[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Read online

  “I thought you’d been killed a dozen times over,” Slick whispered from atop his pony. The halfling had his hands up in the air and bore a fake grin on his face as he watched the outlaws gape at the wizard’s power.

  “We never went down without a fight.” Olsen’s hands crackled with power.

  “Great,” Slick said. “Let’s follow the lead of the immortal who rises again the next day every time he’s slain. He’ll have a real incentive to get the rest of us out of here alive.”

  “Hold it!” Dunk said, climbing down from his horse and stepping between the tall robber and Olsen. “We don’t have to do this. If we fight here, now, people are bound to die on both sides.”

  “We think that’s the point,” Olsen snarled.

  “Perhaps we can see now why he had trouble finding others to help him in his quest,” Lästiges said into her camra. “Did word of the wizard’s ways scare off potential aid, or did all of his other protectors get killed on the job due to his abrasive manner?”

  “Look,” Dunk said, desperation cracking his voice. He stretched his hand toward the tall man and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Wee Johnson,” the archer said, switching his aim from the wizard to the thrower. “What of it?”

  “Oh,” Slick said, slapping a hand over his face. “You, son, need to find some better friends. Anyone who’d give someone a nickname like that?”

  Wee Johnson adjusted his aim again and loosed his arrow. It zipped past Dunk’s shoulder like a hurled log. The thrower turned just in time to see Slick get knocked back off his pony with a strangled cry.

  Dunk leaped forward and socked the archer in the jaw, sending the tall man stumbling back. The thrower pressed his advantage and snatched Wee Johnson’s bow from his hands. He smashed it into the man once, twice, knocking him to his knees.

  Swift as a snake, Dunk slipped behind Wee Johnson and pulled his bow up under the tall man’s jaw. He pressed it hard into the outlaw’s throat and drove his knee into the man’s spine. “You son of a snotling!” Dunk hissed. “That was my—”

  “I’m okay!” Slick shouted, bouncing up behind his pony as if on springs. He pulled on a tear in the shoulder of his thick jacket. “He just grazed me, son!”

  Dunk froze, then looked down at Wee Johnson and realised that he’d almost killed the man in a blind rage, with his bare hands. Then he looked out at the other outlaws gaping at him, and he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have stopped.

  The idea that he’d been ready to kill this man made Dunk ill. There had to be a better way out of this. He saw now that many of the outlaws had their bows trained on him. If he broke Wee Johnson’s neck, as he’d been about to do, they’d fill him full of shafts before the tall man’s body hit the ground.

  Dunk glanced at the others. Most of them bore blades in their hands. M’Grash clenched his fists, forming them into hammers and staring at the heads of the outlaws as if they were nails.

  “Hold it!” he said. “Anybody else fires an arrow, and I’ll snap Wee’s neck.”

  The tall man gurgled something at his fellows, and the bald man stepped forward, a hand raised in the air to ward the other outlaws off. “Let’s talk,” the man said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Ambushing people seems like a poor way to go about avoiding it,” Pegleg said, glaring at the outlaws all around them.

  The bald man stared down at the pile of ashes. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” he said. “Robin there, he said no one would dare stand up to a gang like ours. ‘They’ll trip over themselves to give us their money,’ he said.”

  Dunk gaped at the man as he got a better look at him. He wore plain robes belted at the waist with a simple rope. A small religious icon carved from soapstone dangled from a string around his neck. “You’re a priest!”

  The holy man nodded as he knelt down and made a small blessing over his friend’s ashes. “We like to say ‘cleric’.” He rose and stood in front of Dunk, placing a hand on the bow still choking his friend. “I’m called Brother Puck.”

  Dunk let off some of the pressure on Wee Johnson’s neck, and the archer swallowed deep gulps of air. The thrower had never had much luck with religious leaders, be they priests, brothers, or something more sinister. He remembered all too well the priest in Dörfchen who’d tried to trick him into feeding himself to the chimera living over their town.

  “An outlaw priest?” Dunk spat into Robin’s ashes, sending up another puff of steam. “What were you thinking?”

