“I knew then that I could not stand another moment. As night fell, I spied a nearby shoreline through my oar’s hole, and I set to work on my chains in the darkness. I knew I could not remove them, but in the madness of my grief an option came to me that I had not considered before.
“If I could not break my chains, then I would leave behind that which they held.”
The captain held up his hook and watched it shine in the lamplight, a sad but proud expression on his face. Horror ran through Dunk’s gut as he gaped at his coach.
“You took off your own hand?” Dunk asked. “With what?”
Pegleg laughed bitterly, exposing his teeth. The ones up front were made of gold, and they seemed as sharp as razors now in his mouth.
Despite the cabin’s warmth, Dunk shivered.
“Once I was free,” Pegleg said, “I charged for the gunwale. As I cleared it, I felt something sharp sink deep into my ankle. I reached back with my hand to grab the snakehead I found there, and I pulled it and its daemonic owner after me into the briny deep.
“The tales of the sharks proved to be no legend. Once I fought my way back towards the surface, I could see a dozen fins circling in the lantern light that the daemons on the ship shone out at us, laughing at their sport.
“Knowing the wound on my arm would draw the sharks to me, I swam hard for the shore. I could barely see it in the darkness, just a strip of grey caught between the dark of the sky and the sea, but I knew it had to be there, so I pulled myself towards it.
“As I went, I could feel the daemon’s venom working its way into the wound from its bite, numbing my nerves as it crawled upwards from my ankle. I didn’t know what would kill me first: the sharks, the poison, or the daemon pursuing me through the waves.
“The daemon struck out at me again, its snake-arm tagging me on the same foot as before. Having found purchase in my flesh, it tried to pull me back towards it. Before it could bring me within reach of its other limbs, something pulled it back down into the water, and its grip on my ankle was gone.
“The creature emerged a moment later, screeching and howling in a way I’d never known. I could smell blood in the water, which began to churn beneath the daemon, just before it was hauled down one last time.
“I put my back to the scene and swam for my life. As I went, I could feel my poisoned leg starting to grow cold. Despite this, I kept swimming as fast as my limbs would carry me.
“The first time I felt the shark, it hit me in the side, just with a glancing blow. The massive beast seemed to have decided that the feeding frenzy going on behind me was too much trouble — or that human flesh tasted better than the daemonic variety.
“Perhaps the shark was a daemon itself, or maybe it had just been living in the wake of daemons for too long. Either way, something had gifted it with a sharp malignance I’d not seen in any animal before or since. It didn’t just want to eat me; it wanted me to know who was doing it.
“The beast hit me again, this time in my leg. As it came around for a third pass, I saw its entire head emerge from the water, and it looked me straight in the face with its dead-black eyes. I was only yards from the shore, and yet I knew I would never make it — and so did that thing.
“I watched the shark as it circled me and came in for the kill. As it did, I curled my legs under me. When it struck, I kicked out with my poisoned leg and jammed it as far into the bastard’s gullet as it would go—
“The damn thing nearly choked on the limb. As it chewed on my flesh, I thrashed about, trying to kick out its brains from its insides.
“Soon enough, I felt myself become a great deal lighter. While the beast gnawed on my limb, I set to dragging myself through the last bit of surf and onto that sacred shore.
“A wave came along and carried my bloodied carcass all the way to the sand. I hit the ground hard, and it almost knocked me senseless. For a moment, I feared the riptide would sweep me back out to sea, but I managed to find purchase in the waterlogged sand for long enough to hold out.
“I hauled myself out on to that shore and bound my wounds with torn strips of my tattered clothing. I thought for sure I’d die during the night, but my will to live was too strong. I made it through to the dawn.
“Some fishermen found me then and carried me back to their village. Their wives tended to me there, nursing me back to health, although I would never be whole again.”
Pegleg tapped the end of his wooden leg on the floor, as if for luck, and gazed down at his missing parts. When the captain raised his eyes again, Dunk realised he must be staring at his coach in horror, and he looked away.
