As the undead Hacker came within reach, Fergie leapt at him, swinging both of his spiked gauntlets up at Deckem’s face. It was a desperate ploy, for sure, but Dunk couldn’t see the coach had any options left to him.
“No!” Dunk shouted, stretching out his hands to stop the massacre, even though dozens of yards separated him from the two combatants.
A flash of light blinded Dunk then, and a peal of thunder louder than even the noise of the crowd followed closer after. When Dunk’s vision cleared, he saw Fergie’s smoking body stretched out flat on the Astrogranite.
Deckem stood over the Mancaster coach’s fallen form and spat something black at him through his faceguard.
“Feefa’s blessed fife! What was that?” Jotson said. “Fergie is down! He’s down! Hackers win!”
The crowd booed louder than ever and started throwing things on to the field: empty beer steins, half-eaten rat-on-a-stick treats, hapless snotlings, even the remains of the missing referee. Dunk and the other Hackers had to sprint for their dugout, dodging flying debris every step of the way.
As Dunk ran, he spun about, his eyes searching the field and the stands, hunting for whoever or whatever had struck the Mancaster coach down. Anything that could strike out of the blue like that could attack anyone else as well, and there was no telling who or what its next target might be.
Of course, Dunk couldn’t ignore the fact that the bolt had taken out Mancaster’s last hope — however unlikely — just as Deckem had been about to kill him. Who would have bothered to kill a man already doomed to die?
17
When Dunk reached the Hackers’ dugout, Pegleg stomped over toward him, smacking the tip of his wooden leg angrily on the concrete as he did. “What in the name of Nuffle’s dirty jockstrap were you thinking, Mr. Hoffnung?”
Dunk glanced about and saw all of the other players — both living and undead — staring at him, seeming as eager for an answer as the Hacker coach. Slick stood off to one side, watching his client from a safe corner but not stepping forward to help. Lästiges stood next to him, her camra zipping about the dugout, switching back and forth between focusing on Dunk and his coach.
When Dunk had sprinted across the gridiron to confront Deckem, he hadn’t given much thought to the issue at all, but that wasn’t going to be good enough for the ex-pirate, he could tell.
“I couldn’t just let Deckem and his goons — or should I say ‘ghouls’—kill that man. He didn’t deserve to die.”
“No one deserves to die, Mr. Hoffnung,” Pegleg said. “Yet our lives are littered with corpses. He was as deserving as anyone else.”
“More so,” Deckem said. “He dared to stand against us.”
Dunk started toward Deckem, but Pegleg stepped between them.
“What if I dare to stand against you?” Dunk said to Deckem. “Will you try to kill me too?”
Deckem smirked. “I won’t just ‘try’.”
“No one hurts Dunkel!” M’Grash lashed out with one hand and shoved Deckem up against the back wall of the dugout. The blow might have killed a living man, but it just held Deckem in place. He stared up at the ogre with an odd smile on his face that sent a lance of ice up Dunk’s spine.
“Belay that, Mr. K’Thragsh,” Pegleg snarled. “Both of you back to your corners. This is a conversation between Mr. Hoffnung and me.”
“I don’t have anything else to say,” Dunk said. “I saw what the right thing to do was, and I did it.”
“Well, I’m not finished,” Pegleg said. “You’re fired!”
“What?” Dunk had been prepared for many punishments from his coach, up to and including death, but the thought that he might lose his position with the Hackers had never crossed his mind. To him, the Hackers weren’t just a team. In many ways, they’d become his family, and you couldn’t just kick someone out of a family.
Then Dunk remembered how his father had disowned Dirk when he’d run off to play Blood Bowl. He had no doubt the same fate would await him if he ever saw his father again, no matter how unlikely that may be. He had no intentions of ever running into his parents again.
“You can’t do that,” Slick said, stepping forward. “We have a contract!”
“Had!” Pegleg said. “Mr. Cavre, cashier Mr. Hoffnung immediately. Give him his sentence, strip him of his uniform, and send him on his way.”
