[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Dunk lowered the spyglass and grabbed Pegleg by the shoulder. “Something’s wrong.”

  The ex-pirate handed Dunk the wheel and took the spyglass from him. As Dunk took control of the ship, he noticed that the Fanatic wasn’t chasing straight after them any longer. It had started to peel away.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Pegleg said. “They had us. They were after us, and we had no way to escape. What in the seven seas could have stopped them?”

  A commotion erupted at the fore of the Sea Chariot. Dirk and Spinne stood peering out past the bowsprit, shading their eyes with their hands. M’Grash, who stood behind them, closer to the bridge, turned and howled in fear, his face twisted into a terrified grimace.

  Dunk’s stomach twisted into a knot. He’d known M’Grash to overreact before. The ogre could be sent into shuddering fits by the right kind of cockroach. But anything that could honestly scare him, not just give him the heebie-jeebies, had to be truly horrible.

  “What in Nuffle’s balls is that?” Pegleg said as his spyglass leaned in over Dunk’s shoulder.

  Dunk followed the spyglass’s angle and spotted a jet of water spraying into the sky, just barely to the port side of the Sea Chariot’s bow. At first, Dunk feared that they might have found a reef in the middle of the sea, as unlikely as that seemed. A reef, though, would have thrown up plume after plume as the waves crashed against it. This just sent up water constantly, never waning.

  Spinne turned at the bow, and cupped her hands to her face. She shouted something, but Dunk couldn’t hear it over the roar from whatever was spraying the water into the sky.

  “Hard to starboard, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said, “now!”

  Dunk spun the wheel to the right, over and over again, until it could go no farther. As he did, the ship began to turn, but too slowly. Despite changing its facing, though, the ship kept moving straight towards the plume.

  Dirk shouted at Dunk too, but the roar had only got louder. Dunk couldn’t hear a thing Dirk said. He shrugged at him, and started to make his way down the stairs and across the deck. That’s when M’Grash came charging at him.

  “Whirlpool!” The ogre’s deep voice cracked in panic. “Whirlpool, Dunkel! Whirlpool!”

  Pegleg cursed. “Lean hard on that wheel, Mr. Hoffnung.”

  Dunk put everything he had into it, but the wheel wouldn’t turn any farther. “I don’t think it’s doing any good.”

  Pegleg ignored Dunk, and reached into a long, low chest built into the aft of the bridge. He pulled out a massive harpoon with a wicked, barbed tip. It was big enough to be used for hunting whales.

  The coach wrestled the harpoon out of its box and handed it to M’Grash. Dunk noticed it had a large coil of rope tied to its back end.

  Pegleg handed the harpoon to M’Grash and pointed at the Fanatic. There’s your target, Mr. K’Thragsh! Let her fly!”

  M’Grash leaned back with the harpoon in his hand, his arm cocked back even farther. It wavered in his hand, bending under its own weight, and Dunk feared it might snap in half in the ogre’s hand. Then M’Grash stepped forward and hurled the harpoon into the air.

  The harpoon zipped through the air, too fast, as Dunk soon spotted. Years of being a thrower for a Blood Bowl team had honed his sense of a throw to a razor’s edge. He knew, as the missile left M’Grash’s mitt that the ogre had put too much arm into it, and not enough finesse.

  A few yards past the gunwale, the harpoon went into a slow, flat turn, spinning like a dagger thrown sideways through the air. The winds caught it and buffeted it about so that it barely reached the Fanatic’s hull.

  When it did, the side of the harpoon’s shaft, rather than its tip, smacked into the ship, and it bounced off into the sea.

  “Haul it back,” Pegleg shouted.

  M’Grash complied, pulling the harpoon in with a series of short, sharp yanks that nearly snapped the weapon to splinters with each tug. Spinne came charging onto the bridge, and Dunk handed her the wheel. She leaned into it with all her might, moving it a few inches more than even Dunk had managed.

  Dunk gave Spinne a quick, tender kiss, hoping it wouldn’t be their last. Then he turned towards the ogre to lend a hand. As he did, the harpoon leapt out of the waves and stabbed point first into the deck, juddering right between Dunk’s legs.

