Dunk looked into the end zone, which was still filled with steam and smoke. They’d had a hard enough time getting here going through the stands. He didn’t see how they could make it back that way while carrying M’Grash, who had to be at least 500 pounds of dead weight.
“We’ll have to go through the end zone,” he said.
“No way” said Dirk. “We can’t even pick him up, not the three of us. We’d need five at least, ten would be better.”
“How about twenty?” a man said as he raced down the aisle.
Dunk looked up at the man, a hefty fan decked out in Hacker gear from head to toe. A score of others dressed just like him pushed straight down the aisle, shoving aside any of the lizardmen who dared to approach them.
“We’re here to help,” the man said. “What can we do?”
Dunk recognised the man. “You were on the Fanatic.”
“We all were. We really grew to respect you guys on the voyage, and we’re ready to do whatever we can to help out.”
Dunk bit his lip. He didn’t want to trust his best friend’s fate to a pack of Blood Bowl fans, but he clearly didn’t have a choice. “All right,” he said, “let’s get everyone around M’Grash. We lift and carry him as one, and it shouldn’t be too bad.”
“I couldn’t blame you for thinking that,” said Dirk. He pointed over Dunk’s shoulder, “but I think maybe you forgot about her.”
Dunk turned around and saw his mother’s ghost looming over him. The smoke and steam curled around her, making it impossible to tell where she ended and the disaster in the end zone began.
“Dunkel,” Greta’s ghost said, “I think this has gone on long enough.”
“I couldn’t agree more, Mother,” he said as he stepped towards her. “It’s time to end this.”
36
“I don’t think you quite understand, Dunkel,” the ghost said. “I want you to shape up. Don’t spend what little time you have left worrying about the fate of an ogre. Enjoy your last few hours among the living, or I’ll kill you right now.”
“Gosh, Mother, you always know how to say the sweetest things. It’s a good thing you were such a concerned, involved parent when you were alive, or I might think you were desperately trying to make up for something you failed at in your life.”
The ghost let loose a shriek that made everyone in the stadium cover their ears. “Dunkel Hoffnung! I am still your mother, and you will talk to me with the respect I deserve!”
As Dunk spoke, he saw Dirk and Spinne leading the Fanatic fans down to the far side of the end zone, away from him and the ghost. He knew that he had to keep her busy until they managed to get through the dangerous section. Not only would they have to contend with the brittle crust over the lava, which might explode if broken, but also with the fact that the ghost might spot them and come after them at any moment. If they dropped M’Grash there, Dunk knew they’d never get him out of there alive.
“First of all,” Dunk said, “you’re not my mother.” He spoke slowly and let his voice drip with cockiness. “You’re nothing more than a collection of spirit-stuff that happened to be around when my mother died. You just think you’re Greta Hoffnung, but the truth is she’s dead and gone.”
“How dare you say that? I gave birth to you! I raised you from an infant! I turned you into the strong and able man you are today!”
“Second of all, you, and by you, I mean the woman you pretend to be, may have birthed me, but you never raised me. You were too busy with your social schedule and your gossip about the noble class to burden yourself with anything as inconvenient and messy as child rearing.”
“That’s not true!” she said. “I saw you every day! I took most of my meals with you!”
“How kind,” Dunk said mockingly. “Maybe if you’d been around more, Dirk wouldn’t have decided that he couldn’t stand you so much that he had to run away.”
Dunk winced as he spoke Dirk’s name. It felt good to get all of this off of his chest, but he hadn’t planned on saying his brother’s name. If Greta’s ghost decided to look for Dirk to confront him on any point that Dunk raised, she’d see them hauling away M’Grash, and all would be lost.
“That’s not true! That was your father’s fault! I-I would have spent more time with you if not for him. I… When Dirk ran away, I was heartbroken. You know that!”
Dunk remembered all too well. Greta had refused to come out of her chambers for over a week. Dunk had heard screaming matches between her and his father, but he’d never dared to get close enough to learn exactly what they were about.
