[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Dunk blushed six shades of red. “Um, sure I—” He shook his head. “Wait, I mean, no.” He looked at the dark-haired woman out of the corner of his eye. “Have you?”

  Lästiges giggled and flashed a hungry smile. “A lady never tells.”

  “So what’s holding you up?” Slick asked.

  Lästiges backhanded the halfling, and he tumbled back from the crest of the hollow, down toward the trail that wound around it far below. If M’Grash hadn’t whipped out a hand to catch Slick, Dunk might have found himself without an agent. The ogre cradled the halfling in his palm like a newborn child for a moment before placing him back along the crest, this time out of Lästiges’ reach.

  Satisfied that the only part of Slick hurt was his pride — of which, as an agent, he had little to harm — Dunk glanced over and saw the others watching the scene in the hollow below. Simon and Guillermo had cocked their heads all the way to the right, trying to get a better angle on some bit of the action. A knowing smile played across Cavre’s face as he looked on. Pegleg wore a scowl as he squinted from the naked forms below to Olsen, who stood by his side, frowning and scratching his beard.

  “Where’s the cup?” Pegleg said, never one to be distracted from riches.

  “Huh?” Olsen said, his mind leaping back from the hollow. “Oh, yes.” He pointed at a tent hunkered down against the hollow’s opposite side. “My guess is that it’s there. If we hurry, we might be able to get to it before they bring it out to use in their unholy ceremony.”

  “Hrm,” the treeman rumbled behind them. “That lot don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, now, do they?” He tried to crank his head to the left, but the movement threatened to topple him over. “You humans are a bloody messy sort.”

  “How do treemen reproduce?” Lästiges asked. Her camra zipped up into the treeman’s face, and he swatted it away with a leafy branch. Undaunted, it returned straight away, but this time it kept a respectful distance.

  “Er…” The treeman’s eyes turned a soft shade of red for a moment. “It’s all about pollination with us: blossoms, seeds, saplings — that sort of thing.” His eyes resumed their normal colour. “This seems a bit more effort. Why do you bother with it all?”

  A voracious grin split Lästiges’ face, and Dunk blushed at just seeing it. “That’s not reproduction,” she said. “It’s sex, and it’s incredible fun.”

  A loud groan erupted from the base of the hollow, followed by two more similar noises. “See?” Lästiges said, batting her eyes at the treeman.

  The creature shook its branches. “If you say so. Sounds bloody painful to me.”

  The reporter reached out and caressed the treeman’s bark. “It’s just the opposite.”

  Olsen cut in, his voice and manner both fragile and edgy as he hissed at Lästiges. “Can we put an end to the education of our treeman friend about human mating habits for—?”

  “Edgar.”

  The wizard craned his neck back to glare up at the treeman. “What?” he spat.

  “My name,” the treeman said. “It’s Edgar.”

  Olsen stared at the creature for a moment, and then shook his head. “All right, then, Edgar. We’d like to focus on our stated goal here for a moment, if that wouldn’t trouble you over much.”

  “Get on with it then,” Edgar said, unperturbed. If he’d heard the sarcasm in the wizard’s voice, he gave no sign of it.

  “I have a question I would like to ask,” Guillermo said. Beside him, Simon nodded along.

  The wizard sighed through his nose. “And?”

  “I thought these people were supposed to be some kind of plague spreaders.” The Estalian pointed to the active folk in the hollow as more groans escaped from their pile of writhing bodies.

  “And?”

  “Well, they don’t look so unhealthy to me.”

  “Faith save us.” Olsen winced, and Dunk had the impression he was counting to himself under his breath. When the wizard opened his eyes again, he fixed his gaze on Guillermo and said, “Have you ever heard of venereal disease, lad?”

  The Estalian frowned. Lästiges leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Guillermo flushed so red that Dunk feared the cultists might see him like a signal fire.

  “Really?” Guillermo said, glancing down at the front of his pants.

  Lästiges patted him on the back and said, “Let’s just say you’re better off enjoying the performances down there from a distance. A long distance.”

  “Is that quite enough?” Olsen asked, frustration lacing his voice.

