“And what in the deep blue sea is wrong with that?” Pegleg asked, still pulling at his hook.
“Nothing at all, but,” Dunk said as he stabbed a finger at his head, “you’re thinking too small.” He gestured towards Enojada. “Just think; you could coach the first team to be the undisputed champion on two continents. Haken’s Hackers would be the first team to truly be known as the best in the entire world.”
Pegleg leaned forward on his stuck hook. “You,” he said to Dunk, “are full of shit. Beating up on a bunch of little girls halfway around the world while we should be back here kicking the tar out of serious opponents will only make us a laughing stock.”
Enojada moved so fast that Dunk saw only a blur. One moment, the desk stood between Pegleg and him, and the next it had been smashed in half. The Amazon stepped back to where she had been standing near the door, and the coach looked down at his free hook and waggled it on the end of his wrist.
“My apologies for the ‘little girls’ crack, mizz,” Pegleg said. He spoke in a soft, steady tone once more. “But my point still stands. From the point of view of the Blood Bowl fan, Lustria is just another bush league. We’re staying here.”
Dunk scowled, and then decided to play his trump card. “We’ll buy the Hackers from you then.”
“What?” Pegleg stuck his hook in his ear and scraped it around, pulling out a good chunk of wax. “Could you repeat that, Mr. Hoffnung? I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“Dirk and I will buy the Hackers from you. We can sell the keep and the rest of our holdings in Altdorf and have plenty of money to handle the purchase.”
“The Hackers are not for sale.” The man spoke as low as a whisper, but still growled like a mother bear defending her cubs.
Slick cleared his throat, and then spoke, softly and reverently. “Come on now, Pegleg, everything is for sale, at the right price.
Pegleg’s voice rose straight to a scream. “You’d have a better chance putting a bid in on my thrice damned soul! Now get out of my office, now!”
3
At the Bad Water tavern down on the docks of Magritta, Sparky the dwarf bartender had a round of drinks ready before Dunk even reached the bar. The entire place erupted in cheers as Dunk, Dirk, and Spinne made their way in from the chilly night air, with Slick and Enojada in tow.
The Bad Water had become known as the Hackers’ hangout while in town, and Sparky and the bouncers there did the best they could to ensure that the crowds wouldn’t drive their famous patrons away. They had permanently roped off a few tables in the corner for the Hackers’ to sit at, and they’d emblazoned Hacker logos and merchandise over nearly every surface in the bar.
As Dunk made his way towards the bar, a trio of Darkside Cowboys fans in black and blue face and body paint leapt at him from out of the crowd. “Hackers suck!” the three men said in unison.
Before Dunk could even respond, the Cowboys fans disappeared beneath a swarm of kicking legs and swinging arms, all wearing the Hackers’ familiar green and gold colours. A moment later, the battered men popped up atop the arms of the crowd and were passed straight towards the wall opposite the door.
“Hold it,” Sparky shouted, although no one but Dunk seemed to hear him. There was nothing to do but watch the three bodies passed straight towards the picture window and then get tossed right through it. Dunk heard one, two, three splashes as they tumbled into the seawater below.
“I lose more windows that way,” Sparky said as Dunk finally made it to the bar to collect the first round of drinks.
Dunk tossed an extra bit of gold on the bar. “To make up for the destruction.”
Sparky shook his head even as he leaned over the bar and pocketed the money. “You don’t have to do that. We make enough off you drinking here to cover a new window every day of the week.” The dwarf grinned through his thick, bushy beard. “But I do appreciate it.”
“Three Killer Genuine Drafts and one Halfkein for Slick,” Sparky said. He nodded his head towards Enojada. “What about for your friend?”
“She’s an Amazon.”
“I think that’s clear.”
“Really, from Lustria. Got anything that might make her feel at home?”
Sparky leapt down from the narrow walkway that ran behind the bar, and Dunk heard him rummaging around among countless bottles. A moment later he popped back up with a tall, thin, clear bottle filled with a golden liquid. He opened it and stuffed a green wedge into it, then slapped it on the bar in front of Dunk. The label read “Corpse-Rona.”
