“I refuse to let you take that tone with me, young man! Even if I’m dead, I’m still your mother, and you will listen to me!”
“Sod off,” said Dirk.
Before Dunk could blink, a score of tendrils shot from the mists and enveloped his brother in a tangle of grey mists. The chill felt palpable and painful, even to Dunk, who stood a good fifteen yards from Dirk.
Dirk fell to the ground, growling in pain. He writhed against the tendrils, and they proved to be as insubstantial as the air. However, try as he might, he could not work his way free of them, and soon he lacked the strength to try.
Warm blood only provided some protection against violent temperature changes. Given enough time, that defence could be worn down to nothing, and Dirk had been pushed to that point in record time.
Dunk rushed over to help his brother. “Let him go, Mother! You’re killing him!”
The ghost swung around in front of Dunk, sweeping between him and Dirk and stopping him cold. “That’s the point, I’m afraid. If you boys won’t respect me in life, then perhaps you’ll give me my due in death!”
All thoughts of the game disappeared from Dunk’s head as he dived away from the mists that stretched out for him, along with his mother’s bitter tones. Scrambling beneath them, he tucked the football under his arm reflexively, and rolled when he hit the ground. The mists sailed over his head, and then curled up and back for another shot at him.
“Dunkel!” This time, the voice was deep and resonant, but no less strained. M’Grash scooped Dunk up off the ground and into his arms. “Bad lady no hurt you!”
“Bad lady?” Greta said. “Bad lady? You oaf of an ogre. How dare you question how I choose to raise my sons!”
The tendrils came straight for M’Grash this time, and the ogre did not even attempt to avoid them. Instead, he inhaled as deeply as he could, and then blew with all his might.
The mists parted before the ogre’s mighty lungs, but only for a moment. It was like trying to push back the ocean by splashing through it. Even a creature as powerful as M’Grash had to concede the battle to the stronger power.
As the mists came rushing back at M’Grash, the ogre dropped Dunk and fled. The chill grey shot over Dunk’s head and enveloped the entire field for as far as Dunk could see. He had to admit that this wasn’t more than a few feet though.
“Can you see what’s going on down there, Jim?”
“Not a thing, Bob. I’ve heard of freak fogs before, but this is ridiculous! That’s thicker than my last wife’s skull!”
Dunk could hear his friends calling his name. He wanted to call back to them, but the fog had come down close to his feet, and he could no longer see who was close to him. If he said something to give himself away, a lizardman might appear out of the mists and tear his head off. Or, worse yet, his mother might find him.
“Either way, something had better happen quickly, or we’ll be going into overtime! The clock’s just about to run out, and we have a tied score!”
At that moment, Dunk felt something tugging against his leg. He yanked his foot away, sure that he’d find a set of long, lizard teeth attached to it. Instead, he spotted Big Richard waving up at him from the floor of the volcano, which Dunk now realised was steaming from exposure to his mother’s chilliness.
At first, Dunk just stared at the Sacrifice Fly. Then he knew just what he had to do. He scooped Big Richard up in one arm and stuffed the ball into the pygmy halfling’s hands with the other.
“Which way is the end zone?” Dunk asked.
“That way,” Big Richard said, pointing over Dunk’s shoulder. “But why?”
Dunk slung the halfling down low and gave him three big swings. “When you hit the ground,” Dunk said, “keep running until you see daylight.”
“No,” Big Richard said as he tried to squirm from Dunk’s grasp. “No, wait!”
But it was too late. The man in the little Hackers uniform went sailing off into the mist and disappeared.
32
“Dirk!” Dunk shouted. “Mother! What have you done with Dirk!” He clawed his way through the mists, praying he would find his brother before their mother froze him to death.
A low moan wafted from downfield, and Dunk charged towards it. “Dunkel!” the ghost’s voice called. “I’m almost through with your little brother. You’re next!”
