“You don’t think you could find work elsewhere?”
“Sure. Maybe. I don’t know if I’d want it. The Hackers are like my family now, especially since Dirk joined the team. I don’t think I’d want to play for anyone else.”
“There is a world out there beyond Blood Bowl, you know.” Helgreta sipped from her glass. Her smile pronounced the wine delicious.
“I’ve been in that world. I was trying my hand at slaying dragons when Slick found me and convinced me to try out for the team. I didn’t know much about Blood Bowl back then, and I thought it would have taken a team of wild horses to drag me to a try-out. As it turns out, it took a hungry chimera and a town full of angry citizens to push me into it.”
“Can one get used to being run out of a town?” The way Helgreta asked made Dunk wonder if the wine had gone to her head already.
“I don’t think so. The last time was enough to get me to try something new, to put my old life behind me entirely.”
“But that hasn’t really worked, has it?” She tossed back the rest of her wine in one, long drink.
Dunk pondered that. “No. At least not the way I did it. Every day, it seems like my past comes back to haunt me in different ways. First it was Dirk. Then Lehrer and the Guterfiends. Then my father, and now—”
“Your father is alive?”
Dunk nodded. He reached for his wine, but Helgreta grabbed it before he could, and dumped the contents of his cup into hers. “How could that be?” she asked as she set his empty goblet back in front of him.
“He and I both managed to get out of the keep before the mob came and tore my mother and sister to pieces. I lost track of him after that and figured he was dead. It seems I was wrong.”
Helgreta looked at Dunk through lidded eyes. “And how do you know this? Have you heard from him?”
“I had a drink with him in this very bar earlier this week.”
Helgreta gasped. She sipped the wine she’d taken from Dunk and curled up in her chair like a contented cat. “Do you know where he is? I always liked him.”
Dunk shook his head. “He shows up when he wants to. You know, when I first saw him, I wanted to kill him.”
“What kept you from doing it? You’ve killed lots of people, haven’t you?”
“Not that many.” Dunk frowned. “This is my father we’re talking about. I… Well, if the reason why I keep playing Blood Bowl with a wizard’s curse over my head is complicated, then my reasons for not killing my father are right up there with the rest of the great mysteries of the world.
“I wanted to kill him, especially when I found out what he’d done, how he’d been responsible for so much of the misery in my life, for Dirk leaving home, for the deaths of my mother and sister. But he didn’t mean any of it. He’d been trying to do right by his family, and somehow it all got messed up.”
“So you think you should judge people by their intentions, not by the results of their actions?”
“I — I suppose that’s right. After all, there are so many things that can go wrong with a plan; so many awful, stupid things. It seems harsh to only account for an action’s results without considering what the actor meant to happen.”
Helgreta smiled, and then sat up and poured Dunk some more wine. “You see,” she said, “it’s probably better that we never got married anyway. That’s a huge point on which we differ.”
Dunk shrugged. “After everything you’ve gone through on account of me and my family, I can understand that.”
Helgreta raised her goblet. “Here’s to putting the past behind us,” she said with a savage grin.
Dunk picked up his own goblet and clinked it against hers. “And here’s to second chances,” he said.
As Dunk brought the goblet to his lips, he knew something was wrong. The scent of the cedar, of Helgreta’s overpowering perfume, of his own nervous sweat had all drowned out something else he’d sensed there, something more subtle and more dangerous. He sniffed at the wine, and there it was.
Bitter almonds.
Dunk choked on his own spit and dropped the goblet to the floor. As he hacked and coughed until he was red in the face, Helgreta gazed at him and laughed.
“When I first heard you’d come back to town two years ago, Dunkel, I ignored it. I satisfied myself with watching that championship game you played against the Reavers, and I hoped and prayed that someone would tear your head off in the middle of the match. When that didn’t happen, I cried myself into a stupor. By the time I’d recovered, you’d left town once again.
“Last year, when you played the Reavers again, I prayed that a horrible plague would destroy you and everyone you held dear, all your friends from your new life. A new beginning denied to me. My petitions went unanswered again.”
