Dunk slunk away with his tail between his legs, his two friends behind. The dwarfs who passed them in the massive halls of Barak-Varr stared at the three of them: a halfling (small as a dwarf child), a human (taller than a dwarf, but barely as broad), and an ogre (bigger than the other two put together). With Dunk too depressed to think much, Slick took charge.
“Most of the pubs in this city are built for people only slightly larger than myself. They’re large enough to accommodate a few humans, though not in big numbers. I only know of one other establishment in this complex that can seat an ogre at a table,” the halfling said as the trio wound through the labyrinthine passages cut expertly through the cliff face. “This makes the choice much simpler.”
Slick guided the three friends through the Great Hall of Barak-Varr, a cavernous affair that made even M’Grash seem small by comparison. About halfway down the hall, on the right they veered off towards a massive set of stone doors, in which was set a smaller set of dwarf-sized doors. A set of glowing dwarf runes blinked overhead in a pattern that seemed to call to Dunk, even though he could not read the Khazalid.
“It translates roughly as ‘House of Booze’,” the halfling said. “It’s my kind of place.”
As the trio approached, the dwarf doorman called to someone inside. By the time they reached the pub’s threshold, the stone doors were already rotating back silently on their massive stone hinges. The three then walked under the open archway, which stood at least twice as tall as even M’Grash.
As the giant doors closed behind them, the trio sauntered into the pub. It was a huge place with wide-open aisles running between tables with tops set at all different levels. The upper reaches of the room were filled with smoke rising from the long pipes on which many of the patrons puffed, but this was so high above that it almost seemed like a thick layer of clouds that might open up and rain down on the patrons below at any moment.
Slick led the others to a large table, the top of which stood far over his head. It was perfectly sized for M’Grash, who sat down comfortably at one of the chairs. Slick climbed up a ladder built into the side of one of the chairs, which cunningly had a tiered back. Slick sat on the highest of the tiers while a pair of dwarf waiters pushed him close enough that he could make use of the table.
Dunk had to climb into his own chair, although he was able to pull himself close to the table on his own. As he made himself comfortable, Slick ordered a round of drinks for them. They arrived only moments later, carried by dwarfs walking on multi-jointed steel stilts. Slick and Dunk received standard-sized steins of Driver’s Doppelbock, a local specialty said to be brewed in the deepest of dwarf mines. M’Grash, on the other hand, was brought a barrel-sized stein of his favourite Killer Genuine Draft.
“Thank Nuffle that Dirk will be all right,” Slick said.
“And Spinne too,” Dunk said, raising his glass. It was a bittersweet kind of relief. Of the eight Reavers caught in the dungeon when it collapsed, four had been crushed to death in the disaster. Dirk, hurt though he was, had been the last Reaver to enter the dungeon.
“Have you visited them in the Halls of Mercy yet?” Slick asked.
Dunk shook his head. “The doctors said they couldn’t see anyone until tomorrow.”
“Isn’t that convenient?” a voice called up from below. Dunk looked down to see Lästiges standing at the bottom of a chair next to his. She kept talking as she mounted the chair and climbed up to sit next to the others, a pair of dwarfs ready to push her close to the tabletop. “The loss of the great rookie phenom’s main rival — his hated brother, who he nearly killed the night before — and the destruction of the team that handed the Hackers’ their most recent defeat.”
Dunk glared at the reporter. “This is a private party,” he said coldly.
“Excellent,” Lästiges smiled at a dwarf with orc’s blood on his axe. “I’m sure you have a lot to celebrate. Either way, I’m sure your employer won’t mind if I cover it.”
“We’re not here as a Blood Bowl team, miss,” Slick said. “Just fans of the game.”
“Really?” Lästiges said in a mocking tone. “Are you sure about that?”
“What’s your game?” Dunk asked. He was tired, grumpy, and wanted to be left alone to have a drink with his friends.
“The question is, what’s yours? Dungeonbowl is the answer tonight, it seems.”
