Fixed

by Robbie MacNiven

  Contents

  Cover

  Fixed – Robbie MacNiven

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Fixed

  Robbie MacNiven

  The stadium was rocking. From the upper spires, where Grizmund and his gaggle of pale-fleshed vampire thralls had secured the best seats, to the pitch-side barricades, where half a dozen fights had already broken out between irate supporters, every man, elf and beast inside the Thunderdome Nordlander Arena was on up its feet, claws or paws. Cabal Vision were giving a pitch-side interview to a halfling pundit more preoccupied by dodging the remains of a Hackers Dunk Doughnuts advertising board being flung by the crowd, while the Nordlander cheerleading team were going through their flashiest routine, pompoms a yellow and blue blaze.

  It was half time, and it was going well for the Nordland Rangers. Too well.

  ‘Do you think the fixers have got to them?’ Klimt asked. The rest of the Rangers shouted the lineman down, filling the dugout with their disapproval.

  ‘Tell Kelled that,’ Garr said over the outrage, nodding towards the medical lean-to, where the team’s apothecary, the butcher-turn-chirurgeon Mikal Frisk, was attempting to staunch the blood pouring from the catcher’s mangled arm. A Kroxigor, the biggest creature on the pitch, had caught Kelled just before the halftime whistle. His screams were lost amidst the roaring of the crowd.

  ‘There have been too many shock results since the split,’ Klimt went on, ignoring the abuse he was getting from the rest of the huddle. ‘Everyone knows someone’s got to halve the coaches. They’re making a fortune off these outcomes.’

  ‘Who in Nuffle’s name would the scalies do a deal with though?’ Torvern, the stocky little catcher, demanded. ‘They’d as soon rip legs off as take a bribe.’

  ‘Depends on the bribe,’ Klimt countered.

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Coach Rife. The lanky, scarred ex-blitzer took off his feathered cap to mop his brow, glaring at Klimt. ‘That sort of talk undermines everything we’ve done to make it this far. Everything I’ve done, Klimt. Do you want me to bin you?’

  ‘No coach,’ the lineman said, eyes on his boots.

  Rife nodded, gaze sweeping the rest of the team.

  ‘We’re up eleven touchdowns to six, against a lizardmen team touted to finish a comfortable second in the playoffs. We’re going to put this one to bed. Break these scalies and it’s us versus the East End Boyz in the playoff final. I don’t need to tell you all that’s where we want to be.’

  ‘Yes, coach,’ the Rangers chorused.

  ‘Same as we’ve done all season,’ Rife went on. ‘Garr, take us down the middle, box formation. Vulf, can you keep up?’

  Kelled’s substitute grinned and nodded.

  ‘Damn scalies won’t lay a claw on me, coach.’

  ‘Good. Dumpf, just… do what you’ve been doing all game.’ The hulking ogre frowned, squinting down at Rife.

  ‘Der…’ he began to say, picking at his crooked nose.

  ‘Tackle the Kroxigor, Dumpf. So Garr can get through. Don’t let that thing catch him the way it caught Kelled. Stop the Krox, that’s all you have to do.’

  ‘The… croc see what?’

  ‘The big lizard, Dumpf. The big, scaly bastard lizard. As soon as he makes a move for Thunderbolt here, bring him down.’ Rife smacked Garr’s battered helmet for emphasis.

  ‘Sure thing, coach.’ The ogre went back to picking his nose.

  ‘Right. Okay then. Let’s do this, Rangers!’

  Garr dropped into his familiar central position, flexing his back and shoulder muscles. The comfortable score line didn’t reflect the reality of playing against lizardmen – iron-hard muscles and iron-hard scales meant a lot of hard knocks.

  He glanced up at the main stand, and the rickety spire-towers occupied by Grizmund and his bloodsuckers. In over a decade of professional league Blood Bowl, Garr had long ago learned to block out the crowd, at least until they started throwing spiked projectiles or shrieking goblins onto the pitch. Today, though, he couldn’t shake the hypnotic, black gaze of the ancient bloodsucker. He owed the diabolical mobster money. Thanks to his gambling he owed half the damn town money, but Grizmund was just about the only one with the means to actually pursue a debt from the most famous and successful blitzer in Nordland history. The so-called Throat-Ripper, himself a long-retired blocker from the Arterial Jets, had ‘treated’ Garr to lunch at the Crow’s Corpse only last week, an eatery that just so happened to sit across the street from the dank, crumbling stonework and rusting iron of the debtors’ prison. For all his on-pitch success this season, Garr knew he was running out of time.