Dunk finally managed to bring the coughing under control. He shoved himself back in his chair and clutched at his throat and stared at Helgreta with wide-open eyes.
“This year, I prayed again. I prayed so hard. When I heard about the reward on your head and then the Hoffnung Curse, I thought my prayers had finally been answered.
“Then you killed Karl, and I knew I had to take matters into my own hands. Like the saying goes, ‘the gods help those who help themselves’.”
Helgreta crept from her chair and stood over Dunk. “Can you feel the poison working its way through your veins? Has it reached your lungs? Your brain?” She reached over and rubbed her hand against his chest. “Has it stopped your heart?”
Dunk’s hand snaked out and caught Helgreta by the throat. Then he shoved her back into her chair. “This charade is over,” he said. “You’re insane.”
“You?” She stared at him, her eyes wide as zeroes on a scoreboard, her voice rising to a screech. “Why can’t you ever seem to die?”
Dunk clenched his hands into claws. He wanted to strike back at Helgreta, to kill her for trying to kill him, but he couldn’t.
“The poison’s not affecting you; that liquor I smelled on your breath when I came in—”
“Was the antidote,” Helgreta said. “You always were the clever one.”
“If anyone in the world deserves to kill me,” Dunk said, “it’s you, but I won’t just roll over and die.” He shook his head in amazement at the lengths to which this woman had been willing to go to end his life.
“Who gave you a choice in the matter?” Tears streamed from Helgreta’s dark eyes, forming rivers of black that streaked down her face from the ebony smudges of make-up surrounding her eyes. “No one asked me!”
“You took your best shot,” Dunk said. “It didn’t work out. Let it go.”
“Never!” Helgreta launched herself at Dunk and clawed at him with her long, sharp nails. He caught her by the wrists and held her away from him at arm’s length. “Somehow, some way, you will die!”
Dunk shoved the woman back into her chair again. “Someday,” he said, “but not today.”
Helgreta shrieked at Dunk in frustration, snatched the bottle from the tabletop and hurled it at him. He ducked beneath it, and it shattered against the wall behind him.
By the time Dunk had stood up again, Helgreta had already dashed out of the door of the tiny room, screaming the entire way. “He’s evil!” she said. “Evil!”
“No!” Dunk lunged for the door and into the room beyond. There he saw the pogre players standing between him and the door. “You best leave ’er alone,” one of the orcs said. The rest of them nodded in agreement.
Dunk charged at the group, cutting his way between the elf and the goblin as if they were linemen he’d caught flat-footed on the field. With one move, he grabbed the end of the table closest to him and overturned it, shoving it forward against the orc and the dwarf on the far side of the table. They tried to duck under it, and the table started to roll right over them.
Dunk went with the momentum and somersaulted across the bottom of the flipping table. This put him on its far side, with the table between him and the angry players.
He charged
into the next room, and he could see Helgreta’s back as she fled past the Hackers’ table in the main hall. “No!” he shouted. “Stop her!”
The Bright Crusaders had leapt up from the chairs and stools at which they’d been drowning their sorrows. They closed ranks around Dunk, forming a human wall between him and the doorway as they linked their arms together.
“Get out of my way!” he shouted at them. “Or she’s dead!”
“We won’t let you kill again, Hoffnung,” Sister Mister said in a voice as rough as an ogre’s beard, “especially not Karl’s cousin.”
Dunk stared at the woman in horror — and not just because he could finally get a good look at her without her helmet on. Then he dived straight at her. She rebuffed him with a push of her belly, and he found himself on the floor.
“She attacked me,” Dunk said. “She’s going to die!”
“How dare you threaten that lady?” the dwarf called from the other side of the room. Dunk glanced back and saw that a line of Bright Crusaders had closed that doorway off too.
“Don’t worry, Hoffnung. You have nothing to fear from them. We won’t allow anyone else to come to harm because of your so-called curse,” Sister Mister said, the menace in her voice unmistakable. “As a charter member of ARSE, Helgreta has already come to terms with her fate. You can do nothing to stop it — nor to save yourself.”
