“You gotta admire a competitor like that. Even the death of his cousin isn’t enough to slow him down for a second.”
“Well, with the clock winding down here, Bob, it looks like this game might end up in a tie.”
“I hate ties. They’re like kissing your sister.”
“I told you to stop dating her.”
“Hey, I said I hate kissing her, but she seems to love it. I can’t get her to respect the restraining order!”
“Hold it, Jim. Our roving reporter on the field, the lovely Lästiges Weibchen, would like to check in.”
The image on the screen shifted to a beautiful woman with long, auburn hair and black eyes, who smiled out at the viewer like she had always been your best friend. She stood down on the sidelines, somewhere near the ogre’s dugout from the look of it. As she spoke, she glanced up behind her from time to time.
“Thanks, Bob! Eyewitnesses here on the field and in the stands claim that this mysterious thunderbolt did not come from the sky, but from right here in the stadium.”
M’Grash helped Dunk to his feet, and then picked him up and shook him like a wet dog, flinging beer and beer-soaked ash everywhere. Just when Dunk had started to wonder if M’Grash might accidentally kill him, the shaking stopped, and Dunk could watch the Jumboball again.
“There he is, Bob!” Lästiges said, her voice ringing out over the PA system, even though the image on the Jumboball was that of a gaunt, middle-aged man in midnight-blue robes. As the camra zoomed in on the man — picking out his wispy white beard, his silver skullcap, and his watery, green eyes — Dunk recognised him instantly.
Lästiges gasped and said “It’s Schlechter Zauberer!”
The crowd echoed the reporter’s sharp intake of breath.
“Blood Bowl fans may remember Zauberer’s involvement in the death almost two years ago of the mutant minotaur captain of the Chaos All-Stars, Schlitz ‘Malty’ Likker. Rumour also has it that he was the motivating force behind the tragic Jumboball accident here in Magritta last year that ended in the messy and permanent death of Krader, the troll player who had showed so much promise up until that point. To make matters worse, Zauberer was on the All-Stars’ payroll at the time, ostensibly hired to help them, not murder their star players.”
As Dunk watched, Zauberer — who had been standing among a group of passed-out drunks in the nosebleed section of the bleachers, right under the announcers’ box — lifted his arms over his head and took off into the air. Dunk wondered for a moment if the fans the wizard had left behind were really sleeping at all or just not moving under their own power forever. Before he could ponder the issue much longer, an idea struck him, and he turned and sprinted off towards the Hackers’ dugout.
“As you might remember, Hoffnung and Zauberer have clashed several times before, both on the field and off. Since the wizard is not listed as an official employee or freebooter for either team, I can only guess that Zauberer has decided to take their rivalry to a new, deadlier level.”
When Dunk was only twenty yards or so from the dugout, another lightning bolt came scorching out of the sky to carve a crater in the ground right behind where Dunk had been, proving Lästiges’ words right.
“A ball,” Dunk yelled at his team-mates in the dugout. “Toss me a ball!”
All of the players in the Hackers’ dugout just stared at Dunk in some odd mixture of astonishment and fear. Lined up in their green and gold uniforms, the Hackers’ three-sword H logo emblazoned across the sides of the helmets they held on their laps, they seemed like little more than children brought together to play a game. Unfortunately, Blood Bowl was a game of life and death.
Spinne stepped out of the dugout and pitched a ball to Dunk underhand. He caught it neatly in his left hand and swapped it to his right. Then he cocked his head back and searched the sky over the stadium for any sign of the wizard who meant to fry him to ashes in moments.
A third bolt of lightning passed close enough to Dunk to stand his hair on end. The clap of thunder that followed deafened him again, but since it passed behind him he could still see. He spun around, looked directly above him, and spotted Zauberer diving closer, cursing in some language Dunk had never heard, a long, silver wand waving in his hand.
Dunk cocked back his arm and threw the football like a bullet at the wizard. Zauberer tried to dodge the spiked missile, but instead he only managed to put his shoulder forward. This caused the tip of the ball to slam into the wizard’s right arm rather than his chest.