  ‘Let’s end these coldbloods, Rangers!’ he shouted, adrenaline spiking. ‘I’ll give two-to-one odds on the touchdown whistle blowing in under two minutes.’

  The rest of the team growled their approval. Sadly, none of them actually took him up on the bet. More was the pity.

  He slammed a fist against his chest plate and dug his boots into the ravaged turf near the line of scrimmage. To the Wastes with Grizmund and his corpse cronies. He looked away from the spire seats and took note of the skink runners making up the lizardman front row. The diminutive yellow-spotted creatures had been unusually sluggish so far, but Garr was still certain they’d try their hardest to slip through the Rangers’ backline as soon as one of their bigger saurus team mates were able to wrestle the ball from the humans. Kriegveld and the other linemen had better be up to standard when it came to their blocks.

  The goblin referee’s whistle shrilled, the crowd’s roaring redoubled, and the Rangers were going forward. Garr snatched the ball from where it thumped down after kick-off, its battered leather cradled in both spiked gauntlets. The scalies were defending a high line, racing to meet them. Garr felt a roar building in his throat, body driven on by the swelling howl of the crowd. He hit the line of scrimmage at full tilt. A skink simply disappeared beneath him, his outstretched fist slamming it down into the trampled dirt.

  ‘On your left!’ Gruber, the younger, rookie blitzer, shouted. Garr was vaguely aware of his offer of support, but he was still going, the chequered earth of the end zone beckoning him on. The catchers were almost in position. He barely knew what was happening either side of him – the thud and crunch of impacting bodies was all he heard. None of it really registered. It never did. Once he was committed, blitzing through the centre, nothing was going to distract him. That was why he was the best. That was why they were going to win.

  ‘Watch for the block!’ shouted Rell, one of the linesmen following the Nordlander attack. Garr had already spotted it. One last hurdle – a big saurus backliner. Garr had already taken the lizard down twice in the first half. It wasn’t going to stop the Thunderbolt now.

  He hit it with his shoulder, a classic barge, his spiked pauldron hammering the creature’s scaly hide. The lizardman snatched for the ball even as it went down, claws raking off Garr’s breastplate and gauntlets. The blitzer put his boot into the struggling coldblood for good measure, driving over him, launching himself at that final grassy expanse. Vulf the catcher was there – he’d made it through the scalies’ backline too. He was screaming for the ball. The crowd was going wild. Garr pulled his arm back, ball in hand, winding up for a throw he’d made a thousand times before. It was all over. The playoff final was theirs.

  ‘Garr, watch out!’

  Gruber’s shout came too late. Something hit him. He knew straight away that it wasn’t a skink, or even a saurus. He was going down, the ball tumbling from his grasp, the air driven from his lungs. His left side crunched into the dirt, the force of the impact hal
f spinning him onto his back and cracking his helmet off the ground. For a second he found himself staring through the grille of his visor up at a clear, blue sky.

  Then the Kroxigor stepped over him. Clearly, Dumpf hadn’t managed to stop the huge lizardman. The ogre was probably still too busy picking at a particularly intransigent wad of snot lodged in his nostril.

  ‘Great Nuffle’s hairy arse,’ Garr panted, struggling for breath. The ball was embedded in the dirt next to him, spikes gleaming. He lunged for it.

  And so did the lizardmen. With a shriek, a swarm of skinks mobbed him from every side, burying him in a mound of scrabbling, pale, leathery flesh. Garr tried to heave himself up, but found he was pinned. As the mound of bodies on top of him increased, the pressure became unbearable. He panicked, rendered helpless, unable to see for the creatures swarming over him. The last thing he felt before the darkness took him was the Kroxigor’s grip on his leg, tightening.

