“Did anyone touch them?” Dunk asked.
“Just my frying pan,” Guillermo said, pointing at the weapon he’d tossed into the crackling fire, along with another log. “They did not put a finger on me.”
Slick nodded along with the lineman. “Careful you don’t let Pegleg know you’re that good with a frying pan,” he said. The next time we’re on the Sea Chariot, he’ll make you the ship’s cook.”
“Leave it in the hearth,” Dunk said, jerking his chin at the pan. “The fire should have cleaned it well enough, but why take the risk?”
“What about your sword?” Guillermo said. Dunk had left it wrapped in the same tarp they’d used to haul away the woman’s charred body. “It is a handsome blade to throw away.”
“It’s just a thing,” Dunk said. “I can always get another sword.”
“That’s a good attitude, Mr. Hoffnung,” Cavre said as he walked into the great hall. “It is far better to be cautious than cauterised.”
“How is Simon?” Guillermo asked. Dunk could hear a bit of guilt mixed in the worry lacing the lineman’s words. “And the others?”
“Simon will live,” Cavre said, “although only Nuffle knows for how long. The two prospects killed themselves when they saw him and realised what lay in store for them.”
Dunk, Slick, and Guillermo gasped. “Does he suffer so?” asked the lineman.
Cavre grimaced. “Not as much as before. The old woman and I had to wrap him in strips of linen from head to toe and soak the wrappings in beer.” The blitzer stopped when he saw the others goggling at him. “The alcohol helps to sterilise his skin. He has also consumed enough of it for it to have a sedative and anesthetic effect.”
“How long will he have to be like that?” Dunk asked.
Cavre shook his head. “It is impossible to say. For now, the disease is under control, although I wouldn’t share a bottle with him.”
Slick looked wall-eyed at the flask of wine now in his hands, then set it gingerly on the table before him. No one else reached out for it.
“It could take him at any time,” Cavre continued. “Or he could live for years.”
“Can’t you do anything about it?” Guillermo said.
Cavre shook his head. “In my homeland, deep in the Southlands, such an illness is considered unbeatable. The old woman knew it not at all.”
“What about Olsen?” Dunk asked.
“We’re afraid not, lads,” the wizard said as he entered the great hall. “Our skills go more to harming things than healing them. The best we could offer that poor sod is a quick release.”
“Will he ever play ball again?” Guillermo asked.
Cavre nodded. “As long as he stays covered in his wrappings and keeps them wet, I do not see why not.”
Dunk looked over at Slick and saw that the halfling had his head down and his shoulders shaking. The thrower reached out and tried to comfort his friend with a hand on his shoulder.
Slick threw back his head, his face shining with tears. Dunk had never seen the halfling show such emotion before, and he felt his own grief over Simon’s fate rising in his chest, threatening to break through as terrible sobs. He heard Guillermo already sniffling beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Slick said, wiping the tears from his face with the palms of his little hands. “I’m so sorry!”
“No,” Dunk said. “It’s not your fault. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Or did you?” Olsen asked. “Is there something you’d care to share with us, wee one? Secrets you need to slough from your soul?”
“No,” Slick said, his body shaking again. “Not that. I’m sorry for laughing so damn hard.”
With that, the halfling doubled over, gasping for air.
Dunk stared at his agent for a moment, then at the others, all of whom goggled at the callous creature.
“What’s so damn funny?” Dunk asked, pulling Slick back up to sit straight in his chair. “What?”
“I know it’s horrible,” Slick said. “But all I can see in my head is Simon charging down the field in his wet wrappings, smelling of yeast and barley.” He put his hands out in front of him as if to frame a picture, then thrust his arms forward, his hands formed into claws.
“Imagine a drunk, diseased, living mummy staggering down the field at you like a walking bar rag.”
Olsen started to snicker. “He’d be almost too drunk to stand, but everyone would be afraid to tackle him.”
“Talk about a mummy’s curse,” Guillermo said, a wry smile on his face. “He’ll be fine — as long as stays away from the toilets. M’Grash might mistake him for an ogre-sized roll of toilet paper.”
