[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Now, though, he had things to live for. He’d reconciled with his brother. He’d found his father. He had more money than he’d ever dreamed of since he’d left the family keep in the hands of an angry mob, and there was Spinne, whom he loved. The only thing keeping them apart, it seemed, was this damned game.

  Dunk considered standing up and leaving the team, the stadium, and the game behind there and then. After all, he was sure that Zauberer would kill him shortly after he stepped onto the field. The wizard would only want to wait for the right moment, something that fit his quirky sense of drama.

  But Dunk knew he couldn’t leave all this behind. He couldn’t abandon his friends, his family. He glanced at Dirk, who flashed him a cocky smile. Dunk could see past it to how nervous the man was underneath the facade. He couldn’t leave him behind.

  And, of course, Pegleg would murder him on the spot if he tried to go now.

  “This is kill or be killed,” Pegleg said. “We have the All-Stars outmatched in every position. We play better ball than them. We can score on them at will.

  “But that’s not how they win games. They don’t care about touchdowns. We could be ahead ten to zilch, but if the game ends under their terms, they won’t care.

  “All they have to do to win is murder every damned one of you. Once we can’t put any players on the field, they win by forfeit, no matter what the score.

  “Now, that’s not a very big field out there as battlefields go. There are no forests to hide in, no hills to skulk behind. In short, there’s nowhere you can hide.

  “The only thing you can do is face up to the bastards the best you can — and kill them before they kill you!”

  The Hackers stood up and cheered at the top of their lungs.

  “Are you with me?”

  “Yes!” the Hackers shouted as one.

  “What?”

  “Yes!”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “YES!”

  “Then get on out there and kill! Kill for your fans! Kill for your family! Kill for your team! Kill for yourselves!”

  “Go! Go! Go!” Cavre took up the chant, and the others joined in straightaway. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Pegleg stamped over to the door to the tunnel that led to the Hackers’ dugout and to the field in the centre of the Emperors Stadium, where a hundred thousand fans waited to watch them prove themselves the champions they knew they could be. “Let’s GO!” he bellowed.

  The Hackers’ voices devolved into a cacophony of howls that would have sent a tribe of wild wolves fleeing, their tails between their legs. Then they charged after Cavre as he led them down through that dark tunnel and towards the chances for life and glory that awaited them beyond.

  28

  Dunk stomped his feet and jumped up and down in the dugout as he waited for the game to begin. They’d already introduced the teams and gone through all the pre-game nonsense. All that was left was the coin toss and the kick-off.

  Trotting out onto the field to the deafening roar of the crowd had been a rush. After a moment, his ears had adjusted to the noise, and he could hear the people chanting, “Dunk! Dunk! Dunk!” He’d grinned wide and waved at them and listened to them roar their approval.

  No amount of gold could buy a feeling like that.

  “Hold still,” Dr. Pill said as he approached Dunk and waved a wand at him that looked like it had been constructed with leather straps and chicken bones.

  “What’s this?” Dunk asked. “Some kind of blessing?”

  The apothecary shook his head. “Big game like this, it pays to check everything. The All-Stars like to slip cursed contraband into their foes’ kits. I already found a mouth guard that would have turned into a snake.”

  Without another word, Dunk stretched out his arms and legs, and let Dr. Pill wave the wand over them. It whined like a stuck snotling as it approached his throat, rising in pitch as it got nearer and then lowering as he moved it away.

  “What’s this?” Dr. Pill asked, pointing at the shrunken head. The thing twisted on its chain under the apothecary’s glare.

  “You ever hear of a player named Skragger?”

  Dr. Pill nodded. “Black orc, star player for the All-Stars, set all sorts of records.” He cocked his head at Dunk. “Killed while attacking you and then came back as a vampire player for the Champions of Death. I heard you ripped his head off in the middle of a game.”

  Dunk gestured towards the shrunken head. “Cavre made it for me.”

  “Is it a replica? Some kind of memento?”

  Dunk shook his head. “It’s the real thing. Cavre shrunk it.”

