The two figures in the dazzling white suits stepped forward, and the band wrapped up its latest song with a flourish. “Hello,” the larger man said in a charming, well-mannered tone. “My name is Mr. Doarke, and this is my assistant, Tat II. Welcome to Columbo’s Island.”
The band behind Doarke struck up a tune that had something to do with drinking and sex. Dunk did his best to ignore it, although he saw Spinne blush. Lästiges turned her camra on the band, recording it, “for the fans back home.”
“I am Captain Haken of the free ship Fanatic,” Pegleg said. “We sail for Amazon Island, but hope to take advantage of your hospitality to stretch our legs and restock our supplies.”
“But of course,” Doarke said. “We are at your service.” His grin seemed warm and friendly, stunningly white against his bronzed skin, but underneath it Dunk thought he sensed something of the shark. He felt like they were being sized up for a meal.
Dunk left Pegleg and Cavre to handle the negotiations. When he heard the ex-pirate cry in dismay at Doarke’s prices, he knew why he’d felt like a fresh roast tossed in front of a pack of starving dogs.
The singer finished up the band’s latest tune with a flourish. “Take five, boys,” he said. “Hell, take fifty.”
When the rest of the band groaned in protest, the singer winked at them. “Always leave them wanting more, boys. We’ll have a big show tonight.”
Placated, the band members tossed themselves down on the sand to watch the surf roll in. Edgar strode off towards the line of trees beyond the beach, grumbling about finding somewhere to shoot roots for a while. M’Grash followed him, a hopeful look on his face.
“What’s good to eat?” the ogre asked. It had been a long journey, and even at triple rations he never had enough to eat.
“Eat?” The treeman growled, indignant. “You think I’m going to give you bloody pointers on which of my cousins you should dismember to fill your stomach?”
M’Grash whimpered and rubbed his empty belly. Even from such a monstrous figure, the sound was pitiful.
Edgar sighed and put a branch around the ogre’s shoulder. “You’re nothing but a big, bloody baby,” he said. “We’ll find you some food. I never did like this branch of the family tree much anyhow. Bananas and coconuts? Give me a good hardwood any day.”
The singer strode up to Dunk, Spinne, Slick, Dirk, and Lästiges and stuck out his hand for shakes and introductions all around. “Name’s Buffay, Jiminy Buffay,” he said. “We’re the Moral Reefers.”
“That’s an unusual name for a band,” Lästiges said, her camra focused on the man, looking for his reaction.
Jiminy grinned right into the camra’s lens. “We’re the shoals on which all ships of morality founder, and we are like rocks in the steadfastness of our debauchery.”
“We should have brought Getrunken along,” said Spinne.
Dunk held her hand and spoke to Jiminy. “It’s been a long trip,” he said. “We just want to stretch our legs and get the lay of the land.”
Jiminy raised an eyebrow, with a sidelong glance at Spinne. “Looks to me like you already have that at your side, friend.”
Dunk wasn’t sure if he should laugh or knock the man into the sand. A giggle from Spinne told him to not worry about it, for now.
“We have just the thing to help unloosen legs of all kinds,” Jiminy said. Behind him, one of the Moral Reefers lugged up a small, wooden cask. A tap had already been driven into one end.
“What’s that?” Dirk asked. He’d been silent until now, watching, absorbing, gathering it all in. The mystery of the cask had finally inspired him to speak.
Jiminy cocked his head at Dirk, a twinkle in his eye. “An island treat like no other, my friends. A delight to all those who sample it, and a boon to all who partake.”
As he spoke, another of the Moral Reefers opened the tap and poured a clear liquid from the cask into a set of cups that had been carved from the shells of split coconuts.
“What’s it called?” asked Dunk.
“Ever heard tell of rum?”
18
As dusk fell, Pegleg and Cavre re-joined Dunk and the others, who’d been sampling Jiminy’s rum all day long. Doarke and Tat II strolled up behind them, pleased looks twinned on their faces.
