Dunk cocked his head at the halfling. “I thought you said something about chainsaws and Dwarf Death-Rollers.”
Slick nodded. “All that and more. I said they’re against the rules. I didn’t say you wouldn’t see them.
“Blood Bowl is, at its core, an abstraction of the battles and wars that rage across these lands every day. As the saying goes, ‘all’s fair in war’.”
“That’s ‘love and war,’ I think,” Dunk said.
“You don’t say?” Slick said, seemingly genuinely surprised. “I can’t say I know much about love, son, but I’ll teach you everything I can about this kind of war.”
9
As Dunk and Slick finally topped the rise from the beach to the level area that served as the Hackers’ practice field, they saw nearly fifty hopefuls lined up along the edge of the field, waiting for Pegleg to speak to them. Slick slapped Dunk on the leg and the young warrior raced over and fell into line.
Dunk gazed along the line to check out the competition. There were humans from all walks of life and many lands around the Old World and beyond. Magritta was the crossroads of this part of the globe, and it showed in the faces of these people. There were blond-haired, axe-bearing warriors from Norsca, who wore their locks in long, complex braids under their horned helmets; olive-skinned dandies in turbans and colourful robes from Araby; even more exotic people with straight, black hair under wide, conical hats from far-off Cathay; nearly black-skinned hopefuls from the distant South Lands; and many more souls from Estalia, Tilea, Bretonnia, Kislev, and even Dunk’s own home: the Empire.
Dunk noticed that all of the hopefuls were humans, not an elf, dwarf, or halfling among them, much less a goblin or an orc. In fact, of the Hackers’ current players, there was only one nonhuman face among them: M’Grash. Dunk wondered how an exception to the (perhaps unspoken) rule had been made for the ogre, although he could certainly see how such a creature would be a tremendous asset to any team. Most of them were men, of course, although a few women stood out in the group, clearly ready to grind into the dirt any man who might question their abilities.
Before Dunk could think more about this, Cavre stepped up before the line and called the hopefuls to attention.
“Pardon me, kind ladies and sirs!” the dark-skinned man shouted. The chatter in the line fell silent. “My name is Rhett Cavre. I’m not only the assistant coach here but also the starting blitzer, unless one of you thinks you’re good enough to take my job.”
Nervous laughter rippled through the line at that.
“Welcome to the Hackers’ boot camp, and good luck. I hope to get to know you over the next two days and maybe even play with the best of you in the tournament. As we run you through our drills and test your skills and abilities, I want you to remember the one rule we enforce above all others with the Hackers: always listen to your coach!”
Cavre turned to the side, sweeping his arms wide toward Pegleg. “With that in mind, allow me to introduce the coach of the Bad Bay Hackers: Captain Pegleg Haken.”
Pegleg, still dressed in his captain’s uniform, limped his way towards the line, step-tap, step-tap, step-tap. When he reached Cavre, he took off his sword belt and scabbarded cutlass and handed them to the star blitzer. Then, still without saying a word, he glared up and down the line, scanning the motley faces he found there. Then he drew a deep breath and spoke.
“I’ve never seen such a sorry lot of losers!” Pegleg growled with the voice of a drill sergeant and the attitude of a daemon. “You stupid sods came here because you want a chance to risk your lives for a bit of glory and gold. You are idiots! Blood Bowl is a hard game for hard people. If you want to earn some money by fighting, try something safer… like joining your local army! At least they feed you for free there!”
Pegleg bowed his head and shook it, his black curls bouncing beneath his bright-yellow tricorn hat. “The life expectancy of the average Blood Bowl player is measured not in seasons, but games. I’m sure that some of you have families back home that care about you, friends that wouldn’t mind seeing you again while you’re still breathing, maybe even a lover that hopes to hold you in her arms again.”
He looked up from under the brim of his hat. “The best advice I can give you is to leave. Now.”
A pair of brothers from Tilea, standing next to Dunk, looked at each other and started to weep. As one, they broke from the line and raced for the beach and the safety of the streets of Magritta beyond. Five others calved off from the line and chased after the others. One of the dandies from Araby joined them, wailing the entire way.
