“He’ll bloody well blab to me,” Edgar said, turning to leave. “I’ll strip the leaves from his limbs!”
“Hold it!” Dunk said before the treeman could stride away. “I think I have a better idea.”
18
“Why don’t we try the door, again?” Simon asked.
Dunk rolled his eyes as Slick shushed the Albionman for the third time. “It’ll be trapped,” Dunk whispered.
“And the window won’t?”
Dunk looked down from where he, Simon, Guillermo, and Slick stood in Edgar’s upper branches. M’Grash waved up at him with a smile from where the moonlit pavement beckoned far below. The window the treeman held them in front of sat in a sheer, plastered, whitewashed wall, with nothing to grasp onto nearby but the brown-painted frame itself.
“Would you expect an assault from this angle?”
“Why would anyone want to assault me?”
“I can think of a half-dozen reasons off the top of my head,” Slick said. “Now shut up.”
“You’re noisier than a scurry of bloody squirrels in heat,” Edgar said. “It’s a wonder he’s not awake already.”
The treeman staggered a bit to the right, and all four of the people in its branches yelled out. M’Grash reached out and caught Edgar before he went over like a felled oak.
“Whoa!” said Dunk. “How much of that maple juice did you have?”
“Not enough,” the treeman said, righting itself as it shook free from M’Grash, and licking its lips with a tongue the colour of heartwood.
“You don’t get hooch that bloody good in the Sure Wood, I can tell you that.”
“For Nuffle’s sake,” Simon said. “You’re noisier than the lot of us. Can’t you keep it down.”
Dunk glanced up and down the darkened street in which they’d found themselves. It was late, and all the lights in the inn before them were out. In their target room, nothing seemed to stir.
“He must sleep like the dead,” Dunk said.
“I don’t think Deckem sleeps very well,” Guillermo said. “Or at all.”
“That’s because he’s undead,” Slick said. “He unsleeps.”
That sent Edgar into a titter, and the treeman nearly dropped all of its friends. “Whoops!” it said. “My apologies, mates, but that was bloody funny!”
“How are we going to get in there?” Guillermo said. “It’s closed.”
“We just open it,” Dunk said.
“And if it’s locked?” asked Simon.
“Don’t take your eye off the ball,” Slick said. “One thing at a time.”
Edgar extended one of his branches forward, and Dunk crept along it until he could reach the window. There were two of them, actually, hung side by side on hinges so you could pull them into the room. Dunk pushed against them, hoping they would just give. They held firm.
“They’re locked,” Dunk said.
“Here’s your next thing,” said Simon.
“Let’s just break the bloody things,” Edgar said. “Then we drag him out of his bed and haul him into some dark corner of that wooded park we passed. No one will hear us — or him — there.”
“You don’t think that this will wake him up?” Guillermo said. “This breaking of glass?”
“Just throw the halfling through,” Simon said. “We can follow right after.”
Slick gaped at the Albionman. “First, no! Second, don’t you think something like that would wake even the dead?”
“So what if it does?” Edgar said.
At that, the windows opened into the darkened room, and Olsen stepped forward, the moonlight catching him in the frame.
“Aye,” the wizard said. He looked older than Dunk had ever seen him, worn and on the verge of exhaustion — and not in a good mood. “Whatever will you do?”
“Run?” Edgar squeaked in a tiny voice.
Olsen snorted, and a weary smile crept across his lips, leaving his tired eyes undisturbed. “Come on in, lads,” he said, stepping back into the darkness. “We think it’s time we talked.”
Leaving M’Grash and Edgar out on the street to keep watch, Dunk, Simon, Guillermo, and Slick climbed into the wizard’s room through the open window. By the time they all made it in, Olsen had lit a pair of lamps on either side of his bed and carried one of them over to a table on the opposite side of the room.
“Sit, lads, sit,” the wizard said, pointing to the four chairs arranged around the table. Dunk took one of them — the one nearest the door — and Guillermo and Simon each sat down too. Slick leaned up against the windowsill instead.
