“I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here, Mr. Hoffnung,” the coach said. He sat in a chair behind the desk, and as he spoke he scratched something in the desk’s top.
Dunk sat in a small folding chair opposite Pegleg. Staring up at the grim look in the ex-pirate’s eyes, he had no doubt why he was here. Only the solemn vow Cavre had given to Dirk that Dunk would not be harmed kept him from fleeing into the darkness right then and there. That and the fact that Cavre stood directly behind him and would probably put him down at the first false move he made.
The young warrior realised that Pegleg was waiting for an answer. He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said sullenly.
From under his brilliant yellow tricorn, Pegleg shot his first mate a concerned look “Cavre? Have you already informed Mr. Hoffnung of this evening’s events and how they are entwined with his eventual fate?”
“Not a word, captain.”
Pegleg narrowed his eyes at Dunk. “You are aware of the murders, then?”
Dunk nodded slowly, confused. “That’s why you cut me from the team this afternoon,” he said. “Despite the fact I had nothing to do with them.”
A smile tickled at the edge of Pegleg’s mouth. “I see, Mr. Hoffnung. You continue to maintain your innocence then?”
Dunk nodded as if nothing could be more evident.
“Then I suppose you had nothing to do with this evening’s killings either?”
Dunk froze, stunned. “What?”
Cavre spoke. “Sometime shortly after sundown, Andreas and Otto went to collect our newest players for a celebration. They found Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Reyes in fine condition. Sadly, the same could not be said of the Broussard brothers.”
Dunk felt the beer in his stomach start to creep its way up his gullet.
“What was wrong with them?” he asked. He forgot to supply any honorific when addressing Pegleg, but the coach ignored it.
“Why, Mr. Hoffnung, they were dead, of course.”
Using his good hand, Pegleg reached down and pulled something bundled in a crimson cloth from a drawer in his desk. He tossed it on to the desk and peeled bade the fabric with his hook so deftly that Dunk suspected he could fillet a fish with its tip.
It was the same knife Pegleg had found in Dunk’s tent before.
“They were killed with this.”
Dunk gasped for air. “Don’t tell me you found that in my tent again.”
“No, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said flatly. “It was sticking out of Luc Broussard’s right eye.”
Dunk’s head reeled. He found it hard to focus, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the freshly bloodied knife. He clamped down hard on his rising stomach, afraid that everything he’d put into it since that morning would come spraying onto the coach’s precious floor.
Instead, out came a rousing, tent-shuddering belch.
Dunk looked up sheepishly at Pegleg and then back at Cavre, who both stared at Dunk as if he’d grown a second head. “Um,” he said, “excuse me?”
Cavre just shook his head at Dunk, while Pegleg seemed to be sniggering behind the hook he raised to his face.
“Well,” Pegleg said once he’d regained his composure, “on that auspicious note, I’d like to inform you of your new status, Mr. Hoffnung.”
Dunk repressed a shiver, although whether of anger or fear he could not tell. “You can’t think I had anything to do with this,” he said.
Pegleg shook his big, tricorn hat. “No,” he said. “Several people placed you in the Bad Water from when you left here until Mr. Cavre brought you to me. You’re off the,” he looked at the sharp, shining device in place of his missing hand, then cleared his throat, “hook… so to speak.”
Dunk slumped back in the folding chair, astonished at the heights and depths of his day. Then he sat bolt upright again. “What about the other killings?” he said. “Do you still think I had something to do with those?”
Pegleg shook his head. “We never did, Mr. Hoffnung. The attempt to frame you by placing the murder weapon in your tent was far too obvious. You may not be a great Blood Bowl player yet, but you’re hardly a fool.”
“Then why did you cut me from the—? Oh.” This line of questions led Dunk to an answer he didn’t particularly like.
Pegleg shook his head again. “You’re a fine player, Mr. Hoffnung, and I’d be pleased to offer you a spot on our team, but I hoped to play along with the killer long enough for me to be able to learn who he was. In all honesty, I suspected the Broussard brothers, but these most recent events seem to have taken them out of the running.”
