[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “So? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “It’s the Bright Crusaders!”

  “Wait,” Dunk said. “That isn’t some band of flower-tending fairies, is it? This massacring the helpless bit gets old fast.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s never been helpless,” said Slick as he gratefully accepted a pint of Potter’s Field Lager from the waitress, a woman who looked like she might have played on the line for the Vynheim Valkyries several generations back. “Thanks, love,” he said as he tossed her a stiff tip.

  “No, son,” Slick said, smacking his lips once he’d had a sip of his beer. “The Bright Crusaders is a human team that includes some of the best players in the league.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of them?”

  “Because, you pay attention to the part of Bloodcentre where they rattle off the scores for the top-ranked teams; the Bright Crusaders, beloved as they are among the fans, hardly ever win.”

  Dunk frowned. “I don’t get it. If they’re that good, why don’t they win any games?”

  Dirk gave Dunk his “you’re so naive” grin and said, “Because they’re too good.”

  “How can you be too good,” Dunk asked. None of this made sense to him yet.

  “Because,” said Slick, “they don’t cheat.”

  Dunk’s jaw dropped. “They don’t? Not at all? I thought that was part of the game.”

  “To those of us who love and play the game well, the way Nuffle meant it, cheating is an integral part of the game. Why, between two well-matched teams, sometimes cheating is the only way for one team to win!”

  “Do the Bright Crusaders ever win?”

  Dirk snickered. “What team do you think gives teams like the Titans hope?”

  “The Bright Crusaders,” Dunk said softly. “This doesn’t sound fair.”

  “Who said anything about fair, son?” asked Slick. “I thought we were talking about Blood Bowl.”

  “Maybe I can help you change the subject.”

  Dirk turned as white as a sheet, staring at someone over Dunk’s shoulder. Slick grabbed his pint and sat it in his lap, ready to dive under the table with it should it be required. Dunk turned around, already aware of who was there.

  “Hello, Father,” he said. “Won’t you join us?”

  “For Nuffle’s sake,” said Dirk, “they’ll let anyone into this place these days.”

  Dirk glanced around. All sorts of tough and seedy types filled the tavern. At one table, a pair of minotaurs butted heads over a fresh steak that had just been brought to them, rare. At another, a flock of naked fairies frolicked in a bowl of mead large enough to serve them as a swimming pool. Over by the bar, a man in a cowled robe sold some eager young adventurers a map to a hidden dungeon. Behind the bar, a troll in a bloodstained apron sliced off one of his fingers to pay a bar bet and then watched as a new one grew to replace the old.

  “Give me one good reason,” Dirk started, snarling at Lügner as he rose from his seat. Then the drink spinning in his head sat him back down again before he could fall to the floor. “Aw, never mind.”

  Lügner sat down in the empty chair between Dunk and Dirk, opposite Slick, and signalled for another round. “Make mine a Bloodweiser Dry,” he said.

  “Dear Nuffle,” said Slick. “It’s true. Only someone who deals with daemons could drink that pale-spirited excuse for a drink. Have some water instead; at least that’s an honest drink.”

  “Then it would burn his lips off,” Dirk said.

  Lügner put a hand on Dirk’s arm. “It’s good to see you too, Dirk.” The younger son stared at the fingers on his forearm, but he left them there.

  “All right,” Dunk said. “I’ll ask. What in the Chaos Wastes are you doing here?”

  “Excellent question, Dunkel,” Lügner said. “Direct and to the point.”

  When Lügner reached for Dunk’s arm, Dunk pulled it away. “Quit glad-handing me and answer the question.”

  Lügner turned serious. “I came here to see you both and to apologise to you.”

  “Apologise?” Dirk said, getting half out of his chair. “You think that’s going to get you off the hook here? We’re talking dealing with daemons, getting our mother and sister slaughtered at the hands of an angry mob, and making our lives a living—”

  “Sit down,” Dunk said, reaching across the table to push Dirk back into his seat. “It’s bad enough all that’s true. Don’t announce it to the entire bar. Besides, what harm did any of that do you? You’d already left the keep and declared the rest of us dead to you.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

  Dirk glared at Dunk, his eyes glassy from the drink, but his fury managing to burn through. “What harm? I was a kid when I left home — more than a little naive. I said some stupid things back then, but I never stopped caring about you — any of you.” Dirk looked over at his father, tears brimming in his eyes.

