[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Dunk relaxed and reached for the rope. As his hand closed on it, the fishwoman let him go. The people on board the Fanatic cheered.

  “I’m sorry,” Dunk said as he turned to look back at the fishwoman. “But thank you.”

  She swam there in the water, using her tail to push forward against the current, keeping her easily in place. Her eyes sparkled at him.

  “How could I let you die?” she asked, a half-smile on her full lips. “I saved you once. I wouldn’t want all that effort to go to waste.”

  “Thanks again.” Dunk pulled at the rope. The current was still strong and he’d have to work hard at it, but he knew he could make it to the ship from here.

  “If it doesn’t work out with her, you let me know.”

  Dunk smiled ruefully. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Vonderluft.” She giggled and let the current pull her away. “In your tongue, at least.”

  With a flip of her tail, she disappeared beneath the waves. Dunk turned back to the ship and began the long haul to its deck.

  He could hear Slick and Lästiges cheering as the sailors aboard the Fanatic hauled him over the gunwale to collapse on the main deck. She was a beauty of a ship, and huge. Dunk had never been on a four-masted craft, and the size staggered him.

  His strength had all but given up as he reached the ship. He could still cling to the rope, but he couldn’t pull himself up. Fresh from the locker room, he would have practically vaulted up it. As it was, he could barely move his arms.

  The sailors had gamely hauled him up to the deck. The entire time, he’d wondered how long it would take, and every time he thought he’d almost made it to safety he looked up to see he still had yards ahead of him.

  Now that he’d made it, he could hardly breathe. He rolled on his back and struggled to fill his lungs with air as his chilly arms hung limp at his sides. He closed his eyes to shade them from the sun, as he couldn’t force his hands to that duty.

  A moment later, Lästiges and Slick landed on him in a massive hug that nearly knocked the last bit of air out of him. As he gasped his excitement at seeing them, he heard a familiar voice ring out.

  “Get off the lad, you two.” Pegleg’s voice held steady, but Dunk could detect a raw undertone to it. “He didn’t haul himself all the way up here so you could kill him.”

  The pair pushed themselves off Dunk, but knelt close to him. Shaded by their bodies, he looked up and nodded his thanks, still not enough air in his lungs for him to speak.

  “So good to see you, son,” Slick said. “I thought for sure we’d lost you!”

  “And your other top clients too?” Dunk rasped.

  Slick gave him a “you know it’s not like that” tap on the shoulder. “Just glad you’re safe.”

  “How are the others?” Lästiges asked.

  “Dirk’s fine,” Dunk said. He tried to put a hand on her arm, but she’d raised her hands to cover her face. Dunk noticed the camra floating over her head, recording everything.

  “Edgar made it down in one piece. He and M’Grash threw me up here. Spinne’s fine too, as are Cavre, Reyes, Spiel, Hernd and Getrunken. The Amazon is alive too.”

  Pegleg’s good leg trembled so hard Dunk could feel it through the deck. “So many gone, and the Sea Chariot too.”

  “A fishwoman saved me. She defied her leader to do it. The rest of them wanted to keep us there forever.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Lästiges. “What could they want?”

  Dunk blushed, and winced as he saw the camra again. Fortunately, a set of heavy footfalls interrupted the conversation before Lästiges could force an answer.

  “Is this your man?” a voice asked. It carried the weight of command in its depths.

  “Aye,” said Pegleg. “Dunkel Hoffnung, number 7, Bad Bay Hackers.”

  Lästiges helped Dunk up into a sitting position, and he found enough feeling had come back to his arms for him to lean on them. He peered up at the large shape standing over him. This could be none other than Captain Mad Jonnen.

  Jonnen towered over Dunk, a massive orc with green skin made ruddy by both the sun and excessive drink. Despite this, his whitish, thinning hair and startling blue eyes sparkled in his pig face. He reached down a meaty hand to help Dunk up, and for that moment Dunk felt like a child being dusted off after falling down on a playground.

  “Welcome to my ship,” Jonnen said, grunting as he spoke. “We was following you along when — boom!—you went down that big, damn hole. We fished your friends here out of the drink, but we figured the rest of you were goners. If the Big Suck didn’t get you, the Sea Snake would.”

