[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  M’Grash stepped forward, squatted in front of the log, and shoved his maul-size hands under it. He grunted and groaned with all his might, snarling and growling at the fallen tree so loudly that Dunk thought any other attackers who might lay in ambush out there would have to be insane not to turn and run. Then again, they were talking about cultists who worshipped the evil god of rot.

  “There’s no way he can do that,” Lästiges whispered so that everyone could here. “Can he?”

  No one responded. Then, with a great roar from M’Grash, the log moved an inch. Encouraged, the ogre shoved his fingers in further beneath the log and redoubled his efforts. His biceps looked as big around as Dunk’s waist, and the thrower feared the ogre might burst them with his heroic effort.

  “Shouldn’t we stop him?” Dunk asked. “If he hurts himself, how can we haul him out of here?”

  “Hush,” Slick said. “Let him work.”

  The tree must have lain there in the forest for years, perhaps decades. The soil of the forest floor had risen around it, almost as if the tree had cut into the land it had fallen on so long ago, like a sword through flesh. There it had stuck, probably forever, until the ogre came along.

  M’Grash let loose a pealing howl that echoed throughout the forest. Dunk wondered if they could hear the ogre’s cry back in the pub.

  Then the tree came free of the earth. Dirt scattered everywhere, showering the riders with tiny pellets. The horses, already spooked by M’Grash’s howling, scrambled backward, out of range of the log, which the ogre now stood holding over his head.

  It turned out that the tree’s top only extended a few yards to the left, and that now stabbed into the air. The right end, where the roots sat, still rested on the ground somewhere in the darkness beyond.

  Dunk let out a cheer for his friend, and the others joined in. They let up only when the ogre shouted out, “Hurry! It’s heavy!”

  The others stared at their companions, daring each other to go first. Dunk ignored them all and started down the path again, aiming to ride straight under the lifted log. Even on horseback, he saw there would be plenty of room for him under the ogre’s outstretched arms. As he went, he reached down and slapped Slick’s pony on the rump. The startled creature shot forward, moving under the tree ahead of the thrower, the halfling howling in dismay the whole while.

  As Dunk passed under the tree to the left of the ogre, he heard a low, hollow voice say, “Oi! Leave off, will ya!”

  The thrower glanced up to see a set of glowing green eyes staring down at him from what he’d thought were a pair of knots in the bark of the tree. A rough stub of a branch stuck out beneath them, closer to M’Grash. Right over the ogre’s head, between his hands, a horizontal crack that seemed like an old axe-wound moved like a set of lips.

  Dunk’s brain refused to understand this, and he stopped there under the tree to gape up at this strange face that had appeared in it.

  “You there!” the tree said, snarling at Dunk. “Tell this bloke to get his fingers out of me face!”

  Lästiges screamed. The noise broke Dunk from his trance, and he spurred his horse forward just as M’Grash dropped the tree. The thing’s branches brushed against his horse’s tail as it fell down behind him.

  Dunk brought his horse around next to Slick and his pony.

  “I don’t think I like this forest much,” Dunk said.

  “Son, that’s the smartest thing you’ve had to say all day.”

  11

  M’Grash sat there between Dunk and the tree, staring at the thing in horror. “What is it?” the ogre asked, panic slicing through his voice.

  The branches on the side of the tree started to move, and M’Grash crab-walked backward until he sat next to Dunk’s horse. As he did, the branches pressed themselves into the ground, and the tree lifted itself up on them.

  “Agh,” the tree said, raspier this time. “That bloody hurt.”

  The tree slowly rolled away from Dunk, Slick, and M’Grash until it could get a proper look at them through its eyes, which glowed as if lit from within. “You lot really know how to cock things up.”

  The tree collapsed back to the forest floor with a thud that Dunk felt through the horse beneath him. It closed its eyes as it did, and for a moment the thrower wondered if he’d just imagined it all. Perhaps this was some kind of sorcerous illusion or a hallucination brought on by breathing the foul air of the Sure Wood. Or maybe he’d hit his head on the bottom of the tree as he’d raced under it. Or possibly it had even fallen on him and crushed him dead. The last seemed the most likely at the moment.

