“Listen up, you scurvy dogs!” Pegleg began, shattering Dunk’s reverie. “This is our first game with our full complement of new players. That means we’ve finally got a chance!
“I want you to hit the Reavers with everything you’ve got. There is no such thing as ‘dirty play’ in this game. The only crime is getting caught! And I’ve made a contribution to the Referees’ Widows and Orphans Fund to guarantee the zebras won’t be watching us too closely.”
The team laughed evilly at that. Dunk was a bit too horrified to say anything.
“Your first job is to get the ball into the end zone. Your second job is to stop the Reavers from doing the same. Use any means at your disposal to accomplish these lofty goals. Kick, bite, smash, punch, even kill if you have to. It’s not necessary, of course, but if you can make sure a Reaver won’t be coming back for the rest of the game, then more power to you!”
At first, Dunk’s thoughts went to Dirk and Spinne. They were among his targets, his and the rest of his team’s. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure about his contract anymore. Then he realised that all of the Reavers would be coming after him and the rest of his team with the same murderous abandon. Then he was absolutely positive he’d made a mistake.
Pegleg continued unabated, his voice building from simple menace to a bloodthirsty crescendo.
“Now, go out there and tear the Reavers limb from limb! Make them sorry they even woke up today! Make their mothers sorry for having them!
“GO OUT THERE AND WIN THIS THRICE-DAMNED GAME!”
The rest of the team roared in approval, and their coach threw open the door to the playing field. They charged out in single file, and as they left the tunnel from the locker room and hit the sunlit field, the crowd let loose a deafening, thunderous noise that shook the supports of the stadium until the entire ground threatened to come crumbling down into the field after the players.
“What,” Dunk asked himself as he followed the others on to what he now could only think of as the killing ground, “have I gotten myself in to?”
17
If the noise from the crowd deafened Dunk from inside the locker room, it stunned him once he reached the dugout, a stone-lined pit that sat on the edge of the field, between the stadium’s seats and the game’s sidelines. The tunnel from the locker room came out in the middle of the dugout and stretched twenty yards in either direction, giving members of the team and staff plenty of room to move about, as well as a rat’s-eye view of the action.
Dunk was glad that he had been the last through the door. When he stepped into the dugout, he stood frozen in his boots. He’d seen games on Cabalvision before but only through a crystal ball. He’d never even been in the stands for a game, and to now be here with tens of thousands of fans cheering and booing all at once overwhelmed him. He thought that perhaps dragon slaying wasn’t such a bad career choice after all.
“Keep moving, son!” Slick shouted up at Dunk.
The rookie looked down at the halfling, who he could barely hear over the roaring crowd. It was like standing in the ancient market in Altdorf when the Emperor’s entourage marched through. The raw emotion in the place was both humbling and moving. Although one part of Dunk wanted to turn and run, another part needed nothing more than to charge out on to that field and give the fans the kind of game they so desperately wanted.
“Keep moving!” Slick yelled again, giving Dunk a push in the back of the legs this time. “Go find your seat!”
Dazed, Dunk gazed around the dugout. Over to the left, he spotted Guillermo Reyes, Milo Hoffstetter, Simon Sherwood and Kai Albrecht sitting on a bench. They were still in their armour, but they’d taken their helmets off to get a better look at the field. Risers lifted the bench to put them at eye-level with the players.
A thick, brick wall behind these players, with a bit of a roof slanting over them, protected them from the fans to their rear. That didn’t stop the crazed spectators from throwing all manner of things down at the dugout. As Dunk walked over to join the others, dozens of steins shattered on the dugout’s roof, spattering beer, ale, and some worse things all about the place. He flinched at the sound of the first few, but they soon faded into the background, suffocated by the rest of the racket.
The starting players had already raced on to the field, which seemed to be what had caused the crowd to go from simply excited to entirely insane. The two teams met in the centre of the field, on which someone had emblazoned a beautiful blue and white crest showing a sailing ship on calm seas against a yellow field shaped like a shield.
