A determined Reaver reached out for Dunk’s ankle, and Dunk kicked him in the arm for his troubles. He thought about making sure the man had been knocked senseless, but Dirk grabbed him by the shoulder before he could strike again.
“That’s enough,” Dirk said. “He’s had enough.”
Dunk shrugged his brother’s hand off him. “If you’d keep your animals on a proper leash—”
“These are good players,” Dirk said, tearing off his own helmet and getting in Dunk’s face. “Who could resist that kind of reward? You think any of us play this game for the exercise?”
“They tried to kill me.”
“Just like they might during any given game.”
Dunk stared straight into his little brother’s bright blue eyes. “You think maybe you can take that reward all for yourself now?” he asked.
All the frustration of having to run and hide over the past few days had boiled over during the fight, and Dunk hadn’t stuffed it back in the bottle yet. If Dirk wanted a piece of him, he’d give it to him.
Dirk raised his fists as if he wanted to throttle the life out of Dunk, but before he could make his move, Rhett Bool stepped between them. He had a ball in his hand, and he shoved it into Dunk’s hands.
“It’s your kick-off,” he said to Dunk. Then he turned to Dirk. “You need to get back to receive.”
Dunk and Dirk stared at the minotaur as if he’d grown a second head between his horns. He just gazed back at them with his large, bull’s eyes, unblinking and silent.
“You can’t be serious,” Dunk said. “Who’s left to play?”
“There’s six of you still capable,” Bool said. “And the Reavers still have one player left.”
Dunk felt sick as he looked over at Dirk, who just glared back at him. “You can’t… Forget it. I won’t do it.”
The Reavers’ coach stormed onto the field. Dunk had never met him before, but Blitz Bombardi’s reputation preceded him. He dressed like a businessman, in a suit of the finest silk, under an over-large bear-fur coat, purportedly made from the skin of a beast he’d killed with his own hands in his youth. He stared out at Dunk for a moment through a pair of black-rimmed spectacles that legend had it were fashioned from the black horn of a chaos daemon. If so, Dunk thought that might explain the way the man’s eyes blazed at him.
“What’s the problem?” Bombardi asked Dirk. He held his voice steady, almost quiet, but no one could mistake the menace carried in every syllable he uttered. This man expected his players to execute his orders efficiently and without question. He refused to show his irritation, but Dunk could feel it simmering beneath his placid surface.
“No problem, coach,” Dirk said, keeping his eyes locked on Dunk. “The game’s over.”
Bombardi shook his head. “The game isn’t over as long as there is one Reaver standing.”
“You can’t be—” Dunk started to speak, but Bombardi snapped his head in the Hacker’s direction and cut him off with a glance that Dunk thought could have stopped a starving troll.
Bombardi turned back to Dirk. “Get down that field and prepare to receive that ball. We are in the final match of this tournament, and we will not forfeit the game under any circumstances.”
“Coach,” Dirk started.
“That’s correct. I am the coach. You are the player. You will follow my lead, or you will be fired.”
Dunk watched Dirk struggle with his emotions. Dirk had been part of the Reavers ever since he’d left home. The team had become his new family, and every member of that family had betrayed him today when he’d stood up to them to defend his brother.
“It’s okay,” Dunk said. “We’ll forfeit too. We’ll call it a draw.”
Bombardi spun on Dunk. “You can’t do that. This is a tournament. The final game. There is a fortune at stake. There will be a winner. It will be the Reavers.”
M’Grash leaned forward and put a gentle hand on Bombardi’s back. “Pegleg always tells me…” He rolled his eyes back for a moment to concentrate, smiled when he found the thought he’d almost lost, and then continued. “ ‘Just ’cause I say it don’t make it real.’ ”
Bombardi looked like he might shoot flames out through the lenses of his glasses. Instead, he shrugged off the ogre’s hand and glared at Dirk. “Get in the game, or go home.”
Dirk chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. Then he tossed Bombardi his helmet. “Screw you and this screwy game,” he said. Then he walked off the field to the boos and hisses of scores of thousands of angry fans.
