[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “They only have five stations?” Slick had said, stunned. “How do they sell anything around here?”

  “And two of them are owned by the King: BBC 1 and BBC 2. Then there’s also the Itinerant Telepathic Visionaries network, and the innovatively named channels Four and Five. I’ve been on each of them twice already, and I’ll go back for another round just before game time.”

  “How many of them will show the game?” Dunk had asked.

  “All of them.”

  “All of them?”

  “You think there’s anything better to watch on a Sunday afternoon around here?”

  At the time, Dunk had felt some strange sense of pride that the entire nation would tune in at once to watch the Hackers play in the Far Albion Cup final, even if he wouldn’t be on the field. Now, the idea of an entire nation so fully focused on the game that there weren’t any other activities scheduled for the day bothered him — especially given what he and his fellow ex-Hackers had planned.

  Security around the game had been tight, but the guards — stuffy looking men in red uniforms and tall, furry, black hats — had recognised Dunk and the others as members of the team and waved them on through the gates. At Slick’s insistence, they’d waited until just after the opening kick-off to get to the stadium, ensuring that Pegleg and his new-version Hackers would be out on the field when they arrived.

  As predicted, the locker room lay empty, not even a straggling reporter poking through the team’s gear skulking about. Everyone knew the big story was out on the field. Everyone but Dunk and his friends.

  Slick strode into the room first, scouting ahead. When he signalled the all-clear, the rest tumbled in after him: first Dunk, then M’Grash, Simon, and Guillermo, with Edgar — bowing over the best he could to fit through the doorway — shuffling in at the rear.

  “So,” Dunk said, “where is it?”

  Slick scurried about the place, peering into every nook and cranny he could find. “Olsen said he’d leave the cup in his locker, but it’s not there.” The halfling pointed over at a red door left flung open in the far corner of the room.

  Indecipherable runes etched in gold, silver, and other, nameless inks glowed softly on the inside of the door and throughout the interior of the locker. Even in the dim light from the sigils, Dunk could see the locker stood empty. There wasn’t even a bit of dust inside the thing.

  “Isn’t that just the way of things, lads?” Simon said, shaking his head.

  Guillermo frowned, and Dunk noticed the man shiver. “Then where bloody is it?” he snapped.

  Edgar snorted. “You can’t use ‘bloody’ like that,” he said. “It’s an adjective, not an adverb, except in some unique circumstances.”

  “You can bloody well shut your mouth,” Simon said.

  “Ah,” Edgar said with a laugh, “like that.”

  “Olsen must not have been able to leave the cup behind,” Slick said. “Maybe Pegleg guessed what he might be up to and decided to put it under lock and key instead.”

  “Would that work?” Dunk asked. “Doesn’t it have to be with Pegleg for the Hackers to always win?”

  “Do I look like a wizard?” the halfling said. “It’s magic, son. It works like it wants to work.”

  “Besides which,” Edgar said, “with the way Deckem and his bloody deadmen are playing, who needs the bloody cup to assure a win?”

  “Maybe that’s how the legend manifests itself every time,” Dunk said. “We don’t know. We should have asked Olsen more questions.”

  “What would you like to know?” the wizard said as he entered through the tunnel that led underground to the Hackers’ dugout.

  “Where did Merlin put the shiny cup?” M’Grash said, looming over the wizard. The ogre looked ready to hunt through Olsen’s entrails for whatever clues he could find.

  The wizard put a hand to mollify the ogre, but M’Grash took this as a threat. His meaty hand lashed out and wrapped around Olsen’s neck. As the wizard clawed at the ogre’s fingers, trying to pry them from his throat, M’Grash hauled the wizard up to his level so he could talk straight into his face.

  “Where is the cup?” M’Grash demanded.

  Olsen’s feet kicked in the air below him as he struggled to maintain consciousness. He gurgled out a few syllables, but words were beyond him.

  “Put him down, M’Grash,” Dunk said carefully. “He can’t talk like that, and he’s no good to anyone dead.”

  Dunk caught Olsen in his arms as the ogre dropped him. “I’m sorry about that,” the thrower said as the wizard gasped fresh air into his lungs. “He’s a little on edge about stealing the cup from Pegleg.”

