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Death Match – Extract

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One

The last thing Dunk Hoffnung remembered was the ogre trying to knock his helmet off his head with a bench torn from the first rows of the end zone. Dunk had just scored a touchdown for his team, the Bad Bay Hackers, and the crowd had gone wild. From hard-won experience, Dunk had avoided letting those battle-crazed, blood-thirsty bastards pull him into the stands. He knew that even fans who liked you often got carried away once they got their hands on you.

That’s probably why he hadn’t seen the ogre coming up behind him. He couldn’t remember which one it was anymore. All of the Oldheim Ogres looked the same under their cauldron-sized helmets and with their tent-sized jerseys draped over their massive plates of spiked and sharp-edged armour: like gigantic servants of death with mean hangovers.

The ogre had picked Dunk up with one hand and held him dangling in the air by his ankles, like a bad daemon baby in need of a fatal spanking. Then the creature reached into the stands with its other hand and pried the bench off one of the bleachers there, sending the fans who had been sitting on it scrambling for their lives.

Dunk remembered one snotling still clutching one splintered end of the bench as the ogre hoisted it into the air as a makeshift club. The hapless thing had got its Hackers fan jersey snagged on the splinters. It started to try to gnaw through the fabric with its wide, flat teeth, but there hadn’t been enough time.

Dunk had heard the green-skinned midget squeal in horror as the bench came swinging down at him, but he couldn’t muster any pity for the thing. He was too busy trying to angle himself out of the way of the ogre’s mighty swing.

As the blue painted plank came at him, Dunk reached for his toes, which hung high above him, still in the ogre’s grasp. The weight of his own armour made this nearly impossible, but the terror-fuelled adrenalin coursing through him inspired the heroic effort.

The board went sailing underneath him, right through the space where his head had once been.

‘Jim, I haven’t seen a swing that feeble since you tried to dismember that dwarf for dinner last night!’ Bob Bifford’s voice rang out over the Preternatural Address system, echoing across the stadium and throughout the nearby streets of Magritta.

‘I still enjoy a bit of sport with my meals,’ Jim Johnson grumbled. The retired ogre player’s massive, battle-scarred mug flashed across the gigantic crystal ball perched at the far end of the stadium. Then it cut straight back to Dunk, squirming in the Oldheim blitzer’s grasp.

‘It seems Gr’Nash down there shares your passion for a good fight,’ said Bob, ‘and your skill!’

The crowd erupted in laughter, and the sound drove Gr’Nash even madder than before. The ogre swung at Dunk again, but the Hackers’ star thrower managed to angle himself out of the way once more.

Dunk wondered where the rest of his team could be. They wouldn’t just leave him up here forever, would they? M’Grash K’Thragsh – the Hackers’ own ogre – was Dunk’s best friend. Spinne Schönheit shared his bed. Edgar – the treeman they’d picked up in Albion last season – was as solid as his trunk. And Dunk had played alongside Cavre and Reyes for two years now.

Of course, the other players had only been on the team since the start of the tournament. Few of them had set boots on a Blood Bowl field before, and none of them had ever faced down an opposing team of eleven angry ogres.

Dunk barely knew these new players at all. If it weren’t for the fact that their names were stencilled across the backs of their green and gold armour, he didn’t think he’d have been able to pick them out from each other in the game. Still, they were on his team, and he expected them to come to his aid.

A glance at the Jumboball – which piped the Cabalvision broadcast to the fans in the stadium via the most advanced mass communications magic of the day – showed Dunk that the other Oldheim Ogres had formed a wall of armour-plated flesh between Dunk and his team-mates. He knew that the wall couldn’t stand forever. Sooner or later his friends would get around it. M’Grash would just plough right through it. But it would take time, something he didn’t have.

Gr’Nash raised the busted bench up for another swing, and the snotling on the end broke free and went sailing off into the stands. The fans there batted the poor creature into the air again, bopping it back and forth like a beach ball, the pathetic beast squeaking like a living chew toy with every blow.

‘It’s always great to see the fans working together to entertain themselves,’ Bob said. ‘That just might be our Bloodweiser Beer play of the day.’

‘I don’t know about that, but keep your attention on that end zone,’ Jim said. ‘It looks like Hoffnung has a great, early shot at being named the game’s Most Violated Player.’

Seemingly to prove the point, Gr’Nash lowered his arm and slammed Dunk headfirst into the Astrogranite below. Stars flashed before Dunk’s eyes, and his head felt like the muscles in his neck had turned to rubber.

‘I thought the MVP went to the ‘Most Violent Player,’ sad Bob.

‘It’s a double-edged acronym,’ said Jim, ‘and here’s Gr’Nash to stake his claim for the other side of the award.’

Stunned, his arms flailing about, Dunk swung his head around to his left. He saw a flash of blue and smelled fresh-cut lumber. Then everything went black.

The next thing Dunk knew, he was lying flat on his back. This didn’t seem so unusual, what with the savage blow to the head he’d just taken, but he couldn’t see or hear a thing. He started to panic, then realised his eyes were closed, which at least explained why he was blind.

His eyes felt like they might have been glued shut, but he finally managed to peel them open. He instantly regretted it.

He stared up at the ceiling above him, the light of a number of lanterns flickering across its rough-finished surface. He recognised it as belonging to one of the team locker rooms in Magritta’s Killer Stadium, for which the legendary brewing company had bought the naming rights. The holes in the plaster from when M’Grash had leapt with joy after their last victory told him that this was the locker room in which the Hackers had started the day.

‘How’s your head?’ The voice sounded like it had been forced through the chewed end of a halfling’s pipe: smoky and distant.

Now that the speaker mentioned it, Dunk realised that his head felt like his brains were beating away at the inside of his skull with spiked warhammers. ‘Not good,’ he rasped through a mouth coated with an all-too-familiar flavour: dried blood.

