Dunk ignored the halfling. “He had something in his hands when he left, a sheaf of papers.”
“Contracts maybe?” Slick offered. “Perhaps he works for another team and wants to know what Pegleg is paying his players.”
“Why would that be important?” Dunk asked.
Slick smiled, finally back on ground familiar to him. “Lots of teams like to try to poach the best players from each other. To do that properly, the more you know about your targets the easier it is. After all, it’s hard for a team to outbid your current salary if they don’t know what it is.”
“I suppose,” Dunk said, not entirely agreeing with the halfling. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask? If most players are as greedy as you imply, they’d be happy to let prospective teams know their asking price.”
Slick nodded. “But lots of players lie about that. For one, it’s a matter of pride. Everyone wants to be known as the player with the highest price tag.”
“That gives new meaning to ‘most valuable player’.”
“For two,” Slick continued, “players would love to get an offer that’s substantially above what they’re really making. With the real numbers in hand, a coach only has to offer the least amount necessary. While negotiating, it puts him in a real position of strength.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Dunk said.
Far outside the tent, the crowd in the stadium roared again.
“I hope that’s good news,” Slick said. “We could use some right now.”
“Too bad,” a gruff voice said, just before its owner entered the tent. “Gotcha bad news right here.”
The intruder stood nearly eight feet tall and seemed nearly as broad across. He had to bend over to fit into the tent scraping the tops of his pointed, bark-coloured ears on the canvas ceiling. His thick arms were long enough that they almost dragged to his feet. Sharp tusks rose from the bottom, lantern-shaped jaw of his savage-cut mouth, and their tips scraped raw patches on either side of his flat upturned, almost piggish nose, which squatted just under his beady, black eyes set wide apart in his ham of a face.
“Skragger,” Slick whispered. In the silence of the tent it sounded like a cannon’s shot.
“You can’t be in here,” Dunk said to the black orc.
The creature was dressed in filthy but stylish Orcidas clothing, and a thick, gold ring pierced the centre of his nose, almost daring someone to try leading him around by it. A small tuft of salt-and-pepper hair jutted from the top of his head, and Dunk was struck by the wrinkles on the creature’s face. Most Orcs died young. Skragger was unarmed it seemed, but so, Dunk remembered, was he.
Skragger’s long, right arm reach out and smacked Dunk to the ground. It came so fast, he almost didn’t see it.
“Nuff from you,” the massive orc said. “Talk,” he said jabbing his chest with a black-nailed finger. Then he pointed at Dunk. “Listen.”
Dunk scrambled to his feet and nodded, his cheek still stinging from where the orc had hit him.
“Dunk Hoffnung?” Skragger said, pointing at Slick. The halfling’s eyes sprang wide as he squeaked and gestured toward the rookie instead.
Skragger turned toward Dunk, a satisfied smile on his horrible face. “Dirk yer brother?”
Dunk nodded silently as he tried to scan the room. Pegleg had to have another weapon in here somewhere. He considered diving under the tent’s back wall and taking his chances with outrunning the black orc. Skragger might once have been able to chase Dunk down, but it didn’t seem that the years had been kind to him. Still, that would mean leaving Slick behind to the black orc’s nonexistent mercies, and Dunk couldn’t bring himself to risk that.
“Wuz Orcland Raiders blitzer,” Skragger said, pointing at himself now. “My record: Most Touchdowns in a Year.” The creature pronounced the last words carefully and proudly, something the rookie wouldn’t have guessed the orc was capable of.
Dunk nodded. “Congratulations,” he said earnestly.
Another scabby orc paw snapped away from Skragger’s side and slapped him to the ground.
“Don’t innerupt,” Skragger growled.
The rookie nodded, silently this time, as he crawled back to his feet. Now both of his cheeks burned. At least it seemed that the black orc was more interested in talk than murder.
“Yer Dirk could break record.” Skragger frowned, exposing all of his lower row of yellowed, broken teeth. “That can’t happen.”
