[Blood Bowl 01] - Blood Bowl

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

Dunk had to admit that he looked very little like himself. People did stare at him as he walked down the street, but it seemed they were looking at the decorations on his head rather than him. He even went out and bought himself a replica jersey that had his number, ten, on it and his name emblazoned across the back.

  In the pubs, Blood Bowl fans hailed Dunk and slapped him on the back. “Go, Deadly!” they shouted at him, thinking he was emulating the “Deadly” Dunk Hoffnung mythologized in the pages of Spike! Magazine.

  Lästiges had followed up her ‘expose’ of Dunk’s killing spree with another feature article detailing Dunk’s short career and his links to Dirk, Spinne, Slick, and anyone else Dunk had ever met. According to the report, Dunk had killed half a dozen Game Wizards while making his escape and then dared the world to find him.

  Accordingly, although they had to know the story wasn’t true, the GWs had raised the bounty on Dunk’s head to five thousand crowns. That was more than most people in Altdorf made in their entire lives, and it was enough to grab the attention of more than a few bounty hunters. Fortunately, no one was able to penetrate Dunk’s disguise.

  Rumours placed Dunk all over the place. Some said he’d escaped to the New World. Others claimed he’d struck a deal with the gods of Chaos and would be the new starter taking the place of Schlitz for the Chaos All-Stars. One local rag even claimed that Dunk was an illegitimate grandson of the Emperor himself and had been secreted away in the Imperial Palace.

  While all this insanity swirled around him, Dunk got Slick to find a ticket for him to the Hackers’ games. “Where else would someone dressed like me be on game day?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, son,” Slick said. “The Game Wizards will be there in force. Do you think they’ll be as easy to fool as everyone else?”

  “I’ll be standing in a crowd of over a hundred thousand raving fans, dressed like this. If they can pick me out of that, they deserve to catch me. As part of my contract I get seats to all games in which we play. Get me one of those.”

  “You’re not still playing for the Hackers, son.”

  “Has Pegleg torn up my contract?”

  “No,” Slick smiled, “he hasn’t. He’d have to spend a fortune to fire you. Besides which, he’s milking the publicity of you being a Hacker for all it’s worth.”

  “How’d you negotiate a severance clause like that?”

  “It was easy, son. Pegleg figured you’d be dead long before he thought about firing you. Most bad Blood Bowl players end their career on the field. It’s rare that they live long enough to refuse to play.”

  In their first game, the Hackers were set to take on the Moot Mighties, a halfling team from Moodand. “The ‘halfling reserve’ as some like to put it,” Slick said as he gave Dunk his ticket.

  “Does a halfling team stand a chance against the Hackers?” Dunk asked. “I don’t mean to offend, but it sounds like a mismatch.”

  Slick shook his head. “You really need to start following the sport more.” He drew a deep breath, then spoke. “In most circumstances, you’d be right. Most of the halfling Blood Bowl teams only ever play each other in their own stadium, known as the Batter Bowl, named after former Moodand League Commissioner Balbo ‘Beery’ Batterman, of course.”

  “That’s fine, but the Hackers will murder them. Literally. M’Grash could probably take on the lot of them alone.”

  Slick winced. “It’s been done before. The Mighties got tired of all the grief they got for being so small. The legendary ogre player Morg’di N’hthrog boasted he could take them all on at once, and they dared him to prove it.”

  “What happened?”

  Slick pursed his lips. “Let’s just say the next season was a rebuilding year for the Mighties.”

  “And they won’t meet the same fate against the Hackers? It sounds like M’Grash could trash everyone on the field and then use the scrubs to pick his teeth.”

  “On any given day, any team can beat any other team.”

  “That sounds like something the Gobbo would say. I smell the Black Jerseys at work here. Why give the Hackers such a creampuff of a team to play though? Who’s going to bet on the Mighties?”

  “All they have to do is beat the spread.”

  “What’s the spread?”

  “Six touchdowns.”

  Dunk frowned. “That’s all?”

  “The Gobbo’s giving even odds the Mighties won’t survive the game long enough for the Hackers to score seven times.”

  Dunk nodded. “The Black Jerseys could make sure the Hackers lose somehow, and the Gobbo would rake in a dragon’s hoard.”

