Rotes broke the hold her terror had on her, spun and hurled the ball back towards the other players, who still stood huddled in the middle of the field. Anfager reached up and dragged it down into the scrum like a frog snatching and swallowing an errant fly.
“All right,” Dunk said. “Break!”
The Hackers burst out of the huddle, each in a different direction. They left only one player still standing there, clutching something under his arms.
The All-Stars ignored the other players and went for the stationary one, who seemed to be just standing there with the ball, daring them to try to hurt him. They were happy to oblige.
“I smell something up here, Jim. Do you have any idea who number 18 is for the Hackers? He looks like he’s pleading for a quick death!”
“I don’t have him listed on my roster. Lästiges?”
“Coach Haken tells me he’s a last-minute addition to the roster, a new rookie who’s never seen a minute of play!”
“It looks like our man of mystery might only see a minute of play!” said Jim. “Here come the All-Stars!”
Dunk glanced back over his shoulder and saw three of the Chaos players slam into number 18 at once. They knocked him flat on his back and piled on top of him, trying to crush the life from him with the weight of their bodies. A moment later, they leapt to their feet, howling.
“Can you see what’s going on down there, Lästiges?”
“It’s a huge mess, Bob. Whatever number 18 was holding down there, it wasn’t a ball! When the All-Stars hit him, it burst, and the contents of — it looks like a canvas sack — went everywhere. Oh, gods! The smell is awful!”
Dunk grinned as an image of number 18 flashed up on the Jumboball above the end zone before him. Inside the spare set of armour, Lehrer had just been awakened by the horrible scent of the gunk that had coated nearly every part of him. As the old man tried in vain to wipe away the cast-offs of Dr. Pill’s overused healing potions, he started to scream.
“Amazing!” Bob said. “But if that wasn’t the real ball in number 18’s hands, then where is it?”
“Look!” said Jim. “Hoffnung’s heading for the goal line, and there’s only one All-Star who can stop him!”
“Where you goin’?” Ichorbod asked as he stomped between Dunk and the end zone.
Dunk skidded to a halt, nearly sliding into the acid-skinned troll. “Nowhere special,” the thrower said, putting up his hands to show they were empty. “I don’t have the ball. I’m just decoy number two.”
It took Dunk a moment to remember the troll’s voice couldn’t have come from the area above his shoulders. He looked straight ahead and saw Ichorbod’s face grinning at him from where his slime-covered body held it right between his outstretched hands.
“Don’t care,” Ichorbod said. “Yer dead.”
Dunk reached out and grabbed the troll’s helmet by the edges of the rim that framed the creature’s face. “Don’t!” he said, falling to his knees. “Please! You can’t kill me! I have too much to live for. I have five kids back home! I’m — I’m pregnant!”
The troll stared out at Dunk, dumbfounded, which wasn’t a big mental leap for him. The thrower’s outburst had confused it so much it didn’t hear the thunderous footsteps approaching over the crowd’s raucous cheers.
“Touchdown, Hackers!” Bob’s voice said. “Heldmann strolls into the end zone untouched! I love this game!”
Before Ichorbod could turn to see the replay on the Jumboball, M’Grash’s spike-cleated boot came rushing at him. At the last second, Dunk snatched his arms back, and M’Grash punted the troll’s severed head up and away.
Dunk scrambled backward away from Ichorbod’s body, eager to escape its final efforts at senseless violence. As he did, he watched the troll’s head soar past the fans in the nosebleed seats and nearly knock a circling gull from the cloudless sky. It arced out over the stadium’s upper edge, and was gone.
Ichorbod’s body tripped on something and toppled to the Astrogranite. It lay there for a moment, and then started to beat its fists and feet against the ground like a massive, acid-skinned toddler in the middle of a monstrous tantrum.
“Thanks, big guy,” Dunk said to M’Grash as they trotted back to their end of the field for their next kick-off.
“Dunkel safe!” the ogre said with a tusk-filled grin. “We win!”
“Not yet,” Dunk said. Above them, the scoreboard changed to show the new tally: All-Stars 1, Hackers 2. “But it’s a good start.”