With that, the circle of Bright Crusaders began to tighten around Dunk. He searched for a way out, a hint of daylight between his attackers, but he could find none. It looked like he was just going to have to kill his way out of the situation. The Crusaders outnumbered him ten to one, though, and had absolutely no fear for their lives. They’d come here to martyr themselves for their cause: his death.
A large hand shot out from behind Sister Mister and grabbed her by the head. With a quick twist of her neck, she fell down to the floor, dead. She bore a wide smile on her face.
M’Grash stuck his head through the door after his arm and said, “Dunkel okay?”
Somewhere outside the Skinned Cat, thunder rolled across what Dunk knew to be a crystal clear sky. Grim frustration marred Dunk’s face as he grimaced at the ogre and said, “All right, big guy. Let’s give these bastards what they want.”
27
“Welcome, Blood Bowl fans, to the championship pre-game show for this year’s Blood Bowl tournament. I’m Jim Johnson!”
“And I’m Bob Bifford! This should be one humdinger of a match, Jim, featuring the Bad Bay Hackers versus the Chaos All-Stars!”
“True enough, Bob! Due to the now infamous Hoffnung Curse the wizard Schlechter Zauberer placed on star Hacker Dunk Hoffnung, the Hackers were heavily favoured going into this game. Let’s talk to our able odds-making consultant, the legendary Gunther the Gobbo, to see what happened. Gunther?”
“Thanks, Jim! It’s simple. In a nutshell, Zauberer’s backing the All-Stars. As long as he has the power of the Chaos Cup behind him, he’s the heavy favourite.”
“And what are the chances that the Hackers might be able to find Zauberer and take the Chaos Cup away from him, thereby evening the odds?”
“That of a snotling’s snowball in an ogre’s pitcher of hot blood.”
“Excellent!” said Bob. “Now lets check in with our roving reporter Lästiges Weibchen to set up this burgeoning rivalry for us.”
“Thanks, Bob! Traditionally, the Hackers and the All-Stars haven’t had much time for each other. Remember, just a few years back, the Hackers weren’t considered contenders for the championship games for any of the majors, despite the leadership of Captain Pegleg Haken and of team captain Rhett Cavre, not to mention the brute force of M’Grash K’Thragsh.
“That changed three seasons ago when then-protégée Dunk Hoffnung joined the team. Something about the chemistry of the team gelled strongly around a central group of players that has survived to this day despite dozens of casualties to the Hackers’ roster.
“The modern-day Hackers have faced the All-Stars twice in the past three seasons. The first time was in the Chaos Cup two years back. In that game, Hoffnung killed the All-Stars’ team captain Schlitz ‘Malty’ Likker during a half-time ceremony set to honour former All-Star captain Skragger.”
“Didn’t Hoffnung claim at the time that the Blood God had possessed the minotaur with Zauberer’s help?” asked Jim.
“He certainly did, and that seems to have been the start of the conflict between Zauberer and Hoffnung. This flared up whenever the two met, but it usually ended up with the humiliation of Zauberer, who sometimes served as the All-Stars’ team wizard.
“Still, the All-Stars won that game, as they did in their only match against the Hackers the following year in the Spike! Magazine Tournament. That’s the game with the infamous Jumboball incident, when the gigantic display at the end of the field came off its mount and crushed hundreds of fans to death as it rolled onto the field.”
“I remember that,” said Bob, licking his lips. “I almost couldn’t restrain myself from getting down there and helping to, ah, clean up.”
“That game ended with several players dead on both sides, including the All-Stars’ new team captain, Macky Maus. In the end, though, the All-Stars prevailed when Coach Haken threw in the towel. With only three players left on the field, he knew the Hackers didn’t stand a chance.”
“How many players are still left from the original team that Hoffnung joined just three years ago?” Jim asked.
“Only four: K’Thragsh, Cavre, Reyes, and Hoffnung himself. That’s a hard-bitten, battle-tested core, and to that they’ve added Edgar — a treeman from Albion — and Dirk Heldmann, Hoffnung’s younger brother and long-time fixture of the Reikland Reavers. Up until this year, at least.”