Zauberer shrieked like a little girl from the pain. Clutching at the ball still embedded in his flesh, he fluttered towards the ground like a wounded duck, clawing desperately at the air with his fingers, but finding no purchase.
Dunk took one long step to the side, and the wizard crashed to the Astrogranite in front of him with a dull thud. Dunk reached down with one hand and pulled Zauberer to his feet. He needed to know what was going on. He hadn’t seen the wizard in over a year, and now he’d tried to kill him for no reason Dunk could discern.
Zauberer’s head slumped down between his shoulders, and a thin line of bloody drool trickled out of his mouth. He groaned when Dunk lifted him to his feet, but his feet wouldn’t bear his weight, and his eyes only opened long enough to roll back into his head before closing again.
Dunk yanked the ball from the wizard’s shoulder, planning to use it to jab him back to consciousness. The open wound bled freely, and what little colour the pasty-faced wizard had drained from him, leaving him whiter than the lines painted on the field.
“Speaking of competitors, Jim, what do you think about Hoffnung there? It seems he’s found himself a ball!”
Startled, Dunk peered around the field and saw everyone staring at him. For just a moment, no one in the stadium breathed. Then Gr’Nash, the Oldheim Ogre who’d cracked his skull earlier in the game, threw a long, broken, sausage-sized finger in Dunk’s direction — it must have come from one of the other Ogres — and bellowed, “Kill him!”
Dunk dropped Zauberer and heard the wizard’s skullcap crack against the Astrogranite. Then he started to race towards the Hackers’ dugout.
“That’s a damned shame,” Bob’s voice said. “One little assassination attempt by a wizard tossing lightning bolts around like snotlings in a bar fight, and Hoffnung loses his nerve. He had such potential too.”
“Not to mention the fact that we only have a few seconds left in the game. Looks like you’ll be puckering up for my baby sister Bertha tonight!”
“Not today, Jim. Since this game is part of the Spike! Magazine Tournament finals, no ties are allowed. We’ll go into sudden-death overtime instead.”
“If those Ogres catch Hoffnung, I think I know whose death we’ll see first!”
Dunk ignored the commentators and scanned the Hackers’ end zone. He saw Cavre racing towards it now, breaking away from the Ogres eager to carry out Gr’Nash’s death sentence.
Dunk brought his arm back one more time and tossed the ball high and long into the air. It arced up and then down like the smooth parabola of a rainbow. At the end stood no pot of gold, just Cavre’s outstretched, wide open hands.
Cavre pulled the ball in just as time ran out, but Dunk couldn’t tell where the catcher’s feet were. Had he scored, or had they been too late?
Bool blew the whistle, but Dunk couldn’t tell if it was to signal a touchdown or the end of the game — maybe both?
“Touchdown! The Hackers win the game!”
Dunk started to throw his arms up in the air to cheer, but he saw the Oldheim Ogres still racing towards him. Remembering how well Gr’Nash had treated him after the last touchdown he’d scored, Dunk decided to dive into the Hackers’ dugout rather than celebrate their victory within arm’s reach of the angry ogres.
That night in the Bad Water — a sports tavern located in the worst part of Magritta, right down next to the wharf — Dunk raised a tankard of Killer Genuine Draft to toast the Hackers and their advancement to the Spike! Magazine
Tournament finals. “Here’s to the finest bunch of hard-bitten killers I’ve ever played alongside!” he said.
The other Hackers — all of them, including Pegleg — roared in approval, as did the assembled crowd of regulars and hangers-on tough enough to work their way into the main room that night. They clanked their mugs together and drank deeply in approval of Dunk’s sentiment.
“Another round of Killers, Sparky!” Slick called. “Put it on the Hackers’ tab.”
Pegleg started to protest, but everyone else in the bar shouted him down, including his own players. He raised his hook to slash the throat out of the nearest of those who’d failed to respect him, but Cavre stepped forward to grab him by the wrist and sit him down before anyone could get hurt.
