Pegleg turned to Big Richard. “We’re short two players, no pun intended. Pick two of yours and bring them in.”
The five Sacrifice Flies trembled in fear. “Don’t worry,” Pegleg said, “you can’t disappoint me any more than I’ve already been.”
Dunk and the rest of the Hackers slunk out on to the field, taking great care not to repeat Getrunken’s error. Dunk knew he was supposed to line up in the Hackers’ half, but he went straight for the mist-covered patch of earth instead.
“What’s this?” Bob said. “It looks like Hoffnung’s decided to defect to the Lusties!”
“Does that require a sex change operation?” Jim said.
“I don’t know, but I’d bet some of the Lusties would be happy to help him with that, right there on the field!”
For the most part, the Lusties ignored him. Each and every one of them was tall, statuesque, and beautiful, all cut from the same cloth. At first glance, Dunk could barely tell them apart, other than by the differing colours and styles of the long hair that flowed out of the backs of their helmets.
They all reminded Dunk of Enojada. He craned his neck around to peer into the Lusties’ dugout and spotted the promoter standing there next to the team’s coach, Lovie Jones. She waved back at him with a dazzling smile and seemed honestly happy to see him. He supposed that this game represented the culmination of months of hard work for her, and now she’d finally pulled it off. While Dunk being there might have thrilled her, though, she’d kept her distance from the Hackers since the start of the tournament. The rest of the Lusties clearly didn’t share her glee.
They all glared at him hungrily, as if sizing him up for a meal. Dunk had no doubt that any one of them would try to take him out given half a chance, but he kept his guard up, unwilling to leave them even that much.
Only Hernd stopped him as he got closer to his goal. “Come to take a look at the end zone, Dunk?” she said. “It’s the last time you’ll see it today.”
“Just glad to see you finally got your chance to start as a thrower, Rotes,” he said, “and I didn’t have to get hurt for it to happen.”
“There’s still time for that,” she said. He thought he detected a hint of a grin under her helmet, but that might just have been her baring her teeth.
“Mother!” Dunk called as he reached the end zone. “What are you doing?”
The ghost’s face swirled out of the mists at him. “I just wanted to get a good seat to watch my boys play their last game,” she said. “Isn’t that what a good mother should do?”
“We came up with a solution to your problem,” Dunk said. “We hired Kirta to become a Hacker. Now you don’t have to worry about us hurting each other.”
The ghost’s head bobbed up and down, and Dunk realised she was nodding. “I appreciate your efforts, Dunkel. I really do. You’re a good son.”
Dunk felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, despite himself.
“But that’s just not going to be enough,” the ghost said.
Dunk’s stomach felt like it toppled out of his belly and into one of the lava-lit crevasses. He’d worked hard to set up this deal, pushing Pegleg on it and strong arming the Lusties’ coach, Lovie Jones, into agreeing to it. It had cost the Hackers a great deal of money to boot. And his mother had dismissed it all with a casual comment.
“Why not, Mother?” he asked, letting the irritation in his voice show. “What more could you possibly want from us?”
“Why, don’t you know, dear?” Greta’s ghost covered her mouth in surprise. “I want us all to be together for all eternity, and there’s only one sure way for that to happen.
“I want you all dead.”
35
At that moment. Dunk knew just where Kirta had gone. She hadn’t got cold feet at playing with the Hackers or against the Lusties. She hadn’t decided to run off with Jiminy instead of facing her problems. She was somewhere nearby. He just hoped she was still alive.
“Mother,” Dunk said, “what have you done with Kirta?”
“She’s safe,” Greta’s ghost said, “for now. She’s done with her team, I understand, thank you for that, Dunkel, and I didn’t want her hurt.”
“Just dead?”
The ghost looked offended. “Suicide is painless, they say, although that’s just a horrible myth.”
“She’s not committing… Wait. Didn’t you get killed by the mob?”
“Wh-why would you say that, dear?”
Dunk gasped. “When that mob stormed the keep, they didn’t kill you, did they? You never gave them a chance.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You took the coward’s way out.”