  Dr. Pill leaned over and peered at the tiny head closely, getting within inches of it, but never touching it. Then he strode over to the other side of the dugout to chat with Cavre. A moment later, the two of them came back to talk with Dunk. Dr. Pill had his black bag with him.

  “I’m so sorry, Dunk,” Cavre said.

  “How do you get this thing off?” Dr. Pill asked, pointing at the metal ball gag in Skragger’s mouth. “Can you remove it?”

  “Sure,” Dunk said. He reached down and released the gag, letting it fall into his hand.

  “Sons of witches!” Skragger’s head said in its squeaky voice. “Gonna grow my head, get my body back, and kill every damn one of you!”

  “I can see why you had him gagged,” said Cavre.

  “Hold still,” Dr. Pill said as he rummaged about in his bag. He produced a small silver vial and uncorked it. Then he tapped a small amount of bright red powder from the vial into the palm of his hand.

  “I hear all your records were fakes,” Dr. Pill said to Skragger’s head.

  “Who said?” Skragger screeched. “Lies! All lies! Earned every—”

  Dr. Pill blew the red dust into the shrunken head’s face. Skragger inhaled most of it, and it set him off on a coughing fit.

  “How is that possible?” Dunk asked. “He doesn’t have any lungs.”

  “You’re toting around a talking shrunken head on a chain around your neck, and now you want to debate its physiology with me?” Dr. Pill permitted himself a smirk.

  “Whoa!” Skragger said. “That’s good stuff.”

  “What’s going on?” Dunk asked.

  Dr. Pill re-corked his vial and then stuffed it into his bag. As he did, Cavre spoke. “My most sincere apologies, Dunk. If I’d known this was possible, I never would have allowed it.”

  “Known what was possible?”

  Cavre pointed at Skragger’s head as the thing mumbled on about all the pretty orc cheerleaders in its path. “That thing,” Cavre said. “It’s telepathic.”

  Dunk’s eyes flew wide. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m afraid not. It makes sense when you think about it. How could someone as dense as Skragger be such a great Blood Bowl player? Simple. He reads his opponents’ minds. He could tell what they were going to do as soon as they thought about it.”

  “He knows everything they think?” Horror gripped Dunk’s heart.

  Cavre shook his head. “He’s a simple orc who can barely construct a sentence. Even if he could read your mind, he probably wouldn’t understand most of it — beyond the violence. That he understands, and that’s what he’s been communicating to Zauberer.”

  Dunk felt like he might fall over. He stabbed his finger at the thing hanging on his chest. “This is how he’s been doing it? How Zauberer knows where I am and when I’m in danger?”

  Cavre raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  Dunk reached for the head. “I’m going to stomp this thing into tiny pieces.”

  “No!” said Dr. Pill. “I just went to a great deal of trouble to drug that little bugger before Zauberer would be able to notice it. Don’t you dare wash my work down the drain.”

  Dunk narrowed his eyes at the apothecary. “What did that stuff do to him?”

  “It’s a powerful hallucinogenic. It makes him see things that aren’t there.”

  “And things that are?”
/>
  “He can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy at the moment. He’s also highly suggestible.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  The Hackers won the opening coin toss — handled by the only referee both teams could agree on: Rhett Bool — and elected to receive. Dunk trotted down to one end of the field and waited for the All-Stars to kick the ball.

  The more he thought about it, the more he knew that Zauberer would probably wait until the worst moment to attack him. He also knew that the wizard had a traitor’s soul. He saw anyone and anything as expendable in the race to achieve his goals. He’d zap Skragger in an instant.

  He wanted to kick himself for not figuring out about the connection between Zauberer and the black orc. Zauberer had been such a horrible shot in that game against the Oldheim Ogres back in Magritta. How had he got to be so deadly accurate? He had a tiny little spotter working for him, helping him call down his ebony bolts from the blue.

  Dunk rattled Skragger’s chain just for fun and heard the head howl in protest. “Yer gonna die!” he said. “Zappity-zap-zap!”

  Then the crowd started in on the rising shout that told Dunk the ball would be coming his way soon. When it reached its climax, it ended in a massive, unified shout and then shattered into thousands of cheers.

