[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Then Cavre kicked the ball over the heads of most of the Kickers, and the game started up again.

  The rest of the game was a blur for Dunk, who spent most of his time trying to avoid getting killed by the Kickers. The shock of losing so many of their players wore off fast, it seemed, and now they were determined to inflict even greater losses on the Hackers. Most of the players completely ignored the ball, setting out to break some bones instead.

  “I’m going to tear off your arms!” a Kicker snarled at Dunk after planting a snap-kick straight into the thrower’s gut. Lying on the Astrogranite, gasping for breath, Dunk realised there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop the Kicker from making good on his pledge.

  Then Shelley smashed into the Kicker from behind and laid him out flat. They landed next to Dunk, close enough so he could feel the ground shake from their impact. The Kicker’s helmet came off and dribbled away across the field, exposing him as a thick-cut man with short-cropped, dark hair and a series of scars on his face that made his face look more like a treeman’s than a human’s.

  The Kicker reached back, grabbed Shelley by the arm, and pulled. The limb separated at the elbow once again, and the Kicker found himself holding Shelley’s forearm in his fist. He screamed at the sight of the amputated arm before he dropped it and tried to scramble away.

  Dunk saw that the arm had torn stitches running all the way around its elbow end. Stranger yet, while he’d expected to see blood pouring from the end of it, there was not a single drop.

  Shelley picked up his forearm in his other hand and smashed it down on the Kicker’s helmet like a hammer. The Kicker screamed in horror until Shelley smashed him with the loose arm again. It must have been like bringing a hammer down on the Kicker’s skull. After the second blow, he fell silent, but Shelley kept beating the Kicker’s face into a bloody mess. The whole time, he never said a word.

  Jotson’s voice kept up a steady commentary on the action, though it didn’t seem to all be happening in front of Dunk.

  “By all the stones in the henge, that’s some serious killing going on down there. I haven’t seen this kind of mayhem since — well, since last week, at least! Have you ever witnessed a tougher team than these Hackers? Shelley there is beating Percy to death with his own arm! That’s one way to give a man a hand — into the grave!

  “Of course, Stevenson’s having his way with Silver on the other end of the field. He seems to be under the mistaken impression that Silver’s head is the ball, as he’s taken to spiking it in the end zone. Sorry, friend, but that’s not going to score points with anyone but the fans!

  “At midfield, it’s Dickens and Swift having a go at Bantam, pulling his legs apart and cracking him like he was a wishbone. The Kickers can only wonder if the referee got a premium price for self-induced blindness during this game or if the Hackers robbed him as well!”

  Something black and white and red all over came spinning through the air at Dunk. At first, he thought it might be the football, which he’d lost track of, and he threw up his hands to catch it. Then he noticed its strange colours, and he dodged out of the way instead. More than one Blood Bowl player had reflexively caught a bomb when he thought it was the game ball, and Dunk wasn’t about to make the same mistake as Stumpy Kajowski.

  The “ball” sailed over Dunk’s head and bounced three times before rolling to a rest on the Astrogranite behind him. When it came to a stop, he saw it for what it was: a human head wearing a black-and-white striped cap.

  Dunk stared back down the field from where the head had come and spotted Simon standing over the referee’s decapitated corpse, an insane grin on his face. The catcher’s eyes flashed red at Dunk before he trotted away down the field.

  “It looks like… It could be… Yes! He could… go… all… the… way!” Jotson’s voice shouted. “Touchdown, Hackers!”

  The crowd roared, although whether with outrage or delight, Dunk couldn’t tell. He was just thankful that the action had stopped for a moment and he could get his bearings again.

  “Who scored that?” Dunk asked as he ran back over to the Hackers’ bench.

  “Deckem certainly hasn’t lost any of his panache,” Jotson said. “It’s good to have him back out of retirement. I knew that fatal injury of his wouldn’t keep him down!”