Pegleg glared at the remaining hopefuls until the cries of the cowards faded into the distance. “Anyone else?” he said.
Dunk felt his foot start to step forward, but he pressed it down into the soft earth instead. He hadn’t come all this way to give up now. Blood Bowl couldn’t be any more dangerous than fighting dragons. Or a chimera. Could it?
“Now that those weak-livered pansies are gone, we can get down to business,” Pegleg growled as he paced back and forth along the line of hopefuls. Step-tap, step-tap, step-tap. He waved his hook as he spoke, often coming within bare inches of a hopeful’s face. No one dared to flinch.
“Give me fifty laps around the pitch!” Pegleg roared. “Now!”
By the end of the first day of the two-day boot camp, Dunk wished he was dead. He was sure that it would hurt less. When he sat down in his tent that night, every inch of him seemed to be sore and bruised.
“You think this is bad,” Slick said. “Wait until you wake up tomorrow.”
The first day had been all about testing the hopefuls’ raw abilities, as well as their limits. Pegleg and Cavre had run them through drill after drill: races, obstacle courses, tackling, throwing, catching, and more.
It was clear that Dunk would never be the blitzer Cavre was. He didn’t have a head for tackling, and nearly half of the others were able to outrace him in a dead sprint. Perhaps he’d be best as a lineman or a catcher, although Slick was pushing him to try for thrower.
“Blitzers are often the team captains and the top-paid players,” the halfling said, “but sadly that’s not where your talents lie. Throwers are the next best.”
“Won’t I just end up playing behind Kur?” Dunk asked. “I don’t think he’s going anywhere soon.”
“Even the toughest players get hurt sometimes. It’s inevitable. That’s why they have backups. Sooner or later, those players get their chance on the pitch, often in the most important parts of the game.
“Besides, if you shoot for thrower and fall short, Pegleg can always make you a lineman instead. Aim high, son.”
“You think I can make thrower?” Dunk tried to keep the need out of his voice, but feared the halfling could hear it.
Slick patted the young warrior on the back. “I could feed you a line of lies, son, but you’d see right through that. I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know. You have all the raw talent you need, but your lack of Blood Bowl skills could haunt you.”
Dunk knew what Slick meant. He’d been trained with the sword, the knife, the bow, the spear, to be a warrior, not a Blood Bowl player. While the skills needed for both overlapped, they weren’t identical.
“Still,” the halfling said softly, “I’ve never seen someone with an arm like yours. The way you brought down that chimera? Simply stunning.”
“It was a lucky shot,” Dunk said as he lay back on his cot.
“Then be as lucky as you can,” Slick said as sleep reached out and surrounded him like a dozen linemen and beat him unconscious.
“Awake, you rotters!” Pegleg’s voice shouted, waking Dunk from his dreams, seemingly only a moment after he lay down his head. “Awake! The last of you buggers out of his tent gets cut right now!”
Dunk rolled out of his cot and stumbled out of the tent, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday. He’d been too tired to change into a nightshirt. He ran a hand over his face and another through his hair as he rac
ed to the impromptu line forming in front of Cavre as Pegleg stormed through the camp, hollering at the top of his capacious lungs.
A dozen others joined Dunk immediately, and another few trickled in soon after, moving slowly and groaning from having to stretch their tortured muscles with such little notice.
Dunk’s whole body was sore from his head to his toes, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Back home, Lehrer’s training program had kept him in decent shape, and the long journey to Magritta hadn’t afforded him much opportunity to grow soft. Still, he’d worked himself as hard as he ever had yesterday, and he felt it.
After a full pass through the camp, Pegleg limped over to stand next to Cavre and survey the line. Of the forty or so hopefuls that had stuck around through the training yesterday, only twenty stood in the line now.
“Mr. Cavre,” Pegleg snarled. “I told you this was a sorry lot.”
“I didn’t disagree with you, captain.”
“Where are the rest of them?”
“I’ll check, captain.”