  Lügner put an arm around his younger son, and this time Dirk didn’t push it away. He just laid his head down on the table and wept into his sleeves. “I’m sorry, Dirk,” Lügner said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything to help you forgive me.”

  “Anything?” asked Dunk.

  “Hold on just a minute, Dunkel. I’m having a moment with your brother here. He’s finally—”

  “Passed out?”

  Lügner glared at Dunk, and gave Dirk’s shoulders a little shake. “It’s all right, Dirk,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  When Dirk didn’t respond, Lügner brought his head down nearer to Dirk’s face to listen to him breathe. When he didn’t hear anything, he grew concerned and put his face closer.

  Dirk let loose with a humongous belch right into his father’s face. Then he rolled over onto one arm, sprawled across the table and began to snore loudly.

  “Damn, damn, and damn,” Lügner said. “Yet another chance just slipped through my fingers.”

  Dunk tried to smother his laughter, but couldn’t manage to mask it entirely.

  “And you think this is funny?” Lügner asked, turning on Dunk.

  “You have to admit,” Slick said, “the whole burping up your nose thing was fairly hilarious.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Lügner said, seeming to see the halfling for the first time.

  “Well, of course you wouldn’t,” said Slick as he started to giggle, a mischievous sparkle in his eye. “It was your nose. For those of us who maintain noses that have not gathered a snootful of a Bugman’s belch, rest assured, it was damned funny.”

  Lügner struggled to maintain his anger at Slick, but he failed and broke out into a sheepish smile. “I suppose it was, wasn’t it?”

  Dunk took a pull from his bottle of beer, which was filled with Spotted Minotaur. He’d picked up a taste for the mellow brew in Bad Bay, a region filled with the black and white cows that resembled the bull-headed creature on the label. For some reason, it had come to remind him of a place he now thought of as home more than he ever had of Altdorf.

  “So,” Lügner said once Dunk put down his bottle, “you still want to take a shot at me?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Here’s what I think, Dunkel.” Lügner leaned across the table at Dunk, neatly avoiding the puddle of drool starting to form under Dirk’s head. “If you really wanted to give me the beating I deserve, you’d have done it back in Barak Varr. I know you. You’re not violent by nature.”

  “Really?” Slick said. “Have you seen him play?”

  Lügner ignored the halfling. “You might have been able to hurt me in the heat of the moment, but not here, not now after you’ve had months to think about it. You must know that I never meant you or anyone else in the family any harm.”

  “You should try telling that to Mother and Kirta,” Dunk said.

  “I would if I could, Dunkel. I miss them as much as anyone. You lost a mother and sister. I lost a wife and daughter, but at least I managed to keep you alive.” He looked down at Dirk and then back
at Dunk. “We still have the three of us. Isn’t that worth something?”

  Dirk grimaced at his father and shook his head. A part of him still wanted to reach out and twist the man’s neck until his head separated from his shoulders. He could hear his mother and sister crying out for retribution, for vengeance, just as he’d heard them every day for nearly four years.

  Now he heard other words, too, in his mother’s voice: “He loves you, you know.”

  Dunk knew it, but he wasn’t sure it mattered one damn bit. Weren’t some things unforgivable?

  Then he saw Lehrer coming through the bar towards their table.

  “What?” Lügner asked, staring at Dunk’s face. “What’s the matter?”

  Slick started to kick Dirk under the table. When that didn’t seem to rouse the man, he moved on to slapping him in the face instead.

  “Keep your hands off my son,” Lügner said, blocking the halfling’s open hand. “I won’t put up with anyone abusing my—”

  Lügner caught sight of Lehrer and his tongue froze. When Lehrer spotted Lügner, he didn’t recognise him at first. He smiled at Dunk and Slick as he approached, and then slapped Dirk on the back and grabbed his shoulders as he came up behind him.