“Sure, Father brought the Blood God into our lives. That’s what drove Dirk away, but you knew about it, and you didn’t stop him!”
“Oh, don’t get so high and mighty with me, Dunkel. You knew about it too. Oh, sure, perhaps you didn’t know about the daemons, but anyone living in that house had to know he was up to no good. You could have said something as easily as me, but you never did.”
“I was supposed to be getting married! I spent as little time in the house as I could!”
“Yes, but your father sold us out to Khorne years before that. You had your whole childhood to figure it out, and I know that you paid attention to your father when you were younger. You idolised him for a while.”
Dunk turned grim at these thoughts. “That was a long time ago.”
“I supposed that goes for all the feelings you once had for me as well. I know I wasn’t much of a mother to you and Dirk and Kirta, Dunkel, but I promise to make it up to you throughout eternity.”
The ghost’s sheer madness staggered Dunk to the point that he didn’t know how to respond to it. Still, he had to keep her distracted just a little bit longer.
He snuck a quick peek, and saw that the crew hauling M’Grash out through the end zone had just about made it. He wanted to give them plenty of time to get clear, though, perhaps even all the way back to the dugout.
When he looked over his shoulder to the crew’s goal, he spied Slick racing towards him, as fast as his little legs could carry him. Dunk didn’t know what sort of insane thoughts could have propelled his agent on to the field, especially with a ghost occupying the end zone, but he already had too much craziness on his hands to deal with it right now. To turn around to chase Slick back to safety would alert Greta’s ghost for sure.
“What makes you think that eternity will treat us any better than our lives in Altdorf?” Dunk asked. “You were a miserable mother then, and I can’t imagine you’ve improved upon your parenting skills while terrorising poor Kirta over the past few years.”
“I saved your sister! Without my help, she’d have been dead a dozen times over!”
“Saved her for a life of slavery and then to be sold into the most lethal sport in history? Well done, Mother. Gold stars for you!”
Tendrils shot out of the swirling mists from beneath the ghost’s face, lashing towards Dunk. He dived to the right, away from the others carting M’Grash off the field, and rolled away. As he touched the ground with his bare hands, he cried out in surprise and pain at the heat emanating from it.
As intent as Dunk had been on his mother’s ghost, he hadn’t realised that the cracks in the field had started to widen. He felt like he was rolling about on a giant’s griddle. He sprang to his feet as soon as he could, if only to put his boots under him again and keep his bare skin from blistering.
The chilling mists that had sailed over his head came curling after him. He looked past them to see Slick guiding the crew bearing M’Grash into the dugout. The crowd cheered on their efforts, showing that even if they didn’t care much for the Hackers, they hated Dunk’s mother even more.
“You hear that, Mother?” Dunk said. “Everyone in the stadium hates you. They think I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“The people here, if you can call them that, are little more than barbarians, cold-blooded freaks who have to restrain themselves from eating their young, something at which they rarely succeed!”
The crowd tu
rned ugly at the attention focused on it. The people in the stands began to hurl things into the end zone: Bloodweiser, Killer Genuine Draft, Spike! Magazine’s Hard Lemonade (which came frozen solid as a brick), bleachers, skinks-on-sticks, smaller spectators, and more.
All of these things passed right through the mists, of course, doing the ghost not a bit of harm. Despite this, she grew furious. “Don’t!” she said, turning to screech at the crowd. “Stop!”
“Would you look at that?” Bob said. “It seems like the Undead Mother of the Year doesn’t like people polluting her pure and virtuous mists.”
“That’s amazing, Bob! Truly amazing! How do you think a proper stadium of Blood Bowl fans might react to that?”
The crowd roared and began to hurl more and more things into the end zone. Dunk wondered how long it would take them to run out of things to throw, and if the end zone would look like a landfill or an incinerator when it was all done.
