Dunk knew any team would be lucky to have her. The Reavers, for instance, would probably have knocked themselves out trying to get her back on their team, but she wasn’t even willing to talk to them.
“This is your fault, son,” Slick had said, “and you’ve cost me a good chunk of my income for it. Fix it.”
“She wanted us both to leave the game. How much of your income would that have cost you? You’re just lucky I decided to stick around,” Dunk said, “and how is this my fault?”
“Take it from me,” said Slick, “it’s always the male’s fault. And even if it isn’t, the only thing that can fix it is for the male to apologise as if it is.”
Dunk stared at the halfling. “Is this kind of advice why you’re so lucky in love?”
“Don’t be unkind, son. It doesn’t suit you.”
So when the pounding on the door continued unabated, Dunk buried himself further in his bed. Unless it was Spinne knocking at the door, he didn’t want to be bothered, and he knew it wouldn’t be her.
“Wake up, lazy bum!” Skragger’s head screeched from its spot on the mantel. “Get damn door!”
Dunk pulled the pillow from under his head and put it on top of the others.
Then the door flew open so hard it slammed into the wall next to it.
Dunk leapt out of bed dressed only in his underwear. His head was still a bit fuzzy with sleep, but he thought he was ready for anything: Slick, Dirk, Pegleg, M’Grash, maybe a horde of angry fans. He held up his fists, ready to fight if he had to.
Two people dressed in black robes emblazoned with the Wolf Sports logo strode into the room, each holding a wand before him: the Game Wizards Blaque and Whyte. The first was a tall, stocky dwarf with soot-black hair and a swarthy, rough-hewn face. The second was a short, thin elf with white-blond hair and a proud, angular face. Despite their differing races, they stood at exactly the same height.
“What?” Dunk asked, confused but still keeping his fists at the ready. “What do you two want?”
Blaque sniggered. “That’s cute,” he said. “Can you help out Hoffnung here, Whyte? Perhaps you can enlighten him as to why we’re here.”
“Allow me to hazard a guess, Blaque. Could it be because of his performance in his last game, the one against Da Deff Skwad?”
“Yeah, Whyte, I think that could be it. You see, Hoffnung here forced one of the dullest games of Blood Bowl ever upon the public. More specifically, the part of the public paying to see the games in the stadium and over Cabalvision networks like our own sponsors at Wolf Sports.”
The dwarf glared at Dunk. “You see, that kind of game is a direct threat to the livelihoods of our employers. That means it’s a direct threat to our livelihoods as well. We don’t take kindly to that, of course, and neither do they.”
“Get out,” Dunk said.
“Are those the kind of manners they teach a man who was once heir to one of the largest fortunes in the Empire? It’s a crying shame how politeness seems to have fallen off with the younger generation, isn’t it, Whyte?”
“A damned shame,” the elf said. “Happens all the time in humans, of course. Too short-lived to develop a true appreciation for their elders.”
“Good point, Whyte. Good point.”
Dunk took a step towards the pair of wizards and pointed at the door. “I said, ‘Get out’.”
Blaque tapped the tip of his wand into his open palm in a way that Dunk could only see as a threat. “You’d think a player like this — MVP of his last game — would be kinder to GWs like us, given the kind of authority we have over him and his game, wouldn’t you?”
Whyte stared at Dunk with ice-white eyes. “I certainly would.”
Dunk dived for Blaque’s wand. The dwarf tried to avoid the thrower, but failed. Dunk snatched one end of the wand and then punched the dwarf in the nose. Dunk felt something crunch, and Blaque let go of the wand.
Dunk spun towards Whyte, the wand in his hand. How could he make something like this work, he wondered? Instead of trying to cast a spell with it, he flipped it in his hand into an overhand grip and stabbed it down at the elf’s neck. For some reason, though, his arm caught in mid-stab and refused to come down any farther. Dunk tried to growl in frustration and pull the wand free from where it had become stuck in midair, but he realised that it wasn’t the wand that was stuck. It was him.
