Pride and Penitence

by Alec Worley

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  Pride and Penitence – Alec Worley

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  Pride and Penitence

  by Alec Worley

  Dolph Gutmann, coach of the Bright Crusaders, gazed at the gnawed and splintered bones piled in the wheelbarrow before him. His eager young assistant, Tomas, beamed as though he were presenting his employer with a wheelbarrow full of birthday cake and not the mortal remains of lynchpin player Ulrich the Virtuous.

  ‘The skaven said we should get the head back before the end of the game,’ said the boy, eyes wide with enthusiasm. ‘Rat-ogres have a terribly efficient digestive system, apparently.’

  Dolph gave a brittle smile. ‘Can this wait? I’m in the middle of a pep talk…’

  Tomas gazed round at the surviving members of the Bright Crusaders, all eight of them. They were seated in a semi-circle, mesmerised by the contents of the wheelbarrow, their faces contorting as if in competition to see who could strike the most horrified expression.

  Dolph ushered his assistant from the locker room, kicked a chewed femur out of sight and clapped his hands, as if about to introduce a fun new activity to a class full of schoolchildren. He winced as Tomas hissed at him from the doorway.

  ‘Sorry, coach. Shall I put this lot with the others?’

  Anger was something of a foreign language to Dolph. His first season as coach of the Bright Crusaders had given him plenty of opportunity to become fluent, but the only expression of rage he could seem to master was a steady throb in his temple and a growing collection of stomach ulcers.

  ‘If you could, that would be lovely,’ said Dolph, his voice trembling with restraint. Tomas disappeared with a whistle so cheerful that it made Dolph’s eyelids twitch.

  It was this eerie patience that had not only earned Dolph his nickname – ‘the Saint’ – but also served him well during his own time as a star thrower for the team. Despite serving for eight long, silverware-free years, Dolph remained proud to serve the Bright Crusaders, a team famous for its devotion to the virtues of sportsmanship, which included a problematic contempt for cheating of any kind.

  He regarded what was left of his beloved team, most of them now blinking up at him like a basket full of pigeons curious to know whether the cook was going to serve them roasted on a stick or baked in a pie. Had he pushed them too hard during training? Were they overawed by the importance of the event? This was the Purity Cup Final, after all, the Crusaders’ first shot at a major trophy in years, a chance to stop everyone from sniggering at the mention of the team’s name, a chance to prove that good guys could finish first for once.

  Dolph returned his players’ attention to the tactics chalked on the board beside him, rebuilding his expression into something resembling an encouraging smile as he outlined the plays for the second half against the Doomtown Rats. He praised the valour of his blitzers in breaking the skaven line and enabling the Crusaders’ first two touchdowns, applauded the fortitude of his linemen for holding back the skaven’s persistent offence, and commended the thrower for not sobbing too loudly at the sight of Skrut Manpeeler, the skaven’s marauding rat-ogre, disembowelling his third Crusader player in a row. That last casualty had allowed one of the skaven gutter runners to scurry into the Crusaders’ end zone to score a touchdown for the Rats seconds before the half-time whistle blew.

  Facing a tenuous two-one lead, Dolph marvelled at the lunacy of his own optimism as he tried to reassure his team that all would not be lost in the second half so long as they maintained a strong defence. His assertions inspired nothing but a surge of protests.

  ‘They have a twelve-foot monstrosity that eats every player who tries to mark it,’ said Klaus the Forthright.

  ‘Those gutter runners are going to have a field day now there’s only eight of us,’ said Hans the Doubtful.

  ‘At least they haven’t bribed the referee,’ said Dieter the Naive.

  Dolph nudged the team’s bard, who quickly struck a heartening chord on his lute, silencing the quarrelling players long enough for Dolph to cut in, his voice firm with conviction.

  ‘Our passing game has been the best in this competition,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten what we did to the elves? Every one of you is skilled enough to be worth two skaven players. If you ask me, it’s us who outnumber them.’

  The bard’s fingers galloped over his lute-strings, his soaring melody evoking all the romance of valour in the face of uncertain odds.