“No.” Pegleg held Cavre back with his gleaming hook. “I’ll rouse them myself.”
The pirate-coach stalked through the camp, peering into the tents. Those nearest to the line were all empty, their former occupants staring back at Pegleg from the line. Dunk’s tent was further back, closer to the sea.
Pegleg came to a tent and stopped. “Wu Chen!” he shouted. “This isn’t a brothel in Cathay! Get out here.”
As the silence from the tent grew longer, Pegleg’s face grew redder. With a horrible snarl, the pirate raised his hook high and brought it down, ripping through the fabric of the tent. “I said get out here!” he raged, “You worthless—”
Pegleg cut himself short as his hook tangled in the cloth. He tugged at it, trying to free his arm, but he only wound himself in further. With a mighty, two-handed wrench, the stakes holding down the tent gave, and Pegleg cascaded backward, the whole of the tent coming with him, entangling him in its cloth and its lines.
“Mr. Cavre!” Pegleg shouted as he fell backward, wrapped in the remains of the tent tighter than any mummy. The players, whose half of the camp lay on the other side of the bonfire in the middle of the camp, started to laugh as their leader’s tent-packaged body began to roll toward the sea.
“Mr. Cavre!” Pegleg shrieked as he heard the lapping of the waves and realised the extent of his plight.
The blitzer was already on his way. “Mr. K’Thragsh!” he shouted as he sprinted toward the captain. “A hand if you will!”
The ogre burst out of the pack of players and dashed toward Pegleg as he rolled toward the waters of the bay, screaming, “Mr. Cavre!”
The captain’s struggles only made his situation worse. If he’d have stayed still, he probably wouldn’t have continued to roll down the gentle slope toward the sea. As it was, he fought and clawed away with his hook like a cornered wildcat. At one point, he managed to tear the fabric from in front of his face. The sight of the approaching water snatched a horrifying scream from his chest, which was cut off when he rolled over on his face again.
Despite M’Grash’s long-legged stride, Cavre reached the captain first and stopped him from rolling further. He stopped the man just before the high-tide mark, much to the captain’s delight. However, before Pegleg could offer his thanks, M’Grash picked him up and dangled him from the end of his outstretched limb like a prize fish he’d just managed to haul to shore.
“Get me away from the water!” Pegleg bellowed. The ogre nearly dropped him in shock, but the creature managed to recover himself and carried the captain back toward the bonfire pit, still held in front of him like a newsworthy catch.
Before M’Grash got too far, Pegleg’s struggles bore fruit. The tent-trap he found himself in finally gave way entirely, and he plummeted from the ogre’s grasp, crashing to the ground. M’Grash blushed red as he stared at the ragged remnants of the tent, still hanging in his hand.
The players burst out in howls of laughter, which were only made worse when Pegleg tripped over his good leg as he tried to stand up. Some of the hopefuls joined in too, although quietly. The last thing any of them needed was Pegleg mad at them.
The captain finally leapt to his peg and shook the tent’s lines off of his leg. “What are you all laughing at?” he snarled at the players. The uproar only got louder.
Pegleg stormed over to the players, his hook held out and high, ready to impale the first person he met. But before he could exact his revenge, Cavre’s voice rang out.
“Captain!” he said. “We have a problem!”
Pegleg stopped so hard, he drove his peg halfway into the beach’s sand. “It had better be good, Mr. Cavre!” he said, his face as crimson as his coat.
“It’s murder, captain,” Cavre said. “Murder!”
Even as far away as Dunk was, he could see the body lying in the spot left bare by Pegleg’s destruction of the tent. It was Wu Chen’s.
Pegleg rushed over to the corpse and cursed. Holding the curved end of his hook against his forehead, he said something quiet and respectful over the body. As he finished, he looked up and gasped.
“Quick, Mr. Cavre,” he said, “check the other tents.”
Dunk’s stomach fell into his boots. He and the other hopefuls watched from the line in detached horror as Cavre and Pegleg went through each of the tents, pulling back their flaps one by one. One by one, they discovered a full score of dead hopefuls, each cut down in their prime.
