Bentwhistle the Dragon Box

by Paul Cude

  With the opposition having a clear foothold in the game, Salisbridge seemed to capitulate more and more as the half wore on. Tank found himself on the end of a couple of nasty uppercuts from the opposing prop while in the scrum, twice in succession, both of which were missed by the officials. Peter shook his head when the score reached 7-20, barely able to watch the action, if that's what it could be called. Thankfully for the players and spectators alike, the referee finally blew for half time, allowing the Salisbridge players a much needed rest and revision of tactics, whilst the freezing spectators found respite from the cold and were able to top up their drinks.

  Staring out through the windows of the cosy clubhouse, queuing at the bar with Richie, Peter watched as the bedraggled band of Salisbridge rugby players got a right royal rollicking from their coach. Deflated was the only word he could think of to describe them right now. To a man, they all looked ready to throw the towel in, even his man mountain of a friend, Tank, who was usually the most optimistic and upbeat person he'd ever met. Part of him couldn't blame them... freezing cold, covered from head to toe in mud, bleeding from legs, arms, head, fingers, etc. They were a mess. Peter, very selfishly he realised, really did not want to go back out to watch the second half and witness his friend get the beating, not just in terms of score, that was so obviously coming his way.

  Tapping him on the shoulder, Richie handed him a fresh drink.

  "Thanks."

  "You're welcome. Better watch out though, babe magnet," mocked Richie, nodding in a certain direction.

  Turning to look in the direction Richie had indicated, he had but one thought.

  'Ah Janice.' Richie stepped back a little as the gorgeous bar worker nuzzled up to Peter, whispering to him as she carried a near impossible amount of glasses.

  "Still okay for that drink later?"

  "Of course," he replied.

  "Good," added Janice, smiling profusely, before pecking him on the cheek and disappearing into the crowd.

  Just as Richie opened her mouth to say something, he beat her to it.

  "Not a word, not one single word."

  Richie just grinned, pleased deep down to see her friend happy. Both of them joined the rest of the supporters and headed back outside, sensing more than a little pessimism amongst the crowd, mainly made up of home fans. So wanting Tank to do well, realistically Peter just couldn't see it happening. As the chaotic crowd slowed up to squeeze through the double doors that led outside, a very grumpy and stressed looking figure forced his way through from the outside, bumping into people heading in the opposite direction, spilling a couple of drinks without even a hint of an apology, showing absolutely no manners whatsoever. Peter could see Richie about to take the rude man to task. Instantly, he grabbed her and stopped her from doing it, allowing the man to pass unhindered. She was not happy at his intervention.

  "What exactly do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

  "You can't just go into one at him. Do you know who he is?"

  "Yeah," she replied angrily. "He's the chairman of the sports club. So what?"

  "I don't think letting him have it with both barrels is a very good idea. Do you?"

  "He shouldn't be immune to showing some manners, quite the opposite in fact. If you hold a position of responsibility like that, then you should carry yourself with some dignity and pride. This place is always full of kids and teenagers and I don't think anyone should act that way and get away with it. What sort of role model is he to the kids, eh?"

  As they both hit the bitingly cold air outside, Peter carefully considered Richie's words, as she eyed his every move, and maybe every thought.

  "Sorry. You're right of course. Want me to come with you to find him?"

  "I don't think that's really necessary, do you? But don't stop me like that again, or I'll snap you like a twig," she joked.

  "Understood," replied Peter, knowing when he was beaten.

  Plonking themselves back against the barrier, the two friends found themselves in pretty much the same place they'd been for the first half, as they waited for the referee to restart the match. They didn't have to wait long.

  Salisbridge were out of the blocks like a jet fighter fuelled on pure adrenaline. Whatever the coach had said to them at the break had certainly got them going. As he witnessed yet another ferocious tackle from one of the home side's players, Peter wondered how long they could keep up this high tempo, and whether they could all remain injury free. Looking on, he could see that each and every one of Tank's teammates were focused only on getting the ball, performing to their maximum and getting themselves back into the match, and he knew from playing hockey that you were more likely to get hurt going in for a challenge half heartedly than going in fully committed. It was almost as if the Salisbridge players were reborn, they were so totally different from their first half display and leading them by example, throwing himself in harm's way almost constantly, was Tank. Watching his friend, back to his normal self, a steely glint in his eye, he knew at that precise moment that his prediction about Salisbridge losing the match couldn't have been further from the truth.