Pegleg sat there in silence, his story apparently done. Dunk couldn’t stand the quiet and had to speak.
“And from there you went on to coach the Hackers? What about you being a pirate? Is that all just a sham?”
The coach smiled, wider this time, and picked up the bottle of wine to fill their glasses again, emptying it. “My Blood Bowl career is a tale for another time, Mr. Hoffnung. I think we’ve bared enough of our souls for one day. As for me being a pirate, I often find it’s easier to let people believe what they like — especially if it can be turned to your advantage.”
Dunk nodded and got up to leave. “Now I understand your fear of water,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re one of the bravest men I know. I don’t think you’d ever get me on a boat again if I’d gone through that.” He glanced around the sealed-up cabin. “Even like this.”
“Yes,” Pegleg said. “I’m not one to let my limitations limit me any more than they must. Dr. Pill has been working with me on that detail as well. He seems to think I’m ready to try a short stroll on the main deck. I think I’ll take his advice.”
Pegleg rose to his feet. He seemed a bit unsteady, but whether that was from the sea, the wine, or his nerves, Dunk could not tell.
“Could you get the door for me, Mr. Hoffnung?” Pegleg said as he limped towards the thrower.
“Aye, captain,” Dunk said. He unlatched the door, pulled it open and held it wide for the man.
Pegleg nodded his thanks and then stumped his way on through, out into the crisp, night air of the open sea. Dunk waited for a moment, seeing the captain’s cabin empty for the first time since he’d known the man. Then he left as well, shutting the door behind him.
11
“Dunkel? Who are the bad guys?” M’Grash asked for the third time.
“The Dwarf Giants,” Dunk said, just as he had each time. He knew that pre-game stress often destroyed what small powers of concentration the ogre had, and there was little use in getting steamed about it. If anything, it kept his own mind off his fears.
“Dunkel? Who are the good guys?”
Dunk smiled. “The Hackers. The guys in green and gold, just like you.”
“Not enough!”
“True,” Dunk nodded. “Normally we’d play with the full team in the Barak Varr Bowl, but remember the 75th anniversary game two years back? We beat the Champions of Death?”
M’Grash grinned, and not for the first time Dunk gave thanks that this was not his foe, but his friend.
“That tournament had gone so well that they decided to keep using the original rules for Dungeonbowl. There’s only six players on a side, and we move about using magical teleportation pads.”
“Dunkel? How those work?”
Dunk grinned. “You just step on them and — poof!—You’re gone.”
“Gone?” M’Grash clutched Dunk in fear.
“Gone somewhere else, big guy. The wizards of the Colleges of Magic set up for the game in the dungeon. The dwarfs built it for them.”
That seemed to calm the ogre’s nerves a bit.
“Dunkel?”
“Yes?”
“Who are the good guys?”
Dunk put his face in his hands.
Spinne jumped in to help out. “It’s okay, M’Grash. There’s you, me, Dunk, Edgar, Guillermo, and Cavre. That’s all six. That’s all we get for this game.�
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M’Grash smiled at Spinne. It had taken him a while to realise she was with the Hackers and not a “bad girl” anymore, but once he had he’d taken a real shine to her.
“Spinne? Are others dead?” Tears welled in the ogre’s eyes. He could dismember a troll without blinking, but the thought that his friends might be killed sometimes put him into hysterics.
“No. They’re right behind you.”
M’Grash turned and saw the other five Hackers, Pegleg, Dr. Pill, and Slick looking up at him from a sitting area on the far side of the locker room. He gave them a nervous, little wave, and they all waved back with the same level of enthusiasm.
“What about him?” M’Grash asked, pointing at Dunk’s neck. Before the game, Dunk had taken Skragger’s shrunken head and hung it around his neck on an iron chain. He’d paid a handsome coin to make sure that the necklace’s mounting would keep Skragger from biting him in the neck. The last thing he needed was for the black orc to take a gouge out of his throat. A steely ball gag forced between Skragger’s tiny fangs provided another layer of insurance against that.
