Pegleg growled. “We’re going to have to teach that treeman of ours how to hold the damned ball.”
Dunk pointed down to where Spinne had caught the ball and pulled off the branch to use as a club against the pair of ogres trying to capture her. Even encased in her helmet and armour, Dunk could see how beautiful she was. She moved with a dancer’s grace, but struck with the trained savagery of a born warrior.
Dunk smiled, glad that the two of them were finally on the same team for once. Dating Spinne, back when she’d been with the Reikland Reavers, had been trouble for them both. The fact that his brother Dirk played for the Reavers too and had once shared Spinne’s bed hadn’t made it any easier.
“Do you think maybe Edgar planned that?” Dunk asked. “It looks like it’s working.”
“Edgar’s brains are composed of wood, Mr. Hoffnung. What do you think?”
Somewhere on the field, a whistle blew. A russet-coated minotaur dressed in a black and white striped shirt charged out on to the field and scooped up a yellow penalty flag.
“Ooh!” Bob’s voice said over the PA. “That’s going to be ‘illegal use of a weapon on the field’ against Schönheit. Bool’s going to kick her out of the game for that!”
“Amazing!” Jim said. “You hardly ever see that kind of solid, fair officiating in a game of Blood Bowl, and clearly the fans don’t like it.”
A rousing howl went up from the stands, punctuated with hisses and boos.
“If anyone can take that kind of abuse, though, it’s a player like Rhett Bool. It’s too bad he chose to play for Nurgle’s Nits during this tournament.”
“Too true, Bob! I think Nits’ management must have blown its whole stake on his salary, considering the rest of the team was made of up Chaos-tainted halflings. Where do they find these players?”
“I don’t know, Jim, but they’re going to have to keep looking if they want to try it again. They may have won their first game against the Darkside Cowboys, but Bool was the only player to survive!”
“It didn’t help that he trampled half of his own team’s starting line on that first-half kick-off runback!”
Dunk scowled. “I though you paid off the referee,” he said to Pegleg. Dunk didn’t like the idea of distracting the ref’s eyes with a stack of shiny gold coins, but he knew it was an established and respected part of the game.
“Oldheim paid him more — and he kept our own booty too!” The ex-pirate turned on Dunk. “Get out there if you like and tell him how wrong he is to do that.”
Dunk stared up at the minotaur as he charged into the stands and gored an unfortunate section of fans that had come to cheer on the red-uniformed Ogres. He swallowed hard.
“Would you give him his money back for Dr. Pill’s treatment?” Slick asked as he emerged from the tunnel in the back of the dugout.
Pegleg shook his head, “Only if he could get me out of my part of the bargain with that blackguard as well.”
“What did you promise him, coach?” Dunk asked.
Pegleg spat on the ground. “A guest appearance on his bloody Cabalvision show.”
“The one where he heals people in front of a live audience?” Slick asked. “I thought that was fictitious.”
Dunk gazed up at Pegleg. “Hand or foot?” he asked.
“Neither!” The coach snarled, stabbing his hook at Dunk.
A roar erupting from the crowd told Dunk something was up. “What happened?” he asked, unable to hear the announcers over the hullabaloo.
“The Ogres scored,” Slick shouted. He could project his voice well from his tiny frame. “That evens up the score at two touchdowns apiece.”
Dunk frowned. “They didn’t stop the game for the penalty.”
“You’ve been playing this game for two years now,” Pegleg said. “Haven’t you ever seen a bloody penalty called?”
“Sure,” Dunk said. “There was that game against the Chaos All-Stars last year. They called penalties against both me and M’Grash, but then that Jumboball came crashing down.”
“Yes,” Slick nodded, “and you were called for excessive celebration after your first touchdown.”
“But I was unconscious for that.”
“Ah, yes,” Slick said, stroking his chin. “Well what about when you got booted from the game for killing Schlitz ‘Malty’ Likker?”
“That was during halftime, and Zauberer had ensorcelled him to be possessed by the spirit of Khorne. It wasn’t in the middle of the game.”
