[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “Again!” the red-faced Olsen roared. “Aye! And again and again until there’s no more toast — we mean, toasts!—to be made.”

  Dunk tried to wave the gesture off, but a barmaid showed up with a fresh bottle of whiskey at that point. Olsen tried to grab the bottle to pour a fresh round of shots, but he knocked the bottle from the table instead. Cavre snatched the bottle from the air before it could smash against the ground, and he quickly poured the drinks himself.

  Dunk noticed that Cavre had skipped over his own glass. “Hey!” the thrower said. “That’s not fair! You’re just as much to blame for getting that trophy as I am.”

  Cavre grinned. “Too true, Mr. Hoffnung, but someone has to stay sober enough to pour the drinks.”

  Dunk turned to point at the barmaid, but his head swum around even faster. He had to reach back to clutch the table in front of him for fear of falling to the earth. “Whoa!” he said, laughing. “Are we back on the ship already?”

  For some reason, the others at the table found his antics hysterical, especially Lästiges, who wrapped an arm around Dunk and leaned heavily against him.

  “You’re damned — damned — damned cute,” she said around her hiccups, smiling up at him with her dark eyes, ruby-red lips, and Cabalvision-perfect teeth. “If I wasn’t already with your brother—”

  Dunk became aware of Lästiges’ breasts pressing against his shoulder, and he turned to gaze wobbily into her eyes. They seemed to be asking him — no, begging — to kiss those soft, red lips, the ones his brother—

  “My brother!” Dunk said, shrugging the reporter away. “Wait until he hears about — whoa!”

  Only intending to move a bit out of Lästiges’ range, Dunk had overbalanced himself, and he tipped and fell backward off his seat. He landed flat on his back, which knocked the wind out of him for a moment, but the alcohol had numbed him so that the landing didn’t hurt a bit.

  The rest of the table went silent. Slick leaped up on the table, nearly slipping in a pool of spilled beer, and stared down at the young thrower. “Dunk!” he said, his voice cracking with worry. “Are you killed, son?”

  When Dunk could breathe again, he started laughing harder than ever, and the others all joined in. After a moment, he stopped and clutched at the ground beneath him, dizzy enough to wonder whether he might spin out into the night sky should he let go. He closed his eyes and hoped that the vertigo would go away.

  “So, wizard,” Edgar said, “when will you end your life?”

  That stopped the laughter dead.

  Dunk pried his eyes open to see the treeman standing tall over him, his branches seeming farther away than the moon. Even from this angle, Dunk could see the creature wince, realising he had said something to spoil the mood.

  “My apologies, mate,” he said. “You seem like a good bloke, and I’m in no hurry to shove you off this mortal coil. I just — well, I haven’t—” He stopped and mulled something over for a moment. “Bollocks. Are you planning to die all at once — together, I mean — or in turns? And is this something I can bloody well lend a hand with?”

  Dunk snorted at this but then realised no one else was laughing along. Embarrassed, he decided he had to do something to set this right. He sprang to his feet to launch himself into an impassioned speech about the sanctity of life, especially among friends, but he tipped over backward again before he could start.

  Edgar caught him in his branches and set him upright. “I’m sorry, mate,” he said. “This is maybe a bit too human for me.”

  “Not at all,” Dunk said. “It’s just, well, we’re not all bent on killing ourselves — despite what it may look like on the gridiron. It’s only Olsen here who’s up for giving that a go, and only because we finally found the one thing that can kill him: the cup.”

  “So you lot, as his friends, risked your lives to be able to help him kill himself?”

  “Actually, we don’t know him all that well. He paid us. With the cup.”

  Edgar shook its upper branches. “I don’t suppose I might ever understand you lot.”

  “This is a rare situation,” Olsen said to the treeman. “Rare situations call for rare solutions.” He looked at the others around him. “And this is about as rare a group of people as you’d ever want to find.”

  A smile burst on the wizard’s face. “And we can’t imagine wanting to leave such rare people behind tonight!”

  A cheer rose, and many glasses clinked together at the announcement.