“We’ve stocked the dinghy with supplies,” Cavre said. “We’re going to take them back to the ship.”
Dunk groaned in dismay, and the others, including the Moral Reefers, all joined in. “Aw, coach,” he said, struggling not to slur his words, “do we have to?”
Dunk held a puppy-dog look on his face for as long as he could, and then fell against the others, laughing. Cavre and Pegleg stood over them, not saying a word, until their merriment petered out.
“We’ll go on without you, Mr. Hoffnung,” said Pegleg, failing to entirely keep the disgust from his voice. “You lot sleep off whatever it is you’ve polluted your bodies with. We’ll be back for you in the morning.”
Dunk leapt to his feet and then fell back down again. The world had started to tilt as soon as he’d got his head away from the planet, so he decided to hug its face again.
“Gotta watch out for those gravity storms,” Jiminy said. “They’re as unreasonable as hurricane season, and come with the rum.”
“The boat is full,” Cavre said. “We don’t have the room for anyone but me and the captain anyhow.”
“We could ride Edgar back,” said Dirk, giggling as he spoke. “We could all just pile on his side and let M’Grash push us all the way home.”
Edgar’s voice called out from the treeline. “I heard that, you bloody sot! I’ve shot roots here, and I’m not leaving until it’s time to rip them out!”
“Stay,” Pegleg said, sneering at them all, “please.”
He spun on his wooden leg and stormed off towards the dinghy. Cavre hustled off behind him. As he went, the catcher called back, “We’ll return in the morning.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Enojada.
“You don’t have to,” said Cavre. “We will be fine.”
“He is going to hold onto the oars with his hook?”
Cavre glanced to see if the captain had heard, but the man was already halfway to the dinghy. Cavre scowled at the woman, and said, “Fine. Then let’s move.”
Doarke and Tat II waved at the two as they made for the dinghy. Then Doarke grinned down at his drunken guests. “I see you have decided to make yourselves welcome.”
Dunk looked up at the man, but the world spun around him as he did. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “This rum of his is great.” He pointed to Jiminy, who cackled at the implied accusation.
“No worries, my friends,” said Doarke. “We on Columbo’s Island have made an excellent deal with your captain, and are inclined to celebrate such good fortune with any who care to join us.”
One of the Moral Reefers passed a cup full of rum to both Doarke and Tat II, who accepted graciously. Doarke dipped his finger into the rum, and turned to Tat II, who had produced a tiny torch. The tiny man lit Doarke’s finger, and the larger man held his hand in the air above him.
“Here’s to new friends,” Doarke said, raising his cup. “May they someday become old friends. To the law of living free!”
The man slammed back the contents of his cup, and extinguished his flaming finger in his mouth.
Dunk and his friends erupted into a round of applause. Within minutes, each of them, except for Edgar and M’Grash, had duplicated Doarke’s feat.
M’Grash dipped his finger into the giant-sized cup the Moral Reefers had supplied him with, fashioned from an old cask cut in half. He even managed to hold still long enough for Tat II to ignite the rum. Then, however, he could not help but run screaming for the ocean to douse the fire.
“Set myself on bloody fire?” Edgar said, his branches shaking at the thought. “You’re mad. You’re all bloody mad.”
“To the law of living free!” Spinne said as she completed the ritual.
“What’s all that about?” Dunk asked. He looked around and saw that Doarke had disappeared.
Tat II answered. “The boss invented that years ago when he took over. He calls it the Statute of Liberty.”
“What does living free have to do with burning rum?”
The little man shrugged. “You can’t have liberty without some shots being fired.”
“How come you’re so short?” Slick asked, not slurring his words as much as Dunk had. Normally, the halfling wouldn’t be so direct, but the rum had loosened him up too.
Tat II grinned. “You should see my sister.”
“Seriously, these other fellows are clearly men. You’re clearly not.”
“My tribe is native to this land. We have lived here for centuries, surviving by being too small for the bigger creatures to notice, or at least bother with.”
