“Really?” Dunk said. “Maybe you should see someone about that, coach? Dr. Pill could probably get you fixed right up.”
The man started to come around the desk to grab Dunk and haul him to his feet, but his hook was stuck once more. “I’ll take you to Dr. Pill. Gah! I order you to report to him for an evaluation and treatment. He’ll put an end to this poppycock.”
“Oh, I would,” Dunk said, “but as I recall, difficult as it is in my fevered condition, the contract clearly states that we have to use a third party doctor on which we can both agree. Team physicians are just too easily pressured by their employers.”
“He’s right,” Slick said. “That got put in back when coaches kept forcing their players to take to the field in the second half against Nurgle’s Rotters, no matter how many quarts of vomit they produced.”
“You’re playing tomorrow,” Pegleg said, “if I have to kick your rump out onto that field with my wooden leg!”
Dunk stood up, cleared his throat and stared Pegleg in the eye. He’d allowed the man to terrify him for as long as he’d been a player. That was a time honoured part of the player/coach relationship in Blood Bowl, and he’d abided by it. The fact that Pegleg could intimidate the Emperor made that easier, but with one foot already out of the door, Dunk found that the man no longer had such a hold over him.
“Try it,” Dunk said, “and you’ll be wearing two of those pegs.”
Pegleg stopped cold in the middle of taking a breath to start a new rant. He choked the air back and glared at Dunk. Before the coach could say a word, Dunk spoke.
“I’m not playing tomorrow. I’m not playing the day after that. I’m not playing until you release me from my contract.”
He gave a gentle cough into his fist as he turned to leave. “As soon as you come to your senses, I think I can arrange to come to mine.”
5
“You really think I should still play?” Spinne asked as she adjusted the chinstrap on her helmet. She and the other Hackers stood in the Hackers’ dugout on one side of the field, making last-minute preparations before the game.
“If I happened to catch whatever ‘illness’ it is you seem to have, I think people might understand how that could happen.”
“Get out there,” Dunk said. He clapped his brother on the arm. “You too. I can make my point on my own. No need for the rest of you to suffer with me.”
Dirk cast a wary gaze towards the dugout on the opposite side of the field. “We’ll be out there playing while you sit here safe on the sidelines, far away from Khorne’s Killers. Tell me again who’s suffering here.”
“It’s too late for Pegleg to replace you. If you don’t play, the others will probably get killed.”
“So tell me again why you’re shamming sickness so you can stay out of the game if you’re so concerned about our health.”
“I have to do something to break Pegleg’s will.”
Dirk put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Can’t you find another way? We’re going to miss you out there, painfully.”
“Don’t you want to find Kirta?”
Dirk winced at this. “Of course I do, if she’s really there. This seems like an awful risk to take on some Amazon’s say-so, even if she did know about Nunya.”
“I don’t trust her either,” said Dunk. “After all, she’s basically working as an agent for the Amazons, and most agents are slime.”
“Hey!” Slick said.
“Present company excepted, of course.”
“Son,” Slick said, “you’ve got it wrong. All good agents are slime. It goes with the territory.”
Dunk did a double take, and then decided that the halfling was serious. Sometimes he wondered how he’d ended up with such a person in his life, and why he would trust his agent with not only his money but his life. So far, though, despite his bluster, Slick had never steered him wrong.
Something screeched into the sky and exploded over the field.
“There’s the signal for the start of the game!” Bob said. “Welcome to the finals of the Spike! Magazine Tournament, pitting the world champions, Bad Bay Hackers against the bad boys of the Chaos Circuit, Khorne’s Killers!”
Dirk patted Dunk on the back while Spinne mimed a kiss at him through her helmet. Then they followed the others as they charged out into their positions on the field.
Dunk’s heart sank as he watched them go. He’d faced similar dangers with them countless times. Khorne’s Killers couldn’t be worse than the Chaos All-Stars they’d faced in the Blood Bowl finals last year, right? But this time he’d be watching from the sidelines, unable to help.
“Hard, isn’t it?” Pegleg said right behind him.