“That’s the Oliveri family crest,” Slick said from behind Dunk. “They’ve ruled Magritta for over fifty years.”
The rookie turned, surprised to see the halfling there. Slick shrugged at him. “It’s the safest place I could think of. You don’t think I’m going to wait in the camp after what happened during the last game?”
Dunk smiled, happy to have a familiar face around. “What’s happening out there?” he asked.
As he spoke, a voice thundered out over the stadium, louder than Dunk could have imagined. It even drowned out the roaring for a moment.
“Now, please welcome today’s home team, the Reikland Reavers!”
“That’s the Preternatural Announcement system,” Slick shouted into Dunk’s ear over the resultant bellow from the crowd as the Reavers’ starting players took the field. “That’s Bob Bifford’s voice. He’s been doing these games for years. Keeps bouncing back and forth between Cabalvision networks to whichever one has the contract this year.”
“Isn’t he a vampire?” Dunk asked. Even he’d heard of Bob Bifford and his partner Jim Johnson, who Dunk knew was an ogre like M’Grash. “How does he do this during the day?”
“Sun Protection Fetish,” Slick said. “How do you think guys like Hugo ‘the Impaler’ von Irongrad ever manage to play day games? They keep their SPF on them at all times.”
“Even at night?”
“You never know when a team wizard might conjure up some magical daylight.”
Dunk nodded at that. “Why don’t we have a team wizard?”
Slick rubbed his fingers together. “Too much gold. Pegleg’s saving his wizard budget for the semi-finals, if we make it.”
The Reavers stormed toward the centre of the field, chanting, “Em-pe-ror! Em-pe-ror!” As Altdorfs best and brightest team, they had the favour of their nation’s ruler, and they dedicated every game to him as a matter of course.
Among the Reavers, Dunk spotted Spinne and Dirk at the front of the pack. Like the other Reavers, they wore war paint on their faces, visible even under their helmets. Dunk noticed that everyone seemed to have black stripes painted under their eyes and white strips across their noses.
“What’s all that for?” Dunk asked Kai, waving a hand over his face. He noticed that the lineman bore those same stripes.
Kai smiled at the rookie’s naiveté. “The black lines help keep the sun from reflecting off your face and into your eyes.”
Dunk nodded at that. “And the white stripes?”
Kai pulled the strip off his nose and held it out for Dunk to see. It looked like a stiff, little board, but it was sticky on the side to be pressed against the nose. “The Snot Stoppers are new. They bear a small enchantment designed to open up your sinuses so you can breathe better. It’s supposed to enhance athletic ability.”
Dunk squinted at the thing as Kai put it back on his face. “Does it work?”
Kai frowned. “I don’t know. I wear it because it helps me smell players coming at me from ten yards away. Those undead and goblin teams really stink!”
Bob Bifford’s voice rang out over the PA system again. “And heeeere we go! The teams meet in the centre of the field for the coin toss. As the captain of the visiting team, Kur Ritternacht will call it in the air.”
Dunk watched as the referee — a mean-looking, dark-skinned elf with a crimson crest of hair, dressed in a shirt with vertical black-and-white stripes — pulled out a large go
ld coin and spoke to Kur. “Orcs or Eagles?” he hissed. Without waiting for an answer, he flipped the coin in the air.
“Orcs!” Kur shouted.
The coin fell to the ground and bounced high on the stony surface. When it rolled to a stop, the referee shouted out “Orcs it is!”
Kur muttered something to the referee, who then tossed the ball to Dirk.
“The Hackers win the toss and elect to receive. The Reavers take the east end of the field and set up to receive the ball,” Bob’s voice said.
“What’s this made out of?” Dunk said, pointing at the field. “I’ve never seen a coin bounce like that before.”
“Go ahead and touch it,” Slick said.
Dunk slipped off the bench and reached out from the dugout to lay a hand on the field. It was rough and tough like stone, but it gave and rebounded like flesh. If it had been warm, Dunk might have thought it was living. He picked at it with one of the spikes that jutted from the knuckles of his fingerless gauntlets, and a small chunk came free. When Dunk looked back at the material, though, he couldn’t find where the chunk had come from. It was if the stuff had somehow managed to heal.
