Free Taking One for the Team by Vanessa Cardui Page A

break went to the stormers.  Raven held back, watched the passing.  Third runner to first to third to blue wing to score, just like that.  They were well smooth, no doubt.  Longacre was going to lose?  Doubt.
    She grabbed it off the bound, passed, crossed the line, took a pass, scored.  Then went in after their third runner—the team captain—hit her with a low tackle, just on the clean side of a bad hit, took the ball up, launched a try.  Missed, because one of the tower's chains clipped her side on the follow-through.
    First half, Raven made ten goals on forty-one tries, which was damn good against the team the stormers were showing.  They'd scored on tries that seemed impossible—there was a muddy footprint on the side of Stave's helmet where one of the runners had gone right up over him to score.  And every single time one of the stormers made an error, another one was there covering.
    Blue wing was better than Raven.  He was taller, and had an arm like a pulse rifle.  Gold wing was stronger and smarter, but he was off his game; when Raven crossed the line, she doubled up on gold side, took tries sooner than she would've, because the stormer towers were murder.
    Score was twenty-eight to forty at the half.  They were coming close to winning the bet, but that wasn't what Raven cared about, not after that half.
    "We can win it," she told Stave and the rest of them as they cleaned the mud out of their cleats, and wiped off as much blood as they could.  "Lure the gold wing in between towers, pin him with a chain.  He's slow, and you could—"
    "We're going to play things safe," said Stave.  "Bet's looking winnable, and damn if I don't want to win it.  That'd settle Hold-Your-Cards' hash, anyway—nobody takes bets off stormers, not more than one time in twenty."
    That was true, and fair, and it rankled.  Making a bet like that with stormers was to show how rich they were—how much they could afford to lose.  Winning whisky and an automatic was just a dream.  But dammit, it was close enough.  They could take it.
    When the second half started, Raven went all out.  Four scores on fifteen tries, three intercepts, and she hit one of their runners hard enough that he staggered getting up.  And because she was going all out like that, there were more holes for Longacre's runners to get through.  Score was thirty-eight to forty-four when their center tower caught Raven with a chain.
    Sterrn, at Longacre's gold wing, had missed on his try, so Raven went for the pick-up, rolled over a stormer runner, but as her hand went up for a try, the chain wrapped up around her chest, pulling her forward.
    She'd been out of range of the tower.  She'd been sure she was out of range.  No time to think.  She turned and twisted as their center tower turned and pulled.  Bang-thump of Sterrn getting the loose ball and scoring, and she tried to undo the prickle-catch of the chain as she also dug in and tried to keep from being pulled in.
    Didn't manage either.  Their center tower wasn't just huge; he pulled like a gasoline tractor.  And the prickle-catch had caught the other end of the chain behind Raven's back, up on the shoulder.  He pulled her in as she tried to find purchase in the mud.   Another bang-thump of a Longacre score, and then he whipped a second chain at her.
    That close, it wrapped around three times before the prickle catch caught.  Both legs pinned, and her right arm pinned to her body.  The tower let both chains go, and turned his attention back to the game.
    A pin.  It had been almost twenty games since Raven had been pinned, and damned if it was going to be a pin in this one, not with them within ten points of the stormers at the end of the second half.
    Chains were tight, but tight wasn't perfect.  And her left hand was free.  She started rubbing her ankles together, closing and opening her right hand, pulling for any slack she could find, anywhere.
    Mud was wet enough that it loosened things