The speaker leaned over into Dunk’s field of vision. He was an old elf with a bloodstained patch of white fabric slung over his right eye, his lips curled in a disgusted sneer. ‘You’ll live,’ the elf said as he shook his head, his voice dripping with disdain. ‘I’ve seen little halfling girls take punches better than you.’

‘There was a board and an ogre involved,’ Dunk said. He started to get angry, but the rush of blood to his head made his brain switch over to using steam-powered jackhammers. To placate them, he let out a deep sigh instead of the string of curses he’d been preparing.

Then the elf slapped him in the jaw, and the stars started swirling around his vision again. ‘Sit up,’ the elf said.

‘Take it easy on him,’ another voice said, one that Dunk knew as well as any. It belonged to his agent, a tubby halfling by the name of Slick Fullbelly.

‘Don’t worry,’ the elf said as Dunk used his wobbly arms to shove himself halfway up into a sitting position. ‘I won’t punch your meal ticket here.’ The elf fitted a bulging monocle over his good eye and squinted through it at Dunk. ‘Looks like the ogres nearly took care of that for you already. If they’d succeeded, maybe a scumbag like you would finally have to go and find some honest work.’

‘Like gathering illegal substances to concoct potions designed to get players back on the field?’ Slick asked. Dunk saw him flittering around the elf’s feet, trying to get the apothecary’s attention, but the elf ignored him as if he were nothing more than a fly hunting for carrion. ‘Do the Game Wizards know about the little operation you have here, Dr. Pill? Maybe Wolf Sports would be interested in running an exposé.’

The elf removed his monocle and started to rummage through a wooden rack filled with iron flasks. Some of these looked fresh while others rested under thick layers of dust. The elf scratched his chin, and then selected a flask, possibly at random. He turned towards Slick and blew the dust off the bottle and into the agent’s face.

As Slick tried to hack the dust from his lungs and rub it from his eyes, the elf pulled a rusty scalpel from a sheath on his belt and worked it around the red wax seal covering the flask’s cork. ‘Who do you think supplies me with those truly hard-to-find ingredients?’ the elf asked, ignoring Slick once more. ‘Do you think ratings go up or down when an injured player manages to hobble back onto the field for a few more plays?’

Dr. Pill stabbed his scalpel into the top of the broken seal and used it to pry the flask’s cork free. It came loose with an explosive pop that sent it and the scalpel flying into the ceiling, where they embedded themselves next to one of the holes M’Grash had made.

A green and slimy substance bubbled forth from the flask’s open top, spilling down over Dr. Pill’s hand, which Dunk now saw was covered with a rubber glove. Where the stuff plopped on the floor, it hissed and sizzled like water on a hot, greased griddle.

‘Drink this,’ the elf said, shoving the potion at Dunk. The flask smacked him in the face and knocked him back to the table again.

Dunk growled and sat right back up again. The elf grimaced at him, shamefaced. ‘My apologies,’ he said, pointing at his eye patch with his free hand as he offered up the bubbling flask again. ‘No depth perception.’

Dunk crossed his eyes to stare at the flask of frothing gunk, which hung too close to his face, but at least it hadn’t smashed into him this time. He felt the sharp scent of it scorch the hair in his nostrils right off.

‘How does he know that’s not some kind of poison?’ Slick squeaked out between coughs.

‘Oh, it’s a poison, all right,’ Dr. Pill said, staring at Dunk with his one good eye, ‘arsenic, to be precise. Smell the bitter almonds in it? That’s always a dead giveaway.’

‘What?’

‘But it has an antidote mixed into it, along with some other things, the so-called ‘secret ingredients.’ This volatile combination can strip the paint off your armour, but it’ll put your head right too. Otherwise, it’s weeks in the sickhouse. You’ll miss not only this game but the rest of the tournament too.’

From somewhere above, Dunk heard a low, muffled roar. The plaster shook loose from the ceiling, and the cork and scalpel came tumbling down, barely missing Slick’s feet as they stabbed juddering into the floor. The agent leapt back in dismay.

Dunk reached out with an unsteady hand and snatched the potion from the leering elf’s hands. Before his other arm could give out and send him collapsing back on the table, he tipped the flask back, opened up his throat, and swallowed its noxious contents in one determined gulp.

Slick looked up at Dunk as if the thrower had promised him another beer, and Dr. Pill glared at him, his good eye seeming as dead as the other. Dunk felt the potion swirl its way down into his belly where it began its work. Warmth spread out from his stomach to his head, fingers, and toes until he felt like he wanted to jump into a sauna to cool off. Sweat poured off his skin, streaming down from his hairline and into his eyes. His eyeballs started to burn from the inside, and his teeth felt like glowing coals in his mouth.

‘Water,’ Dunk rasped. ‘Please.’

‘Here,’ Dr. Pill said. He handed Dunk a wide funnel attached to a long, rubber hose that wound its way under the table on which the rack of flasks rested.

Dunk squinted into the funnel, unsure what to do with it. Would it fill with water for him to drink? Should he hold it over his head and let a cascade of water shower him? He needed something to drink so badly that he thought of sticking his face into the funnel and sucking on it until the water came out.

Then his stomach turned on him hard, flipping and flopping like a fish on a dry dock, gasping for water, drowning in air. Dunk’s eyes flew open, as wide as the zeroes on a scoreboard.

‘What’s happening?’ Slick asked. ‘Son, are you all right?’ The halfling turned on the elf, ‘I swear to every bastard god that ever sinned I’ll turn you over to our own team’s ogre if he dies. Dunk’s like a brother to M’Grash. He’ll take it hard – and he’ll take it out on–’

Dunk interrupted Slick’s tirade of threats by unleashing the contents of his stomach into the funnel. It started with a savage roar, travelled through the gush of a flooding river, and trickled off into a sickly whimper punctuated with a hack and a spit.