A stein of ale smashed against his shoulder pad, and Dunk — realizing he wasn’t wearing his helmet — slipped back into the dugout before someone in the crowd developed better aim.
“It’s called Astrogranite,” Slick said as Dunk took his spot on the bench again. “Its as tough as stone, only better. Low maintenance too.”
Without warning, the crowd started to groan in a low-pitched tone. Dunk looked out to see the Reavers’ kicker getting ready to boot the ball downfield. As the kicker got closer to the ball, the pitch of the crowd’s inharmonious moan rose until it transformed into a screech as the kicker sent the ball sailing west.
The ball came right down toward Cavre, who caught it neatly and began dashing east, toward the Reavers’ end zone. The game was on.
Dunk spent the first half of the game sitting next to the other ‘scrubs’, as Kai called all the players on the bench. “Because we’re the ones called in to clean things up after someone’s blood has been spilled.”
“Being a backup is not so bad,” Guillermo said. “You get to sit here on the sidelines where it’s safe. You get paid the same no matter if you play or not. And you get great seats to watch the game.”
“Why did you try out for the team if you don’t want to play?” Milo asked.
“My brothers bet me that I wouldn’t do it,” Guillermo grinned. “They scraped together ten crowns that said I’d wash out before the cuts. I’ll do just about anything to win a bet with my brothers.”
“Including signing up to play a ridiculously dangerous game?” Simon said. The way he shivered as he spoke told Dunk that Simon was starting to regret having made the same decision himself.
“Well,” Guillermo smiled in his warm, Estalian way, “I thought I’d just decline the offer if it came, but when Coach Pegleg sat me down to explain the terms, I just couldn’t refuse.”
Dunk nodded. He knew exactly what Guillermo meant. This wasn’t the career of dragon slaying he’d set out for when he left town, and he was a bit concerned how anyone from his family — well, besides Dirk, of course — would react when they saw him on the field. But the gold took the sting right out of that.
Bob’s voice belted out over the crowd noise, which had finally died down a bit, although it sometimes crested like one of the monstrous waves in the Sea of Claws, on which Dunk’s family had vacationed every year.
“Rhett ‘the Rocket’ Cavre receives the ball and launches himself downfield. The Reavers’ linemen charge forward to stop him, but the Hackers set up a nice line of Mockers to give their star player some protection.”
“This is exactly the kind of thing the Hackers need to do to win this game,” Jim said. “The Reavers outmatch the Hackers at just about every position, so the Hackers must play together as a team to have a prayer. Coaching will be the key here.”
“True enough, Jim, but what about the new recruits the Hackers just picked up only two days ago? Do you think they’ve had time to integrate with the others and gel into the kind of lean, mean, bruising machine they have to be to prevent a repeat of that gut-wrenching loss against the Darkside Cowboys?”
“Gut-spilling, you mean! I haven’t seen that much blood on the ground since your last family dinner!”
“Stop it, you big lug. You’re making me drool!” Bob said. Dunk could hear him licking his lips.
“Oh! Cavre pitches the ball back to the Hackers’ starting thrower, Ritternacht, the third-leading thrower in the league last year. Ritternacht drops back into open territory and pumps a fake. Then he sees an open man downfield and lets it rip!”
“Look at that ball sail along!” said Jim. “It’s heading right for the end zone!”
“Wait a minute! Dirk ‘the Hero’ Heldmann has an angle on it. He leaps up and… yes! Intercepted!”
The crowd went nuts, and Dunk could barely hear the announcers as he watched the drama play out on the field.
Dirk took off with the ball, running towards the south side of the field to gather some room. Then, still charging at top speed, he hurled it straight down the field and into the end zone.
“Spinne ‘the Black Widow’ Schonheit reaches up with those long, lovely arms of hers and hauls the ball in, dodging a last-second dive from Karsten ‘the Killer’ Klemmer. Triple K goes wide and into the stands while Schonheit executes a victory dance in the end zone. Touchdown!”