  Dirk raised his head, his eyes still focused on some place far away. He saw Dunk and Slick and flashed a goofy grin. When his gaze wandered over to his father, he scowled at the man’s bloodless face.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dirk asked Lügner, his words slurring only a little. He craned his neck around to see who was helping to hold him up, and he saw Lehrer smiling down at him.

  Dirk’s eyes snapped into focus. He stared at Lehrer for a moment, and then looked back at his father, a wide, mean grin on his face. “Oh,” Dirk said, “I’m so glad someone woke me up for this.”

  Lehrer shot Dunk a quizzical look. Dunk put a hand towards his father to reintroduce the two old men, but before a single word left his mouth, Lügner stood up and smashed Lehrer in the mouth with a white-knuckled fist.

  All conversation in the bar stopped as the patrons turned to see what was going on. No one looked inclined to intervene, instead just craning their necks around towards the two old men. Fights took place in the Skinned Cat all the time. The regulars just wanted a clear view of the action.

  “You son of a harpy!” Lügner said as he stood over the fallen Lehrer, pointing down at the man with one hand and waving a fist at him with the other. “Stand up so I can knock you down again!”

  Lehrer glared up at the man as he pushed himself up on to his elbows, and then his eyes went wide and all colour drained from his face. “Lügner,” he whispered. “How — how…? You’re a ghost.”

  Lügner kicked Lehrer in the ribs, and the tavern’s patrons cheered. They’d been afraid this bout might end with a single punch, which wouldn’t have been nearly enough for them. Most of them hadn’t even seen that punch, and they would have hated to miss out on the fight entirely.

  “Does that feel like a ghost?” Lügner asked. He followed up the first kick with another to Lehrer’s belly. The air rushed out of the servant’s lungs. “Does that?”

  Dunk stood and grabbed his father by the arm. “Stop!” he said. “You’ll kill him.”

  “I think that’s the point!” the troll behind the bar shouted. The crowd erupted in laughter.

  Lehrer pulled himself to his feet and lunged for the door. Before he got two steps, Dirk leapt from his chair and laid a perfect tackle into the man’s legs. Slick slid down from his chair and went over to grab Lehrer by the ear and haul him back to the table with Dirk’s help.

  “See,” Slick said proudly as he and Dirk sat Lehrer down in Slick’s chair, “that boy’s a natural at defence. Even near-dead drunk he can still hit you in the back of the knees. Sheer poetry, I tell you.”

  Dunk guided his father to the chair across from Lehrer. Then he and Dirk sat back down in their own seats, between their father and their old teacher. The men flung daggers at each other with their eyes as they smouldered in grim-faced silence.

  Most of the other patrons in the tavern went back to conversations or fights-in-the-making of their own. Dirk glared at the others until they looked away.

  Slick signalled for another round of drinks. “We’re either going to be here for five seconds or a long while,” he said to Dirk. “Either way, I’ll need a drink.”

  “Traitor,” Lügner snarled at Lehrer.

  “What did you ever do to deserve my loyalty?” Lehrer asked, his lips curled in an angry sneer as he cradled his injured ribs with his arms.

  “Besides pay you handsomely for more than two decades of service?” Lügner rolled his eyes and then snapped them back at Lehrer. “We were friends once, you and I.”

  Lehrer snorted. “A friend doesn’t steal another man’s woman.”

  Lügner’s nostrils flared and his eyes grew so wide that Dunk feared they might pop from his head and roll off the table. “Steal…? She chose me.”

  “She was too young.”

  “We all were. That was thirty years ago.”

  Lehrer flinched at that. “It’s still fresh in my mind.”

  “I’d be happy to solve that for you — by removing that mind from your skull. You as much as killed her, opening the front gate for that mob.”

  “Wait,” Dunk said. “Are you talking about Mother?”

  “Kirta didn’t deserve to die like that,” Lügner said, “and Greta never did you a bit of—”

  “She—!” Lehrer bit his tongue and tried again, his voice a harsh whisper this time. “She was a trollop who played with the hearts of men good and true. She—”

  Lehrer doubled up over the table, his eyes watering in pain as he grabbed his privates.