  Dunk glanced back at the Jumboball to see an instant replay of the score. In the huge image, Deckem sprinted toward the goal line, the football tucked under his arm. As he neared the end zone, a large Kicker stepped between him and the goal. Deckem stuck out his arm and drove it into the Kicker’s chest as he shoved him back over the plane of the goal line.

  In the image, the crowd in the end zone seats behind Deckem went nuts. The new Hacker stood over the unconscious Kicker’s form and hurled the ball up toward the cheap seats. Then he threw something else that landed even further up into the stands. A fight broke out in both locations as the fans trampled each other for a chance to claim Deckem’s discarded prizes.

  “Good work, Mr. Deckem!” Pegleg said. “We’re up two to nothing, and it’s only halfway through the first half Dunk turned to see Deckem trotting up behind him, still waving at the wild, adoring crowd. His hands were covered in blood, but not a drop of sweat marred his smooth, pale brow.

  “Thanks, coach,” Deckem said with a smile. “I don’t believe in toying with my prey. It’s an act of mercy to end things as soon as possible.”

  “Great Nuffle’s cooler of Hater-Aid!” Jotson said. “Do you see what that second present Deckem sent to his fans is?”

  The image on the Jumboball zoomed in tight on a tattooed dwarf with a bright-orange mohawk and more piercings than an archery target. He roared in triumph as he smashed aside the other treasure-hunters and thrust his prize aloft in a bloodied fist.

  It was a battered human heart, still beating from the looks of it.

  “Crikey! I have ten quid that says that ends up on B-BA tonight and fetches a princely sum!”

  “Bee-bay?” M’Grash said, scratching his head.

  “The Blood Bowl Auction network,” Slick said. The halfling stood on the end of the Hackers’ bench, looking up at the Jumboball too.

  “Yessir! Who wouldn’t want to have that up on their mantel?” Jotson asked. “But wait!”

  The camra panned over to show a force of blue-uniformed knights in blood-spattered armour slashing their way through the crowd. Most of the fans parted before their wedge formation, and those that didn’t tasted the knights’ steel.

  “It looks like the Kickers have sent their cheerleaders into the stands to get that vital part of Hartshorn’s anatomy back. With luck, their team apothecary will be able to get it back into him in time!”

  The dwarf clambered up on the shoulders of a nearby fan and held the heart aloft again, defying the armoured cheerleaders, daring them to take it from him. The crowd growled in anticipation of the coming fight, and the cheerleaders marched on undeterred by the dwarf’s antics.

  Just as the knights reached the dwarf, he tossed the heart back to a tall, thin, dark-haired man standing behind him, and then launched himself into the knights. Spreading his compact form out as much as he could, he bowled over the front two ranks of the knights. They might have all gone over if the crowd rushing in behind them hadn’t been forced to hold them up for fear of being crushed themselves.

  The man with the heart bobbled it for a moment, and then caught it tight. As he did, one of the cheerleaders broke free from the dwarf and pointed her sword straight at the man’s neck. Terrified, the man pitched the heart farther up into the stands and then dived down over the gawkers standing below him.

  The fans below caught the man and started to pass him toward the exit, overjoyed at the chance to foil the cheerleaders’ efforts. At the same time, the fan who caught the slippery heart hurled it counterclockwise along the stands, straight into another section. The crowd cheered, and the noise went up time and again as fan after fan who found himself holding the heart tossed it on again.r />
  Dunk stared at Deckem in disgust as the man grinned up at the images on the Jumboball. “You would rip out a man’s heart just to score a touchdown?” Dunk asked. “He couldn’t have stopped you anyway. You didn’t have to kill him. What kind of player would do that?”

  Deckem turned and looked the thrower straight in the eyes. The smile had left his face. “A winner,” he said before he turned and headed for the locker room.

  * * * * *

  “Those guys scare me,” Dunk said before he took another pull from his ale.

  “You’re not the only one,” Slick said, gazing around the cosy pub — a well-appointed place called the Cock and Bull — every inch of which seemed panelled in dark, rich woods. “I’ve never seen so many people blow off a victory dinner as I did tonight. I poked my nose into the dining room at the inn, and the only ones there were Pegleg, Cavre, and Deckem and his four stooges.”