“What is it?” Dunk asked.
“Piss water.” Sparky scowled at the bottle. “Seal piss, I think.”
“Seriously?”
“How would I know it tastes like seal piss?” Sparky held up a thick, stubby hand. “Wait. Don’t answer that.”
“What’s with the green thing?”
“It’s a lime. Sailors eat them on long voyages to stave off scurvy.”
Dunk glanced at Enojada. “You think she has scurvy?”
“Nah. The fruit just makes the piss tolerable, or so I’m told. I don’t put vegetables in my own drink, and I don’t trust drinks that require them.”
Dunk nodded his thanks, picked up the tray on which Sparky had set the drinks and toted it over to his table. Dirk, Spinne, and Slick each grabbed their drinks, and Dunk handed the Corpse-Rona to Enojada, who accepted it with a wide smile.
“I had no idea you could find such things here,” she said. “This is awful.”
Dunk stared at her. She pointed at the bottle and laughed.
“In Lustria, this is the kind of swill that no one will drink, so we export most of it. In other lands, the lure of its exotic origin sells it better than its lousy flavour does at home.”
“Do you want something else?”
Enojada shook her head and snatched the bottle from the tray. “It may be the worst part of home, but it’s still home.”
Dunk sat down and decided to get right to it. “Tell us about Kirta.”
“You do not waste much time with pleasantries,” Enojada said. “I like that.”
“So?” asked Dirk.
Enojada took a sip of her beer and rolled it around on her tongue for a moment, clearly enjoying the attention far more than her drink. “Kirta is alive and well. She is our team captain, one of the best blitzers that Lustria has ever seen. She is a natural at it. Clearly the talents required for Blood Bowl run strong within your family’s blood.”
“But how is she alive?” asked Dunk. “We thought she’d died when the Guterfiends arranged for an angry mob to storm our family keep.”
“She escaped,” Enojada said with a simple shrug. “Alone, she found her way outside the city and made her way down the Reik until she came to the sea. When she reached Marienburg, she fell prey to a press gang that captured her and sold her to a pack of pirates.”
Dunk grimaced at the thought of his sweet, little sister among a band of ruthless buccaneers. Spinne reached out and took his hand to comfort him, and he did not push it away.
“Some time later, she wound up sailing down the Scorpion Coast. In the temple city of Tlaxtlan, she was auctioned off as a slave and purchased by the Lusties’ owners. It was the best deal they ever made.”
“Our sister is a slave?” Dirk asked, his temper rising along with his voice.
“No longer.” Enojada’s eyes seemed a thousand miles away. “She proved to be a natural player, and within the space of a single year she was able to demand not only her freedom but a healthy salary.”
“A born negotiator, eh?” said Slick. “She doesn’t share that with her brothers.”
The halfling noticed Dunk and Dirk staring at him. “And thank the gods for that, sons, or you wouldn’t need me.”
“Then where would we be?” Dirk said, daring Slick to answer.
“Now she’s the team captain, you say?” Dunk said, trying to shift the conversation back to his sister. He ran his tongue along his lower gums. “It�
��s a great story. It really is. I only have one question.”
Enojada raised her thick eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Why should we believe a word of it?”
Enojada smiled. “Of course, you do not know me, and I come to you with the most fantastical story possible, a story too good to be true. Why should you trust me?”
“Exactly.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Dunk sat back to consider this.
Enojada continued. “I’m nobody to you; a woman who comes to you out of the blue with a wild story about a woman you know is dead. No matter how much you care about your sister, how can you possibly want to cross the ocean just to check out my story? Especially when I have a clear motive for wanting to trick you into doing just that?”
Dunk glanced at Dirk, and then looked straight into Enojada’s eyes. “That about sums it up.”
“Kirta said you would be like that. She hoped you’d be at least that canny.”