“Unless they killed themselves out of guilt, captain,” Cavre said.
Pegleg chortled at that. “Very good, Mr. Cavre. I’ll admit I hadn’t thought of that. Very good!”
Dunk stared at Pegleg, afraid that he might for a moment be serious. The captain saw the look and waved it off.
“This is all beside the point, of course. The fact is that we have two more people dead, leaving us once more short-handed on this team. Those are spots we need to fill.”
It finally dawned on Dunk why he was here. “You want me to play for the Bad Bay Hackers?” It was a question less of curiosity than astonishment.
“Didn’t I just say that, Mr. Hoffnung?” Pegleg looked over Dunk’s shoulder at Cavre. “Well, didn’t I?”
“Not in so many words, captain,” the blitzer said.
Pegleg harrumphed. “I suppose I’ll have to be a bit more direct about it then. Mr. Hoffnung?” He looked Dunk straight in the eye and pointed at him with the curve of his hook. “I’d like to offer you a position as our backup thrower. Are you interested?”
A strange mélange of emotions washed over Dunk. This was why he was here in Magritta, right? To try out for the Hackers, to launch his Blood Bowl career. At the same time, he couldn’t get his father’s disparaging attitude about the game out of his head. His parents had disowned his brother over playing the game, after all. That was hardly a concern these days, but it still gave Dunk pause.
“Yes!” Slick’s voice shouted from outside the tent The halfling stormed in through the closed flaps, barely disturbing them as he passed, and stabbed an index finger toward Pegleg’s face. “He’ll take it!”
All eyes in the tent turned toward Slick and he suddenly realised he’d become the centre of attention. He blushed with a sheepish grin, then spoke more calmly to Pegleg. “Assuming we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement, Captain Haken, of course.”
“Of course,” Pegleg replied, rolling his eyes.
Cavre came around from behind Dunk and walked over to a locked cabinet against the right wall. He produced a key and opened it, then extracted a large, tall bottle wrapped in woven strands of something that looked like straw to Dunk’s eyes. He placed it on the table, next to the bloody knife, along with a pair of crystal glasses.
“A drink of Stoutfellow’s finest to seal the deal?” Pegleg said to Slick.
“Let’s start with a toast to celebrate our mutual recognition of our desire to work together,” the halfling said, “and we can work our way up from there.”
Cavre took Dunk by the elbow and led him from the tent.
“Don’t worry yourself, son,” Slick said as Cavre escorted Dunk away. “By the time I work out your deal with this scallywag, he’ll have promised us his hook and an option on his leg — the good one!”
Back in the Bad Water, Cavre raised a drink to Dunk. “Here’s to the game,” he said to the rookie as they clinked their steins together. “May you leave it better off than you found it.”
Dunk drank deeply from his KGD, then wiped his mouth and smiled at Cavre. “Are you talking about me or the game there?” he asked.
Cavre smiled. “The toast doesn’t say, does it, Mr. Hoffnung? That’s what makes it such a good toast. Congratulations.”
Dunk smiled. He hated the circumstances under which he’d come to his new position — if he even had it yet, although he trusted Slick to take care of that �
� but he found himself pleased to be in it. For tonight, at least, he was ready to let his ambivalence drain away so that he could enjoy the moment for the magical thing it was.
Dunk knew that thousands of people, maybe millions, would kill to be able to play Blood Bowl professionally. And somebody did, he thought, which gave him pause. He shoved that aside with the rest of his doubts though. He hadn’t killed those people, and it seemed that Pegleg and Cavre finally believed him. That was enough for now.
Dunk let the joy of his good fortune, or fate, as the case may have been, flow over him. Doing this had to beat chasing after dragons, and it was far enough away from Altdorf that he might even be able to forget what had happened to his family back there and what he’d had to do with it. He drank deeply from his stein, then slammed it back down and ordered another.
Several steins later, the world seemed a much friendlier place to Dunk. He clapped Cavre on the back and said. “I’m just thrilled to be able to work with you.”
Cavre smiled patiently at the rookie. “So you keep telling me, Mr. Hoffnung.”