  ‘They’re weak,’ Dolph continued. ‘They’re worse at dodging than you think and their co-ordination is pitiful. They don’t work as a team. Whereas we stand united, armed with faith and decency. We face the impossible as we have always done. Do we not strive to honour the sacred code of fair conduct in a sport lost to madness? Is this not victory enough? Is this not who we are?’

  Dolph’s heart soared at the sight of his players nodding in agreement, joining hands in a gesture of unity, the bard’s heroic air rousing them to righteous war.

  A bell clanged in the corridor outside, summoning both teams to the players’ tunnel for the second half.

  ‘Who are we?’ demanded Dolph.

  The players would have roared back, ‘We are the Bright Crusaders!’, only the hulking blitzer responsible for their first touchdown had sprung to his feet.

  Gerhardt the Penitent.

  The vein in Dolph’s temple began throbbing, his eyelids fluttering like they were trying to escape from his face.

  ‘I understand, Coach Gutmann,’ said Gerhardt, his face enraptured as though receiving private instruction from Sigmar Himself. ‘You’re saying we have an unfair advantage!’

  Before Dolph could correct him, Gerhardt dropped his trousers.

  The coach and the other players gazed in horrified awe as Gerhardt struggled to untie his bootlaces, hopping around the locker room like a half-naked ogre on a pogo-stick.

  It wasn’t the strangest thing Gerhardt the Penitent had done since joining the Bright Crusaders last season. He had set fire to himself during that qualifier against the Athelorn Avengers. Then there was the time he insisted on playing while lying on a bed of nails. Or the time he had apologised for an expert tackle on a kroxigor by spending the rest of the game trying to kick himself into the nearest end zone.

  ‘I shall play without armour,’ he bellowed, shrugging off his spiked shoulder-pads and tearing off his vestment. ‘I shall bear no unjust advantage, for a victory won unfairly is no victory at all!’

  During an interview with Spike! magazine, Dolph had been sincere when he described Gerhardt’s arrival as a ‘blessing’. He had scored four touchdowns in his debut match against the Khazad Steelers and was probably the only rookie Dolph had ever seen who could listen to the threats of a rabid Trollslayer without soiling himself. The man had all the makings of a legendary blitzer, as strong as an ogre, as quick as an elf and regarded pain as an interesting theory he might be lucky enough to one day understand. But it soon transpired that Gerhardt’s physical gifts were tempered by a moral outlook that was severe even by the impeccable standards of the Bright Crusaders.

  It turned out Gerhardt was an ex-monk from St Apologia of the Immaculate Piety, a cult of flagellants who believed that only through constant hardship and penitence could one achieve true enlightenment. The monks wore nothing but fleas, lived on a diet of their own tears, and slept on beds of gravel, but only if they’d run out of hedgehogs.

  Gerhardt the Penitent now bared himself before his teammates, surrounded by torn clothes and discarded armour, announcing his readiness to
return to the pitch by snapping the waistband of whatever meagre rag it was he was trying to pass off as a loincloth.

  The bell outside rang again, more urgently this time.

  ‘Gerhardt,’ said Dolph, urging the other players to remain seated. ‘We agreed that you would no longer carry out acts of penitence on the pitch. The fact that you’ve managed to abstain from doing so all season is the reason we’ve been able to get this far in the competition, yes?’

  A pair of familiar shadows materialised behind Gerhardt. Dolph had regretted allowing the blitzer to hire a pair of dark elf ‘trainers’ (their business card had read ‘Freelance Sadists’), but Gerhardt had insisted that he would need help in maintaining an acceptable level of personal contrition if he was no longer allowed to debase himself in public. Last week they had helped Gerhardt bury himself during training and it had taken the groundskeeper hours to find him again.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gerhardt, inspired as the dark elves whispered in his ear. ‘I have abstained from penance for too long. I must atone for the arrogance of our previous triumphs.’

  One of the linemen was now sobbing.

  The bell rang a third time and Dolph took a deep breath, struggling to dispel the image of his own hands garrotting Gerhardt with a loincloth.