  Puck’s eyes fell, and he pressed his hands together in a ritual of pleading. “There aren’t many in these parts who have the gold to spare for the gods, not to speak of the less fortunate. Our collection plate lay empty for many weeks. Robin — he was one of our church elders — he came up with the idea.”

  “What idea?” Lästiges said from behind. The camra, which had been taking in the scene from high in the trees, floated down to focus tight on the cleric’s face.

  “Rob from the rich and give to the poor,” Brother Puck said, fat tears rolling down his pale, dirt-crusted face.

  Slick tried to stifle a snort, but failed. Then Pegleg let loose half a cackle. Soon after, Lästiges giggled. Before Dunk knew it, every one of the Hackers beside him was bent double with laughter.

  The outlaws surrounding the Hackers lowered their weapons, disarmed by this complete lack of respect for the basic principle upon which their merry band had been founded. Some of them shuffled their feet. One even started to laugh a bit himself before another of his compatriots smacked him in the back of the head. “What?” Brother Puck said, confused.

  “Son,” Slick said, wiping the tears from his eyes as he ambled toward the cleric, “that has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.”

  10

  Crestfallen, Brother Puck stared at the halfling as if he’d just blasphemed his mother. Sensing that Wee Johnson was too entranced by Slick’s bravado to be a threat, Dunk let loose the bow, releasing the man’s throat. Still, he kept a tight grip on it with his other hand, just in case.

  “Think about it, ‘brother’,” Slick said.

  “Wait,” the cleric said. “Don’t you dare start up with the old, ‘if you rob from the rich, they’re not rich any more, are they?’ bit. Or ‘if you give to the poor, do you then have to rob them too?’ questions. The plan was a good one. We were comfortable with it. And it worked.”

  Brother Puck looked down at the pile of ash that had once been Robin. “At least it did until today.”

  Slick shook his head, pity overtaking his smugness. “No, son. It’s just the futility of what you’re trying to do.” He looked back at the others, who’d all stopped laughing now. “The rich are rich for a reason. It’s one thing to come into money. It’s something else entirely to keep it.”

  “He’s right, mate,” Simon said, lowering his sword.

  “You may take my word on this,” said Guillermo. “We piss through gold like it was beer.”

  “You see,” Slick said. “You give money to people who have never had money before — like just about any Blood Bowl player — and they don’t know what to do with it. It runs through their fingers like water. Soon enough, they don’t have a copper left to their name. That’s how we get players to come back again year after year.”

  Wee Johnson, still on his knees, goggled at the halfling, who he still towered over. “I thought all players were rich. That’s why Robin came up with the plan to get ahead of you after you left the pub and rob you.”

  “Sure, they’re rich,” Pegleg said, snorting. “On payday. Maybe for a few days after. Most of them run through their cash before the next game rolls around.” He raised his eyebrows at his players. “I’ve given out more than one payday advance in my time — for a vicious amount of interest, of course.”

  “So if we give money to the poor, they’ll just waste it?” Brother Puck looked as if he’d swallowed a hornet. “I can’t believe that.”

  “Unless you teach t
hem how to handle it,” Slick said. He swept his eyes over the assembled outlaws in their filth-stiff clothes. “But I doubt any of you have those skills yourself.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Dunk said, surprising even himself as the words slipped from his mouth.

  Slick nodded. “Take yourself, son. What do you do with your money?”

  “What do you mean?” Dunk didn’t think he’d like where this was heading.

  “What do you do with it? Do you spend it all every week?”

  “Of course not. I spend a bit more than I should maybe, but I save a lot of it.”

  “How?”

  “I deposit at least half of each paysack in a bank backed by the Emperor.”

  “Does that leave you enough to live on?”

  Dunk nodded. “More than enough.”

  Slick turned to Simon. “How much have you saved?”

  “Saved?” The Albionman turned a bright pink.

  “What about you, Guillermo?”

  The Estalian shook his head.

  “Cavre?” The dark-skinned man hesitated for a moment before dropping his eyes.

  “What about Pegleg?” Dunk asked. “Coach, you pay all of us. You have to know about handling money.”

