[Blood Bowl 02] - Dead Ball Read online

  The man hesitated for a moment, then grasped Dunk’s hand and shook it. He had a strong, rough-handed grip.

  “You’re with the Bad Bay Hackers,” the man said. “Your name is Dunk Hoffnung. We’ve been expecting you.”

  Dunk wondered if this man was some kind of mind reader. Then he realised that he was probably just a Blood Bowl fan who’d seen him on Cabalvision. Lästiges had made sure that their departure from the Old World was seen far and wide. It must have reached Albion as well.

  “You don’t speak like an Albionman,” Dunk asked. “Can I ask your name?”

  “Surely,” the man said, pulling back his cowl and revealing a wizened face under a full head of the same reddish-grey hair as his neatly trimmed beard. His eyes were the same grey as the overcast Albion sky, but they burned with knowledge and deep intent. The other thing Dunk noticed were the man’s ears, the tops of which came to a sharp and elegant point.

  “You’re an elf,” Dunk said. As he did, he regretted his words, which sounded as profound as announcing that he was still actually breathing.

  “Our name is Olsen Merlin,” the elf said. “And we think we could be a great deal of help to each other, you and us.” He turned to look at the other Hackers staring down at him. “And the rest of your friends, as well.”

  Simon stepped forward and shook Olsen’s hand. “Mr. Merlin,” he said with a wide grin. “I had the pleasure of playing on the Notting Knights a few years back. You were our team wizard.”

  Olsen’s face fell. “Ah, sure ’twas, laddie, but we’ve put all that behind us now. There’s nothing left in the game for us any more.”

  “Why’s that, sir?” Cavre asked. Dunk had never seen the man treat anyone with such reverence before, and the star blitzer was renowned for his respectful ways.

  “Perhaps you’ve decided that the game that once sustained you has nothing left to offer you?” Pegleg asked. Olsen just shook his head.

  “Or maybe you long to return to your homeland once more and leave Far Albion behind?” said Guillermo.

  “Nay,” said Olsen. “We bid good riddance to Hibernia when we left it centuries ago. Too damn many of the wee folk wandering around the place for our taste.” He eyed Slick carefully. “You’re a bit large for a fairy, aren’t ye?”

  “I’ll have you know I’m a halfling born and proud of it,” Slick said, mustering every bit of indignity he could find. “There’s nothing the least bit ‘fairy’ about me.”

  Olsen reached down and patted Slick on the shoulder. “No need to be so dramatic about it our wee friend.”

  Dunk thought he saw steam escaping from his agent’s beet-red ears.

  “Did you decide to retire to a life of rest and riches?” Dunk asked, hoping both to distract the wizard and to get Slick’s refocused on something that mattered much to him: gold.

  Olsen shook his head. “Nay. A team wizard can make a pretty penny, to be sure, but ye rarely have a steady contract, no damn benefits, and ye constantly have to worry about the other team trying to either bribe ye or assassinate ye. It’s not a life fit for any self-respecting elf.”

  “Friend?” M’Grash said, reaching out a monstrous hand to the downtrodden wizard.

  The Hackers all froze. As Dunk knew, when M’Grash made a friend, the two were bonded for life. The ogre’s brain held no room for two opinions about a soul. It branded each person it met with a label, and that stuck for pretty much ever.

  “That’s kind of ye, laddie,” Olsen said, patting the back of M’Grash’s hand like that of a small child, despite the fact it was three times as wide as his own. “But we’ve never been much of a friend to anyone, we fear.”

  M’Grash’s face fell so hard Dunk thought he might hear it bounce along the floor.

  “Ah, cheer up, me grand ogre,” Olsen said, his eyes sparkling as he chucked M’Grash under the chin. “We dinnae mean anything against your gentle soul. We’re just too tired and crusty to think much on such things anymore.”

  “So, why don’t you just bugger off then?” asked Slick, who stood tall on his stool, glaring into the wizard’s eyes.

  “No!” the rest of the Hackers shouted in unison. According to Simon, Olsen alone had any hope of helping them find the Far Albion Cup, and they weren’t about to let Slick run him off.