“Slick thought I needed something to make me seem more fearsome on the field. I thought this would do the trick,” Dunk said. “He doesn’t count as a player — or much of anything else.” The thrower turned the tiny head around to look at its face, and its wide, white eyes glared at him from its wrinkled, black eye sockets. Skragger growled something at him, but the gag muffled it.
“Are you ready?” Dunk asked the ogre as he dropped Skragger’s head back into place on his chest. “The game’s about to start.”
“Dunkel?”
“Yes?” Dunk shouted, finally pushed far enough to show his frustration with his massive friend.
“Why so tense?”
Dunk closed his eyes. Before he could say anything, he heard the sound of a piercing whistle over the PA system, and the game was on.
Cavre led the way, dashing on to the glowing circle on the floor in front of him. Once he disappeared, Edgar charged after him, followed by Guillermo and Spinne.
“Go, M’Grash!” Dunk said, shoving the ogre from behind.
“Don’t have to shout,” M’Grash said as he crept towards the teleportation pad. He put his big toe on it like he was testing the water in a dark and chilly pool, and then he disappeared.
Dunk chased right after the ogre. When he popped into the dungeon, he ran right into M’Grash’s back.
“I move,” M’Grash said, jumping out of Dunk’s way and heading for the sole exit from the room.
Dunk picked himself up off the floor, which had been painted with the Hackers’ logo and name, with gold letters on a green background. The letters seemed to have been done in real gold leaf, which Dunk knew fitted with the level of dedication the dwarfs had to the game.
Drawing the lot to face the Dwarf Giants — the most popular of the dwarf Blood Bowl teams — in the opening round of the Dungeonbowl tournament had put the fear of the gods into the Hackers. Pegleg had taken to walking about the practice area, muttering and grumbling, since he’d heard the news, and it had put a scare into all of the players.
The rookies were glad to not have to play, it seemed. Once when Guillermo had bruised his knee during practice, one of the more promising new recruits had burst into tears. Fortunately, Dr. Pill had been able to make the lineman as good as new in no time.
Having played in the tournament two years ago, Dunk knew exactly what the Hackers were in for, and that had terrified him even more. The dwarfs were renowned for using strange — sometimes crazed — devices in their games. They’d come up with a new dungeon this year, just for this event, and knowledge of its arrangement had been kept protected like a state secret.
Of course, everyone suspected the Dwarf Giants were in on the new layout. Lästiges had even aired an investigative report on it for Wolf Sports. Blaque and Whyte, the two Game Wizards that seemed to have been assigned to her, led her around the labyrinthine halls and tunnels of Barak Varr to show her viewers that any such suspicions were unfounded.
In one segment, unchaperoned by the GWs, Lästiges had interviewed a dwarf by the name of Dimlet. They’d met in a secluded booth in the House of Booze, a legendary watering hole in the dwarf city. The dwarf had a white stripe that ran right through his black hair and beard, making him look something like a walking skunk, and his seedy clothes and weasely demeanour only added to the impression.
“Yeah,” the dwarf said, “it’s all a sham, isn’t it? The good lords of Barak Varr would never do anything to help out their own boys for a game as vital as this now, would they? Never happen in a million years, right?”
Lästiges leaned in close to the dwarf for a moment, and then leaned right back, her eyes watering from his scent. “Are you saying,” she said through her coughs, “that the Dwarf Giants were given the plans for the new Dungeonbowl dungeon?”
“Do you know that dwarfs is all related? We breed like rabbits, and the orcs is the only things keeping us in line. Every one of us is someone’s brother or sister or someone else’s cousin. You think it’s easy to keep secrets in a family, do you? Even one the size of that?”
“But do you have any proof that this is so?”
Dimlet scoffed, and then one of his eyes rolled back into his head. The other stayed riveted on Lästiges. “What’s ‘proof’? What’s good enough? If I said I’d seen this happen, would it matter? If I had a letter from the Council of Barak Varr to the Dwarf Giants, would that help? If I could show you a meeting of these blackguards on a Daemonic Visual Display, would that be good enough for you?”