  “Not even Simon?” Dunk rubbed his chin as he gazed around the room. One of the first things he’d noticed about the place was that it had no Cabalvision. That alone had been enough to recommend the place. Dunk didn’t feel like sitting though endless replays and joking commentary about that afternoon’s game — or ‘wholesale massacre’, as one of the BBC anchors had called it. “I thought for sure he’d be whooping it up with his fellow countrymen.”

  “Maybe he has other friends in town, folks who aren’t so murderous.”

  “We won, didn’t we?” Dunk said. He waved for another beer, even as he polished off the one in his hand. “Isn’t that what it’s all about? Win the tournament, grab the prize? The wealth of kings and the adulation of the fans?”

  Slick nodded slowly, as if trying to convince himself of Dunk’s words. “That’s the standard story, son, the one we all try to sell ourselves. Sad thing, isn’t it, that it so rarely turns out that way?”

  Dunk narrowed his eyes at the halfling for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s all just a big fairy tale, isn’t it?” Slick leaned back in his chair, which was much too large for him, forcing him to bring his legs up so that his feet hung out over the edge of the seat. “I mean, how many Blood Bowl teams are there?”

  Dunk shook his head. He had no idea. “Dozens?”

  “More like hundreds if you count all those local club teams full of amateurs who play for the ‘fun’ of it.”

  Dunk accepted his next beer from the barmaid, a pretty, blonde woman dressed in a farm girl’s clothes.

  “Thanks,” Dunk said. “Cheers, I mean.”

  The barmaid smiled. “You’re not from around these parts, are you, love?”

  Dunk shook his head, his thoughts drawn to the people back home he missed most: Spinne and his brother Dirk.

  “Business or pleasure?” she asked.

  “A bit of both,” Dunk said. “We’re here for the tournament.”

  “Cor blimey,” the woman said, her blue eyes sparkling. “It’s been a cracking good tourney so far, hasn’t it? That game this afternoon? What a bleeding bloodbath.”

  Dunk’s face froze. “You like that sort of thing?”

  The barmaid stuck out her bottom lip as she considered the question. “I dunno, really. I don’t normally care much for Blood Bowl. Too much going on, if you ask me. I’m more of a real football fan myself.”

  “But you watched that ‘bloodbath’ this afternoon?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I caught the replay on the chryssy. Just the highlights.”

  “That’s all you care for?”

  “Well, I know there’s a lot more to the game than fighting and killing, but that’s all over my head, innit? It’s like when you watch the chariot races. The only part anyone cares about are the crashes.”

  Dunk hoisted his beer to the woman and said, “Cheers.” She wandered off to find others in need of drink.

  What the woman had said crawled around in Dunk’s guts like a long-tailed rat. He knew all that most of the fans cared about was action, but were people really that bloodthirsty? Could they ignore the fact that real people were killed in front of them? And that they cheered to see it?

  “What were you saying?” Dunk said to Slick.

  “There are hundreds of Blood Bowl teams out there. Thousands of players. How many of them can be winners?”

  “About half of them, every week,” Dunk said.

  “No, no, no, son. I’m talking about real winners. How many can win one of the four major tournaments? How many have any kind of a shot at playing in the Blood Bowl, much less winning the trophy? Just a handful of teams.”

  Slick moved forward in the chair until his legs dangled over the edge. As he spoke, he gestured with his hands to punctuate his points, warming to his subject. “Maybe a dozen teams have a shot at the title every year — probably less than that. But how many of those teams think they’re in that top dozen?”

  Dunk shrugged.

  “Dozens more. Maybe even hundreds. Half of the teams out there, at least. They think they can win it all, and they’re dead wrong. Just ask the Gobbo next time you see him. Ask him how many teams have odds to win the title that are in the single digits.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll see him again if I keep hanging out with you.” Dunk thought back to how the halfling had tried to beat the bookie up back in Magritta, and a smile flitted across his face. He washed it down with another swig of his beer.

