The free kick came powering straight at him. It smashed into his helmet, and rebounded high into the air.
The blow left Dug dazed. He lifted his head dizzily to look up at the ball spinning in the air above. It began to fall back towards him.
“Just kick it!” screamed the home fans.
Then, suddenly, as he stared at the falling ball, Dug experienced a strange moment of revelation. Time seemed to slow. The noise around him faded. Images flashed across his mind’s eye. He saw the cave paintings back in the Tribe’s valley settlement, with their small, round, mysterious objects that Bobnar thought were badly drawn rabbits.
In a rush of understanding, Dug knew why the ball seemed so familiar. He knew what his ancestors were doing in the ancient paintings. They were playing this game, this so-called “soccer!”
Dug snapped back to the here-and-now. The ball was still dropping toward him. The other team’s players were bearing down on him.
“KICK IT!” yelled the crowd.
So Dug kicked it. But it wasn’t just any old kick. It was as if Dug were seized by some remarkable soccer instinct. Without thinking, he performed an acrobatic overhead kick.
Unfortunately, he fluffed it.
The miskicked ball swerved wildly through the air . . .
. . . into the back of Dug’s own net.
The crowd erupted. The angry groans and jeers of the home fans drowned out the joyful whoops of the few visiting supporters.
Up in his private box, Lord Nooth had missed Dug’s acrobatic own goal. He was too busy gloating over the day’s takings, a great pile of bronze schnookels that had just been poured into a box beside him. Nooth wasn’t really interested in soccer. It was the money it made for him that he adored.
The sudden explosion of crowd noise brought him out of his trance.
“What?”
Spotting the ball in the back of the net, he hastily tried to cover his lapse of attention. “Ah, yes . . . GOAL!” he declared over the din.
Down in the arena, Dug had been mobbed by the other team’s players. To his alarm, they seemed determined to hug and kiss him as part of their energetic goal celebrations.
When Dug finally managed to break free, it was only to be confronted by an angry-looking Mr. Magnificent.
“You idiot!” he growled, glowering at Dug. “You just scored an own goal, Hugelgraber!”
Before Dug could reply, a sudden angry yell made his heart sink.
“Stop the match! He’s not me!”
It was the man whose clothes Dug had swiped in the changing room—the real Hugelgraber. He was standing at the edge of the field, still stark naked. Only the corner flag saved his blushes. He was pointing furiously at Dug.
It looked like the game was up.
CHAPTER FIVE
A LATE CHALLENGE
Mr. Magnificent looked from Dug to his naked teammate and back again. His perfect blue eyes narrowed. He grabbed Dug’s helmet, and tugged it off.
There were gasps of surprise from all around the arena as the shocked crowd took in Dug’s true identity. Up in his private box, Lord Nooth sprang to his feet in outrage.
“A caveman?” he roared in disbelief.
“A CAVEMAN!” echoed the appalled crowd.
“Playing the Sacred Game?” hissed Nooth with cold fury. “Seize him!” he commanded. “Bring him here!”
Dug tried to make a run for it, but was quickly grabbed by guards. They dragged him across the field into the shadow of Nooth’s box. Nooth glared angrily down at him. He pointed an accusing and colossal finger.
“How dare you—”
Nooth broke off. His giant-sized foam fingers were rather spoiling the desired effect. He cast them aside, then tried his menacing glare-and-point routine again.
“How dare you set foot on our hallowed ground?”
Dug looked around at the many disapproving faces scowling down at him. He knew he was in a bad spot. But frightened as he was, he was not about to let a bully like Nooth treat him like dirt. He dug deep for some courage.
“You took our ground!” he told the Bronze leader defiantly. “Our home!”
Nooth smirked nastily. “Oh, that,” he said, as if his invasion of the Valley had been a trifling matter. “You have no home,” he told Dug, with a mocking sneer. “Your kind are finished on this earth.”
He gestured impatiently to the guards holding Dug.
“Take him away and kill him,” he ordered. “Slowly!”
Nooth’s men knew to obey his every word, or face the consequences. They began dragging Dug toward the arena exit as slowly as they could.
