[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  9

  “I don’t really know what happened,” Dunk said. When Pegleg scoffed at this, Dunk raised his eyes and continued. “Okay, I know what happened to me, but I’m still not sure why.

  “You’ve been to Altdorf, so you’ve probably heard of the Hoffnungs. We were one of the wealthiest and oldest families in the city. I can trace my ancestors straight back to the place’s earliest days.

  “Over the centuries, our influence waxed and waned. In my grandfather’s day, we hit one of our low points and had to sell almost everything. He hanged himself in disgrace when my father was just twenty years old.

  “From the family’s point of view, that was one of the best things that could have happened to us. My father and grandfather had often butted heads. Grandfather stuck hard and fast to the old ways, while my father advocated moving into new businesses and investing what little money we had aggressively while we still had it. With Grandfather gone, the reins of the business fell into Father’s hands, and he made the most of it.

  “By the time I was born, the Hoffnung fortune had been revived and the family had become a vital part of Imperial culture once more. Father proved to be an excellent businessman and a cunning student of Imperial politics.

  “When I came of age as a young man, my father arranged a match between myself and Helgreta Brecher. Our wedding was meant to join far more than ourselves. It would marry the city’s largest fortune with its sharpest entrepreneurs.”

  “Didn’t you have any say in this?”

  Dunk snorted softly. “Not much, but I didn’t much care either. Helgreta was pretty enough — a sweet young lady, really — and I was willing to do whatever Father asked of me. He impressed upon me how important this merger of our two families would be, and I was ready to play along.

  “It all seemed to be going well until the night of our official engagement party, which the Brechers held in their family keep, right in the heart of Altdorf. Although we’d been betrothed to each other for years, the party signalled that we would be married within the year.”

  Dunk stopped speaking for a moment, his eyes focused on something far beyond the confines of Pegleg’s sealed cabin. “She was so beautiful that night. She gave me a scarf of the finest silk as a symbol of our impending union.” He raised a hand to his neck where he had worn it.

  “Towards the end of the night, Helgreta’s brother Kügel accosted me. He’d had a great deal to drink, so I tried to give him his space. He pursued me though, accusing me and my family of worming their way into his family over nothing but gold.”

  “Wasn’t there a bit of truth in that?”

  “Of course. We all knew it. These sorts of marriages happen all the time in Imperial society, and if Helgreta and I didn’t have any problem with it, I didn’t see what Kügel had to get angry about. And I told him so.

  “He didn’t take that well at all. He went and found a ceremonial sword hanging in the front hall of their estate, and he came back to the ballroom with it. Everyone stopped and stared at him. The band’s instruments froze in their hands.

  “The guards — who worked for the Brechers, of course — stayed right where they were. They weren’t about to stop the heir to the Brecher fortune from doing whatever he wanted. Nüsse Brecher, the patriarch of the clan, stood up and told Kügel to sit down before he made more of a fool of himself, but Kügel attacked me instead.

  “As a rising nobleman, I hadn’t been in too many real fights, but I’d been trained in the arts of war since my childhood. Kügel had spent his days writing poetry and swilling wine. When he came at me with the sword, I snatched it from his hand, shoved him away and then held the blade to his neck.

  “Now, keep in mind that this is the brother of my fiancée. Although he’d attacked me in his own home, I could see that he was drunk and upset. I had no desire to humiliate him further, much less hurt him.

  “Then the most amazing and horrible thing happened. A trio of armoured daemons wielding burning whips and swords smashed in through the skylights over the ballroom and brought the massive chandelier hanging there crashing down to the floor. It crushed several people to death.”

  Dunk glanced back at Pegleg and saw that the man was holding his breath.

  “They stood eight feet tall on their cloven hooves, not counting the tops of their large, leathery wings. They bore crimson tattoos on their charcoal-coloured skin, which glowed like burning embers in a hot breeze. Their eyes were black, polished marbles, like those of a shark. Long horns thrust from the fronts of their skulls, curling back on themselves again and again. They stank of sulphur, and it hurt to stand in the heat of their presence.”

