T w e n t y S i d e d

“This next team,” says the assistant coach, “is called the Wolfenburg Diggers.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

I’m saving myself the trouble of transliterating my hilarious nasal wheeze, a symptom of whatever pox the gods brought out of cold storage to punish me for beating elves with halflings. That, or the drinking, bad food, stress, and self-loathing. But as my assistant stares at me past my mound of calcified tissue mache, I’m getting the sense that not only is he not joking, he’s probably waiting for me to repeat that last command for real. Okay. Let’s wrap up the tactical assessment so I can get some more sleep.

“Wolfenburg Diggers,” I repeat. “Is that just exactly what it sounds like? No way is that exactly what it sounds like.”

“It is…wolves, from a burg, who have dug-up undead supporting players. It’s not off the nose, exactly.”

“Is that really how other coaches operate? Did this team almost get called the Shittsville Badhobbits?”

One word to describe the mood when I walk into the locker room? Bruchenvaustlantung. It means the silence occurring when an estranged uncle arrives unexpectedly during breakfast and puts his thumb in the butter.

“Cheer up,” I say. “You’re catching first. Means we’ll get some goals in before they rip you all up like those amazons did, eh?”

My joke doesn’t get much laughs. Which is fine. I guess it wasn’t a joke. More like an unsolicited, unpleasant, and painfully accurate assessment, huh?

“You might win,” I say. “You probably won’t. But you can, you know, give ’em hell, just like I said at that game? The big one? Remember that inspirational–oh, okay, I guess that’s the call to go out on the field. Good luck! Not that–I mean, seriously, no, good luck. “

Pervince throws me a final glance on his way out of the locker room. He’s saying something to Cottar. Cottar nods.

Trust and camaraderie. I didn’t like it.

So what are we working with out here? There’s the werewolves, as advertised, and some shambling flesh creatures, so that’s zombies…oh, wait, those are wights…no, THAT’S a wight, those are zombies, and…that’s a ghoul? And is that a flesh golem?

“So his theme is what?” I say to the assistant coaches. “The scariest stuff he could find in the worst place in the world? Is that really a legitimate theme?”

“Necromantic. The team’s necromantic.”

“So what’s necromantic about…”

“It’s actually really interesting.“

“It is not. So why can’t I just throw some big fucking orcs on my halfling team, huh? Call it a Biomantic team or something? Or some knights on horseback? Or…”

“Treemen?”

“JUST thought of that, thank you, forget I asked.”

His wight is tasked with kickoff–a grave bastard in black rainment, he swipes a bulky boot into the ball. It spins flush with midfield, far on my right side, just out of easy reach for a lunchbox. And as my halflings flutter into movement, a bad horror novel happens. Werewolves leap. Zombies charge. Flesh golems thunder over the open pitch. Ghouls gambol, bloodied jaws hanging open, claws spread.

So I brought halflings today.

Dudo Heathertoe makes it to the ball, realizes that his backup has been canceled, gulps visibly. A wave of rotting flesh is already surging toward him with precious little resistance between them and his terrified halfling hide. The bad news is, his lunchbox is not going to be meeting him anytime soon. I’ll be happy to tell him the good news once he avoids being eaten. He runs like his life depends on it, which makes intuitive sense–straight into the trunk of the treeman who’d backed up from the brawl to meet him. It scoops him from the pitch and flings him up–up–upish–down–he should not be going down that fast shit.

Dudo scrambles up to his feet dazed and confused. Is this the end zone? No. That’s the end zone all the way over there. He’s about six feet from where he was when he was thrown, and…he checks over his shoulder. Yep. That’s a werewolf right there about to eat him. He yelps and starts running with the wolf hot breaths away from him, and let me tell you, halflings didn’t invent slingshots and factory farming because they’re high on the natural food chain.

“Come on, let’s help him!” yells Pervince. Easy for him to say, since he’s…oh. No, they’re actually all being menaced by a horde of quasi-undead freaks. It is actually incredibly hard to say that. Some of the halflings closer to the center try to push through the mass of fur and teeth, and I see two little halfling helmets streaking down the pitch–and one skidding the other way, covered in blood.

Meanwhile, Dudo looks over his shoulder just in time to celebrate a final moment of crapping in something besides a bedpan. Then the ball pops up in the air like a champagne cork at the Wolfenburg Digger’s celebratory feast and Dudo thuds down like the main course.

The werewolf latches onto the ball and lopes on all fours down the embattled left side of the field. Remember those two halflings who made it through? Well, they made it through as far as the ghouls, wights, zombies, and other werewolf, the last of which is acting as a kind of cowcatcher. Redundant werewolves–just one of many things this team isn’t equipped to handle. My boys are beaten back by zombies–another couple halflings break through the line to fail alongside their buddies–Bob Quickfeet lopes to block the werewolf train, and the lead wolf pounces on him…

BAM. Quickfeet goes down, but something happens the crowd doesn’t see and the werewolf couldn’t expect. I won’t go into detail, but if that wolf hadn’t gone out and gotten neutered already–he’s welcome. Both players skid down in a tangle of limbs and horrible limbs, and the other wolf, the ball carrier, is suddenly pulled up short with three of my halflings coming around on him. He roars. He looks for an opening. He doesn’t see the cleat coming for his ear and he probably wouldn’t believe it if he did, and when he’s let go of the ball another halfling drops under a furious golem swipe and grabs it and breaks free for the end zone…

He’s tripped.

Two halflings race out of the sudden localized zombie apocalypse just in time to see a wight, mere feet from his own end zone, bending down to pick up the ball like this hasn’t happened since he was alive and slaughtering halflings. We can all hear the hoarse and chilling laugh coming from his lifeless throat, and he charges back to the center with reckless abandon.

I guess my halfling blockers are a little lower than he expected.

He’s clattering into a heap of haunted armor, and the ball is going–back to his end zone, courtesy of my boy Cottar. It’s all over before a few not-paid-for-this looking apothecaries have disentangled his wolf from my he-wolf at midfield. Touchdown.

“Go give them a halftime speech,” I tell my assistant.

“Don’t you usually do that?”

“Haven’t you usually got a job that isn’t asking me that question?”

“I don’t–I’m sorry, I can’t actually–“

“Look, I’m sick. Therefore, you give the speech.”

“Pervince asked–“

“Go give the speech!”

So presumably that goes fine, the players get back onto the field, we’re ready to roll. We kick off into his decidedly angry-lookin’ formation. His wolf, still bloodied from the last tangle, dives to catch the kickoff–and I don’t know whether to blame his shitty catching or our shitty punting, but he misses it by several yards. My halflings squeeze through his horrorshow and Cottar, that beautiful fearless bastard, is headed toward the ball/wolf situation like a pig who’s smelled a delicious bacon breakfast. He slides past the furiously groping claws and gets his mitts on the ball. The wolf, realizing this, is not amused. Cottar is just about to run for the end zone when he hears the growl and turns to stare straight down the jaws of the wolf, sharp and unstoppable as death…

Cottar throws a headbutt.

They’re both down in a symphony of squeals and blood spurts, and my boy Broccoli leaps over the melee to pound the ball home. Touchdown two. I’ll never again doubt Cottar’s got guts. I mean, I can see them right now. The apothecary’s poking them with his healin’ stick.

So we win this one, too? Huh.

 

 

Hm.

Apropos of nothing, I go straight to my office and grind my teeth for six hours straight.

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.