“Actually, since it was halftime, it was exactly the middle of the game.”
“You know what I mean. The game wasn’t going on at the time.”
“Well, the game’s stopped now, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said in a voice laced with menace. “If you’d care to join it instead of taking this sweet jaunt down memory lane, I’d surely appreciate it.”
Dunk blushed with embarrassment, “Sure thing, coach. Whatever you say.”
Pegleg flashed a gold-toothed grin at the thrower. “Good lad. Now get out there to take Spinne’s place, and try not to get yourself spanked like a wee child this time!”
Dunk nodded, then grabbed his spare helmet from the rack in the back of the dugout and trotted out onto the field. As he reached the sideline, he met Spinne coming off. She stopped for a moment and butted her helmeted head against his. Grinning at him through their faceguards, she blew him a kiss and said, “Make them pay.”
Dunk grinned when she turned to smack him on his butt, and he hustled out onto the field. The crowd roared as he raced to the end the Hackers were protecting. He raised his hand to acknowledge them, and the noise grew so loud he could barely hear.
When Dunk had first decided to become a Blood Bowl player, the adulation of the fans was the last thing on his mind. As a washed-up dragonslayer — more of a never-was than a has-been — he’d just wanted to put his past behind him and try something new, something entirely different. Taking up a career on the gridiron seemed like just the thing.
He’d resisted the notion at first. After all, his family had disowned his brother Dirk when he’d gone off to join the Reavers. In response, Dirk had even changed his last name from Hoffnung to Heldmann.
Of course, the disgrace and dissolution of the Hoffnung family had been what had spurred Dunk to take up dragonslaying in the first place. He still felt responsible for what had happened in those dark days, even though he’d done his best to put them behind him. Living as a Blood Bowl star player made forgetting his old life a whole lot easier.
“Dunkel!” M’Grash shouted, bounding towards the thrower in joy. “Dunkel okay!”
Dunk had long since learned not to deny the Hackers’ ogre his happy moments. He let the huge lug haul him up in his arms and give him a hug that could have crushed a bear. Once Dunk was back on his feet, he felt thankful he’d been wearing his armour. The ogre had cracked his ribs more than once in the past.
Edgar came up and ran a branch along the back of Dunk’s helmet too. “You’re a bloody hard nut to crack,” the treeman said with a gentle rap.
“Good to have you back!” Guillermo Reyes called from his position towards the front of their formation. The Estalian lineman’s accent always seemed thicker here in his homeland, and he played harder too. Because of how he’d left Altdorf, the capital of the Empire and his home since birth, Dunk envied Guillermo his hometown hero status, which he never imagined he could enjoy.
Then Rhett Cavre, the legendary blitzer and the Hackers’ team captain, trotted up. “Are you all right, Dunk?” he asked. Despite the chaos surrounding them, the man’s demeanour was as soft and solid as ever. True concern for Dunk as a friend, not just a player, showed in his wide, dark eyes. Cavre saw the players on his team as people, not just bodies to fill positions, and for that he’d earned the respect of each and every one of his team-mates.
“Dr. Pill fixed me right up,” Dunk said, nodding.
Cavre winced. “Did he use one of the dusty bottles or one of the clean ones?”
Cavre smiled, his brilliant white teeth shining like a crescent moon against his ebony skin. “Those haven’t been ‘recycled’ as often.”
Dunk felt his stomach turn again, empty as it was. “Think we’ll have any more trouble with the ref?” he asked, eager to change the subject.
Carve laughed warmly. “Not after what she threatened to do to him after the game if he made any more calls like that.”
Dunk glanced down the field at the minotaur in the striped shirt. He noticed that Bool moved with a bit of a limp as he trotted the spiked ball out for the Ogres to kick it off.
“She mentioned something about having him for a steak dinner,” Carve said. Then he knocked Dunk on his pauldron. “Get into position before that ball comes our way.”
Dunk turned and sprinted off to the end of the field, right in front of the end zone, and then turned around to face the Ogres. Their kicker had booted the ball right into the stands twice so far this game, but if it came down anywhere near Dunk, it was his job to catch it. Then, as the team’s thrower, he had to hurl it downfield to anyone he could find open.