  “How terrible,” Pegleg said. He’d inched away from Dunk as the story unfolded, and now he sat curled up in the far corner of his velvet couch.

  “The worst part was how they claimed to know me. One of them pointed his burning sword at me and said, ‘Do not fear, Dunkel Hoffnung. We will protect you.’

  “With that, the others used their blades to slice Kügel into bite-sized portions. He was dead before he could scream about it. I blinked, and the floor in front of me was filled with wet pieces of Kügel.

  “Helgreta screamed. A lot of people screamed, actually. I think I screamed. Then everyone ran.

  “With one daemon standing in front of me, I didn’t see a clear path from the hall, so I hacked at it with the sword I’d taken from Kügel. I stabbed the creature clean through the heart, and it howled in pain and then disappeared in an explosion of hot ash.

  “I couldn’t see a thing. Then someone knocked the blade from me, and two sets of hands grabbed me by my arms and hauled me into the air.

  “When I emerged through the shattered windows and into the night sky above, I saw the remaining daemons had me. They laughed as I screamed at them in protest. A few moments later, they deposited me just inside the gates of my own family’s keep. Then they flew off into the night, and I never saw them again.”

  “By Nuffle’s sacred rulebook,” Pegleg said. “That’s an amazing story, Mr. Hoffnung. Is any of it true?”

  Dunk stared at the ex-pirate. For a moment, he considered throwing something at him, perhaps the bucket in his hands. Then he realised that telling the story had distracted him so much that his body had forgotten to keep being seasick. He felt fine.

  “Every word of it, Coach,” Dunk said.

  Pegleg shook his head. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Mr. Hoffnung.”

  Dunk didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t read the captain at all, even as the man unfolded himself from the corner of the couch.

  “Do you believe me?” Dunk asked.

  Pegleg arched his eyebrows at Dunk. “I take it no one in Altdorf did.”

  Dunk shook his head. “My parents did. My father knew what was coming though and started packing to leave right away. My mother just sat there in shock. She couldn’t understand what had happened and how it would affect us all.

  “When the mob showed up on our doorstep — led by a platoon of Imperial soldiers — she went to open the door. I’d been helping my father pack, and we’d lost track of her.”

  Dunk closed his eyes. He didn’t think he could go on. He’d got this far through the story that he’d never told anyone since he’d left Altdorf — not Slick, not Spinne, not even Dirk, who’d left the Hoffnung home a year before the incident. He had to finish it.

  “The mob tore my mother apart. We had no idea what she’d done until we heard her screams. By then, it was already too late.

  “Father showed me a secret passage out of the estate. It opened up near a public stable, and he purchased us a pair of horses there.

  “‘They’ll be looking for two men riding together,’ he said. ‘Best if we split up for now. Meet me at the summer estate near Marienburg when you can.’

  “That was the last I saw of him. The city’s gates were locked at night, so I hid in the alley behind the Skinned Cat until dawn. Well after midnight, a drunken sot stumbled into the alley to look
for a place to sleep. I paid him to trade clothes with me and keep his mouth shut, which he did as soon as he passed out again.

  “As dawn broke over the city, I mounted up again and rode for the northern gates. I heard some people in the street gossiping about the daemonic attack, but no one recognised me. Once I left the city behind, I rode hard until Altdorf — my birthplace, the only real home I’d ever known — disappeared in the distance.”

  “Did you ever see your father again?”

  Dunk shook his head. “I went to the summer estate, but word of the incident at the Brecher keep travelled fast. I couldn’t stay there long. I rode into Marienburg in disguise and took work as a warehouse guard there, down near the wharf.

  “Every day I had a break, I rode back out to the estate to hunt for a sign of my father. One day when I got there, I found a host of people using the place. Some of them I recognised as our servants.

