“Spinne!” he shouted. “I’m coming.”
Dunk heard a roar on the other side of the hull, a sound that could only have come from M’Grash’s throat. An instant later, heavy footfalls thudded across the sand towards Dunk, and a set of sausage-sized fingers appeared under one jagged edge of the hull.
Dunk felt a hand tug on his arm, and saw the fishwoman pulling at him, trying to get him to follow her into the water. Her touch surprised him with its warmth. He supposed it would have been as cold and clammy as that of a corpse.
“It’s all right,” he said. “He’s my friend.”
Then it got dark inside the hull. Dunk looked up to see the hull tipping back towards the water, blocking out the sun. He cheered, but the noise caught in his throat as he realised the problem with M’Grash’s plan, if the ogre could be said to have one.
As the hull tipped backward, more of it caught in the edge of the maelstrom, and the water started to pull it backward… straight backward. Dunk edged back as the hull began to pull free from where it had become embedded in the sand. Heartened by his movement, the fishwoman yanked on his arm harder, trying to pull him into the water.
“Stop!” Dunk shouted, although he knew the ogre wouldn’t be able to hear him through the wood and over the roar of the water. “M’Grash, stop!”
The hull kept coming at him. If Dunk had felt confined before, he was now becoming claustrophobic.
Dunk watched the spinning wall of water, polluted with the flotsam and jetsam of countless wrecked ships whirring past at high speed. A bleached skull whipped by, followed by various parts of a dismembered skeleton, and Dunk knew that to enter the water would mean his death, no matter how well meaning the fishwoman might be.
The wall of wood coming towards him didn’t look like it wanted to give him much of a choice in the matter. Dunk considered hunkering down against the wall of water and hoping that the hull might tip over enough to scrape over his head, but as he watched the hull drag nearer to him, he knew he couldn’t rely on that happening. Instead, he drew a bead on the section of wood he’d battered and decided to give it one last shot.
Dunk got down into a three-point stance, just the way Pegleg had taught him to before every kick-off. Many players said a prayer to Nuffle, the god of Blood Bowl, as they entered the sacred stance, but Dunk had long since realised that there were solid, athletic, secular reasons to use it as well. It put him in the perfect position from which to launch a hit or tackle, and he intended to use it here for the same purpose.
Dunk lowered his head, and then launched at the oncoming wood, legs pumping him forward faster with every stride. He smashed into it with everything he had, heedless of how much it might hurt. Smashing against the hull seemed a better bet than letting it drag him to a watery doom, so he did it, hard.
The planks gave way under his vicious assault. He smashed straight through them and found himself on the other side, face down in the sand with splinters of wood all around him, the sun beating down on him again.
Dunk’s skull hurt from the impact, but he felt so thrilled to be alive that he barely noticed it. He shook his head to clear it, but before he could even look up, something large and powerful gathered him up into its arms and hauled him into the air.
“Dunkel!” M’Grash shouted. “Dunkel is alive! M’Grash saved Dunkel!”
Dunk grinned despite himself. The ogre’s unconditional enthusiasm always felt contagious, and with Dunk having narrowly avoided death, he found it impossible to avoid being swept up in it. He cheered alongside the ogre and gave him a huge hug around his trunk-sized neck.
“Dunk!”
He recognised Spinne’s voice instantly, and struggled to get the ogre to let him go. “Put me down, M’Grash,” he said, still overjoyed, but determined to get free. “I have to see Spinne.”
The ogre tossed him free, and Dunk made a running landing on his feet, dashing across the sand. He looked up and saw Spinne right there before him. She planted her feet to greet him and caught him like he was an opposing blitzer.
Dunk wrapped Spinne up in his arms and drew her close. He planted a long, lingering kiss on her delicious lips. He knew that as long as she was with him, there was nothing he couldn’t do, no challenge they couldn’t take, no game they couldn’t win together.
“I thought you were dead,” Spinne said.
“I thought I was dead too. I thought we were all dead.” He held her close and finally opened his eyes to peer over her shoulder.