The dwarf bartender raced along the high foot rail behind the bar — which boosted him up high enough so that he could reach out over the bar — towards a fresh keg of beer. A cheer rose up, and at first Dunk thought it was for the beer. Then Spinne elbowed him in the ribs and pointed up at the set of crystal balls hanging over the bar.
Each of the crystal balls showed a sporting event of one kind or another. These ranged from professional snotling tossing (an event favoured in dwarf taverns around the Old World) to dragon wrestling (dragon vs. ogre, dragon vs. troll, dragon vs. dragon, etc.) to witchball (played by scantily clad women straddling flying broomsticks). On the largest crystal ball, the Reikland Reavers faced off against the Darkside Cowboys, a dark elf team with a reputation for cruelty, even among Blood Bowl players.
The Reavers had just scored the go-ahead touchdown as the time wound down in the half. As the Wolf Sports team cut over to the Gods-Damned Blood Bowl Halftime Show — hosted by Barry Hacksaw and No. J. Pimpson — Spinne nuzzled up under Dunk’s arm and kissed him on the cheek, a forlorn look on her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
A frown marred Spinne’s beautiful face. Here in the bar, her strawberry-blonde hair and blue-grey eyes gleamed in the lanterns’ light. The set of her jaw showed the strength she had to have to be one of the few female Blood Bowl players, but her eyes had softened tonight for some reason.
“I don’t know whether to root for the Reavers or their opposition,” she said with a sigh.
“I know what you mean,” Dunk said, wrapping his arm tighter around her shoulders. “I want Dirk and his team to win, but if they do we’ll have to face them in the finals. That could get… messy.”
“Their starting thrower may be your little brother, but I played on that team just a couple of months back.”
“Are you worried you’ll have to play against your old friends? Maybe hurt them?”
Spinne stood up straight and scoffed at Dunk, his arm falling from her. “Not at all. They’re a bunch of jackasses, Dirk included. Why do you think I’m playing for the Hackers?”
“Because Slick forced Pegleg to make you a great offer?” Dunk smiled behind his tankard as he took a long pull from the fresh beer that Sparky had slid in front of him.
“Okay, that was it.” Spinne grinned at him.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well, if we play against the Reavers, I know them backwards and forwards, every strength and every flaw. The downside is they know mine too.”
“Your flaws? That’s a short list.”
“You have a list?” Spinne narrowed her eyes at Dunk.
“It’s just a metaphor.” He held up his hands in mock surrender.
“Is that something like a dikphor?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“What’s a dikphor?” Dunk asked, regretting the words as they left his mouth.
Spinne leaned in close and whispered in Dunk’s ear. “Play your cards right, and I’ll show you later.”
Then Spinne froze in his arms.
“What?” Dunk asked. He held her at arm’s length and stared into her eyes, which were focused on something behind him. “What is it?”
“Look,” she said, jerking her chin at the wall over the bar.
Dunk turned to see Lästiges interviewing Schlechter Zauberer on Wolf Sports’ Cabalvision. The wizard lay sitting up bare-chested in a sickhouse bed, fat and slimy leeches hanging from his wounded shoulder, which looked like it had been stitched up with a dirty shoelace. Without his robes, the man seemed skeletal, his papery, white skin stretched thin over his jutting bones. The dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes made him seem like he might soon be hammering on death’s door with his silver skullcap.
Lästiges asked the wizard a question, and he started to rant out the answer. With the celebration in the tavern as loud as it was, Dunk couldn’t hear a thing. He grabbed M’Grash by the arm and signalled for the ogre to quiet down the crowd.
M’Grash turned to face the people gathered in the bar and put a finger to his lips. Then he shouted out, “Shhhh! Be quiet! Dunkel wants to hear the evil wizard talk!”
Dunk blushed as all eyes turned to him, but he ignored the attention and focused on the large crystal ball instead. Everyone followed his example without saying another word.
“So you attack in broad daylight because you like the attention?” Lästiges asked.
The camra focused on the clammy-faced Zauberer. “This is just the start of everything,” he said, a line of drool hanging from his bottom lip as he spoke. “Soon the world will know my name. Soon emperors will tremble at my feet. The ultimate power will soon be m-mine!”