The ghost seemed to grow larger as she let her rage show. “Is it cowardly to refuse to let a pack of peasants tear you limb from limb? To not let them violate and murder you? To rob them of their so-called revenge on you?”
Dunk waited for the ghost to finish, and then spat on the ground before her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
A roar went up from the crowd, and Dunk glanced up at the Jumboball perched over the stadium. He saw Jim and Bob’s ugly faces leering out at him.
“It’s game time, game fans! Listen to that Lustrian crowd howl!”
Dunk shot a piteous look at his mother’s ghost. “I have to go,” he said, “but this isn’t over.”
As he turned and started trotting back to the Hackers’ side of the field, he heard the ghost say. “Of course not, dear, but it will be soon.”
Dunk glanced up at the crowd in the stadium as he picked his way across the hot and treacherous pitch. A group of Amazons cheered directly behind the Lusties’ dugout, but they were among the few humans in the stadium. A contingent of Norscans had arrived, too — Dunk could tell from their horned helmets, some of which had been retrofitted to allow them to sip from two attached steins of ale at once.
The fans who’d survived the journey on the Fanatic stood up behind the Hackers’ dugout and made the most noise of any section in the stadium, bar none. The hardcore Blood Bowl aficionados had made it all the way across the ocean to see the game, and they were determined to make the most of it. Each and every one of them wore Hackers colours. Most of them had painted their faces and wore yellow tricorn hats in honour of Coach Haken.
Together, the Fanatic fans were loud enough to be heard over those rooting for the Lusties.
“What’s that they’re saying?” Spinne asked.
“I don’t know,” said Dunk. “It sounds like ‘Fug the Lusties!’ ”
Spinne grinned. “I don’t think ‘fug’ is the word you’re looking for.”
“Then what could it — Oh!”
Getrunken leaned in with a leer. “I wouldn’t mind some of that action myself!” Then he joined in with the fans, waving his arm to lead them like a conductor.
The humans were notable for the fact that the lizardmen in the audience outnumbered them at least five to one. These creatures came in a wide rainbow of hues, from glowing blue to scarlet red, and everything in between. Some of them spat fire into the air as they cheered, and a number of terradons circled high above the stadium, riding the updrafts formed by the heat from the volcano’s crater.
The lizardmen didn’t cheer like regular crowds. They hissed their approval instead, flicking their tongues everywhere, flinging their saliva all around. Dunk gave thanks, not for the first time, that the Hackers’ dugout had a roof.
Out on the field, of course, such things meant nothing. Dunk could not allow anything to distract him from the matter at hand. To do otherwise would be to invite death.
“Now that Hoffnung’s finally decided which team he wants to play for, it’s time for the kickoff!” Bob said.
“This one’s for all the teeth,” Jim said. “The winner not only takes home the Tobazco Bowl trophy but gets bragging rights as the undisputed Blood Bowl champion of the entire planet!”
“Which should last until at least the next morning!” sa
id Bob.
The crowd’s roar rose to a crescendo, and the game was on. The Hackers had lost the coin toss and had to kick off. As soon as Edgar’s trunk connected with the ball and booted it downfield, Dunk raced forward, ready to join in the play.
Within seconds, a number of Amazons broke through the Hackers’ front line and surrounded Dunk on all sides. They’d made the most of the mismatches with the Sacrifice Flies and stomped two of them into the nearest crevasses. Dunk could still hear one of them squealing from the double hotfoot the lava was giving him.
Then the ball appeared in the sky, having been hurled downfield by Rotes. With four Amazons in the backfield and only Dunk and Cavre to defend against them, Dunk knew he’d have to move fast.
As much as Rotes thought Dunk had held on to his position out of some twisted sense of loyalty she believed Pegleg felt for him, the fact was he was a much better thrower than her. On her end of the field, M’Grash had nearly tackled her, and she had thrown the ball up as far as she could in a dead panic. While this had got the ball, and the ogre, away from her, the barely controlled throw meant the football was up for grabs.
