[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “Kirta.” Without a doubt, this was his sister.

  “Hello, Dunk and Dirk,” the image said. For a moment Dunk wondered if Kirta had heard him speak, but he had to remind himself that the Eye-Pod could only play images it had already recorded.

  “If all has gone well, Enojada, my emissary, has found you and relayed our proposal to you. I do hope that you can find a way to take her up on it. I would like nothing more than to see you once more.

  “I had long thought that you had perished at the hands of the mob that destroyed our family and our keep. It wasn’t until I saw the Blood Bowl championship game last year that I discovered I was wrong. We do not have many Old World games on our Cabalvision networks here, but I always watch the big match.

  “I was so delighted to see Dunk playing for the Hackers. Then to learn that my brother Dirk is none other than star player Dirk Heldmann, my heart nearly burst.

  “I have so many questions for you, as I suppose you do for me. I am well, living here among the Amazons. They took me in when I was most desperate and have proved good and stalwart friends. I captain our Blood Bowl team, and I look forward to testing my mettle against…”

  Kirta’s voice trailed off, and tears welled in her eyes. She tried to speak again, but emotion choked off her words. She bowed her head for a moment, and when she raised her eyes again they burned with determination.

  “I do hope that Enojada finds you and brings you to me. I cannot wait to see you again. You are all the family I have left in the world. Please come as quickly as you can.”

  With that, the Eye-Pod’s pupil went dark. Dunk reached out for the device, but it scampered away on its tentacles and leapt into Enojada’s open hands. “I’d like to have that,” Dunk said.

  Enojada gave him a wink and held the Eye-Pod before her like a serpent with forbidden fruit. Then she flipped it towards him, and he caught it in the air. It felt warm, but not so slimy as he had feared. The tentacles on it retracted, and he put it in a shirt pocket.

  “Consider it a down payment for your fees,” she said with a knowing grin.

  “That’s not his decision to make,” Pegleg said with a snarl, “it’s mine.”

  Every set of eyes in the room focused on the coach. He squirmed under their gazes and doffed his yellow, tricorn hat. Dunk noticed more grey hairs atop his head then he’d seen before.

  “Just how long is this affair of yours going to take?” he asked. “Lustria’s not just around the corner.”

  “It is a journey of several weeks, of course, but it is not as far as you might fear.”

  “When is this tournament of yours?”

  “It is held at the height of the summer solstice.”

  Pegleg nodded. “Then forget it.”

  He turned to leave, but Dunk slammed the door shut.

  “Why?” Dunk couldn’t understand what was going through his coach’s head. “We’re not going to be in the Dungeonbowl anyhow. They’re offering you a fortune just to show up, and another fortune if we win.”

  “ ‘If’?” said Dirk from his bed. “You mean ‘when’. How can a bunch of semi-pros with delusions of grandeur have a hope against the reigning Blood Bowl champs?”

  He glanced at Enojada. “No offence.”

  She gave him a wooden smile. “None taken.”

  “There’s the Chaos Cup as well,” Pegleg said. “Suppose we don’t make it back in time for that. Ocean voyages are never a sure means of travel.” He caressed his hook with his good hand. “That’s one thing I know.”

  “The Eyes of the Daemon are worth more than the Chaos Cup purse,” said Spinne.

  “Either one of them would be,” Enojada said, her smile gone.

  “It might even delay us past the Blood Bowl,” Pegleg said. “Defending champs lost somewhere on the other side of the world, how would that look?”

  “It is not that far way,” Enojada said. “The Blood Bowl tournament is not for nine months.”

  “What’s this really about?” Dunk asked. He stood in the pirate’s face. From here, he knew, the man could gut him with his hook before Dunk could move, but he was ready to take that risk if it meant putting an end to this.

  Pegleg ran his tongue over his gums, but did not say a word.

  “You’ve always been about winning and money,” Dunk said. “This has both. It should be an easy game, and the purse is enough to fund the Hackers for years.”

  He leaned in closer. “What are you afraid of?”