  Slick rolled his eyes. “The point here — and I do have one, son — is that most Blood Bowl players spend their entire career chasing after a dream they have no real chance of achieving. They’d be better off shopping around for headstones instead. They’re about ten times more likely to need one of those rather than a free spot on their hand for a championship ring.”

  Dunk nodded, and Slick fell silent. They both worked at their beers for a moment, neither of them wanting to speak before the other. Finally, Dunk gave in.

  “Are you telling me to quit?”

  Slick looked across the table toward Dunk, a sad frown on his face. “You’re a big boy,” the halfling said. “I can’t tell you to do anything. Hell, I’m not sure what I want you to do myself. We’ve had a great ride with the Hackers over the past year. That bonus cheque we got at the end of the last season put quite a few good pies in me.”

  Slick rubbed his belly at that thought. “But money’s no good to someone who’s too dead to spend it.”

  Dunk took another pull at his beer and considered this. After a while, he shook his head. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t leave the team.”

  “Why not?” The halfling asked the question as if he wanted to know what Dunk wanted for dinner.

  “What would the team do without me?” Dunk said. “They wouldn’t have enough players to play. They’d have to forfeit.”

  Slick snapped his fingers. “You’d be replaced like that. There are always people desperate to get on to a decent Blood Bowl team. Just look at Deckem and his friends. Pegleg didn’t even have to go looking for them. They came hunting for him.”

  “But they’re my friends,” Dunk said. “What about Cavre or Simon or Guillermo or M’Grash? I can’t leave them to fend for themselves.”

  “Why not? They were there before you came around, and they’ll manage well enough after you leave.

  “What’s the first thing I told you about Blood Bowl?” Slick said.

  Dunk had to think back about that one. “When someone offers you a contract, get it in writing?”

  “Yes! But that’s not what I meant. What else?”

  “Never shower with an orc?”

  Slick nodded. “That’s a good one too, but it’s not what I meant. What else?”

  “It’s only a foul if the ref sees it?”

  “Wow, son. I am a positive fount of wisdom, but that’s—” The halfling raised his hands to cut Dunk off. “Here it is, the relevant secret: Never make friends with the other players.”

  “What?” Dunk said.

  “You never know when you might ge
t traded or released. The people you’re playing alongside this week could be your mortal foes the next. Don’t get too attached to any particular team because you might find yourself having to play against them next week.”

  “You never said that,” Dunk said.

  Slick squinted at his client. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm,” Slick said. “Well it’s good advice no matter when you get it. Sorry I skipped over it the first time around.”

  “I think you’re making things up as you go along.”

  The halfling grinned up at the young man. “You know, for a Blood Bowl player, you’re pretty smart.”

  “Such faint praise,” Dunk said.

  “Hey, I can only work with what you give me. I’m an agent, not a miracle worker — your career rocketing toward the top aside.”

  “I thought I was responsible for that.”

  “See, son,” Slick said, reaching out a hand to pat Dunk’s arm. “That just goes to show how little it is you know.”

  Dunk smirked. “Thankfully I have you to watch out for me.”

  “I think you could do better than that.” Deckem stepped around a pillar of polished wood. “A player of your talents deserves a first-rate agent.”

  Slick stood up on his chair. “They don’t get any better, pal!”

  Deckem smiled at the halfling, and then pointedly ignored him. “You are a fine player, Mr. Hoffnung. I admire your skills on the field. Even if they aren’t as refined as my own, you have a great deal of natural talent for the game.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Dunk said, picking his words with care.

  “I’d encourage you to stick around,” Deckem said. “As Mr. Fullbelly points out, you could be replaced, but I don’t think that would be in the best interests of the team. The more original Hackers on the team, the better. From a marketing point of view, at least. Otherwise, we become just another FA League team rather than the newest kids on the block. There is some mileage to be extracted from that if we are willing to squeeze hard enough.”