The ghost unleashed an ear-splitting screech that forced everyone in the stadium to cover their ears. Those who were standing fell to their knees in pain. Those who were sitting wished that they’d been standing so that the pain of falling to their knees might distract them from just how much their ears hurt.
Through it all, Dunk thought he could make out some kind of words, but it wasn’t until his ears stopped ringing that he could figure out what they were. “Stop it! You’re killing her!”
Once the echoes from the horrible scream faded away, Bob’s voice came out over the Preternatural Announcement system.
“I think after all this we can see how the Hoffnungs all became tough enough to become Blood Bowl players!”
“Sure thing!” said Jim. “Between their father’s performance in the Blood Bowl championship game last year and their mother’s appearance here, my only question is why didn’t they get into the game earlier?”
“Too true! After all, their home life must have made playing Blood Bowl seem like a picnic in paradise!”
Dunk pulled himself back to his feet and dusted off his knees, which glowed red from getting too close to the lava beneath the stadium’s floor. He knew what his mother had meant with her scream, and why she’d screamed so loud. In his gut, he knew.
“What did you do with her, Mother?” he asked, trying to peer past her into the roiling bank of mists that still covered the Lusties’ end zone.
“You were my favourite, Dunkel,” Greta’s ghost said. “You were my first, my special little boy. I loved Dirk when he came along too, but I’d already had a little boy. When Kirta entered my life, though, she stole my heart away.”
“Where is she, Mother?”
“I knew what your father had done, and I couldn’t live with the thought that you would all someday be sacrificed to the Blood God. I hardened my heart against you all, perhaps against Kirta the most.”
Dunk tried to peer through the mists. The ghost seemed to be coalescing in front of him, gathering the low bank of steam over the end zone into herself. He thought he could finally see something in there, something besides all the things the fans had thrown into the place.
“When it all went bad, when that mob stormed our castle, I decided I would do the right thing. I’d protect my daughter and keep her safe, even if I couldn’t do the same for Dirk and you.”
“Thanks for nothing, Mother.” Dunk could not keep the bitterness from his voice.
The ghost sobbed with grief, slim wisps trailing down from her eyes where tears should have formed.
“When it came down to it, when the moment arrived for me to do what I had to do, I couldn’t manage it. I-I…”
Dunk eyed the ghost suspiciously. A sense of dread began to grow in him, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up. “Couldn’t manage what, Mother?”
“I had the dagger in my hand.” The mists around the ghost’s hand formed into the shape of a long, curved knife. “When Lehrer abandoned us, when I refused him, I-I never thought he’d just leave us like that, but he did. So I drew out my dagger and prepared to use it.”
“Mother,” Dunk asked, knowing he didn’t want to hear the answer, “what did you do?”
“I raised the blade over Kirta and steadied my hand to plunge it into her back. I would kill her and then myself to prevent the mob from getting us, from handing us over to Khorne, from meeting justice at his blood-soaked hands.”
Dunk stared at his mother’s ghost, his jaw dropping low in horror. The mists behind her parted finally, and he saw Kirta lying unconscious in the end zone.
One of the first bleachers tossed onto the field had fallen near and then toppled over onto her. While it had pressed her to the searing floor, it had also shielded her from many of the other things the fans had thrown into the ghostly mists. However, a large, glowing hole had appeared in the end zone, right where M’Grash had landed and then been blown back, and Kirta’s body lay perilously close to it. Dunk could see that her armour and hair were starting to smoulder. If he could not deal with Greta’s ghost soon, poor Kirta would burst into flames.
“But you couldn’t do it, could you?” Dunk said.
The ghost had swirled around on its ethereal tail to look down at Kirta. Greta shook her head back and forth, unable to say a word. She leaned in close to caress the unmoving girl’s cheek, and the proximity of her chill to the lava’s heat caused a new burst of mist to billow up around Kirta’s body.
“She’s alive, and you’re not. The mob didn’t kill either one of you, did it, Mother?”