  Right now one of the opponents had the ball, looking to kick it long. With a Salisbridge player bearing down on him, he must have panicked just a little because he sliced the kick wildly. One of the Salisbridge wingers was on it in the blink of an eye, gathering the ball in and charging off down the pitch, taking out half of the opposition in one go. The rest of the team chased after their winger, hoping to offer support, but he was miles ahead of everyone, everyone except Tank. With only two opponents to beat, the winger dropped his shoulder one way and speedily swerved the other. Not having been totally fooled by the dummy, his opponent managed to recover enough to grab hold of the winger's ankle, just as he'd thought he'd got past. As he started to stumble to the ground, he just about managed to offload the ball to Tank who was motoring along just inside him. Keeping his eyes on the ball, despite it spinning wildly, Tank gathered it in cleanly as he ran, avoiding the flailing opponent on the floor as he did so. Clutching the ball tightly to his chest, he glanced over his shoulder, pleased to see that no one from behind was in a position to catch him. Turning his attention to what was in front of him, he had a sudden feeling of déjà vu. Standing in his way was the opponent with the smug grin, the one who'd injured him in the first half and the one that had punched him twice in the scrum. As Tank approached like a huge out of control runaway boulder crashing down the side of a mountain, his opponent still wore the same smug grin.

  Tank had already decided on a course of action and had poured on as much speed as he had left, the muscles in his legs burning with pain from the effort. As the distance between them closed, the opponent's grin wavered. Not sure what to do, the opposing defender mirrored Tank's moves, jinking first left, and then right, before going left again. Knowing the defender was more than a little off balance, Tank put his head down and, wrapping both hands tightly around the ball, pumped his legs as fast as they would go, gasping for breath as he did so. An instant too late, the defender realised what was about to happen, but being just slightly off balance there wasn't a chance of him doing anything about it. Tank ploughed through the defender, catching him full on in the stomach, sending him some six or seven feet in the air. A splintering crack, like the sound of a gunshot, echoed across the pitch as the two collided. Crossing the line, Tank placed the ball down on the turf directly beneath the posts, the welcoming squelch of the defender landing awkwardly in the mud brought a grin to his face. Raising his hands above his head in delight, Tank lapped up the applause from the small crowd, including both Richie and Peter. By now his teammates had caught him up, enveloping him as a group, patting him on the back and ruffling what little hair he had left on his head.

  'None of this kissing and cuddling here,' Peter thought, 'unlike in all the football on the television.' Why footballers who know they're going to be filmed celebrate in quite the way they do, he just didn't know.

  Causing a five mi
nute delay to proceedings, the smug defender had to be helped from the pitch by two of his team's substitutes and their physio. The match resumed with Salisbridge putting away the conversion, much to the delight of the small crowd, who now had something to cheer about. Salisbridge were now very much in the ascendancy with the score at 14-20.

  Play continued with the home side trying their hardest to break down the opposition and gain the much needed points they needed to win the game, but without much luck. They had a few drop goal attempts, which didn't really trouble the posts very much, along with two penalty kicks, both within range, both going agonisingly wide. The crowd, along with Peter and Richie, were becoming frustrated in much the same way as the players. If it hadn't been for the smug defender crying like a baby as the physio escorted him into the changing rooms, the crowd would have had nothing at all to smile about.

  Both sides having made their final substitutions with ten minutes to go, the match became even scrappier, to the disbelief of the crowd. Peter and Richie drained their glasses dry, both tossing the plastic glasses over ten feet in the air, landing them squarely into a bright blue bin set up beside the pitch, much to the amusement of several onlookers. Both smiling at each other, each with but one thought.