  “That’s bloody true of us all,” Edgar said, his leaves trembling as he spoke. “Crikey, betraying your bloody coach isn’t something any footballer should do lightly.”

  “We’re not betraying him,” Dunk said, setting Olsen down to sit on a nearby bench. “We’re saving the team — for him.”

  “You think Pegleg would see it that way, son?” Slick asked. Olsen bent over double and sounded as if he meant to hack up a lung or two.

  Dunk frowned as he checked to make sure that the wizard would survive M’Grash’s interrogation. “He will — eventually.”

  Finished clearing his throat, Olsen sat back up with a wry smile on his face. “You may get your chance to find out, lad. Your good coach stripped me of the responsibility of keeping watch over the cup. Apparently he feels I’ll be far more useful to his cause if I spend my time zapping some of those poor, damn Royals off the pitch.”

  “The deadmen haven’t killed them yet?” Slick asked.

  Olsen shook his head. “They watched the DVDs of the last two games. Those Daemonic Visual Displays are bloody amazing, and they come out so fast these days. Anyways, their coach came up with a strategy to beat savage murderers like the deadmen.”

  “And this strategy, it works?” Guillermo asked.

  “So far. They haven’t scored yet, but they’re not dead either. They just flee whenever any of the deadmen get close to them, and they throw the ball forward as best they can.

  “Sadly, the Royals aren’t well known for their passing game. They tend to drop as many balls as they catch.”

  “So,” Dunk said, trying to steer the conversation back to what they needed to know, “where’s the cup?”

  “Pegleg has it sitting next to him in the Hackers’ dugout.” The wizard sighed. “He’s planning to give it back to the Far Albion League at halftime.”

  “What?” the others in the room all said.

  “He believes that the team that controls the cup can’t be beaten, right?”

  The others nodded.

  “Well, if the cup goes back to being the Far Albion Cup’s travelling trophy, the Hackers get it right back. Legitimately too. And once that happens, the Hackers will never lose. They’ll always get the cup back every year.”

  “That’s insane,” Dunk said. “The legend can’t be true then. Otherwise, how would the Orcland Raiders ever have been able to win the trophy? Whoever had it before them would never have lost it.”

  “Ah,” Olsen said ruefully. “Here’s where Pegleg’s plan breaks down, just as it did for the Royals, who had it before the Raiders took it. You can only win the tournament if you show up to play. The Raiders made sure that the Royals never made it to the final game. Those damned orcs won the game by forfeit.

  “It’s hard to stop a team full of deadmen, though. If someone kills most of your team, you just conjure up a fistful more, and you’re ready to go. They don’t even have to be good players, right? You’ve got the cup, you don’t really care about skills any more.”

  “We have to get that cup,” Dunk said. “How much time do we have?”

  “And there’s the two-minute warning!” Mon Jotson’s voice said. “This is the first time the Hackers have made it to one of these in a Far Albion Cup game!”

  The crowd booed louder than ever.

  “No time, son,” Slick said
. “No time at all.”

  Dunk raced down the tunnel to the Hackers’ dugout. He had no sort of plan in his head. He only knew that he needed to act, and now. He heard the others hot on his heels, including the thumping tromps of M’Grash and the scraping branches of Edgar as they forced their way through the too-small space. He hoped that the noise of the crowd’s disapproval would be enough to mask their approach from Pegleg and Deckem, but he had little choice but to proceed either way.

  When Dunk reached the end of the tunnel, he held up a hand to signal the others to stop, and he peered around the corner of the portal. To Dunk’s relief, only Pegleg stood there in the dugout. The ex-pirate glared out across the gridiron, leaning on his wooden leg and tapping his booted toes against the cut-stone floor. Something sat on the bench behind him, wrapped in a burlap sack. From the size and shape of the thing, Dunk knew it could only be the Far Albion Cup.

  “I’ll get it,” Slick whispered.

  Dunk glanced down to see the halfling peering around his leg, staring hard at the cup.

  “Are you nuts?” Dunk asked. “If he sees you, he’ll gut you on the spot.”