  “But you said the Hackers have to lose in the finals for the Gobbo to make his big score. So the Hackers play the Mighties and get an easy win and rack up a bunch of points. I heard the Mighties coach actually challenged the Hackers. I’ll bet the Gobbo set that up.”

  “I’m surprised the players don’t refuse to take the field. They’ll get creamed.”

  “Maybe,” Slick said. “The Moot Mighties, though, aren’t just any halfling squad. They have a treeman on their team by the name of, well, his real name is unpronounceable. The Mighties call him Thick-trunk Strongbranch.”

  Dunk goggled at his agent. “A treeman player? What position does he play?”

  Slick grinned. “Thrower, of course.”

  Dunk shook his head. “This, I have to see.”

  Come game time, Dunk sat in the stands, surrounded by thousands of newly minted Hackers fans. Scores of them wore replicas of his jersey, and a few even had their heads painted like him. They seemed uniformly drunk and rowdy, but Dunk found their unbridled enthusiasm contagious. He was soon cheering along with the rest of the fans, screaming and chanting until he was sure he’d never be able to talk again.

  When the Hackers took the field, they charged out there like champions. Dunk wasn’t sure what Pegleg had said to the players in the locker room ahead of time, but they came out ready to play. He watched them down there with a pang of regret. He surprised himself by how much he wanted to be out there playing alongside them.

  A quick head count told Dunk that the Hackers had yet to replace him. They only had fifteen players on the field. In some strange way, that gave him hope that everything would somehow all work out for the best.

  When the Mighties rolled out onto the field, the crowd erupted into laughter, all except for a sizeable halfling cheering section in along the eastern end of the field. The little fans rooted at the top of their lungs for their homeland heroes and were just as rowdy as any of the other spectators. Dunk noticed there were more beer vendors walking the aisles in the halfling section, selling Bloodweiser draughts in commemorative steins to all the thirsty fans there, who seemed able to drink twice their weight in cheap, watery beer.

  The halflings went mad as the treeman strode onto the field. Thick-trunk Strongbranch towered over the field, dwarfing even M’Grash. He waved his leafy boughs at the crowd, greeting the fans of Mighties and taunting the Hacker Backers, as a blood-streaked banner a crew of battle-scarred rowdies standing well behind Dunk proclaimed the Bad Bay fans.

  The Hacker Backers started to chant right away. “The tree! The tree! The tree is on fire! We don’t need no water! Let the bugger burn! Burn, bugger, burn!”

  Strongbranch just smiled at them all as he sauntered out to the Mighties’ end of the field.

  The coin toss went to the Mighties, but that was the only thing that did. They elected to receive the ball. Gigia Mardretti kicked it deep into the Mighties territory, and one of the halflings pitched it to the treeman.

  M’Grash was the first Hacker down the field. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into Strongbranch with all his incredible might.

  The treeman struggled to stay upright, but it was a futile effort. The towering oak of a player toppled over backward, slowly at first and then accelerating to bone-crushing speed.

  “Tiiiiiiim-beeeerrrrr!” the Hacker Backers sang in unison as the tree-man was laid low.

>   Strongbranch dropped the ball as he fell, and Kur was there to scoop it up. An instant later, he was in the end zone, celebrating the Hackers’ first touchdown.

  Two of the Mighties had been standing in the wrong place when Strongbranch fell. A well-experienced crew of halfling litter bearers raced on to the field and carried them off. Two more players bravely took their place to the hooting of the Mighties’ fans.

  “Wow, Jim,” Bob’s voice said as the teams set up for the Hackers to kick the ball again. “That was a quick score. Isn’t that some kind of record?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you, Bob? The fastest score ever though was made in literally no time at all, since the clock doesn’t start until someone touches the ball.”

  “I think I remember that. Wasn’t that Old Goldenhooves?”

  “You got it, Bob! The centaur player was so fast that he reached the Elfheim Eagles’ end zone before the kick-off hit the ground and caught it in the end zone!”

  Dunk looked up towards the top of the stadium above the north end zone. There he saw a live Cabalvision broadcast of the game displayed on a massive white wall. The images of Jim and Bob chatting with each other flashed up for a moment, along with a grainy replay of that long-ago centaur score.

  “The Mighties have only taken two casualties so far, Jim, so you owe me a crown!”