Dunk almost jumped out of his shoes. He spun around and put a few, judicious feet between him and his coach. Pegleg ignored him, keeping his eyes focused on the Hackers as they took the field.
“Being left behind while the people you care most about in the world go off to play the game, to risk their lives, to grab the glory. It’s hard.”
“Don’t you do that every game?” Dunk asked.
Pegleg nodded. “Aye, Mr. Hoffnung, and that’s why I’m tougher than you. You won’t break me over this. You might as well give up and get out on that field right now. That way you can avoid the heartache of watching your friends get torn to pieces while you sit here on the sidelines, nursing your damned cause.”
The coach’s words stung Dunk more than he would let on. He’d been up most of the night struggling with this question, but as dawn had broken over the horizon he’d known he’d made the right choice.
“You’re only concerned about your team,” Dunk said. “I’m doing this for my baby sister.”
With that, he sat down on the far end of the bleacher from Pegleg. The other players stared at him. Dr. Pill sneered for a moment, and then strode over and perched next to Dunk.
“You should get your lazy, wimpy ass out there,” the apothecary said.
“I’m making a point.”
“You made your point. Now you’re just making me look bad.”
Dunk raised an eyebrow at the old elf.
“You’re ‘sick’. I’m the team apothecary. It’s my job to fix you up. You’re not fixed. I must not be doing my job.”
“Everyone knows that’s not true.”
Out on the field, the Killers kicked off the ball, and the Hackers scrambled into position to grab it. The ball sailed right towards Rotes Hernd, who’d started in Dunk’s place.
“I’m sure the Game Wizards would be happy to hear that.”
Dunk froze. “They’re right behind me, aren’t they?” He could not bring himself to turn around.
Dr. Pill snorted. “I’m not that clever. Besides, as pissed off as I am at you, I respect what you’re doing.”
“You do?”
“Family comes first, even over Blood Bowl, especially over Blood Bowl.”
“But you wish it didn’t make you look bad.”
“Precisely. But that’s the least of your worries, I’m sure.”
The old elf clapped Dunk on the back and stood up to greet the stretcher coming off the field. A pair of thick armed dwarfs carried it from either end, and Getrunken sprawled across it, his helmet dangling from one limp hand.
“What happened?” Dr. Pill asked. “I didn’t see the injury.”
Pegleg came over, caught the front of Getrunken’s jersey with his hook, and pulled Getrunken to a sitting position. The man’s head lolled forward on a limp neck, and his eyes rolled open, bloodshot and vacant. When he exhaled, Dunk could smell the rotgut on his breath, even from where he sat.
Pegleg put a hand over his face and growled in disgust. “It was self-inflicted, before the game began. He’s three sheets, maybe four.”
Dr. Pill shook his head and sneered. “The wimp asked me for something to kill the pain, and then does this.”
“What pain?” asked Dunk.
“Emotional.” Dr. Pill rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t take
the stress of starting the game, he said.”
Pegleg slapped Getrunken across the face with his fleshy hand. “Get on your feet, you dog. Get up, or the next slap will be from my hook!”
Getrunken’s eyes snapped to focus on the hook still holding him upright. He started to say something, and then brought up his helmet, inverted like a bowl, and bent over it. Pegleg snatched back his hook as the man retched into his helmet.
“Get him out of here,” Pegleg said to the dwarfs. He shot a glare at Dr. Pill. “Get him sober for the second half. He’s starting again whether he’s ready or not.”
“They’d kill him in a state like that,” said Dunk.
“Better to die on the field than in the locker room.”
Pegleg stabbed his hook out towards a burly young man sitting in the dugout’s far corner. “You!” he said.
“Yes, coach.” The young player charged up to the ex-pirate and snapped off a sharp salute. “Nicht Bereit reporting for duty, coach.”
“This is a Blood Bowl team, not the army, Mr. Bereit.” Pegleg stared at the young man’s vacant gaze, and shrugged, giving up on explaining the differences. “You’re in. Take that sot’s place in the line.”
Bereit quivered with excitement. “Yes, coach. Right away, coach.” With that, he charged out onto the field.