  Dunk spotted the ball spinning end over end through the crisp, afternoon air, arcing right towards him. He spread his arms, and it landed right between them and his chest with a satisfying thump. He turned his head to the right and spotted Rotes Hernd, the Hackers’ back-up thrower, standing near the sideline, waving her arms at him. Dunk snapped a quick pass to Rotes, who stood behind the protective wall of M’Grash and Edgar, and then sprinted upfield.

  The first few All-Stars ignored Dunk and chased after the ball instead. Then Dunk heard a chorus of horrifying barks, and he knew that he’d attracted the attention of Serby “Dawgy-Dawg-Dawg” Triomphe, the All-Stars’ new team captain.

  Dunk glanced to his right and saw Serby sprinting after him. The mutant beastman’s three canine heads — each with its own black and red helmet, but none with a muzzle — growled in harmony, their eyes blazing red, blue, and green. Drool dripped from each head, slicking down Serby’s jersey. Dunk had heard that he had to change jerseys at least four times a game, which close up, didn’t seem to be often enough.

  “Mine!” the green-eyed head said. “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

  “Catch!” the blue-eyed head said. “Catch! Catch! Catch!”

  “Kill!” the red-eyed head said. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  Any one of the heads looked like it could rip one of Dunk’s arms clean from its socket. He’d seen just that happen in the scouting report Pegleg had prepared before the game too. Serby had taken hold of a doomed orc blitzer playing for the Underworld Creepers. In one blood-soaked blur, the orc had gone from four limbs to a single arm, which still held on to the ball as Serby’s three heads scurried off into the dugout to enjoy their hard-earned snacks.

  Dunk’s legs pounded against the Astrogranite, propelling him downfield. He gave thanks that Serby’s stride wasn’t much faster than his, and that the creature’s three heads made him top-heavy. When the beastman got too close, Dunk jinked to one side or the other, and Serby’s helmets clashed against each other as he tried to follow Dunk’s moves.

  Dunk knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. There was only so much open field around him. Sooner or later, Serby would corner him or get some of the other All-Stars to team up on him, and then Dunk would be doomed.

  “Look at Hoffnung run!” Jim’s voice said. “That’s one way to walk the Dawgy-Dawg-Dawg!”

  “Let’s see if Hoffnung has it in him to curb that canine!” said Bob. “If he can’t somehow collar that mutt, he’s going to end up having kibble made from his bits!”

  Dunk spun away from Serby’s snapping jaws once again and sprinted towards the end zone. As he did, he glanced back and saw the ball spinning down out of the sky towards him. He reached out his gauntleted hands and caught the pigskin between them.

  The crowd cheered. With Dunk scant yards from the goal line, he had a touchdown in the bag — or so it seemed.

  Dunk reached up and pulled Skragger’s chain from around his neck. As he did, he turned and stopped, standing a mere yard in front of the end zone. “I can’t believe I’m about to score!” he shouted. “I can’t wait to hear the crowd cheer when I do!”

  “Cheer!” Skragger said, his tiny eyes focused on something far away. Froth filled his miniature mouth. “Make ’em cheer!”

  Dunk wrapped the chain around the ball, winding it fast around the spikes. Then he held it up in front of him and waved it at Serby. “Here, Dawgy-Dawg-Dawg!”

  All six of Serby’s eyes flashed red at the insult. Their words devolved into nothing more than rabid barking. The beastman charged straight at Dunk with the speed of a runaway mining cart sliding on its way down to hell.

  Just as Serby reached him, Dunk said, “Here it comes.” He gave the ball a little flip into the air and then dived to the side. The ball hung there for a moment, right where he had been. Then Serby crashed into it at full speed and wrapped his arms around it.

  “Amazing!” Jim said, the crowd’s cheers drowning out his voice. “Just as Hoffnung was about to score—”

  A crack of black lightning cut off the announcer’s comments. The noise sent Dunk’s ears ringing, and the flash blinded and dazzled him. He smelled something that reminded him of the sausage-on-a-stick vendor just outside the stadium.