  “A Blood Bowl team can always use a wizard on its side, Mr. Merlin,” Pegleg said with a grin. “With your kind permission, I’d like to hire you as our full-time consultant on all matters sorcerous, magical, and otherwise unnatural.”

  “Nothing could please us more, chappie, but we don’t need your money.”

  Pegleg’s smile grew wider than ever. “Better yet, Mr. Merlin. Better yet.”

  The wizard leaned over the table and spoke directly into the coach’s face before bursting into uncontrollable laughter. “But I didn’t say I wouldn’t take it!”

  The fact that Pegleg still kept his smile on his face indicated how drunk he must have been, Dunk thought. He knew that money was never a joking matter with the ex-pirate. Perhaps the smile wasn’t as real or as strong now as it had been before, but maybe only because Pegleg knew better than to antagonise a drunken wizard.

  “Now all we need are some more players to fill out our roster,” Slick said.

  Olsen stopped laughing at this. “How many players are you lot shy?”

  “Eleven,” Cavre said. While the blitzer had been drinking with the rest of them, Dunk couldn’t see that he’d suffered from it at all. He was as stoic as ever.

  Dunk wished he could say the same for the team’s other blitzer. M’Grash had washed down their celebratory feast with a personal keg of bitter ale, and now he lay sleeping like an elephant-sized baby curled up under the wide, round table.

  M’Grash made for a friendly drunk at least. Dunk hated to think how bad it would be if strong drink turned the ogre surly instead. The last thing he needed was to spend his nights trying to keep M’Grash from picking a fight. As it was, he often just had to baby-sit as the ogre slept instead.

  “Eleven?” Olsen said. “Gods preserve us.” He looked around the table at the Hackers sitting there. “We just assumed—” He stopped to count the players.

  “Faith. Only five of you here?” The wizard gazed into the eyes of each of the Hackers. Dunk noticed the mirth had left the yard. “You’re all that’s left then?”

  Pegleg grimaced. “The best of the lot too,” he said. “The fittest survived.”

  “Well,” Olsen said, “there’s only one thing for us to do then. We’ll have to find another team to merge with in time for the Far Albion Cup tournament!”

  “Wait.” Pegleg held up his hook to silence the wizard. “We’re in no shape to jump back into the game just like that. The Far Albion Cup tourney starts in less than a week.”

  “Correct,” Cavre said. “We’re out of training, and even if we could manage to find enough players to fill out our roster, we’d never be able to work in enough practices to forge a team that could win a major cup.”

  “But this isn’t a major cup,” Slick said, nodding to Olsen and Simon. “Apologies to our friends from Albion, but the competition here can’t be anything like what we’re used to back home. Even with just five players, we’d probably tear some of these local clubs apart.”

  Simon pounded his glass on the table and spilled his beer as he pushed himself to his unsteady feet. His glassy eyes seemed like they might roll back into his head at any moment, but he still spoke, slurring out his words as best he could. “Now, see here, Mr. Tiny Agent. We may not have the best football players in the world here in Old Blighty, but we’re not nearly so bad as you… Wait… What was I on about?”

  “Cheers!” Dunk shouted, raising his glass.

  “Cheers!” everyone else replied, including Simon, who seemed pleased to
be able to rid his mind of whatever it was that might have been bothering him.

  After everyone had put their drinks back down, Olsen signalled the waitress for another round and said, “Opinions of the relative strength of our local lads aside, you’ll need to fill out the team with some warm bodies at least — or cold if you’d rather line up a willing necromancer. Not our area of expertise, we’re afraid.”

  “He’s right,” said Slick. Even though the halfling stood less than half Dunk’s height and had drunk at least as much as his client, he spoke in a steady voice, his eyes bright and strong. “You have to start the game with at least eleven players. Otherwise, you forfeit automatically.”

  “But where are you going to find any players willing to join a foreign team only days before the tournament starts?” Lästiges said. “Who’d be so foolish?” She made a solid effort at a professional manner, but her hair rested cockeyed on her head from when she’d fallen asleep at the table during the dessert course. Dunk couldn’t wait for her to see the Cabalvision images her camra was recording.

