“It’s a ransom note!” gasped Glorfindel as his trembling
hands unrolled the parchment.
“Sherioushly?” coughed Kelm the Witless in disbelief,
spitting her champagne onto her feet. “Shomeone
actually thinksh we’d pay to get him
back?” She’d been drunk since Coach
Lysenko had vanished and, her team-mates surmised, it wasn’t out of grief. “Let’sh all of us jusht calm down, have
another gash of bubbly, and then get the hell out of here,” she slurred.
“And go where?”
Panoply Cruz snapped.
“Home, of courshh!
The Loren of Foresht!” She took another quaff from the bottle. “Foresht of Loren,” she corrected absently.
“We’ve got games scheduled!” protested Tarquin Rickman.
“She’s got a point,” sighed Duran Fiennes, shaking his head. “Look what happened against the Pants. We’re just not cut out for this sort of
thing.”
Nobody said a word, the emotions were still too raw. The jeers of the crowd had cut deeper than
the actual sting of defeat in the end, but the defeat still hurt badly
enough. The Wood Elves had been left to
shuffle off the pitch after being soundly beaten by the Skaven, without even a
single touchdown to their name. The
Skaven had simply outclassed them completely and the Green Glade Players couldn’t even blame much of it on the brutality
of their opponents. True, they had been
vicious creatures, but as Skaven went, they didn’t foul half as much as everyone
had expected.
That said, Roger the Rat
Ogre had damn-near taken Hare-Foot Hoffman’s head off with a swipe of his tail,
ruling the catcher out of the next game and leaving him with an injury that
their apothecary, Donna DeNiro, feared he may never fully recover from, but
really, that was the only serious injury.
Of course, it didn’t help that Glorfindel was still too traumatised
after his experiences against their Dark Elf opponents in the last game to
play, and losing Kelm the Witless to a brutal block in the first half by Uncle
Rycos really put a strain on the rest of the team.
The Wood Elves had barely seen their opponents’ half of the
pitch, instead spending most of the match chasing rats as they scurried past in
the opposite direction – more often than not, carrying the ball. At least the treeman, Girth Gielgud, had
finally managed to draw blood with a crushing blow to the skull of Stan Nice
Scarf. That was, however, scant
consolation for losing three touchdowns to nil.
Still, at least no-one had died…
Eventually Auburn Branagh broke the silence. “What does it say?”
Glorfindel scanned the note, straightened, cleared his
throat:
“Yea, gadzooks and forsooth! Hear I, and
my words of terrible woe! ‘Tis with a
leaden sadness upon my breast that I must with heartbroken sorrow declare this,
the words of sinister and malicious deception, writ upon this dread parchment
for all to –“
“Jusht read the bloody thing,” hiccoughed Kelm, stirring
from an impromptu doze.
“Fine,” he bristled.
“Blah, blah, blah… got your coach… blah, blah, blah… if you lose another
game… blah, blah, blah… little tiny bits… etcetera, etcetera…”
“What’s in the sack?” Branagh asked nervously. It sat on the floor between them all, a
leather bag, tied with a black bow. The
note had come attached to it.
“It says…” murmured Glorfindel, half to himself as he
scanned the ransom note. “Apparently
it’s some sort of token from the coach…”
Tarquin Rickman hoisted up the sack. “What, like proof of life? Fair enough,” he said, upending it and
unfastening the bow.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” urged Branagh, too
late. “It smells a bit like –“
Kelm wretched up half a bottle of champagne as the sack’s
contents slopped across the floor.
“Oh, gods! Is that
–?” Branagh’s hand went to his
mouth. “Did they literally just send us a sack of -?”
“Surely they could have found a better token than that!”
Rickman broke in, covering his nose. “It
could be anyone’s… expulsion!”
“Oh,” intoned Glorfindel, trying to hold the parchment
steady. “Apparently, if we lose again,
they’ll send us his bowels to go with it.”
“They want us to win every
match?” Branagh’s heart sank. “They want us to win the league?”
“Well that’s him dead then.”
Rickman shrugged.
The team mumbled their general agreement, peppered with the
occasional “bugger him” and “never liked him anyway”, their apathy and
resignation quickly rising to a chorus of dissent.
Glorfindel threw down the ransom note and raised himself
up. “Enough!” he bellowed, silencing
them all. “What do you propose we do? Nothing?
Do we abandon him? Do we just sit
on our hands?”
“I will gladly shit on my handsh!” offered Kelm, cheerfully.
“If you want to go home, then go!” he flared.
“But remember this – we may have lost a game and the crowd may be
jeering our names… but they are jeering our names.”
A few of the players looked at their feet, their cheeks
taking on a red glow.
“So what’s it to be, then, eh? A vote?”
Glorfindel pressed them. “To play, and
to win. Or to give it all up and go
home?”
They mumbled agreement, but none of their eyes met his.
“As I thought,” he said.
“So, brothers and sisters… Raise
your hands. Those in favour of returning
to the Green Glade?” He nodded grimly.
“And those in favour of playing, and winning?”
There was a long silence, broken by Kelm managing to wake
herself with her own snoring.
“So, it’s settled then,” Glorfindel sighed.
Kelm took another swig of champagne.
“I thin’ I’m going to be shick…”
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