“I can handle that myself.”
“Of course, of course.”
“But I didn’t mean adding new players to the team,” Dunk said. “That’s not what I don’t like. We need new players — about ten of them — but I’d rather not do it while Pegleg still has his hands on that cup. I mean, have you seen some of the hopefuls?”
Dunk pointed out at the gridiron, where Cavre ran the latest round of prospects through a set of drills. Most of them were built like bulls, and some featured thick coats of fur and savage claws or tusks. They came in various shades of green, brown, pink, and grey, and they bore tattoos, piercings, and filings. One and all, they seemed barely more than savages, ready to disembowel their foes and then strangle them with their own intestines. In fact, two players had already been cut from the tryouts for doing just that to their nearest competitors.
“I admit they look like the rejects from the Chaos All-Stars training camp, but what do you expect? After Lästiges’ Far Albion Cup special aired on Wolf Sports last week, just as many people think the Hackers are cursed as blessed. After all, we’ve lost twenty-one players already this year, cup or no. You’d have to be a pretty desperate sort to want to join up with such an outfit.”
“Or to stay with one.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving the Hackers, are you, son? I could probably get you signed with another team, but not until the season’s over. Pegleg’s contracts are rock solid about that.”
Dunk shook his head. “I don’t give up that easily. It’s just…”
“There are places you’d rather be.”
Dunk hung his head and nodded.
“Have you heard from Spinne again?”
“Not since we got back.” Dunk frowned. He could feel her letter in his pocket. He’d taken it out and read it at least three times a day since he’d got it. “I can’t believe they used that footage of me waking up in Lästiges’ bed. You’d have thought she’d have more control over things like that.”
“The camra followed her around every second of that trip, son. Sadly, the little daemon inside doesn’t have a discriminating memory. But if you had to be with that reporter woman every moment of your life, you’d probably be eager to ruin her life too.”
Dunk shrugged. Out on the field, one of the hopefuls snapped another prospect’s arm in two with a sickening crack. The injured player kept right on running, though, leaping past another assailant and spinning his way into the end zone.
“Have you heard from your brother?”
Dunk frowned. “Not at all.”
“I hear he broke it off with Lästiges too.”
“That’s what ESPNN said on its Best Damn Blood Bowl Show Period. The Gobbo laughed so hard at the news I thought he’d choke on his own rancid spit.”
“We should be so lucky.”
Dunk sighed. “I’m not looking forward to seeing him again.”
“I guess you’re lucky we were still at sea when they announced the Blood Bowl would be in Kislev this year. There’s something rotten about that though.”
“If Pegleg could have made the Sea Chariot grow wings, he would have flown us there in a heartbeat.”
“I heard he asked Olsen to try.” Slick laughed.
“And we would have done it too, given a bit more time.”
Dunk and Slick turned around to see the wizard standing behind them. Dunk felt his anger at the wizard start to rise, but he shoved it back down and bottled it up.
“So we could get there without enough players?” Slick asked. “Or would you have just let the cup recruit them for us so we could duplicate our experiences in Albion?”
“We’d have worked it out,” the wizard said. “Where there’s a wand, there’s a way.”
“You don’t think sorcery’s done enough harm to your life?” Dunk asked. “Such as it is?”
“We lay in a bed of our own making, all of us, laddie. Don’t think you’re any exception.”
Dunk shot a hard look at the wizard. “I’m just wondering why you’re still here. Didn’t you have a date with a cup of your own blood? For someone so weary of life, you seem to have taken a shine to it again.”
Olsen smiled as he bent over to pick a tiny white flower from the ground. “There’s nothing like staring the abyss in the face to make you long for the light.” He brought the bloom to his nose and sniffed it deeply. “Aye. Everything suddenly seems much brighter than before.”
“If you like them so much, perhaps you’d like to gather a bouquet for yourself,” Slick said. “I understand there’s a real demand for ex-Blood Bowl players who know their way around a floral arrangement.”