  “I bloody well would!” Edgar said, waving about an empty wooden bowl. He’d been drinking a sweet, fragrant concoction made of warm, fermented maple syrup that Dunk could smell on his breath, even from half a table away.

  “I’d be honoured to be a part of this team,” the treeman said. “I’ve never seen such a great bunch of mates before in my life. If you lot say you can win this bloody game of yours, then I believe you, and I’ll play by your bloody side.”

  Pegleg and Carve looked at each other for a moment. Cavre hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. The coach shot to his feet, then, and raised his glass for another toast.

  “Well, lads, here’s to Edgar!” Pegleg said. “A finer team-mate you could never want.”

  Those able to stand did so and joined the ex-pirate in his cheers. Dunk looked over at Edgar, who jumped for sheer joy, and smiled. He’d already come to like the treeman a lot, and he could see how he would be a huge asset for the team. Even if Edgar had never played a game of Blood Bowl in his life, size and speed like his had to be good for something.

  Sticky tears of sap rolled out of Edgar’s great, green eyes. “I’ve never been so — Whoa!”

  As the treeman leaped once more, he landed off-balance and tipped over backwards. He seemed to fall in slow motion, as if the leaves in his upper branches dragged through the air like it was water. He came down flat on his back with a resounding thud that Dunk felt all the way through to his teeth.

  Dunk leapt up on to the table to get a better view of the treeman where he lay. He couldn’t tell if Edgar was breathing or not. Nor, he realised, did he know if Edgar ever breathed.

  “Are you all right, Edgar?” Dunk asked.

  “All right?” the treeman said. “I’m bloody better than ‘all right’, mate! I’m a bloody Bad Bay Hacker!”

  * * * * *

  “Rise and shine, son!”

  Dunk wanted to pry open his eyes, but the pounding in his head told him that if he tried the sun would kill him by frying holes through his retinas that would burn through his brain and burst out the backside of his skull.

  “Go away,” he murmured. He wanted to shout at the intruder, but he couldn’t muster the energy to speak so loudly, sure that it would shatter his eardrums if he tried.

  “Come now, Dunk. It’s past noon. Time to get a move on.”

  It was Slick’s voice, but Dunk didn’t believe the halfling could ever be so cruel to him. It had to be an impostor, an evil doppelganger who had taken Slick’s place in order to alienate all of his friends with his inhuman deviltry. Either that, or Dunk was going to need another agent when he recovered from this, as such a horrible act of intrusion was unforgivable.

  “Here, son,” Slick said, as he helped Dunk sit up. “Drink this.” The halfling shoved a mug of something hot into his client’s hands.

  The room spun around Dunk as he struggled to keep his back to the wall behind him. He put out a hand, trying to keep himself from tumbling from the bed beneath him. As he veered to the left, a bit of the scalding liquid spilled from the cup and landed on his lap.

  That woke him right up.

  “Yowch!” Dunk shouted, flinging off the wet sheet over him as his eyes flew open. The pain from the light stabbing into his eyes made them flinch closed again, and only his newfound respect for whatever it was in his mug made him careful enough to keep it from spilling on him again.

  “For Nuffle’s sake, can you keep it down!”

  The voice next to him belonged to a woman. It was close, perhaps sitting in a chair at the side of the bed. Dunk reached out his free hand to push the woman away, but she wasn’t where he expected her to be. He let his hand fall, and it landed on her breast.

  “Hey!” the voice said. Her voice, Dunk realised, recognising it at last: Lästiges’ voice.

  “Gah!” Dunk leapt from the bed, flinging his eyes open again, even as he held the burning mug of liquid in both hands out of respect for the damage he knew it could do. Once he was standing, he looked down past the mug and spotted Lästiges’ form in the bed, huddled under the dry part of the sheet with only her head and her unkempt hair sticking out.

  “No, no, no!” Dunk said, the shock at what he saw causing him to forget for a moment the pain pounding in his temples. “How drunk can a man get?”

  “Oh, you’re no catch either, I’m sure,” Lästiges said as she wrested open her own bloodshot eyes. “Don’t you—” Her eyes caught Dunk’s and locked there in sheer terror.