Everyone on Dunk’s end of the field went for the ball. As an experienced thrower, Dunk had a good idea where it would land. He’d spent many hours watching Rotes throw the ball and sometimes even coaching her, although she always seemed to resent his advice. He knew she’d throw it too long. Even in practice she’d do this so that no one would rib her for having a weak arm. Here, in a game against her former team-mates, she’d have a lot more to prove.
Dunk faded back, all the way until he was in the Hackers’ end zone. The others gathered around the 20-yard line and the ball sailed high over their heads. Dunk plucked it out of the air to the amazed roar of the crowd.
Of course, that put him in the end zone with the ball, with four Lusties nearby and only Cavre to lend him a hand. Dunk suspected that would be enough.
A veteran of more Blood Bowl seasons than Dunk ever hoped to play, Cavre had already knocked down two of the Lusties before the ball reached Dunk’s hands. While the Amazons had been playing the ball, Cavre had been playing them.
That left two Lusties turning to take on Dunk. He cut to the left, towards Cavre, and the veteran blitzer took out another Lusty with a sharp block from behind. The other had been too wary to get drawn closer to Cavre, and she went straight for Dunk.
Dunk gave the Lusty a quick jink. She hesitated, buying him the instant he needed to sweep back to the right and look for blockers and a target downfield. He pump-faked the ball back to the left, and the Lusty leapt into the air, hoping to block the pass. As she recovered from her jump, he spotted Edgar wide open in the middle of the field.
The treeman made for such a large and easy target, it almost felt like cheating to throw him the ball. As Pegleg and Slick constantly reminded him, though, there was no shame in making the easy play. Even cheating wasn’t a problem in Blood Bowl. The only crime in the game was getting caught.
The ball sailed through the air, and Edgar caught it in his upper branches, high up enough so that no Lusty ever had a chance to touch the ball. With a lumbering spin, the treeman pitched the ball forward again, straight towards Spinne.
She leapt up between a pair of Lusties and snagged the ball out of the air. Unfortunately, she had to move forward to get the pass from Edgar, who despite all his branches didn’t have much of an arm. This put her out of the end zone, with the two Lusty defenders doing their best to pull her down.
Spinne spied M’Grash thundering her way and tossed the ball to him in an underhand arc. He gathered it up in his hands like Dunk might hold an apple, and charged straight for the end zone.
Three Lusties bravely stood in his way. Despite his ogrish heritage and his love for the game of Blood Bowl, M’Grash didn’t like to kill unless forced to. He took three huge, bouncing strides and then leapt straight over the Lusties’ heads. He came down in the end zone with a thump, holding the ball high in triumph.
“Touchdown, Hackers!” Bob said.
Dunk cheered at the top of his lungs. Despite the problems with his mother, despite his worries about his sister, despite the fact that most of the fans in the stadium wanted the Hackers to lose, they were playing well, and they were going to win. He could feel it.
Then the end zone exploded.
“Um, we may want to check the instant replay on that, Bob!”
Dunk raced forward, keeping one eye on the cracked field, which seemed to have become even more rugged with the blast. The other he kept on the Jumboball, watching the scene in the end zone play back in slow motion.
M’Grash leapt forward into the end zone. As he did, the ghost swirled in underneath him, the ground below her growing so cold that frost rimed its ridges. When M’Grash came down, he passed right through the ghost and hit the cracked ground.
M’Grash landed so hard that he shattered the crust that the ghost’s chill had caused to form over the top of the lava. The liquid rocks below had built up a tremendous amount of pressure, as the ghost’s cold mist in the end zone had essentially created a large cap over the lava. When M’Grash cracked the cap open, the pressure below finally had a means to escape, and it did so, violently.
The force of the blast sent a glowing pillar of lava high into the air, fountaining out over the end zone and sending the players nearby scrambling. It threw M’Grash about like a child’s doll, sending him high into the air. The camra followed his progress, and Dunk watched him come down on an end-zone section of the stands filled with pinkish lizardmen.