Dunk felt ill. He’d stood up to his coach over a thin hope bound up in a web of flimsy lies. He knew he’d never forget this. Pegleg wouldn’t let him.
“So she told me to tell you this one word, to confirm my story, to let you know that it’s all true.”
Dunk waited in silence, but Dirk couldn’t take it. “What is it?” he demanded.
Enojada pursed her lips and spat out a single word. “Nunya.”
Dunk almost fell off his chair. Spinne grabbed him by the arm and straightened him back up. Dirk wasn’t so lucky and slipped off his seat to the floor.
“What’s it mean?” Slick asked. “Is that someone’s name?”
Dunk nodded. “Sort of. It’s what she called her doll. She had it since she could talk.”
Spinne frowned. “That’s an unusual name for a little girl to give a doll. What does it mean?”
“None of your business.”
Spinne glared at Dunk. “I was just asking. If you don’t feel we’re close enough for you to share such information—”
“No!” said Dunk. “That’s not what I meant at all. The doll’s name is Nunya. N-U-N-Y-A. Nunya Bidness.”
4
Dunk burst into Pegleg’s office. “We need to talk.”
“It’s customary to knock, Mr. Hoffnung.” The coach peered up at Dunk over a pair of half-moon glasses he’d been using to read a sheaf of papers scattered on the desk in front of him.
Dunk reached out and knocked on the new desk’s surface. “We need to talk now.”
Pegleg put down the papers. “Today is your day off. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“We play tomorrow.”
“Then after that.”
Dunk shook his head. “We need to deal with this now. I’m going to Lustria, and Dirk’s coming with me.”
Pegleg removed his glasses and set them on the desk. “You don’t say? How about Spinne?”
“She’s coming too.” Dunk thought she would, at least.
“You’re going to undertake a long and perilous ocean voyage to find your sister’s ghost on the say-so of a damsel, pardon me: Amazon, you know nothing about.”
“Enojada is telling the truth.”
“You seem sure.”
“I am.”
“So, there’s no way that a wizard could have stolen a memory from you or your brother or one of dozens of souls who once worked in your family’s keep to fabricate this ‘proof’ you seem to think you have?”
Dunk stopped and thought about this for a moment. “It’s possible, sure.”
“But you’re going anyhow.”
“I am.”
Pegleg rubbed his goatee with his good hand. More grey shot through the black than when Dunk had first met the man three years before.
“You know, Mr. Hoffnung, coaching a Blood Bowl team is one of the more thankless jobs around. If your team loses, everyone blames it on you, from the announcers to the fans to even the owners, should there be others than yourself. If your team wins, the players get all the credit, at least the star players do. Players like you.”
“I’ll come back. We all will.”
Pegleg raised an eyebrow. “And how would that work? As soon as anyone leaves the team, under his own steam, or feet first, I have to replace him.”
“Openings develop after almost every game,” said Dunk.
Pegleg nodded. “You’re not leaving. I won’t let you out of your contract.”
“But Coach—”
“Don’t give me that, Mr. Hoffnung. Where will I be able to find three seasoned athletes who play together as well as you, your brother, and your woman? And you know that if you leave, M’Grash will be useless for months.”
“We’re going anyhow.”
Pegleg went entirely cold. Dunk had seen the man rage at people before, tearing into them with his hook as well as his furious words. This terrified him far more.
“If you leave, I’ll sue you for breach of contract. I’ll have the Game Wizards track you down and use their magic to compel you to fulfil the terms to which you agreed.”
Dunk stared at the man. “You wouldn’t dare. You can’t.”
“Try me, Mr. Hoffnung.”
“Can he do that?”
Dunk turned to the door, and Slick appeared a moment later. The halfling nodded at Pegleg and swallowed hard. “I’m afraid so. The contract is clear about this. Every Blood Bowl contract has such clauses. They stop the players from wandering off after their first pay day and only coming back after blowing every last copper of it.”
“And you let me sign that?”