  ‘What about Sister Bertilda and the orphans?’ he said, snatching a sheaf of letters pinned to the team’s portable shrine. Gerhardt looked bewildered. He’d become even more forgetful since he’d ordered those dark elves to break things over his head during morning prayer.

  Dolph rifled through the letters, pausing now and then to read aloud.

  ‘“Dear Gerhardt”,’ he read. ‘“We are eternally grateful for your assistance.”’

  Another letter: ‘“The children see you as an inspiration. Without your help we would be forced to sell them all for wizarding experiments.”’

  Yet another: ‘“Sir, we beseech you, in Shallya’s name, do all you can to help your team achieve victory on the day of the final.”’

  Gerhardt examined a child’s sketch, charcoal scribbled on parchment, of a robed stick-figure and her tiny charges celebrating as a hulking figure covered in spikes trampled through a scrawl of dismembered limbs. The blitzer turned to his teammates, hoping they might offer him a further clue.

  ‘We pledged to buy her orphanage with our winnings,’ said Felix the Chaste. ‘If we win we’ll be saving her and a hundred orphans from eviction. They’re the reason you promised to stop sabotaging every game!’

  Gerhardt’s face suddenly brightened with recognition, then darkened with what Dolph desperately hoped was sensible thought.

  ‘Those orphans need you, Gerhardt,’ he said. ‘We need you. Your strength, not your devotions. Just for one game more.’

  The other players had already gathered up Gerhardt’s discarded armour. They offered it to him in unison, nervously, like devotees hoping to placate a volcano god who was just looking for an excuse to smite something. Gerhardt returned their gaze with a troubled look.

  ‘It is no small thing you ask of me, brothers,’ he said, wrinkling his nose at their offering. ‘Our victories have afforded us some of the finest armour money can buy. We wore no such finery when we were losing games with blessed humility. I fear it is a symbol of our vanity.’

  Dolph saw the other players glance at each other, perhaps wondering if there was anything in the Crusaders’ code of ethics that might excuse the murder of a teammate.

  ‘If I wear this armour,’ said Gerhardt, ‘if we win this game, then you must agree, all of you, to join me in an act of penitence, only this can assure the virtue of the Bright Crusaders as we claim that trophy.’

  Dolph and the other players almost mobbed him with relief.

  ‘Anything, for the love of Nuffle. Anything! Just get us that win!’ cried the coach. The other players nodded in agreement.

  Gerhardt’s smile became a roar. ‘Who are we?’

  Dolph and the other players would have roared back, ‘We are the Bright Crusaders!’ only there came an urgent knock at the door. It was Tomas.

  ‘The bad news is the referee is threatening to penalise us if we don’t hurry up,’ he said, then produced a sack that reeked worse than the stadium outhouse. ‘The good news is I managed to get Ulrich’s head back.’

  ‘I wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the Crusaders’ dressing room, Jim.’

  ‘I know a wizard who could arrange that, Bob.’

  ‘What I want to know is how the Crusaders plan to stop a full team of some of the best runners in the game from getting through their lines when they’ve only got seven and a half men.’

  ‘Seven and a half, Bob? I count eight. Is someone missing a limb?’

  ‘I’m talking about Gerhardt the Penitent, Jim. He’s certainly not the most reliable player. Do you remember how he apologised for that touchdown against the Iron Tusks by trying to saw off his own leg?’

  ‘That was a while ago, Bob. In this tournament, he’s been downright boring. No stopping in the middle of the game to pray to the ball, no covering himself in leeches, no chaining himself to a rock.’

  ‘But will he be able to stay focused enough to help the Crusaders secure their lead? I mean, this could be the game that saves these goody-goodies from being a permanent laughing stock.’

  ‘Well, we’re about to find out, Bob. The players are back on the pitch, and there’s Gerhardt. He looks focused enough, but who’s that he’s waving to in the crowd?’