  'If only they knew everything else we were capable of.'

  Turning their attention back to the muddy scrap of a game, the two friends shouted encouragement in Tank's direction, but whether or not he could hear it was something else entirely.

  Towering high into the air on the halfway line on the opposite side of the pitch, the fancy new electronic timer showed that only three minutes of the match remained. It looked as if time had run out for Salisbridge to get anything out of the game, thought Peter, shivering ever so slightly, all the time rubbing his hands together. Feeling for his friend, knowing that he'd be gutted to lose, particularly to such unsporting opposition, all he wanted to do at the moment was go and warm up inside the club house; he really didn't care who won or lost at this point. Tank, it had to be said, had other ideas. His body hurt beyond belief. In all the time he'd played this action packed, adrenaline fuelled, mightily addictive sport, he'd never hurt this much. NEVER! He knew he'd done something bad to his right ankle and really wasn't looking forward to taking his boots off. On top of that, his left shoulder felt badly bruised, and as for his left ribs, well he struggled to pull in a full breath, and he couldn't stand upright without nauseating waves of pain pulsing through them, not to mention the cuts and almighty bruises lining his face and the huge lump on the top of his right cheek.

  'All in all,' he reflected, 'not one of my better days.' Catching his breath in the momentary respite before another line-out, he decided there and then that these dirty, cheating... ... opponents (even in his mind he couldn't say the word that most others would have used to describe their antics), weren't getting away with it, not while he could still stand, even if he had to tear up the entire rugby pitch and bring the try line to the ball. They were simply not going to win, there were no two ways about it. However he did appreciate that with a little under three minutes left on the clock, it would need something very special to turn the match around, and would probably involve a huge slice of luck. Straightening up and ignoring the mind numbing pain that came with the move, he wandered over and assumed his place in the line-out, focused solely on getting his hands on the ball.

  Right hand gripping the ball like an eagle clutching a fish, the Salisbridge hooker was poised to throw the ball straight down the line of opposing forwards, but as he drew the ball back behind his head, he gave Tank a little wink. Immediately Tank knew this was it, the chance he'd been looking for. As the hooker released the ball straight down the line, at exactly the height Tank had been expecting, having practised this over and over again in training, the man mountain of a dragon wrapped in a human body jumped with all his might, one of his gigantic hands plucking the ball out of the air, before falling back onto the muddy surface, his damaged ankle nearly giving way with the bone shuddering impact. Holding one opponent at bay with his free hand, he sprinted for all he was worth around the back of the forward line, shaking off the opponent and headed deeper into the middle of the muscle sapping pitch. On doing so, he found himself directly level with the electronic timer. It loomed over him like a dark, prehistoric dinosaur about to strike, the brightly lit numbers standing out like piercing, fluorescent eyes. In a fraction of a second he read the display, his mind registering that he had less than ninety seconds to turn defeat into victory. Ignoring the pain slicing through his body, he found solace in noticing out of the corner of his eye that his friends were still watching him from the sideline. Stretching the huge muscles in his neck, he put his head down and charged for all he was worth past a row of his own players, determined to score a try and win the game for his team.

  In the few seconds since the line-out, Peter and Richie had suddenly become more alert, and less interested in going inside to get warm. Both of them sensed simultaneously that something had changed, and that things were about to get very... interesting.

  With his head down, running at full tilt, Tank had already thundered two members of the opposition out of the way and was busy weaving between the next two, with the rest of the Salisbridge team in hot pursuit.

  Leaning against the metal rail that surrounded the pitch, the very last thing Peter was currently, was cold. Nervous, excited, hopeful, barely able to look... he was all of these things, but most definitely not cold. Tank was brushing off opponents like they were children, and had everyone watching, spellbound. The crowd had collectively breathed in, and were now holding their breath, waiting to see how things would pan out.