Dunk gaped at the star blitzer, the captain’s first mate. Would he really do it? He couldn’t imagine that Cavre would defy the coach as Dunk had.
“Captain Haken,” Cavre said, “I believe Mr. Fullbelly has a point. According to the terms of the contract he negotiated with you, we must give six weeks’ notice before cutting him loose.”
“Or else what?” Pegleg never took his eyes off Dunk.
“Or we’re in breach, and he can sue. Given the fact he has Mr. Fullbelly as an agent, I assume that’s a foregone conclusion. They would clearly be in the right and—”
“I don’t care!” Pegleg said, frothing at the mouth. “I will not stand for this. Disobedience! Mutiny!” He pointed his hook straight at Dunk’s heart. “It’s either unemployment for you — or death!”
“Captain Haken,” Cavre said calmly. “There’s also the matter of the Far Albion Cup Final. Our victory puts us in the game, which is only a week from today. If we release Mr. Hoffnung, we will have to replace him or be forced to forfeit the game.”
“Then replace him! Use any warm body! Take Mr. Fullbelly! Or Miss Weibchen! Or maybe I’ll take the field myself. Apparently, in this blasted country, other coaches do!”
“No,” M’Grash said. “If Dunkel goes, I go too.” He let Deckem fall to the floor and then strode over to stand next to his friend.
“Aye,” Edgar said, stepping in behind the ogre. “That bloody well goes for me as well. And next time I won’t do you the bloody favour of taking out the referee by pretending to be a tree standing outside of his quarters, will I?”
Simon and Guillermo looked at each other, then shrugged and walked over to stand next to Dunk. They didn’t say a word, just glared at Deckem and his compatriots, right along with the others.
“You can’t replace us all,” Dunk said. “You need us.”
Pegleg’s eyes looked as if they might burst from their sockets. “You cannot do this. You will not get away with this. This is my team! Mine!”
Deckem stepped up next to the coach. “He can’t replace you, but I can.” He tossed a thumb over his shoulder at the four undead players behind him. Dunk noticed that Swift had his head back on his shoulders, but he needed to hold it in place with both hands.
“You see those fellows?” Deckem said. “I can come up with another dozen just like them in the space of that week. They’ll be just as tough, strong, and unbeatable as me. And they won’t question a single order.”
“Not one?” Pegleg raised an eyebrow beneath his yellow tricorn hat, still keeping his eyes locked on Dunk.
“They can’t.”
Pegleg turned to shake Deckem’s hand. “You, sir,” he said, “have a deal.”
Then the coach turned on his living players — all except Carve who stood off to one side of the argument still — and said, “You bastards. You traitorous bastards. You’re all fired.”
With that, he pivoted on his wooden leg and left the dugout through the underground passageway that led to the Hackers’ locker room. After shooting Dunk a sympathetic look, Cavre followed close on the captain’s heel.
Dunk and the others stared after them for a moment. As they did, Deckem snorted. “Well done, my former team-mates.” He sneered as he spoke. “I couldn’t have planned this better if I tried. Within the course of a few weeks, I’ve gone from dead to complete control of an entire Blood Bowl team. You have my undying thanks.”
Before Dunk could reply, Deckem followed after Pegleg and Cavre. His four compatriots strode after him, Swift still balancing his head on his shoulders.
“He’s right, you know,” Olsen said as he stepped into the dugout
from the field. “You’ve totally cocked this up.”
“Where have you been?” Lästiges asked. “Isn’t a team wizard supposed to stay in the dugout at all times?”
“Of course, our fair lass, unless said wizard wants to do something for which we wouldn’t care to be fired.”
“It was you,” Dunk said. “Wasn’t it? You blasted the Mancaster coach with your wand.”
Outside the dugout, the crowd loosed a massive cheer followed by a long, loud ovation. “I don’t believe it!” Jotson’s voice said. “He’s up!”
Dunk peered out over the lip of the dugout and saw Fergus Alexson getting to his feet on his own power, shaking off the outstretched hands of the Mancaster team apothecary as he did. A bit of smoke still rose from his body, particularly his hair, which now stood up on end and was scorched black at the tips. Still, he was alive and leaving the field without assistance.