When Dunk got into position, he turned and saw the All-Stars leading Ichorbod’s body into the dead centre of the field. As they did, a figure in black robes strode out onto the field, bearing in his arms a massive, fanged skull mounted atop a short stand covered with smaller skulls.
Dunk stared for a moment. He recognised Zauberer, but he couldn’t imagine what the wizard could be thinking, walking right onto the field in the middle of the biggest game of the year. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
“Stop him!” Dunk said as he dashed ahead. “We have to stop him!”
Ten of the All-Stars stepped forward between the Hackers and Zauberer. They formed a wall through which the Hackers would have to fight to stop the wizard’s plot. Dunk led the charge, launching himself at the crab-armed man who stood closest to him.
Zauberer set the Chaos Cup down on top of Ichorbod’s chest and withdrew a pair of black-bladed knives from the sleeves of his robes. As he did, the two ram-headed men leaned over the cup to peer into it. The cup’s handles lashed out and snared the beastmen, holding them fast. They bleated in terror and tried to pull free, but they could not manage it before Zauberer ducked in with his blades and slit their throats.
As the lifeblood of the ram-men flowed into the cup’s main bowl, the skulls around the base rolled off and began to burrow into Ichorbod’s torso with their vicious, sharp teeth. The troll flailed about, trying to keep itself from being devoured alive, but it couldn’t seem to shake a single one of the skulls from its flesh. Each of them had found an unbreakable purchase and continued to gnaw at the troll’s sinews until long after it had stopped fighting them.
One of the crab-armed man’s claws caught Dunk around his left bicep and started to pinch. The thrower shoved down hard and wedged his pauldron into the claw to keep it from clipping his arm in half. Still, the pressure started to bend the armour, and Dunk howled in pain.
Desperate, Dunk began pounding the crab-armed man in the face. Each blow seemed like it should have been enough to knock the All-Star senseless or dead, but the man’s mutated arms kept holding on.
Dunk stopped punching the man for a moment and realised that he was unconscious or worse, but his claw had not unclenched. He pulled and yanked at the claw in frustration, but it refused to give. M’Grash reached over and tore the claw from the All-Star’s arm, then jammed his fingers into the pincer and pried it loose.
Dunk rubbed his arm as he sprang free. “Thanks!” he said, staring at the ogre as he looked down at the monstrous crab claw in his hands. “I owe you a tub of butter!”
Dunk spun around and spotted Zauberer standing over a skeleton, holding the Chaos Cup aloft in his hands. Even as Dunk watched, the troll’s flesh started to re-grow on its bones, knitting them together once again. He wondered what had happened to the smaller skulls, since none of them were around the trophy’s base, or attacking Ichorbod’s torso any longer.
Then he spotted the last of the small skulls emerge from the troll’s ribcage with something pulsing between its savage teeth. Defying gravity, it tumbled up the wizard’s robes and over the rim of the Chaos Cup.
“We are ready, o mighty Khorne, for your sacred embrace!” Zauberer shouted.
The sky turned to blood, and everyone screamed.
31
One moment, Dunk stood in Emperor Stadium in Altdorf, in the heart of the Empire, the seat of power and culture in the Old World. The next, he and everyone else in the stadium — including the entire building — were some
where else.
Dunk didn’t know how he knew that it wasn’t just that the sky had changed colour. Perhaps it was the hot, humid air, or the stench of blood and brimstone, or the foul taste of ashes in his mouth. Or perhaps it was the screams of the more than one hundred thousand people in the stadium with him, who all sounded as if their souls had been ripped from their flesh.
Whatever it was, he knew he was somewhere else, and he couldn’t stop screaming about it either.
In the entire stadium, only Zauberer’s voice wasn’t screeching in horror. Instead, the wizard had thrown back his head and started to laugh.
Dunk thought he’d never heard anything so evil in his entire life. He covered his ears and cringed at the sound.
As he did, he saw Ichorbod’s body pull itself to its feet, only it didn’t look anything like Ichorbod any more. Its skin had the same wet sheen, but it was crimson coloured now, and it had a head.