The other players came over from their side of the camp to help. They hauled the bodies from the tents and stacked them up near the fire pit, one at a time. Dunk tried to go down to help too, but Cavre pointed him back toward the line. “This isn’t something for the hopefuls to help with, Mr. Hoffnung,” he said.
“Why not?” Dunk asked. He’d trained with each of the victims yesterday, and he wanted to do what little he could for them.
“Tell him, Mr. Fullbelly,” Cavre said to Slick before returning to his grisly work.
The halfling took Slick by the leg and guided him back to the line. “Think about it, son,” he said softly. “Who stands the most to gain from all this?”
As Dunk returned to his place, he glanced up and down the line at the faces of the other hopefuls. “We do,” he said with a grimace.
It took the Hackers the better part of an hour to pick through the place. Once all the bodies were accounted for, Pegleg looked up at the line of hopefuls. “We don’t have time for this, Mr. Cavre.”
“Aye, captain,” the blitzer said. Then he raced up to where the hopefuls still stood and said, “You lot are with me. We have a long day ahead of us, and a few deaths never stopped a game of Blood Bowl.”
10
That day’s training was even worse than the first. This time around, Cavre fitted each of the players with a spare set of armour before practice began.
Dunk was amazed at the sophistication of the armour. Unlike the stuff he’d worn before, which was fashioned for the rigors of battle, this sort of armour was designed for the weaponless head-knocking and unarmed combat of Blood Bowl. It featured massive spaulders — Slick called them “shoulder pads”—which were made as much for knocking down other players as for protection.
Dunk also wore a helmet that featured a wrought-iron grill over the face to protect his eyes from probing fingers, or so it seemed. Unlike traditional helmets, though, this one featured padding on the inside to protect the skull from the regular blows rained down on it by opposing players. It was painted in a loud yellow and featured the three crossed swords on a green background that comprised the Hackers’ logo.
Overall, the armour fit tighter than Dunk was used to, and featured more padding underneath. It was built for speed as well as protection, to allow the wearer to run as well as survive an attack. The armour of the linemen and blitzers was just a bit heavier than that of the throwers and catchers, whose smaller shoulder pads were built so they could easily lift their arms over their heads.
The helmet, the shoulder pads, the gauntlets and even the knee and elbow pads featured sharp sets of spikes that would quickly make a mess of unprotected flesh. Their presence explained the amazing number of small dents found on most of the sets of practice armour loaned out to the hopefuls.
After getting fitted with the equipment, the hopefuls played a loose scrimmage against each other, mostly just running through a set of plays over and over again. The hopefuls lined up against each other and tried to accomplish whatever goals Cavre set for them, which ranged from successfully throwing the ball to running the ball through a phalanx of linemen. Dunk found himself in a set of thrower’s armour, ready to throw the ball downfield, towards the opposing team’s end zone at a moment’s notice.
Dunk decided he liked being a thrower for more than just the gold and glory that Slick had mentioned. When you had the ball in the game, there wasn’t much more frightening than realising that everyone on the opposing team hoped to crush you far enough into the turf that you couldn’t get up without a group of helpers armed with a set of trusty shovels.
When most players had the ball, there was little they could (or at least should) do but run for the end zone and hope to find some daylight along the way. Throwers, though, could scramble around as much as they liked until they found someone downfield (closer to the end zone) to chuck the ball at. Some of the balls they worked with were spiked too, which made catching the ball a bit more of an adventure, but all of the catchers did their best, even when their efforts drew their own blood. They all wanted to make an impression, and not of the full body-in-the-turf variety.
At midday, Cavre called a break for lunch, and the hopefuls joined the team members around the fire pit for more of the team’s traditional stew. This always seemed to be made of some mixture of cheese, beer, and some sort of unidentifiable meat. Dunk had already had more than his fill of the stuff aboard the Sea Chariot, but after a day and a half of Blood Bowl tryouts it tasted like the finest of meals ever served in his family’s keep back in Altdorf.
[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl Page 8