  Jonnen pursed his lips around his one remaining tusk. “Good to have you aboard. Have a turkey leg.”

  He fished a greasy specimen out of his pocket and handed it to Dunk. The thrower looked at it suspiciously. Then he noticed that Jonnen, and everyone else on the ship, was watching him. He hadn’t fought his way onto the Fanatic to die of food poisoning, but he didn’t want to offend his large host, with his army of sailors and Blood Bowl fans behind him. Throwing caution to the wind, he stuffed the turkey leg between his teeth and ripped off a bite.

  “Good man,” Jonnen said, clapping Dunk on the back. The entire ship seemed to unclench with this pronouncement.

  “Now,” Jonnen said, turning to his crew, “get the dinghy down and roped up tight. We got some players to save.”

  A cheer went up from the ship’s forecastle, which pointed away from the whirlpool. Dunk glanced over to see the large, railed-off area packed with dozens of people.

  They hailed from all races, and came in all shapes and sizes. Their faces, hair, and beards were painted and dyed in a rainbow of colours, both vibrant and dark. They each wore a Blood Bowl jersey coordinated to the colours of their skin.

  Some bore ill-fitting helmets on their heads. Others had piercings or tattoos that showed their allegiances to their favourite players or teams. One dwarf had even had his head shaved, painted brown, and fitted with rows of spikes to resemble a football.

  They were fans. Not just any fans, but the most fanatic of fans, the people who dedicated nearly every waking moment of their lives to thinking about, talking about, and essentially worshipping their chosen teams.

  “Hackers rock!” a troll said from the back of the forecastle. A good chunk of the fans joined in with him. “Rock, rock, rock!”

  A massive orc near the railing turned around and pointed at the troll. “Hackers suck!” he shouted.

  “Suck, suck, suck!” another chunk of the fans shouted. Few, if any, seemed to be without a solid, vocal, screaming opinion on the matter.

  “Rock!”

  “Suck!”

  “Rock!”

  “Suck!”

  “ROCK!”

  “SUCK!”

  The argument devolved into a general brawl with proponents on either side poking at each other with their flabby fists. While some egos and arms might have been bruised, no one was seriously hurt.

  “Fans,” said Pegleg. “Can’t live with them. Can’t pay your salaries without them.”

  A yowl cut through the air. Back towards the whirlpool, a windmilling Dirk arced high over the surface of the sea before falling down well short of the rope, which still drifted in the current.

  “After him!” Jonnen said, encouraging the crewmen who’d just managed to get a dinghy into the water. They set to their oars ferociously, and soon managed to collect Dirk.

  As the crew in the dinghy pulled Dirk aboard, Spinne appeared high in the afternoon sky. She sailed straight over the dinghy before splashing down. She only had to ride the currents back to it, rather than try to fight towards it with every ounce of her strength.

  Over the next hour, the Hackers and their friends stuck down in the maelstrom were hurled up into the air over the sea, where they came to a splashy landing and were then collected. One by one, the crew rowed out and hauled them into the dinghy. Eventually, everyone had managed to make i
t to the top, except for Edgar and M’Grash.

  Dunk swore. “I hadn’t thought of that. How are those two going to get out of there? I never should have left them.”

  “If you don’t leave, you stay,” Jonnen said, “and where do you end up then? Right where you started.”

  “Uh,” Dunk said, unsure of how to respond, “thanks.”

  He went to the gunwale to wait for Spinne, Dirk, and the rest to make their way up on to the ship. They climbed up a rope ladder tossed down to make the process easier. As they did, something large came surging to the surface towards the aft of the ship.

  A scream went up from the fans at the forecastle, and they immediately ended their bickering. Dunk stared at the thing that had erupted from beneath the vicious current, wondering if the sea serpent had come back. Instead of something long and green, though, he saw the head of his friend M’Grash breaking the surface.

  The ogre pulled himself straight up a rope attached to the anchor chain. When Dunk had seen it as he’d been hauled on to the ship, he’d ignored it. Now, he realised that it had to be the rope tied to Edgar, who was still down in the maelstrom.