Dunk had to laugh at this, despite himself, and even Cavre joined in.
“Thirsty ogres might be a hazard too. Jim Johnson might try to wring him out so he can drink all the beer.”
“Oh,” Slick said, “if he did that in the announcer’s booth in front of that bloodsucker Bob Bifford — now there’s a cage match I’d pay to see.”
This set the entire group off, giggling like children until they were finally too tired to go on.
Dunk felt better about Simon for a moment, but he felt guilty too. “I can’t believe we’re joking about a dying team-mate,” he said softly. That capped the laughter, and everyone fell silent.
Slick, solemn as the rest of them now, reached over and clapped Dunk on the knee. “Laugh or cry, son,” he said. “Laugh or cry.”
“The Hackers sure have made a comeback since their devastating loss in the Spike! Magazine Tournament, Jim. They look like a whole new team!”
“They practically are, Bob! As chronicled in the Wolf Sports’ Cabalvision special The Hackers Far Albion Cup, they picked up a tree-man known only as Edgar during their time in Albion, the only survivor of the slate of rookies who joined the team while on that distant isle. Isn’t that right, Lästiges?”
Dunk saw the lady reporter’s smiling image appear in the monstrous Jumboball squatting over the east end zone of Emperor Stadium. This crystal ball was, if anything, larger than the one in Magritta, and just looking at it filled Dunk’s head with thoughts of rolling, shattering balls again.
“It’s anchored down tight, son,” Slick said, standing next to him on the edge of the Hackers’ dugout. “Don’t give it another thought.”
“The Hackers are one of the most resilient teams I’ve had the pleasure to follow,” Lästiges said in a chipper tone. Dunk thought he could see something sad around her ten-foot tall eyes, though, and he wondered about his brother.
Dirk would be somewhere in Altdorf today too, along with Spinne and the rest of the Reavers. They were supposed to be playing a game later today in the Altdorf Oldbowl, their home stadium, against Da Deff Skwadd, a team of orcs, trolls, and goblins hailing from the distant Badlands, just west of the furthest end of the Worlds Edge Mountains. The oddsmakers — including the Gobbo — heavily favoured the Reavers, which comforted Dunk a bit. He didn’t really care who won the game, though, as long as Dirk and Spinne came out of it all right.
“What else can you say about a team that only has two of the same players from two seasons ago?” Lästiges continued. “They lost another fifteen players in the Far Albion Cup finals too in a tragic magical accident involving their own team wizard, the legendary — at least in the small media market of Albion — Olsen Merlin.
“Amazingly, the Hackers still have Merlin in their employ. This reporter can only speculate that this has something to do with the wizard’s long history with the Hackers’ new lucky charm: the original Far Albion Cup itself. The question in most fans’ minds today, though, has to be: can a trophy, however pretty it might be, be enough to boost the Hackers out of the basement?”
“Now, Lästiges,” Bob said, “the Hackers did make it to the finals of the Blood Bowl Open last year. What makes things so different this time around?”
Lästiges laughed. “I suppose you must have been napping during the last game the Hackers played in the Ol
d World. In the Spike! Magazine Tournament, the Chaos All-Stars handed the Hackers their heads — literally, in some cases. There’s been rampant speculation since then that the Hackers might have somehow benefited — knowingly or not — from the machinations behind last year’s Black Jerseys scandal.”
“Did you just use the word ‘machinations’ in a Blood Bowl broadcast?” Jim asked with a rude cackle. “I think most of our viewers’ eyes just rolled back into their heads. Let’s get down to the action!”
Dunk tried to ignore the announcers for the rest of the game. The Jumboball made that hard though, and every time he heard Lästiges’ voice he glanced up there and wondered if she’d managed to reconcile with Dirk yet. If there was hope for those two, then there might be some for Dunk and Spinne too.
Dunk hadn’t allowed himself to think too much about Spinne since he’d got her letter. He’d written back to her three times, explaining himself, but he’d never received any response. He’d wanted to go to Altdorf to find her, but Slick had talked him out of it. Both the Hackers and the Reavers were in training for the Blood Bowl. His team needed him here.