“Hackers win!” Bob’s voice said. “Hackers win! The Hackers have won the Spike! Magazine Tournament!”
Dunk stared up at the scoreboard and then at his own baffled face as it appeared on the Jumboball. He raised his arm in victory and tried to offer up a smile, but he just couldn’t make it happen.
7
As Dunk, Spinne, and Slick strolled down the hall of the Hackers’ “secret” inn, the halfling seemed like the only one pleased with the day’s results.
“It’s wonderful, son, wonderful!” Slick said. “Do you have any idea what the winner’s purse for a major tournament like this is? Why my percentage alone will be enough to keep me solvent for the rest of the year.”
Neither Dunk nor Spinne cared to respond, but this didn’t give Slick any pause. He just stabbed his finger into the air and kept talking.
“Just think what this will do for the Hackers’ reputation too. We’ll have hopeful rookies crawling out of their burrows.” Slick rubbed his chubby, little hands together. “And they’ll all need representation.”
“I’m just happy you were able to find us another room here in the hotel,” Dunk said. “I thought they were all sold out.”
“They were,” Slick said, grinning. “But, because you two are my best clients, I decided I would swap rooms with you to give you a break until we leave this town behind.”
“Thanks,” Dunk said, impressed by the halfling’s generosity. “When do you think we’ll be leaving?”
“Pegleg doesn’t see any reason to stick around here, especially with you having to deal with this bounty nonsense. He wants to be out of here on tomorrow morning’s high tide.”
Dunk couldn’t wait to be out on the wide-open ocean on the Sea Chariot, the Hackers’ team ship. The chances that someone would manage to find him out there and try to grab the reward were far less than they were here on land. He’d grown tired of having to glance over his shoulder every moment he was in Magritta. Leaving the town behind would not sadden him a bit.
“Here we are,” Slick said, turning to present the couple to a round door that stood only five feet tall.
Dunk stared at the door for a moment, then at Slick, and then back at the door.
“This is the halfling part of the inn,” Spinne said.
“Exactly!” said Slick. “Who would think to look for you two here?”
Dunk had to admit that the halfling had a point. He wouldn’t have thought to hole up here himself. He turned and gave Spinne a kiss. “Will you mind if I don’t carry you across the threshold?” he asked. “It would be hard on my knees.”
“As long as you let me sleep in the bed,” she said with a grin. “I can’t imagine there will be room for us both — for sleeping, at least.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Slick said. “I had the staff move a standard-sized double bed in here for me. There’s enough room on it for a handful of halflings. I think they thought I was some kind of swinger.”
“You think of everything,” Spinne said, laughing as Slick produced a key and used it to open the door.
“After you, my friends,” the halfling said, sweeping his arm wide to usher them into the room.
With no lanterns burning inside the room, Dunk couldn’t see a thing. That was his first clue that something was wrong. He reached towards his belt for his sword, but it wasn’t there. They’d come to the hotel dressed as monks, and there hadn’t been a place for a blade under the hooded robes.
He’d insisted on slipping a knife under the costume though, which Slick had razzed him about when they’d slipped out of the robes after leaving the inn’s main room behind.
Dunk had felt silly at the time, but now, as the blade’s handle filled his hand, he was glad he had it.
“You don’t need that,” a gravelly voice said from somewhere in the darkness. Dunk recognised who it belonged to instantly: his old teacher Lehrer.
A match blazed in the far corner of the room, and Dunk saw the old man set the flame to a lamp sitting on a low table next to the low chair in which he crouched. He looked the same as ever, perhaps a bit more careworn. His silver hair had grown out a bit and threatened to fall into his sparkling, grey eyes. His drab clothes stood out in the brightly decorated room, the muddy colours of the cloth clashing with the primary colours that halflings with money seemed to love so much.
“Here to collect the reward?” Dunk asked as he moved into the room, crouching over to make sure he didn’t bump his head. He peered left and right, hunting for some sign that Lehrer was not alone. He didn’t think the old man would have brought someone else into their business together, but all sorts of strange things had happened to him that week.