  Cavre pulled out a chair for wizard, and Guillermo helped him into it. Pegleg cleared off the space on the table before Olsen with his hook, shoving the glasses there to shatter on the floor. Simon grabbed an unattended pint from the bar and placed it in front of the wizard, over the bartender’s half-hearted protests.

  Dunk placed himself between Slick and Olsen, hoping that the halfling wouldn’t be willing to go through his meal ticket — Dunk — just to get at the wizard. M’Grash just sat down on a low bench against the wall, looked down at the bewildered elf, and flashed a toothy, too-innocent smile.

  “Now that’s what we call service, lads,” Olsen said. “Good on ye.”

  Then the wizard turned serious. “Of course, we don’t expect that you’re being so kind for nothing, we may be old, lads, but we ain’t that kind of fool.”

  He leaned over the table as the others took their seats around him, each of them focusing every bit of their attention on his face. When he opened his lips to speak, they hung on his every word — even Slick.

  “Aye,” Olsen said. “You’re here to learn all about the original Far Albion Cup, are ye not?”

  The Hackers all nodded with excitement they could not contain. The wizard took a long pull on his pint, and then put it back down without bothering to wipe the foam from his moustache. He cleared his throat and then leaned forward again.

  “Lend us your ears, lads. We’ve got a tale to spin.”

  8

  “A long time ago,” Olsen said, “before any of ye were born, we played Blood Bowl like we meant it.”

  Dunk glanced around and saw that every eye in the place was on Olsen, including those of the bartender and the other patrons. He got to his feet, his chair scraping out behind him loudly in the silence, and stared out at the others in the room. They all turned back to their own companions, and the bartender set to sweeping up the mess from the brawl once again.

  “You were a Blood Bowl player?” Simon said. “I thought you were just a wizard. I mean, not just a wizard — a wizard’s a very fine thing to be, of course — but I never imagined that you played the game as well.”

  “Aye,” Olsen said, giving Simon a hairy eye. “As an elf, we’ve led a long, long life, and we’ve done many a thing, some great and some not so much so. But we did play Blood Bowl, we did.

  “Our team was called the Eiremen.”

  “Ire Men?” Guillermo asked. “I, R, E?”

  “No, lad. E, I, R, E. Eire. As in another name for our fair homeland, Hibernia.”

  “This is good,” Guillermo said blushing. “I thought you might all be angry all the… Um, never mind.”

  “Never will, laddie.” Olsen clapped his hands together. “So, where were we?”

  “Just about to tell my audience everything!” a feminine voice said as its owner burst into the pub.

  Lästiges stormed through the room, straight up to the Hackers’ table. A small golden ball hovered in the air just in front of her. As she reached the table, it turned around, and Dunk spied a small, eye-sized hole in the thing, staring out at him and the rest of the Hackers.

  “Ah, Miss Weibchen,” Pegleg said as he got to his feet and doffed his yellow, tricorn hat. “A pleasure, I’m sure. I didn’t think you’d catch up with us this quickly.”

  “Captain Haken, Wolf Sports paid you good gold to reserve a berth for me on your ship, the Sea Chariot. Why did you set sail from Magritta without me?”

  Dunk could see that Lästiges was furious with Pegleg but unwilling to admit it to anyone. A sparkle of light flashed on the golden camra ball with its floating daemon inside, recording everything it could see and hear through the ball’s open end. Dunk wondered if Lästiges cou
ld shut the thing off or would have to live with it recording everything she did until she returned home. Then he asked himself which of either Wolf Sports or his brother Dirk must have been behind such a thing. Maybe both.

  Pegleg cleared his throat and shot an apologetic look at Olsen, like a parent embarrassed by an obnoxious child. He stood to address Lästiges, doing his best to ignore the floating globe that zipped around her head, trying to find a good angle from which to film them both.

  “My dear,” the pirate said, flashing her his best smile, which proved to be far more creepy than comforting. “We would have waited for you, but we were on a tight schedule. If we were to meet our new friend here, I knew we’d have to be gone at high tide or we’d be lost for sure.”

  Lästiges showed Pegleg a pouty frown. “Because of you, captain, I have no images of you and your players aboard the Sea Chariot. That was supposed to be the starting scene of my report. What will I do without it?”