The ghost angled back to face Dunk again. She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the courage to keep my angel safe from harm.”
“You turned the knife on yourself.”
The ghost held up the misty blade in her hand, and it melted away in the sunlight. She nodded.
“I saved myself instead.”
“And that’s why you came back as a ghost.” Now Dunk finally understood. “You did have unfinished business to take care of: protecting Kirta.”
“Which proved nearly impossible,” Greta’s ghost said with a moan. “I can scare people. I can scream at them all I want, but I can’t touch them.”
“You nearly froze Dirk to death.”
“As I said, if we could not be together properly in life, then I’ll be happy to gather us all together for eternity in death.”
Dunk rolled his eyes. “Given your stellar track record, what makes you think it’s going to work any better this time?”
“Because it will! It has to! And you cannot stop me!”
Dunk heard footsteps thundering up behind him, and he spun around to see Dirk and Spinne rushing to help. Spinne held Slick in her arms, cradling him like a small child.
“No!” the ghost said. She unleashed another screech that brought everyone in earshot down once more. Dirk and Spinne fell to their knees, and Slick slipped to the ground, still clutching something to his chest.
The ghost hurled herself at Dunk once more, and he ducked nimbly under her attack. Once he rolled back to his feet, he realised that Greta hadn’t been aiming for him, this time, but for the people just beyond.
Spinne saw the ghost coming at her, and she managed to shove Slick out of the way. Dirk moved to protect her from Greta’s ghost, but this proved impossible. If the ghost had been substantial, he would have kept her from harming Spinne, but as it was Greta simply enveloped them both.
Even from where he stood, yards away, the ghost’s chill felt like a wintry blast straight off the Sea of Claws. Dirk howled in pain, and Spinne screamed.
Dunk glanced over his shoulder and saw the lava inching closer and closer to Kirta’s unconscious frame. Flames licked the bench that lay on top of her, and it would only be a matter of moments before both it and she would be engulfed.
Dunk knew this might be his only chance to rescue his sister, but to do so might cost his brother and his lover their lives.
Dunk froze for a moment. The choice was just too hard for him to make, but if he didn
’t do something soon all three of the most important people in his life would die.
Spinne cried out, and Dunk knew that he had to go to her. No matter what happened to Dirk and Kirta, he loved this woman and wanted to build a new family with her, one that wouldn’t be cursed with the madness that had affected the family in which he’d grown up.
He only hoped that Kirta might hold on a little longer and that, if she didn’t, Dirk could forgive him. He hoped he could forgive himself.
Just as Dunk was set to charge at the ghost and do his worst to her, whatever that might involve when trying to fight an insubstantial spirit, Slick stood up and held something over his head.
“Son,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, “I have the answer right here!”
Dunk stared at the halfling in disbelief. In his upraised hand he held the Lizard’s Claw.
“How in the world did you end up with that?” Dunk wanted to ask, but there was no time. Instead, he held out his hands and shouted, “Throw it here.”
Slick swung it back for an underhand pitch. As he did, he shouted again. “Remember, you can use it to wish for anything you want. Anything at all! Just be careful.”
Greta’s ghost spun around at these words and focused on the halfling. Dunk silently cursed his agent for having such a big mouth. “Just throw it!” he said.
Slick swung the claw back once more and then tossed it high into the air. Dunk never would have guessed that the halfling had such a strong arm, but the Lizard’s Claw sailed up and over his head. He leapt for it, but it was just out of his reach.
Dunk glanced at the ghost, saw the desperate hunger in her eyes, and then turned and charged after the Lizard’s Claw.
37
“That will be mine!” the ghost screeched as she jetted past Dunk to fall onto the magical severed hand.
Dunk’s legs pistoned as he strove to reach the Lizard’s Claw first, but he could not outrun the ghost’s unearthly speed. She fell on top of it, curling her icy mists tightly around it, so thickly that Dunk could no longer see the claw beneath her.
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 28
