[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Where the blade met the crystal, it chipped off large chunks of it, and the ball slowed to a stop once again. Sensing the advantage, Dunk jammed the chainsaw forward, taking larger and larger pieces out of the thing. A moment later, though, the sphere pressed forward harder, and Dunk had to dodge out of the way once again.

  Dunk spun around as the ball passed him. He spotted a pair of large cracks running through the thing. The first came from when M’Grash had smashed into it, and the second sprung from the deep gouges he’d managed to carve into it. These same divots didn’t keep the Jumboball from still rolling along the Astrogranite in fine form though.

  Beyond the glassy sphere, now smeared with layers of blood, Dunk saw Krader beating M’Grash into the Astrogranite. The ogre had fought valiantly, but he looked like he might fall over exhausted at any moment. Dunk had to do something to help him now, or he might never get another chance.

  Dunk ran around to the other side of the sphere. It wobbled there for a moment as if unsure which way to go. Dunk jabbed at it with the chainsaw again, and huge hunks of crystal spun away from it. The ball leaned toward him once again.

  Dunk ran straight for the battle between the ogre and the troll. Krader had knocked M’Grash to his knees, and he was about to finish the bleeding, battered ogre off. He had his back to Dunk and didn’t hear the chainsaw over the crowd until it was too late.

  Dunk shoved the tip of the chainsaw straight into the troll’s back and fought to hold it steady as it bucked against the creature’s rocky hide. At first, he thought the creature didn’t feel the whirring teeth biting into its skin, but then Dunk realised that M’Grash had wrapped his fists around Krader’s arms and was holding him down.

  Krader pulled back his head and screamed. Dunk’s ears rang so hard he thought he might never hear again. At the moment, though, that was the least of his problems.

  In his pain-fuelled rage, Krader backhanded Dunk, who went sailing off to the west. As he wondered whether his jaw might be broken, the thrower looked up to see the Jumboball roll right into Krader and knock him flat.

  The crowd went nuts.

  “Now that’s the kind of turnaround I like to see in a Blood Bowl game, Bob. This is fantastic! I wonder how we can top this next week?”

  “Careful what you wish for, Jim. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the rogue Jumboball become a regular event!”

  The Jumboball tried to slow down before it smashed into Krader, but it failed. The troll reached up to stop it too, but he only ended up being able to put up his arms to keep it from crushing his upper body, even as it pulverised his legs.

  M’Grash summoned up some hidden reserve of energy and sprang at the Jumboball. At first, Dunk thought the ogre might try to attack it with his bare hands, but he soon realised that M’Grash just wanted to hold the thing in place.

  “Hit it, Dunk!” Guillermo shouted from behind.

  The thrower didn’t need another prompt. He launched himself forward and slammed the chainsaw into the Jumboball, searching for a weak spot, digging at the cracks that had already formed. Under his assault, those cracks widened into seams and then to gaps.

  “So, Bob, how much do you think one of those babies costs?”

  “I don’t know, Jim, but I’m glad it’s not coming out of my pay cheque.”

  “No!” Krader shouted. “Stop! Please!”

  For a moment, Dunk considered showing the troll mercy, but before he could even haul back on the chainsaw, Krader lashed out with his arms and knocked M’Grash’s feet from under him. The ogre went down like a brick wall in an earthquake.

  “I’ll kill you!” Krader said. “I’ll kill you all!”

  He reached for Dunk then, but the thrower ignored him. The Jumboball, he saw, was rolling towards him once again.

  Dunk took three steps back and looked up at the monstrous sphere. His arms felt like wet logs, and his fingers wanted nothing more than to let the sputtering machine in his hands fall from their numbed grip.

  The chainsaw coughed twice and then went dead.

  Dunk grabbed at the T-grip and pulled. Something in the machine whirred around, but the chainsaw failed to leap to life.

  As the ball rolled closer, Dunk tried the T-grip again and again.

  “Run!” Guillermo shouted.

  Dunk didn’t bother to glance back at the lineman. This had to work. It had to. He pulled the T-grip again, and the machine choked and rumbled again, then let loose a hungry roar.