  “Shh,” Slick said. “I’m a halfling. This is the kind of thing we do.” With that, the agent slipped past Dunk before the thrower could reach out to stop him.

  Slick padded toward Pegleg, silent and smooth, and Dunk briefly wondered if Slogo Fullbelly had earned his nickname from his reputation as an agent or a thief.

  For a moment, Dunk turned his attention to the field. Out there, he saw Deckem with his arms out, palms up, raising them up and down, exhorting the fans to be louder than ever. They obliged him by hissing and booing with insane fervour and tossing larger and larger things on to the field. A large chunk of a wooden bleacher seat — half of a long log cut lengthwise — bounced off the top of the dugout and rolled into the field in front of Pegleg, but the coach ignored it, steadfast as a sea captain sailing into a coming storm.

  Dunk tensed for a moment, fearful that Pegleg might turn and see him in the darkened rear of the dugout, but the ex-pirate’s gaze never wavered from the gridiron. Out there, Deckem continued to incite the crowd to an insane pitch as his deadmen trotted in circles around him. Some of them picked up the detritus the fans had thrown at them and hurled them back into the stands, where the tight packing of the fans guaranteed the junk would hit somebody.

  Meanwhile, the Hackers’ apothecary stood amid it all, stitching one of the deadmen — Dunk recognised him as Swift — back together. He’d somehow lost an arm, but it didn’t bother him at all as the healer darned it back on to him with a thick, black thread.

  Dunk understood Deckem’s intentions. He wanted the field to be such a terrifying place that the Royals would refuse to go back on to it. No living creature in its right mind would want to dive into such a maelstrom, but few would accuse any Blood Bowl player of being entirely sane under even the best of circumstances. In his heart, Dunk rooted for the Royals to stand up to Deckem’s attempt to intimidate them, no matter how foolhardy it might seem.

  The crouched-over Slick reached out and put his hand on the sack-covered cup. He followed it with another. Then he wrapped his arms around the cup, cradling it from underneath its bowl and slowly stood up to his full height.

  Despite the roaring noise outside the dugout, when Pegleg spoke, his voice seemed to cut through it all. “What, Mr. Fullbelly, do you think you are doing?”

  Slick looked up at the coach, who still hadn’t torn his gaze away from the field. He shivered, but he did not drop the cup. Instead, he took one step backward, carrying the big burlap sack in his arms.

  “Just thought she needed a little polishing, Pegleg,” the halfling said. “You can’t give it back to the league officials with it all dirty like this.”

  “Your concern is touching, Mr. Fullbelly.” Pegleg’s hook lashed out and pierced the top of the sack. Once the canvas was securely snarled in the hook, the ex-pirate turned about to stare into the halfling’s eyes. “But that won’t be necessary.”

  “Listen, my old friend,” Slick said. “We’re here to help you. This cup of yours, it’s evil through and through.”

  “Winning is never evil,” Pegleg said. “Not in Blood Bowl. Not in life.”

  “You see?” Slick said. “That’s just what I’m talking about. It’s already got its hooks in you. You’re a tough coach and a good one, one of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I’ve known you for years, and I consider you not just a patriarch of the game but a good friend. Winning might have always been important to you on the field, but you’ve always been able to leave it there, on the field, when the game was over.”

  Pegleg scowled. “So you say. I was raised to be a gentleman, but this is not a gentleman’s game. Still, I deported myself as best I could given my current vocation. And what did I get for my troubles?”

  Slick shook his head, his mouth open but silent as he gaped up at the coach.

  “Nothing. Unless you count poverty, hardship, and a bleeding ulcer. But I coached the way I wanted to, the way I thought I should, no matter how horrible the insults visited upon my team, no matter how many of them were murdered as I sat on the sidelines here and watched, helpless to do anything to stop it.

  “And what did I get for that? The admiration of my peers? The accolades of the fans? The respect of our so-called reporters?”

  Pegleg sneered down at the speechless halfling. “No. None of that. Not one whit. Instead, we — me and my team — were branded losers. Losers! They laughed at us.”