“No, you idiots!” snapped Nooth, red-faced. “I mean take him away at normal speed and kill him slowly!”
The guards hastily accelerated the pace of Dug’s removal.
“Now . . . get on with the match!” Nooth ordered Dino and the players.
Dug, however, was not done yet. As the guards dragged him away, the sight of the two crossed spears brought the build up to the match flashing back. Words echoed in his mind: We challenge the champions. He thought again of the cave paintings of his ancestors. If they could play soccer . . .
“Wait!” he protested, struggling to get free. “WAIT!”
With one last effort, he managed to squirm out of the guards’ grip. He snatched a corner flag, and went sprinting back out across the grass. He intercepted the ball, and speared it with the flag’s spike.
Bang!
Having regained the attention of the crowd, Dug played his last card.
“WE CHALLENGE THE CHAMPIONS!” he yelled, trying to appear as bold as he could.
For the second time, gasps rippled around the arena. A shocked hush fell.
“What did you say?” sneered Lord Nooth. He looked down at Dug in amused disbelief.
“He said,” Dino called up from below, “WE CHALLENGE THE—”
Nooth cut his assistant off impatiently. “I heard what he said!”
Dug tried to hold his nerve. “If we win,” he told Nooth, “we get to keep our Valley. You have to leave my tribe in peace.”
Nooth let out a scornful laugh. “You think you can beat us at soccer?” He smirked. “A match between the Bronze and the brutes.” He shook his head. “What a ridiculous idea!”
Mr. Magnificent was still glaring at Dug. “Such a contest would bring the Sacred Game into disrepute!” he snarled.
“Sacrilege!” added Dino disapprovingly. “Only the common masses would flock to see such a vulgar spectacle.”
As these last words of Dino’s sank in, a change came over Lord Nooth’s expression. “Flock, you say?” he murmured, thoughtfully. “The masses, eh? You think so?” He looked to the brimming box of schnookels nearby, and a sly smile spread across his face. “Hmmmm . . .”
To the scheming, money-loving Nooth, Dug’s “ridiculous idea” was beginning to look less ridiculous by the second.
As things turned out, Dug had more trouble persuading his own leader than Lord Nooth to accept his bold idea.
Following Nooth’s public acceptance of his challenge, Dug was released, and he made the trek back to the Badlands as fast as his legs would carry him. His reunion with the Tribe was a joyful one. Bobnar and the others had feared the worst after his disappearance. And no one was happier to see him than Hognob.
It was impossible, however, for the Tribe to stay in high spirits for long. Their situation was grim. The Bronze invaders were still occupying the Valley. They had built a high fence around it, to keep out “primitives.” The Tribe were outcasts now, forced to survive in the deadly territory of the Badlands. They were hungry, tired, and scared.
Dug was determined to give them hope. He had brought it back with him from the Bronze City, in the form of a soccer ball, and a copy of the program from his first ever match. He wasted no time in telling his friends his plan.
“Soccer,” he told them, as they huddled together in their makeshift Badlands camp. “That’s how we get our Valley back.”
>
“Soccer?” said Bobnar, frowning. “What’s ‘soccer’?”
Dug passed around the match program. It was full of etchings of the Bronze team in action. His friends flicked through its pages in wide-eyed wonder.
“It’s this amazing game, Chief!” Dug explained. “And the leader of the Bronze people says that if we play this game, and beat them at it—”
“Ooh, nice tight shorts!” interrupted Magma, admiring a player picture.
“Aw, Mom . . . please!” groaned Treebor, looking deeply embarrassed.
“If we beat them at it,” Dug went on, “we can have our Valley back!”
At this, the Tribe looked overjoyed.
“That’s what we want!” cried Treebor.
Only Bobnar looked doubtful. “And if we don’t beat them?” he asked.
Dug became a little sheepish.
“Then Nooth said . . . he said we’ll spend the rest of our miserable lives working down the mine.”
Barry took this badly. “Nooooooooooo!” he wailed. Then his look of terror gave way to a puzzled frown. “What’s a mine?” he asked Thongo.
Bobnar was considering Dug’s plan. He looked unconvinced.