  Pegleg swallowed, and then coughed on a throat gone dry. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “You don’t get it, Mr. Hoffnung. You never have. We have everything we want. We have money. We have fame. We are champions.

  “There’s only one way to go from here.”

  Dunk snorted. “Everyone loses sometimes. We’ve lost plenty. We’ll lose again.”

  Pegleg nodded. “Aye, we will, but to top-level competitors, not to a pack of ladies playing in their little garden on the other side of the world.”

  Dunk stepped back. “You’re afraid we’ll lose.”

  Pegleg pointed his hook at Enojada. “People don’t just come to town and offer you a king’s ransom so you can come back home with them and slaughter them in their beds. We know nothing about these people or this place, or about what’s really going on in that jungle she calls home.”

  Dunk started to speak, but Pegleg turned his hook on him.

  “I realise it’s your little sister out there, but, they have nothing to lose in a game like this. Everyone expects us to beat the tar from them, and if we don’t do exactly that, who’s the laughing stock then?”

  He stabbed his hook at his chest. “Me!”

  The ex-pirate made a feeble noise and looked down at what he had done.

  “Erp.”

  Blood welled up from the point at which he’d plunged his hook through his skin. It spilled down his front, staining his shirt a dark crimson. He took one step forward and said, “Damn hook,” before he collapsed to the floor.

  8

  Dunk peered out at the ocean sparkling in the midday sun as the Sea Chariot chased the blazing orb across the sea. They hadn’t seen a single ship since they’d reached the open sea. While merchants did travel between the Old World and Lustria, it was a long and perilous journey and a large ocean.

  Dunk had never felt so small in his life. It seemed a miracle of courage that he and the team had managed to get the ship ready to sail in such a short time. He attributed it to the number of times the Hackers had been run out of town in the past. That had mostly happened in the days before he’d joined the team, but Cavre and Pegleg had told him plenty of harrowing tales of such times.

  At the same time, with the wind whipping through his hair and cracking at the edges of the sails, he’d rarely felt so free. They had left the Old World and all of its baggage behind them as they sailed off towards a new and different frontier that none of them, except for Enojada, of course, had ever seen. While they had a game ahead of them, it felt like a lifetime away. For now, the rise and fall of the waves would be all they would know.

  “The captain will have your head when he wakes up,” Dr. Pill said as he joined Dunk on the bridge.

  “So you’ve said many times. When do you think that might be?”

  The old elf shrugged. “Could be any minute, might never happen.”

  “Really?”

  The apothecary snorted. “No. I gave him something. He’ll be up soon. Even from a human view of time, and then you’ll be dead.”

  “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission,” Slick said as he rolled up the stairs from the main deck.

  “It’s not your head on the block, is it?” said Dr. Pill.

  Slick flashed a broad smile. “All the better.”

  “I could keep him unconscious until we reach Lustria,” the elf said to Dunk. “That would give you more space to run. There’s nowhere to go on this ship.”

  “That’s an awful long ti
me for him to be asleep.”

  “He could, ah, die, in his sleep.”

  Dunk goggled at the elf, who blushed just a bit.

  “Wouldn’t take much. Wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  “Are you saying you’d murder the coach?”

  “I’d never say such a thing.”

  Dunk turned to look straight into the elf’s good eye. “I thought you and Pegleg went way back.”

  “That we do.” Dr. Pill pursed his lips. “That’s how I would find the strength to tolerate such a terrible misfortune, should it suddenly, unexpectedly, untraceably happen.”

  Dunk gave the elf a sidelong look. “Let’s do what we can to keep that from happening.”

  Dr. Pill shrugged. “Just trying to simplify your life.”

  Despite the heat of the day, Dunk shuddered. He waved to Spinne and Lästiges where they sat near the prow, on either side of Dirk.

  Dunk’s brother had recovered well under Dr. Pill’s care and would be as fit as ever in a matter of days.

  Since the death of their father in the last Blood Bowl championship, Dunk and Dirk had gone back to being the only family they had, or so Dunk had thought until Enojada had arrived with news of their long-lost sister. The thought of losing Dirk shook Dunk up almost as much as his excitement at finding Kirta.