“Really?” Dunk said, pride in his brother unexpectedly welling in his heart. He glanced at Slick and asked, “Dirk could do that?”
Slick nodded at Dunk from where he cowered behind Pegleg’s bed. “He’s off to a great start. He almost managed it last year. He only fell five touchdowns shy.”
“Too close!” Skragger snarled. He aimed a blow at Slick but only succeeded in knocking a post off of Pegleg’s bed, the top of which was carved in the shape of a human skull. It fell next to Slick’s feet, a none-too-subtle warning as to Skragger’s intent.
“Tell Dirk, back off,” the orc continued. “Breaks my record, Skragger breaks him.” With that, he drew up both arms and brought them down, smashing Pegleg’s thick, oaken desk in two. “Break you too.”
Dunk looked at the splintered remains of the desk at his feet, then back up at Skragger. “I’ll let him know.”
Skragger guffawed rough and low at this. As he did, he pulled a grimy shred of parchment from the pocket of his greasy Orcidas sweatpants. From his other pocket, he pulled out a short pencil that was far too small for his massive hands. He licked the tip with a tongue as rough as sandpaper, set it to the parchment and crossed out something with a single line. Then he looked around.
“Which team?” Skragger said.
Dunk cringed as he leaned just a little over the edge of the destroyed table and said. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
Skragger grimaced in anger, and Dunk braced for another smack. “Which team owns thizzere camp?”
“Ah,” Dunk said, brightening at the ease of the question, although he didn’t quite understand the motivation behind it. “The Bad Bay Hackers.”
Skragger glared down at his list for a moment, then scowled and took out a tiny pair of wire-rimmed glasses that he perched on his nose. “Hrm,” he said. “Ritternacht still with ya?”
“Kur?” Dunk said, smiling. “He’s the starting thrower.”
Another slap sent Dunk reeling backwards, slipping under the back flap of the tent and tumbling into the sand. As the rookie lay there on the beach, feeling his jaw to see if it was broken, he saw the tip of a pencil appear at the top of the tent’s rear flap. It tore downward in a smooth, steady move, parting the fabric neatly in two.
Skragger stepped through the new-made gap. “That warning fer Dirk?” he said. “Goes fer Kur too.”
With that, the black orc crossed another name off his list and then strode off toward Magritta’s docks. Somewhere in the distance, a crowd roared again.
16
“As a guard, you make a wonderful thrower, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said after Dunk explained to him everything that had happened that afternoon. “Wizards, daemons, and a black orc blitzer too?”
“I know it seems too insane to believe,” Dunk started.
“I coach a Blood Bowl team,” Pegleg said evenly as he stirred around in the remains of his desk with his hook. “There are few things too insane for me to believe.”
Dunk hung his head. “I’m sorry, coach,” he said. “I did the best I could.”
Pegleg waited a moment before responding. “It’s not your fault, Mr. Hoffnung. It seems fate has it in for us today.”
“Speaking of which,” Dunk said, “how did the game go?”
Pegleg frowned. “We lost,” he said. “Get out.”
“I’d like to warn my brother that his life is in danger,” Dunk said.
Pegleg rubbed the arc of his hook on his head, letting the touch of the metal cool his brow. “Permission denied, Mr. Hoffnung. You c
an tell him in two days. The Reavers are next up on our dance card.”
Dunk nodded. “What about Kur?”
“That,” Pegleg said, “had better come from me. After the game Kur played today, though, I’d say that Skragger’s record is in no danger from that quarter.”
“Okay, but—”
“Dismissed, Mr. Hoffnung.”
Over the next two days, many of Dunk’s new team-mates wanted to ask him about what had happened at the camp while they’d been at the game. He told the story over and over again, keeping as best he could to the facts as he knew them. He figured that anyone on the team deserved to know what was happening with the team. After the murders during and after the tryouts, it was clear that something dangerous was happening around the team, and the incidents during the game only amplified that feeling.
“Daemons, you say?” asked M’Grash. The ogre had taken a distinct liking to Dunk, and he felt obliged to cultivate it, not least because he’d rather have M’Grash on his side than against him.