  He grinned. The plan had worked.

  “Nuffle’s gnarled nads!” Bob’s voice said. “Triomphe is gone! Blasted to ashes by a freak bolt of lightning that seemed to come from nowhere! Do the Hackers have a wizard on their side who’s not listed on their roster?”

  “We’d better check the replay on that!” Jim said. “That colour of bolt has been a trademark of Zauberer’s ever since he stole — I mean, apprehended — No that’s not right either. He — ah, forget it!”

  “What was your point again, Jim?”

  “Just this: Since Zauberer stole the Chaos Cup, he’s been blasting all of Hoffnung’s foes with bolts just like that one, with the same dramatic and messy results.”

  “Does this mean that Zauberer’s somehow switched sides?” Bob asked. “How could he have killed Triomphe instead of Hoffnung?”

  “Hold on a moment. We have a report coming in from our intrepid correspondent on the front lines — I mean, the sidelines. What’s up with the All-Stars, Lästiges?”

  “Total chaos, Jim!”

  “Well, that’s nothing new. How about we check in with—”

  “Wait, Jim! The All-Stars’ dugout is even more chaotic than normal. As usual, their dugout is shrouded in an impenetrable cloud of blackness, but bodies and parts thereof have been appearing from it ever since that bolt passed through Triomphe, hot enough to blast his shadow onto the Astrogranite beneath him.”

  “Have you been able to get a word in with the coach?”

  “You well know, Bob, that no one has ever interviewed the All-Stars’ coach — at least not without either dying or falling into a gibbering heap on the spot. Whoever he is, he likes his privacy and has protected it for decades. Even under such unusual circumstances, it seems that he will maintain that secrecy for now.”

  “So, if you can’t get into the dugout, and you can’t ask anyone any questions, what can you tell us?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. Back to you, Jim!”

  “Thank you, Lästiges, for that confuzzling report!”

  While the announcers blathered away over the PA system, Dunk shoved himself to his feet and poked around through Triomphe’s ashes, helmets, and bits of armour, for the remains of the ball. All he could find were a few blackened spikes, a couple of which had melted into steaming lumps of metal.

  Dunk discovered even less of Skragger’s shrunken head: nothing at all, not a single trace. Wherever the black orc vampire was now, Dunk hoped it h
urt.

  Bool whistled the play dead when he came to the same conclusion that Dunk had. There was no ball left to be found. The ref signalled for a fresh ball to be thrown in from the sidelines, and one was.

  Cavre conferred with Bool and the newly appointed captain of the All-Stars, a squid-headed woman with ink-black eyes, by the name of Kathula Lustcruft. Dunk trotted over to join with the other Hackers on their side of the field, and the All-Star players congregated together on the other.

  “What’s going on?” Dunk asked.

  “They’re trying to figure out what to do about the missing ball,” Dirk said.

  “Last time we just had another one thrown in.”

  “The Blood Bowl Tournament organisers got an interpretation of Nuffle’s Rules that made that illegal,” Rotes said.

  “What’s their bloody alternative then?” Edgar asked. “Call it a bloody tie only two bloody minutes into the bloody game?”

  Spiel shook his head. “According to the latest dispatch from the Church of Nuffle, ancient scholars delved deep into the apocrypha and came up with a new rule for what to do if such a thing ever happened again.” The rookie noticed everyone staring at him. “What? Don’t you people read what they send you?”

  “Read?” M’Grash said, scratching his head.

  “So what’s going to happen?” Dunk asked. “Give us the short version.”

  “That was,” Spiel said, scowling. “It’s called a death match. They put two players in the middle of the field, ten yards apart. Everyone else has to be twenty yards back. Then the ref drops the ball between them and runs for his life.”

  “Nuffle’s jolly jockstrap,” said Guillermo. “That will be a mess. How do they decide who enters this match of death?”

  “That’s what I just spent the last minute figuring out, Mr. Reyes,” Cavre said as he trotted over from the conference. He looked over at the ogre. “Mr. K’Thragsh, you’re up!”

  29