‘Nuffle’s leathery balls!’ Slick said as he rushed to Dunk’s side. ‘What have you done to him? Son? Son!’

Dunk wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sat up, ready to be knocked over by the tiny force of the halfling’s breath. Instead, as he shook his head, he realised it felt fine. The throbbing that had been there was gone, his brains having dropped their excavating tools and called it a day.

‘I’m good,’ he said, bounding off the apothecary’s table, ‘better than ever, maybe. I feel great!’

Slick squinted up at Dunk suspiciously. ‘When we brought you in here, son, you were half-dead. I thought we’d have to go with a closed coffin at the funeral. How’s this quack manage–’

‘It’s customary to thank those who save your life,’ Dr. Pill said, ‘although I’m accustomed to not receiving such pleasantries from primitives.’

Dunk smirked at the apothecary. He wanted to be angry at the man and his sour attitude, but he felt too damn fine to be bothered with such things. ‘Thank you,’ he said sincerely.

‘Just doing my job,’ the elf said, the sneer back on his face. ‘And at the rates I charge I suspect your employer would prefer it if you ceased joining in this riveting knitting circle here in the locker room with your agent and me and got back out on that pitch to do your job.’

Dunk bounded off the table and cracked his neck back and forth. ‘On my way,’ he said as he headed for the door.

As he left, he heard Slick ask Dr. Pill a question, trying to curry his favour. As an agent, Slick found it his duty to work every possible angle on Dunk’s behalf, and being able to call on someone who could heal an injured player like that might come in handy.

‘That’s an amazing contraption you have there to catch your patients’ illnesses. Does it just vent into the sewers?’

The elf snorted. ‘Do I just throw it away? Of course not. Do you have any idea how much those materials cost? I find they can last for three or four applications at least.’

Dunk raced out through the tunnel that led to the Hackers’ dugout, certain he didn’t want to hear any more.

Two

When Dunk emerged into the dugout, he saw Pegleg glaring out at the open field beyond. The former pirate had his good leg planted on the top step and his wooden prosthetic stabbed right into the Astrogranite that edged the dugout. He braced his fleshy hand against the dugout’s roof, designed to keep out bad weather and ‘gifts’ hurled by furious fans. His hook scratched at the wide-brimmed, yellow tricorn hat that already bore a score of holes from such abuse.

‘Reporting for duty, coach!’ Dunk said as he strode past the benchwarmers that lined the back of the dugout, supposedly the safest place in the entire stadium. A couple of them glared at Dunk with jealous eyes, but the others trembled as he walked by, fearful not of him, but of anyone who made sudden movements.

‘Thank Nuffle you’re here, Hoffnung,’ Pegleg said. ‘Dr. Pill’s magic never fails.’

Dunk rubbed his head again, amazed that it didn’t still feel like an axe through the kindling of his skull. ‘It was worth whatever you paid him.’

Pegleg spat on the field. ‘I’m glad you feel that way. I’m deducting his fee from your pay.’

‘What?’ Dunk goggled at the captain. The man hadn’t fallen too far from his piratical roots, it seemed.

‘It’s the least you can do,’ Pegleg said. ‘In the grand scheme of things, I’ll end up paying more for it than you.’

‘How’s that?’ Dunk asked. As he spoke, he watched the ball sail downfield with something that looked like a long branch jammed atop one of the spikes.

Pegleg growled. ‘We’re going to have to teach that treeman of ours how to hold the damned ball.’

Dunk pointed down to where Spinne had caught the ball and pulled off the branch to use as a club against the pair of ogres trying to capture her. Even encased in her helmet and armour, Dunk could see how beautiful she was. She moved with a dancer’s grace, but struck with the trained savagery of a born warrior.

Dunk smiled, glad that the two of them were finally on the same team for once. Dating Spinne, back when she’d been with the Reikland Reavers, had been trouble for them both. The fact that his brother Dirk played for the Reavers too and had once shared Spinne’s bed hadn’t made it any easier.

‘Do you think maybe Edgar planned that?’ Dunk asked. ‘It looks like it’s working.’

‘Edgar’s brains are composed of wood, Mr. Hoffnung. What do you think?’

Somewhere on the field, a whistle blew. A russet-coated minotaur dressed in a black and white striped shirt charged out on to the field and scooped up a yellow penalty flag.

‘Ooh!’ Bob’s voice said over the PA. ‘That’s going to be “illegal use of a weapon on the field” against Schönheit. Bool’s going to kick her out of the game for that!’

‘Amazing!’ Jim said. ‘You hardly ever see that kind of solid, fair officiating in a game of Blood Bowl, and clearly the fans don’t like it.’

A rousing howl went up from the stands, punctuated with hisses and boos.

‘If anyone can take that kind of abuse, though, it’s a player like Rhett Bool. It’s too bad he chose to play for Nurgle’s Nits during this tournament.’

‘Too true, Bob! I think Nits’ management must have blown its whole stake on his salary, considering the rest of the team was made of up Chaos-tainted halflings. Where do they find these players?’

‘I don’t know, Jim, but they’re going to have to keep looking if they want to try it again. They may have won their first game against the Darkside Cowboys, but Bool was the only player to survive!’

‘It didn’t help that he trampled half of his own team’s starting line on that first-half kick-off runback!’

Dunk scowled. ‘I though you paid off the referee,’ he said to Pegleg. Dunk didn’t like the idea of distracting the ref’s eyes with a stack of shiny gold coins, but he knew it was an established and respected part of the game.

‘Oldheim paid him more – and he kept our own booty too!’ The ex-pirate turned on Dunk. ‘Get out there if you like and tell him how wrong he is to do that.’