  10

  “Again, Mr. K’Thragsh!” Pegleg shouted, barely audible over the whirlpool’s thunderous roar.

  Dunk grabbed the ogre’s arm, and M’Grash stopped in his tracks. He glanced back to see Dunk standing next to him, his hands stretched out for the harpoon. He looked to Pegleg for guidance.

  The coach shook his head. “Mr. K’Thragsh, make that throw!”

  “He can’t do it!” Dunk said. “Let me try.”

  “I’m still the coach of this team, Mr. Hoffnung. Do not defy my orders!”

  Dunk stared at the man, trying to see if he’d finally gone insane. “M’Grash is a blitzer, not a thrower. He’ll never spear that ship.”

  “That’s none of your concern. I’m in charge here, and you will abide by my decisions.” Pegleg nodded at M’Grash, who hefted the harpoon for another throw.

  Before he could let it loose, though, Dunk stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “This isn’t a game,” Dunk said. “If we blow this, we all die!”

  Pegleg laughed humourlessly. “You think it’s any different in a game? Every time you step on the pitch, it’s a matter of life and death. That’s what makes the game so great.”

  Dunk reached out to take Pegleg by the lapels, but thought better of it. He balled his fists at his sides instead.

  “Don’t do this,” he said. He glanced towards the bow, and saw a massive hole that had opened up in the surface of the sea before them. It looked like someone had pulled the plug from the bottom of the ocean and was letting all the water flow down the drain. A dolphin arced up out of the opposite wall of water, hung there in the sun for a spectacular instant, framed in a rainbow formed by the sun in the spray, and then disappeared into the vertical waters once more.

  “You’re a better coach than that,” Dunk said to Pegleg. “You’re mad at me. I get that, but don’t let it cloud your judgment. Don’t let it kill us all.”

  Pegleg opened his mouth to snarl a riposte, but he stopped and bit his lip instead. He scanned Dunk’s eyes, and nodded.

  “All right,” he said, in a “don’t make me regret this” tone. He waved at M’Grash to hand the harpoon to Dunk. “Mr. Hoffnung? You’re up.”

  Dunk nodded his thanks, and took the harpoon from M’Grash’s grasp.

  “Sorry, Dunkel,” M’Grash said in a pained voice.

  “Don’t sweat it, big guy,” Dunk said, keeping as upbeat as he could. “Just hold on to something and take care of Spinne.”

  Dunk didn’t spare a moment to watch M’Grash respond. He simply cocked back his arm and took aim at the Fanatic’s hull. The suction of the whirlpool had started to spin the Sea Chariot’s bow about to port, and Dunk had to aim past the port gunwale at the galleon. The deck of the ship bounced madly with the whirling water trying to tear it apart, making it hard for Dunk to find a clear shot. He knew that he only had time for one shot, but with the deck bucking, he had just as much chance of putting the harpoon in the sea as into the Fanatic.

  Dunk waited for a moment, trying to gauge the bounce, to better time his throw. It felt like waiting for a receiver to get open as a pack of ogres stampeded towards him. The right moment might never happen, but he had to wait for it, or he’d waste whatever chance he might have. Making a bad throw would be just as bad, worse even, than making no throw at all.

  “Throw it!” Pegleg shouted. “Throw it now, or we’re all doomed!”

  Dunk held on to the harpoon for a moment longer. He wondered if Pegleg might stab him with his hook and take the harpoon from him if he held onto it for too long. He flexed his throwing arm, keeping it loose, but kept waiting for the right moment to present itself.

  �
��We’re going in!” Spinne said. “Hold on to something!”

  The ship began to nose in over the whirlpool’s edge. It tottered there for a moment, hanging between one fate and the other, and it was then that Dunk saw his chance. He hurled the harpoon at the other ship.

  Dunk’s aim was true, and the harpoon arced through the air in a perfect spiral, the rope playing out behind it. The barbed tip slammed into the deck of the galleon and stabbed right through it, catching in the strong, solid wood.

  Despite this, the ship continued its long slide over the whirlpool’s edge. The deck tilted at a crazy angle, and Dunk had to grab the gunwale in front of him to keep his balance.