  The Jumboball loomed over Dunk now, the midday Estalian sun gleaming off its gore-spattered surface. The thrower hefted the smoking, coughing chainsaw behind him and then pitched it right into the sphere’s path.

  The sphere rolled over the still-whirring chainsaw, its teeth scoring huge gashes in its underside. As the crystal fragmented along the bottom, Krader came crawling around from its far side, his legs starting to heal even as he dragged himself along by his boulder-like hands and powerful arms.

  “I’m going to pick my teeth with your bones!” the troll snarled, blood spluttering from between its broken teeth. “I’m going to use your hide to wipe my—”

  The chainsaw’s fuel tank exploded under the Jumboball, which smothered the blast. The resultant shock sent thousands of cracks through the sphere and shattered the already cracked crystal into billions of shards. For a moment, the shards hung there in the air, nothing holding them together any longer but memories. Then they cascaded downward like water from a burst skin, driving themselves into the hapless troll below. The tremendous weight of the countless razor-sharp shards shredded Krader’s flesh into a bloody stew.

  Dunk lurched backward to avoid the falling remnants of the Jumboball. The crowd’s cheers hit him with the force of a wave. He fell to his knees and wondered what might happen next.

  “Well, Bob, that’s one way to kill a troll I’ve never seen before!”

  “True enough, Jim. I prefer to barbecue them myself, but to each his own!”

  “I can’t believe that after all that we had to forfeit the game?” Back in the locker room, Dunk shook his head, his short-cropped black hair still dripping with sweat, as the apothecary the team had hired stitched up his wounds. The white-haired woman didn’t believe in painkillers, but her needle was so sharp that Dunk barely felt it. He’d waited for the old Estalian mystic to help out some of the others first. He’d wanted her to take care of M’Grash too, but the ogre had threatened to smash her skull between his thumb and forefinger if she didn’t minister to Dunk first.

  “We only have five players left alive, son,” Slick said, his voice filled with a rare reverence. “And you and M’Grash were kicked out of the game. Even Pegleg won’t fight odds like those.”

  “Weren’t you the one telling me I should give up when we had eleven players left, Dunk?” said the coach, who stood nearby, watching over the apothecary’s handiwork. “Now there’s only M’Grash, Cavre, Sherwood, Reyes, and you.”

  Dunk let his head hang down. He focused on the stab and pull, stab and pull, of the old woman’s needle and thread. It kept his mind off the grief.

  “It is okay to mourn our lost, Mr. Hoffnung,” Cavre said from his spot on a bench across the room. Dunk raised his head to meet the man’s gentle stare. “Tonight, we number eleven less than this morning. This is much for even the hardest minds to comprehend.”

  “It’s like we’ve been through a war, innit?” said Simon in his clipped, Albion accent. His eyes bore a haunted look, rounded with deep, dark circles that reminded Dunk of the black paint many players wore under their eyes to cut down on glare during a game. Simon had washed off his black grease long ago, but the darkness remained.

  “Ah, the shame,” Guillermo said, “it is tremendous. Here, in my homeland, in front of my family and friends, to be humbled so.” He fell silent for a moment. “I cannot wait until we leave.”

  “Aren’t we going to stick around for the rest of the tournament?” Dunk asked. “The finals are next week. The Reavers still have a shot.”
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  “We don’t really care about your brother and your girlfriend, now, do we?” Simon said. “We have enough problems of our own.”

  Slick stepped in front of Simon. “There’s no need to get personal about it,” he said sharply. “If it wasn’t for my boy there, we’d be down to the three players who managed to hide the best.”

  Simon unfolded himself to his full height and glared down at the tiny Slick. “I don’t care for how you choose to talk to me.”

  “Sure,” said Slick, “now you can play the tough guy, when you’re facing down someone less than half your size.”

  Simon raised his foot high enough to stomp on Slick’s head. A large man, Simon stood taller than Dunk, and far more than twice the halfling’s height. He looked like he could squish the little agent like a cockroach. “You watch your little tongue—” the catcher started.