More of a problem was the fact that, as this year’s favourites, the Reavers had hidden themselves away in a secret camp for the entire month before the game. Their coach wanted no distractions, and he’d gone to great lengths to make sure that even people as dedicated as jilted lovers wouldn’t be able to bother his players.
The Hackers lost the toss and set up down at the west end of the field to kick-off the ball. The Darkside Cowboys, a team composed entirely of dark elves dressed in black and blue uniforms, jogged down to the east end to receive.
“These Cowboys are mean bastards,” Pegleg had said in his pre-game talk to the entire team. “They may not have the raw power of a team like the Oldheim Ogres, but they make up for it by playing the most vicious and ruthlessly efficient football I’ve ever seen. Their star blitzer — Raghib ‘the White Rocket’ Ishmael — once tore out two players’ hearts and stuffed them into each others’ chests, right in the middle of the game. And they played for the Cowboys!”
“Why do they call him ‘the White Rocket’?” Dunk had asked Slick later.
“He’s an albino, son,” Slick said. “Skin whiter than the silver hair you see on most dark elves. And he’s faster than just about anything else on two legs. He’s got an amazing arm too. Used to be a whaler on a ship called the Ahab, and he hurls that ball like a harpoon.”
Dunk gritted his teeth as he waited for Cavre to kick the ball to the waiting Cowboys. He gazed around at the other players on the field and realised he didn’t know but half of them well. He’d practiced with the new players, but they mostly kept to themselves. With all the death that had surrounded the team lately, Dunk hadn’t felt like getting to know them. He didn’t want to make more friends just to lose them too.
Besides which, they were a surly lot. Something about the new recruits put Dunk’s teeth on edge. He had to admit they were good players, if not spectacular, but he wished they were all on someone else’s team. They might be his team-mates but never his friends.
He told himself he was overreacting. The whole debacle with Deckem and his deadmen had left him with a foul taste in his mouth when it came to Blood Bowl. This was his first game since the Far Albion Cup Final. Once he got back into the zone, it would all be fun again.
Right?
The roar of the crowd rose as Cavre put up his hand, signalling to the others that he was about to kick the ball. As he ran forward, the noise reached a blistering crescendo, and then fell off as the ball sailed through the air toward the Cowboys.
Dunk raced straight down the field, following in M’Grash’s wake as the ogre charged along the north side. Edgar cleared out the south side as he strode into and through the oncoming Cowboys, forcing the ball carrier back into the centre. Peering around the ogre’s shoulder, Dunk saw that Ishmael, who stood taller than all of the other dark elves, had the ball.
“Oh, my, Bob! Did you see that move?”
“Barely, Jim, barely. The White Rocket is zooming along so fast I almost missed it. Too bad for the Hackers’ rookie lineman Karfheim that Ishmael didn’t miss him.”
“I wonder how the White Rocket gets out bloodstains when they fountain all over him like that. Perhaps Lästiges would know?”
“Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I know one end of a laundry tub from another, girls,” Lästiges said. “You’re a vampire, Bob. Don’t you know?”
“I know better than to get blood on my clothes,” Bob said. “Oh! And there goes another player, the Cowboys’ Meion Sanders. It’s always sad to see a future Hall of Famer take a fall like that.”
“The only future Meion has is with an undead team now,” Jim said, “if they can piece together enough of his corpse.”
Dunk spotted Ishmael jinking his way, and he spun out from behind M’Grash to launch himself at the Cowboy’s star blitzer. Ishmael was ready for him and tried to stiff-arm him out of the way, but Dunk just grabbed the albino’s white-skinned arm and spun him to the ground.
The ball tumbled free, and Dunk scrambled after it. Before he could reach it though, he felt a pair of wiry arms wrap around his lower legs and bring him to the Astrogranite.
“You dare to stand before the White Rocket, Hoffnung?” a voice rasped into his helmet. “You should expect to pay.”
23
Dunk felt a blade cut across the back of his thigh, trying to hamstring him, but as the edge pierced his flesh, he wriggled away. The razor secreted in the edge of Ishmael’s gauntlet missed its mark.