Slick narrowed his eyes at Tat II. “Are you some kind of halfling?”
“When Columbo came to our land, he had already travelled throughout your hemisphere. In the Southland, he met a people who he said reminded him of us. He named us after them.”
“And they were?”
“Pygmies.”
Slick stopped cold. “You’re pygmy halflings.” He clapped a hand over his face. “I thought I’d seen it all.”
“Don’t complain,” Dirk said. “You finally have someone who can look up to you.”
Slick and Tat II looked at each other, and then turned and kicked sand in Dirk’s face. The blitzer spluttered in protest and made to get up and chase after them. He slipped in the sand again, though, and by the time he’d recovered, they had disappeared, cackling into the darkness.
“Which way’d they go?” he asked, but not even Lästiges would stop laughing long enough to tell him.
Dunk allowed himself to spill over backward onto the sand, and lay there staring up at the stars. They were different from the ones he’d grown up looking at. He recognised a few constellations in the northern part of the sky, but most of the arrangements of the stars seemed entirely new.
“What’s that one?” he asked, pointing up into the sky.
“Your hand’s wobbling too much, friend,” said Jiminy. “I can’t be sure what your meaning is.”
“That one.” Dunk stabbed at the sky once more, but his once-blazing finger seemed to wander with a mind of its own. “The one that looks like a football.”
“That’s no football,” said Lästiges. “It’s a camra.”
“A cake,” said Slick.
“A trophy,” said Dirk.
“You’re all blind,” said Spinne. “It’s an ogre’s head.”
M’Grash whined.
“Just kidding,” Spinne said.
“Dunk, my friend, you have sharp eyes,” said Jiminy. “That there is none other than the Football. Folks around here believe that Nuffle put those little lanterns up there for everyone to see. If it shines over your head, you’re sure to be a winner.”
“We can’t see it from the Old World,” said Dunk, “at least I never have.” The others from the Fanatic all murmured their agreement.
“So, what’s that tell you?” Jiminy grinned baring all his white teeth.
“That we’re a bunch of losers,” said Dirk. Dunk smacked him on the arm with the back of his hand.
“That’s, true,” said Jiminy, “but what else?”
Dunk and his friends all shrugged.
Jiminy smiled. “It tells you that it’s a hokey legend. Of course it doesn’t work that way. It hangs up there over almost every game. If it was real, everyone would be blessed to win, and then where would we be?”
“Wouldn’t we all win?” asked Dunk.
“Not much of a game then, is it, my friend?”
Dunk had to concede the point.
“Personally, I think Nuffle put it up there as an advertisement for his favourite game. Without it, well, let’s just say games aren’t as frequent here as they are where you come from. Leave something alone that long, and people are liable to forget about it.”
“So the constellation is a gigantic billboard?”
“If you want to look at it that way, sure.”
Dunk glanced around. “It doesn’t look like it’s working too well.”
“How do you figure that?”
“How many Blood Bowl teams do you see around here? Besides us?”
19
Dunk’s head pounded like the inside of a steel drum when he awoke the next day. Unaware of how or when he’d gone to bed, the horrible taste in his mouth drove him from sleep. Fully prepared to find himself lying in the beach’s chilly, sea-sprayed sand, he discovered that he was warm and dry, and that for the first time in a long while no deck swayed below him.
Dunk opened his eyes. He lay on an overstuffed mattress beneath ivory white linens, a canopy of thin netting hanging over the frame that surrounded his bed. Sunlight streamed in through a wide bay window set across the white-walled room from the bed.
In normal circumstances, Dunk would have been delighted to have found himself in such a place, and in Spinne’s supple arms to boot. As it was, the light stabbed at him, the sheets felt scratchy, and he wondered where he might find a convenient place to throw up. If none presented itself soon, he might have to make do with whatever he could find.
“Awake already?” Spinne asked, turning to face him. He groaned in protest, but she kept right on talking. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever come back to me as drunk as you were last night.”