  He stopped when the even larger M’Grash grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into the air like a helpless kitten. Simon’s feet pedalled in the open air beneath them as he strove to pry the blitzer’s massive hand from around his neck. M’Grash held the full-grown man out at a safe arm’s length and shook his head at him.

  “Put me down,” Simon snarled, his dark eyes blazing at the ogre as his face flushed to the colour of a watermelon’s flesh. “Put me down, or I’ll — urk!”

  The catcher’s tirade came to an abrupt end as M’Grash squeezed off the last bits of air flowing through Simon’s throat.

  “Stand down!”

  All heads snapped around to stare goggle-eyed at Pegleg, who stood atop one of the benches in front of the lockers, glaring down at the others. “What in Nuffle’s nine nastiest names do you lot think you’re doing?” he said. “It’s not enough that we lost eleven players to the Chaos All-Stars today, is it? You have to go finish the job for them?”

  The others hung their heads in shame. M’Grash let loose his grip on Simon, and the catcher came crashing to the floor. He missed crushing Slick by scant inches.

  “I’m all right,” Simon said after a long, silent moment.

  “For now,” Pegleg said. “If I catch any of you fighting with each other again, I’ll kick you off the team.”

  The players looked at each other for a moment, none of them willing to risk their coach’s wrath. Or so Dunk thought.

  “You’re joking,” Simon said as he stood up and brushed himself off. He looked around at the others. “With only five of us left, you can’t afford to lose any of us.” He smiled, and the sight of it felt like a knife in Dunk’s belly. “I’m the only catcher you’ve got.”

  Pegleg leapt down from the bench and landed right in front of Simon. As he did, his hands moved quicker than Dunk could see. Pegleg’s hook caught Simon around the back of his neck, and a short, gleaming knife appeared in the coach’s other hand, pressed against Simon’s throat. A line of blood appeared along its edge, right where it met the catcher’s flesh.

  “Coach!” Dunk started toward the ex-pirate, but Cavre’s firm hand on his shoulder held him in his place.

  The thrower couldn’t let Pegleg murder Simon. No matter how much of a bastard he might be, the Albionman was a team-mate, and that had to mean something.

  Pegleg ignored Dunk as he hissed into Simon’s ear. “I already have to replace eleven players after today, Mr. Sherwood. What’s one more body dumped in the deep?”

  Simon’s flesh turned a ghostly pale. “You — you misunder — my apologies, Captain Haken. I was out of line.”

  “That you were, Mr. Sherwood.” Pegleg removed his hook from the back of Simon’s neck and pushed him away. The catcher fell back into M’Grash’s arms, blood trickling from the shallow cut on his throat.

  The coach glared down at Simon and then around at each of the others in the room, like a wild tiger who’d awakened to find himself in a cage full of fresh, poisoned meat. “If you — any of you — cross that line again, the consequences will be swift and horrible.”

  With that, Pegleg turned, his long green coat flaring out behind him, and fled the locker room.

  “Well,” Simon said, “that was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

  “Shut up,” Slick said, shaking his head at the catcher in disgust. “You’re lucky he didn’t cut you right there.”

  “From the team?”

  “From life.”

  Simon started toward the halfling, but Cavre stepped between them and put a hand on the catcher’s chest. “There’s been enough blood shed here today, Mr. Sherwood.”

  Simon opened his mouth to speak, then reconsidered and closed it. He nodded at the team captain’s cool-headed wisdom and took a step back.

  “So,” Dunk said, trying to fill the awkward silence. “What happens now?”

  Cavre answered, thankful for the change in subject. “I suspect it’s back to Bad Bay for us,” he said. “We might stay here a bit to see if we can round up some new recruits, but the other teams snapped up most of the top prospects before the tournament began.”

  Dunk nodded, remembering how he’d joined the team that way just over a year ago. He hadn’t made the first cut then, although Simon and Guillermo had. That thought shocked Dunk. Of the Hackers still left standing at the end of today’s game, only M’Grash and Cavre had been a part of the team for more than a year.

  Pegleg had only offered Dunk a job after someone murdered the “top prospects”. Dunk hadn’t known then that he owed his job to M’Grash’s amoral efforts to get him placed on the team. When he’d found out, he’d nearly choked.