“Amazing!” Jotson said. “I’ve never seen such determination from a fellow who is not dead. Except for the undead, of course. They always play like they have so little to lose!”
“If you mean, ‘Did we save the life of that foolhardy man?’ then, yes, we did. The only way to do that seemed clear. We just had to win the game before he died.” He took his wand out and blew a bit of smoke off the tip of it. “So we did just that. Notice that by our discreet measures, we never risked the wrath of our coach. Nor did we get fired.”
“Couldn’t you have lit that thing off a few minutes earlier?” Slick said. “You could have saved these boys here a whole lot of trouble.”
Olsen shrugged. “Their antics provided us with the distraction we needed, wee one. Without that, we might not have taken the chance at all.”
“So thanks for bloody nothing, mate,” Edgar said. “Only my second game as a Blood Bowler — as a part of a team — and I don’t even make it out of the first half! I haven’t played in a full game yet!”
“I’ll bet you always got picked last for games as a sapling, too, didn’t you?” Slick said, patting a sympathetic hand on Edgar’s bark.
“How in the bloody Fire-Breathing Forest did you know that?” Edgar said, sap-like tears welling up in his glowing green eyes.
Slick looked toward Dunk and rolled his eyes. “Just a lucky guess,” he said.
Dunk felt his heart slip down into his boots. He looked at the halfling — his agent, his friend — and slowly shook his head.
“What do we do now?” he asked. “We’re five Blood Bowl players without a team.”
“Six!” Edgar said.
“Six,” Dunk said. “Slick, you’re my agent. You’re the one who directs my career. What should we do next?”
Slick came over and put an arm around Dunk’s leg. “Don’t worry about it, son. Sometimes getting fired is the best thing that can happen to you. It gives you a chance to renegotiate your contract, which is great if you’re in a position of strength.”
“And we are?” Guillermo asked, his voice filled with desperate hope.
Slick snorted. “Not even close,” he said with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t get there from here.”
“What do we do next then?” Simon asked.
“I recommend we grab some grub, shoot around some ideas over a few beers, and then — as the Albionmen say — get ‘knock-down pissed’.”
No one argued with that.
“Here’s to unemployment!” Dunk said, raising the latest in a countless series of ales to his fellow ex-Hackers sitting at the table with him and Slick in the Cock and Bull.
A roar went up throughout the pub. As the Hackers had bought the first few rounds for themselves, they’d picked up drinks for everyone else in the place as well. They had soon found themselves surrounded by dozens of brand-new friends.
When the locals realised who their benefactors were, they’d cheered even louder. Their defence of the ever-popular Coach Alexson had made them national heroes, and the fact they’d lost their jobs over it only cemented the admiration the average Albion football fans felt for them. The bartender had refused to let them pay for another drink.
“Here’s to sleeping in!” Simon said.
“Here’s to getting soft!” Guillermo said.
“Here’s to beer!” M’Grash said. That got the loudest cheer of all, and he grinned wide and sheepish at the applause.
“Here’s to the Hackers,” Edgar said from his spot outside an open window.
While M’Grash had been just able to squeeze through the pub’s door, it had proved too much of a hardship for the treeman. “It’s all right, mates,” he’d said. “I can’t bloody well sit down anyway.”
Dunk had felt bad for Edgar, but the treeman had kept his spirits up and joined in the fun by peering in a wide window in the front of the pub and occasionally reaching in for the bartender to refill his bowl of fermented maple syrup. Every now and then, someone on the street would remark on the fact that a tree had sprouted right there in the middle of a Kingsbury street, and Edgar would spin about and spit out a drunken, “Sod off!”
This never failed to set off waves of laughter through the pub. When Edgar toasted the Hackers, though, the crowd fell quiet, as did the players at Dunk’s table.
“Bollocks!” Slick said, jumping up on the table. “Bollocks to the Hackers!”