“That’s not the only thing being executed, Bob. It looks like those fans are playing wishbones with Triple K’s legs!”
Dunk stood up, but he couldn’t see Karsten anywhere. It was if the carnivorous crowd had swallowed him whole. From the sounds of it, they were chewing him up pretty badly.
A moment later, the crowd spat Karsten back into the end zone. Spinne pirouetted over to the injured player and spiked the ball down into his face. It stuck in his open-faced helmet, right between the top ridge and his single chin bar.
The Reavers charged back to their end of the field, leaving the Hackers to lick their wounds. A team of litter bearers raced out to collect Karsten and cart him off the field. They deposited the man in the Hackers’ dugout, and Dunk could see blood trickling from a half dozen wounds in Karsten’s exposed flesh.
“That took all of one minute,” Pegleg snarled, checking the green and gold pocket watch he’d pulled from his crimson coat as the game began. He’d been pacing up and down through the dugout since, watching the clock almost as much as the game. He looked over at the bench and sighed.
“It’s going to be a damned long day.”
18
From where he stood at the edge of the field, Pegleg looked at his bench. His gaze sliced through each of the players, evaluating them one by one.
Dunk felt Pegleg consider him for a moment and then move on, and he couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. The other scrubs sat frozen stiff, afraid to attract their coach’s attention with the slightest movement. Beside him, Dunk could hear Simon whispering a mantra over and over again: “Don’t pick me. Don’t pick me. Don’t pick me.”
Dunk looked up at Pegleg and saw the coach glaring down at him, a pitiless smile on his face. “Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said, pointing his hook at the rookie. “You’re in.”
Dunk surprised himself by leaping up and darting out of the dugout to stand next to Pegleg. “Who am I in for, coach?” he asked.
Pegleg lowered his head and rubbed his eyes with his good hand. A low moan emanated from the other side of the dugout where an apothecary, a tall thin man wearing a grimy, once-white coat and a pair of magnifying glasses over his eyes, was working on Karsten.
“No leeches!” the lineman screamed. “No leeches!”
“It’s that or the bone drill,” the apothecary wheezed. As he spoke he put down the slimy green things flopping about in his fists and picked up a vicious-shaped metal device. As he spun its handle the blo
od-caked tip whirred and clacked. Dunk had never heard such a horrible threat.
“Leeches!” Karsten said. “By Nuffle’s dirty cleats, I’ll take my chances with the leeches!”
“But Karsten’s a lineman,” Dunk said. “I’m a thrower. What about Guillermo?” The rookie looked back over his shoulder to see the new lineman drawing a finger under his throat at Dunk. He wasn’t sure if Guillermo meant for him to be quiet or that the lineman wanted to kill him. Maybe both.
“You’re my man, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said. “Don’t question my judgment — ever.”
“Aye, coach,” Dunk said with a snappy salute.
Pegleg glared at the rookie as if he couldn’t tell if the salute was in mockery or earnest. Then he looked out at the field and said, “No matter. Make your peace with Nuffle, Mr. Hoffnung, and welcome to your first game of Blood Bowl.”
Armed with some hurried instructions from his coach, Dunk strapped on his helmet and charged out on to the field. The crowd cheered as he raced toward his designated spot, right near the mid-field line. Dunk raised his hands in the air to encourage them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Dirk said, standing opposite from Dunk across the line.
“Working the crowd!” Dunk said. “Blood Bowl’s a game that’s larger than life. I’m giving them what they want.” He raised his arms again, and the cheering grew.
“Listen to them go!” Dunk said. As he spoke, he spotted Spinne standing several yards back and caught her eye. She smiled at him and blew him a kiss. He caught it in both hands and raised it into the air like a trophy before bringing it back down to stuff into his mouth. The crowed loved it.
“Do you hear what they’re saying?” Dirk asked.
Dunk stopped pandering to the stands for a moment and listened carefully. It took him a moment, but he managed to pick some words out of the roar, two words that the fans kept chanting. When he realised what they were, he blanched.
[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl Page 14