Dunk opened his mouth to bark at the woman, but Slick silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Wait,” he said, concern etched on his face. “What are you saying?” he asked the reporter.
Lästiges smiled, her crimson-painted lips parting to reveal a set of perfectly even, sharp teeth. “You haven’t heard? Instead of dropping out of the tournament, the Grey Wizards have chosen another team to substitute for the Reavers.”
Dunk scowled at the reporter. “Who?”
“Who else?” she smirked. “What other human-centric team is right here in Barak-Varr and ready to play? Why the Bad Bay Hackers, of course!”
Slick let out a cheer, and M’Grash joined him, rocking the table with his enthusiasm. Dunk put his hands over his face and sighed.
“As I was saying,” Lästiges said once the cheers faded, “how much more convenient can you get? This couldn’t have worked out better for you if you’d planned it.”
“I didn’t plan anything.”
“So it just happened? A kind of spur-of-the-moment sort of a thing? How opportunistic!”
“I had nothing to do with it!” Dunk shouted, standing half out of his seat. As he did, he realised the people at the neighbouring tables were looking at him. Then his eyes settled on two wizards in black robes with red sashes watching him from near the door. They were the same ones from that night in the Bad Water the tall dwarf and the short elf.
“Ah,” Lästiges said approvingly. “I see you’ve finally noticed my friends over there. They make a charming couple, don’t they?”
“Are you working for them, miss?” Slick asked, a bit of an edge in his voice.
“I prefer to say I’m working with them. They’re so clueless on their own. All they understand is enforcement, nothing about how to run an investigation.”
“And that’s your specialty,” Dunk said.
Lästiges reached out and patted Dunk on the cheek. “And everyone says that Dirk is the brains in the family.”
Dunk looked back over at the Game Wizards and waved at them with a mock smile. They ignored him and went back to muttering at each other over their glasses of dark red wine.
“They really are clueless,” he said. “One of the biggest threats to the game is standing right behind them, and they haven’t even noticed.”
Lästiges turned around to see who Dunk was talking about. She peered hard at the GWs and all around them. “I think you’re the clueless one, rookie,” she said. “There’s nothing there.”
“See that black orc standing at the bar behind your friends?”
Dunk jerked his head in that direction, and Lästiges, Slick, and even M’Grash stared after him.
Lästiges wrinkled her brow for a moment, then said, “Skragger? You can’t mean Skragger.”
“That’s exactly who I mean,” Dunk said as he raised his stein in a toast to the monstrous orc. Skragger responded in kind with his own stein of Bloodweiser, then arched his eyebrows and jerked a long, sharp-nailed index finger across his throat with a wicked smile.
Dunk gave the black orc a thumbs-up sign and then turned back to Lästiges. “He’s afraid someone’s going to break his record for most touchdowns in a season, remember,” he said. “He says if Dirk tries it, he’ll kill us both. He threatened Kur too. You were with me in The Trip when Dirk told me.”
Lästiges laughed. “Kur doesn’t have a chance.”
“You’re missing the point,” Dunk said. “He’s trying to keep players from performing at their peak potential, and that can only hurt your friends and your employers at Spike!”
Lästiges wrinkled her snowy brow at that.
“How do you figure?”
“How many Cabalvision licenses do you think Wolf Sports could sell if someone was close to breaking Skragger’s record. I mean, besides all the great high-scoring games leading up to that. The few games before, during, and after the breaking of the record? Blood Bowl fans would be tripping over themselves to lay down their crowns.”
“That’s an interesting angle,” Lästiges said, nodding her approval. “Of course, it hasn’t occurred to you that he might also have been behind the ‘accident’ today. Or that having the GWs focus on him might take the heat off you for a bit.”
Dunk shook his head. “I’m not worried about that. I’m innocent. I just want to keep people safe.”
Lästiges reached out and patted Dunk’s cheek again. “Well played,” she said. “I’d love to think anyone is that altruistic, but, well, this is Blood Bowl we’re talking about.”
Dunk smiled, “Anything I can do to help a good friend like you.”