  Garr woke up reaching for the ball. It took a second for him to realise he was clutching at blocker Markus’s thigh. He was on his back, and he was moving, though at first he wasn’t sure how. Above was a cloudless sky, and faces. Girls. Garr realised that he was dead. He was dead, and in heaven.

  As was, apparently, the entire cheerleading squad. Garr blinked. No, he wasn’t dead after all. He was on a stretcher. Another face pushed its way in amongst the concerned expressions of the Nordlander cheerleaders. Torvern, streaked with sweat. The lineman was speaking, but Garr couldn’t make out the words. His ears were ringing, the incessant buzz overlaying a distant roar that swelled like the crash of waves upon a far-off, jagged coastline. After a moment he recognised the sound – thirty thousand bloodthirsty spectators, howling equal parts approval and dismay.

  He was being carried towards the tunnel and out of the rickety old timber stadium. His leg was in agony. He tried to sit, but even looking for purchase with his elbows set his head spinning. He slumped back, as the tidal roar rose up to swallow him. The last thing he heard were Torvern’s words, repeated over and over, reaching him as though from far away.

  We won.

  The light filtering through the yellow canvas of the apothecary’s tent stained everything the colour of stale urine. Garr gritted his teeth, as much to keep out the smell as to bite back against the pain infusing his leg.

  ‘It looks bad,’ said Frisk, looming over the table Garr had been laid on.

  ‘Is that a professional medical opinion, sawbones?’ Garr demanded, glaring up at the fat ex-butcher. Frisk grimaced, his heavy jowls streaked with sweat. The tent was infernally hot, and the apothecary’s grubby blue overalls were stained dark with perspiration.

  ‘As professional as it’s going to get, I’m afraid,’ he said, lifting the cloth away from Garr’s thigh. The Thunderbolt focused his eyes on the canvas directly above – he didn’t want to see it. He felt chubby fingers probe his limb.

  ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘No,’ Garr growled, knuckles white.

  ‘How about now?’

  Garr nodded through clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m going to have to operate,’ Frisk said, leaning over Garr so the Thunderbolt was looking up at him.

  ‘You keep your damn rusty blades away from me,’ Garr snapped. Before Frisk could respond the tent flap snatched back. Coach Rife ducked inside, pulling his feather cap from his balding head.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded, eyes darting from the apothecary to his star player. Frisk shrugged.

  ‘Like I said, it’s bad.’

  ‘No one can see you like this,’ Rife said, turning to Garr. ‘The fans will go wild. There’ll be a riot. We’ve got to get you fixed up.’

  ‘Just keep this butcher away from me,’ Garr said, forcing himself up onto one elbow. ‘I’ll not play in the final if he touches me, you can bet your last reikmark on it.’

  ‘If I don’t operate, you won’t play again at all,’ Frisk said. ‘Then he won’t be leading your lineout any more, Herr Rife.’

  ‘Is that your professional medical opinion?’ Rife asked.

  Frisk sighed loudly, mopping at his chins with a stained handkerchief.

  ‘This team pays me to treat it. The money comes out of your earnings as well. By all means, let your star player walk out of here right now – assuming he can even stand. But don’t blame me when he finally comes to terms with the fact that he refused to have a career-threatening injury operated on.’

  Rife looked at Frisk, then at Garr, then back to Frisk. He approached the operating table and peered at the Thunderbolt’s exposed thigh. The stinking shadows couldn’t hide his grimace.

  ‘It’s bad,’ he said.

  ‘I know, damn it,’ Garr spat, still refusing to look at the injury. ‘I’m not letting him give me the chop, Rife.’

  ‘You’ll still have two legs,’ Frisk mumbled. ‘I’ll fix it. Just… don’t worry!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Garr snarled.

  ‘You won’t even notice the difference, trust me. In fact, you may even be able to play better!’

  ‘Frisk is right,’ Rife said, patting Garr’s bruised shoulder. ‘I pay him too damn much not to use his… abundant medical talents.’

  Garr slumped back, eyes closed.

  ‘Just not above the thigh, right doc?’

  ‘Keep your knives away from his crotch,’ Rife said to Frisk. The apothecary rolled his piggy eyes and picked up a tankard from a nearby bench.

  ‘Bugman’s XXXXXX,’ he said, bending down to help Garr into a sitting position.