  “I rode into the place, hoping to find my father taking some sun in the gardens, this whole nightmare over. When the servants spotted me, they turned white as sheets. One of them raced into the house, shouting for help.

  “‘What is it?’ I asked the ones still left. ‘Where is my father?’

  “Lehrer emerged from the estate then and strode out to talk with me. ‘Your father is not here,’ he said.

  “‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you came ahead to prepare the place for him. It’s a terrible mess.’

  “‘Your father is dead,’ he said. Just like that. I nearly fell off my horse.

  “‘Our new employers — the Guterfiends — are here,’ he said. ‘If they find you, they will kill you. You must leave. Now.’

  “When I tried to protest, Lehrer grabbed the reins of my horse and turned it around. Then he slapped it on its hindquarters and sent it — and me — galloping off.

  “‘Don’t come back — for your own good!’ he shouted after me.”

  Dunk sat there in silence for a moment, watching Pegleg’s impassive face. “Do you have anything in here to drink?” Dunk asked. “An afternoon of vomiting and talking dries a man out.”

  10

  Pegleg retrieved a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses from a cabinet near the still-glowing crystal ball. He removed the cork with the tip of his hook, decanted the wine into the glasses and handed one of them to Dunk. Then he raised his glass in his good hand for a toast.

  “To living with our daemons,” Pegleg said. He took a large mouthful of the wine and swirled it around his tongue before swallowing it. “And to grinding the bastards into bloody paste.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  Dunk drank deeply of the wine, and then shoved his glass forward to be topped up. Pegleg obliged him, and then re-corked the bottle with his hook.

  “So,” Dunk said, “do you believe me?”

  Pegleg arched an eyebrow at Dunk. “Why wouldn’t I, Mr. Hoffnung? Have you shown yourself to be less than trustworthy in the more than two years you’ve been with my team?”

  Dunk waited for his answer.

  “I am haunted by daemons of my own, Mr. Hoffnung, and I don’t mean the metaphorical kind. I’ve seen the kind of creatures you describe. In fact, I once worked for them as their slave.”

  Dunk’s eyes opened wide.

  “Given your own experiences, do you find this so hard to believe?” Pegleg stroked the back of his hook with his good hand as he spoke.

  Dunk shook his head, and then nodded. “Yes — I mean, no. I don’t doubt that someone who travels as much as you do has encountered daemons before, but I would never have guessed they’d enslaved you.”

  Pegleg swirled his red wine in his glass and took another sip. “I wasn’t always a coach, you know — or a pirate, for that matter. In fact, I was never much of a pirate.

  “I used to be a fisherman, like my father before me and his father before him, back as far as we knew. My family lived on the south shore of the Sea of Claws, in a little town so small that no one had ever bothered to give it a name. Those who knew where it was lived there, and few others cared about it at all.

  “Now, of course, it’s not there at all. Nothing more than the burnt skeletons of a few buildings standing along that distant stretch of shore.”

  “What happened to it?”

  Pegleg gave Dunk a thin smile. “Mr. Hoffnung, will you allow me to tell my own story at my own pace, to make my own decisions about how to present the facts as I saw them?”

  Dunk flushed red and nodded his apology.

  Pegleg stared into the wine sloshing about in his glass for a moment before he continued. “I was little more than a boy, but I’d served on my father’s boat from the moment I could tie a sheepshank. We’d taken in a good haul that day and were sailing home with the harvest of our nets when I saw the smoke rising from our little seaside hamlet.

  “At first, we didn’t know what to do. If someone had destroyed the town already, there seemed little profit in racing in to add our souls to the pyre. On the other hand, if any were still alive, we knew we could not abandon them there. Soon enough, we decided to drop anchor a hundred yards out and swim in, hoping we could slip in unnoticed.

  “When we reached the beach, the sun hung low in the west. My father and I slipped forward into the nearby forest and then circled around to the back of the hamlet. We entered the settlement near our home, where we’d left my mother and sister that morning.