  “It — it’s a treeman,” Slick said in the sort of tone that priests reserved for direct conversations with their god. Dunk had never heard such reverence in Slick’s voice, but he’d never seen a talking tree until today either.

  “Yer bloody right it’s a treeman,” the treeman said as it opened its eyes and glared at the halfling.

  Slick leapt backward as if someone had stabbed him. “Remarkable,” he said.

  “Maybe we should go,” Dunk said, pulling on his horse’s reins as he prepared to urge it to flee. “The others will catch up when they can.”

  “Right!” the treeman said. “Fine! Wake up a poor, sleeping bloke and then race off into the woods like a gaggle of frightened geese. It’s all I expect from yer kind of chaps.”

  Dunk shook his head. “What kind of chap?”

  “Breathers,” the treeman said. “Axe wielders. Fire users. Scum.”

  “You’re mean,” M’Grash said, standing up now.

  “You’d be bloody mean too if you’d just spent the last year face down in a dried patch of mud!” The treeman roared so forcefully in its hollow voice that the wind ruffled Dunk’s hair.

  A little, gold globe zipped up over the treeman and focused on its face.

  “What in the sap-burning hells is that?” the treeman said. Startled, it swatted at the globe with its branches. One of them caught the camra on its side and batted it away into the woods. A squeal of protest that could only have come from Lästiges sounded from the other side of the treeman.

  “It’s not important,” Dunk said. “We didn’t mean to bother you. We just wanted to get by.”

  The treeman frowned. “Just like that black-robed lot that’s always trooping through here at all hours of the night.”

  “He means the cultists,” Olsen shouted over the treeman.

  “Of course I mean your bloody cultists! If you can call them proper cultists. Nothing like the mean bastards that used to run the Sure Wood with an iron axe. These just want to gather in their clearing to screw under the stars. Pfaugh!”

  Before Dunk could stop him, Slick dismounted from his pony and sidled his way toward the treeman, stopping just out of reach of the thing’s branches. Dunk didn’t know how much protection this offered, as they’d already seen the thing move. He put his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it in the blink of an eye. Perhaps he could lop off a branch before the thing struck, giving Slick enough time to break free. Would such a creature bleed — or just leak sap?

  “How long have you been there, old boy?” Slick said. Again, his tone stayed so respectful that Dunk wouldn’t have recognised it as coming from Slick if he hadn’t been there to see it.

  “Your bloody cultists, I—” The treeman cut itself off. It grimaced, and then continued on. “They were chopping down some of my saplings for firewood. Can you bloody well believe it? This bloody place is full of dead and dying trees, and they have to go and cut down some tree barely past being a seedling, their branches almost as green as the bloody grass.”

  The treeman fell silent then, until Slick prompted him again. “What did you do?”

  “I chased them out of there. That’s what I bloody well did. I chased them out through the rain-soaked disaster of a forest. I almost had them too. If I’d have got them in my branches, I’d have turned them into fertiliser in just bare, bloody moments.”

  “What happened?” S
lick said.

  Dunk flinched, anticipating another rant from the treeman, this worse than any of the rest. Instead, the creature cracked open its bark-lined mouth and said, it a voice soft but clear, “I tripped.”

  Slick didn’t respond. Everyone else remained silent. Dunk could hear M’Grash breathing loudly next to him, the ogre enthralled by the treeman’s tale. Eventually, the treeman continued on.

  “I bloody tripped, and I fell face down in the muddy path. I—” Dunk saw a line of sap pour out of the treeman’s eyes and roll down its bark. “I got stuck. I’ve been lying here ever since, afraid that they’d come back for me with saws and axes.”

  “They didn’t,” Slick said. “We’re friends.”

  M’Grash started to say something to deny that, but Slick stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re safe now, old boy,” Slick said. “You’re safe.”

  “Bloody, bloody hell,” the treeman said. “You’re a dead good lot, you are, to be sure. It’s about bloody, damned time.”

  “Do you need a hand up?” Slick asked.