  Lästiges screamed.

  Dunk screamed.

  Slick screamed too. Then he started to laugh.

  “I don’t see what’s so damn funny,” Dunk said.

  “Perhaps he got a good look at your—” Lästiges started. “Wait. You’re still in your clothes.” She pulled down the sheet covering her and looked at herself.

  “So are you,” Dunk said. Relief washed over him, with a wave of nausea quick on its heels. He staggered backward, and Slick guided him into a nearby chair.

  “So we didn’t…” Lästiges said.

  “No, no, no,” Dunk said, smiling despite the fact his shrivelled brain seemed to be trying to force itself out either of his ears.

  “You don’t have to be so relieved about it,” the reporter said. Her camra rose from its resting spot near the door and began to hover near her again.

  “It seems not even your daemon-infested device there could bring itself to bear witness to that potential horror,” Slick said. Lästiges whipped a pillow at his face, but he neatly caught it.

  “Drink that,” the halfling said to Dunk. “It’s from Olsen.”

  The thrower sniffed at the steaming mug in his hands as he wondered how he could hope to swallow something so hot. It smelled like week-old pig vomit.

  “Something to put me out of my misery?”

  Slick grinned. “One way or the other. It’s safe. I had one earlier myself.”

  Dunk blew out a long sigh, and then tossed the drink back, swallowing it in one huge gulp. The hot liquid scorched him straight down his gullet and into his belly, where it seemed to take on a life of its own. He could feel it growling around in his stomach like a trapped badger trying to figure out the best route by which to claw its way free.

  Dunk leaned over and put his head between his knees. He thought if he could just let loose the contents of his stomach, he’d feel much better, but he couldn’t make it happen. Instead, after a moment he got tired of trying and sat back up.

  “Hey,” Dunk said, “my head doesn’t feel like an overripe melon any more. And I can feel my tongue again.”

  “See,” Slick said.

  Dunk rolled his tongue around in his mouth and then made a horrified face.

  “Olsen tells me that the taste should go away in a day or three.” Slick shrugged up at the thrower.

  “I need something to eat,” Dunk said. “Anything.”

  “It doesn’t help,” Slick said, patting his b
ulging belly. “Believe me, son, I’ve tried.”

  “Do you have any more of that junk?” Lästiges said, rolling out of the bed.

  Dunk noticed that she still had on every bit of her clothing from the night before, right down to her shoes. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. He couldn’t imagine cheating on Spinne, as much as he loved her, but to do so with his brother’s girlfriend would have been even worse.

  “Olsen has a kettle of it in the main room,” Slick said. “I’d have brought you a cup if I’d known you were — Ah, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  Lästiges spat a bitter “Thanks” at the halfling, and then scurried from the room.

  Dunk remained silent for a moment after watching her go. “What happened last night?” he finally asked.

  “We all had a little too much to drink last night, son,” Slick said. “All right: a lot. The last I saw of you, you had offered to escort that girl back to her room in a valiant effort to protect the honour of your brother’s girlfriend.” He chuckled. “A fool’s errand if ever there was.”

  “Fortunately, nothing happened. We must have just passed out here together.”

  “Sure,” Slick said. “Unless, of course, you managed to get your clothes back on after drunkenly violating the trust of your respective lovers.”

  Dunk gave the halfling a sidelong glance. “You can’t be serious.”

  Slick shook his head. “No, I’m not, but Pegleg is. He sent me to find you for the team meeting.”

  “What team meeting?”

  “The one to meet your new team-mates.”

  Dunk stared at the bed in the corner of the room. It called like a siren, offering the one thing he still wanted after that foul drink: the oblivion of a good, long rest. “I’ve already met Edgar,” he said.

  Slick frowned. “Not him, son. The others.”

  “Others?”

  The halfling beckoned for Dunk to follow him as he strode out the door. “Come and see,” he said.

  14

  “You must be Dunkel Hoffnung,” the man in the black clothes said as he extended his hand in greeting to the thrower when he entered the pub’s courtyard. It looked far bleaker in the midday sun than it had the night before. “A pleasure. I am Bavid Deckem.”