“So,” Olsen said, “what can we help you with at this unusual hour?”
“You know why we’re here,” Dunk said.
The wizard stared at the thrower in silence for a moment, a frown of regret on his face. “Yes, we suppose we do. You want to know more about the Far Albion Cup.”
Simon, looking confused, said, “We’re here about Deckem and his deadboys, aren’t we?”
“They’re the same topic,” Olsen said. “You can’t talk about Deckem’s lot without bringing the cup into it too.”
“What’s going on?” Dunk asked.
“Ah,” Olsen said, settling back to sit on the end of his bed, “now that’s a simple question, but with a complicated answer.”
“We’re unemployed,” Dunk said. “We have plenty of time.”
“Right,” Olsen said. “A long time ago, centuries before any of you were born, I was a great wizard.”
“Aren’t you still a great wizard?” Guillermo asked.
“Perhaps. But back then, in the days of my youth, I knew I was a great wizard. I told everyone I knew that I was, and I set out to prove it. This was back before football of any kind had found our secluded isle, and fair Albion was sadly ignorant of such great discoveries. Without such a sport to play, I set out to make my mark by leading the effort to destroy the most dangerous and evil sorcerers of the day.
“My friends — compatriots, really — and I met with some successes. We ran off the Lizard-fiend of Loch Morrah, the Mole-master of Drogan Glen, and even the Black Oak of the Sure Wood.”
Dunk heard leaves rustle at this last name and glanced out the window to see Edgar shivering not in the breeze but stark fear.
“Then we set our sight on the greatest, most powerful evil in the land in those dark days: Tharg Retmatcher. That ancient crone ruled over most of Albion then, with the exception of the last bastion that was Kingsbury, and the king — King William I, in those days — bade us to take her down by any means necessary.”
Olsen bowed his head. For a moment, Dunk feared the old elf had nodded off. Then he raised his eyes again, red and puffy though they were.
“We were so sure of ourselves. We rode right out to Downing Castle and challenged her to show herself. Well, she did, and she destroyed us to a man. When — when I saw how the battle would go, I used my magic not to launch yet another futile attack, but to flee.
“I was the only one of us to survive.”
“What happened to Tharg?” Guillermo said.
“Hush,” Simon said, transfixed, never taking his eyes from the wizard. “He’s getting to that.”
Olsen nodded. “I went into hiding after that, and Retmatcher’s forces scoured the land for me. I was no longer here, though, having gone to hide in the Old World, in the majestic city of Altdorf.
“While in my exile there, I plotted for my return, for my chance to redeem myself and bring down Retmatcher once and for all. To that end, I constructed the ultimate weapon, an enchanted device so powerful that not even the dreaded Retmatcher could resist its power.
“When it was ready, I smuggled it and myself back to Albion aboard a pirate ship. I brought it to King William III, who now sat on the throne, and gave it to him to give to Retmatcher.”
“And she just accepted this ‘gift’ from her mortal enemy?” Slick asked.
Olsen raised finger to tell the halfling to be patient. “William III had come
to a sort of peace with this dictator. She let him remain on his throne, mostly as an impotent figurehead. In exchange, he retained control of Kingsbury and the surrounding area and paid her a regular tribute.”
“And he gave this weapon to her as part of his next tribute,” said Simon.
“Who’s telling this story?” Olsen asked. The wizard waited in silence for an answer.
“My apologies,” Simon said. “Please, continue.”
Olsen rolled his eyes but started talking again. “William included the weapon in his next payment of tribute to Retmatcher.” The wizard ignored Simon’s self-satisfied smile. “When she saw it, she knew straightaway that she had to use it at once. I’d tailored it to fit her vanities and her taste. This might have made her suspicious, but she knew that King William had tried to do the same many times over the years, hoping to mollify her tempestuous nature.
“So, at dinner that night, she filled the cup with wine and drank deep from it.”
“The weapon was the Far Albion Cup?” Simon said, aghast.