Dunk had never seen the face on that head before. He’d heard it described, and he’d known there and then that he preferred to know nothing more about it. He’d tried to do many things to remove those descriptions from his head, but nothing, not sleep, not drink, no oblivion but death could help. And now that face stared down at him and smiled as it opened its mouth and took a deep breath.
Next to the creature’s laugh, Zauberer’s seemed little worse than the giggles of a happy child.
Khorne. It could only be Khorne.
“By all that’s unholy,” Bob’s voice said, “the Blood God has come to life in Ichorbod’s corpse!”
“I think that’s an illegal substitution,” said Jim, “but since Bool’s cowering under the Hackers’ bench, I don’t see how he’s going to call it!”
The All-Stars gathered around Khorne — or at least his avatar brought to life in Ichorbod’s flesh — and fell to their knees before him. The Blood God waved his hand over each of them, and they transformed. Their armour writhed around them, as did their flesh.
One by one, the All-Stars rose once more. Their black armour glistened as if with wet paint, but Dunk knew without touching it that it now seeped ebony-coloured blood. Their skin all mirrored that of Khorne himself, shining red as if their epidermises had been stripped away. Their eyes glowed as if lit from within by the fires of hell.
Beyond the stadium’s rim, Dunk saw dark mountains gathered round the place. These towered over the people, like dead gods forced to bear witness to the atrocities that would be carried out within. Red-gold lightning lit the roiling crimson clouds that scudded overhead as if carried by a hurricane bringing a storm of blood.
Between the flashes of lightning and the terrified rolls of thunder that seemed like the moans of a million cursed souls, Dunk realised he could see, high above the highest seats, a ring of floating lights illuminating the stadium with a hellish glow. Dunk recognised these as the new lamps that had once surrounded the arena in a tremendous circle — the ones paid for by the Guterfiends.
“What’s that Lästiges?”
“I said, according to Hacker apothecary Dr. Pill, it seems that Schlechter Zauberer has transported the entirety of Emperors Stadium to the Realm of Chaos, home of such legendary chaos lords as Nurgle and Khorne!”
“Stunning!” said Bob. “Just like we told you before the game folks, this is one Blood Bowl final you cannot afford to miss!”
“Are we still broadcasting via Cabalvision?” asked Jim. “I know I’m an ogre, but that doesn’t seem possible!”
“It’s all done with the latest in camra magic,” said Bob. “Remember that Zauberer destroyed the old camras in the semi-final game that pitted the All-Stars against the Badlands Buccaneers. Wolf Sports had them replaced with the finest camras available! These babies can transmit our Cabalvision feeds across unlimited distances, even to hell and back it seems!”
Dunk fell back and found himself standing with the other Hackers on the field in an impromptu huddle. Looking around to see his friends by his side helped to calm his pounding heart. He reached out and put his hand on Dirk’s shoulder. His brother glanced back at him, and Dunk saw the fear ebb in his eyes. Then he gave Dunk a reckless grin, and the two clasped hands. No matter what they had to face, they’d face it together. Dunk only wished that Spinne could be there too.
Khorne raised his hands and brought them down in a cutting motion. Every scream in the stadium stopped, and an eerie silence reigned over the entire place. Even Bob and Jim had quit their chattering.
“People of Altdorf,” Khorne said. Although the Blood God didn’t raise his voice, Dunk could hear him perfectly, and he had no doubt that everyone else in the stadium could as well. In the absence of the deafening screams, Dunk was surprised that everyone couldn’t hear the blood rushing through his veins as well.
“My servant Zauberer has completed the ritual that activates the Chaos Cup. My followers placed this with your people centuries ago. It is now carrying out its true purpose.
“My champions will play your champions in this sacred game handed down to you by means of Nuffle and his writings. If your champions win, you and your stadium will return to your home realm.”
Khorne gestured to the ensorcelled All-Stars. “If my champions win, your realm will become mine.”
“No,” Dunk whispered.
“Wow!” said Bob. “That’s the deal of a lifetime — for Khorne!”
Dunk stepped forward. “No way!” he said, the words leaping from him before he could pause to consider the creature at which they were directed. “You can take your deal and shove it!”
The crowd cheered.
“We won’t do it,” Dunk said. “We won’t play!”