Pegleg glowered at Dunk. “I’ve been reduced to this,” he hissed, and marched off.
Dunk shrugged. As the team took losses during the game, his position only grew stronger. He couldn’t root for his team-mates to get hurt, but he wasn’t above taking advantage of it.
Dunk watched as Hernd connected with Spinne on a long pass. Before Spinne’s feet even touched the ground, one of the Chaos players, a ram headed creature with glowing eyes, wrapped a tentacle around her waist and tossed her to the ground. Dunk gasped, but when the ball rolled free, the Killer went after it instead of Spinne, and a moment later the woman sprang back to her feet.
“It’s not easy to sit here and watch, is it?” a soft voice said next to him.
Dunk turned to see a fair-skinned Estalian beauty sitting next to him, her flowing, black hair spilling over the back of her Hackers uniform as her wide, dark eyes glittered at him. “Camisa Roja,” she said, pointing at herself.
“You just joined the team?”
She nodded with a grin. “This is my first game. I feel so blessed to have made the cut with such a great team. I can’t wait until I get to play.”
Dunk gave her a smile that barely touched his lips.
“It’s so sad that you’re too sick to play,” she said, putting a sympathetic hand on his arm. Then she snatched it away. “Hope it’s not contagious.”
“I’m fine,” he said, waving off her concern.
“Oh? Then why aren’t you out there on the field?” She stared at him as if he’d started to drool.
“It’s complicated.”
Dunk didn’t mind talking to the woman, but he didn’t know her. Dr. Pill’s offhand threat to turn him over to the Game Wizards had made him cautious about trusting anyone, especially when it came to new faces. Her smile returned, more guarded this time.
“I see. It’s just that I’d give just about anything to be able to be out there with the ball in my hands.”
“Funny,” Dunk said, more to himself than her. “I’ve never felt that way about it.”
6
“Heldmann is down! I repeat, Heldmann is down!”
Dunk leapt to his feet and stared out at the field. A huge pile of people and creatures had formed on the far side of the field. Legs, arms, horns, tails, and tentacles thrashed about, and Dunk couldn’t make a bit of sense of it.
He jumped out of the dugout and stared up at the Jumboball. The image on the humongous crystal ball showed exactly what Dunk saw: a huge mess. Green and gold jerseys struggled with black and blue ones in a massive scrum that showed no signs of breaking up.
“Did you see that hit?” Bob said. “I haven’t seen anyone that brutalised since the end of the last season when you finally came home to your wife after six solid months on the road.”
“True enough,” Jim said. “The little lady packs a heck of a wallop. I spent a week in the infirmary recovering after that!”
A flash of black and white stripes caught Dunk’s eye, and for a moment he hoped that a referee had appeared to help break things up. He knew that Dirk had to be somewhere in that pile-up, as were Spinne and the rest of his friends, but he couldn’t get a glimpse of him. Then he saw that the ref’s shirt was empty, shredded, and covered with glowing, green blood.
“What happened to the ref?” Jim asked. “He’s supposed to step in when it gets like this!”
“You missed his transformation? We’ve gotta see an instant replay for that!”
The image on the Jumboball jumped, and a high-blooded elf appeared in the centre of the crystal, wearing a referee’s striped shirt. It seemed to be a break between plays, and the elf reached out and grabbed a water bottle from a bench for a quick drink. As he poured the liquid from the bottle, it began to glow with a sickly, green light.
The referee wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then stared at the green glow there. A moment later, he fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. As he writhed on the edge of the field, his skin began to turn a bright red, and blades made of bone emerged from his wrists. He used them to tear off his shirt, slicing through the fabric and into his skin.
A line of long, wispy tentacles rose from the referee’s spine as he bent his back. A beak sprouted from his face. Feathers sprang from his legs.
“I don’t know about you,” Bob said, “but that’s the ugliest chicken I’ve ever seen.”
“Wonder how those legs would taste,” said Jim. “What? They all look the same once they’ve spent a good hour in a barbecue pit!”