The whirlpool stretched farther across than he would have thought possible, almost as wide as a Blood Bowl field. The rotting hulks of several ships, and the shattered remains of countless others, lay strewn among the jagged rocks and across wide stretches of otherwise empty, white sand. A green and gold Hacker flag flapped from the end of a mast that had stuck like a spear in the ground, but the rest of the Sea Chariot seemed to be in splinters, or to have washed away, trapped in the maelstrom.
A few damp souls wandered around the wood. Dirk knelt, digging under a chunk of hull, using a broken plank as a shovel, Reyes helping him with a battered oar. Cavre wandered about the place, turning over loose bits and pieces, looking for any signs of life. Hernd sat over to the west, holding Spiel’s head in her lap. The man looked half-drowned, but he still lived. Getrunken lay unmoving just a few yards beyond.
“Where are the others?”
Spinne didn’t say a thing.
Dunk pulled back so he could see her face. “Pegleg? Edgar? Anfäger?”
Spinne just shook her head. She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Gone,” she said, her voice broken and raw. “Roja, Bereit, Anima, Ciotola, and Linson too.”
“What about Enojada?”
As Dunk spoke, the Amazon appeared atop a massive rock, and shaded her eyes as she surveyed the area. She seemed untouched by the carnage around her. But for her wet hair and her dripping clothes, he might have suspected she hadn’t had a terribly rotten day.
Dunk knew someone else was missing, but he couldn’t say who. He went down the roster in his head, but came up empty. Only members of the team had been aboard: the Hackers and Enojada. Who could it be?
Dunk felt sick. Not one name had come to his mind, but two.
“Lästiges?” he whispered into Spinne’s ear. “Slick?”
She raised her eyes, and he saw that she had been weeping. She shook her head. “No sign anywhere.”
Dunk let Spinne loose and stared at the land around them, from the rock on which Enojada stood to the maelstrom’s upper edge, where the raging waters of the ocean spilled down for a moment before being swept away.
“You thought I was dead too,” Dunk said, holding Spinne with one arm. “There’s still hope.”
Dunk took to running towards the large rock in the centre of the whirlpool. Spinne raced along beside him. As he passed Dirk, Dunk clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Dirk said, annoyed. He stood up to see who’d smacked him. “Hey!”
Dunk stopped at the base of the rock, Spinne hauling up beside him. As Dunk caught his breath, something hit him from behind and smashed him into the rock. He spun about in its grasp and saw that Dirk had tackled him.
“You son of a bitch!” Dirk said. Dunk had thought his brother would be happy to see him, but the man was anything but.
“Don’t talk about our mother that way,” Dunk said. “Besides, what would that make you?”
“Just shut up.” Dirk wagged a finger in his brother’s face. “By Nuffle’s leathery balls, don’t you ever pull something like that again!”
“Like what? Getting sucked into a whirlpool and then rescued by a fishwoman? I’ll try to avoid it.”
“Fishwoman?” Spinne said.
“Just don’t do it!”
“What? You got pulled in here with the rest of us, with everyone else on the ship. What could I have done about that? What is it you don’t want me to do?”
Dirk stabbed his finger into Dunk’s chest for emphasis on every word. “Don
’t scare me that way, you bastard.”
Dirk spun away and marched off, mad.
“Again with the comments about our mother,” said Dunk. “She must be spinning in her grave.”
Spinne put a hand on Dunk. “Take it easy on him,” she said. “Lästiges is still missing.”
Dunk had been about to follow Dirk and have more words with him, but the fight went right out of him. He knew how upset he’d be if he thought Spinne was dead, how upset he’d been just minutes before when he’d thought they were all dead. He could give his brother a little space.
Dunk waved up at Enojada. “See anything?” he asked.
The Amazon shook her head. “Did you say something about fishwomen?”
Dunk glanced at Spinne, who glared at him. “Uh, yeah. When I came to in that hull, a fishwoman was leaning over me. I think she saved me.” He glanced between Spinne and Enojada. “You didn’t see any fishwomen?”