  Thankfully, Dunk had been able to clear all that up during the last Blood Bowl tournament, casting the blame on Kur Ritternacht, then the Hackers’ starting thrower and Dunk’s chief rival. Kur had killed enough others and had tried to destroy Dunk enough times that Dunk felt no guilt for that. Sadly, it seemed to be just another part of the game.

  “Maybe we should go to Albion instead,” Simon said.

  Everyone turned to gawk at the catcher. “This isn’t a chance for a quick vacation,” Slick said. “We have to rebuild fast for any chance to play in the Dungeon Bowl tournament.”

  “Will the Grey Wizards sponsor us again?” Dunk asked. “After all, the only reason we got in last year was that cave-in that almost destroyed the Reikland Reavers.”

  M’Grash had been behind that too, Dunk recalled. Fortunately, his brother Dirk and lover Spinne hadn’t been killed. Otherwise, he might never have been able to forgive the ogre.

  Dunk glanced over at the massive, morose creature. He’d never seen M’Grash so quiet, so depressed. The ogre’s simple nature meant he probably felt the loss of their team-mates sharper than anyone else, Dunk guessed.

  Cavre frowned. “They’ve said as much, but this may change things. Wizards love their plans. They set schemes in motion that take years to bear fruit. They do their best to eliminate uncertainties.”

  “And a team with just five players left, she qualifies as ‘uncertain’?” Guillermo said.

  Carve shrugged. “It’s hard enough to fathom the mind of a single wizard. I won’t hazard a guess at the thoughts of an entire college.”

  “I wasn’t talking about taking a holiday,” Simon said. “Albion is a cold, dreary place. If I never went back, that would sit fine with me. I’m talking about going after the Far Albion Cup.”

  Dunk’s face went blank. He’d never heard of this cup before, but then he’d avoided anything to do with Blood Bowl until that incident with the “chimera that wasn’t anything at all like a dragon” last year, after which Slick had convinced him to forget about dragon slaying and give the game a try.

  Dunk’s agent saw his confusion written on his face. “It’s the Albionish equivalent of the Blood Bowl tournament, son,” Slick said. “If you can call what they play over there by the same name.”

  “It’s not ‘proper’ Blood Bowl, for dead sure,” Simon said. “But the teams play hard. I was a star player for the Notting Knights before I joined the Hackers.”

  “Happens all
the time,” Slick said to Dunk. “Far Albion League players get full of themselves playing in their little league and decide to try their fate in the real league. Most of them get sent back home in a pine box.”

  “We have some cracking players,” Simon said. “But the Old World league pays far better. It drains away all the real talent.”

  “So how’d you get in?” Slick asked.

  Simon ignored the halfling. “I wasn’t talking about the Far Albion League though. I meant the Far Albion Cup, the league trophy. The actual cup from which the gods of Albion drank the blood of their slaughtered forebears. The great god Feefa himself handed it down from the Highlands to the founders of the Far Albion League.”

  “The legends say that those who control the cup cannot lose,” Cavre said softly. Dunk couldn’t remember ever seeing the unflappable man so impressed.

  “Must have made for some dull tournaments,” Dunk said. “Right? Once a team won the trophy once, who could beat them?”

  “It’s a travelling trophy,” Simon said. “The winners have to give it up before the start of the tournament every year.”

  “If we had the cup, Mr. Sherwood,” Cavre said, his eyes wide and distant, “we’d never have to suffer through a game like this again.”

  “Do we even know where this thing is?” Dunk said. “This all sounds a bit too easy: Steal the cup and never lose again? What are we waiting for?”

  “You confuse ‘straightforward’ with ‘easy,’ Mr. Hoffnung.” Cavre nodded at Simon to continue.

  The catcher cleared his throat. “Sadly the Far Albion Cup was lost.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It was stolen — over 500 years ago.”

  “And where do you think you’re going to find that?” Slick snorted. “Everyone but Nuffle himself has been hunting for that old trophy for centuries. They all failed. What makes you think you’ll be any different?”