Spinne slid into the room behind Dunk, and Slick marched in after her, closing the door behind him. “Fancy meeting a scumbag like you in a nice place like this,” Spinne said to Lehrer as she moved to check and then cover the curtained windows.
The old man smirked. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Miss Schönheit, although I almost feel I know you from all the news reports I’ve seen.” He glanced at Dunk. “The ones from that Weibchen woman are always so deliriously mean.”
“Get out,” Dunk said, pointing the knife at Lehrer. Even though the old man seemed to be unarmed, Dunk knew better. He’d never known his old teacher to go anywhere without at least two weapons on his body — usually more.
“Now, now,” Lehrer said. “There’s no call to be like that. Just consider this a friendly visit from an old fan of yours.”
“You work for the Guterfiends,” Spinne said. “They destroyed Dunk’s family.”
Lehrer threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I work for the people who occupy the Hoffnung’s old estate, just as I worked for the Hoffnungs before that. Hey, a man’s got to eat.”
Dunk dug into his purse, fished out Skragger’s shrunken head, and tossed it to Lehrer. “You hired this bugger to kill me — after he’d been brought back as a vampire — once we stopped him from killing us the first time.”
Lehrer caught Skragger’s head neatly and spun it around so he could look into the creature’s eyes. “You’ve seen better days,” he said to the head with a wry grin.
Skragger snapped at Lehrer with his tiny teeth, but the old man just held him by his temples and let his jaw swing wildly through the air.
“Pathetic,” Lehrer said so softly Dunk could barely hear him. He set Skragger’s head upside down on the table next to him, pointing its eyes towards the lamp.
Then Lehrer looked back up at Dunk, who still stared at him, waiting for an explanation. “Yeah, that’s all true,” Lehrer said. “Guilty as charged, although I was just following the Guterfiends’ orders.”
“That’s not much of an excuse,” Slick said as he sat down in an overstuffed, halfling-sized chair in the far corner of the room from Lehrer.
Seeing the halfling in his chair, Dunk realised that Lehrer had to be sitting in a halfling couch, as it was three times as wide as Slick’s seat.
“If I hadn’t done it, they would have just got someone else to hire Skragger. As it was, I could keep tabs on this bugger and even try to warn Dunk if he got too close to him.”
“Which you never did.”
Lehrer smirked. “You didn’t need my help, kid.”
“And I don’t need it now,” Dunk said, jabbing his knife in Lehrer’s direction. “Get out.”
Lehrer grimaced as if trying to suppress his temper. Dunk remembered that look on the man’s face all too well. He’d frustrated Lehrer to the point of losing his cool all too often. Eventually, he’d figured out the signs that he was about to trigger such an outburst, and he’d learned how to step back until everything was fine again.
Now, he didn’t care.
“You’re wrong,” Lehrer said. “Again.” He blew out a long sigh and narrowed his eyes at Dunk. “Who do you think put that price on your head?”
Dunk’s jaw dropped. “You?”
“No,” Lehrer said, disgusted. Think, kid, if I’d done that, would I have shown up here alone? I’d have just waited for the bounty hunters to bring you to me.
“So,” Dunk said. “Who was it then?”
“The Guterfiends,” Slick said from the couch behind Dunk. “It has to be. They wanted you dead enough to send Skragger after you.”
“Give the little guy a pipe full of weed,” Lehrer said. “They want your boy here dead in the worst way.”
“Do they really have a million crowns to spend on my death?” Dunk asked. He looked down and noticed the mattress Slick had mentioned, sprawling right there on the floor before him. He sat down on it and laid his knife across his thighs. If there really was someone willing to offer that kind of money to bring him down, how could he stop it?
“They seem to have a bottomless treasury,” Lehrer said. “How do you think they managed to break up your family business? It wasn’t done with mirrors.”
Dunk sat there in silence for a long moment, just staring down at the knife in his hands. This was it, he realised, the shoe he’d been waiting to drop. And now it had.