Everyone in the bar roared at this, and Slick pranced proudly around the table at how well he’d sensed the mood of the place. When he slipped in a small pool of spilled beer, the roar changed to a sound of concern, but Dunk reached out and caught the halfling before he could crash to the floor. The patrons raised their glasses and cheered again.
“I don’t like you talking about the team like that,” Simon said. “It’s not proper.”
“I guess you missed the part where we were fired,” Guillermo said. “Hackers we are no more.”
“No more Hackers?” M’Grash said. He looked as if a tear might roll from his eye and plop into his barrel-sized tankard of ale.
“Don’t you worry about it, big guy,” Dunk said. “We’re not done with the Hackers yet.”
“You dead sure about that?” Simon asked. “I didn’t see a doubt in Pegleg’s mind.”
“He’ll be fine once he calms down a bit,” Slick said. “Cavre will talk some sense into him. Or we’ll hit him with a big enough wrongful-termination lawsuit that we’ll own the Hackers.”
“Now who’d want a washed-up team of losers like that?” Lästiges said as she strode into the pub, her camra zipping along behind her.
“They’re only washed up because they no longer have us,” Guillermo said. “We can repair that.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” the reporter said. “Your team has always got along more on luck and a prayer than any real talent. Your big run last year was nothing but a fluke.” She looked at Dunk as she said this. To avoid blushing at her, he turned away.
“Where have you been?” Slick asked, narrowing his eyes at the reporter.
“Following your former manager and team-mates around, of course,” she said. “Captain Haken is still furious — mostly at you, Dunk.”
“Will coach be happy again soon?” M’Grash asked.
Lästiges gave the ogre a condescending smile and patted the back of his hand. “Not today, I’m afraid. Cavre tells me that he thinks Pegleg will be in a better mood tomorrow — but that he’ll still be willing to hire a fistful of snotlings to replace you rather than have you back.”
“He wouldn’t,” Simon said in horror.
“He won’t have to,” Lästiges said. “Deckem has already offered to fill out the team’s ranks with more of his clammy ‘friends’.”
“Can he do that?” Guillermo said.
“He claims he can.”
“Where in all of bloody Albion did he come up with those creatures anyway?” Edgar shouted in from the window. “They should be fertilising my bloody roots!”
“He doesn’t know,” Lästiges said smugly.
“Wait,” Dunk said. “You asked him?�
��
“See, that’s why I like you,” she said, batting her eyes at him. “You’re one of the smart ones. Of course, I asked him. It’s my job to ask questions.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Dunk choked back an urge to throttle Lästiges. “What did he say?”
“He didn’t know. After his retirement, he decided to travel the world a bit. The last thing he remembers is running into a crowd of irate fans of his former opponents. Then he wakes up in a shallow grave somewhere in the Sure Wood a couple of weeks back.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He said that Wee Johnson almost keeled over from a heart attack when Wee and his friends heard Deckem trying to dig himself out of the ground. Brother Puck ran screaming off into the night. When they got over their terror, they started in helping with their bare hands and pulled him out.”
“That was right after we, um…” Dunk’s voice trailed off as he realised that the other patrons in the bar might be able to hear him.
“Yes,” Lästiges said. “It is.”
“They have to be connected,” Slick said.
“It could be a coincidence,” Guillermo said, visibly shaken. “I mean, just because we happen to come upon an artefact of unearthly power and bodies of football superstars suddenly start pulling themselves up out of the dirt doesn’t mean — oh, dear Nuffle…”
“What about the others, though?” Dunk asked. “Where do they come from? They know how to play Blood Bowl, but — does anyone recognise them as retired players too?”
Everyone else at the table gave Dunk a blank look.
“I’ve followed Far Albion football ever since I was a lad,” Simon said. “I used to be able to quote you every player’s personal stats and on-field numbers for five years back. They don’t look familiar to me. They sure do play like the greats of old though.”
“Did you ask Deckem about that?” Dunk said to Lästiges.
“Of course.”
“And…?”
“ ‘No comment’.” She scowled. “I can’t tell you how much I hate those two words.”
[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Page 17