  Before he’d started playing Blood Bowl just over three years ago, Dunk had been alone in the world. He’d lost his family, their fortune, and everything that went with them. He’d known that Dirk had joined the Reikland Reavers, but the two hadn’t talked for years at that point.

  At the time, Dunk hadn’t thought that he’d missed any of it. Looking back, he could see how his failed attempt to become a dragonslayer had been little more than a death wish for a man with a sick and heavy heart.

  Now that he’d got his brother back, he was determined never to lose him again.

  That same sentiment drove his quest for his sister. He would have killed Pegleg if he’d thought that it would get him closer to Kirta, if he’d had no other choice. But he’d thought he’d seen another way and had taken that instead.

  He only hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

  “Hoffnung!”

  The captain’s voice bellowed from his cabin. Dunk could hear it through the boards beneath his feet. He tapped Reyes, who had the ship’s wheel, on the shoulder, and the man scurried away.

  As Dunk took the wheel, Dr. Pill and Slick slunk off, following Reyes towards the ship’s outer railing. Everyone else on the deck did the same thing, giving the path between the captain’s quarters and the bridge a wide and open berth.

  The door to the captain’s quarters smashed open, and Pegleg stormed out of the dark room, shading his eyes against the sunlight.

  “By all that’s holy or not, we’d better be on our way back to Bad Bay. If not, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  Dunk felt his hands grow sweaty on the ship’s polished wheel. Pegleg spun on the tip of his wooden leg and hobbled up the stairs to the bridge.

  “Mr. Hoffnung!” The coach’s skin was a deep red, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen the sun in days.

  “Ahoy, coach.”

  While Pegleg had been unconscious, Dunk had found plenty of time to think about how to handle this. The instant he saw the fury blazing in the man’s eyes, though, all his plans fled from his head. He tightened his grip on the wheel and wondered if he should have taken Dr. Pill up on his offer.

  “Don’t you ahoy me.” He stormed to the top of the stairs and stopped there, his hand shaking, his leg weak. “What’s our heading?”

  “South-west, coach.”

  Pegleg swept his gaze around behind Dunk and spotted nothing but empty sea. Dunk knew what had to be running through his head. They had to leave Magritta by the south-west, but not for long, and there would be no reason to take the cutter out into the open sea, if they were heading for home.

  “Destination?”

  “Amazon Island, coach, off the coast of Lustria.”

  Dunk waited for the explosion, but it never came. Pegleg walked slowly over to stand next to Dunk. He hissed his words through his teeth.

  “Under whose authority?”

  “Mine, coach.”

  Dunk felt like his heart might burst from his chest. He looked down and saw Dirk and Spinne standing on the other side of the wheel, worry etched on their faces. Slick and Lästiges peered from behind them, the reporter’s hovering camra staring over their shoulders. M’Grash lumbered up from the rear, picking his nose as he tried to figure out what all the ruckus meant.

  He knew Dirk and Spinne could cut Pegleg down in an instant, but they wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to save him too.

  “So, it’s mutiny then, is it?” Pegleg brought up his hook and spotted a cork stuck onto the tip of it. His eyes bulged as he stared at it.

  “After what happened, we wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself in your sleep,” Dunk said.

  Pegleg felt for the wound with the wrong hand and smacked the cork into his chest. Dunk could see the memories of what had happened come flooding back. Stunned, Pegleg brought his other hand up and felt the stitches sticking up under his shirt.

  “You nearly died,” Dunk said. “If we hadn’t called for Dr. Pill right away, you would have.”

  Pegleg pulled open his grimy shirt, stained with sweat instead of blood, and exposed the angry wound over his heart. Then he took the cork off his hook, and looked at Dunk.

  “For that you have my undying gratitude, Mr. Hoffnung.” He brought his hook up to Dunk’s face. “Now give me back my ship.”

  “You mean ‘our’ ship,” Dunk said. He squinted out at the dazzling sea, not wanting to know what would happen next. If Pegleg meant to kill him, at least the blinding sun would make sure he would not see it coming.