This sort of play could be risky. If the Ogres intercepted the ball, they could be in the end zone in a matter of seconds. However, it was the best way to move the ball down the field. Trying to run it past the Ogres was almost impossible. With arms as long as Dunk was tall, the creatures just grabbed any of the Hackers that tried to dash past them.
The crowd hushed for a moment, and then started out with a low, collective moan that rose to a roar as the Ogre kicker approached the ball. When he booted it down the field, the fans burst into bloodthirsty screams, sure their desires would soon be sated.
The ball arced high into the air, and for a moment Dunk thought it might go right over his hands and into the stands — maybe even over the top of the stadium and into the streets beyond. Then a freak wind sprang up and blew the ball back towards the field.
As Dunk tracked the ball’s progress, he noticed that dark clouds had raced in to block out the sun in the last few minutes. It seemed strange, but he couldn’t worry about that at the moment. If he didn’t catch the ball and get rid of it as fast as he could, he risked far worse than a few drops of rain on his helmet.
The weather didn’t matter anyway. Blood Bowl games never stopped or even paused on account of rain, sleet, snow, frogs, beetles, locusts, ashes, or even fresh flows of volcanic magma. Any team that left the field before a game was over automatically forfeited the match, and with the amount of money on the line, few teams valued their health more than their share of the gold.
The ball sailed right down towards Dunk. He took two steps up, spread his arms and hands into a basket and caught the ball against his chest, just like in practice. He’d learned the hard way not to catch a ball with any unarmoured parts of his body, and he’d had his breastplate reinforced just so he could receive kick-offs like this.
“Hoffnung has the ball, and he’s off! He races towards the sideline, trying to find some blockers and hunting for a receiver downfield.” Dunk tried to tune out the PA system when playing, but Bob and Jim’s voices were so amplified that it usually proved impossible.
Dunk saw a wall of angry Oldheim Ogres coming his way and knew that he had to get rid of the ball fast if he didn’t want to end up right back on Dr. Pill’s table. He wasn’t sure what would be worse: being left to mend on his own if Pegleg wouldn’t pay the fee this time, or having to “recycle” the potion he’d just used.
He jinked to the left, and then sprinted to the right, angling forward and towards the sideline as he ran. The Hackers linemen forged a wall of their own in front of him, backed by M’Grash and Edgar. Just as the two lines were about to clash, the linemen scattered to the left and right, leaving only the two tallest Hackers standing between Dunk and the onrushing Ogres.
Some of the Ogres chased after the Hackers linemen. The brain of an ogre is smaller than that of a human, but has to motivate far more flesh. This doesn’t leave the ogre a great deal of leftover grey matter with which to do things like make simple decisions, taste its food, or develop emotionally beyond the level of a five-year-old human child. When an ogre starts chasing something, it usually keeps after it — unless something else distracts it. Then it chases that instead — until the whistle blows, and sometimes it ignores that too, a lesson Dunk had just learned in the hardest way possible, barring a messy death and sudden resurrection.
Many of the Ogres followed the linemen as they scrambled out of the way, but most of them were running so fast that they couldn’t easily change their momentum. Some of them tried and tripped over their own feet, creating obstacles for those behind them to stumble over too. The resultant crash shook the Astrogranite enough that Dunk almost fell as well.
A few of the Ogres ignored the linemen, concentrating on Dunk instead, or perhaps on Dunk and Edgar. The Hacker ogre and treeman charged straight at the four Ogres who hadn’t been fooled by the ploy and lowered their armoured shoulders.
Edgar managed to knock one of the Ogres to a standstill. M’Grash — who was large, even for an ogre — managed to shove two of the Oldheim players back on their rumps, but the last Ogre made it through unscathed, and thundered straight at Dunk.
Dunk peered around the oncoming Ogre and spotted Cavre down-field. When the Ogres had charged after the ball, he’d slid through their line and dashed most of the way down the field. Now he leaped up and down, waving his arms, signalling that he might never be more open for a pass for the remainder of his career.
