“Chapter 11

It was a dark and stormy night. Not stormy enough to go midnight surfing, perhaps, but certainly atmospheric enough for Da Hui’s first ever nighttime Bloodbowl match.

It had been Ebeneezer’s idea, as a way to attract some new fans - the sort who didn’t really enjoy sunlight, or even daylight for that matter.
“There’s plenty of them out there,” he had explained. “Night owls, lurkers, creatures of the night, shift workers. People like that love a good game of Bloodbowl just as much as the sun-worshippers. But most of them never get to see more than the occasional indoor bash in one of the dwarf halls or dark elf dungeon arenas. But think how many of them would flock to see a match actually out in the open, under the stars. I bet we’d even fill the stand.”
Coach Robsson had looked across at the stand. It was old and rotten and had been badly made in the first place. The chances were, if they put more than a couple of hundred people in it, it would collapse. Still, he’d told himself, an accident like that might provide him with a few spare players…or maybe a couple of cheerleaders. He really wanted some cheerleaders. They made a team look professional in a way that even fancy new kit couldn’t. Fancy new kit - that was something else on his to-do list. Clothes that weren’t torn and stained and covered in mould, armour that was more metal than rust… They would wear black, of course. And they would have a logo. And they would set up a stall at the side of the pitch selling tunics and caps with the logo embroidered onto them, and the fans could buy them for twice, or even three times the cost of a plain one.
“Well?” Ebeneezer had asked. “What do you think?”
“Definitely three times,” Robsson replied, still in his own little reverie. “And we’ll get Tom to design the logo. Something simple, and yet bold.”
“I mean about the night match.”
Robsson could already see the strong-boxes filled with gold sitting in a row against the wall of his new office. “Let’s do it.”


* * *


“My gods,” Robsson said, shading his eyes from the glare. “How bright are those fires?”
Ebeneezer had set up large brazers all around the edge of the field and they were roaring with a fury that would put the average chaos team to shame. “I thought it would help the fans to see the action.”
“Well maybe it will,” Robsson replied, but the players can’t see a damn thing for the glare. Not to mention the heat. Sanjfrntyg’s bag of spares is starting to smell like Saturday night at Robbo’s Kebab Parlour.”
“Maybe,” Ebeneezer said, defensively. “But just look at all those fans.”
Robsson looked. The stand was groaning - even louder than the disreputable bunch of misfits piled into it - but Robsson had to admit there were quite a lot of them.
“So who have you found for us to play on this most auspicious occasion?”
“Well,” Ebeneezer told him. “They’re dark elves.”
“Dark elves?” Robsson looked hopeful. “Any cheerleaders?”
Ebeneezer shook his head.
“What? What kind of self-respecting dark elf coach doesn’t have cheerleaders? I thought that was the whole point of dark elves? Who is this bunch of kill-joys then?”
They’re called Galaga. Coach is Gary_Gygax. Ring any bells?”
“Vaguely. Something about flying goblins, if I remember.”
“Well, there’s none of those tonight, only dark elves.”
“Without cheerleaders?”
“Yes, without cheerleaders.”

As it turned out, cheerleaders would have been pointless anyway, as none of the players, or coaching staff, could see much of anything due to the raging infernos that ringed the pitch. As far as Robsson could tell, Da Hui kicked off, and then there seemed to be a lot of players running into each other or standing around looking vague and pointing in the wrong direction. For long minutes nothing seemed to be happening, and if the elves still had the ball, then they were keeping it well hidden because he had no idea where it was. And then, when it finally did appear, it was already in Da Hui’s endzone.
“How did that happen?” he demanded, but his players simply shrugged and shook their heads which, for the zombies, didn’t really mean anything as this was just how they always walked.

With time running out in the first half, Da Hui set up to receive.
“Who’s that?” Ebeneezer asked, pointing to one of the players on the line of scrimmage. “Is he one of ours?”
“He is for the moment,” Robsson replied. “His name’s J Earlice. I used to know him back in the old days, before he… well, when he was still an elf. I bumped into him earlier. He’s fallen on hard times recently and was trying to beg the price of a ticket for the game. I thought I’d give him a try-out, you know, for old-time’s sake.”
“Is he any good?”
“Not really, no. But he can stand there and get hit like the best of them, and he only wanted one of our replica team tunics in return.”
“We don’t have any replica team tunics.”
“Shhh! He’ll hear you.”

As far as Robsson could tell, the second half got underway when the referee blew his whistle. There was certainly a lot of shouting suddenly, and Da Hui seemed to have the ball. But all the action was taking place on the far side of the field and the glare of the fires meant he could only see the occasional snippet of action. A few players were lying down. One or two of them seemed to be dark elves. There was a cheer. Then a groan. Then another cheer. Then a much bigger cheer. Da Hui had scored. Then the fans started jumping up and down and waving their arms around. Then the stand collapsed.

How the rest of the game managed to get played was anybody’s guess. For once there was more chaos off the field than there was on it and Galaga made good use of it to sneak in a cunning last-minute touchdown to win the game.

“Nice one,” Gary_Gygax said as he shook hands - and even patted Robsson on the back - after the final whistle had been blown. “A fun match, though I do think you might want to go easy on the lighting next time out.” He fanned himself. “Phew, what a scorcher, as they say. Oh, and maybe you might think about replacing that stand before our next match. Not sure our fans were too impressed with it.”
“Yeah, well I’m not sure our fans were too impressed with your cheerleaders,” Robsson replied. “Maybe you should sort that out before our next match.”
“What? We don’t have any cheerleaders.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, neither did you,” the dark elf replied.
“Oh yeah?” Robsson strode purposefully over to the remnants of the collapsed stand, reached in to the pile of shattered timbers and dragged out two of the dead bodies by their legs. “We do now,” he said triumphantly, shaking the corpses vigorously as if trying to make them dance.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And probably some more players as well, by the look of it. What have you got?”
“To get out of here,” Gary-Gygax said with a grimace. “Right now.””