  Guillermo swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I have a plan, Mr. Merlin,” Pegleg said. He’d doffed his yellow tri-corn hat. “Simple, but serviceable.”

  The wizard nodded for the ex-pirate to continue.

  “A few of us set up a distraction on the east side of the hollow.” Pegleg pointed to the right, which meant they had to be on the hollow’s south side. Dunk had turned around entirely during their time wandering in the Sure Wood, with no sun or stars to steer by.

  “While the cultists investigate, we send our fastest runners into the tent to snatch the Far Albion Cup. We rendezvous back at the place where we found Edgar. Then we leave the wood with all due haste.”

  “Who do you picture in each force?” Olsen asked.

  “Mr. Reyes, Mr. Sherwood, and Mr. K’Thragsh will generate the distraction.” Pegleg stabbed his hook at each player in turn as he spoke. “Dunk and Mr. Cavre, you two will go for the prize.”

  “And what will the rest of you be doing while we’re off risking our lives?” Simon asked, staring at Pegleg, Olsen, Lästiges, and Slick.

  “Come now, Mr. Sherwood,” Pegleg said. “Don’t be a coward. This is a sound plan, and I’ve assigned the best people to each role. Would you rather Mr. Fullbelly here raced into the tent? Or myself?”

  “We have a wizard with us,” Simon said.

  “So we do.” Pegleg nodded. “And if coaching Blood Bowl for so many years has taught me anything, it’s that you leave your wizards in reserve until you need them — and you hope you never do.”

  “What about me?” Edgar asked in a forlorn tone.

  The coach stepped back and goggled up at the treeman. “You’d care to help?”

  “Sure,” Edgar rumbled. “Why the bloody hell wouldn’t I?”

  Pegleg smirked as he twirled his moustache. “You’ve fulfilled your ‘end of the bargain’. You’re free to go. We won’t bother you again, Mr. Edgar.”

  “But I’d—” Edgar fell silent for a moment. The others gazed up and him and waited. “It’s dead dull in this bloody forest since all the others have been gone.”

  “You’re bored?” Dunk said.

  The treeman stabbed a branch at the thrower. “That’s it. That’s it right in the heartwood. I’m bored. There’s nothing like a full year face down in the bloody muck to make a body wish for a change.” He looked down at them all. “You lot seem to be my best chance at that.”

  “Are you certain, Mr. Edgar?” Pegleg said. Dunk could almost hear the gears whirring behind his coach’s sparkling eyes. Or perhaps that was the ghostly sound of gold being scooped into a bag. “If you come with us, I can guarantee you’ll not be bored.”

  The treeman’s upper branches waved in a way that Dunk now understood to be his equivalent of nodding. “It’s either you bloody fools or those humping idiots down there.” He looked at them each in turn. “You don’t bother with all that sort of thing, do you?”

  “Not often enough, honey,” Lästiges said with a dry chuckle. “Not often enough.”

  Not for the first time, Dunk wondered if this lady reporter had truly captured his brother’s heart or just his loins. Perhaps Dirk wouldn’t make such distinctions, but Dunk couldn’t bring himself to not.

  “Right then,” Pegleg said, scanning the faces of his players. Dunk could feel him sizing them each up, determining if they were all up for the jobs he had in mind for them. “Let’s go over this once again.”

/>   Pegleg stepped forward and began to use his hook to scratch a diagram into the side of a nearby tree. Dunk had seen him do the same thing dozens of times before, although the coach usually used the wall of a locker room instead.

  “Yowch!” Edgar howled. The treeman slapped the ex-pirate’s arm away and stumbled backward. “What in the bloody Chaos Wastes did you do that for?”

  Pegleg took a step back. “You can feel that?”

  “I just look like a bloody tree! There’s the ‘man’ part of the word too. ‘Tree-man’. The ‘man’ part hurts!”

  A silence fell over the hollow as Edgar bellowed down at Pegleg. None of the Hackers or their companions spoke a word. Then Dunk realised that the noises from the hollow had ceased too.

  The thrower glanced down at the orgy and saw that its participants had frozen in their various, now-awkward positions, right in the middle of whatever pleasurable thing they’d been doing. One trio fell over onto each other, unable to maintain their balance any longer.