  Pegleg’s hook flinched, but did not scratch Dunk’s skin. Instead, the ex-pirate reached out with the bend of the hook and pulled Dunk’s chin until the thrower faced him. Dunk searched the man’s eyes for murderous intent and found it swaying there like a cobra ready to strike. “Pardon me, Mr. Hoffnung, but I don’t think I could possibly have heard you right.”

  Dunk stuck out his hand for Pegleg to shake. “I’m part owner of the Hackers now. Glad to have you back, partner.”

  The last word hit Pegleg like a troll lineman. He shook his head and looked up at the sky, and then at the sea around him. “I died, didn’t I? This is Hell. I tried to live a good life, to do right by people. I barely ever cheated my players, but I guess you can’t make up for a misspent youth. I’m in Hell.”

  He stared at Dunk, and then slashed at him with his hook. Dunk ducked behind the wheel, and the hook bit deep into the polished wood, sending off splinters.

  Dunk pushed away from the wheel before Pegleg could attack again. As he did, the wheel began to spin, slowly at first, but then picking up speed. As the sails overhead began to flag, Pegleg jumped forward and grabbed the wheel.

  Pegleg set the wheel straight and then tied it down so it would hold a straight heading, cursing the entire time. When he finished his work, he spun on Dunk, brandishing his hook once more.

  “Explain this,” Pegleg snarled at Dunk. “This is my ship, mine! No one else owns it.”

  Cavre stepped up behind the captain, keeping well out of the man’s reach. “Now, captain, you know that’s not entirely true.”

  Pegleg went as cold as a week-old corpse. He turned to stare at Cavre and nodded. “So,” he said, “it’s come to this. I was out, and you took over.”

  “Just as you asked me to, captain. That’s why you sold me part of the team and made me the team’s general manager.”

  “And first mate aboard ship.” Pegleg slapped the blunt end of his hook against his forehead. “Has everything gone so wrong?”

  Cavre shook his head. “You were near death. Dunk showed me that he had a plan, and I thought it was a good one. He made an extremely generous offer for a part of the team, and I sold it to him.”
/>
  Pegleg pulled at his beard with his good hand. “How much did you sell him?”

  “Half.”

  Pegleg almost choked.

  “Of the whole team?”

  Cavre shook his head. “Of your shares.”

  Pegleg nodded in understanding. “So, he and I are equal partners. As long as we agree, there are no problems.”

  “And when you don’t?”

  “You use your shares to break all stalemates.”

  Cavre smiled, his white teeth gleaming bright inside the frame of his dark skin.

  Pegleg reached out and clapped Cavre on the back. “Well played, old friend.”

  Dunk laughed, as did everyone else. The tension seemed to melt away from the bridge, and then from the rest of the deck. Pegleg and Cavre started to laugh as well, and for a moment Dunk thought everything would be all right.

  “Just one thing,” Pegleg said, still chortling. “Did you come up with this idea yourself?”

  “No,” Cavre said, wiping the tears from his face. “It was all Mr. Fullbelly’s idea.”

  Down on the deck, Slick froze.

  Pegleg vaulted over the wheel, straight at the halfling. Slick took off as if someone had mentioned that the last donut was still sitting in a box on the prow. Still, with his roly-poly belly and thick, stubby legs, he didn’t have a prayer.

  Even though Pegleg only had one good leg, he’d catch up with the agent soon enough. He was fast, and there were only so many places to hide on a ship.

  “M’Grash!” Dunk said as he scrambled after the coach.

  The ogre reached out and plucked Slick from the deck, and then held him high over his head, out of reach of Pegleg’s swinging hook. Slick squealed in terror at first, but then clung to the ogre’s hand as if it were a lifeline tossed to a drowning man.

  “Mr. K’Thragsh, put that bilge rat down so I can spear him on my hook like the rodent he is.”

  M’Grash began to lower the halfling to the deck.

  “Don’t put me down,” Slick said, begging the ogre. He rose into the air once more.