  Gerhardt could just make out Sister Bertilda waving at him from among the seething wall of fans to his left. She was cocooned inside the humble grey habit of a priestess of Shallya, her face a perfect oval as she waved her handkerchief. He fancied that she resembled a courtly lady granting favour to her champion, although he knew she was just as likely trying to wave away the stench of ale and vomit that permeated both the stands and the majority of the other fans. The group of orphans under her charge jumped up and down behind the advertising boards in a frenzy of excitement, swathed in tattered scarves with adorably oversized caps askew on their heads as they waved their crutches or rapped spoons upon their gruel bowls.

  But the sight of those he had promised to save did little to ease Gerhardt’s nagging conscience. He had struggled all season to control his addiction to repentance, to stop himself from whispering the Crusaders’ tactics to the opposition players and applauding their bootwork when they fouled him. Gerhardt’s conscience haunted him like a ghost that had nothing better to do, urging to him to repent, always to repent. If only Coach Gutmann knew how close Gerhardt had come to firing himself out of that confetti cannon at half-time.

  He wiped away another rivulet of drool oozing from the brow of his helmet and looked up into a pair of glowing green eyes. They glared down at him like emerald fires above a snout wrinkled with fury. Skrut Manpeeler was a festering tower of muscle, claws and whiskers, a rat-ogre stitched together by some demented skaven alchemist for reasons beyond the grasp of human sanity. Like the rest of its rancid species, the monster stank like it was really putting in the effort, its chest heaving with rapid rasping breaths that fanned Gerhardt’s face with an aroma somewhere between ‘cesspit’ and ‘something that had smelled pretty bad even before it was found dead in the gutters behind a harbour tavern on a hot day’.

  The other skaven players had assumed a strong offensive formation beside this monstrosity. The ratmen were hunched, as if barely evolved from scurrying through sewers on all fours. Their clawed hands pawed restlessly at the ground, snouts twitching, bodies encased in armour or draped in rags, both the colour of luminous mould. Those standing beside Skrut snickered to themselves, relishing not only the power of their monstrous teammate, but also the vulnerability of the diminished opposition. It took all of Gerhardt’s internal resolve to stop himself from wishing them all good luck.

  The whistle caught Gerhardt by surprise
, the crowd surging with a tidal roar as the ball sailed overhead into the skaven half. Then it happened. It always did. While all eyes were focused on the trajectory of the ball, one or several members of the crowd would take it upon themselves to start a fight, assassinate the referee, or attempt to burn down the stadium.

  This time a skaven fan had taken the opportunity to launch something at one of the Crusaders’ players. Blood Bowl fans were extraordinarily inventive when it came to selecting things to hurl at the players. Gerhardt had seen everything from rotten fruit and startled livestock to halfling snack vendors and all manner of homemade contraptions that ticked or sizzled for a few seconds before exploding. He was almost disappointed to see that today’s missile was merely a rock.

  It descended almost lazily, like a perfectly placed pass, towards the head of Felix the Chaste. The catcher was busy studying the skaven lines, no doubt calculating how best not to die during the second half of the game. Gerhardt couldn’t recall telling his legs to start moving. All he knew was that he felt overwhelmed by a familiar sense of need. He was sprinting towards Felix, his eyes fixed on the hurtling rock. He’d been so good all season. He’d agreed to wear his armour. Wasn’t that enough? Surely Coach Gutmann would allow him just one bit of penance, just a smidge. It was only a little rock after all. He heard Felix cry out in alarm seconds before Gerhardt shoved him aside, sprang into the air and caught the rock square between the eyes.

  Gerhardt picked himself up, helped a shaken Felix to his feet, then gave everyone else a thumbs-up before promptly keeling over. Coach Gutmann suddenly appeared at his side trying to explain something to him while the apothecary asked Gerhardt to count how many fingers he was holding up, which – in all fairness – would have been a tough one for the blitzer even without the concussion. Gerhardt pushed them all aside and jogged back into position, burbling something about a rainbow stealing his unicorn.

  The whistle blew, activating some kind of switch in the rat-ogre’s fevered brain, one that sent it from ‘unnerving stillness’ to ‘berserk rage’ in a millisecond. The monster fell upon Gerhardt, eyes blazing green, huge claws raking the air with terrifying speed, ripping at the turf as the blitzer staggered backwards, still trying to shake away the buzzing in his skull.