“When I got to Amazon Island, they treated me nothing like a slave. They gave me respect. They trained me to be an athlete and a fighter, to find self-respect. I have that now. I fought for it, and I earned it. I don’t want to give it up.”
Dunk reached out a hand to Kirta, but she pulled away. “It won’t be like that,” he said. “We’re not kids any more. Our parents aren’t around any more.”
“Mother’s more around than ever. I used to wish she’d pay attention to me when she was alive. Now I wish she’d just go away.”
“This is the first step towards making that happen,” said Dunk. He scooted up in his chair. “I understand your fears. None of us want to go back to our childhood. It’s not worth revisiting. But Dirk and I are back in the old keep, and we have the means to fix it up, to treat it right, and to make it a real home, not just the place where our parents warehoused us.”
“We’ll keep out of your hair,” said Dirk. “Spinne and Lästiges will see to that.”
Kirta smiled and let out a little laugh, and Dunk knew that it would be all right. Then she gasped and put a hand to her mouth.
“But I can’t leave now,” she said. “We have the finals tomorrow. There are rules about making trades in the middle of a tournament.”
“True,” Pegleg said. “Teams at any level of a tournament aren’t allowed to make trades outside of the tournament. In fact, they can’t make trades at all, with one exception: they can trade players with the next team on their schedule.”
Dunk nodded. “If the two teams agree on it, it must be fair, because otherwise they wouldn’t go for it.”
“Couldn’t someone buy a victory like that?” Kirta asked. “A wealthier team could buy all of a poorer team’s best players and make it impossible for the poorer team to win.”
“True, except for two things: first, there are far easier ways for a team to buy its way through a game. You can bribe the refs, pay for a team wizard to cast curses, or even give the players enough gold to make them throw the game. None of that involves making a public trade or having to take on the obligation of taking on a long-term contract with new players.
“Second, teams are restricted to the number of players they can have on their roster. To gain a new player, they must give up one of their current players in the trade. Most teams aren’t willing to trade away valuable personnel in exchange for anyone else, particularly in the middle of a tournament.”
“But you have?”
Dunk nodded. “Believe it or not, Rotes Hernd volunteered. She wants to play for the Lusties.”
“Why?”
“She watched your team play tonight. She thinks she’s better than your starting thrower, Dayton No-Manning.”
Kirta nodded. “She’s tired of riding the bench behind you and wants her shot at being the starting thrower on another team.”
Dirk smirked. “For a long time, she thought she might have a shot at unseating Dunk.”
Dunk shot his brother a look.
“What? It’s not like people don’t get hurt in this game. Anyhow, she gave up on that after he bought into the team. She figured even if Dunk was half-dead he could still push Pegleg into sending him onto the field, so she’s been on the lookout for a better gig ever since.”
“But we’ve been away from the Old World since that happened,” said Dunk. “This is her first chance to jump ship, so to speak, and she’s eager to take it.” He glared at Dirk. “For whatever reason.”
Dirk shrugged and grinned.
“So,” Pegleg said to Kirta, “what do you think, Miss Hoffnung? I promise you that I will be your coach, not these jokers. I will work you as hard as anyone else, teach you what I can, and make you earn every minute you play on the field and every coin I pay you.
“I watched you play. You’re an excellent catcher. Blood Bowl seems to run in the Hoffnung veins, and you are a proud example of that.
“Even if these two weren’t pressuring me, I’d be happy to make you an offer. You’ll be an asset to the Hackers, and I’ll be proud to have you on my team.”
He pushed the contract towards her and produced a pen and a bottle of ink from another pocket in his long coat. “So,” he said, “what will it be?”
34
“Where’s Kirta?” Pegleg demanded for what seemed like the hundredth time, as Dunk tightened the straps on the few bits of armour he was permitted to wear. “I trusted you on this, Mr. Hoffnung. I offered her a sweetheart deal, and now your ‘innocent little sister’ has taken off like a scared rabbit.”