Dunk felt his way towards the ghost by following the freezing temperatures emanating from her. Dirk’s groans got louder as he went, confirming he was on the right path.
“Mother!” he shouted. “You’re just as cold-hearted in death as you ever were in life! It must be a real treat for you to finally be able to do more than pluck at our heels with your disapproval.”
“You ungrateful brat!” Greta’s ghost wailed. “After all I did for you, this is how you repay me!”
“You let Lehrer and our nannies raise us. They were our parents, not you.”
The mists rose from the field, gathered up as if caught in an oncoming tornado. As they coalesced back into something Dunk could recognise as having once been his mother, they lifted from the floor of the volcano’s centre, revealing the pitch and the people gathered around and on it. Most of these souls gasped in relief, pleased to have emerged from the freezing fog and to be able to bask in the tropical sunlight once more.
One tiny man crowed in triumph. A moment later, the horn sounded to signal the end of regulation time in the game.
“Nuffle’s blessed balls!” Bob’s voice said. “That’s the end of the game, but it’s not over yet!”
“I thought it was already over!” Jim’s voice said. “Called on account of haunting!”
“The referees may have fled from the field, but they left the clock running! And look who’s standing in the Ssservants’ end zone with the ball!”
All eyes in the stadium turned to see Big Richard standing, holding the ball, which was almost as large as he was, over his head and jumping up and down in ecstatic joy.
“Touchdown, Hackers!” said Bob. “Hackers win!”
Normally Dunk would have cheered for this along with everyone else and then joined his team for the post-game celebration. At the moment, though, he had a more urgent matter on his hands.
“You unbelievable bastard!” Greta’s ghost screamed down at Dunk as she towered over him.
“Gosh, Mother,” Dunk said as he glanced towards Dirk, “are you telling me you and Father weren’t married?”
Dirk lay on the crater’s floor, right about the Hacker’s 40-yard line, curled into a ball. For an instant, Dunk thought perhaps he’d been too slow, moved too late to save his brother, as Dirk seemed still as death. Then Dunk saw him trembling from the extreme cold he’d endured, and hope surged in Dunk’s heart.
Greta’s ghost dived down from her vantage point high above the field, straight at Dunk. Knowing he couldn’t do anything to harm her, at least not directly, Dunk spun on his heel and sprinted away. A blast of mist splashed down right where he’d been standing, followed by an unearthly wail that made Dunk wish he’d been born deaf.
Having achieved his goal, which was to lure the ghost from hurting Dirk, Dunk had no idea what to do next. It felt like the tiger had him by the tail, and all he could do was run, and hope he could somehow outlast the dead.
Dunk knew that his mother knew next to nothing about Blood Bowl or anything else athletic. She’d spent her days involved in the high society of Altdorf, unwilling to show interest in her husband’s work and refusing to sully her hands with something as base as child-rearing. He knew he could avoid her attacks by jinking back and forth all day long, and he did just that.
Greta telegraphed her attacks long before they came crashing down, and Dunk easily danced around them, spinning and slicing across the field with the same skills that helped him avoid opposing players during a game. Every so often, he would nearly step on a lizardman from the Ssservantsss who’d just started to come out of the cold-induced torpor caused by the mists that had blanketed
the field. Rather than trying to attack him, these creatures slunk off the field as fast as their sluggish limbs would carry them, not wishing to have anything to do with the Hackers and their ghostly family feud.
Dunk started to tire. He’d already played a full game, and while avoiding Greta’s attacks was easy enough, he couldn’t keep it up forever.
That’s when he spotted Kirta. She stormed out of the stands and raced right for him, a murderous scowl on her face.
Staying away from Greta was one thing. Kirta was a trained athlete and fresh to the field. He might dodge her tackles a few times, but eventually she’d get a hand on him and would slow him down just enough for their mother to finish him off.
Dunk considered his options. If he beat Kirta to the ground, he might have a chance, but he knew he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d come so far and risked so much to see his sister again. He couldn’t hurt her, not now.