Without warning, the referee launched into the game, his eyes glowing with hatred and the greenish taint of Chaos. A moment later, Dirk appeared on the screen, sprinting along the field, the ball tucked under his arm. The referee leapt at him, his mutated arms spread wide as he flapped into the air on his bent, feathered legs.
Dirk’s free fist smashed into the referee, but it wasn’t enough to knock the mad creature away. He went down beneath the referee in a flurry of tentacles and feathers.
“Does that count as too many creatures on the field for the Killers?” Bob asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jim, “but who’s going to call the penalty?”
“If those remains in M’Grash’s fists are any indication, the Killers are already a player or three short!”
“Stay here,” Pegleg shouted.
Dunk glanced back to see him facing down the others, holding his hook high and daring them to try to get past him. “I will not have my team start a bench clearing brawl!”
Dunk stared across the field to see the Killers’ coach, Pike PcCarthy, a burly, fish faced fiend with whips for arms, lashing his players back towards the bench. Until he’d seen PcCarthy in action, Dunk had wondered how anyone could keep a pack of monsters like the players of Khorne’s Killers under control. Then he’d seen PcCarthy disembowel a water carrier for supplying water that was too pure.
Still, even PcCarthy didn’t want to be seen instigating an all-out brawl in the Spike! Magazine championship game. He knew that if he let his players loose, he might never get them back.
“If you wish to keep your jobs,” Pegleg said, “you will remain with the seat of your breeches scraping for splinters on those thrice damned benches!”
Dunk launched himself out of the dugout and sprinted across the field, straight for the pile up. He ignored his coach’s pleas for him to stop. Dunk wanted to lose his job, and if he could help his brother out in the meantime, then all the better.
The players in the pile didn’t see him coming. They were too busy tearing each other to pieces to worry about outside threats. The Killers in the opposing dugout, though, saw Dunk coming and pointed his advance out to Coach
PcCarthy.
Howling in rage, the fish-man called his players to their feet, and sent them sprinting galloping, slithering, and slurping off to show Dunk and the rest of the Hackers a lesson. Dunk had a good head start on them, though, and knew he would reach the pile first. He glanced back and saw that Pegleg had finally relented. The rest of the Hackers had followed him on to the field.
When Dunk neared the pile up, he took a flying leap into the air and came down hard on the first Killer he saw. As he reached the zenith of his arc, Dunk realised he’d made one big mistake. He’d rushed onto the field without his armour.
That not only meant he had no protection, but neither did he have spikes or blades to use against his foes. At the moment, there was little he could do about it. He brought his legs forward and came down with the best-protected part of his body: his feet.
Dunk’s boot stomped the back of the helmet of a Killer in front of him into the Astrogranite so hard that the spikes on the front of the helmet stuck there in the synthetic stone. The creature, jersey number 616, squealed like a pig that’d just learned the big secret of the slaughterhouse as it flailed about helplessly.
Dunk reached out and grabbed the faceguard of another player’s helmet. Reptilian eyes stared back at him when he wrenched the player’s head around, and a forked tongue flickered out to caress the back of his hand. The creature hissed at him as it arched its neck back to strike with its venomous fangs.
Dunk pulled down on the helmet hard, putting all his weight into it. The move bent his foe in half. Thankfully, the snakeman didn’t have any arms to flail at Dunk, and for a split-second he felt safe.
That came to an abrupt end as he saw the creature’s scorpion’s tail arch up behind it. Dunk knew he’d have to let the beast go or suffer its lethal sting.
“Quake ‘The Plumber’ doesn’t look too happy about his new Hacker hood ornament!” Bob said.
“That’s right!” said Jim. “He’s about to give Hoffnung a piece of his, um, tail!”
“Ya gonna sssuffer sssucker,” the creature hissed.
Dunk reached out with his free hand and pulled at the buttons on the side of the Killer’s chinstrap. Just as the tail started to come down, the chinstrap gave way, and the snake-scorpion-man stumbled backward onto its raised tail. Dunk looked down at the spiked helmet in his hand. Now, at least, he had a weapon.
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 4