“She’s not afraid of anything,” Dunk said. “She grew up with Dirk and me as her brothers and Lügner and Greta as her parents. She’s as tough as they come.”
“Like a thief in the night, then, or a ship at high tide, or a cheap dress!”
“Watch it, coach,” Dirk said from the other corner of the locker room.
“The point, Mr. Hoffnung and Mr. Heldmann, is that the game is about to start in two minutes, the battle to determine which is the best Blood Bowl team the world over, and we are shy a key player! If she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to start another one of those pygmy halflings in her place.”
“We look forward to the opportunity!” Big Richard called from a corner of the room in which he stood huddled with the other Sacrifice Flies. The five other pygmy halflings nearly knocked each other out as they scrambled to hide underneath the nearest bench.
“Then today’s your lucky day, Mr. Richard!”
“Actually, Richard is my first name. Big is the surname. On the Island of Sacrifices, we do things a bit backward from your culture.”
“Right! Mr. Big it is. I can’t tell any of you apart in those helmets, and given the size differential with our foes, I don’t suppose it matters. Pick one of your fellows to join us, Mr. Big. We take to the field in one minute!”
“I really thought she’d be here,” Dunk said to Spinne and Slick. “Last night she actually seemed eager.”
“And now we have to take the field without Rotes, who will be playing for the Amazons instead,” said Spinne. She shook her head in sympathy. “I never would have guessed it.”
“Maybe she ran off with that Jiminy fellow,” Slick said. “Have you tried checking with him?”
“No need to impugn my good name behind my back,” the singer said as he burst into the room. “You can do it to my face if you like.”
“Where’s Kirta?” Dunk asked.
Jiminy froze, concern etched on his face. “She’s not here? I last saw her after breakfast, and she left me to go to the stadium. I just came by to wish her good luck.”
“Was she mad about anything?” Spinne asked.
Jiminy shook his head, clearly confused. “Not a bit. When I first saw her this morning, she seemed a little shellshocked about the new deal you’d offered her, but as we talked, she seemed to warm right up to it.”
“You didn’t spend the night with her?” Dunk asked.
Jiminy stepped back in momentary horror. “No, of course not!” Then he realised who he was talking to. “Well, the honest truth is, I would have if I could have. I’d have married that woman a dozen times over.”
“And why haven’t you?” Spinne asked. For some reason, Dunk felt her eyes burning at him.
“It’s not for a lack of wanting on my part or hers, I can tell you that. Greta, though, she puts her… well, not her foot, her tendrils down, I suppose, every time.”
“Is she always with Kirta?” Dr. Pill asked.
Jiminy nodded. The old elf scratched at his eye patch and sniffed. “Clearly trying to live her life through her daughter. Classic substitution complex in which the parent tries to control every aspect of the same-sex child’s life in an effort to make sure that it’s as ‘perfect’ as possible, from the parent’s self-interested point of view, of course.”
Dunk pursed his lips at the apothecary. “Care to translate that into plain speech for the rest of us.”
Dr. Pill almost choked on his disdain as
he tried to scoff and roll his eyes at the request at the same time. When he recovered, he said, “Your mother won’t take kindly to any major changes in your sister’s life that she didn’t instigate herself, especially if it means taking Kirta away from her, and especially if it comes from you and your brother, whom she identifies with your father, whom she hates with a burning passion and blames directly for her own death.”
Everyone stared at Dr. Pill with blank looks.
“Remind me to buy a dictionary for the voyage home and make all of you read it. Let me try again.
“Your mother doesn’t like you. She likes your sister too much. She wants you all dead because she thinks she’ll have ironclad control over you then.
“Bringing Kirta into the Hackers is the opposite of what your mother wants. You are a threat to her. Taking her daughter under your protection makes the threat real. She will react in an irrational, but predictable way.”
Dunk nodded at the end of every sentence, proving he was following along. Everyone else in the room did too, even M’Grash.
“Which is?” Dunk asked.