Dunk held his head together with his hands, hoping that the parts of his skull that wanted to leave him would stay on. “I’d never get that drunk, honest.”
To tell the truth, Dunk didn’t remember much of last night after Pegleg, Cavre, and Enojada had left for the ship. It seemed like he’d had fun, although he couldn’t say for sure exactly how. Now, however, his head felt determined to keep torturing him until he could recall every last detail of how he had damaged it.
“Did you mean what you said?” Spinne asked, snuggling into his embrace, her head resting on his chest.
Dunk froze. “Um, sure.”
“I’m so happy” she said. “I just can’t wait!”
“Me neither,” said Dunk, hoping that she would drop him some kind of hint about what it was that would make them both so happy.
“Oh, and the way you did it, out there in the sand, under the stars. It was just perfect.”
This confused Dunk even more. A moment ago, she’d been talking about something she couldn’t wait for. Now she was going on about something he did last night, and apparently did well.
“Of course, getting sick in the fire pit put a bit of a damper on it, but I can overlook that. I certainly won’t include that part when I tell my sister all about it.”
“Good,” said Dunk, rubbing his belly. It growled back at him. No wonder he felt so hungry.
Spinne flipped up onto her knees and gave him a hard look. She stared deep into his eyes, and then scowled.
“You don’t remember a damn thing about last night do you?”
Dunk considered lying, trying to fake his way through the conversation, but it was clear that she’d caught him. Besides, it was nearly impossible to lie about an event that he didn’t know anything about, despite the fact they’d both been there.
“Fine,” she said, not waiting for a response from him. She jumped out of the bed, bare naked, and slipped back into her clothes. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“What?” Dunk said, getting up out of bed. “What are talking about?”
Spinne gave Dunk a look that could have peeled paint off a wall.
Before Dunk could get to the bottom of what had happened, a knock came at the door. Slick didn’t even give Dunk a chance to respond before shouting through the door. “Son, are you in there? I need to talk to you, now!”
“Can it wait?” said Dunk. “I’m right in the middle of something here.”
“It’s a disaster!” Slick said. “A complete and total
, and utter disaster.”
The halfling wasn’t known to inflate problems. Sure, as an agent, he lied all the time, and well, but that usually meant making things sound better than they were. He wouldn’t kid around about something as horrible as this sounded.
Spinne opened the door as Dunk slipped into his clothes. “What is it?” she asked. Her anger with Dunk had faded away in the face of Slick’s terrible tone.
“It’s the Fanatic! They’re gone!”
Dunk cursed. “I should have known it. Pegleg was still angry with me. The first chance he got, he ditched us all and left his problems behind.”
“No, son,” Slick said, “that’s not it at all. The ship’s still there, floating right where it anchored. It’s just everyone on it… they’re gone.”
Dunk goggled at the halfling. “What do you mean gone?”
“Gone, as in ‘not there any longer’, ‘having vacated the premises’, and ‘nowhere to be found’.”
“How do you know that?” asked Spinne. “You haven’t been back there already, have you?”
Slick shook his head. “M’Grash got eager to get back to the ship, so he swam out to the Fanatic earlier this morning. When he got there, he said no one was aboard.”
Dunk raised an eyebrow. M’Grash was a wonderful ogre and a great friend, but he wasn’t the sharpest sword in the weapons rack. Dunk didn’t know how the ogre could have missed the entire crew and passengers aboard the Fanatic, but he apparently had.
“I know what you’re thinking, son, but the big guy seems serious.”
“I don’t doubt that he is,” said Dunk. “Being serious and being right aren’t always the same thing though.”
Dirk and Lästiges appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?” the reporter asked, her ears pricking up.
“It seems everyone aboard the Fanatic has decided to abandon the ship,” said Dunk.
“They just want the rum,” said Dirk. “Can’t say I blame them. I’ll bet Getrunken led the attack.”
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 14