  “Those little guys are tougher than they look, Bob. Let’s go to our new sideline correspondent, the lovely Lästiges Weibchen, to get a report on how they’re doing.”

  Dunk stared in disbelief as Lästiges’s face splashed onto the wall, her head alone taller than M’Grash.

  “Thanks, Jim!” Lästiges said with a winning smile. “It’s not looking too good for Perry and Mippin down here. The Mighties’ team apothecary tells me they won’t be back on the field today. More stunning, they might even miss dinner tonight!”

  The rising noise of the crowd drew Dunk’s eyes away from the monstrous image to watch the next kick-off. As he scanned the sidelines he spotted Lästiges down there near the Mighties’ bench, a fist-sized golden ball floating near her head, watching her and broadcasting the image via Cabalvision to the Wolf Sports team.

  One of the halflings near Strongbranch caught the ball again. This time, instead of tossing the treeman the ball, the stubby player dashed into Strongbranch’s arms.

  “Throw him! Throw him! Throw him!” the crowd chanted as the treeman raised the halfling over his head. Dunk couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but neither could he look away. Strongbranch reared back an arm, the one with the ball-carrying halfling in it, then hurled it down the field over the heads of everyone, including M’Grash who leaped up to try to knock the little guy down.

  The halfling, who had rolled himself up into a well-armoured ball, went sailing down the field and hit the turf just shy of the end zone. From there, he bounced once and spun out flat, just on the other side of the goal line. The little guy stood up and stabbed a fat-fingered hand into the air. The ball was in it.

  The crowd went nuts. Even the Hacker Backers cheered. Dunk found himself screaming his heart out for the little guy.

  It was the last time the Mighties would score. Now wise to the tree-man’s strategy, the Hackers put two receivers back in their own end zone. They camped there until Strongbranch decided to try his halfling-hurling trick again.

  When the halfling zoomed toward the end zone, Cavre stepped up and caught the flyer before he could land. Then he tucked the hapless halfling and the ball he was carrying under his arm and raced him all the way back down the field to the other end zone, scoring a touchdown for the Hackers instead.

  Cavre was so excited by the strategy’s success, he spiked the halfling along with the ball. The halfling litter bearers were already waiting in the end zone for this and toted the little guy off in seconds.

  The rest of the game was a rout. The Hackers pounded the Mighties into the dirt, sometimes literally. After only six scores, the Mighties no longer had enough players left to field a whole team and had to concede the game.

  The crowd rushed the field as the referees announced victory for the Hackers, and Dunk went down with them. He was careful to avoid the Hackers, though, for fear that his disguise wouldn’t be enough to fool any of them. He knew that some of them, Kur in particular, wouldn’t hesitate to turn him in for the bounty on his head.

  As Dunk watched, a battalion of Hacker Backers upended Strong-branch, who toppled into the crowd to another rousing round of “Tiiiiiiim-beeeerrrrr!” It was then that he felt a hook snag his shoulder. He turned to see Pegleg staring at him.

  “That’s quite a getup you have there, sir!” the coach shouted over the noise of the crowd to Dunk, his sea-grey eyes piercing right through the rookie. “We hope to one day see our friend, Mr. Hoffnung, back among us!”

  “I don’t think it will be too much longer!” Dunk shouted back.

  “Let’s hope not!” Pegleg shouted. “This team needs him more than he might know!”

  “Tell us, coach!” Lästiges’s voice shouted at Pegleg over Dunk’s shoulder. “How does it feel to be one step closer to the Blood Bowl?”

  Pegleg shot a knowing glare at Dunk for a moment before devoting his attention to the reporter. “Like coming home!” he shouted as Dunk slipped back into the crowd, not once looking back. “Like coming home!”

  32

  The Hackers played two more games in the playoffs. In the first, they faced off against the Underworld Creepers, a team made up of skaven and goblins who normally scrimmaged in the sewers of the largest cities in the Empire. The final score was 7 to 2, in favour of the Hackers. It wasn’t much of a game after a pivotal moment in the first half.

  As Dunk watched the game, he saw that one of the Creepers was smoking — and not tobacco. Smoke and sparks poured out of a black, round shell the lanky, green goblin had tucked under its arm as it raced down the field.