  Dunk glanced back, and saw Spinne still clutching the wheel, Slick’s arms wrapped around one of her legs as if he feared she might try to kick him away. Beyond her, people in the middle of the boat began to slide towards the railings, scrabbling to find any handhold at all to stop their descent. One man, the new back-up blitzer, by the name of Tom Linson, tipped right over the edge of the ship and out of sight.

  Edgar, who always stood next to the mast, had tipped over and got his limbs tangled in the ship’s rigging. The sails were useless now anyhow, and the ropes that held them in place seemed like the only thing that had kept the treeman from toppling over the ship’s edge. He’d taken advantage of this to gather Guillermo and Spiel in his free branches, where they clung to him for their lives.

  At the far side, Dirk had a good hold on the gunwale, and was starting to use it to climb back towards the bridge, which teetered high above him. As he struggled upward, Enojada came tumbling down. He reached out with one hand and caught her just as she was about to cartwheel into the ocean’s hungry maw, which widened beneath them, ready to suck them down.

  M’Grash had a death grip on the gunwale beside Dunk, and he’d already gathered Lästiges safely in his free arm. Pegleg hung from the railing by his hook, staring at the line as it played out between him and Dunk, zipping fast enough over the gunwale to make the wood smoke.

  Then the line went taut.

  The entire ship shuddered from stem to stern. Far below, someone screamed. Dunk hated himself for giving thanks that it didn’t sound like Dirk.

  The rope and the ship creaked with the strain of holding onto each other, but neither one gave. Dunk glanced back and saw the stern swinging back and forth in the rushing water, like bait on a hook trawling behind a speeding boat.

  Dunk knew that this couldn’t last long. Either the Fanatic would tow them out of the maelstrom, or they would haul it down along with them.

  Dunk could still see the Fanatic from his vantage point at the aft gunwale. The ship had already begun to turn aside from the whirlpool when he’d harpooned it. Now, it struggled to complete a full about turn, but a ship the size of a galleon was simply too big to turn about on its keel.

  The weight of the Sea Chariot pulling on the Fanatic must have given Captain Mad Jonnen and his crew fits. Despite that, it seemed like the Fanatic was starting to make some headway in its efforts to leave the whirlpool behind. Dunk laughed in relief, hope that they might yet survive, rising in him.

  Then the screams below grew louder and more numerous. He looked back, hoping he wouldn’t hate what he saw. He was horribly disappointed.

  Something green and slimy had wrapped around the middle of the cutter. It had to be at least six feet thick, maybe more, and it slithered up, over, and down around the deck like a living lasso, like the world serpent from the Norsca legends that Dunk had learned as a child. It squirmed, writhed, and slid forward without any sign of which end of it was which.

  Then it tightened around the ship, bringing its full weight to bear on the hull. The Sea Chariot stopped sliding back and forth in the unforgiving current, which was more like a waterfall, but instead of wavering from side to side it started to creep down.

  “No!” Pegleg shouted. “Don’t do it! No!”

  Dunk looked to see what the man was shouting at, and he saw the captain waving his fleshy fist in the direction of the Fanatic. There, next to where the harpoon had buried itself in the galleon’s deck, stood a man with a glittering axe.

  Dunk opened his mouth to join Pegleg in begging for mercy, even though he knew it was useless. If the Sea Chariot had to go down, as it seemed it would, there was no reason for the Fanatic to go with her. If he’d been standing on the deck of the Fanatic, the axe would probably have already fallen.

  Before Dunk could say anything, a horrific howl drowned out every other sound. He whipped his head back around to see the head of a massive sea monster having breached the whirlpool’s foaming walls. The thing tossed back its head and screeched again. It arched back its long, sinuous neck to strike.

  Then something next to Dunk snapped with a loud, sickening twang, and the Sea Chariot tumbled backward into the raging maelstrom. The sea creature screamed as it went down with it.

  11

  Dunk awoke to the smell of the sea, the sound of the whirlpool still roaring in his ears. He wondered if all those stories people told about the afterlife were wrong. Perhaps he was doomed to wander the earth as a detached soul, trapped in that single moment and place in which he perished.

  Just about every part of Dunk hurt. He stank of saltwater. He could taste it in his mouth, and it stung his sinuses and his eyes.