“Dug,” he said wearily. “We’re a rabbit-hunting tribe. We’ve never even played this game!”
“But that’s just it!” cried Dug. “We did . . . once. The cave paintings back in our Valley, they’re pictures of our ancestors playing soccer!” He looked eagerly around the group. “Our ancestors were mighty soccer players!”
The others needed a few moments to take in this bombshell.
“Champions!” murmured an awestruck Asbo, speaking for them all.
“So, if they did it, surely we can do it!” Dug concluded triumphantly.
Bobnar still wasn’t persuaded. “I don’t see that this changes anything, Dug,” he said. “It’s just too risky.”
The others, however, were behind Dug’s plan.
“Come on, Chief! We can do it!” urged Gravelle.
“I wanna play soccer!” insisted Asbo. “I wanna play now! Now!”
“Waiyaiwecannalooosssmaaan!” agreed Eemak.
“NO!” said Bobnar firmly, putting his foot down for once.
The others looked glum. With long faces and slumped shoulders, they turned and began to slope away.
“Fine. Don’t worry about us,” muttered Treebor. “We’ll just stay here and eat dinosaur bones all day.”
“Yeah, we’ll be okay,” said Asbo, miserably. “We’ll just die a slow and lingering death in the Badlands.”
“Come on, Chief!” pleaded Dug. He could tell that their soft-hearted old leader was weakening.
With a heavy sigh, Bobnar gave in. “Look . . . all right!” he said. The others turned eagerly back to him. “We’ll give this ‘soccer’ idea a try. See how it goes. But no promises!”
“Thank you, Chief!” beamed Dug. His eyes filled with steely determination. “The match will be held at the next full moon,” he told the others. “All we have to do is win. Then we go back to the Valley!”
As his friends let out an enthusiastic cheer, Dug’s words echoed in his mind. All we have to do is win. He felt a rush of confidence. For a tribe with such soccer talent in their blood, how hard could that be?
CHAPTER SIX
TRIBE IN TRAINING
It was an excited and enthusiastic Tribe that gathered the next morning for their very first soccer training session.
Dug had been up since sunrise getting things ready. He had chosen the least dangerous part of Badlands terrain he could find nearby, and set to work turning it into a basic playing field. With Hognob’s help, he had collected enough dinosaur bones to build a pair of makeshift goals. For field markings, they had laid out lines of large shells. These weren’t ideal, as some still had fierce Badlands crabs living inside them and had a tendency to move around every now and then. But it was the best they could manage with what was on hand.
Now, as the rest of the Tribe looked admiringly at what he and Hognob had put together, Dug felt proud of their handiwork.
“Okay!” barked Bobnar, taking charge. “Line up, everybody!”
The Tribe shuffled eagerly into a single row in front of Bobnar and Dug. Bobnar noticed Hognob joining the lineup. He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Are hogs supposed to play soccer?” he asked Dug.
Dug looked awkward. “Erm, probably not, no. Sorry, Hognob.”
With a sulky look, Hognob slunk out of the line.
“All yours, Dug,” said Bobnar, stepping back to watch.
“Thanks, Chief. Right. So . . .” Dug looked at his friends’ eager faces. Where should he start? He gestured to the marked-out area. “This is a ‘soccer field,’” he began, in his best one-step-at-a-time teaching style. “Here, we play soccer.”
The Tribe stared at him with blank faces. There was some puzzled muttering. Bobnar, looking on, spoke for them.
“Uh . . . how, Dug?” he asked.
Dug pressed on. He held up the ball. “This is a soccer ball,” he explained. “One team tries to kick the ball in this ‘goal.’” He pointed to the nearest dinosaur-bone goal.
Turning their heads to look, the Tribe let out a collective, “Oooooo!”
“And the other team tries to kick the ball in that ‘goal.’” Dug pointed again.
“Aaaaahhh!” murmured the others, fascinated, as they took this in.
Barry was already looking lost. “Soccer sounds hard,” he complained.
Treebor put his hand up. “What happens if you do kick the ball in the goal?” he asked.
Dug thought back to his experience in the Bronze City. “If you kick the ball in a goal,” he replied, “other men hug and kiss you.”
