[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”

  Then the crowd began its collective low groan again, signifying the upcoming kick-off. As the sound grew louder and higher, Dirk beckoned Dunk with a crooked finger, saying something.

  “What’s that again?” Dunk asked as he leaned forward, cocking his head toward his brother.

  The screaming of the crowd reached a crescendo as Dirk shouted at Dunk. “Remember when you knocked me out of that window when we were kids?”

  Dunk nodded. He’d been ashamed of that incident since the day it had happened. Dirk had fallen from the keep’s east tower and nearly been killed. Only the intercession of the best apothecary in town had saved the young boy’s life. It had been an accident, but the blame for it fell squarely on Dunk’s shoulders.

  Dirk flashed Dunk an evil grin, then lowered his shoulder and slammed his spiked pad into Dunk, knocking him flying backward to the ground. Dunk’s head hit the ground, and stars zoomed past his eyes. The next thing he knew, he felt Dirk’s boots stomp on his chest as the Reaver blitzer literally ran right over him.

  “Now we’re even!” Dirk shouted back as he charged down the field, after the ball.

  Dunk crawled to his feet and shook his head. It felt like his brain was loose. The world swam around him, threatening to pitch him off its edge.

  The rookie clung to what Pegleg had told him, and he started running toward the end zone.

  “Your brother is going to knock you flat,” Pegleg had said.

  “No he won’t, coach,” Dunk had said, bouncing up and down as he surveyed the field. “I can take him.”

  Pegleg had grabbed the faceguard on Dunk’s helmet and wrenched the rookie’s head around until they were looking eye to eye. It had hurt, but Dunk hadn’t said a word, his tongue catching in his mouth.

  “You’re going to let him,” Pegleg had said. “Then you’re going to get up and run for the end zone for all you’re worth.”

  “Which one?”

  “Theirs,” Pegleg had said, pointing in the direction the rest of the Hackers were already facing.

  “Got it, coach. See, I always get those mixed up, whose end zone is whose. Is yours the one you’re defending or the one you’re attacking. I can never—”

  “Go. That. Way.” Pegleg stabbed his hook toward the Reavers’ end zone to punctuate each word. Then he brought the hook around to come up under the chin strap of Dunk’s helmet. The sharp tip had caught Dunk right in the fleshy part of his neck there. A single sharp jab could have shoved the hook up into Dunk’s mouth so that Pegleg could lead him around by his jawbone.

  “Don’t disappoint me,” Pegleg had said. Although he’d only whispered, Dunk had heard him as clearly as if everyone else in the stadium had been struck dumb.

  All this in mind, Dunk sprinted as hard as he could toward the Reavers’ end zone, struggling to clear his head as he ran.

  “This time, Kur Ritternacht fields the ball directly,” Bob’s voice said. “He gets some good blocking from the Hackers’ linemen and moves the ball forward. K’Thragsh, the only nonhuman player on the field, opens up a hole for him, and he dashes through it.”

  “Yes!” said Jim’s voice. “ ‘Monster’ M’Grash K’Thragsh was one of the Hackers’ standouts last year, and a play like that really shows you why. That’s the sort of player you can build a team around — or destroy another team with!”

  As Dunk ran, he heard someone else pounding after him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Spinne racing towards him. He had the angle on her to the end zone and he knew he’d get there first. He winked at her, then looked up past her toward the sky.

  There, hovering in the air like some great bird of prey, hung the football. It paused for a moment at the top of its arc, then came plummeting back to earth. As it approached, it seemed to move faster, and Dunk realised he’d have to run as fast as he could to catch it.

  His eyes still on the ball, Dunk sprinted for the end zone and a date with the ball for which he could not be late. As the ball closed the last few yards toward their mutual meeting spot, he stretched out his arms as far as they could go. The ball landed hard in his fingertips, hard enough to break them, or so it felt. He grabbed at the ball as if it were life itself and pulled it in hard to his chest, where he cradled it like an infant.

