A Last Sniff of Glory

by David Guymer

  The crowd roared.

  He closed his eyes and let the tide of adulation carry him from past to present, onto the pitch and his place in the lineout. He had no idea how he had got here. The moment. He was a dead-thing, called from unlife only to play, with only the dimmest recollection of what passed in the times between. And nor did he care.

  He was alive now. He opened his eyes.

  And despite everything, he had always known exactly what he would see.

  Prince Amaranth the Inviolate was near enough to reach out and shove, and it was a triumph of match discipline that he did not do so.

  The champion of Chaos was half again his height, and must have been three times his weight or more. He was clad in plate steel, reddish purple, cast as if moulded to the contours of his gargantuan physique so that he appeared to bulge with muscle like a beast of shining hellmetal. A fluted helm enclosed his face behind a mask of perfect condescension, but Rurrk saw through the slits of his eyes. They were jaded.

  ‘You have aged,’ said the prince. The voice that rang from the sealed helm was so similar to the euphoria of the crowd that he could scarcely tell them apart. ‘There will be precious little sport in this, but the people want what they want.’

  Rurrk snarled for an answer.

  The whistle blew and he barely heard it. A teammate he could not name hoofed the ball downfield and he did not care. He swung for Amaranth’s head.

  At last.

  The Chaos champion arched back, a moment of sublime grace that belied his monstrosity, and Rurrk’s steam-powered claw chuntered across his muscled plate. Purring with aggression, the Amaranthine Prince came in high over Rurrk’s swing, his heavy gauntlet cracking Rurrk’s lighter shoulder armour like a warhammer.

  Rurrk gasped in sudden searing pain, then snarled, shouldered Amaranth back a pace and shoved him off. He turned with the momentum of his bull-like forward charge, not exactly quick, not for a skaven, but he had grown into his new bulk and was still a sight quicker than Prince Amaranth. Like his muscles, his tail too had been hardened and tautened and it lashed across Amaranth’s ridged neck guards like a severed cable.

  Amaranth reeled, his arms whirling, but his boots were weighted like anvils. It would take a cannonball to knock him down.

  The crowd brayed and in Rurrk’s head it was all for him.

  He was nevertheless half aware when a beastman with fur painted bright purple and with pennons of the same fluttering from his goat-like horns picked up the ball and began to run. In what was clearly a training ground routine, heavily armoured Chaos warriors beat back the opposing formation of line-rats and stormvermin to clear their runner a path. The rat-ogre, Manwrecker, blundered into the flank of the drive like a cave-in with claws. A bellow caused teeth to rattle against fangshields, and a blow from the monster’s fist smashed a Chaos warrior into the stands. Crude fireworks popped the sky, and the rat-ogre sniffed at the unexpectedly vacant patch of astrogranite in confusion as the beastman clattered past with the ball.

  And Prince Amaranth came back for more.

  ‘I am immortal,’ he roared, to the melodic belligerence of a horde of chanting fans. Hate had burned the listlessness from his eyes and now he glowered like a thing possessed.

  Their arms tangled, attacking one another with knees and tail. Metal scraped against metal as they fought. Amaranth smashed his sneering mask through Rurrk’s half-armoured snout and brought it away bloody. Rurrk slid from the brawlers’ embrace, head filled with singing, and shook his head. He clapped his paw to his head, but the singing only got stronger.

  Amaranth spat out a final verse that brought sparks from the tip of his tongue, and as though his armour were doused in daemonic oils, he erupted in screaming flame. He laughed, and his next punch lifted Rurrk from his footpaws and threw him a dozen tail-lengths back into his own half.

  The Inviolate was far too couth for anything so boorish as spitting on the ground, but condescension dripped from his armour like libations to insatiate gods.

  ‘You think you have recovered your strength of old, but it will not be enough. I have refined my skills since last we met.’ The unnatural flames spat balefully and receded back into his armour. ‘This is no longer diverting.’

  Rurrk squealed in fury as Amaranth turned to run after the ball-carrier. He levelled his claw, steam escaping through whatever thing it was had come loose when he had hit the ground as the chambers built to pressure. It shook his arm, ready as a volcano, and then in a great, whistling geyser, emptied its reservoirs over the Amaranthine Prince. The Champion’s armour took on a glow, crimson, like the backs of eyelids held too long on the surface world. He roared in scalded ecstasy and Rurrk chittered gleefully.

  ‘Ball-thing!’ Razzel shrieked at him from the sidelines.

  Rurrk saw the beastman clattering towards him on cloven feet, panic in its ungulate stare at the sight of him in its path, but then shrugged his shoulder to it and bouldered instead into the reeling Prince Amaranth.

  Razzel clawed at his horn chimes in a rage.

  The Grey Seer had arguably the perfect temperament for a Blood Bowl coach, an incendiary cocktail of thwarted ambitions, sudden, pious furies and a sorcerous temper.

  Admirable traits in the dugout.