Dunk put his hands up before him to show he wanted to talk, but Kirta ignored him. Instead, she threw back her head and screamed out, “Mother! You are embarrassing me!”
The ghost froze in mid-strike. She turned around, twisting on her smoky pillar of a waist to face Kirta.
“Kirta, darling, you know I never meant to do anything to hurt you. I only wanted to put an end to your brothers’ shenanigans, and they absolutely refuse to be reasonable. Now they’ve done the worst thing possible!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dunk watched Spinne haul Dirk to his feet and hustle him off the field into Lästiges’s waiting arms. He avoided moving his head to look at them for fear of alerting Greta’s ghost to the fact that Dirk was getting away.
That just left Kirta and him out in the open with their mother’s crazed ghost.
“What are you talking about?” Kirta said. She seemed to have the situation far better in hand than Dunk did, so he began to sidle off the field.
None of the fans in the stands had left the stadium. They all wanted to see what would happen, despite the peril. They regularly sat up as close as possible to the mayhem of a standard Blood Bowl game. Dunk supposed getting a ringside seat to a fight with a ghost had to be just as compelling to them.
“They won their game!” Greta’s ghost moaned. “They won, and now you’re going to win, like you always do, and they’re going to end up playing you in the finals. I just can’t stand it!”
“But, Mother, that’s what we do for a living. Dunk and Dirk have played against each other, lots of times!”
Dunk winced as Kirta mentioned his name, and then froze as the ghost focused her attention back on him. “Is this true?” she asked him. “You willingly put yourself in a situation in which you might kill your brother?”
Dunk cringed at the question. “No one got hurt, Mother.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true now is it, Bob?” Jim said.
“Absolutely not! The Hoffnung-Heldmann brothers have two of the highest HOG ratios on any team!”
Dunk grimaced and promised himself to have a word with Bob and Jim once this was over with. He’d never met the two announcers in person. Few players had, as they had a habit of treating any Blood Bowl player who approached them as a lethal threat. A couple of rookies died every year before the point was made, but the veterans always gave the pair a wide berth.
“What?” the ghost said, aghast. “What exactly is a HOG ratio, Dunkel?”
“Hurt Other Guy, Mother, but that’s not important.” He put up his hands and waved down her protests. “What matters is that Dirk and I survived all that, and we play on the same team now. There’s no chance of us killing each other!” At least not on the field, he added mentally.
“You know,” Greta’s ghost said, “I have a perfectly reasonable solution to this problem.”
Dunk blinked, and then swallowed hard and folded his hands in front of him while he waited for her to continue. He felt just like a little boy back in the keep, waiting for his mother to hand down some ridiculous punishment for Dirk, Kirta, and him for having broken some rule or ignored some bit of etiquette about which they’d known not a thing. To interrupt her at this point would invite another bout of insane ranting. It was always better to wait her out rather than give her another reason to go mad.
“Death,” she said sweetly, just as if she’d suggested they all sit down to eat cake. “Once we’re all dead, we can enjoy eternity together, never without each other’s company again.”
Dunk didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Kirta came up and put an arm around his shoulders. “Can we get back to you on that, Mother?” she said with as much innocence as she could muster.
Dunk nodded along with his sister. “That’s right, Mother. Kirta has a big game to play right after this, and that’s a big decision to make. I promise, we’ll sit down afterwards and come up with a solution to all this.”
The ghost beamed down at them, her thundercloud grey colour turning to a cheery silver. “Oh, of course! I was just so excited about my idea that I couldn’t wait to share it with you. But I can be patient, at least until tomorrow’s game.”
“We’ll have it all sorted out before then, Mother.” Dunk looked down at his little sister and realised he couldn’t tell which of them was trembling. “I promise.”
33
That evening, when Kirta walked out of the Lusties’ locker room, leaving the post-game victory celebration behind, Dunk, Dirk, and Pegleg were waiting for her. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” Dunk asked.