  Dunk cheered as M’Grash pulled himself straight up to the anchor chain and then to the aft of the ship. Once there, he turned around, reached down, and immediately began pulling on the rope.

  Using his superhuman strength, M’Grash made quick headway. After only a few pulls, the rope went slack in his hands, though, and Dunk’s stomach landed in his boots.

  Then Edgar popped out of the water, about twenty yards off, cursing and yelling the entire time. While the treeman easily floated to the surface, it wouldn’t take much for him to be sucked under the waves once more.

  Fortunately, M’Grash wasn’t about to let that happen. The sight of the treeman seemed to fill M’Grash with renewed strength, and he hauled on the line harder than ever. Within scant minutes, all of the surviving passengers of the Sea Chariot stood gathered together on the deck of the Fanatic.

  “Amazing!” said Jonnen as he shook hands with everyone, “just amazing. It’s an honour to have you here. It truly is.” He grinned, showing all of his broken, blackened teeth.

  “So,” Jonnen said, “give us a minute and we’ll get underway. I’ll bet you can’t wait to get back to Bad Bay.”

  “But we’re headed for Lustria,” Dunk said. “We can’t go back to the Old World.”

  “That’s too bad, because that’s where we’re heading.”

  14

  “But we have to go to Lustria. My sister’s there!”

  Jonnen shook his head. “An awful shame, that’s what that is. But the people I have on board didn’t book a trans-ocean trip. They wanted to go to Magritta, and we did that. Now we need to get them home before they start wondering aloud why they paid us so damn much.”

  Dunk looked to Pegleg, who shrugged. The man had never wanted to go to Lustria in the first place. He was hardly going to help Dunk out of this tight spot.

  “We can pay you,” Dunk said. “We can pay them too. We have the money.”

  “On you?”

  Dunk sighed. “No, of course not, but I can write you a letter of credit, and you can make good on it once we get back.”

  “If we take this trip, we’ll miss the Dungeonbowl for sure. My passengers won’t go for that.”

  Dunk beckoned for Enojada to join them. The woman strode over, still dripping wet. “How can I help?” she asked.

  “This woman,” Dunk said to Jonnen, holding Enojada before him by the shoulders. “She’s the agent for a team of Amazons who invited us out to play in their championship tournament, the Tobazco Bowl. If the Hackers win the game, we’ll be the only undisputed champions on two continents. Surely that’s something a real Blood Bowl fan might be interested in.”

  As he said this, Dunk turned towards the forecastle and raised his voice. When he got to the words “real Blood Bowl fan,” the people there erupted into howling cheers. They took pride in the fact that they were the best fans in the world, and Dunk saw that he could use that.

  Jonnen was on to him though. “Play to the gallery all you want, Hoffnung, but I’m the captain of this ship. She goes where I say she goes.”

  “Of course,” said Dunk, trying to placate the orc, who was built like a boulder. “I never meant to try to undermine your authority. How could I, right? You run a tight ship, I can see that.”

  Jonnen grunted suspiciously and gestured for Dunk to go on.

  “I just think there could be a real opportunity for you here. Think of it: a chartered voyage, with the Blood Bowl tournament champion Bad Bay Hackers, to watch them play in the first ever tournament for the championship of the entire world. What true fan wouldn’t want to see that?”

  Dunk resisted the urge to turn towards the forecastle again, but he spoke clearly, and loudly enough for everyone to hear him. A glance out of the corner of his eye told him that they were hanging on every word of the conversation.

  Jonnen sized up Dunk the way a wild boar sized up a meal. Insanity danced in the orc’s eyes, and Dunk had no doubts why the ex-coach’s only known first name was “Mad.”

  “All right.” Jonnen nodded at Dunk. “You make good points, but I have to sell an idea like this to my customers.”

  The fans in the forecastle roared their support. Jonnen waved them down.

  “They’re an excitable lot. Right now, they love the idea, but we’re talking about many more weeks away from home for them, plus extra fees.”

  The roaring subsided at the mention of additional money that might be owed.