Dunk reached back and grabbed Ishmael’s helmet by the faceguard. The albino pulled away, slipping out of the helmet before Dunk could twist his head off. “Well played, Hoff-Nung,” the not-so-dark elf hissed, “but no one can stop a rocket.”
Dunk spun about, looking for the ball, and saw that Simon had scooped it up. As he ran for the end zone, many of the Cowboys seemed to be avoiding him, shoving their team-mates toward the diseased Hacker instead.
“Would you look at that?” Bob said. “First the Hackers have an ogre on their team. Then a treeman. And now it’s a mummy! Now that’s diversity for you. Never let anyone tell you the dead and the living don’t mix!”
“As we can testify ourselves, old friend,” said Jim. “But according to the lovely Lästiges, that’s no mummy!”
“Has anyone told the kids?”
“Ha, ha,” Lästiges said mirthlessly. “That’s none other than Simon Sherwood, the Albion native who joined the Hackers at the start of last season. Simon had a bit of a run-in with a ladyfriend who should have been playing groupie for Nurgle’s Rotters instead. Now he’s the poster child for safe sex.”
“And just how do you have safe sex with a Nurgle cultist?” Jim asked. “An all-over body wrap like that? It seems Sherwood’s trying to seal up the dungeon after the daemons are already out.”
“That’s right,” Bob said. “It seems like the secret to safe sex is the same as it is for comedy.”
“Is that so? Then tell us, what is—”
“Timing!”
Dunk felt a burning sensation across his back and turned around to see Ishmael standing behind him, his gauntlet running with blood. The albino grinned at him, showing a set of jet-black teeth behind his pale, white lips.
“You must be the sensitive sort, Hoff-Nung,” the albino said. “Most people never feel the White Rocket’s cuts until they’re dead.”
“It’s because your blade’s just like you,” Dunk said, smashing the Cowboy over his unprotected head with his own helmet. “Dull.”
The albino went down, crimson blood spurting from his shattered nose. Against Ishmael’s white skin, the fluid looked redder than Dunk thought possible. As he watched it flow, he had to fight back a terrible urge to keep pounding at the helpless dark elf with his helmet until his head was only a bloody smear on the Astrogranite.
“Touchdown, Hackers!” Bob said. “Simply amazing. Have yo
u ever seen a score like that, Jim?”
“Not since the last time the Hackers played in the Old World, back in Magritta, but they were on the other side of the equation then. It seems they’ve learned how to play that kind of game. It’s not often you see a body count that high on a team’s first possession.”
Dunk looked back toward the Cowboys’ end zone, where Simon was still letting loose with a complicated victory dance that threatened to unwind his wrappings. Between the thrower and the end zone, bodies in black and blue uniforms littered the field. In fact, by Dunk’s count, not one of the Cowboys who had started the game still stood.
“Damn,” he swore, dropping Ishmael’s helmet next to the albino’s unconscious form. “Not again.”
“It’s the cup,” Dunk said to Pegleg. The coach’s office attached to the Hackers’ locker room was a cramped place made even more so by the large crystal ball mounted on the lone desk. It made the ex-pirate seem more dangerous than usual, perhaps because with the door shut behind him Dunk knew there was no place in the room that was out of the coach’s reach. He wondered if the room had been built with that in mind.
“What, Mr. Hoffnung, is your point?”
“Coach, we can’t go around killing off every team we face.”
“And why not?” Pegleg leaned back in his chair and ran a hand back through his long curls. Far more grey streaked them than had when they first met, Dunk noticed. “Blood Bowl is a violent game. People get killed in it all the time.”
“We’ve already had this conversation,” Dunk said. “You gave the cup up once before.”
“That was in a moment of weakness,” Pegleg said, leaning forward, his fingers splayed across the desk. “I should never have given in. What did that do for us? We lost the Far Albion Cup tournament — including the purse, which would have helped defray the exorbitant expenses of the trip.
“A Blood Bowl team is not a charity. You expect to be paid, don’t you? Your agent certainly expects you to, and the rest of the team would like to take their sacks of gold home, too, twice a month whether I have the cash or not.”
[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Page 22