  That seemed to break the spell Edgar’s outburst had cast over the hollow. One of the cultists stood up and pointed at the towering forms of Edgar and M’Grash, just visible, Dunk guessed, on the fringe of the bonfire’s light.

  “Intruders!” the man shouted.

  The people in the hollow scattered in a dozen different directions, each of them shouting for help or screaming for mercy. Some of them seemed to run in circles around the bonfire, gathering up scraps of clothing and wriggling into them as best they could. Many of the gatherers cared little whether the clothes were theirs or not, it seemed, as shown by one fat and hairy man who slipped into a corset in an instant. Dunk later wondered at how easily the man had performed that task, but he put that detail out of his head as something he’d rather not contemplate for long.

  “I think we have our distraction,” Slick said.

  Dunk and Cavre glanced at each other and then at Pegleg.

  “What are you waiting for, lads?” the coach said pointing them off toward the west side of the hollow. “Go, go, go! Head for the end zone! We’ll keep them busy as long as we can!”

  Dunk heard M’Grash say, “End zone? Where?” as he and Cavre sprinted off through the darkness to the west. They curved around the edge of the hollow as they ran, and they soon came to the north side. Cavre cut to the right and raced up to the rim of the hollow.

  Dunk caught up with the blitzer at the edge of the rim. Below in the hollow, the cultists seemed to be rallying. Most of them were clothed by this point, staring up into the darkness and pointing all around.

  “What are they waiting for?” a balding man standing near the bonfire said. “Why haven’t they attacked?”

  As if in answer, M’Grash and Edgar rose over the crest again. The treeman raised its branches tall and wide and let loose a horrible noise that seemed to shake every tree in the forest. At the same time, M’Grash hefted up a small boulder, a rock as large as a pirate’s treasure chest, and flung it at the bonfire.

  When the boulder hit the bonfire, burning bits of coal and wood exploded from it. These showered the hollow with glowing embers, some of which hung floating in the resultant smoke like angry stars in a murderous sky.

  The cultists screamed like children and scattered like rats. The hollow’s floor fell into total chaos as the cultists banged into and tried to climb over each other through the stinging smoke.

  “Here,” Cavre said softly, handing Dunk a black bandana. The blitzer often wore one like this on the field, tied around his forehead or his biceps to absorb his sweat and keep his vision clear and his hands dry. He produced one for himself and tied it around his face, covering his nose and mouth.

  Dunk followed Cavre’s example and was happy to find the cloth dry and clean. He started to ask what it was for, but the blitzer raised a finger to cut him off.

  Cavre signalled Dunk to follow him, and then plunged down the steep side of the hollow, toward the cultists’ tent. As they reached it, Dunk saw that it bore strange symbols and patterns embroidered into the red fabric in black, green, and yellow threads. Dunk didn’t look at them for long, but what little he did see made the inside of his head itch. After that, he avoided even glancing at them at all.

  Cavre reached down and pulled up the tent’s back wall and motioned Dunk inside. Before he could stop to wonder why it should be he who entered the place first, the thrower scrambled under the fabric and found himself inside the tent.

  An awful stench stung Dunk’s eyes and lungs and he tried to peer through the murky haze. At first, he thought that the flying embers in the chaos outside might have set the tent on fire. Or perhaps the noxious smell came from the too-sweet incense burning low in the brazier sitting in a far corner. Then he realised that the foul vapours in the air sprang not from any blaze but from the fleshy lump of a creature that sat in the centre of the place.

  The sick thing that squatted there seemed like it might once have been a man, but it had long since left simple definitions of humanity behind. If it had any legs to stand on, it might have been taller than Dunk, judging by the size of its massive, flabby torso, but those limbs had been carved away, along with its arms. From the slick sheen of rot over an angry red rash on its pale, almost formless flesh, Dunk might have thought the once-man dead if it had not moved at the sound of their entrance.