“We’re team-mates now,” Dunk said. “You can drop the ‘mister’ bit. Call me Dunk.”
Cavre shook his head. “I work with a lot of people, Mr. Hoffnung. On a Blood Bowl team, they tend to come and go like grist on a millstone. Only a rare few do I ever call by name.”
“But I’ll be the thrower,” Dunk said, the drink making him a bit more distressed by Cavre’s cavalier attitude than he normally would allow. “You’re the blitzer. Those are the team’s top two positions. We’ll have a natural bond.”
Cavre snorted softly as he raised his stein to his lips. When he brought it down, he gazed at Dunk with his dark, brown eyes that seemed like they’d maybe seen too much over the years for their own good. “Sometimes it works like that,” he said, “true. But not always. I’ve been working with Mr. Ritternacht for two years now, and there’s no such bond there.”
Dunk’s heart sank. If Kur hadn’t been able to inspire any kind of respect in Cavre in years of trying, what hope did Dunk have? On the other hand, Kur didn’t seem like the kind of person who cared to try for such things. That lifted Dunk’s spirits for a moment.
“And you’re still just the back-up thrower, Mr. Hoffnung,” Cavre pointed out.
Dunk’s spirits sank again. He took another belt of his KGD.
“So, sailor, what does a girl have to do around here to get a guy to buy her a drink?”
Dunk looked up to see Spinne on his other side, away from Cavre. She smiled at him, but he couldn’t move his tongue, maybe because of that smile.
A mug full of mulled wine slid down the bar and skidded to a halt in front of Spinne. Dunk looked down at it as if it had been conjured from thin air. Then he glanced back at the bartender and caught his eye. “Put that on my tab,” he croaked out.
“It looks like you’re celebrating,” Spinne said as she brought the mulled wine to her soft lips. Dunk found himself just as jealous of the mug as he had been of Slick earlier.
“Mr. Hoffnung here has just been offered a position with the Hackers,” Cavre offered from over Dunk’s shoulder.
Spinne smiled. “Congratulations!” she said, clinking her mug against Dunk’s stein. He almost dropped his beer, but he managed to rally enough to join her in her toast.
“What position will you be playing?” Spinne asked.
“Thrower,” Dunk said.
“Behind Kur?”
Dunk nodded. “For now.”
Spinne laughed. “That’s confidence for you,” she said to Cavre over Dunk’s shoulder. “Don’t you find a rookie’s ambitions amazing?”
“Not anymore, Spinne.”
She looked back at Dunk. “He’s just flattering me. He remembers back when I was a rookie too. I had so much to learn, didn’t I?”
Dunk nodded. “I suppose I do too.”
“More than you know, my Dunkel,” Spinne said. “More than you know.”
“My brother used to call me that,” Dunk said. “Do you know where he is?” He craned his neck around, suspicious that Dirk was watching him, frozen like a deer in the bright light of Spinne’s attention.
“I don’t have any idea,” she said. “Is it important? Oh, you’d like to share your news with him, right?”
Dunk shook his head. The last thing he needed right now was a conversation with Dirk. He was feeling good, and he knew that would bring him crashing back down to the dirt.
“We’re not together, you know,” Spinne said. “Your brother and I. He likes to give people that impression sometimes.”
“I had that impression.” Dunk’s day had just gotten even better.
“Sometimes I let people think that. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to keep men away from me, would you?”
Dunk smiled, boggled by the insanity of the question. “Is that a joke?” he asked, looking her up and down. “I think you’d need an army — or at least a good set of linemen.”
Spinne frowned. “I’m not some kind of princess. I’m a Blood Bowl player.”
“And one of the best around,” Carve said. Dunk turned as he heard the man’s stool push back from the bar.
“I’m going to call it a night,” the blitzer said. “I’d love to be able to help Mr. Hoffnung here celebrate his impending contract all night long, but we aren’t in Magritta for pleasure.”
“Right!” Dunk said. “I can go back with you. Is there some kind of curfew?”