  The ex-pirate grimaced. “I give just about every thin copper I must to my players. What I have left over goes back into the team’s resources: the tents, the training camps, hiring an apothecary to stitch you dogs back together. Keeping a ship like the Sea Chariot isn’t cheap either. Plus, there’s Nuffle’s tithe.”

  Dunk gaped. “You donate gold to the Blood Bowl god?”

  Pegleg looked shocked. “Of course, Mr. Hoffnung. How do you expect us to win a game if we set Nuffle against us from the start?”

  Dunk stared at Pegleg for a moment, then at Brother Puck, then Slick. “So that’s how I manage to hold on to my money.” He turned his attention back to the cleric. “See? There are far easier ways to part fools from their gold.” He threw down Wee Johnson’s bow and backed away in disgust.

  Brother Puck glared at Dunk for a moment. Then a window seemed to open in his head. He stepped toward Pegleg and the others, his arms spread wide. “Friends,” he said. “Can we impose upon your kindness for a moment?”

  Dunk’s friends glanced at each other for a moment, and then nodded at the cleric.

  “I am a priest of the angry god of the Sure Wood. He has decreed that we should request a small donation from all who pass through his lands so that we may — in service to him, of course — maintain his wooded temple and alleviate the misery of the poor souls who nest beneath his boughs.” The cleric snatched a hat from the head of one of the other outlaws and turned it over and stretched it out toward the intruders. “Can you find it in your hearts to help?”

  Guillermo and Simon looked to each other. Simon spoke. “It’s like this, mate. As coach here told you, we don’t have much to spare until we play another game, and that seems to be a fair ways off at this point.”

  “You wouldn’t want to anger the god of Sure Wood, would you?” Brother Puck asked, his face filled with concern. “I ask only out of consideration for your own well being. Only this morning, I heard good Robin blaspheme our god, denying his existence, and well…” The cleric let his eyes fall and linger on the pile of ashes where Robin had last stood.

  “Coach?” Guillermo said. “Can you help us out?”

  Pegleg sighed. “I’m afraid I used most of the last of our cash to outfit this little expedition of ours. I don’t have much left.”

  “I must admit some admiration for brave souls like you,” Brother Puck said. “To so blithely ignore the will of the gods, well, that’s something few have the pluck to manage so well.”

  “Mr. Merlin?”

  “We’ll have no truck with these dastards,” the wizard said. “Faith! They’re lucky we don’t fry them all on the spot.”

  “Mr. Fullbelly?” Pegleg asked.

  The halfling pursed his lips. “I’d do it, but I’d end up expensing it back to the Hackers. Would you be good with that?”

  “Ms. Weibchen?”

  The reporter snorted. “If the Hackers won’t pay for it, I don’t think Wolf Sports would be interested in covering it.”

  “But if we did, they would?”

  “Then you’d have already paid for it,” Lästiges said, smiling wide.

  “Rhett?”

  Cavre opened his mouth to speak, but before any words came out M’Grash broke in. “Coach,” he said. “Here!”

  The ogre reached into his pocket with a ham-sized fist. When he pulled it out and opened it, three bags lay in his palm. “This enough?” he asked.

  Brother Puck’s eyes lit up like lanterns on a moonless night. The other outlaws brightened too, standing up straight, their attention riveted on the ogre’s open hand.

  “Ah!” said Slick. “A new way to avoid blowing your wealth: being too dumb to spend it.”

  “Hold it!” Dunk said. “M’Grash, put that money away.”

  “But Dunkel,” the ogre said, crushed, his shoulders and face sagging with sadness. “Just want to help.”

  “I know, big guy.” Dunk rubbed his chin. “And maybe there’s a way.”

  “Surely there is,” said Brother Puck. “You make a donation to the god of Sure Wood, and we all go away happy.”

  Dunk shook his head. “I have something more… equitable in mind.”

  “Think they were telling the truth, son, about where the cultists’ hideout is?” Slick asked, back bouncing along atop his tubby pony.

  “We paid them well enough for it,” Olsen grumbled back from his mount, positioned once again in the lead.