Dunk stared up at the minotaur as he charged into the stands and gored an unfortunate section of fans that had come to cheer on the red-uniformed Ogres. He swallowed hard.

‘Would you give him his money back for Dr. Pill’s treatment?’ Slick asked as he emerged from the tunnel in the back of the dugout.

Pegleg shook his head, ‘Only if he could get me out of my part of the bargain with that blackguard as well.’

‘What did you promise him, coach?’ Dunk asked.

Pegleg spat on the ground. ‘A guest appearance on his bloody Cabalvision show.’

‘The one where he heals people in front of a live audience?’ Slick asked. ‘I thought that was fictitious.’

Dunk gazed up at Pegleg. ‘Hand or foot?’ he asked.

‘Neither!’ The coach snarled, stabbing his hook at Dunk.

A roar erupting from the crowd told Dunk something was up. ‘What happened?’ he asked, unable to hear the announcers over the hullabaloo.

‘The Ogres scored,’ Slick shouted. He could project his voice well from his tiny frame. ‘That evens up the score at two touchdowns apiece.’

Dunk frowned. ‘They didn’t stop the game for the penalty.’

‘You’ve been playing this game for two years now,’ Pegleg said. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a bloody penalty called?’

‘Sure,’ Dunk said. ‘There was that game against the Chaos All-Stars last year. They called penalties against both me and M’Grash, but then that Jumboball came crashing down.’

‘Yes,’ Slick nodded, ‘and you were called for excessive celebration after your first touchdown.’

‘But I was unconscious for that.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Slick said, stroking his chin. ‘Well what about when you got booted from the game for killing Schlitz ‘Malty’ Likker?’

‘That was during halftime, and Zauberer had ensorcelled him to be possessed by the spirit of Khorne. It wasn’t in the middle of the game.’

‘Actually, since it was halftime, it was exactly the middle of the game.’

‘You know what I mean. The game wasn’t going on at the time.’

‘Well, the game’s stopped now, Mr. Hoffnung,’ Pegleg said in a voice laced with menace. ‘If you’d care to join it instead of taking this sweet jaunt down memory lane, I’d surely appreciate it.’

Dunk blushed with embarrassment, ‘Sure thing, coach. Whatever you say.’

Pegleg flashed a gold-toothed grin at the thrower. ‘Good lad. Now get out there to take Spinne’s place, and try not to get yourself spanked like a wee child this time!’

Dunk nodded, then grabbed his spare helmet from the rack in the back of the dugout and trotted out onto the field. As he reached the sideline, he met Spinne coming off. She stopped for a moment and butted her helmeted head against his. Grinning at him through their faceguards, she blew him a kiss and said, ‘Make them pay.’

Dunk grinned when she turned to smack him on his butt, and he hustled out onto the field. The crowd roared as he raced to the end the Hackers were protecting. He raised his hand to acknowledge them, and the noise grew so loud he could barely hear.

When Dunk had first decided to become a Blood Bowl player, the adulation of the fans was the last thing on his mind. As a washed-up dragonslayer – more of a never-was than a has-been – he’d just wanted to put his past behind him and try something new, something entirely different. Taking up a career on the gridiron seemed like just the thing.

He’d resisted the notion at first. After all, his family had disowned his brother Dirk when he’d gone off to join the Reavers. In response, Dirk had even changed his last name from Hoffnung to Heldmann.

Of course, the disgrace and dissolution of the Hoffnung family had been what had spurred Dunk to take up dragonslaying in the first place. He still felt responsible for what had happened in those dark days, even though he’d done his best to put them behind him. Living as a Blood Bowl star player made forgetting his old life a whole lot easier.

‘Dunkel!’ M’Grash shouted, bounding towards the thrower in joy. ‘Dunkel okay!’

Dunk had long since learned not to deny the Hackers’ ogre his happy moments. He let the huge lug haul him up in his arms and give him a hug that could have crushed a bear. Once Dunk was back on his feet, he felt thankful he’d been wearing his armour. The ogre had cracked his ribs more than once in the past.

Edgar came up and ran a branch along the back of Dunk’s helmet too. ‘You’re a bloody hard nut to crack,’ the treeman said with a gentle rap.

‘Good to have you back!’ Guillermo Reyes called from his position towards the front of their formation. The Estalian lineman’s accent always seemed thicker here in his homeland, and he played harder too. Because of how he’d left Altdorf, the capital of the Empire and his home since birth, Dunk envied Guillermo his hometown hero status, which he never imagined he could enjoy.

Then Rhett Cavre, the legendary blitzer and the Hackers’ team captain, trotted up. ‘Are you all right, Dunk?’ he asked. Despite the chaos surrounding them, the man’s demeanour was as soft and solid as ever. True concern for Dunk as a friend, not just a player, showed in his wide, dark eyes. Cavre saw the players on his team as people, not just bodies to fill positions, and for that he’d earned the respect of each and every one of his team-mates.

‘Dr. Pill fixed me right up,’ Dunk said, nodding.

Cavre winced. ‘Did he use one of the dusty bottles or one of the clean ones?’

‘Dusty. Why?’

Cavre smiled, his brilliant white teeth shining like a crescent moon against his ebony skin. ‘Those haven’t been ‘recycled’ as often.’

Dunk felt his stomach turn again, empty as it was. ‘Think we’ll have any more trouble with the ref?’ he asked, eager to change the subject.

Carve laughed warmly. ‘Not after what she threatened to do to him after the game if he made any more calls like that.’

Dunk glanced down the field at the minotaur in the striped shirt. He noticed that Bool moved with a bit of a limp as he trotted the spiked ball out for the Ogres to kick it off.