  Tears streamed down Tank's face as one of the opposition grabbed his damaged ankle. Gathering all the pain up in his mind, he sealed it in a brightly coloured box deep inside his psyche, something dragons were taught to do in the nursery ring. Still within his mind, he tossed it into the furthest recesses, watching it disappear off into the darkness, and then back with his body, wriggled free of the defender who'd had hold of his ankle. Continuing his selfless charge towards the try line, he was careful to make sure that none of his dragon abilities bubbled to the surface in an effort to help him, so while he'd been taught that little trick with the pain during his time in the nursery ring, he didn't consider it part of his array of magic, or a particular dragon feature that would give him an unfair advantage. Like his friends, he was as honest as the day was long when it came to any kind of cheating within his chosen sport.

  Richie and Peter had seen their friend do astonishing things whilst growing up, but the display Tank was putting on here and now made Peter wonder if he'd seen anything from his friend that was quite so amazing.

  Things had started to blur around the edges of Tank's vision.

  'Not a good sign,' he thought, as he pushed ever further into the opposition's half. The good news was that some of his teammates had nearly caught up with him; the bad news was that nausea washed over him in giant waves, so badly that he feared he would pass out at any second. But he knew if he did, any chance of winning would be lost forever. Suddenly his brain registered that he was in a lot of trouble. Three opponents were converging on him all at once, with absolutely no way to avoid being tackled. Bringing his head up just slightly, he glanced over his left shoulder. Sure enough, Speedy Ian, the Salisbridge winger, was galloping down the wing like a racing thoroughbred. Tank waited until he could see the whites of his opponents' eyes, something made even harder by the problems with his vision. The three of them knew that Tank had nowhere to go, and were oblivious to anything else around them. All they knew was that they were going to take him down... BIG TIME! With them all just fractions of a second away, Tank, without looking, threw the ball high up into the air over his left shoulder, and then dived down onto the churned up ground. All three opponents were left stunned as they helplessly watched the ball fall directly into the path of Speedy Ian. Worse was to follow, as they all tripped over Tank's prone bod
y at speed and at exactly the same time, causing them all to pile up into each other with bone chilling thumps.

  On the ground, Tank wheezed in pain from the falling opponents, all of whom had made contact with his ribs and back to one degree or another. With a Herculean effort he forced himself to his feet, determined to see it through and make sure his team got the try their hard work fully deserved.

  On the sideline, the spectators still collectively held their breath, waiting to see if their team could do the impossible with only seconds remaining.

  Willing his battered and bloody body to move, Tank took off after Speedy Ian and the rest of the Salisbridge attack. Through his ever diminishing eyesight, he could just make out the winger being tackled, with the attack turning into a ruck about ten feet short of the try line. His body moved on autopilot as he joined his teammates in what he knew to be the final seconds of the match. The ball came fizzing out of the ruck quicker than he would have thought possible, back to one of the forwards who, surprisingly, rather than run towards the try line, threw the ball straight back to him. Clearly the forward's brain must be addled, because if he looked only about a tenth as bad as he felt, then no one in their right mind would have passed him the ball. Tank's bloodied, numb, frozen fingers seized the ball, before his mind even registered it. Unable to take a painful breath, something grabbed him around the neck, forcing him to the ground. Above the impact of smashing into the ground, and the subsequent face full of mud, Tank heard the referee's shrill whistle nearby. In an attempt to win the game and waste time, their opponents had given away a deliberate penalty. Rolling over, trying hard to make his giant, tree trunk like legs work, Tank glanced over towards the electronic timer. The fluorescent numbers dazzled his broken eyes. There were eighteen seconds left, eighteen seconds to do the impossible. Staggering to his feet with the ball on the ground in front of him, he took everything in. He was standing off to the left hand side of the pitch, some fifteen or so feet away from the try line that he so desperately needed to get to. Glancing around, his teammates looked worse than he felt, which was saying quite something. To a player, Salisbridge had given their all. More to the point though, was that they looked as though they'd already lost, a feeling that was creeping up inside him. That is until he looked up into the faces of his opponents between him and the try line, all looking like they'd... won. A primal, unjust rage roared from somewhere deep inside him. It powered every muscle, every sinew, and wrapped itself throughout his broken body, as it screamed,