  Pegleg patted Lästiges on the shoulder and said, “Do not worry yourself with such trivial matters. When we return, you can record our trip then. Just use those images for our venturing forth as well. No one will be able to tell the difference.”

  “Huh,” Lästiges said, narrowing her eyes at Pegleg. “I suppose that might work.”

  Before the reporter could press Pegleg again, Cavre stood up and said, “May I ask how you got here so quickly after us, Miss Weibchen? I thought that you would have been delayed at least until the next high tide, putting you half a day behind us.”

  A smile snaked across Lästiges’ face. “I’ve been here waiting for you for days. My employers at Wolf Sports have deep pockets,” she said. “Very deep pockets. They paid to have me flown out here immediately once I’d realised you’d left without me.”

  She looked around at the wreck of the room, including the sunlight shining in through the three holes in the far wall, from which the hapless patrons had finally been extracted while the Hackers spoke with Olsen. “All I needed was to find you once you showed up. You and your team-mates didn’t make that too difficult.”

  “Well,” Pegleg said, pulling over an empty chair with his hook, “now that you’re here, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?”

  “We’re not ‘comfortable’ with that,” Olsen said.

  “And you are?” Lästiges wrinkled her nose at the wizard.

  “Merlin,” he said, pointedly not extending his hand in greeting. “Olsen Merlin.”

  “Whatever.” Lästiges rolled her eyes at the wizard. “Wolf Sports didn’t send me here to follow some old coot of an elf who wants to cadge free drinks out of the tourists with stories born of his dementia.”

  All of the Hackers winced at this, including Dunk, who half-feared — well, hoped maybe — that the reporter might disappear in a flash of smoke to be replaced by a warty frog. They all gaped in horror at Lästiges and then looked to Olsen to see if they might have to flee from his reaction to avoid any collateral damage.

  The wizard stared coldly at Lästiges for a moment, and Dunk thought he saw his hands twitch beneath his cloak. The thrower prepared to grab Slick and throw them both behind M’Grash for safety.

  Then Olsen drew forth a long, gnarled finger and pointed it directly at the reporter’s nose. He opened his mouth to speak, and out came a deep, hearty chortle. “You, you, you,” he said to Lästiges, punctuating every word with a stab of his finger as a smile curled on his lips. “You have spunk. We like you.”

  Tentatively, the Hackers joined in with Olsen, offering up halfhearted chuckles of relief — perhaps masking a bit of disappointment.

  Dunk leaned over and whispered in Lästiges’ ear. “This wizard is going to help us find the Far Albion Cup. He’s ancient and powerful. Don’t make him mad.”

  Lästiges’ dark eyes twinkled as she glanced at Dunk. She turned to whisper in his ear. “I think he’s been mad since long before he met me.”

  “And we’ve been able to hear people whispering about us since before any of you were born.”

  Dunk and Lästiges, shame flushing their faces, looked up to see Olsen and the rest of the Hackers staring straight at them. Dunk cleared his throat.

  “I was just trying to impress upon our friendly reporter here the reverence with which one should treat a person as important as yourself,” Dunk said.

  “My deepest apologies,” Lästiges said. “After spending years interviewing people who think they’re something special, it’s a pleasure to finally meet someone who really is.”

  Olsen raised a hand to cut them off. “Don’t think we don’t appreciate the obsequious utterances, lass, but we tire easily of such things. Besides which, we believe we have more pressing matters than massaging an old elf’s battered ego.”

  The wizard glanced up at the golden ball hovering over Lästiges’ head. “Is that camra on?” he asked, running a spit-slicked hand through his hair. “We’d prefer to not have to repeat ourselves later.”

  Lästiges’ ruby-red lips spread in a hungry smile. “I’m ready anytime you are — sir.”

  Olsen grinned and then gestured for everyone to sit down and gather close. “All right, then. Let us tell you the story of the Far Albion Cup.”

  Lästiges, Slick, and all of the Hackers huddled tight around the wizard, each of them giving Olsen their undivided attention. Even M’Grash, who often had a hard time focusing on anything more complex than a meal, hung on the wizard’s every word.