Olsen smiled down at the halfling, then reached over and tucked the flower behind Slick’s ear. “Perhaps we will at that, my wee friend. The world has seen stranger things.”
With that, the wizard turned on his heel and strode off, smiling as he raised his face to the gentle rays of the sun.
“You know,” Slick said, “that guy’s really starting to get on my nerves.” He snatched the flower from his ear and threw it down to grind it into the dirt with his heel.
“What’s wrong?” Dunk said as he opened the door to his modest room above the FIB Tavern, which took its name for the opinion the owner held of the particular variety of Imperial Bastards ruling the Empire from distant Altdorf.
“Simon, he is sick,” Guillermo said. “I think it is serious.”
Dunk rubbed his eyes. “It’s the middle of the night,” he said. “Why bother me? Shouldn’t someone get an apothecary?”
The Estalian nodded. “Slick, he is already on his way, but I thought you might want to see this.”
Dunk paused for a moment, and then nodded. “Let me get my boots and my blade.”
Moments later, Dunk and Guillermo stood outside Simon’s room in the Hacker Hotel, the finest such establishment for at least fifty miles around. Most of the Hackers stayed here. In fact, at the moment only Dunk and M’Grash did not.
While the ogre didn’t feel welcome at the Hacker Hotel — and rightfully so, given the way the staff always treated him like a lit bomb during his infrequent visits — Dunk had spent too much time worrying about money to patronise such a place. The FIB had everything he needed, and at a quarter of the price. As the son of a nobleman, Dunk had known great wealth in his youth, but his family had lost all that years ago. Having tasted both fortune and poverty, Dunk had the respect for gold that many of the other players lacked.
“His room is next door to mine,” Guillermo said. “Tonight, we drank in the great hall downstairs with some of the new recruits. I had enough, so I excused myself and went to sleep. Later, I heard horrible moans coming from Simon’s place, loud enough to wake me up. I got up to check on him, but the door was locked.”
Dunk saw where the frame around the lock’s bolt had been shattered. “You didn’t let that stop you.”
“How could I? If you’d have heard the noises, you’d have—”
A plaintive groan interrupted the Estalian, emphasising the point he’d been about to make. It sounded like it could only have come from an animal that had lain dying for a long, pitiless time.
Dunk gave the door a push, and it swung wide on well-oiled hinges. Inside, a large, canopied bed with an airy mattress stood near the window in the far wall. A lamp flickered on the bedside table, showing something — someone, Dunk corrected — writhing in the once-crisp sheets now soaked with sweat.
As Dunk followed Guillermo into the room, the first thing that hit him was the sweet stench of decay. For a moment, he wondered if Simon had left a meal out in his room before they’d left for Albion. Only so much time with old meat left to rot could explain such a horrible smell, or so Dunk thought.
Then he saw Simon.
The catcher looked like he’d caught something horrible. An oily, grey sheen covered his skin and seemed to have stained through his breeches and soiled the bedclothes. He shivered as if adrift on an arctic plain, although the night wind that b
reezed in through the open window was warm and humid.
Guillermo reached out to pull a cover over Simon. That was when Dunk saw the red rash crawling over Simon’s skin. He snatched Guillermo’s hand back before he could touch the soiled sheets.
“You see that?” Dunk asked the scowling Estalian. The rash seemed to be moving like a horde of insects along Simon’s skin. “I’ve seen that before — although it wasn’t moving like that then.”
“Where?”
Dunk’s mind flashed back to the horrible, maimed creature in the cultists’ tent in that damned hollow in the heart of the Sure Wood. The rash on his skin had looked similar to this, although it hadn’t crawled in the same way. Dunk wondered, though, if that was because it had already done as much damage as it could have to that poor soul.
“Just don’t touch him,” Dunk said, giving Guillermo’s hand back to him. Then a horrible thought struck him. “Or have you already?”