The women both shook their heads. Enojada arched an eyebrow at him in amusement, while Spinne scowled at him.
Dunk shrugged at them. “She disappeared when M’Grash tipped the hull into the waves. He must have scared her off.”
“Good riddance,” said Spinne.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her,” said Dunk, looking around. “We’re trapped down here. Finding anyone who can get in and out of here on their own power is a good thing, right?”
Spinne gave him an annoyed shrug. Enojada pursed her lips and spoke. “These fishwomen, they do not think the way we do. They are predators, and they cannot be trusted.”
“Have you seen any before?”
Enojada smiled. “Yes. They followed in the wake of our ship as we travelled from Lustria to Magritta. They constantly tempted the men to leap in after them. A few of them did, and we never heard from them again.”
“You didn’t sail over on a ship full of Amazons?” asked Dunk.
“Did you not wonder why I did not travel back with such a ship?” Enojada laughed. “We enjoy our privacy and do not have much contact with the outside world, other than for Blood Bowl. We have few ocean-worthy ships. I booked passage on a merchant ship instead.”
Dunk nodded, but he wasn’t listening any longer. The pod of fishwomen that had just swum through the maelstrom’s wall had captured his attention.
12
Dunk followed Spinne and Enojada to where the fishwomen waited for them, sunning themselves on a rock that stood just inside the spinning wall of water. The other survivors all got there before Dunk, but the newcomers waited to speak until everyone was ready to listen.
Spiel stood uneasily, an arm draped over Rotes’s shoulders. Cavre, Dirk and Reyes each bore blades that they’d scrounged up from somewhere, all of which were rusty enough to fall to pieces at the first swing.
Getrunken staggered up alongside Dunk, drunk as ever. Dunk wondered if the man had been so intoxicated before they hit the whirlpool, or if he’d managed to find a source of alcohol somewhere in the heart of the maelstrom.
Dunk surveyed the fishwomen. Every last one of them was breathtakingly beautiful, with the exception of their teeth, which matched those of the fishwoman who’d been leaning over him as he awakened. She stood on the far left of the line of fishwomen, staring at Dunk with her wide, striking eyes.
The fishwoman in the centre of the line, who sat highest on the rock, spoke when all of the others had arrived. “Welcome, men of the land, to the Orange Bowl. In your tongue, my name is Nixe.” She flung her arms wide. “This is my family, and this is our home.”
Dunk thought of the rusty hue of the rocks that littered the bottom of the whirlpool, and he understood the name. None of the others seemed particularly eager to answer the woman. With Pegleg gone, the Hackers had no appointed leader. Dunk looked to Cavre, the team captain, and the man sighed and took a reluctant step forward.
“We apologise for intruding upon your land, fair ladies. We had no choice.”
The fishwomen tittered with laughter. Nixe flashed a restrained smile. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Are you saying you drew us here?” asked Spinne. The hostility rolled off her in waves as she glared up at Nixe.
The fishwoman shook her head patiently, while the others scowled at Spinne. Dunk took a protective step towards her, but the scowls only deepened.
“Not at all,” said Nixe. “Any ship that passes too close to the Orange Bowl gets sucked right in, whether they want to be or not. That’s what makes this such a perfect place for us.”
Spinne narrowed her brow at the fishwoman. “What do fishwomen need with a place like this? Can’t you breathe water?”
Nixe blushed. “Of course we can, but we need a place like this so that we can, well, meet men.”
Dunk’s eyes grew large at this, as did those of every other Hacker.
“You’re that hard up for companionship?” Spinne asked.
Enojada stepped forward, a knowing smile on her face. “Do not judge them too harshly,” she said. “As an Amazon, I know what it’s like to live without men. Despite the benefits, it’s not easy.”
Her gaze slid up and down Dirk as she spoke. He noticed the attention, and his skin flushed a bright pink.
Dunk slapped his head to knock the last bits of water out of his ear. “Wait. I can’t possibly be hearing you right. You… you hang out here hoping for a date?”