“Insincerity. Now, that I understand. You’re serious about the threats though?”
“Slick was there.”
Lästiges grimaced at the halfling. “I don’t think I could cite someone with the name ‘Slick’ as a reliable source.”
“Listen here, miss,” Slick began.
Lästiges cut him off and changed the subject, addressing Dunk again. “I hear you were seen talking with Gunther the Gobbo in Magritta. That’s interesting company you keep.”
“No more so than you.”
“Touché. What did he offer you?”
“Maybe I just wanted to place a bet.”
“That’s against most team charters. It’s in the fine print of your contract.” Lästiges hesitated. “You can read, can’t you?”
“Well enough to know you’re not much of a writer.”
“Perhaps you read the exposé I did on the Gobbo last summer? No? That was before your time, I suppose.”
Dunk shrugged.
“I found evidence that the Gobbo is the head of a vast conspiracy of players that runs through nearly all of the top Blood Bowl teams. Together, they work his odds-making racket well enough for him to be able to pay off at least a score of players.”
“I didn’t think anyone would care about cheating in Blood Bowl.”
“They do when it’s their money on the line. People lay down bets on these teams assuming they’re all doing their best to win.”
“And some of the players are professional chokers.”
“Not everyone is good enough to get paid for it.” Lästiges patted Dunk’s hand as she said this, and he flashed back to that long fall over the edge of the stadium in Magritta.
“I suppose this conspiracy has a colourful name?”
“The Black Jerseys.”
“Cute. Did you come up with that?”
“I didn’t have to. They use it themselves.”
“What’s this have to do with the accident yesterday?”
Lästiges leaned forward, every bit serious now. Slick practically climbed on the table to get close enough to hear everything she said, and even M’Grash tilted an ear over her.
“Someone’s been killing off Blood Bowl players like snotlings this year,” she said. “Every time I turn around, I hear about somebody dying under mysterious circumstances. Take the Hackers, for instance.”
“I had nothing to do with those killings in the tryout camp.”
“So I hear, but that’s not what I meant. Ever wonder why there were so many openings on the Hackers with such short notice before the first Major of the year?”
Dunk realised he had not, and the fact irritated him. As he finished his beer, the dwarf server was there with another for him in an instant.
When he picked it up, he felt a piece of paper wrapped around the grip. As he spoke with Lästiges, he tried to peel it off without her noticing.
Slick filled in the details for Dunk. “The Hackers lost four players only a month beforehand, son. That’s why I was out looking for recruits.”
“What happened to them?”
Slick shrugged. “No one knows. They just never showed up for practice one day, and no one heard from them again.”
“Odds are they were murdered,” Lästiges said.
M’Grash’s elbow slipped off the table, and the ogre bounced his chin off the tabletop, sending all of the other drinks leaping a foot into the air. Dunk was still working at the mysterious paper, so he kept control of his stein. Slick and Lästiges, on the other hand, ended up wearing what was left of their drinks.
“Sorry!” M’Grash rumbled with a sincerity Dunk was sure Lästiges couldn’t understand. “So sorry! Fell asleep!”
As the others — along with a handful of dwarf servers — fussed over the mess, Dunk tore the paper off his stein and unrolled it. On it was written a note. It read:
“My offer stands! Let’s do business!”
It was signed “The Gobbo.”
Dunk scanned the room, still in his chair while the others had dismounted to help the waiters get at the mess. There in the back of the room, directly opposite from the Game Wizards, sat Gunther the Gobbo, raising his stein and favouring Dunk with a greasy grin.
Dunk flipped the Gobbo an obscene gesture that drew gasps from everyone seated on that side of the pub. Then he slid down from his chair and said to Slick and M’Grash, “Let’s get back to our quarters. It seems we have a game tomorrow.”
23
The next afternoon, Dunk stood in the visiting team’s dugout, outside of a different dungeon, suited up and ready for the game. He’d tried sleeping last night, but wrestling with worrying about his brother and the things Lästiges had told him had ruined much of that. Still, he was ready to get in and play. Frustrated as he was, he felt like breaking something — or someone.