  ‘For the pain?’ Garr asked, reaching out shakily. He grimaced when, instead of passing it to him, Frisk gulped down the tankard’s contents instead.

  ‘For my hands,’ the ex-butcher said, belching loudly. ‘Helps keep them steady. Right, let’s get started.’

  They smuggled him from the stadium district in the back of an anonymous black hire carriage, the driver walking away with a few coins and promises that his family would suffer if a word of the Thunderbolt’s state reached the papers. Garr lolled in the carriage’s back seat, half covered by a team blanket, blessedly oblivious to every jarring rut. Rife had at least managed to convince Frisk to be liberal with the poppy tonic, or he had after Garr’s screaming had run the risk of alerting people to his condition.

  There were no opportunistic journos lurking around the Thunderbolt’s luxury inner-town manse – the baleful presence of Nog made sure of that. The ever-faithful ogre ex-player was patrolling the perimeter, a big, lumbering shape in the fading light. Frisk and Rife managed to haul Garr from the carriage and put him into the ogre’s arms.

  ‘Take… him… bed,’ Rife said, speaking slowly. ‘Don’t let anyone in until we return. Especially not any reporters, or Grizmund’s debt collectors.’

  Nog nodded.

  ‘What did he just say?’ Frisk asked.

  ‘Put Thunderman bed,’ the ogre said slowly, squinting. ‘And… no let-ins.’

  ‘Don’t let him put any betting coupons on either,’ Frisk said as they left.

  Garr remained unconscious as Nog carried him through what had once been the most sought-after bachelor pad in the Lower Nordside. Now dark reikswood-panelled walls that had once been hung with signed sketches of the greatest Rangers were bare, their decorations auctioned off one after the other to pay for Garr’s inveterate gambling. The floors were similarly unadorned, the thick Araby rugs long gone. Every surface was collecting dust, and cobwebs had started to conglomerate around the ceiling – he’d stopped paying the cleaner just over a month before. Of course she’d run to the press with reports about the state of Garr’s finances, reports Rife had been quick to counter. A halfling cleaner would say anything for a free pie or two.

  Nog placed Garr carefully on his cheap wooden bed and, with forefinger and thumb, tucked him beneath the blue and yellow covers. The ogre stood looking d
own at his master, a lazy smile tugging at his blunt features. After a while he seemed to snap back to the present. He tiptoed over to the window, the dusty floorboards squealing beneath his weight. Satisfied that it was closed, he glanced one more time at his master before lumbering from the room.

  Two days passed. Frisk visited frequently with a variety of home-made potions and salves, keeping Garr under for what he described as ‘bonding time’. Nog fed the blitzer during his rare moments of lucidity, Garr accepting messy spoonfuls only with glaring truculence. The papers would have a field day if they could see him – the highest capped, highest-earning, longest-serving blitzer in Nordland history – laid up and baby-fed by his big, clumsy house-ogre.

  It all changed on the third night. Frisk had been and gone, demanding as usual that Garr keep his leg tightly bound, and refrain from putting too much weight on it. Nog had administered his evening repast – brutally hacked-up vegetables in a soupy mixture tarnished with far too much Stirland pepper. Garr was dozing off, the pain of his damaged limb a dull, distant ache.

  A scratching sound disturbed him. He looked up at the ceiling’s timber beams, but saw nothing. That was when something unusual struck him. He realised that he was cold.

  There was a breeze. It was knocking, ever so gently, at the open shutters. Garr sat up, scowling. Nog had forgotten to lock the window. He drew a breath to bark the ogre’s name, then thought better of it. He’d seen enough of the lumbering oaf over the past two days.

  He threw back the covers, struck a spark to the candle stub and, after a second’s hesitation, swung both limbs out over the edge of the bed. The injury had gone from painful to infernally itchy. He glared down at the inelegant wedge of bandages and plaster, willing the sensation to go away. Then, when it didn’t, he stepped down onto the floor.

  The itch turned to pain, and he flinched. Still, his other leg could take enough weight. He tottered over to the window, closed it, and banged the lock down. Then he slumped back into his bed.

  The itching grew worse. It was unbearable. What in Nuffle’s name had that damned butcher done to him?