Nixe shrugged. “It’s harder to meet men than you might think, especially for fishwomen who live in the middle of the ocean. We don’t want to just toss ourselves on the nearest shore like some fish-legged hussies. We might as well just jump into a fisherman’s net.”
“So you wait here until someone falls into your trap.” Spinne looked like she might charge up the rock and start tossing the fishwomen back into the maelstrom at any moment.
“It’s not like we made it,” the girl who’d saved Dunk said. “We just take advantage of what’s already here.”
“So you’re scavengers, taking advantage of shipwrecks.” Spinne looked around the sandy expanse. “Where are the other survivors then? I don’t see any.”
Nixe grimaced. “It has been ages since we’ve had any new visitors, and honestly, I was starting to have my doubts. After all, once you get too old, you know what they say, right maids?” She looked at her compatriots, who all giggled. “Better chance of being eaten by a giant squid.”
Then it dawned on Dunk. “You’re… you’re talking about breeding.”
Nixe affected a look of mock shock. “I suppose you’re right about that.”
Getrunken stepped forward, howling. “Well, all right, let’s get it on, fair fishwomen. Which one of you lucky ladies, fish, whatever, wants to get it on first?”
The fishwomen looked at each other, disgust warring on their faces alongside mirth.
“Come on, girls, don’t be shy. There’s enough of Getrunken to go around, aaalll the way around, if you know what I mean.”
“How cute,” said Nixe. “He thinks we want to breed with him.”
The other fishwomen issued a collective “Eeewww!”
“Hey!” Getrunken said, truly offended. “I may have put on a few pounds around the middle, but I can still pound away with the best of them.”
Nixe winced. “I think you’re missing the point. There’s no way for us to breed like humans do. We’re just not built that way. We lay eggs, you see…” She blushed demurely.
Getrunken’s eyes got bigger with every word Nixe said. “You’re kidding me, right? Where’s the fun in that?”
“It’s not about fun,” said Nixe. “It’s about survival. If we don’t do this, eventually we all die off. We need some young fishwomen to join us, and we need your help to make them.”
Dunk had to interrupt. “Don’t you have any fishmen who can help you with that?”
The fishwomen all scoffed at that. “Do you see any fishmen around here?” Nixe asked. “Have you ever seen a fishman? Even just a single one? If you have, be sure to let us know, because we’
ve never seen one.”
“Hey,” Getrunken said, “you want my help, ladies, you can have it. You just have to help yourself.”
Nixe shuddered, and the other fishwomen turned away. “That’s not how it works around here. We show up with our eggs. You fertilise them. We take them away and raise them without your aid.”
“This is sounding better all the time. Line those eggs up, fishwomen, and let’s get started.”
“You fertilise them alone,” Nixe said, “without help of any kind.”
“Aw, where’s the fun in that?” Getrunken threw himself down on the sand. A few moments later, the man began to snore.
Dunk glanced at Spinne. He had known times in his life when being a sex tool for a pod of fishwomen would have been the ultimate achievement of his dreams, but not like this, never like this.
He scanned the faces of the other men and found unanimous agreement. “Forget it,” he said to Nixe. “Much as we’d like to help you, our team has a strict policy against fathering untold numbers of inhuman children.”
Nixe smirked. “If you do not help us, then you will die.”
“You’re threatening us?”
Nixe shook her head. “You are trapped here. As long as you cooperate with us, we will bring you fresh food and water. Otherwise, you will be on your own.”
“You’d just let us all die down here,” said Spinne. “I never knew fishwomen were so cold blooded.”
“It’s a chilly sea,” Nixe said. “We’re doing what we have to for the survival of our kind. We’re not asking for much.”
“How long?” Dirk asked.
Nixe raised an eyebrow at the man.
“How long would you leave us down here? Or, say, how many times would you require a ‘donation’ to your cause?”
Dunk couldn’t believe his brother would even consider this. They needed to stick together, or they’d never have a chance to get out.
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 9