‘She mentioned something about having him for a steak dinner,’ Carve said. Then he knocked Dunk on his pauldron. ‘Get into position before that ball comes our way.’

Dunk turned and sprinted off to the end of the field, right in front of the end zone, and then turned around to face the Ogres. Their kicker had booted the ball right into the stands twice so far this game, but if it came down anywhere near Dunk, it was his job to catch it. Then, as the team’s thrower, he had to hurl it downfield to anyone he could find open.

This sort of play could be risky. If the Ogres intercepted the ball, they could be in the end zone in a matter of seconds. However, it was the best way to move the ball down the field. Trying to run it past the Ogres was almost impossible. With arms as long as Dunk was tall, the creatures just grabbed any of the Hackers that tried to dash past them.

The crowd hushed for a moment, and then started out with a low, collective moan that rose to a roar as the Ogre kicker approached the ball. When he booted it down the field, the fans burst into bloodthirsty screams, sure their desires would soon be sated.

The ball arced high into the air, and for a moment Dunk thought it might go right over his hands and into the stands – maybe even over the top of the stadium and into the streets beyond. Then a freak wind sprang up and blew the ball back towards the field.

As Dunk tracked the ball’s progress, he noticed that dark clouds had raced in to block out the sun in the last few minutes. It seemed strange, but he couldn’t worry about that at the moment. If he didn’t catch the ball and get rid of it as fast as he could, he risked far worse than a few drops of rain on his helmet.

The weather didn’t matter anyway. Blood Bowl games never stopped or even paused on account of rain, sleet, snow, frogs, beetles, locusts, ashes, or even fresh flows of volcanic magma. Any team that left the field before a game was over automatically forfeited the match, and with the amount of money on the line, few teams valued their health more than their share of the gold.

The ball sailed right down towards Dunk. He took two steps up, spread his arms and hands into a basket and caught the ball against his chest, just like in practice. He’d learned the hard way not to catch a ball with any unarmoured parts of his body, and he’d had his breastplate reinforced just so he could receive kick-offs like this.

‘Hoffnung has the ball, and he’s off! He races towards the sideline, trying to find some blockers and hunting for a receiver downfield.’ Dunk tried to tune out the PA system when playing, but Bob and Jim’s voices were so amplified that it usually proved impossible.

Dunk saw a wall of angry Oldheim Ogres coming his way and knew that he had to get rid of the ball fast if he didn’t want to end up right back on Dr. Pill’s table. He wasn’t sure what would be worse: being left to mend on his own if Pegleg wouldn’t pay the fee this time, or having to ‘recycle’ the potion he’d just used.

He jinked to the left, and then sprinted to the right, angling forward and towards the sideline as he ran. The Hackers linemen forged a wall of their own in front of him, backed by M’Grash and Edgar. Just as the two lines were about to clash, the linemen scattered to the left and right, leaving only the two tallest Hackers standing between Dunk and the onrushing Ogres.

Some of the Ogres chased after the Hackers linemen. The brain of an ogre is smaller than that of a human, but has to motivate far more flesh. This doesn’t leave the ogre a great deal of leftover grey matter with which to do things like make simple decisions, taste its food, or develop emotionally beyond the level of a five-year-old human child. When an ogre starts chasing something, it usually keeps after it – unless something else distracts it. Then it chases that instead – until the whistle blows, and sometimes it ignores that too, a lesson Dunk had just learned in the hardest way possible, barring a messy death and sudden resurrection.

Many of the Ogres followed the linemen as they scrambled out of the way, but most of them were running so fast that they couldn’t easily change their momentum. Some of them tried and tripped over their own feet, creating obstacles for those behind them to stumble over too. The resultant crash shook the Astrogranite enough that Dunk almost fell as well.

A few of the Ogres ignored the linemen, concentrating on Dunk instead, or perhaps on Dunk and Edgar. The Hacker ogre and treeman charged straight at the four Ogres who hadn’t been fooled by the ploy and lowered their armoured shoulders.

Edgar managed to knock one of the Ogres to a standstill. M’Grash – who was large, even for an ogre – managed to shove two of the Oldheim players back on their rumps, but the last Ogre made it through unscathed, and thundered straight at Dunk.

Dunk peered around the oncoming Ogre and spotted Cavre downfield. When the Ogres had charged after the ball, he’d slid through their line and dashed most of the way down the field. Now he leaped up and down, waving his arms, signalling that he might never be more open for a pass for the remainder of his career.

Dunk cocked back his arm to let the ball fly, but even as he did he realised he’d misjudged the last Ogre’s determination. The towering creature seemed to have put on a burst of speed once he got past Edgar and M’Grash. Now, with the Ogre’s arms raised high and wide over his head, Dunk didn’t see how he could get a clear throw off at Cavre.

On the other hand, if he held onto it, he knew the Ogre racing at him would grind him into dust. He pumped the ball once in an effort to fake out the Ogre, and it worked. The Oldheimer left his feet to try to block the pass.

Still, the Ogre was so large, its reach so wide, that Dunk didn’t see any daylight around him. Instead of trying to slip between the Ogre’s arms, he took one step back, and hurled the ball downfield towards Cavre.

Dunk looked up and saw the Ogre’s long arms coming down over him like a tidal wave, and the ball heading right for the creature’s outstretched fingers. Not only was he going to get crushed beneath this beast’s mighty bulk, his pass would be intercepted too. Considering he’d already woken up from a head injury in the locker room once that day, he didn’t see how this game could get any worse.

Then the world disappeared in a flash of blinding light, followed almost instantly by a boom so loud that Dunk thought he might never want to hear anything ever again.

Three

Unable to see past the afterimage still flashing before his eyes, Dunk stumbled and fell flat on his back. As he did, something that felt like a sack of hot sand hit him and then broke apart. Cloying clouds of some dry substance stuck to his sweaty skin and caught in his nose, throat, and lungs. He spun over onto his hand and knees and tried to hack it out of his chest until it all finally came free.