“Your mother has probably kidnapped your sister to keep her from going through with your deal. She will kill her to cement their relationship. The only question is whether she’s already done that or will wait until she can kill all three of you at once.”
A horrified murmur ran through the locker room. As everyone stood shocked, Carve, who had been out on the field, waiting for the signal to bring the Hackers out, poked his nose back into the locker room through the tunnel that led to the pitch. “Dunk, Dirk, captain?”
“We have to go after her?” Dunk said.
Dirk nodded. “We have to find her, right now.”
Pegleg stamped down on the stone floor with his wooden leg. “You will do no such thing! The game is starting. You cannot leave me short three of my best players.”
“But, coach…” Dirk and Dunk started.
Before they could get going, Cavre cut them off with a shrill whistle that threatened to break their eardrums.
“Come with me,” he said, beckoning them towards the tunnel. He waved down their protests and pointed once again towards the exit. “No comments. No questions. You want to see this. Trust me.”
In all the time Dunk had known Cavre, he’d never known the man to steer him wrong. Still, he had to know how important it was for them to find Kirta, before Greta’s ghost could do something horrible to her. He had to know.
A ball of ice formed in Dunk’s gut.
“Trust me,” Cavre said again. “Come with me.”
The players filed out of the locker room, Dunk following right after Cavre, who was in the lead. As they emerged from the tunnel that led out into the back of the Hackers’ dugout, the stench of sulphur and a wall of oppressive heat struck Dunk at the same time.
It felt, for a moment, like he’d been transported back to the Realms of Chaos in which the Hackers had been forced to play Blood Bowl against the Blood God last year, and for a moment he hesitated, not wanting to face something so horrible again. Barely breaking stride, Dunk steeled his nerve for whatever lay ahead.
As Cavre stepped out of the dugout, the crowd began to cheer, and the roar only grew louder as Dunk and the others strode onto the field after him.
“Blood Bowl fans,” Jim’s voice said, echoing off every wall of the volcanic bowl, “please welcome the current reigning champions of the Blood Bowl Tournament, the Bad Bay Hackers!”
“Kill! The! Hack! Ers!
“Kill! The! Hack! Ers!
“Kill! The! Hack! Ers!”
“Seems like the crowd’s really behind their hometown favourites, the Lustria Lusties,” Bob said. “And who can blame them? Power, speed, and killer bods! How can you beat that?”
Dunk heard the words, but they didn’t mean anything to him. He was too busy gazing at what Cavre had brought them here to see.
The field, if it could still be called that, had devolved since last night. The volcano, it seemed, had not enjoyed the beating it had taken and had determined to fight back. Large cracks ran along the edges of the pitch and through it, like the ice thawing on a frozen bay. Instead of chill water peeking through, red-hot lava glowed up from below.
“No, no, no!” M’Grash said. “No play! Ouch! Burn!”
Dunk clapped his large pal on the elbow. “Can’t say I disagree with you. This is insane.”
“Quit your whining, you lubbers!” Pegleg said. He pointed at the Lusties, who’d already taken the far end of the field. “Are you going to let a bunch of little girls show you up for the cowards you are?”
Spinne took two steps towards the ex-pirate, who threw up his hand and hook at the sight of her. “My apologies, Miss Schönheit. You’re a clear example of how brave the women around here are. Looking out at the terrified faces of the men on my team, I’m appalled on behalf of my entire gender!”
“Wow, coach,” Dirk said, “I’m astonished.”
“That I’d call you lot a bunch of cowardly pansies?”
“No, that you could make proper use of the word ‘gender’. With all those long coats, tight breeches, and ruffled shirts you pirates wear I always wondered if you might be confused about that. Gender, you know.”
Dunk steeled himself for an eruption from Pegleg, but the coach surprised him with how well he’d taken Dirk’s insult.