Dunk cocked back his arm to let the ball fly, but even as he did he realised he’d misjudged the last Ogre’s determination. The towering creature seemed to have put on a burst of speed once he got past Edgar and M’Grash. Now, with the Ogre’s arms raised high and wide over his head, Dunk didn’t see how he could get a clear throw off at Cavre.
On the other hand, if he held onto it, he knew the Ogre racing at him would grind him into dust. He pumped the ball once in an effort to fake out the Ogre, and it worked. The Oldheimer left his feet to try to block the pass.
Still, the Ogre was so large, its reach so wide, that Dunk didn’t see any daylight around him. Instead of trying to slip between the Ogre’s arms, he took one step back, and hurled the ball downfield towards Cavre.
Dunk looked up and saw the Ogre’s long arms coming down over him like a tidal wave, and the ball heading right for the creature’s outstretched fingers. Not only was he going to get crushed beneath this beast’s mighty bulk, his pass would be intercepted too. Considering he’d already woken up from a head injury in the locker room once that day, he didn’t see how this game could get any worse.
Then the world disappeared in a flash of blinding light, followed almost instantly by a boom so loud that Dunk thought he might never want to hear anything ever again.
3
Unable to see past the after-image still flashing before his eyes, Dunk stumbled and fell flat on his back. As he did, something that felt like a sack of hot sand hit him and then broke apart. Cloying clouds of some dry substance stuck to his sweaty skin and caught in his nose, throat, and lungs. He spun over onto his hands and knees and tried to hack it out of his chest until it all finally came free.
By the time the thunderous clap finally stopped echoing in Dunk’s ears, he could wipe the gunk off his face and out of his eyes to try to see just what had happened. He stared up at the Jumboball towering over the end zone behind him, and his jaw dropped.
“Let’s see that one more time, Jim!”
The image on the screen showed the Ogre racing towards Dunk, captured in a slow-motion replay. Just as the creature was about to land on Dunk, the image froze.
“Right there, Bob. Do you see it?”
“See it,” Bob said. “If I wasn’t wearing my Sun Protection Fetish, I think it might have fried my grave-delicate skin from here. As a vampire, I owe my life to my Coppertomb SPF 1,000.”
“The bolt of lightning, Bob. It�
�s right there. Advance that forward just a hair.”
The image on the Jumboball moved almost imperceptibly, and Dunk saw the flash that had only been a tiny spot before stretch into an explosion of light that crossed the massive crystal, stabbing straight through the Ogre as it went.
“See, there’s the bolt. Now just a little bit more.”
The image changed again. The bolt was gone, and the Ogre had disappeared too. An Ogre-shaped pile of ash hung in mid-air in its place.
The image moved forward once more, and the pile of ash fell to the Astrogranite. Some of it had already started to blow away as it dropped, but the bulk of it crashed down to the earth.
As he watched this, Dunk realised he had flash-fried ogre all over him. He stood up and screamed.
Then M’Grash dumped an entire keg of Killer Genuine Draft beer on top of him. The force of the falling liquid knocked him to his knees and left him gasping for air. On the other hand, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It rinsed the remnants of the ogre from his hair, armour, and skin. The hop-scented residue it left behind made Dunk think more than anything that he needed to get himself something pure and clean to drink to wash the taste of ogre ashes out of his mouth.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jim said over the PA. “I mean, death, maiming, even dismemberment, but for the game to stop for it is truly strange.”
“Well it’s hard to play when you’re missing the ball,” Bob said. “Most times if the ball gets blown up or just flattened the players can at least scoop up the pieces and play with those until the next break in the action. When it just disappears like that, it’s hard to see what you might do with it.”
“Gr’Nash, the Ogres’ team captain sure showed some initiative, scooping up a handful of those ashes and running them into the end zone.”
“True, although I think Bool made the right call by nullifying the touchdown. After all, it’s impossible to tell if any of those ashes came from the ball instead of poor Ch’Brakk.”
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 2