Blaque stood up from where Dunk’s blow had knocked him to the floor. He wiped the blood from his nose and scowled at it. Then he cleaned off his fingers in his mouth. “Was that really necessary?” he asked.
“I don’t see how,” said Whyte.
“I was speaking to Hoffnung,” Blaque snapped. He walked over to the bed and used one of Dunk’s pillows to wipe his face clean. The blood stained the pillowcase the red of a bright rose.
“He, um, he can’t answer you.”
Blaque shuddered with frustration. “It was a rhetorical question,” he said. He wiggled his nose. If it was broken, Dunk couldn’t tell from its shape. It looked like it had been broken a dozen times before. It seemed to be swelling up around the sides though.
“Your room or mine?” Blaque asked.
“Perhaps the main suite,” said Whyte. “He might like to watch the game.”
“You’re far too kind.”
Blaque grabbed the paralyzed Dunk and threw him over his back. While Dunk stood at least a foot taller than the dwarf, Blaque was built like a boulder, and he hefted the thrower as if he was a small child.
Whyte stood by the door while Blaque toted Dunk out into the hall. As they passed through the doorway, Blaque turned and smacked Dunk’s skull against the frame. Then Whyte shut the door behind them, and they strode along the hallway, heading for the back stairs.
“Do you think I should apologise to Hoffnung for that?” Blaque asked as they reached the stairs and headed up to the next floor. “Tell him I’m sorry for that lump on his noggin?”
“I believe your mother taught you not to lie.”
“Perfectly right.”
As they left the stairwell, Blaque knocked Dunk’s head against a doorframe again.
“Clumsy me, eh, Whyte?” Dunk could hear the smile in the dwarf’s voice.
“Is that a lie, Blaque?”
“You need to work on your sense of humour, Whyte.”
Whyte strode ahead of Blaque and opened one of the doors that lined the hallway. He held it open for Dunk, as Blaque carried him in, clipping the top of his head once more.
The dwarf chuckled as he brought Dunk over to a couch in the centre of the room and set him down on it. He moved Dunk so he had a good view of a large crystal ball mounted atop an iron stand against one wall.
“He looks a bit awkward like that, doesn’t he?” Blaque asked.
Dunk’s arms and legs were still bent at the same angles they’d been in when Whyte’s spell had frozen him. If not for the pounding pain in his head — which he found far more distracting — he’d have probably thought this uncomfortable.
Whyte waved his wand at Dunk, and the thrower felt his body relax into the couch. Then the two wizards worked together to prop him into a sitting position, slouched low on the couch so they could arrange his head so he could see them instead of the ceiling.
“You bastards,” Dunk said. When he realised he could talk, he tried to stand up again so he could attack the wizards and make them pay for treating him this way. But his body wouldn’t work. Everything below his head was dead to him. Not only could he not move it, he couldn’t feel it either.
He wondered if this was what it was like to be Skragger.
“Let me go!” Dunk said.
“All in good time,” Blaque said. “We just wanted to have a private conversation with you without you trying to smash our faces in. I think this fits the bill well, don’t you, Whyte?”
“Perfectly,” the elf said as he holstered his wand inside his robes.
“What do you want?” Dunk asked. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that ma
ybe he should be afraid.
“We just want to talk,” said Blaque, “about you and your performance in your last game.”
“Wolf Sports named me the MVP.”
Blaque nodded as if that had been an unfortunate mistake. “True. It was spectacular. We watched the whole thing, didn’t we?”
“Every minute,” said Whyte. “Transfixing.”
“It was an amazing victory,” Blaque said, staring deep into Dunk’s eyes. “But it wasn’t great Blood Bowl. Fun to watch the first time, but if that keeps up every game, it’ll get — what did you call it, Whyte?”
“Bloody boring.”
“Right. Boring is not good. Boring means people shut down their crystal balls and go do something else instead of watching the game. So, as I said, it’s not good for Blood Bowl, for the game itself.”