Pegleg glared at Dirk, who looked ready to either fight or flee. “You think I’m going to let some second-rate blitzer who’s only on my team at his brother’s behest upset me with comments about my sexuality and my clothes? At least I’m not the one who brings his mother issues onto the field!”
“Hey,” Dunk said, leaping to Dirk’s defence, although he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because he knew his brother’s mother issues were also his own. “That was only for that one game.”
“Oh, really, Mr. Hoffnung?” Pegleg swung his hook out towards the field. “Then what do you call that?”
Every one of the Hackers spun to look over at the Lusties’ end zone, the one they needed to reach to score a touchdown. Dunk immediately recognised the grey mists curling over the place, forming a wall there: his mother’s ghost.
“I’d call that a good reason to enter therapy,” Dr. Pill said. “I’ll start with you both on the ride home.”
“What about right now?” asked Guillermo. “She’s blocking off the end zone. How are we supposed to score?”
“She’s a ghost,” Spinne said. “She can’t touch you.”
“But she can make us wish we were dead,” said Big Richard. “I’m from the islands. I can’t take the cold!”
The other pygmy halflings clustered around him, nodding in agreement as they clung to each other and shivered. Whether they did so from terror, anticipation of the ghost’s cold touch, or both, Dunk could not tell.
Cavre shaded his eyes with his hand and stared down at the fog wreathed end zone. “This may work to our advantage, Hackers,” he said. “The ghost seems to have chilled the lava flows beneath the end zone. Perhaps her touch and that of the volcano have balanced each other out.”
“You’re trying to tell us that the safest place on the field may be in the end zone?” Getrunken said, slurring his words.
Cavre nodded.
“And that’s because it’s trapped between an angry ghost and a lava flow from an active volcano?”
Cavre nodded again.
Getrunken let loose a monstrous belch, and then pounded his chest to make sure he’d let all the gas out. “All right,” he said with a drunken grin, “just checking.”
Pegleg stepped in front of the team and shouted at them as the crowd roared louder. He doffed his yellow tricorn hat and brushed back his sweat slicked curls. His chin thrust forward in determination.
“Blood Bowl isn’t about being safe! It’s never been about being safe, not for the fans, not for the coaches, and certainly not for you.
“This is a deadly sport, and you take your life in your hands every t
ime you step out onto the pitch. If a troll doesn’t crush you, or a wizard doesn’t zap you to death, you might trip in a hole and break your neck. There are no guarantees here, and that’s what makes it worth doing!
“You think I pay you people so much money because I like you? Or because you’re good at what you do? Some of you are, don’t get me wrong, and I do appreciate that.
“What you get from me is hazard pay! Only so many people are brave, murderous, or dumb enough to put themselves directly in harm’s way by joining a Blood Bowl team, much less actually playing on the field. Half the time you win the game just by surviving it!
“So don’t pay any attention to that ghost in the end zone! At least not any more than you do to the Amazons between you and her.
“You’re here to risk your lives, play Blood Bowl, and win the game! You are the Bad Bay Hackers, and you are winners! You are champions! And no one and nothing can stop you!”
Getrunken thrust his helmet in the air in agreement. “We can do this!” he said. “We can win this game. Let’s do it! Who’s with me?”
With that, Getrunken turned and sprinted out onto the field, screaming at the top of his lungs. The others stood and watched him go.
“No,” Pegleg said, “watch out for the—”
But it was too late, ten yards out onto the field, Getrunken staggered towards a crack in the pitch and jammed his foot into it. An instant later, he leapt into the air and screamed, his boot ablaze, and sprinted back towards the Hackers’ dugout at top speed.
Dunk had never seen the man move so fast, not even in a game. Getrunken dashed straight for the big cask of GatorMaim tucked into a corner of the dugout and kicked it open with his burning boot. The liquid turned to steam as soon as it touched his foot, enveloping Getrunken and the entire dugout.
Pegleg slapped the blunt end of his hook against his head. “So much for a great speech.” He hung his head, defeated. “Just get out there and try not to embarrass me too much.”
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 26