This met with mixed reactions. To Treebor’s obvious embarrassment, Magma suddenly looked a lot more interested. “Let’s get started!” she said enthusiastically.
“That’s the spirit, Magma!” beamed Dug. “All right, then . . .” He placed the ball at Magma’s feet, then moved back a little. “I’ll try to take the ball from you, and you try to stop me, okay?”
Dug ran at Magma. Without hesitation, she knocked him flat on his back with a fearsome right hook. The rest of the Tribe showed their approval.
“Good one, Magma!”
“That’s the way!”
“Nice one, Mom!”
“Soccer’s awesome!” enthused Asbo, who was liking the look of this strange new game.
Only Bobnar seemed to sense that Magma might have misunderstood. “Surely you can’t hit other players?” He frowned.
Dug was still recovering. “No,” he said feebly, sitting up and rubbing his jaw. “You’re supposed to attack the ball.”
In a heartbeat, the entire Tribe snatched up their clubs and charged wildly toward the soccer ball.
“No! No-no-no!” shrieked Dug. “Not that kind of attack! Not with weapons!”
The Tribe stopped in their tracks. Asbo looked at Dug in confusion. “Just fists?” he said.
“No!” insisted Dug. “No fighting at all!”
Shoulders sagged and mouths drooped. This was clearly a major disappointment to all. “Where’s the fun in that?” complained Magma, whose earlier enthusiasm was fading fast.
Dug let out a sigh. So far, training was not going as smoothly as he’d hoped.
As the morning wore on, things only got worse. Despite their soccer-playing ancestry, the Tribe seemed unable to pick up even the most basic of skills.
Dug had them take turns trying a simple penalty shot first. This, he thought, would be a good way to practice just kicking the ball. He persuaded a reluctant Treebor to go stand in the goal.
Thongo missed the ball completely, slipped, and went sliding into the goal himself. Magma gave the ball a mighty kick . . . backwards, straight into poor Eemak’s stomach. Only Asbo made proper contact, and his shot was so wildly off target, the ball flew over the fence, into the Valley.
Dug hurried off to retrieve the ball, which was their o
nly one. He smiled sweetly at the Bronze guard on the other side of the fence.
“Can we have our ball back, please?”
The guard grumpily obliged. Dug headed back with the ball to rejoin the others, wondering if passing practice might be a better way to start.
A training session was taking place in the Bronze City, too. The awesome players of Real Bronzio, golden-haired Mr. Magnificent and his talented teammates, were fine-tuning their soccer skills. They passed, dribbled, and juggled the ball with the style and ease of experts.
Lord Nooth watched smugly from his private apartment, which overlooked the stadium. His assistant, Dino, was with him.
“This soccer match between the Stone Age and the Bronze world—it’s perfect!” said Nooth, grinning. He was already imagining the riches that the match would bring in.
Dino, however, looked a little anxious.
“What if the queen finds out, Your Premiership?” he asked.
The Bronze realm’s formidable monarch, Queen Oofeefa, ruled with a firm hand and an eagle eye. Her seat of power, however, was some distance from the city.
“Pah! The old crow doesn’t know what goes on out here!” said Nooth. He was eager to avoid the queen’s interference. She was sure to disapprove of his cunning schnookel-making scheme.
But the “old crow” was not as out of touch as Nooth hoped.
A loud Squawk! behind him made him jump. A royal message-bird was sitting on the windowsill. It hopped into the room, and began to strut back and forth on Nooth’s desk in a regal manner.
“I’ve heard about the match, Nooth!” said the bird, in a perfect imitation of Queen Oofeefa’s haughty voice. It stopped, and glared at Nooth. “You IDIOT!” it snapped. “Imagine if we lost!”
The bird’s impersonation of the queen was uncanny. Both Nooth and Dino were finding it more than a little unsettling.
“We . . . we won’t—” stammered Nooth.
“YOU’D BETTER NOT!” bellowed the bird, continuing its recorded message. It grabbed Nooth by his lapels. “I’m warning you, Nooth. I won’t have the mighty Bronze Age brought to its knees by a bunch of cavemen!”
Early Man Page 3