By the time the thunderous clap finally stopped echoing in Dunk’s ears, he could wipe the gunk off his face and out of his eyes to try to see just what had happened. He stared up at the Jumboball towering over the end zone behind him, and his jaw dropped.

‘Let’s see that one more time, Jim!’

The image on the screen showed the Ogre racing towards Dunk, captured in a slow-motion replay. Just as the creature was about to land on Dunk, the image froze.

‘Right there, Bob. Do you see it?’

‘See it,’ Bob said. ‘If I wasn’t wearing my Sun Protection Fetish, I think it might have fried my grave-delicate skin from here. As a vampire, I owe my life to my Coppertomb SPF 1,000.’

‘The bolt of lightning, Bob. It’s right there. Advance that forward just a hair.’

The image on the Jumboball moved almost imperceptibly, and Dunk saw the flash that had only been a tiny spot before stretch into an explosion of light that crossed the massive crystal, stabbing straight through the Ogre as it went.

‘See, there’s the bolt. Now just a little bit more.’

The image changed again. The bolt was gone, and the Ogre had disappeared too. An Ogre-shaped pile of ash hung in mid-air in its place.

The image moved forward once more, and the pile of ash fell to the Astrogranite. Some of it had already started to blow away as it dropped, but the bulk of it crashed down to the earth.

As he watched this, Dunk realised he had flash-fried ogre all over him. He stood up and screamed.

Then M’Grash dumped an entire keg of Killer Genuine Draft beer on top of him. The force of the falling liquid knocked him to his knees and left him gasping for air. On the other hand, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It rinsed the remnants of the ogre from his hair, armour, and skin. The hop-scented residue it left behind made Dunk think more than anything that he needed to get himself something pure and clean to drink to wash the taste of ogre ashes out of his mouth.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ Jim said over the PA. ‘I mean, death, maiming, even dismemberment, but for the game to stop for it is truly strange.’

‘Well it’s hard to play when you’re missing the ball,’ Bob said. ‘Most times if the ball gets blown up or just flattened the players can at least scoop up the pieces and play with those until the next break in the action. When it just disappears like that, it’s hard to see what you might do with it.’

‘Gr’Nash, the Ogres’ team captain sure showed some initiative, scooping up a handful of those ashes and running them into the end zone.’

‘True, although I think Bool made the right call by nullifying the touchdown. After all, it’s impossible to tell if any of those ashes came from the ball instead of poor Ch’Brakk.’

‘You gotta admire a competitor like that. Even the death of his cousin isn’t enough to slow him down for a second.’

‘Well, with the clock winding down here, Bob, it looks like this game might end up in a tie.’

‘I hate ties. They’re like kissing your sister.’

‘I told you to stop dating her.’

‘Hey, I said I hate kissing her, but she seems to love it. I can’t get her to respect the restraining order!’

‘Hold it, Jim. Our roving reporter on the field, the lovely Lästiges Weibchen, would like to check in.’

The image on the screen shifted to a beautiful woman with long, auburn hair and black eyes, who smiled out at the viewer like she had always been your best friend. She stood down on the sidelines, somewhere near the ogre’s dugout from the look of it. As she spoke, she glanced up behind her from time to time.

‘Thanks, Bob! Eyewitnesses here on the field and in the stands claim that this mysterious thunderbolt did not come from the sky, but from right here in the stadium.’

M’Grash helped Dunk to his feet, and then picked him up and shook him like a wet dog, flinging beer and beer-soaked ash everywhere. Just when Dunk had started to wonder if M’Grash might accidentally kill him, the shaking stopped, and Dunk could watch the Jumboball again.

‘There he is, Bob!’ Lästiges said, her voice ringing out over the PA system, even though the image on the Jumboball was that of a gaunt, middle-aged man in midnight-blue robes. As the camra zoomed in on the man – picking out his wispy white beard, his silver skullcap, and his watery, green eyes – Dunk recognised him instantly.

Lästiges gasped and said ‘It’s Schlechter Zauberer!’

The crowd echoed the reporter’s sharp intake of breath.

‘Blood Bowl fans may remember Zauberer’s involvement in the death almost two years ago of the mutant minotaur captain of the Chaos All-Stars, Schlitz ‘Malty’ Likker. Rumour also has it that he was the motivating force behind the tragic Jumboball accident here in Magritta last year that ended in the messy and permanent death of Krader, the troll player who had showed so much promise up until that point. To make matters worse, Zauberer was on the All-Stars’ payroll at the time, ostensibly hired to help them, not murder their star players.’

As Dunk watched, Zauberer – who had been standing among a group of passed-out drunks in the nosebleed section of the bleachers, right under the announcers’ box – lifted his arms over his head and took off into the air. Dunk wondered for a moment if the fans the wizard had left behind were really sleeping at all or just not moving under their own power forever. Before he could ponder the issue much longer, an idea struck him, and he turned and sprinted off towards the Hackers’ dugout.

‘As you might remember, Hoffnung and Zauberer have clashed several times before, both on the field and off. Since the wizard is not listed as an official employee or freebooter for either team, I can only guess that Zauberer has decided to take their rivalry to a new, deadlier level.’

When Dunk was only twenty yards or so from the dugout, another lightning bolt came scorching out of the sky to carve a crater in the ground right behind where Dunk had been, proving Lästiges’s words right.

‘A ball,’ Dunk yelled at his team-mates in the dugout. ‘Toss me a ball!’

All of the players in the Hackers’ dugout just stared at Dunk in some odd mixture of astonishment and fear. Lined up in their green and gold uniforms, the Hackers’ three-sword H logo emblazoned across the sides of the helmets they held on their laps, they seemed like little more than children brought together to play a game. Unfortunately, Blood Bowl was a game of life and death.