  Slick pulled his fist out from under the table and then turned and shrugged at Dirk. “Does anyone here think he didn’t have that coming?”

  Dirk gave the halfling a bitter grin, and then grabbed Lehrer by the shoulder and hauled him up so he sat straight again. “Now,” he said. “Let’s talk about this some more, but this time without the cracks about my mother. Next time, I’ll let Dunk have his way with you instead of the halfling.”

  Dirk glowered at Lehrer and cracked his knuckles. The barmaid brought their drinks and placed one each in front of everyone but Lehrer.

  “What’ll you have?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Lügner. “He won’t be living that long.”

  She shrugged and left. As she did, Dirk hoisted his mug by its handle as if to take another drink. Instead, he brought it down on the edge of the table and shattered it, leaving only the handle in his hand, with several jagged shards still sticking out of it.

  “That’s extra!” the barmaid said. When she saw the look in Dunk’s eyes, she gave him a nervous smile. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

  Dirk shoved the makeshift weapon into Lehrer’s face, stopping bare inches from his eyes. “Let’s try that again.”

  Lehrer’s shoulders slumped, and the fight left him. He released a deep sigh. “I never meant for your mother or sister to get hurt,” he said. “Your father,” he glared at Lügner, “he crossed the wrong people. They decided to destroy him that night.”

  “But you helped them?” Dunk asked. He still found this hard to believe, although glancing around the table it seemed like he was the only one. “Why?”

  Lehrer squirmed in his chair.

  Dirk jabbed the broken mug into the man’s cheek. “Why?”

  Lehrer flinched away, but not fast enough. Blood trickled from a small cut on his face. “It’s his fault. He betrayed Khorne. You can’t just do that and hope he won’t notice. If I hadn’t stayed loyal to the Blood God, I would have shared his fate.”

  “So you chose Chaos over your old friend,” Slick said to Lehrer. Then to Lügner, he said, “and you trusted him not to. I don’t know which one of you is a poorer judge of character.”

  Dunk put his head in his hands. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked Lehrer.<
br />
  “Kill him,” said Dirk.

  Dunk ignored him. “We can’t let him report back to the Guterfiends. If they find out that Father’s alive… Well, you saw how far they’d go to get me, and I’m just the heir to their troubles.”

  “Kill him,” said Lügner.

  “Just like that?” Dunk asked. “In cold blood?”

  “My blood is boiling,” Lügner said.

  “We can’t,” Dunk said. “This is Altdorf, not the wild. They have laws against that sort of thing here.”

  “We kill people every game,” Dirk said.

  “That’s different,” said Dunk. “Just by getting on the field, they’re asking for it. That act alone is considered an assault. Any killings during the game are considered self-defence — at least in places where they care about such things.”

  Dirk pulled the broken mug from Lehrer’s face. The old teacher looked at him askance.

  “Let him run then,” said Dirk. “We can catch him in hot pursuit.”

  Lügner stood up and placed his hands on the table. Then he leaned over and put his chin in Lehrer’s face. “Go ahead,” Lügner said. “Give me your best shot.”

  Lehrer glared up into his old employer’s eyes and shook his head. He refused to say a word.

  “Come on,” Lügner said. “You know you want to.” He reached out and took one of Lehrer’s hands and placed it around his throat.

  “Do it,” Lügner said. “Kill me.”

  Lehrer smirked through trembling lips. “Your sons will drop me before your body hits the table.”

  Lügner nodded. “And then we’ll both be dead, and this entire horrid affair will be over. Don’t tell me that holds no appeal for you.”

  Lehrer squeezed Lügner’s throat with a touch that surprised Dunk with its tenderness. Then the old teacher’s hand fell to the table with a thud. “You may hate yourself. You may think you deserve to die,” Lehrer said. “But I don’t feel that way about myself.”

  “You’re in the minority then,” Dunk said as he stood and hauled Lehrer up by his elbow.