“Not so clever as you think, eh?” Olsen said. “Retmatcher was fooled as well.”
“So the cup killed her?” Dunk asked.
Olsen shook his head. “Retmatcher was far too powerful for my magics to be able to kill her. Even though I invested a part of my own soul in the cup, the best I could hope for was to trap her. And that I did.
“The very night her tribute arrived from Kingsbury, Retmatcher hosted a feast in her own honour. At the height of the feast, she raised a toast to herself with my jewel-studded cup in her hands. As the sweet, red wine touched her lips, she fell over, dead to the world.”
“I thought you said you that it was not in your power to murder her,” Guillermo said.
“Despite appearances, she wasn’t truly dead. Instead, the cup stole her soul as she drained that wine.”
Dunk narrowed his eyes at the wizard. “Where did it go? Her soul, I mean?”
Olsen laid a hand on his own chest. In the wan light of the lamps, dressed only in his nightgown, the weary wizard looked older than ever. “We have it,” he said.
Simon, Guillermo, and Dunk all gasped. Slick squinted at the wizard instead. “You’ve been carrying this necromancer’s soul around inside of you for all this time?”
“Nature — even magic — detests a vacuum. That’s why I put a part of my soul in the cup. It created a conduit to the vacancy within me. That’s how the cup could pull Retmatcher’s soul from her flesh.”
Dunk considered this strange tale for a moment. “How did that cup become Albion’s national Blood Bowl trophy?”
Olsen nodded at the young thrower, impressed. “Like all spells my magnum opus is not unbreakable. As you might have guessed by now, if we drink our own blood from the cup, the spell ends.”
“It would try to take your own soul from you and give it back to you.”
“Magic must follow its own rules — the internal logic that defies traditional logic. If it fails that test, it falls apart, and the spell ends.”
“But,” Simon said, “isn’t that what you wanted to do? You told us this would let you end your life.”
Olsen bowed his head and grimaced, then spoke. “The spell had an unintended side-effect. The combining of my soul with Retmatcher’s made me immortal. Her power is such that she refuses to let her soul’s earthly vessel die — even if that vessel is her worst enemy: me.”
“So,” Slick said, “you want to die and let this woman loose upon Albion again?”
The wizard’s face sagged, emphasising the lines the centuries had graven there. “We tire of this life. We have outlived everyone we ever knew. We long for the sweet oblivion of death. We are ready to pass into the great beyond and discover what awaits us in that mysterious country.”
“By ‘we’,” Dunk asked, uncertain how to phrase his question, “do you speak for both of you?”
Olsen nodded softly. “We believe we do.”
The room fell silent for a moment as the Hackers considered the wizard’s tale. When Dunk could take it no longer, he spoke. “You still haven’t answered my question — about how the cup became part of the Far Albion League.”
Rue filled the wizard’s face. “Just because Retmatcher was ‘dead’ didn’t mean she was defeated. We knew it would only be a matter of time before someone figured out what I’d done and tried to break the spell. Too many powerful people depended on her reign as ruler of Albion to let it end like that.”
Slick smiled his approval. “You hid it in plain sight.”
“Exactly. When we learned of the founding of the new Far Albion Blood Bowl League, we made a gift of the cup to Bo Berobsson to serve as the travelling trophy for the league’s annual champions. Who would suspect such a high-profile cup to be the same one as that which had been found near Retmatcher’s hand as she lay sprawled dead on the floor of her dining hall?”
“And if anyone did, who better to protect it than a team of Blood Bowl players?” Guillermo said. “What kind of thieves would be crazy enough to try to steal something that valuable?”
“Good question,” Dunk said, remembering how the cup had gone missing for five hundred years. “So what happened?”
“We underestimated the greed of some Blood Bowl teams. Once word got out that the Far Albion League had such a handsome trophy, teams from the Old World swept into the tournament and tried to win it. We spent a few, harrowing years volunteering as the team wizard for any Albion team who would have us, doing our best to keep the trophy in the country, where we could keep an eye on it.”