“Yes,” Cavre laughed. “But it only applies to players.”
“But…” Dunk was confused.
“Have you signed a contract yet, Mr. Hoffnung?” Cavre asked, still smiling.
“No, but I’m sure that—”
Cavre cut Dunk off with a wave of his legendary hands. “Then your time is still your own. This is the last night that may be true for a while, Mr. Hoffnung. I suggest you enjoy it.”
With that, Cavre snapped off a quick salute and took his leave. Dunk turned back to Spinne, who seemed to be standing closer to him than before.
“Well,” he said, “it seems I’m on my own for celebrating my good news. Would you care to join me?”
“Haven’t I already?” Spinne smiled at him with dreamy eyes.
“So,” Dunk asked, “what do you suggest a young rookie do with his last night of freedom?”
As Spinne leaned in and pressed her breathtakingly soft lips against his, she said, “Oh, can’t we think of something?”
14
The next morning, Dunk slunk back to the Hackers’ camp in the cold light of early dawn. His head pounded like a dwarf jackhammer any time he bent over, which he’d done in Spinne’s room to grab his pants before she hustled him out the door. He hadn’t bent over since, but his head was still spinning with the events of the night before. To be cleared of murder and then to be offered a position with the Hackers was amazing enough, but to then bed the beautiful Spinne was too much for his brain to handle, as evidenced by the fact that it seemed ready to spin out of his skull at a moment’s notice.
“Ah!” Slick shouted as Dunk tried to sneak into his tent. “There you are! Cavre told me you might be out late celebrating your last night as a civilian, but I didn’t imagine it would be all night. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Dunk winced at the noise of the halfling’s voice and held his ears. It conveniently allowed him to hold his head together at the same time.
“Oh,” Slick said, a bit more softly this time. “I see you’re paying the price for your pleasure last night,” he chuckled. “Thank Nuffle you won’t be playing today.”
“How’s that?” Dunk said, surprised at how relieved he was by this bit of news. Then his relief morphed to concern. “We didn’t make a deal?”
Slick feigned shock at the rookie’s words. “Do you really think I would let Pegleg go to sleep last night before he made us an offer we just couldn’t refuse?”
Dunk’s headache eased at this. “So we have a contract?”
&n
bsp; Slick’s grin showed all the teeth in his chubby mouth. “It’s all ready for your signing. We just need to go over to Pegleg’s tent to get your ink on it.”
“How much are we talking about here?” This morning, Dunk had realised he’d spent just about every last crown he had on his celebration. Buying a round for the bar had been a lot more expensive than he’d imagined. It had cost him even more, in terms of his health, when everyone in the bar tried to return the favour to him. If Spinne hadn’t taken him out of the Bad Water when she had, he might have woken up under one of the pub’s tables, or maybe lying out on the docks with his head hanging over the edge of a pier.
“Seventy,” Slick said proudly.
“Seventy crowns per game?” Dunk said, nodding his approval. “Not bad. Depending on how often we play, I might be able to send up to half that home.”
Slick snorted. “That’s not quite it.”
“Seventy per month then?” Dunk said, creasing his brow. “That’s still workable, I suppose.”
“Not per month,” Slick said, a mysterious smile still plastered across his face. “That’s per year.”
“Per year?” Dunk said, frowning now. “I thought Blood Bowl players made real money. That’s less than six crowns a month. It’s liveable, but I could make more money as a ratcatcher in Altdorf. Of course, that’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the Empire, shy of dragon-hunting or, I thought, playing Blood Bowl, so it doesn’t pay too bad. Have you ever looked down in those sewers? I think I’d need more than—”
“Son,” Slick said. “That’s seventy thousand per year.”
Dunk’s hangover vanished.
“You’re — Slick, my head must be fuzzier than I knew. I thought you just said ‘Seventy thousand crowns a year.’ ”
The halfling nodded, his grin wider than ever, so wide he started to jump up and down to spread it further. Dunk grabbed his tiny hands and started jumping with him. The two hooted and hollered until Dunk was sure they must have woken up everyone else in the camp.
[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl Page 11