  “As we crept closer, we heard screams coming from the house. Before I could stop him, my father dashed from the safety of the leafy cover and charged into the house, holding his filleting knife before him like a cutlass. I followed straight after him, my own knife out and at the ready.

  “The shingles on our house caught fire just before we entered the place. Smoke filled the main room to the rafters, but we forged our way into it anyway, following the sounds of my sister’s screams. Coughing on the smoke, we reached my parents’ bedroom and thrust open the door.

  “I will not describe the scene we found therein. I can see every detail of it whenever I close my eyes. The mercy of sleep never takes me far from it, and I cannot escape it in my waking hours.

  “My mother was already dead, and my sister followed soon after. The daemons we found in that room with them — crimson skinned monsters with snakes for eyes and limbs — smashed consciousness from us.

  “My father and I awoke in chains in the lower hold of a massive ship I later discovered was called Seas of Hate. We lay huddled there for I know not how long, recovering from our wounds. There were others in there with us — some from our hamlet but many from parts unknown. Not all of us were human, but we were all imprisoned together.

  “From time to time, someone would lower a bucket of boiling gruel or filthy water into the hold, and we would squabble over it. We had to eat the food with our bare fingers while it was still scalding hot or it would have disappeared before we could even have taken a bite.

  “Sometimes they would come for us. A noose of barbed wire snaked through the hatch above and ensnared some hapless soul and hauled him up and out of our lives. Then the hatch slammed shut again, leaving us in the darkness once more.

  “They caught my father first, perhaps a few days after we were captured. Maybe weeks. I thought I might never see him again, but I refused to weep before my fellow prisoners. Instead, I began to plan my escape.

  “I had lost everything that had ever meant anything to me — all but my life. I intended to hold on to that with everything I had, and I swore to myself I’d kill whoever I must to keep myself alive.

  “When they finally came for me, I went willingly. I actually grabbed the noose and held it with my hands, letting them pull me up by my wrists rather than my neck.

  “The same sorts of daemons I’d seen in my family’s home set me down on a bench, shackled my left hand to an oar, and put the oar in my hands. They used the whip on my back straight away to impress their will upon me, but they didn’t need it. I knew what they expected of me, and I planned to deliver it without pa
use or complaint — at least until I saw my chance to escape.

  “As I set to building up the blisters that would turn to calluses on my hands, I peered around. There were at least two dozen rows of oars working to move that hateful ship through the water, with three men — or creatures — dedicated to each oar.

  “At least two of us would row at a time, with the third sometimes lying collapsed at our side, sleeping from sheer exhaustion. We were never all allowed to rest all at once, and if our reptilian masters wished for more speed, we would all set to our oars with respite for none.

  “A pair of daemons licked their long lashes out over the oarsmen, one to the fore and one aft, while a third kept beat on an ogre’s skin stretched over the mouth of a deep kettle drum.

  “I spotted my father rowing three rows ahead of me and on the other side of the aisle. I tried to speak to him once, and I had my back laid open for my troubles. But I knew that he’d seen me, and for the moment that was enough.

  “After countless weeks under those conditions, I still hadn’t seen my chance to make my break. A few others had tried it, and they had been struck down before they reached the gunwale. The snakeheads on the daemons’ limbs bore terrible venom. A single bite was enough to kill a man within minutes, leaving him a shaking, frothing wreck, bleeding out through his liquefied eyes.

  “Some of the captives sought that ‘blessed bite’, as they called it, their chance for final release from that horrific life. The daemons were sparing in their use of it, if only because they didn’t want to lose too many of their slaves in one go.

  “My father’s strength eventually gave out. One day, he slumped over his oar and did not move. When the overseers lashed his skin, he did not cry out in pain or even flinch. One of the daemons ran him through with a spear to make sure he was dead. Then they drew up his body and tossed him overboard to feed the school of sharks that many of the prisoners claimed constantly followed in our wake.