  “I’ll pay for their passage,” said Dunk. “I’ll charter the whole boat.”

  The crowd roared once more and broke into a spontaneous cheer. “Hoffnung! Hoffnung! Hoffnung!”

  Jonnen waved them silent. He rubbed his chin and stared down at Dunk. Despite the orc’s simple ways, Dunk could see a cold cunning in him, and he couldn’t guess what the captain had brewing in his head.

  “I got a deal for you, a proposition.”

  Dunk looked to Pegleg for approval.

  “You got us into this, ‘partner’. Let’s see you get us out of it.”

  Pegleg normally wouldn’t let anyone else make arrangements for the team, outside of Cavre fulfilling his orders. Having him stand off like this made Dunk nervous. He hadn’t negotiated many deals in his life, and he felt like a tightrope walker performing without a net.

  “I’ll handle this, son,” Slick said, sliding up between him and the orc.

  Jonnen stared down at the halfling and laughed. “All right, Fullbelly,” he said. He pulled another greasy drumstick out of his pocket and handed it to Slick. “Let’s talk turkey.”

  “We’ll offer you a fair price for chartering your ship to Lustria,” Slick said. “Otherwise, you’ll end up taking everyone home and waiting for the next big tournament to start. Only eight teams make it into the Dungeonbowl, so that had to be your least profitable major of the year.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “Not saying that. Just want to know how you figure it.”

  Slick smiled and pointed to the forecastle. “You, sir, have fans from a couple of dozen teams gathered up there. Sure, there are more for the Reikland Reavers than for the Greenfield Grasshuggers, but the fact is, you cater to as broad an audience as you can.

  “With the limited number of teams in the Dungeonbowl, you only get the fans of those teams willing to pay your prices. If my team’s not going to be there, why should I pay to come along on your trip? I’ll save my money for the Chaos Cup or, better yet, the Blood Bowl tournament.

  “Of all the majors to miss, the Dungeonbowl is the one to pick. It’s the one you make the least money from. Going to Lustria instead could be a gold mine for you. You establish yourself as the first and only charter operation offering a service to the inaugural World Championship, and you play that up for years to come. It’s a no-brainer.”

  Jonnen scratch
ed his head. “You didn’t just call me stupid, did you?”

  Dunk froze. If the orc went for Slick, he’d have to jump between them. On a good day, he was sure he could take down the aging captain, but this had not been a good day for him.

  “You’re too smart for that,” Slick said. “Don’t insult us both.”

  Jonnen stared at the halfling for a moment, while Dunk hunted for vulnerable parts of his anatomy to attack. Then the orc threw back his head and laughed.

  “Sharp as ever, Fullbelly I always liked you.”

  “Everyone does,” Slick said with a grin.

  Jonnen cut off his laugh. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’m all for this idea of yours, but I need to sell it to my customers. I know just what will convince them that they need to spend several more weeks aboard my ship.”

  Something in the orc’s tone raised Dunk’s hackles.

  “And what might that be, sir?” asked Slick.

  Jonnen’s wide grin showed all his broken teeth. “An exhibition game.”

  Dunk narrowed his eyes at the orc. “Against who?”

  “Your Hackers,” Jonnen said, “against my fans.” He swept his arm towards the forecastle, and the people there went nuts.

  “We! Got! Game!” they shouted. “We! Got! Game! We! Got! Game!”

  “You’re kidding,” Dunk said to the ex-coach.

  “Not one bit. The fans on my ship eat, sleep, and breathe Blood Bowl. Most of them tried out for a team or twelve. Some actually played. They love the game, and they’d love to play it against the champs.

  “We only have ten players. That’s not enough for a full team.”

  “We’ll play six on six.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.”

  “Aboard this ship?” Dunk looked around. The galleon might be huge, but there wasn’t enough space on it for a proper Blood Bowl pitch.

  “Sure.” Jonnen pulled a drumstick out of his pocket, said, “Whoops,” and put it back. He reached into another pocket and produced a short, white wand.

  Holding it in his hand like a piece of chalk, he began to draw in the air. White lines appeared where he drew, and they hung there in space as if he’d inscribed them on a sheet of glass.