“Take it up with Zauberer,” Dunk said. “I can’t help it if he wants to kill anyone who tries to harm me.” He glared up at the ceiling and then at Blaque. “And how come you aren’t a pile of ashes yet?”
Blaque smiled. “That’s because your wizard friend and we are on the same side. We both want the same thing, don’t we, Whyte?”
“To keep Hoffnung safe.” The elf nodded at Dunk.
Dunk rubbed the sore spots on his head against the pillow the wizards had stuck behind it. “You’re doing a hell of a job of it,” he said.
“You’re a Blood Bowl player,” said Blaque. “A few bruises on that thick skull of yours are nothing. We’re out to keep you from dying.”
A chill ran down Dunk’s spine, but his paralysed body couldn’t shudder along with it. “How?”
“By keeping you out of the game, of course,” said Blaque. “Until you work out your issues with Zauberer.”
“I don’t have any ‘issues’ with him,” Dunk said. “He wants me dead. He just wants to kill me himself. If I could find him, I’d challenge him right now, but no one knows where he is.” He narrowed his eyes at Blaque, and then Whyte. “Do you?”
Whyte shook his head. Blaque frowned. “Not yet. Believe me, we’d like to. Players get threats all the time, but I’ve never heard of anyone threatening everyone else but the player. This Zauberer’s a crank, not much of a wizard as those things go.”
“But he has the Chaos Cup.”
Blaque smiled. “Exactly. I was worried those knocks had rattled your brains a bit, but you’re as sharp as ever. He has the Chaos Cup, which somehow gives him a staggering amount of power. And we can’t find him, either, so we can’t stop him, but we can stop you.”
“Okay,” Dunk said, “I won’t play.”
Blaque snorted. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to lie, Hoffnung? After how you assaulted me in your room, we’re supposed to take you at your word?
“Whyte, if we let Hoffnung go, what do you suppose he does first?”
“Runs whining to Pegleg to protect him until the game starts.”
“And do you suppose he might renege on our deal and play in the game anyway?”
“Of course, for three reasons: first, Pegleg will force him to; second, any deal he makes with us at this point is under duress, and he can’t be held to it; and third, he wants to.”
“Hey!” Dunk said.
“Those all sound like solid reasons to me, Hoffnung. With any one of those on your side, I don’t think we could trust you. With three, there’s no way we can risk it.”
Dunk closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again, resigned. “So what happens now?”
Blaque smirked. “Now I send Whyte out for a cask of ale and some munchies. We’re going to be here for a while.”
“How long?”
Blaque glanced over at the crystal ball in front of Dunk. “It’s still four hours until game time,” he said.
“This late in the second half, the Hackers better have a platoon of priests praying for them,” Jim’s voice said as the image on the crystal ball showed four of the Champions of Death tackling M’Grash at once.
“That’s right,” said Bob. “Only a miracle could save this game for them now. What a turnaround for the Hackers’ fortunes! To go from untouchable to losers in the space of one game!”
“Too true. This loss should knock them right out of tournament, and only yesterday they were the heavy favourites to win! Does anyone else smell the Gobbo’s touch here? Gunther?”
“Very funny,” Gunther’s voice said. “Under other circumstances, I might suspect myself too, but I have an airtight alibi. I spent all morning stuck in the stadium with you!”
“I’m convinced!” said Bob, “but how about all those gamblers who placed money with you on the Hackers? How are they going to take this?”
The image shifted to Gunther, who stood next to Lästiges on the sidelines. “Fortunately, I’m in the clear there too. With Hoffnung on the team, the Hackers were such clear favourites that I declined to take any bets on the game. See, I lack opportunity and motive!”
“True!” said Jim. “What a difference Hoffnung’s absence has made for this team though.”
“Don’t forget that Schönheit left just before the tournament too,” said Bob.
“Yes! It’s been a hard few weeks for Captain Haken and his merry crew. Can the Hackers do anything to recover from this?”
“Well, Jim,” Lästiges cut in, standing between Gunther and the camra, “I have an exclusive report that Dirk Heldmann — Dunk Hoffnung’s younger brother — has agreed to join the Hackers after the end of the Chaos Cup!”