Kirta nodded and led them away from the volcanic stadium and into the jungle beyond. They strode down a long, well-worn path, lit by torches, until they came to a beachside shack with a thatched roof framed up among a stand of coconut palms right on the edge of the sand.
“Few people come here after the games,” Kirta explained. “If they want a drink, there are plenty of places closer in. If they’re going to walk this far, they’re usually on their way home to one of the other islands.”
Kirta spotted a slim and lanky lizardman as they approached, and signalled for a round of drinks. The brownish creature dashed away into a walled hut that stood under a small portion of the thatched roof, the rest of which sat open to the refreshing sea breeze.
The four of them sat in wicker chairs around a bamboo table and stared out at the pounding surf and twinkling stars. The full moon had just risen, and it hung low and wide in the sky, its reflected glory sparkling across the water.
The lizardman appeared at the side of the table and slid four icy beers in transparent bottles onto it. As he did, Dunk noticed his fingers had become the same golden colour as the drinks, and then slipped back to the colour of the table as soon as the lizardman released them.
Without a word, the four each grabbed a beer, and then raised them and clinked them against each other in a wordless toast. After a quick drink each, Kirta spoke.
“So,” she said, “what do you have in mind?”
Dunk nodded at Pegleg. The ex-pirate doffed his hat and then leaned in and put his elbows on the table as he spoke. His golden teeth glittered in the light of the torches burning near the place’s kitchen.
“Come play for us,” he said.
Kirta smiled, and then giggled. Her jaw fell as she realised that it wasn’t a joke.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Think about it,” Dunk said. “It solves our problem with Mother perfectly. Dirk and I are on the same team and so can’t hurt each other.”
“On the field,” said Dirk, “on purpose.”
“If you’re on the same team as us, we can’t hurt you either.”
“On the field,” said Dirk, “on purpose.”
“Perfect,” said Dunk.
“But what if I don’t want to play for the Hackers?”
Dunk froze. He’d anticipated a lot of arguments against his plan, but not this one. He nodded at Pegleg to give him some time.
The coach leaned back and used his hook to tick off a number of points on his fleshy hand. “We offer excellen
t pay. We have full benefits, including a full-time apothecary on staff. We are the defending Blood Bowl tournament champions. Any other player would kill for a deal like this, and you are insane if you turn it down.”
Kirta narrowed her eyes at Pegleg. “How do I know you’re not going to screw around with my contract?”
“Your brother Dunk is a co-owner of the team. He’s had his agent, Slick Fullbelly, look over your contract.” Pegleg produced a scroll from inside his coat and unfurled it on the table. “It’s a better offer than I would have given you, but my partners insisted on it.”
Kirta sat back in her chair and took another pull on her beer.
“I don’t get it,” Dunk said. “Why wouldn’t you want to join the Hackers?”
“It’s not the Hackers I’m worried about,” Kirta said, pointing her bottle into the air for emphasis. “It’s you and you.” The bottle punched at Dunk and Dirk.
Dunk’s jaw dropped. “What?” That was all he could get out.
“I spent most of my life being nothing more than a little sister to you two. I’m not sure I want to go back to that.”
“You’d prefer to live with and work for a team that purchased you as a slave?”
“I’ve paid off my contract and then some,” Kirta said, folding her arms across her chest. “They treat me as an honoured guest.”
Dirk nodded. “But never one of them.”
Kirta stiffened.
“I know what it’s like, Kirta,” said Dirk. “I left home voluntarily to get away from all the craziness. Everywhere I went though, I was never part of a family, not even one as broken and insane as ours.”
Kirta nodded and stayed silent. Dirk realised that she was fighting back tears.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said. “I was chased from my home by an angry mob, with my mother’s ghost hounding me every step of the way. When I was sold as a slave, I was… I was relieved! Finally, I thought, I might have disappointed Mother enough for her to leave me alone for good. You should have heard her harangue me over that.
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 25