“It seems that Hoffnung has lost his mind!” said Jim. “He’s refusing to go along with the Blood God’s deal!”
Khorne stared down at Dunk with his glowing, unblinking eyes. Dunk wondered if the Blood God would bleed him dry there on the spot. Then Khorne threw back his head and laughed. The sound felt like knives in Dunk’s ears.
“If you refuse to play, you will be my guests here in my realm forever,” Khorne said. Then he crossed his arms on his chest and stood as still as a statue.
Pegleg ran out onto the field, with Slick and Dr. Pill trailing in his wake. “Mr. Hoffnung,” he said. “When the Blood God says, ‘play ball,’ you play ball!”
“Coach,” Dunk said. “We can’t. They’ll kill us either way. If we lose, Altdorf and maybe the whole of the Empire — possibly the world — becomes Khorne’s. This way, he only gets a stadium full of souls instead of everyone alive.”
“That’s a fine theory,” Zauberer said, calling over from where he stood in Khorne’s shadow, “but sooner or later, some of you will crack, and then we will have a game!”
“He has a point,” said Dirk. “I’d rather play them while we’re still fresh. A few days from now, we may be too weak to have any hope.”
“We don’t have any hope now!” Dunk said. “Look around you! Have you seen where we are? Do you see who we have to play? We are doomed!”
Someone wrapped her arms around Dunk from behind. “No, Dunk,” said Spinne. “There is always hope.”
Dunk gasped, spun around and took the woman in his arms. “What are you doing here?” he asked, half thrilled and half terrified. Hugging her tight, he saw his father standing behind her, nodding his support.
“I held out hope,” Spinne said, “for you. I hoped that if you won this game, you might consider retiring. I wanted to be here to see that happen, to cheer you on, even if you might never have known I was here.”
Dunk gaped at the woman for a moment, and then kissed her tenderly. “You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
“Ditto,” Spinne said with a toothsome grin. “Now what do you say we kick that Blood God’s ass?”
“Hey,” said Slick, “if you’re going to rejoin the team, I’d like to renegotiate your contract!”
“Belay that,” said Pegleg. “We’ll renew our old agreement, or I’ll toss you into th
e arms of Khorne as a blood sacrifice before the game begins.”
“We’re still short some players, captain,” Cavre said. “We lost a few in that last drive.”
“Who do we have left?”
“Hoffnung, Heldmann, K’Thragsh, Reyes, Edgar, Spiel, Anfager, Hernd, now Schönheit, and myself.”
“That’s ten,” Pegleg said, scratching yet another hole in his yellow tri-corn hat. “We only need one more for a full team.”
“I’ll give it a try if you don’t mind,” Lügner said.
“Father!” Dirk and Dunk said at the same time.
“Thanks, my sons, for pointing out that I’m old enough to make these sorts of decisions on my own. I used to be one hell of a brawler back in my day, and I’ve had the occasion to put those skills to use over the past few years.”
“Who else would be mad enough to give it a go?” asked Pegleg. He stuck out his hand towards Lügner, who shook it. “Welcome aboard, sir!”
Slick stuck up a hand to say something about negotiating a salary, but a scowl from Pegleg shut him up.
“All right,” Dunk said. “That’s eleven players, but I still don’t like our odds. We’re talking about playing against a Chaos Lord. How can we even tackle him? What else can we do to even things up?”
“How are the All-Stars doing?” asked Spinne. “They were down to nine players before Khorne took over Ichorbod.”
“Is that nine with or without Ichorbod?” asked Guillermo.
“Without.”
“Does that make sense? He never did leave the field — most of him, at least.”
Spinne arched an eyebrow at Guillermo. “Given that M’Grash kicked his head so hard that it’s probably now floating down the Reik, I was comfortable counting him out.”
Guillermo nodded, and then noticed that all the other players were staring at him. He shrugged. “I just wanted to be sure.”
“They’re putting someone into a uniform,” Rotes said. “It’s that man we propped up here at the start of the half.”
“Lehrer?” Dunk said. He peered around the Blood God and saw Kathula and the bear-bodied All-Star stuffing Lehrer into a black suit of armour. As they cinched the straps around him, an evil grin grew on his face.
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 26