“So this is a grudge match to beat all grudges,” said Bob. “Just the way it should be!”
Pegleg shut off the Cabalvision feed to the crystal ball in the Hackers’ locker room. He gazed out at the players sitting on the benches in front of him, staring back, and he let loose a grim sigh.
“I know you’ve been watching that crap every day since we beat the Bright Crusaders,” Pegleg said. “I want you to ignore every word of it. All that analysis, all those stats they throw at you, everything, all of it.
“It’s all crap. Sophisticated fairy tales they feed to the emotionally stunted excuses for sentient creatures we call fans. The fans need this stuff. They feed on it. They have to have a story woven around the game, some kind of framing device to give the match more purpose than it really has to them.
“Honestly, what does a fan care about Blood Bowl? Even when it comes to a championship game like this? Anyone?”
“Whatever they bet on it,” said Erhaltenes Spiel, one of the more promising rookies the Hackers had seen this year. He’d joined them back in Magritta, so just the fact that he had survived this far spoke volumes about his ability to play the game — or at least to find ways to collect a cheque while warming the bench.
“Exactly right, Mr. Spiel,” said Pegleg. “Anyone else?”
“Bloody pride,” said Edgar, who stood in the back of the rows of benches, towering over all the other players, even M’Grash, who sat at one end of one of the middle rows, next to Dunk.
“Well put,” Pegleg said with a grin. “We thank those rabid fans who stake their pride on our success. They wear our jerseys, come to our games and buy the things we endorse. In a real sense, they pay all of our salaries, and I love them for it.”
Pegleg held his hook in the air. “But the only things they have at stake in this game are money and pride. That Cabalvision crap caters to them and their needs.”
“But coach,” Jammernder Anfager — another rookie, but with far less promise than Spiel — said, “don’t we have money and pride on the line as well?”
Pegleg smiled. Dunk knew that smile. The ex-pirate reserved it for when some fool walked straight into one of his rhetorical traps. Pegleg lived for straight men like this, the ones who handed him the set-ups f
or his punch lines, but he showed them no pity. He always made them pay.
“True, Mr. Anfager. We have even more to lose, in those senses than any but our most rabid fans. Our jobs are on the line, and our professional reputations. That’s something to fight for, isn’t it?”
Anfager nodded, pleased with himself for having triggered this portion of the coach’s pep talk. Then the ex-pirate lunged forward and brought his hook up under the rookie’s chin, pressing there just enough to break the skin, but not to catch the man by his jawbone like an unlucky, warm-blooded fish.
“I suppose then that you don’t much value your life,” Pegleg said as he glared deep into the rookie’s frightened eyes.
Anfager swallowed hard, but didn’t move, for which Dunk was thankful. Right here before the game, they wouldn’t be able to replace the rookie if he made a stupid decision. Pegleg’s glare dared the man to try to escape the hook threatening him, but Anfager remained frozen.
Pegleg dropped his hook and stepped back to the front of the benches. He gazed out at the players, all staring at him, and wiped the blood on his hook on his bright, white shirt, where it left a crimson trail.
That’s what’s really at stake for you, my hearties. Not fame, not fortune, not the way people will remember you. Sure, all those things are there, and more, but they’re nothing more than phantoms striving to distract you from the most vital thing you each possess: your very lives.
“This is no idle threat on my part. Only four Hackers are still left here from our game against the Chaos All-Stars last year, and they remember the mayhem from that fateful day all too well.”
Dunk nodded at that, as did M’Grash, Guillermo, and Cavre. He missed the friends he’d lost during that game and since. So many Hackers had died last year — although a good number of them had been the creatures brought to the team by the Far Albion Cup. Those he wouldn’t miss at all.
The deaths that surrounded the game — permeated it — didn’t bother Dunk most days. He’d come to Blood Bowl from a failed career as a dragonslayer, so this had seemed to be a step up.
[Blood Bowl 03] - Death Match Page 23