Lästiges leaned into the camra’s view and said, “Uh-huh. So, just how does your attempt on Dunk Hoffnung’s life earlier today fit in with your plans for world domination?”
A sly smile played across Zauberer’s purplish lips. He gazed so intently into the camra it seemed he could see everyone watching back at him through their crystal balls.
“I have friends — acquaintances, really — in high places with low intentions. In return for their favours — their infernal influence — they have requested that I bring them the head of one Dunkel Hoffnung, formerly of Altdorf and now part of the Bad Bay Hackers.”
“That doesn’t seem to have gone so well for you.”
Zauberer ignored Lästiges’ sarcastic tone and kept staring into the camra, his eyes growing wider, and his words more urgent.
“These noble people have authorized me to place a price on Hoffnung’s egg-fragile head.”
Dunk heard Lästiges nearly choke at this news. Once she cleared her throat, she asked, “And how much would this reward of yours be worth?”
Zauberer’s eyes focused off-camra, in the reporter’s direction, for just a moment, a horrifying leer on his face. Then he looked back into the camra, which zoomed in tight on his red-rimmed, bloodshot, slime-green eyes.
“One million Imperial crowns.”
Everyone in the bar caught their breath at once. No one moved. Dunk’s heart froze in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to rewind that moment and shut the crystal ball off before those words went out again.
Then Zauberer threw back his head, exposing his pale gums and his awkward rows of chipped and stained teeth, and he laughed.
Dunk looked to Spinne, then to Slick and the rest of the Hackers. He could see by the looks on their faces that they stood with him.
It took a lot to bribe a Blood Bowl player, but that kind of money was enough to start a whole new team. Still, the Hackers had become Dunk’s family over the past two years, and he knew he could trust them to have his back under any circumstances. Even the new players had trained and practised with him long enough for him to rely on them during a game. This could be no more dangerous than that.
Then Dunk saw the rest of the Bad Water’s rough and tumble patrons eyeing him, some of them counting up the odds and figuring how much they’d each get by splitting the reward up that many ways. It wouldn’t take them long to realise it would be worth chancing a horrible beating at the Hackers’ hands.
“Guys,” Dunk said, his voice serious and low as he clutched Spinne’s hand, “I think it’s time to go.”
&nbs
p; 4
The first of the bounty hunters — for that’s what everyone in the bar had transformed into with the mad wizard’s announcement of an impossible reward — launched himself at Dunk with the neck of a broken bottle in his hand. Dunk dodged the drunken man’s clumsy slash, and then smashed his nose back into his head with his fist.
Before the first attacker even hit the floor, a pair of other hopefuls charged forward. Dunk knew that he wouldn’t be able to get his arms up to defend himself in time, so he gritted his teeth and waited for them to hit him. Instead, Spinne knocked one of them flat with a spinning kick while Guillermo dropped the other in his tracks with a roundhouse that landed square in the man’s overflowing gut.
Dunk righted himself from his own swing and saw that the Hackers had to be outnumbered five to one. While he knew that he and his team-mates still had the upper hand, he didn’t see how this could end well. The Hackers had to play in the Spike! Magazine Tournament finals in just a few days. If they lost a few players in a bar brawl, that could throw off their whole game.
Since the bar’s patrons were all after him, the best thing he could do for everyone, he realised, was disappear. He glanced around for a way out.
The front door was too far away, he knew, and too many people stood between him and it. To get there, he’d have to harm and maybe kill at least a half-dozen of the bounty hunters, if not more.
People blocked his way to the back door too. Plus, Dunk knew such an escape would be too obvious. Even if he managed to make it out to the street, he’d probably find another dozen people there ready and waiting for him to emerge.
He eyed the nearest window. At the moment, it seemed like his best bet. If he managed to crash through it without killing himself, he might be able to disappear into the maze of alleys and barely standing shacks that formed Magritta’s seaside district.
Then Dunk spotted Sparky standing on top of the bar and waving like a marooned sailor trying to signal a passing ship. He’d done everything but set the bar on fire, and he looked as if that might be next on his list.
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 3