“Wow!” said Bob. “That’s amazing news. I suspect if Heldmann could have played in this game, the outcome might have been very different.”
“Unfortunately, since he didn’t start the tournament with the Hackers, he cannot join in the middle of the competition,” Lästiges said. “But this should set them up nicely for the Blood Bowl Tournament.”
“Especially if they can manage to turn over whatever rock Hoffnung crawled under!” said Jim.
“Or got stuffed under!” said Bob. “Even so, if they can recover the body, I’ll bet that Coach Tomolandry the Undying would pay a high premium to add Hoffnung to his Champions of Death!”
“I think he coined the necromancer coach motto that says it best, ‘Blood Bowl players never die. They just end up playing for me!’ ”
Dunk growled in frustration. “Can you shut that thing off?”
“Why?” Blaque asked. “Could it be that you’ve given up faith in your team? How could that be, Whyte?”
“The Hackers are down by three touchdowns with only a few minutes left, and they’ve lost four of their players to either lycanthropy or mummy rot.”
“Yeah. A mummy werewolf, or is that a werewolf mummy? Either way, I didn’t see that one coming,” Blaque said.
“There was that cloud of blackness that covered the middle of the field just before halftime. That’s probably what blocked your view. I think Hugo von Irongrad must have been behind it.”
“The Impaler?” Blaque nodded. “Seemed like his style. I especially like the way he stuck one of the Hacker linemen on the end of the football after scoring that last touchdown. That’s what I call spiking.”
Dunk growled again, louder this time, and Whyte shut off the crystal ball.
“So what happens now?” Dunk asked. “Are you going to keep me like this forever?”
“I don’t see a need for that,” said Blaque. “Do you, Whyte?”
The elf shook his head. “The Hackers are out of the tournament. We should be good until the Blood Bowl starts. If Hoffnung decides to play in any games between now and then, Wolf Sports will just refuse to cover them.”
“Why didn’t you just do that here?” Dunk asked.
“It’s the Chaos Cup,” Blaque said. “Do you know how much money goes into these tournaments? Do you think those game purses just pop up out of the centre of the field? Most of it comes from Cabalvision fees; money our employer pays to the organisers. They want to recoup some of those costs, and they can’t do that if the
y don’t show the games.”
“What happens if I show up for the Blood Bowl?” Dunk asked.
“Gee, you seem a lot smarter than that. Don’t you think, Whyte?”
“I do think, but those kinds of questions make me think Hoffnung does not.”
Blaque reached out and patted Dunk on the shoulder. Dunk considered trying to bite the dwarf’s hand, but he just wanted to have this all over with. Instead, he glared at the wizards and asked the question that had been burning in his mind for the past six hours.
“How did you find me?”
“See,” Blaque said, waving his finger at Dunk, “now there’s a good question. Can you answer that Whyte?”
“We are the Game Wizards, part of the crew in charge of security for the tournaments. We know every hotel in this city, and we have people happy to talk to us in each of them.”
“And?”
“Everyone in the city wanted us to find Hoffnung and persuade him not to play. For the sake of the game.”
“And?”
“Despite all that, the Hackers’ security is surprisingly good. If Zauberer hadn’t sent word to us with Hoffnung’s location, we might never have found him in time.”
“Zauberer?” Dunk said. “He told you?”
“Of course,” said Blaque as he got up to leave and motioned for Whyte to follow him. “He knows your every move. How do you think he keeps track of who’s trying to harm you?”
“Where are you going?” Dunk asked. The thought that the two wizards might abandon him, paralysed still, in this room terrified him.
“Our work here is done,” said Blaque. “The spell on you should wear off in another fifteen minutes or so.” He rubbed his nose, which showed a good bruise on both sides. “We’d rather not be here when that happens.”
As the two wizards walked out of the room and locked the door behind them, Dunk hurled curse after curse at them. He wished that he’d studied magic so that he could have put some real hurt behind them. As it was, they were only words.
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[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 18