The ogre had a certain childlike, uncomplicated quality about him that Dunk admired. He was a simple creature of simple needs, and playing for the Hackers met most of them nicely. For all that, he was lonely.
“People afraid of me,” the ogre said, “but me not bad.”
This came shortly after Dunk had witnessed M’Grash tear the top off a barrel of beer with his teeth. The two had settled down for a drink afterward and were now commiserating over draughts of Killer.
“Me no daemon though,” M’Grash said. “Don’t like daemons.”
Dunk smiled as he picked a splinter out of his stein. “I can understand that. I don’t like them much either.”
“Daemons kill people.” The gigantic creature shuddered, and Dunk felt a strange urge to put his arm around him and tell him it would be all right.
“Some do,” Dunk said. “But I don’t think you’d have been in any danger from this daemon, big guy. Even with his wings he wasn’t half your size.”
“Little daemon?” M’Grash brightened at this.
“Compared to you,” Dunk said, raising his drink to the ogre, “yes. Much littler.”
“Not afraid of little daemons,” M’Grash said. He rested the heel of his hand on one of Dunk’s shoulders, and his fingers reached all the way to the other shoulder. “Keep Dunkel safe from daemons.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Dunk said, tapping his stein against M’Grash’s half-empty barrel. And they did.
The night before the next game, Dunk found himself sitting at the bar of the Bad Water again. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t there just hoping that Spinne would show up, but he soon admitted he was only trying to fool himself. He’d tried to stop by the Reavers’ camp earlier, ostensibly to warn Dirk about the threat from Skragger, but he’d been turned away as soon as he identified himself as a member of the Hackers. Apparently visits from family were okay, but not from players on opposing teams.
Calling the Reavers’ compound a “camp” was a bit of misnomer. The place had a practice field like the one the Hackers used, but it was marked off with proper lines for the boundaries and every ten yards along the field. A host of guards patrolled the place around the clock. Of course, they didn’t have much to worry about there, as the Reavers didn’t sleep in tents nearby their field. Instead, they had reserved every room in the Casa Grande, the best-appointed inn in all of Magritta. Only the prince’s castle had better accommodations, it was said.
The guards at the hotel had turned Dunk away too, but he’d left a message for Dirk, asking him to meet him at the Bad Water. He’d done the same for Spinne as well.
Dunk signalled for the bartender to bring him another pint of Killer. The rookie hadn’t had much money to spend since he’d left his family’s home many months before, and he was enjoying being able to not worry about it so much. He promised himself that he wouldn’t be buying a round for the bar that night, but just before the place closed he ended up doing just that.
Dirk and Spinne never showed.
The day of Dunk’s first game dawned bright and painfully early for the young man. His head felt as if M’Grash had decided to stuff it with cotton and use it for a pillow. Fortunately, as the day wore on Dunk felt better and better, and by the time the game rolled around he was ready to play.
Of course, as a new recruit and the backup thrower behind Kur Ritternacht, Dunk quickly discovered that he couldn’t expect much playing time. Kur himself made this clear when he looked at Dunk after the pre-game workout and said, “Make yourself useful, boy. Get me some water.”
Dunk looked the older thrower in the eyes, unblinking. “I’m your backup, not your waterboy.”
Kur sneered. “I was giving you a chance to get more exercise in another role. Something other than bench-warmer.”
Dunk raised his eyebrows at this. “Kur,” he said, “I’m just keeping it warm for you.”
Kur sneered as he headed into the locker room to suit up.
Pegleg ordered everyone to get into their full armour, even the backups like Dunk. They might not see any time on the field during the game, but they had to be ready at a moment’s notice to hit the turf when needed.
The armour Dunk wore was heavy when he lifted it up, but once he had it strapped on properly it was amazingly easy to handle. The colours were just like that of the Hackers’ helmet he’d worn during tryouts: green and gold.