  Slick glanced out at the field, and Pegleg followed his gaze. “Well,” the halfling said, having to shout to be heard over the noise, “no one’s laughing now.”

  Pegleg nodded at this. “I know. And, Mr. Fullbelly, it’s about damned time.” Then he pulled the cup from the halfling’s arms and set it down on the floor next to him. Once it was safely down, he freed his hook and brought it around to bear on Slick, who cowered from it as it glinted in the light.

  “You can’t do this,” the halfling said. “We only came here to help!”

  “We?” The coach turned toward the entrance to the tunnel toward the Hackers’ locker room and spied Dunk peering around the corner. He coughed out a bitter laugh and beckoned toward the thrower with his hook.

  “Come, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said. “Why don’t you join our conversation? I confess I’m learning a great deal about my so-called friends.”

  Dunk stepped forward out of the tunnel, and the others emerged one by one behind him. Edgar stopped only halfway into the dugout, and even then his top branches nearly jutted out past the shelter’s protective roof.

  “So this is how it is,” said Pegleg as he watched his former players join Dunk and stand behind him. “This is gratitude for you. After everything I’ve done for you.”

  “Like fire us?” Dunk said. “All of us? Come on, coach. Can’t you see this is not like you? When have you ever fired a player before?”

  Simon nodded. “You always said firing was too good for me. It was worse punishment to keep me on the team.”

  Pegleg smirked at this. “That way you might actually get the beating you deserved, Mr. Sherwood.” He scowled again. “But I grew tired of waiting for that. Better to cut you loose — to cut you all loose — and start over again.”

  “Not all of us, coach,” a voice shouted out.

  Everyone’s head turned to see Cavre step into the dugout from the end nearest Pegleg. The star blitzer doffed his helmet and tossed it down on the bench with practiced ease. He wore a look of raw determination on his face. Dunk had seen this on the field many times, but never off, where Cavre’s natural stoicism had become the stuff of legend. The fires in this man’s soul burned hot, but he had kept them focused on the game — until now.

  “I’m still here,” Cavre said, struggling to keep the anger from his voice. “I’ve always been here. I’ve been with this team since I first played the game, and I’d always hoped they would bury me i
n my Hackers uniform. But not anymore.”

  “Hold your tongue, Mr. Cavre!” Pegleg snarled at the blitzer, but Dunk could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Here was a “betrayal” from the one corner he’d never allowed himself to consider.

  Pegleg’s eyes flitted from Cavre to the others, then back again. Dunk felt he could read the coach’s thoughts, so clearly did he wear them on his troubled face. If Cavre stood against him with the others, then perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps there was something to all this balderdash about the cup.

  “No!” Pegleg growled. “I won’t let this happen! I’m so close! I’m about to win the whole damn thing!”

  “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, coach,” M’Grash said hopefully.

  “Arrgh!” the ex-pirate said. “Who’s been filling your empty head with such banalities, Mr. K’Thragsh? There’s no ‘we’ in ‘team’, either! In fact, the damned word lacks an entire twenty-two letters from the alphabet, and none of them matter one damned bit!”

  “There’s no ‘we’ in this team any longer,” Cavre said, pulling off his jersey. He wadded it up into a ball and threw it at Pegleg’s feet. “Good luck with your new players, Captain Haken.”

  Cavre shouldered his way past Pegleg and made for the exit tunnel. As he reached its portal, the coach called out after him.

  “Wait!” Pegleg said. As a man who’d cultivated the image of a pirate legend he’d always taken great care with his grooming. Dunk had rarely seen him with a hair out of place. Now, though, the man looked dishevelled, rumpled even, and a dozen years older.

  The coach looked down at the cup, which had somehow managed to find itself in Slick’s arms again. The halfling flashed his most innocent smile up at the ex-pirate, fooling no one for even an instant. Pegleg ignored the gesture and reached down and tapped the cup with the curve of his hook.

  “Get rid of it,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with raw emotion.

  “What, coach?” M’Grash asked, cupping his massive ear in an effort to hear Pegleg over the still-roaring crowd.

  “Take the cup,” the coach said, louder and more forcefully now. “Take it and dispose of it. Do what you must.”