“But one day your luck ran out,” Slick said.
“Aye. The Orcland Raiders joined the tournament and won, despite our best efforts to sabotage the bastards. They took the Far Albion Cup back with them to the Old World — they insisted on calling it ‘the Fah Cup’—and we never saw it again. Until now, that is. They said it was stolen, but we later learned they’d sold it soon after returning home.”
“They’re orcs,” Slick said. “What did you expect?”
“We spent some time trying to track it down and then gave up. If we couldn’t find it, what were the chances that anyone else could? As long as it was well and truly lost, we were happy.”
“But that didn’t last, did it?” Simon said.
“Not so much. As the years wore on into centuries, we decided that it was time to finally break the spell. But by then the cup was well and truly lost. It took us decades to determine it had somehow found its way into the Sure Wood. Then fortune finally smiled upon us when it brought you to help us recover the cup.”
“So what does all this have to do with Deckem?” Dunk said.
Olsen rolled his head back and looked up at the ceiling for a moment before loosing a deep sigh. “Everything. It turns out we were wrong. We didn’t get all of Retmatcher’s soul. She was just too powerful. When the cup’s magic tried to drag her soul through the cup to me, a good chunk of her soul stayed in the cup, along with the part of myself we’d stashed there.
“Over the years, the part of Retmatcher in the Far Albion Cup overwhelmed the part of me there. The cup slowly turned as evil as it could be, and it started to affect the world around it as best it could. It was likely the cup’s influence that foiled our efforts and let the Raiders win that fateful tournament so many years ago, removing it from our influence so its evil could fester quietly on its own.”
“The cup brought Deckem back to life?” Dunk said, his eyes wide with horror.
“Aye, lad. He and all his friends. We suspect the others are ex-footballers too, but ones that Deckem, er, assembled from many bodies. Notably, he replaced each one’s head with that of some random victim exhumed from any nearby grave, making it nearly impossible to identify them.
“Deckem and his cronies are nearly immortal, products of Retmatcher’s enormous powers and her centuries of festering hate. If we destroy them, the cup will only create more of them. In fact, if what Deckem said after the last game is accurate, the
cup may already be conjuring up more such creatures to replace you lot on your team.”
“No!” a voice outside the window hollered. Then the building shook with the force of three mighty blows.
“Bloody hell!” Edgar said, sticking his face in the window. “You bastards have upset our wee ogre! Can someone have a bloody word with him before he shakes the building down and turns yours truly into so many toothpicks?”
Dunk dashed to the window and called down to the ogre, who sat in the gutter below, pounding his fist into the side of the building as he sobbed loudly. “Hold it, M’Grash! I’m coming!”
The thrower leapt out of the window and slid down Edgar to land next to the weeping ogre. “It’s all right, big guy,” Dunk said. “Don’t cry. We can fix this.”
M’Grash raised his head as Dunk came over and wrapped an arm around one of the ogre’s biceps as if he were trying to comfort a tiny child. “How?” M’Grash said, wiping the tremendous tears from his face and tusks. “How can we save the team, Dunkel? How?”
Dunk patted the ogre on the back as he watched flickering lights start to fill the windows all around them. They had overstayed their welcome here and had to leave right away.
“I don’t know, buddy,” Dunk said to the ogre as he helped him to his feet. “I don’t know, but I promise you this: we won’t let the Hackers go without a fight.”
19
“The Hackers score again!” Mon Jotson’s voice called out over the PA system, which echoed throughout the stadium and beyond, even into the depths of the visiting team’s locker room. “That makes five unanswered touchdowns against the scoreless Kingsbury Royals. If the Hackers can keep up this pace, there will be no stopping them!”
The crowd booed and hissed at the news. Jotson and the rest of the press had spent the whole of the last week vilifying the Hackers — or what was left of them, anyway — every chance they’d had. Even Lästiges had chipped in, appearing on several Cabalvision shows on all five of the Albion stations to slag Deckem and his “deadmen,” as they’d taken to called the undead linemen.
[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Page 18