The lizardmen scattered as the ogre came hurtling down at them, but not all of them were as fast as they needed to be. The ogre’s great bulk smashed them flat, along with the benches in their part of the stadium.
Dunk held his breath as he continued to watch the Jumboball. Although he’d made it almost all the way down the entire length of the field, he still couldn’t see past the cloud of smoke, steam, and ash that filled the end zone. M’Grash had crashed down somewhere past all that, but Dunk had no way to reach him.
He decided to cut to the right and take his chances in the crowd. Most times Dunk had found himself in the stands during a game had turned out terribly. In his first game, the fans had body-passed him up to the stadium’s top edge and tossed him over.
Blood Bowl’s best fans, the ones who took the time and paid the money to come to an actual game, were as tough as they came, harder and meaner than the players sometimes. They often saw a player in the stands as a source of the best souvenirs a fan could have: body parts. These could go for hundreds or even thousands of gold coins on the black market or on one of the magical auctioneering programs like eVilBay.
Dunk knew of the danger of entering the stands, but he had to risk it to make sure M’Grash was all right. He turned and charged towards the sidelines. Before he could reach the low wall that kept the fans off the field, for the most part, a pair of hands grabbed him from behind and hauled him back.
“Forget it!” Dirk said. “You can’t help him!”
Dunk spun around and tore out of his brother’s grasp. “I have to try! I can’t just leave him there!”
“No one is stupid enough to try to tear apart an ogre unless he’s dead! And what could you do for him either way? He’s too big to carry!”
Spinne rushed up behind Dirk. “He’s right,” she said. “I love M’Grash too, but it’s madness to try!”
“Then it’s madness!” Dunk said. “I wouldn’t leave either of you lying in the stands, and neither would M’Grash, and you both know it!”
Dirk scowled at Spinne, who gave him an equally angry and frustrated look. “All right,” Spinne said to Dunk, “but we’re going in together!”
Dunk nodded, clapped them on their shoulders, and gave Spinne a passionate kiss. Then he turned and led the way into the stands.
Some of the fans reached for them as they entered, but Dunk smacked down anyone that came close to him. He took point while Dirk and Spinne cov
ered the flanks, and they waded through the mass of people between them and their friends.
The crowd had already thinned out a bit after the explosion. While Blood Bowl fans always knew there was some threat of death just from sitting in the stands, when faced with an eruption from an active volcano, even a comparatively small burst like this, most of them would decide imminent death wasn’t worth seeing a game they could watch on Cabalvision at their local tavern.
Dunk, Dirk and Spinne fought their way through the crowd, but it was slow going. The fans, mostly lizardmen, sometimes froze when they saw them coming, and they had to be bodily shoved out of the way for the players to get by.
Eventually, they reached M’Grash. He’d created something of a small crater where he’d landed, and blood trickled out under him in at least three different spots. Dunk could not tell if any of it belonged to the ogre.
The fans had cleared out the area around M’Grash, with a few exceptions. A couple of small, greenish lizardmen were pulling on the ogre’s golden nose ring as Dunk and the others arrived.
“Get away from him, you vultures!” Dunk shouted at them.
The creatures looked over their shoulders and spied Dunk, Dirk, and Spinne, looking like spirits of vengeance bearing down on them. They weren’t particularly smart, otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to rob an ogre, and seeing the players coming their way only encouraged them to tug harder on the nose ring.
Dirk stepped up and punted one of the little lizardmen high into the air. Before the first lizardman even came down to a rough landing amidst a bunch of salamander-men who’d run out of snacks to roast during the game, Dunk snarled at the other one, who finally decided he’d had enough and dashed away at top speed, climbing up the front of a nearby spectator and then sprinting away over the heads of others.
“How is he?” Dunk asked Spinne, who’d gone straight to M’Grash.
She looked up from where she’d laid her head against the ogre’s chest. “Still breathing, but he’s not in good shape. We need to get him to the locker room right now.”
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 27