  Dunk hit the ground and rolled hard, keeping himself wrapped around the ball, protecting it from the Astrogranite, which was not as forgiving as he’d hoped. As his momentum faded, he rolled neatly out of his tuck and to his feet. He held the ball high over his head in a moment of pure triumph, and roared along with the crowd.

  “Amazing!” Bob’s voice said. “Hoffnung, the rookie phenom from Altdorf, scores a touchdown in his first minute of play!”

  The moment was cut short, though, when someone hit Dunk from behind and drove him into the stands.

  “Ooh!” said Jim’s voice. “Apparently Dunk’s not as much of a lover as a fighter. Lady Schonheit there just made him pay so much for his score that he’ll be making equal monthly instalments for the next three years!”

  The fans, some of who were more frightening than the players, grabbed Dunk with their meaty paws and greasy claws and passed him bodily up toward the top of the arena. Someone ripped the ball from his hand and bit it in half with his frothing teeth; a rabid dwarf, from the look of him, with a chain that hung between his pierced ear and nose. His face and the shaved sides of his head were tattooed, except where a thin dorsal fin of hair stabbed up from the top, dyed a glaring orange.

  Dunk was just happy the dwarf had gone for the football instead of his arm. He looked back down to where he’d come from and saw Spinne waving at him and blowing a good-bye kiss.

  “I’ll be right back!” he shouted down at her.

  The fans around him burst out laughing at this and practically hurled him towards the top of the stadium. As Dunk kept moving up and up, he recalled that the edge of the stadium stood two or three stories above the ground, maybe more, and the crowd was hauling him straight toward that edge without any sign of stopping.

  “Ah,” Bob’s voice said, “it looks like Magritta’s infamous Dead End Zoners have decided to commemorate the rookie’s amazing achievement with a trip on the Bay Water Bowl’s express escalator to the afterlife.”

  “No!” Dunk shouted as he flung himself about, trying to find a handhold on someone or something, anything to bring this deadly trip to a stop. He scored purchase on a snotling, but when he pulled at it, the tiny goblin simply leapt atop his chest and starting spitting in his face.

  “It’s sad,” Jim’s voice said, his tone betraying that he felt anything but grief, “to see such a promising career cut so short. This has to be some kind of record: first and last touchdown scored in under a minute!”

  Dunk flung the snotling away, and the creature landed in a mob of fans watching him be hauled away, chanting, “Over! Over! Over!” Someone smacked the hapless snotling into the air again, and the creature began a long circuit around the stadium, bouncing about like some kind of fleshy beach ball.

  Dunk had other worries though, as he could not find a way to slow his progress toward his first and surely final attempt at flight. He thrashed about as best he could, but the fans passed him along by the spikes on his armour, holding him fast. The straps that Slick had done such a good job of tightening now trapped him inside his prickly shell, and there was no escape from it.

  When Dunk reached the edge of the stadium, he flung out his arms to grab at the wall, his final chance of escaping this predicament, even if it meant brawling his way back to the field from the cheap seats on down. The fans were ready for this trick though. (It frightened Dunk to consider how many times they’d pulled this off, they executed it — and possibly him — so well.) They hoisted him high into the air and pitched him far out over the stadium’s rear wall.

  “Say so long to Dunk Hoffnung, you fanatics!” Bob’s voice said.

  “See ya!” the crowd answered as one, drowning out
Dunk’s screams as he fell flailing toward the ground far below.

  19

  When Dunk woke up, he hurt so badly he assumed he was dead. At first, he assumed the nauseating way the world rocked beneath him convinced him he’d sustained a horrible head injury. Then he smelled the tang of salt in the air, and he realised he was on a ship.

  Dunk had never been below deck on the Sea Chariot before, but he imagined this was exactly what it would be like. He groaned as the ship crossed a particularly choppy section of sea, forcing him to feel the size and shape of his stomach in a way he never had before.

  Slick was at his side in an instant. “Nuffle’s bloody balls, you’re awake,” the halfling breathed. He reached out with a cool, damp cloth and laid it across Dunk’s brow, which seemed to help stave off the nausea, at least for the moment. “I thought we’d lost you for good.”