  As the creature rolled toward the intruders, gangrenous pus squished through the stitches where the limbs had once been, and the scent of rot grew stronger. Its blind eyes stared toward them through its red-rimmed, lidless sockets. Its nose had been removed, probably through some insane act of mercy, or perhaps to prevent it from constantly nauseating itself with its own stink. No stitches sealed that wound, though, which bore only the blistered marks of a cauterizing brand.

  The thing’s mouth was far wider than any human’s could have been, its cheeks sliced wide with a jagged knife and stitched back to form ragged approximations of lips. As it smiled at him through its gaping mouth, Dunk could see that all of its teeth had been pulled and its tongue bifurcated neatly down the middle, almost to its root. The thing welcomed them softly in either gibberish or some ancient tongue long since lost to all but sorcerers and madmen. As it did, it thrust its groin at them, bursting a number of poorly laid stitches that finally managed to escape its putrescent flesh.

  Dunk stepped forward in a daze, his first instinct to kill the thing with his bare hands. It would be a mercy killing, both for the creature and himself — and perhaps for the kind of world that could produce such an abomination.

  Cavre’s hand on Dunk’s arm held him back. The thrower looked back at his team-mate and saw him shake his head. His eyes drawn away from the spectacle in the centre of the tent, Dunk realised the blitzer was right. They needed to find the cup first, before the cultists discovered them here.

  Cavre pointed to the ceiling of the tent, right near the front flap. There, nestled in a thin bit of netting, hung a golden cup studded with emeralds and diamonds. Despite having been lost for over 500 years, the trophy — for that’s what it was, no simple cup at all — gleamed as if freshly made.

  Dunk drew his sword, and the creature jerked at the scraping noise, despite the fact that its ears had been removed. Steeling himself, the thrower skirted past it to cut the trophy free with a single slice of his well-honed blade. It dropped into his free hand, and for a moment he cradled it in his arm and gazed upon it.

  He could see why people had killed for this cup. It wasn’t just the money it was worth. Having seen it for just a moment, he couldn’t conceive of ever giving it up. He’d share it with his friends, sure — the Hackers, Slick, people he trusted — but sell it? Never. He had to have it, or at least a part of it, forever.

  “Amazing,” Cavre said as he reached out to take the cup from Dunk. The thrower hesitated for a moment before letting the blitzer take it.

  Cavre never touched the cup itself. He had removed his shirt while Dunk stood captivated by the sight of the cup, and he’d draped it over
his hands. As he took the cup from Dunk, Cavre wrapped his shirt around it, hiding it beneath the dark fabric.

  With the cup out of sight, Dunk remembered where he was. Before he could turn to leave the tent though, he felt something strike him in the feet. He looked down to see the rot-infested creature trying to wrap itself around his boots. Disgusted, he raised his sword to hack the thing to pieces, but once again Cavre stopped him.

  “This poor, damned soul is ill, but he is also infectious — catching. If you destroy it with your sword, you risk becoming ill as well. Believe me,” Carve said, looking down at the creature with pity, “this is a fate you would not wish on your most hated foe.”

  Dunk coughed once and nodded as he backed away from the creature. Then he strode to the glowing brazier and kicked it over with his boot. The coals lay on the rug for an instant before the carpet caught fire.

  Dunk and Cavre watched as the fire licked along a trail of invisible slime the creature on the floor had left behind as it had squirmed across it. Soon, it caught up with the revolting sack of illness. It crept along its skin for a moment, and the creature stopped its insane, incomprehensible babbling and started to scream.

  Cavre pulled Dunk to the back of the tent again and raised the flap for him to scoot under. Just before he went, Dunk looked back at the creature and saw its blistering flesh burst into flames.

  “May Nurgle never find your soul,” Dunk whispered as he left the tent. Cavre, the covered cup tucked under his arm like a football, followed close on his heels.

  13

  “Now what?” Dunk asked, gathered with the rest of the Hackers around a table in the back yard of the nameless pub in which they’d first met Olsen.

  “How about another round, lad?” Olsen said. The wizard had already downed more beer than Dunk thought he should have been able to hold in his frame, but he showed no signs of stopping. “We’d like to toast the man who’s finally given us the chance to end this cursed life of ours.”

  “Again?” Dunk said, the contents of his stomach curdling at the thought.