“No,” Guillermo said. “So I swear. When I first came in, he was thrashing about so much that it terrified me. I went for help right away. I found Slick in the hall, and he told me to watch over Simon while he went for help.”
“But you came to get me instead?”
Guillermo hesitated, and then seemed to make a decision. “What you have not yet told me, that is what I feared.” He glanced down at his suffering friend as he loosed another pathetic moan for mercy. “I had hoped this would not be.”
“Why didn’t you just wake up Cavre? He’s right here in the building.”
Guillermo grimaced. “I know where his loyalties lie: with the captain. If Captain Haken had found out about this before I did, I am sure we would have only found an empty bed in the morning, with no explanation ever.”
Dunk put a hand on Guillermo’s shoulder. “I have more faith in Cavre than that, but I understand.” He looked over at Simon and winced. “So, what should we do?”
“I had hoped that you might have an answer to that.”
Dunk knew immediately that the right answer was to kill Simon on the spot, to burn his body the way he’d immolated the creature back in the Sure Wood. That way, he could make sure no one else contracted the disease as well. But if he did that, he might never learn how Simon got sick.
“An illness like this doesn’t come from nowhere,” Dunk said. “We need to find out what happened to him.”
“But how?” Guillermo asked, terror creeping into his voice.
“Have you tried talking to him?”
The Estalian shook his head, his eyes bulging wide.
Dunk turned toward where Simon writhed on the bed and called his name once, softly, then again, louder.
Simon screamed as he sat bolt upright in his bed.
Dunk jumped back a step. He heard Guillermo let out a little squeak behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder he saw the lineman back out in the hallway, peering around the frame of the door.
“Simon,” Dunk said. “Listen to me. You’re sick. Very sick. Do you know what happened to you? Can you tell me?”
Simon’s eyes were wide but seemed to be watching something outside the room’s four walls. Unfocused and bloodshot, they darted back and forth, searching for creatures that existed only in the fevered corners of the catcher’s mind. Dunk called his name again. “Simon? Simon Sherwood?”
The catcher screamed again. This time, he did not stop.
“You cannot do it like that,” Cavre said as he strode into the room in only a pair of long flowing pants, naked to the waist. “You must be more forceful. Observe.” He stood at the end of the bed and glared down at the shivering Simon sitting there in his soiled sheets, stopping screaming only to take another breath before starting again.
“Mr. Sherwood!” Cavre said.
Simon’s head whipped up, and his eyes snapped into focus on Cavre. His scream caught in his throat. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the Albionman’s still-panicked panting.
“You are sick, Mr. Sherwood. If you do not listen to me and follow my instructions, you will die before sunrise.”
The catcher stared at Cavre with eyes as wide around as saucers. He said not a word, but his breathing slowed its pace, and he nodded at the star blitzer’s words.
“Who did this to you?”
Simon shook his head as if not one word of the question made a bit of sense.
“You slept with someone tonight.”
Simon nodded.
“Who was it?”
“Ragretta,” the catcher croaked. “She said her name was Ragretta.”
Guillermo moved a bit further into the room from where he’d been cowering behind the door. “I saw him with a girl with long, curly hair,” he said. “He disappeared with her about a half hour before I went to bed.” He stared down at his friend. “I thought he’d got lucky.”
“He’s lucky he’s not already dead,” Cavre said. “Have you sent for an apothecary yet?”
Dunk heard the patter of little feet out in the hallway, along with longer, steadier strides. Slick burst into the room, a lit lantern swinging in his hand and a bowl-shouldered old woman wrapped in a black shawl right behind him. The woman took one look at Simon and gasped.
“I — there is nothing—” she looked at the blade hanging at Dunk’s side. “Kill him,” she said, her eyes wild with fear. “Cut off his head and burn his body. There is no other way.”
Dunk balked at this. “There must be!”
The woman snatched at his sword, but Cavre caught her fragile wrist in his hand. “He is not too far gone yet,” the blitzer said. “I know something of this sickness. Work with me to save him.”