  He remembered the Sea Chariot tumbling back into the maelstrom. As much as he’d tried to keep a grip on the ship, it wasn’t easy to do when the whole thing was coming apart all around you. He’d reached for Spinne at the last second, hoping that they could at least die in each other’s arms, but the waters had torn them apart instantly.

  If he was dead, though, it felt nothing like what he expected. His ears roared with the sound of the ocean, as if someone had strapped a massive seashell to each of his ears. He could feel the air in his lungs and the sun beating mercilessly on his face. He’d long assumed that death would be an end to pain rather than the start of it, but, either way, he hoped it would go away.

  Dunk opened his eyes and saw the silvery tail of a large fish flopped on the sand beside him. He wondered if the poor creature had died next to him. Did dead fish need to breathe water?

  Then the tail flipped up and down, which got Dunk’s attention. He scrambled to his feet, kicking up sand everywhere. He looked down at the fish and found that the top of it looked a hell of a lot like a gorgeous, topless woman with long, blue-green hair.

  “Good morning,” the fishwoman said, for a fishwoman it had to be. Dunk had never met such a creature before, although he’d heard countless stories about them. Some considered them mere legends, but in a world filled with camras and ogres, and steam-powered chainsaws, Dunk had long ago learned to rarely discount legends.

  Dunk glanced around and saw that he was in part of a ship’s hull that had been involved in a fatal encounter with the bottom of the sea, which was strangely bone dry. The hull surrounded Dunk on three sides, but instead of a fourth wall, where he suspected a deck should have stood, he saw a vertical span of spinning water.

  Sunlight streamed in from the open end of the hull above him, as well as through various cracks and outright holes scattered throughout the hull. A beam fell on the fishwoman, and she smiled at him and flipped her hair back from her face. Despite the bluish tint to her pale skin, or perhaps because of it, she was a stunning beauty.

  Then she smiled at him, revealing a set of sharp, pointy, double-rowed teeth. Dunk wondered if she’d saved him out of kindness, or for her lunch.

  “Good morning,” the fishwoman said again. She cocked her head at him, and seawater poured from her lowered ear.

  Dunk pulled a strand of seaweed from his hair and flicked it to the ground.

  “Hello,” he said. He nearly choked on the word, and had to clear his throat before he could speak again. “What’s happening here?”

  “You fell into the maelstrom,” the fishwoman said, flopping closer to him on her tail. Although Dunk was sure she could swim like a dolphin,
on dry land, he knew he could run circles around her.

  “I thought I was dead.”

  The fishwoman smiled, again showing those shark’s teeth. “We saved you,” she said, spreading her arms wide. Dunk found it difficult not to stare at her breasts, but he did his best. His thoughts naturally turned to Spinne, and then he gasped.

  “The others,” he said. “The people I was with, what about them?”

  “Some of them survived the fall into the heart of the maelstrom. Others, the ocean swallowed whole. She does not give up such treasures so easily.”

  The walls of the hull seemed like they might collapse on Dunk at any moment, either trapping him beneath them or knocking him into the spinning wall of water. Either way, Dunk knew he had to get out of there. He strode over to the nearest fractured part of the hull and gave it a solid kick.

  The hull around him creaked and tottered at the impact. The fishwoman squealed like a dolphin.

  “That may not be wise,” she said in a strained voice. As she spoke, she flopped her way closer to the rushing water.

  “I can’t stay in here,” Dunk said. He pointed towards the water. “And I can’t go in there.”

  He studied the wall quickly, and found a cracked portion that looked more likely to cooperate with him. He aimed a thick-soled boot at it and lashed out. The crack widened as the whole hull shook.

  “Please stop.” The fishwoman folded her hands together to plead with Dunk, and he backed off from the hull.

  Then he heard someone scream: Spinne.

  Dunk planted his feet, lowered his shoulder, and charged straight into the crack that he’d widened. The impact hurt his unarmoured arm, but the wood gave, if only just a little. He stepped back and smashed into the hull again and again.

  As Dunk hammered against the hull, he felt it shake and quiver. At first, he thought that it was about to give way. Then he realised that all he’d done was start to dislodge the hull from the sand in which it had landed. The water that ran into and past the fragment of the hull tugged at it harder due to his efforts, but it didn’t seem to be moving.