The game was to be a rematch of the game interrupted by the cave-in, with the Hackers taking the Reavers’ place. The Champions of Death, being already dead, hadn’t lost any players yesterday. A few of them had been flattened, but Coach Tomolandry had managed to patch them back together in time for the game.
Dunk looked around the room. The entire team was on edge. They’d had no time to prepare for this tournament, and Dungeon-bowl differed from traditional Blood Bowl so much that there were sure to be mistakes. Plus, there were the teleporter pads, which few of the players trusted.
Dunk sympathised with this. In his experience, magic was something to avoid. The people who worked it were either power-mad wizards who cut deals with unknowable forces or power-mad clerics who cut deals with inconstant gods. Being sponsored by one such group of wizards in a tournament overseen by the largest and most powerful organisation they had set his hair on end.
“Listen up!” Pegleg called from the front of the room, where he had stood on an empty bench in front of an open locker. “We have five minutes to game time, and I have something to say.”
The room fell quiet, and all eyes stared at the coach, some glumly, some excitedly, but all intently.
“This game may be more than we bargained for when we came to Barak-Varr, but it’s also the chance of a lifetime. If we do well here, we may end up with a long-term sponsorship from the Grey Wizards, and the Dungeonbowl could become a regular stop for us.”
No one cheered at this news.
“To sweeten the pot the Grey Wizards put up another 50,000 crowns for us. We get half that just for showing up to play today, with 1,000 crowns going to each of you!”
The players whooped it up at the news. M’Grash picked up Dunk in a big hug that threatened to break his ribs.
“And we get the rest if we win the tournament!” The players cheered again, and a knowing smile spread across Pegleg’s normally dour face. After giving the noise a moment to die down, the coach put out his hand and hook to signal for silence.
“I want these six players to line up in front of the teleportation pad: Mr. Ritternacht, Mr. Cavre, Miss Mardretti, Mr. K’Thragsh, Mr. Baldurson, and Mr. Otto Waltheim. You’re our starters
. When you’re ready, say a prayer and step on the teleportation pad. With luck, you’ll end up in our end zone.”
The six players hustled into position. As Kur strode by Dunk, he shouldered the rookie aside with a satisfied grin. Dunk picked himself up and told himself that three minutes before game time wasn’t the right moment to practise his home lobotomy skills on the veteran thrower.
“The rest of you, line up in this order. As soon as the game starts, I’ll send you on to the teleporter pad one at a time. Mr. Hoffnung, Mr. Andreas Waltheim, Mr. Klemmer, Mr. Reyes, Mr. Smythe, Mr. Engelhard, Mr. Karlmann, Mr. Hoffstetter, Mr. Albrecht, and Mr. Sherwood.”
The remainder of the team lined up behind Dunk as he stood right behind the starting six. He was thrilled that Pegleg had enough confidence in him to make him the seventh man. If he couldn’t be in the starting six, this was literally the next best thing.
“There’s no secret to this game,” Pegleg said over the heads of everyone but M’Grash. “Find the ball and stick it in the end zone. What could be simpler?”
The players all laughed nervously.
“Oh,” Pegleg said, “and try not to be too surprised if a chest blows up in your face.”
With that, the horn in the dugout sounded, announcing the start of the game. “Get in there!” Pegleg shouted at the starters. “And make us some gold!”
The starting six stormed onto the teleporter pad and disappeared in six quick flashes of light. Dunk rubbed his eyes and got ready to follow them. In two minutes, the game would begin, and he wanted to be in it as quick as he could.
These were two of the longest minutes of Dunk’s life. He looked over to where Pegleg watched a Cabalvision feed of the match on a large crystal ball. He saw the starting Hackers flexing and stretching in the end zone.
“Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said to him. “You’re my wild card. I want you jumping onto every teleporter pad you can find until you spot a chest. Then open it.”
“Then I take the ball and run.”
Pegleg laughed. “If there is one. Your job is to eliminate as many chests as you can until you fall over.”
[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl Page 18