“Kid,” Lehrer said. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to break all this to you. You know how the reward is for you dead or alive. Well, that pretty much means dead. If you show up to the old keep still breathing, they’ll take care of that quick.”
Dunk let loose a low growl in his throat.
“What about Dirk?” Spinne asked.
Dunk looked up at her, confused.
“What about Dirk?” Spinne asked again, looking straight at Lehrer.
The old man smirked. “I can see why the Hoffnung boys like you, girl. You’re sharp like a knife.”
“What about Dirk?” Dunk asked.
“Once you’re dead, they’ll come for him.”
Dunk fought the urge to be sick. “They want to wipe us out, don’t they?” he said. “And they’re doing it in order, one at a time. First it was my parents. Now it’s me. Then it’ll be Dirk too.” He stared at Lehrer. “What happens once we’re all gone?”
“Then the Guterfiends have a free and clear claim to your family’s holdings, uncontested by any heirs who might crop up.”
“Is that so important?” Slick asked. “They already have those things. Why bother with wiping out the Hoffnung line?”
“You don’t know these people,” said Lehrer. “They’re thorough. If they think there’s even a chance they’ll lose what they have, they’ll go to any lengths, track down every possibility and eliminate them.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Dunk asked. “This all smells like some sort of set-up.”
Lehrer sighed. “Believe it or not, kid, I’m fond of you. I’ve been with your family since before you were born, and I’ve watched you grow from a little infant to a superstar.”
“Then why did you help the Guterfiends destroy my family?”
Lehrer cocked his head at Dunk. “Who told you I did that?”
“Dirk has some pretty hard words for you.”
“He’s just jealous. He always thought I favoured you.”
Dunk thought about that for a moment. “Did you?”
Lehrer smiled. “By default. You weren’t the one who kept stuffing horse dung in my codpiece.”
“Do the Guterfiends know you’re here?” Slick asked.
Lehrer grimaced at this question, and Dunk wondered if a squad of trained killers might erupt from the wardrobe now that someone had finally asked the worst sort of question: one wh
ich only had bad answers.
“They think I’m here to kill Dunk myself.”
Slick nodded. “And if they find out you’ve been trying to warn him away?”
“Let’s just say I won’t be welcome back in the family keep — and they won’t have to pay anyone to kill me.”
“Why’s that?” asked Spinne.
Lehrer winked at her. “There are plenty of folks ready to do that for free.”
“So,” Dunk said. “You’ve delivered your warning. Now what? Just what do you expect me to do?”
Lehrer rubbed his chin as he talked to the thrower. “If you had a lick of sense, you’d hightail it out of the Old World. Maybe go back to Albion. You might be safe there. Or head someplace even farther away: the Dark Lands, the Chaos Wastes.”
“You don’t think they’d be able to find me there?”
“Out of sight, out of mind. These days, they see you every few weeks on their crystal ball — more often if that Weibchen woman covers you the way she likes to. If you quit the game, dropped out for a bit, they might forget.”
“Or they might not.”
Lehrer raised his eyebrows at that. “True enough, kid. I did say they were thorough.”
Dunk sat with his head in his hands. Maybe Lehrer was right. As long as he continued on as a Blood Bowl player, he was a prime target. His constant presence on Cabalvision would drive the Guterfiends nuts, and his high profile would mean that anyone greedy enough to go after their reward would know where to find him.
It would be easier to give all this up, everything he’d worked for for the past two years. After all, he’d never had any burning desire to become a Blood Bowl player. If he hadn’t run into Slick in Dörfchen, he probably never would have even considered taking up such a career. He’d made plenty of money. He could live on it for the rest of his life. Spinne might even come with him if he asked her to.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking at her. “Would you join me? If I left all this behind, I mean. Would you come with me?”
Spinne furrowed her brow at Dunk and crept over to sit next to him on the mattress lying in the centre of the cosy halfling room. She reached up and took his face in her hands.
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 6