Slick shrugged. “It’s standard, son. There are all sorts of clauses that protect you too. That’s why we call it a deal rather than slavery.”
“I never would have—”
“Can you read, son?”
Dunk didn’t like where this was heading. “I read the contract.”
“And you understood what you were signing.”
Dunk nodded. When he turned back to look at Pegleg, the man grinned at him.
“I’m so pleased to know that you can see it my way, Mr. Hoffnung. I hope this incident illustrates to you just what a treasured member of our team you are.”
Pegleg stood and offered his hand to Dunk, as if the meeting were over. Dunk ignored it.
“Isn’t there any way out of this?” Dunk asked. “Can’t I just refuse to work?”
Pegleg chuckled. “Unless you’re physically unable, Mr. Hoffnung, you’re required to take to the field when I order it. Or I can have the Game Wizards make you.”
“Would you really do that?” Dunk stared into Pegleg’s dark eyes. “You’d have those idiots wave me around the field like a puppet on their strings? They’d get me killed before half-time.”
Pegleg dropped his hand. “I’d rather not, truth be told. I… Back in my pirate days, I had just such a spell used on me. I hated every second of it. I swore that I’d do whatever I could to get away from there as soon as I could, and kill everyone I could on my way overboard.”
“Yet you’d do that to me.”
Pegleg spat on the floor. “You don’t seem to be leaving me much of a choice. It’s that or lose the Spike! Magazine championship.”
Dunk shook his head. “And the money that goes with it. That’s all you give a damn about.”
Pegleg opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. After a moment, he tried again. “The money is important, true. You and your team-mates like to get paid, as do the referees I have to bribe, and Dr. Pill, and all the other staffers that help us out around here, but that’s not why I do this.”
Pegleg shook his head. “I like to win, Mr. Hoffnung. I live to win, to be part of a team that is better than all the rest, and to lead that team to be the best that it can possibly be.
“You want to run off to find your sister. Your family is important to you. I understand that, believe it or not.
“I don’t have a family of my own. I don’t have a woman to hold.” He glared at his hook. “The Hackers are my family, m
y cause, my purpose, and I won’t let you or anyone else mess that up.”
The man’s speech, his passion, reverberated with Dunk. He understood just what he was talking about, and he felt shame for having thought that only money meant anything to his coach. But, it wasn’t enough to stop him from doing what he had to do.
“Are you done?”
Pegleg sat back down in his chair and gestured for Dunk to say his piece.
“I feel just horrible.”
Pegleg allowed himself a little smile. “Apology accepted,” he said, waving off Dunk’s words. “No need to say anything more.”
“No,” Dunk said, clearing his throat, and then coughing hard. “I feel horrible, sick that is, ill.”
He sat down hard in one of the chairs in front of Pegleg’s desk. He could smell the varnish on it, but he pretended his nose was so stuffed that a full clove of garlic wouldn’t have got through it.
“I don’t know where I must have picked it up. Some kind of virus.” He pounded on his chest and gave up a few more coughs. Then he laid the back of his hand across his forehead. “I feel faint, feverish, too, I think.”
“You’re going to play sick?” Pegleg sat forward in his chair. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Play? Sick?” Dunk lolled his head on his shoulders as if it had become too heavy to lift. “Sorry, coach. I don’t think I could play sick. I might be contagious. What if it’s the plague?”
“If it is the plague, you’ll get off easy compared to what I’ll do to you.” The cold menace had gone. Pegleg had reverted to rage. “You won’t get away with this.”
“What’s my contract say about that, Slick?” Dunk asked, letting his head fall back so he could stare at his agent with blank eyes.
Slick edged his way back out of the door as he spoke. “It’s pretty clear. The ‘Illness and Injury Clause’, also known as ‘IIC’ or ‘Ick’, states that a coach cannot force an injured or ill player to take the field, period.”
“It’s a sham!” Pegleg stood up and slammed his hook into the top of the desk. “You’re healthier than me, you scurvy dog.”
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 3