  Dunk’s stomach turned, and he sat up, fighting back his body’s demand to vomit. Slick shoved a bucket in front of him, and Dunk clutched it like a poor man clinging to his last crown.

  “Me too,” Dunk said. “What happened?”

  Slick grimaced. “The crowd grabbed you and tossed you over the top of the stadium.”

  Dunk rubbed his aching head. His hand ached too, as did his arm and every other part of his body. “I remember that part,” he said. “What happened after that?”

  “The referee called a penalty.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Against you.”

  “What?” Dunk said. His head felt like it might explode.

  “He called it excessive celebration, you jumping over the edge of the stadium like that.”

  Dunk wanted to let his jaw drop, but he was sure whatever was in his stomach would come storming out after that, so he grimaced instead. “I did not jump over that edge. I was thrown!”

  Slick nodded. “I know, son, as did everyone else in the stadium, but the fans liked the call so much it was bound to stand.”

  “How could a referee make a call like that?”

  Slick patted Dunk on the knee as if the rookie was a small child. “How does any referee make a call in a gold-infested game like Blood Bowl?”

  “Are you saying he was bribed?”

  “Yes,” Slick nodded, “and by both sides too. Apparently the Reavers have deeper pockets than ours, although I suppose that’s no surprise.”

  Dunk slumped back in his bed. “At least I scored a touchdown.”

  Slick stayed silent.

  “I said, at least I scored a touchdown.”

  “Yes, son, about that.”

  Dunk sat up again, too agitated to think about his stomach any more. “Don’t tell me the ref negated the touchdown too.”

  “He tried to.” Slick’s toothy grin put Dunk’s mind more at ease. The fans didn’t like that at all though. It’s one thing to buy a ref. It’s another to make it so obvious.

  “Also, people just loved the style you showed by rolling up into that triumphant stand. That and feeling sorry for you for being thrown over the edge of the stadium caused a bit of a riot.”

  “Really?” Dunk smiled in spite of himself.

  “They stormed the field and grabbed the ref. Then they sent him up after you. Sadly for him, they didn’t give him the easy route.”

  Dunk’s jaw did drop this time. “They sent me by the easy route?”

  “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  Dunk rubbed his head again. “I’m not so sure.”

  “It turns out there’s a series of awnings tiered below the spot where you were tossed over. You hit every one of them. Tore through most of them, but they slowed you down enough so when you hit that sausage on a stick vendor, it was not so bad.”

  “Not so bad?” Dunk said softly. “How long have I been out?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days!” Dunk could not wrap his aching head around that concept. “I thought you said it wasn’t so bad?”

  “Well, the fall wasn’t so bad. The sausage vendor, though, he wasn’t happy about how you destroyed his cart. He beat you senseless. It took three of our linemen to pull him off of you.”

  Dunk let his head sink into his hands. So much for his great debut. Could he ever recover from this?

  “Where are we now?” Dunk asked.

  “The Sea Chariot,” Slick said. “You’re in what passes for a sickbay around here. It’s mid-afternoon. Everyone else is above deck.”

  “What happened to the tournament?”

  “We lost Mr. Hoffnung!” Pegleg swept into the cramped little room and glared down at the rookie. “In no small part, the blame for that gets laid at your feet. Too busy celebrating after your first touchdown to worry about the lady Reaver coming up behind you? That was a rookie mistake.”

  “I’m a rookie,” Dunk offered.

  “That’s not good enough, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said as he shoved his hook into Dunk’s face. The rookie froze, afraid that the thing’s vicious tip might accidentally catch his nose. “Not nearly good enough. I don’t pay you a ludicrous amount of money to make mistakes, rookie or otherwise. I pay you to win games!”

  “What happened to the game?” Dunk asked, hoping to change the subject. As he spoke, though, it occurred to him that this might be the exact wrong subject to change to.

  Pegleg spat on the floor. “A tie,” he said, as if someone had just suggested he trade in his hook for a bouquet of wilted roses. “The remaining referee called the game when he realised he’d have to face the rest of us alone. Then he fled before we could contest his ruling. Since each team had scored a touchdown, the game was declared a draw.”

