Away Game: No Extra Time, Just Sudden Death

At the end of the second decade of the twenty first century, world unrest continues unabated, fueled by ongoing conflicts from the turn of the millennium, which fractured the world on regional and religious lines. These conflicts were not new. They just rose from the ashes of previous incarnations of the same tensions which have existed for a millennia and more. Football is how the masters of the Industrial Revolution harnessed and released these feelings in their countries. Football clubs formed along local lines. Clubs formed along religious lines. Confirming identity and demonizing the other. Warfare contained to a grass pitch in a stadium filled with die hard fanatics. Football fascinates worldwide. Today, Britain, America and Europe are filled with people scarred by their involvement in these world conflicts. People who were dropped into countries they did not know existed, where people speak languages they have never heard, in cultures which are often very alien. Going to the ultimate away game. People like our friends. People like Craig. No one comes away unscathed. People touched by these conflicts live in a netherworld of constant threat, at a level of readiness for action which fries the nerves and damages the mind. When Craig travels with his mates to a quiet backwater at the very northern edge of Europe, he realizes he is in a simmering conflict zone, between Paganism and Christianity which is bursting into flame. And what the Pagans worship is actually out there in the northern forests. Waiting in the darkness. In this game there is no extra time: just sudden death.