Lästiges’ eyes shone with lust for the big scoop she scented, or maybe from Dimlet’s stench. “I think our viewers would find such evidence compelling,” she said.
“I can have those things forged for you in a day,” Dimlet said. “Less if you can double the standard rate.”
The interview had ended there, but the debate had continued. Was Dimlet some kind of crook, or had the Dwarf Giants sent him to Lästiges to throw her off their track?
In the end, Dunk decided it didn’t matter. There were some things about the game he could control, and this wasn’t one of them. He ran through the door, chasing after M’Grash.
“All the players are in the dungeon now, Jim, but we still don’t have a ball. Where do you think they’re hiding it?”
“Well, Bob, if you hadn’t made a pre-game snack of that young dwarf you found passed out on Bugman’s XXXXXX, you’d be conscious enough to remember that the ball’s hidden in one of the six chests scattered throughout the dungeon.”
“Does that mean there are six balls?”
“Just one ball, Bob; if the players open a chest that doesn’t have a ball in it, it explodes! What more fun could you ask for from a game?”
“Gee, that sounds dangerous, Jim. Has anyone warned the players?”
“Go back to sleep, Bob.”
The next room featured a river of lava that cut across it, disappearing underneath the walls at both ends. A high bridge went over it, and Dunk saw M’Grash just coming off the other end of it and trying to decide which of the two facing doors he should go through.
“Stay here, M’Grash!” Dunk called as he topped the bridge himself. The last time the Hackers had played Dungeonbowl, the Champions of Death had put a few of the players right in the Hackers’ own end zone, and getting past them had been horrible. “You’re on defence. If you see a dwarf come through here, stop him. If he has the ball, take it.”
M’Grash nodded at everything Dunk said, but Dunk knew that didn’t mean he had understood all of it. M’Grash could only remember an order or two at a time. Anything more complicated risked him losing track of it all.
“Scratch that!” Dunk said, “Just stay here and knock down any dwarf you see!”
M’Grash grinned at that and gave Dunk a big thumbs-up.
Dunk glanced around and saw something glowing up at him out of the lava below. Shielding his eyes against the heat, he
picked out the edges of a teleportation pad right there in the molten rock. To get to it, he’d have to leap off the bridge. He reasoned that the wizards who designed this place would only ask someone to take a risk like that if there was a correspondingly worthwhile payoff.
On the other hand, some of those wizards had a wicked sense of humour.
“Can’t win the game without taking some chances,” Dunk muttered, repeating the words that Pegleg and Cavre had tried to hammer into the Hackers over the past few months. They hadn’t played any official games since the Spike! Magazine Tournament, and the coach had worried about the players getting rusty. He hadn’t wanted to risk any injuries before the Dungeonbowl tournament, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t browbeat the players into being mentally tough — although that seemed to have backfired with M’Grash.
Dunk vaulted over the bridge’s low railing. The heat from the magma nearly flash-roasted him as he neared it, but before his feet even touched the teleportation pad he found himself somewhere else.
After the blazing light from the lava, it took Dunk a moment to adjust to the darkness around him. When his eyes finally cleared, he clamped them shut again. Then he peeled them open slowly.
Dunk looked down first and saw the teleportation pad through which he’d passed. It took up the entirety of a slab of rock that seemed to be floating in midair, four torches ringing it around its base. Pitch blackness yawned below it.
Looking up, Dunk saw the same thing: nothing. The light from the pad and the torches never reached the ceiling — if there was one.
The only thing Dunk could see was a series of stones just like the one he was on, stretching ahead and behind him like a string of steppingstones. A yard or two separated each of them. Had it not been for the torches ringing them, Dunk didn’t know if he’d have been able to pick them out of the darkness.
In the distance in either direction, Dunk spotted a portal leading out of the room. It seemed to hover in midair, like a doorway cut from the fabric of night.
“Look, Bob! Hoffnung’s found the Bottomless Pit Room. What luck for the Hackers! As first on the scene, he’ll have first shot at that chest hovering below him. Amazing!
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 9