  “I thought the one ref had negated my touchdown.”

  “The surviving ref thought better of that, son,” Slick said. “He reinstated it.”

  Dunk grinned at that. His smile vanished when he looked back up at Pegleg. “I’m sorry, coach,” he said. “I did my best.”

  “That, Mr. Hoffnung, is exactly what I’m afraid of.” Pegleg shook his head, then turned and left.

  Dunk fell back into his bed. What a rude awakening this had been. He felt like crawling up onto the deck and throwing himself overboard. At least then he wouldn’t be able to mess everything up again.

  “Don’t feel so bad, son,” Slick said. “Pegleg’s hard on everyone.” The halfling stared at the door. “You should feel honoured actually. He’s come in here every couple hours checking on you. Considering how stuck to that crystal ball of his he usually is, I’m impressed. I’ve never seen him leave his cabin before if we weren’t docked.”

  Dunk sat back up and shook his head. “I guess that’s something.” A question struck him finally. “Why didn’t we stay in Magritta?”

  “Pegleg’s not a stupid man. He did the math. With two losses, it’s next to impossible to make the semi-finals.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “Like most teams, we’re off to the next of the Majors.”

  Dunk nodded. He liked the thought of a fresh start somewhere else with another chance to prove himself. “Which one’s that?” he asked.

  Slick flashed Dunk a smile that made him nervous. “We’re off to see the Dungeonbowl.”

  “I thought there were three months between all the Majors.”

  “Roughly,” Slick said. “You can never tell exactly when the Chaos Cup will be played, for instance.”

  “Where is the Dungeonbowl then?” asked Dunk as he tried getting to his feet. The world swam under his feet as he did, but he realised now that this was the ship, not his head. “I mean, how long will it take us to get there? Three full months?”

  Slick shook his head. “The wizards of the Colleges of Magic host the tournament every year. Each of the ten colleges sponsors a team to represent it in the games. Originally, they set this up to resolve a horrible conflict among the colleges, but they liked the game so much that they decided to keep it going. They’ve been playing it for more than seventy-five years now.”

  “The Co
lleges of Magic,” Dunk asked, his head suddenly pounding harder than ever. He sat down to wrestle with his stomach again. “So we’re going to Altdorf?” Dunk wasn’t ready to go home, not yet, maybe not ever.

  “Oh, no,” Slick said, waving off Dunk’s ignorance. “The wizards who run the colleges are too smart to host something as dangerous as the Dungeonbowl anywhere near their main campus. It’s held in Barak-Varr, the dwarf seaport that sits right where the Blood River runs down from the Worlds Edge Mountains and into the Black Gulf.”

  “Sounds like a lovely place,” Dunk said. His stomach settled down as he spoke.

  “It’s not so bad, son, so long as you like dwarfs. Of course, most dwarfs won’t go near Barak-Varr, since it’s so near the sea. They think the dwarfs who choose to live there are a bit off-balance, if you know what I mean. But then, they’d have to be to come up with the complexes in which they play the game, right?”

  “Who’s crazier, Slick?” Dunk asked as he got to his feet again. “The people who create the game or those who play it?”

  “We’re not going directly to Barak-Varr, Mr. Hoffnung,” Cavre said that night as Dunk took his dinner on the deck, sitting next to the blitzer. “Right now, we’re in the Southern Sea, heading southeast. Once we round Fools Point, we’ll be in the Tilean Sea, which separates Estalia from Tilea. We’ll follow that coast as closely as we dare, stopping in Remas for supplies. From there, it’s on to Luccini and then through the Pirates’ Current into the Black Gulf.”

  “How long will all this take us?”

  “A good few weeks. It’s not as far as the trip from Bad Bay to Magritta, but we’re not in as much of a hurry. With winter coming on, most of the Blood Bowl teams have gone into hibernation until spring. The Dungeonbowl is the only major tournament held in these dark months.”

  “Who’s sponsoring us in the tournament?” Dunk wondered if he’d get to meet some of the powerful wizards who ran the Colleges of Magic back in Altdorf. Those were the kinds of friends that might come in handy later.