“These are the ‘away team’ colours, son,” Slick explained as he tried to help Dunk get the straps adjusted properly. “Forest green shirt and bright gold pants, with all armour colour-coordinated to where it’s placed. Your shoulder pads are green, for instance, while your kneepads are yellow.”
“Do we have ‘home team’ colours too?” Dunk asked.
Slick nodded. “The home team is usually the highest seeded team in any particular game. ‘Seeds’ are rankings given to the participating teams based upon who the host committee thinks are more likely to win the tournament. The other side is then the visiting team.”
“What are the Reavers seeded?” Dunk asked.
“First, although there’s some argument about that. Some folks thought that honour should have gone to Khorne’s Killers. With luck, we won’t end up playing them. When you run up against a bunch of warpstone-tainted mutants whose only binding trait is their insane worship of a violent blood god, you can lose even if you win, if you know what I mean.”
“And what are we ranked?” Dunk asked, trying to change the subject.
“Two hundred and third.” Slick waited a moment before continuing. “Out of about two hundred and fifty.”
“That doesn’t seem good,” Dunk said. “Are we that bad?”
“Now that you’re on the team?” Slick said with forced merriment. “Of course not.”
Dunk frowned.
“Seriously, son. We only had twelve players going into this tournament. Some people didn’t even think the Hackers would survive the long journey from Bad Bay, what with Pegleg’s fear of water and all.
“His what?” Slick ducked under Dunk’s rotating shoulder pad. “I thought he was a pirate.”
“Word is he was but that it ended badly. He’s hated the water ever since. Given a choice, he stays dry at all times. He doesn’t even drink water! Sticks entirely to burgundy wine.”
Dunk groaned. “He doesn’t even face the bay during training, does he? He always stands with his back to the water. Why would he ever travel by sea?”
Slick snorted. “It’s not that he likes to. It’s just the fastest way to get to someplace like Magritta. You noticed he never came out of his cabin the entire trip.”
“I thought he was studying games on his crystal ball.”
“Oh, he does that too,” Slick said. “It’s one of the reasons he’s such a great coach. He turns his weaknesses into strengths. He has to focus on those games to distract himself from his fears, and it drives him to be the best coach he can. I’ve never seen someone with as much of a command of t
he game as Pegleg.”
“I wonder what it was that turned him against the sea like that?”
“The man’s missing a hand and the better part of a leg, son. Let your imagination run wild.”
Dunk fell silent for a while and let Slick work on all of the straps he was wearing. “Do we ever play games at home?” he said, after a pause.
“You would, if the Hackers had a home stadium to play at. Like most teams, these days, they play games at stadiums owned by the cities who play host. This place, for instance,” he said, “belongs to Magritta.”
“They don’t have a home base at all? Do they just travel all year long?”
“Mostly. In between the Majors, if they can’t find a game along the way, they sometimes hole up in Bad Bay. There’s a field there they use for practice, although there aren’t any stands. It doesn’t make for much of a home field advantage, and its hard to sell tickets to it, so the Hackers spend most of their time on the road instead, pursuing the larger purses offered for games in better venues.”
“It sounds like a hard life,” Dunk said.
Slick nodded as he finished with the final strap. “It’s our life now.”
At game time, the team lined up at the exit from the locker room, ready to race out on to the field. Pegleg stood at the ironbound oaken door and doffed his hat. It was the first time Dunk had ever seen him without it. He was amazed to see that Pegleg’s long, curly hair was in fact a wig that was attached to the tricorn hat. Underneath it, he was as bald as a dragon’s egg.
Just because the hair was missing, though, didn’t mean Pegleg’s scalp was unadorned. A tattoo of a snake wound up from under his collar and leapt onto his skull where it spread out like a hooded cobra to cover the whole of his naked pate. The eyes of the cobra were a bloody red and the fangs that pointed down toward Pegleg’s shining eyes glistened with venom. Or was it sweat? Dunk couldn’t tell.
The thought of venom sent his thoughts careening back to his experience with the chimera and how sick its sting had made him. He’d come a long way from that cave in the Grey Mountains in only a few weeks.
[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl Page 13