The woman shuddered for a moment, looking up at Cavre with wide, watery eyes. Then she lowered her head and nodded. “It will be pointless, but I will try.”
“We could use you on our cheerleading team,” Slick said.
“What can we do to help?” Dunk asked, feeling as helpless as a child.
“Find this Ragretta,” Cavre said.
“And bring her back so you can force her to cure Simon?” Guillermo said hopefully.
Cavre shook his head gravely. “Kill her and burn her body, but be careful not to touch her yourself. I’m afraid that for what Simon has there may be no cure.”
22
Dunk thought Guillermo might fall to his knees right there and weep. Before that could happen, he grabbed the lineman by his shoulder and dragged him out of the room. Slick followed after them, closing the door behind them.
Dunk trotted down to the great hall, the others keeping up as best they could. When they got there, though, the place was dark but for the dying embers of what had once been a roaring fire in the main hearth.
“How will we find her now?” Guillermo said, his voice cracking with despair. “She could be anywhere.”
“Well,” Slick said, “if I were a wanton, Nurgle-worshipping harlot who passed on her dread lord’s diseases through sex, where would I go?”
“Hush,” Dunk said, raising a hand as he cocked an ear. The hotel stood quiet at this hour of the night. The staff had all turned in for the night, and most of the guests were likely asleep in their rooms. If the cultist was still awake, they might be able to—
Dunk’s head snapped up, and he beckoned for the others to follow him. He strode through the hall until he reached the door to the kitchen, under which a faint light flickered. A series of soft grunts and groans emanated from the room beyond. He drew his sword as silently as he could and motioned for Guillermo to quietly push open the swinging door.
Back in the Sure Wood, he’d seen the orgy from a distance, and he’d done his best to ignore it. Recovering the cup had been at the top of his agenda, and he’d refused to let prurient curiosity jeopardise his chances at that. Here, though, now, with the three participants right in front of him — lost in the throes of their disease-tainted ecstasy — he could not avoid it.
What the woman was doing with the men — who Dunk recognised as two of the more bestial prospec
ts in the training camp that week — wasn’t unbelievable, but her bare skin crawled with the same mobile, crimson rash that Simon had borne. As he watched, the rash slipped from body to body, transferring between the woman and the men where bare bits of flesh rubbed against each other, and then coming back again.
The trio turned at the sound of the opening of the kitchen door. The two prospects leaped away from the woman, surprised at having been caught with her. The woman, on the other hand, showed no sign of shame. She flashed Dunk a sly wink and licked her lascivious lips, beckoning for him to join them in their twisted tryst.
There was a moment — just a brief one, a fraction of a second — when Dunk considered joining the woman, knocking the others aside and taking her for himself. Her seductive eyes begged him to do so.
Instead, he brandished his sword at her. “I know what you are,” he said. “Plaguebearer.”
The prospects looked at the woman, as if for the first time, and gasped as they saw the rash writhing along her skin. Then they saw the same marks moving through their own flesh, and they screamed in horror.
The sound startled Dunk, and the woman took the opportunity to leap at him. He stumbled as he tried to avoid her, tripping backward through the door and dropping his blade. She leapt after him as he landed on his rump and tried to scramble away in a desperate crab-walk.
“Join us,” the woman hissed, her breath the sweet, fetid odor of a fresh corpse. She gathered up his sword in her hands and caressed its blade.
Before Dunk could respond, Slick threw his lit lantern at the woman. When it smashed into her, the lamp’s oil burst and its flame set her ablaze. She howled, although whether in agony or fury, Dunk could not tell. Guillermo cut the horrible noise short when he stepped forward and brained her with a cast-iron frying pan.
Later — after Dunk had carted off the woman’s burnt remains, and Slick and Guillermo had carefully brought the two prospects to see Cavre — the three sat around the glowing embers in the hearth, drinking from a flask of wine Slick had appropriated from the kitchen.
[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Page 21