The booths began at the largest bridge across the river, where there were steps built into the banks. The racecourse began and ended where the booths did; going up-river for a set distance, carefully marked on both riverbanks, then returning. Anyone who cared to come to the bank along the race route could see the races; some enterprising souls along the bank were renting their rooms for the final day of racing, so that people could watch in comparative comfort. Alberich couldn’t quite see the point of that—being crowded up to a window that gave you less of a view than the worst spot on the bank itself—but then, from what he was hearing, there would be so much in the way of drinking and carousing going on in those rooms that no one would be paying much attention to the races anyway.

Then there were the competitions in trick skating, being held in a particularly smooth section. Real seats had been set up there, and there were contests in jumping over barrels, fancy skating in singles and pairs, and sprint racing. When the trick skaters weren’t performing or competing, someone had come up with a strange game involving two teams of eight men each, armed with brooms, a ball, and two goals. There didn’t seem to be many rules, except that the participants evidently needed to be drunk enough not to care when they fell down or crashed together, but not so drunk they couldn’t manage to play. Fights frequently broke out, but no one got seriously hurt, as far as Alberich had been able to tell. There were black eyes, a few lost teeth, and broken brooms, but no broken bones. Perhaps that was due at least in part to all the padding that the players wore in the way of extra clothing. The games tended to have no set duration, lasting either until everyone was too tired to go on, or the fancy skaters wanted to use the ice again and got the Guard to chase the gamers off. Whereupon the gamers would pick up their goals—made of eel traps—and move to rougher ice until the good patch was free again. To Alberich’s inexperienced eyes, the game looked something like a game played on ponyback by some of the hill shepherds, who had allegedly got it from the Shin’a’in.

There weren’t any prizes for the broom-ball game, so the people playing it were doing so purely for the sheer enjoyment of the mayhem they were engaging in. And, perhaps, for the hot wine and mulled ale that their supporters brought out for them whenever they took a break.

It never failed to amaze Alberich how much effort some people would go to for a “free” drink.