  “Look, Jim,” said Bob’s voice. “Number fifty-eight, Gakdup Goremaker, seems to have a bomb!”

  “He sure does, Bob! And look at him go! He’s trying to get rid of that deep in Hacker territory.”

  “For the folks at home, Jim, can you tell us if this sort of thing is legal?”

  Jim’s voice laughed. “As in ‘within the proper rules of the game’? Of course not. But I can’t remember a game featuring goblins that didn’t feature some kind of cockamamie scheme. Do you remember the Pogo Stick of Doom?”

  “Remember it? I think I’m still cleaning the turf out of my teeth after the last jump of the pogo stick’s inventor Pogo Doomspider. Attaching a rocket to it in a game versus the Dwarf Warhammerers just wasn’t too wise!”

  Goremaker scrambled down the field, carrying his deadly cargo straight to Kur and tossing it into the surprised thrower’s arms. Kur was no fool though. Even from Dunk’s spot in the stands, he could see the thrower recognise the bomb for what it was instantly. He brought back his arm and fired it into the Creepers’ dugout.

  Dunk had been prepared for a loud blast, but the ear-splitting boom that followed almost deafened everyone in the Emperor’s Bowl. From the large number of skaven and goblins that vacated the dugout as the bomb came in, Dunk could only guess that the Creepers had had a whole stockpile of explosives stored away there.

  Despite the blast, play on the field didn’t pause until M’Grash brought the ball into the end zone a full minute later. He’d have been there quicker if he hadn’t stopped to kick every deafened goblin out of his way.

  As the Hackers were setting up for the next kick-off, Wolf Sports cut down to Lästiges again. “The Underworld Creepers suffered a staggering ten casualties from that self-inflicted explosion,” she told the camra. “Despite this and the restriction keeping the total number of players on a team to sixteen, the Creepers still have eleven eligible players ready to take the field.”

  “That’s goblin maths for you, Lästiges!” Jim’s voice said.

  “What happened with the referee this time?” Bob’s voice sai
d. “Where was the penalty call?”

  “The Creepers are old hands at this sort of mayhem, Bob,” Lästiges said. “Apparently one of their cheerleaders slipped a small bomb down the referee’s pants before Goremaker made his ill-fated dash for glory. I’m being told that he will not return to the game, leaving only one referee to cover the entire match.”

  “No other referees are willing to step up?” asked Jim’s voice.

  “As you know, the high casualty rate among referees has crippled recruiting efforts. Besides this, most referees consider it horrible luck to take over in a game during which another zebra has already been slaughtered.”

  The next game, the Hackers took on the fabled Elfheim Eagles, a team composed entirely of high elves, the most sophisticated, long-lived, and flat-out haughty people on the planet. Dunk wondered how the Gobbo would have allowed such a match-up. The honour of the high elves was legendary, and Dunk doubted there could be a Black Jersey among their number.

  The captain and coach of the Eagles, Legless Warwren, spent much of the game raging at the referees, who’d clearly been bought. Dunk couldn’t be sure whether the money had come from the Hackers’ coffers or those of the Gobbos, but when he saw Kur kneecap an Eagles blitzer right in front of the end zone, and in full view of the orc ref standing there, he knew what had happened.

  As honourable as they were, the Eagles refused to lower themselves to the Hackers’ level and cheat, whether blatantly or not. They managed to complete the game, which was more than could be said for the Moot Mighties or the Underworld Creepers, but the outcome was never really in doubt.

  Once the playoffs were over and the tallies were in, the Hackers were the top-rated seed of the four teams to move on to the semi-finals, the others being the Reavers (of course); Da Deff Skwadd, a team of Orcs hailing from the Badlands far to the Empire’s south; the Dwarf Giants, a team of dwarfs from Karaz-a-Karak in the Worlds Edge Mountains.

  As Da Deff Skwadd had barely squeaked into the semi-finals, their seeding pitted them against the Hackers, while the Reavers faced off against the Giants. Dunk hadn’t heard much about the Orcs, other than that they had a troll on their team and were all terrible at spelling. In the end, Dunk thought, it probably didn’t matter much. If the Gobbo couldn’t figure out a way to pay off a bunch of Orcs to throw a game, he wasn’t really trying.