  “You mean M’Grash paid them well enough for it.” Dunk stuck out his hand for a high-five from his large friend. Experience told him to roll with the blow when it came, and he did. Otherwise, he was sure he’d have been knocked clear from his saddle. “Good job, big guy. You got us all out of there alive.”

  “Not Robin,” M’Grash said, his voice choking just a bit.

  Dunk smiled to himself. In many ways, the ogre was a large child — one who could rip your arms off in the middle of a tantrum. Still, the two had become good friends over the past year, and Dunk had come to admire M’Grash’s honesty and loyalty and even his simplicity.

  “As deaths go, it was a good one,” Dunk said. “It was so quick, I’ll bet he didn’t feel a thing.”

  Olsen turned around in his saddle and started to contradict the thrower, but Dunk cut him off with a steel-hard stare. The wizard shut his mouth for a moment, and then opened it again. “We’d best be prepared for the worst with these cultists,” he said. “They worship the Daemon Lord Nurgle, Prince of Pathlogy, Dark Duke of Disease, and Count of Corruption.”

  “Sounds a real sicko,” Slick said with a grin.

  “Joke all you like, our little friend,” Olsen said. “See how well you laugh when your lungs fill with phlegm.”

  “I think I can hack it.” The halfling chortled out loud.

  Olsen reined his horse to a halt and turned to glare at Slick. “This is a matter of the utmost seriousness, wee one. If you do not treat it as such, you may very well die — and threaten the lives of the rest of us in the process.”

  “Come now, Merle,” Slick said, rolling his eyes. “We’re talking about a handful or two of tree-hugging wackos who’ve probably been chewing on the wrong kind of mushrooms found in this forest for the past twenty years. I saw how you toasted old Robin back there. With people like you and M’Grash on our side, how can these numbskulls pose a threat to us?”

  “For such a wee person, you show a grand amount of ignorance,” Olsen said, his eyes blazing. “I’ve seen such cultists control a horde of maggots once that stripped the flesh from a horse’s bones in a matter of seconds. If they touch you, if they so much as breathe on you, you could find yourself bleeding from your ass and eyeballs in a matter of minutes. You’d consider yourself lucky if your innards didn’t liquefy in the process, but you
might beg for such a thing to happen to release you from other kinds of suffering they can inflict.

  “Or is that not clear enough for you?”

  “Like the blue sky.” The wizard’s speech had snuffed the halfling’s good mood.

  “So,” Guillermo said, as they started around a wide bend in the trail, “why is it that we are doing this again?”

  “Stow that chatter, Mr. Reyes,” Pegleg said. “We’ve set ourselves on this path, and we’re not getting off it until—” The ex-pirate cut himself off for a moment, then continued in a low, awed voice. “Whoa.”

  Dunk looked up and saw a massive log blocking the way before them. The fallen tree had to over six feet across its middle — at least as tall as Dunk — and it stretched from one darkened part of the woods to another. The riders hauled their horses up short in front of the log and gazed up and over it, their mouths hanging open.

  “Let’s just go around it,” Simon said. “It can’t be that long.”

  “We wouldn’t recommend that, lad,” Olsen said. “We smell a trap here. The cultists likely felled this rotting tree here to encourage intruders to wander off the path and into the danger beyond. Here, we are safe. There,” the wizards shuddered, “wise men fear to tread.”

  “I’ll go,” M’Grash said brightly. “No man here.”

  “Belay that, Mr. K’Thragsh,” Cavre said. “Even if you made it safely, the rest of us would still be stuck here.”

  The ogre’s face fell hard enough Dunk thought he heard it slam into the forest floor.

  “We could jump the horses over it,” Dunk said. “I used to make leaps taller than this back in Altdorf.”

  “Even if you could teach us how to manage that, son, I don’t think my pony here would manage it,” Slick said, still staring up at the log in awe.

  “Couldn’t our vaunted wizard do something about it?” Lästiges asked, her camra zipping around Olsen’s head, looking for the best angle from which to capture his squirming.

  “We could, lass. Aye, we could, but is that wise?” The wizard stroked his beard as he considered the log once again.