  The treeman shook for a moment, and then pushed itself up on its branches. It rose high enough into the air that Dunk could see Olsen, Lästiges, and the rest of the Hackers gaping up at it as it trembled there in the air.

  “You,” the treeman rasped at M’Grash. “Give an old, thick trunk a hand, would you now.”

  M’Grash leapt to his feet and charged over to cradle the treeman’s face in his arms.

  “Not in my bloody eyes, you damned beast!” the treeman shouted.

  M’Grash yelped and leapt back. As he did, the treeman crashed to the earth again. The ogre turned to Dunk and held up a hand that bore a long, red mark around its thumb.

  “He bit me!” M’Grash said.

  Dunk dismounted and reached out to examine the ogre’s proffered palm. It looked as if someone had slammed it in a rough-hewn, oaken door. The thrower started plucking the splinters out of the whimpering ogre’s hand.

  “That’s gratitude for you,” Dunk said.

  “Gratitude!” the treeman said, forcing itself up on its branches again. “A bloody ogre pokes me right through my bloody eye, and I’m supposed to get down on my roots and kiss his bloody feet? Do you know how long it takes for me to grow back one of those bloody things? Besides, it bloody hurt!”

  “He’s only trying to help you,” Dunk said, flicking one of the larger splinters at the treeman’s face. “Maybe you’d rather we just left you here instead.”

  The treeman shuddered along its entire length at that thought. “No, nay, no,” it said. “You seem like good blokes. Give an old tree your leave. It’s the months in the mud talking, that’s all. I appreciate all you’ve done, I do. Give a weary log another chance.”

  Dunk looked up into M’Grash’s eyes, each larger than a fried egg, as he pulled the final splinter from his massive hand. “What do you say, big guy?”

  The ogre wiped his nose with a long, thick finger and nodded. “I try again.” He stood and walked back over to the treeman. “But no biting!”

  “Just grab him a little lower if you can,” Slick said, pointing to a spot well below the treeman’s face. M’Grash went straight for it and started to lift the treeman up again.

  “There,” Slick said, “that’s it. Now just work your way back along to his roots. Kind of walk your way under him with your hands.”

  M’Grash did as the halfling suggested, and the treeman’s upper end rose into the air, step by step. Once it was vertical, the creature looked down at M’Grash — at nearly twice his size, it towered over him — and said, “You have my thanks, my — Hey! Wait! No!”

  M’Grash had given the treeman just a bit too much of a push at the end. The treeman tipped back over the other way, spinning its branches wildly, then flapping them like a flightless bird doing its level best to defy gravity.

  It failed and came toppling back toward the earth.

  The treeman wrapped its branches around the bare trunk of a nearby tree as it fell, stopping it from crashing to the ground.

  “Sorry!” M’Grash said. “Can I help again?”

  “NO!” the treeman shouted. “Stay back, you bloody—!” It sighed deeply as it gathered its strength. “You’ve done enough, chap. I can manage it from here, cheers.”

  Dunk led M’Grash back to where the others stood and watched as the treeman righted itself. It brought its wooden legs closer to the tree it held like a long-lost brother. Soon, it pushed back, on its own roots again. It wobbled a bit, unsteady on its own legs for the first time in months, but it stood.

  “Ah,” the treeman said with a deep sigh. “That’s much better. My thanks to you, you tame beast you,” it said, patting M’Grash on the head with a leafy branch.

  Then the treeman surveyed the people standing around it, its great, green eyes scanning them each in turn. If it looked for some sign that these visitors to its forest could not be trusted, it seemed to come up empty. Other than its own suspicious nature, it had no reason not to treat Dunk and his friends with the utmost kindness.

  “Now sod off!” it said, pointing the intruders back in the direction from which they’d come.

  Dunk and the others all stared up at the wooden creature towering over them and stood there in shock. When M’Grash turned to Dunk, the thrower saw tears welling up in the ogre’s eyes. Something snapped in Dunk at that moment, and he stepped up and stabbed a finger at the treeman.