Spinne stepped out of the dugout and pitched a ball to Dunk underhand. He caught it neatly in his left hand and swapped it to his right. Then he cocked his head back and searched the sky over the stadium for any sign of the wizard who meant to fry him to ashes in moments.

A third bolt of lightning passed close enough to Dunk to stand his hair on end. The clap of thunder that followed deafened him again, but since it passed behind him he could still see. He spun around, looked directly above him, and spotted Zauberer diving closer, cursing in some language Dunk had never heard, a long, silver wand waving in his hand.

Dunk cocked back his arm and threw the football like a bullet at the wizard. Zauberer tried to dodge the spiked missile, but instead he only managed to put his shoulder forward. This caused the tip of the ball to slam into the wizard’s right arm rather than his chest.

Zauberer shrieked like a little girl from the pain. Clutching at the ball still embedded in his flesh, he fluttered towards the ground like a wounded duck, clawing desperately at the air with his fingers, but finding no purchase.

Dunk took one long step to the side, and the wizard crashed to the Astrogranite in front of him with a dull thud. Dunk reached down with one hand and pulled Zauberer to his feet. He needed to know what was going on. He hadn’t seen the wizard in over a year, and now he’d tried to kill him for no reason Dunk could discern.

Zauberer’s head slumped down between his shoulders, and a thin line of bloody drool trickled out of his mouth. He groaned when Dunk lifted him to his feet, but his feet wouldn’t bear his weight, and his eyes only opened long enough to roll back into his head before closing again.

Dunk yanked the ball from the wizard’s shoulder, planning to use it to jab him back to consciousness. The open wound bled freely, and what little colour the pasty-faced wizard had drained from him, leaving him whiter than the lines painted on the field.

‘Speaking of competitors, Jim, what do you think about Hoffnung there? It seems he’s found himself a ball!’

Startled, Dunk peered around the field and saw everyone staring at him. For just a moment, no one in the stadium breathed. Then Gr’Nash, the Oldheim Ogre who’d cracked his skull earlier in the game, threw a long, broken, sausage-sized finger in Dunk’s direction – it must have come from one of the other Ogres – and bellowed, ‘Kill him!’

Dunk dropped Zauberer and heard the wizard’s skullcap crack against the Astrogranite. Then he started to race towards the Hackers’ dugout.

‘That’s a damned shame,’ Bob’s voice said. ‘One little assassination attempt by a wizard tossing lightning bolts around like snotlings in a bar fight, and Hoffnung loses his nerve. He had such potential too.’

‘Not to mention the fact that we only have a few seconds left in the game. Looks like you’ll be puckering up for my baby sister Bertha tonight!’

‘Not today, Jim. Since this game is part of the Spike! magazine tournament finals, no ties are allowed. We’ll go into sudden-death overtime instead.’

‘If those Ogres catch Hoffnung, I think I know whose death we’ll see first!’

Dunk ignored the commentators and scanned the Hackers’ end zone. He saw Cavre racing towards it now, breaking away from the Ogres eager to carry out Gr’Nash’s death sentence.

Dunk brought his arm back one more time and tossed the ball high and long into the air. It arced up and then down like the smooth parabola of a rainbow. At the end stood no pot of gold, just Cavre’s outstretched, wide open hands.

Cavre pulled the ball in just as time ran out, but Dunk couldn’t tell where the catcher’s feet were. Had he scored, or had they been too late?

Bool blew the whistle, but Dunk couldn’t tell if it was to signal a touchdown or the end of the game – maybe both?

‘Touchdown! The Hackers win the game!’

Dunk started to throw his arms up in the air to cheer, but he saw the Oldheim Ogres still racing towards him. Remembering how well Gr’Nash had treated him after the last touchdown he’d scored, Dunk decided to dive into the Hackers’ dugout rather than celebrate their victory within arm’s reach of the angry ogres.

That night in the Bad Water – a sports tavern located in the worst part of Magritta, right down next to the wharf – Dunk raised a tankard of Killer Genuine Draft to toast the Hackers and their advancement to the Spike! magazine tournament finals. ‘Here’s to the finest bunch of hard-bitten killers I’ve ever played alongside!’ he said.

The other Hackers – all of them, including Pegleg – roared in approval, as did the assembled crowd of regulars and hangers-on tough enough to work their way into the main room that night. They clanked their mugs together and drank deeply in approval of Dunk’s sentiment.

‘Another round of Killers, Sparky!’ Slick called. ‘Put it on the Hackers’ tab.’

Pegleg started to protest, but everyone else in the bar shouted him down, including his own players. He raised his hook to slash the throat out of the nearest of those who’d failed to respect him, but Cavre stepped forward to grab him by the wrist and sit him down before anyone could get hurt.

The dwarf bartender raced along the high foot rail behind the bar – which boosted him up high enough so that he could reach out over the bar – towards a fresh keg of beer. A cheer rose up, and at first Dunk thought it was for the beer. Then Spinne elbowed him in the ribs and pointed up at the set of crystal balls hanging over the bar.

Each of the crystal balls showed a sporting event of one kind or another. These ranged from professional snotling tossing (an event favoured in dwarf taverns around the Old World) to dragon wrestling (dragon vs. ogre, dragon vs. troll, dragon vs. dragon, etc.) to witchball (played by scantily clad women straddling flying broomsticks). On the largest crystal ball, the Reikland Reavers faced off against the Darkside Cowboys, a dark elf team with a reputation for cruelty, even among Blood Bowl players.