  The air throbbed with rising power, as if one half of a canal lock to the Realm of Chaos had just been opened. The Grey Seer’s eyes turned black as sordid gemstones and with an implosive clap that rippled out from his idolatrous staff a spear of purple-green lightning struck from the sideline to envelop the ball-carrier in a flash of unlight. For a moment, Rurrk could see the beastman’s deformed bones, white against its furry body’s black, and then the whole disintegrated into ash.

  Miraculously unscathed, the ball sailed free. It squirmed through the grasping paws of the Chaos warriors and line-rats that dived to claim it, and then bobbled between Rurrk and Amaranth. Both ignored it, except occasionally to knock it one way or the other as they fought, but never far enough to get it out from between their legs.

  The crowd roared their appreciation for the absurd, the stricken body language of the other players causing them to hoot and holler. The game stuttered to an incongruous pause as players weighed their odds of retrieving the ball from the scrum against that of the brawl burning itself out some time before the half-time whistle and coming down in favour of the latter. The two sets of coaches remonstrated with each other and with their players’ cowardice, but no one shifted except to yell back, and the crowd’s ironic cheers grew louder.

  Relishing the noise, Rurrk smashed his steam-claw into Amaranth’s breastplate, right over the heart, and knocked the prince onto his heels. The Slaaneshi fended him off, open palm pushed under Rurrk’s snapping jaws, and bunched his other fist tight.

  With a beatific shriek he called again on the daemonic patron for whom he was host.

  The astrogranite began to shake, cracks opening up and spreading out from beneath Amaranth’s boots. Again flames licked his armour, but this time they were multi-hued and urgent, orgiastic coils that squeezed around the princeling’s clenched fist and boiled.

  Rurrk backed away, claw raised to ward against the intense light.

  The metal and skin of Amaranth’s hand began to run together, and though the Inviolate was clearly in agony he seemed to be enjoying it. Through twitching whiskers and raised, iron claws, Rurrk saw Amaranth’s gauntlet lengthen until it was a blade of flesh-coloured hellsteel. It stiffened as it cooled. Daemon fire simmered gaily along its dripping edge, and Amaranth the Inviolate laughed with a thousand voices.

  Rurrk feinted with his tail and backed quickly away, or meant to.

  He felt a gentle push against his back, without strength, but enough and at exactly the right time with his heels off the ground to send him stumbling forwards when he had wanted to be scuttling back.

  He gasped.

  A sudden,
moist pain spread through his chest and arrived at his back. Blood appeared in his mouth. It spilled over his fur as he looked down to find Amaranth’s throbbing spike in his chest. He chittered up a gurgle of fresh blood as he finally noticed Silkpaw, near invisible even up close, scavenge up the loose ball and sprint for the end zone. The gutter-runner flitted through the still-unresponsive Princedom players to score what would have to go down as one of the most effortless touchdowns of a celebrated career.

  Rurrk could hear Razzel’s squeals of delight, riding on the roar of blood like a raft.

  But the crowd did not join in. They had not noticed, transfixed by the endgame being played out on the scrimmage line

  He slid back off the fist spike and fell.

  It seemed to last an eternity, until he realised he was already on the ground and just had not felt it. A chitter of laughter burbled up from his throat as the first shouts of ‘Red Claw!’ rose around the stands. The first of many. He felt warm, as if he had found a burrow in which he might close his eyes and sleep in safety. And so he did.

  And dreamt one last dream of glory.

  ‘So how does it feel to have signed for the Drakenhof Templars, and before such a massive occasion as the Eight Point Star final?’

  Rurrk issued a foetid gasp, a moan that rattled up from the depths of his throat. With glassy eyes he stared, unblinking, at the silhouette on the other side of the candle flame. His whiskers were brittle, his fur already beginning to come away in patches. His muzzle opened slackly. A smile.

  The CabalVision mage caught it.

  ‘He very-very excited,’ said Kato, preening in the flickering light. ‘Is what he would have wanted. Legend like Red Claw should not-never end with defeat and he looks forward to lots-many more games.’

  Rurrk’s lips gristled in silent agreement.

  ‘Well it sounds as if the crowds are entering the stadium and I’m sure Prince Amaranth is looking forward to an early rematch.’ The interviewer smiled keenly. ‘Let’s play some Blood Bowl.’

  About the Author

  David Guymer is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned, along with the novella Thorgrim. He has also written The Beast Arises novel Echoes of the Long War, and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel Headtaker.

  In a fantasy world where violence is a way of life, the number one sport is Blood Bowl - Gridiron where anything goes. Dirk ‘Dunk’ Hoffnung, once a barbarian swordsman, is now a rookie quarterback in the toughest football league you’ve ever seen. Follow his career as he goes from Most Promising Newcomer to MVP!

  A Black Library Publication

  Published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  Cover illustration by Wayne England.

  A Last Sniff of Glory © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. A Last Sniff of Glory, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Blood Bowl, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78572-603-3

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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