  “You ungrateful bastard,” he said. “We almost literally stumble upon you in the woods and lend you a hand, and you’re nothing but spiteful. M’Grash here, he helps you up despite the fact you bit his hand, and you practically spit at him.”

  “Right,” the treeman said. “Let me correct that.”

  The treeman made a horrible noise in the back of its throat and then leaned forward, spitting something brown and sticky at M’Grash’s feet. The ogre took a step back, trying to pull his bare toes from the mess, but the sap stuck to his skin like glue.

  “That’s it!” Dunk said drawing his sword and stalking toward the treeman. “You’re going to start treating us right, right now.”

  “Or else what?” the treeman said. It took a single step, and its long stride carried it right in front of Dunk.

  The thrower craned back his neck and looked straight up at the tree-man, meeting the angry gaze in the thing’s glowing green eyes. The creature wanted to intimidate him, but he refused to let it. He reversed his grip on his sword and stabbed it down through the tangle of roots that passed for the treeman’s feet.

  The treeman laughed. “You can’t hurt me that way. It would be like trying to hurt a fleshy thing like you by cutting your hair.”

  “M’Grash,” Dunk said, beckoning his friend over with his free hand. “Knock him back down.”

  The ogre stepped up from behind Dunk as the thrower stepped back and out of the way. The treeman tried to walk away, probably thinking that its long legs would let it outrun the ogre, but it found that Dunk’s sword had pinned its foot to the earth.

  “Wait,” said the treeman. “Let’s be bloody reasonable about this.”

  “Sure,” Dunk said. “Give me a reason not to have M’Grash turn you into toothpicks.”

  “I—” The treeman looked down at the ogre, horror growing on its bark-covered faced. “I—” It cast its gaze wider, but Dunk met it with an impassive glare. The others showed it no sign of sympathy either.

  “I know where the cultists are,” the treeman said, holding up its branches. “I can lead you to them.”

  Dunk raised a hand, and M’Grash stopped cold, his hands only inches from the treeman’s roots. “Seriously?” the thrower asked the treeman.

  The creature nodded as best it could with its rigid trunk. It seemed more like a quick series of bows. “For good friends like you blokes, I can point you right in their direction.”

  Dunk waved M’Grash to commence the toothpicking of the tree-man.

  “Ah, I mea
n, take you right to them, of course. I could do no less for the fine gentlemen — and lady — who showed me such kindness as you lot have.”

  The treeman ended on a hopeful note, and Dunk repaid him by signalling for M’Grash to stop, just as the ogre wrapped his fingers around the treeman’s trunk.

  Dunk turned to glance back at the others. They all nodded.

  “And you’ll guide us back out of this accursed place,” Olsen added.

  “Of course,” the treeman said. “I could do no less for such good folk as yourselves. I’ll be happy to escort you straight from the Sure Wood, and to do my best to ensure that you leave in at least as good a condition as that in which you so elegantly arrived.”

  Pegleg nodded. “I can see how this one survived the great purge of the treemen from this forest.”

  “Now that’s hardly—” The treeman made to move toward Pegleg but found M’Grash’s grip ripping at its bark, so it stopped itself short instead. “Fine, fine, fine. Whatever you like. I’ve made you an offer, and I thought we had an agreement. There’s no need to get personal about it now. I’ll be happy to fulfil my end of the bargain if you blokes are willing to fulfil yours.”

  “And why should we trust him?” Lästiges asked, her camra zipping about to get a close-up of Pegleg’s face.

  Slick answered instead. “It’s the quickest and easiest way to get rid of us,” he said, the earlier awe he’d had for the creature no longer evident. “We get what we want, we leave, and it gets what it wants.”

  “Which is?” Simon asked.

  “We leave, son,” Slick smirked at the Albionman still gaping up at the treeman. “Try to pay attention.”

  12

  “What are they doing?” Dunk whispered as he stared down at the mass of cultists in the hollow below. A massive bonfire burned in the centre of the place, and in its light Dunk could see dozens of naked bodies writhing among each other in strange rhythms he could not decipher.

  “Why, Dunk Hoffnung,” Lästiges said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never witnessed an orgy before.”