The Reavers had just scored the go-ahead touchdown as the time wound down in the half. As the Wolf Sports team cut over to the Gods-Damned Blood Bowl Halftime Show – hosted by Barry Hacksaw and No. J. Pimpson – Spinne nuzzled up under Dunk’s arm and kissed him on the cheek, a forlorn look on her face.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

A frown marred Spinne’s beautiful face. Here in the bar, her strawberry-blonde hair and blue-grey eyes gleamed in the lanterns’ light. The set of her jaw showed the strength she had to have to be one of the few female Blood Bowl players, but her eyes had softened tonight for some reason.

‘I don’t know whether to root for the Reavers or their opposition,’ she said with a sigh.

‘I know what you mean,’ Dunk said, wrapping his arm tighter around her shoulders. ‘I want Dirk and his team to win, but if they do we’ll have to face them in the finals. That could get… messy.’

‘Their starting thrower may be your little brother, but I played on that team just a couple of months back.’

‘Are you worried you’ll have to play against your old friends? Maybe hurt them?’

Spinne stood up straight and scoffed at Dunk, his arm falling from her. ‘Not at all. They’re a bunch of jackasses, Dirk included. Why do you think I’m playing for the Hackers?’

‘Because Slick forced Pegleg to make you a great offer?’ Dunk smiled behind his tankard as he took a long pull from the fresh beer that Sparky had slid in front of him.

‘Okay, that was it.’ Spinne grinned at him.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Well, if we play against the Reavers, I know them backwards and forwards, every strength and every flaw. The downside is they know mine too.’

‘Your flaws? That’s a short list.’

‘You have a list?’ Spinne narrowed her eyes at Dunk.

‘It’s just a metaphor.’ He held up his hands in mock surrender.

‘Is that something like a dikphor?’ She raised an eyebrow at him.

‘What’s a dikphor?’ Dunk asked, regretting the words as they left his mouth.

Spinne leaned in close and whispered in Dunk’s ear. ‘Play your cards right, and I’ll show you later.’

Then Spinne froze in his arms.

‘What?’ Dunk asked. He held her at arm’s length and stared into her eyes, which were focused on something behind him. ‘What is it?’

‘Look,’ she said, jerking her chin at the wall over the bar.

Dunk turned to see Lästiges interviewing Schlechter Zauberer on Wolf Sports’ Cabalvision. The wizard lay sitting up bare-chested in a sickhouse bed, fat and slimy leeches hanging from his wounded shoulder, which looked like it had been stitched up with a dirty shoelace. Without his robes, the man seemed skeletal, his papery, white skin stretched thin over his jutting bones. The dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes made him seem like he might soon be hammering on death’s door with his silver skullcap.

Lästiges asked the wizard a question, and he started to rant out the answer. With the celebration in the tavern as loud as it was, Dunk couldn’t hear a thing. He grabbed M’Grash by the arm and signalled for the ogre to quiet down the crowd.

M’Grash turned to face the people gathered in the bar and put a finger to his lips. Then he shouted out, ‘Shhhh! Be quiet! Dunkel wants to hear the evil wizard talk!’

Dunk blushed as all eyes turned to him, but he ignored the attention and focused on the large crystal ball instead. Everyone followed his example without saying another word.

‘So you attack in broad daylight because you like the attention?’ Lästiges asked.

The camra focused on the clammy-faced Zauberer. ‘This is just the start of everything,’ he said, a line of drool hanging from his bottom lip as he spoke. ‘Soon the world will know my name. Soon emperors will tremble at my feet. The ultimate power will soon be m-mine!’

Lästiges leaned into the camra’s view and said, ‘Uh-huh. So, just how does your attempt on Dunk Hoffnung’s life earlier today fit in with your plans for world domination?’

A sly smile played across Zauberer’s purplish lips. He gazed so intently into the camra it seemed he could see everyone watching back at him through their crystal balls.

‘I have friends – acquaintances, really – in high places with low intentions. In return for their favours – their infernal influence – they have requested that I bring them the head of one Dunkel Hoffnung, formerly of Altdorf and now part of the Bad Bay Hackers.’

‘That doesn’t seem to have gone so well for you.’

Zauberer ignored Lästiges’s sarcastic tone and kept staring into the camra, his eyes growing wider, and his words more urgent.

‘These noble people have authorized me to place a price on Hoffnung’s egg-fragile head.’

Dunk heard Lästiges nearly choke at this news. Once she cleared her throat, she asked, ‘And how much would this reward of yours be worth?’

Zauberer’s eyes focused off-camra, in the reporter’s direction, for just a moment, a horrifying leer on his face. Then he looked back into the camra, which zoomed in tight on his red-rimmed, bloodshot, slime-green eyes.

‘One million Imperial crowns.’

Everyone in the bar caught their breath at once. No one moved. Dunk’s heart froze in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to rewind that moment and shut the crystal ball off before those words went out again.

Then Zauberer threw back his head, exposing his pale gums and his awkward rows of chipped and stained teeth, and he laughed.

Dunk looked to Spinne, then to Slick and the rest of the Hackers. He could see by the looks on their faces that they stood with him.

It took a lot to bribe a Blood Bowl player, but that kind of money was enough to start a whole new team. Still, the Hackers had become Dunk’s family over the past two years, and he knew he could trust them to have his back under any circumstances. Even the new players had trained and practised with him long enough for him to rely on them during a game. This could be no more dangerous than that.

Then Dunk saw the rest of the Bad Water’s rough and tumble patrons eyeing him, some of them counting up the odds and figuring how much they’d each get by splitting the reward up that many ways. It wouldn’t take them long to realise it would be worth chancing a horrible beating at the Hackers’ hands.

‘Guys,’ Dunk said, his voice serious and low as he clutched Spinne’s hand, ‘I think it’s time to go.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2006.
This edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Max Bertolini.

© Games Workshop Limited 2006, 2015. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-928-7

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