  “Over five centuries past, the people of Albion caught Blood Bowl fever. We’d only just heard rumours of this most amazing of sports back then, and when Farley ‘the Foot’ McGintis returned from a tour of the Old World, he triggered off a national rage over the game.

  “Farley had played in the NAF — the old Nuffle Amorical Football league — for a while, for the Champions of Death. He’d had a good run there until an opposing team’s wizard resurrected the poor sod right in the middle of a kick-off return. They tore the poor lad to pieces.

  “Of course, that’s not always the end for the undead players of the Champions of Death. Farley wanted to play so badly he offered to kill himself again right there on the spot. Coach Tomolandry, the greatest necromancer to ever field a team, wanted to help Farley out, but they never were able to find all of Farley’s parts to put him back together again. Seems that some vital pieces got thrown into the stands and disappeared. Rumour has it some bits appeared in a nearby rat-on-a-stick stand sometime in the second half.

  “In any case, old Farley’s career as a player was over. He packed up his things and caught the next boat back home to Albion. On the way, though, he realised that just because he couldn’t play any more didn’t mean he had to give up the game entirely. Those who can’t do, coach.”

  Pegleg harrumphed at this, but when everyone else at the table shot him a steely glare, he sealed his mouth once more.

  “Within a week of his return, Farley had assembled enough players for four full teams. After that, it was just a matter of finding sponsors and venues. For that, he lined up Bo Berobsson, who had formerly been in charge of Big-Ass Ales — or B’Ass, as it came to be known. Bo got all the finances arranged while Farley taught the players and the coaches how to play the game.

  “Now, Farley knew the rules as well as anyone else, but he didn’t exactly teach us the right ones. Instead, he told us that football was a game in which you weren’t allowed to use your hands. Also, when he figured out that kicking around a properly oblong pigskin didn’t work all that well, he introduced a round ball with black and white panels into the game instead. Rather than carrying it into the end zone, you had to kick it through a big, white frame he called a goal.”

  “Wait,” Lästiges said. “You’re telling me that this Farley changed the game all around? But why? Just to be different?”

  Olsen tapped his nose twice, then pointed at the woman. “Aye, that’s what many thought at first when we figured out just what Farley had done, but it was too late then. We’d already played a doze
n seasons of Albion Blood Bowl, and the people here loved it. There was no way for us to go back.

  “Sure, some of the purists were appalled at Farley’s lies, but as the ‘father of the game’ here in Albion, they couldn’t touch him. They tried to change the rules to the proper set, the ones decreed by Nuffle so long ago, but they didn’t take. We just played our variety of football here, and the Old Worlders played their way over there.”

  “But why?” Lästiges said. “Why did Farley do it?”

  Olsen shook his head with a sad grimace. “Ah, well, the injuries that poor Farley sustained in his playing days, they altered the man’s makeup in some serious ways. If you’d seen him, you’d have no questions as to why he’d do something like that.

  “Perhaps the old lad thought he might be able to play again himself someday, although he never did. Maybe he thought no one would listen to him as a coach of the proper game. It’s hard to say. Still, he did what he did.”

  Lästiges leaned forward, pressing the question. The golden ball closed in tight over her shoulder, as focused on the wizard’s face as any of the other listeners.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Olsen let loose the sigh of a person who’d seen more than his share of tragedies in his centuries-long life. “There’s the rub of it, lassie. Not to put too fine a point on it, but poor Farley lost both his arms in his last game. He couldn’t pick up the ball himself, so he made sure that no one else could either.”

  Not waiting for a reaction from his listeners, Olsen pressed on with his tale. “Of course, when Berobsson found out about Farley’s deceit, you could have steamed a fish on the man’s forehead. He decided he’d find out for himself just what the real game was like. This time, he refused to take anyone else’s word for it. So he founded a team he dubbed the Albion Wanderers, and he took them off to tour the Old World and play against some of the NAF teams.

  “Needless to say — but I’ll say it anyway for your delightful camra there — the Wanderers were nearly eaten alive in their inaugural season. Literally. They lost three players to the Gouged Eye, and those damned orcs spit-roasted them right there on the sidelines, with Berobsson and the rest of the Wanderers powerless to stop them.”