DISMEMBER THE TITANS
Graeme Lyon


 	Blood Bowl is back and it’s in Graeme Lyon’s safe hands. Well versed in the nature of the gridiron, Graeme’s sure-footed blend of dark humour and brilliant characterisation effortlessly captures the nefariousness of the professional scene. Get ready, sports fans, this is one hit you won’t want to miss.

 
 
 	 
 


 	Blood soaked the astrogranite of the Light’s Hope Stadium.
 	This in itself wasn’t unusual. Nuffle knows I’ve spilled plenty myself in the course of countless Blood Bowl matches – both mine and various opponents’. But this was a little different. For a start, it wasn’t match day. The stadium wasn’t filled with the noise (and smell) of cheering fans, and I wasn’t wearing my crimson and white Talabheim Titans kit and facing off against whoever hoped to take the team down a peg or two this week. 
 	And usually, when Blood Bowl players were left with missing limbs, it was obvious why, and who had torn the offending extremity off.
 	The corpse of Hans Kniezehen had been carefully laid on the field in the spot he usually occupied at the start of a game. It was deliberate and provocative. And in the case of Johann Walsh, star Catcher and my best friend, what it provoked was a seemingly never-ending stream of vomit. Though, to be fair, that was probably because of the missing limbs and the fact that most of Hans’ innards were spread in a six-feet radius around him.
 	The stench was terrible – the rich copper tang of blood mixed with the unmistakable smell of voided bowels. It was like being downwind of a beastman just before laundry day. Most of the team, and our head coach Gerritt Vanderwald, were staying as far away as possible from the scene of the crime. 
 	At least, I assumed it was a crime, because it seemed quite unlikely that Hans had accidentally disembowelled himself and removed his own arms and legs. 
 	Ghurg the ogre was standing protectively over Johann as he emptied his stomach onto the pitch, and Gerhardt, the team’s water boy and unofficial mascot, had been sent to the nearest watchhouse to get someone to come and look at the scene.
 	I wasn’t holding out much hope that they would come. They hadn’t for the previous two disturbingly similar deaths. The murder of relatively wealthy Blood Bowl players didn’t tend to bother the watch much, and it really didn’t help that the local watch commander was a diehard fan of our local rivals, the Talabec Taleutens. After the last death, I’d had a blazing row with him when he shrugged and said it would just make the next Titans–Taleutens game an easier win for his boys. If Ghurg hadn’t picked me up and carried me away, I’d have committed murder myself. Bet that one would have led to an arrest.
 	I was as near to the corpse as I could bear to go, a handkerchief over my nose and mouth in a vain attempt to smother the smell. 
 	‘Find anything, Juliana?’ I turned to see a chalk-white Johann walking towards me, Ghurg behind him like a huge and imposing bodyguard. A diminutive goblin sat atop the ogre’s shoulders. How we’d adopted the goblin was a long story, but he was useful on occasion. Just now he was leaning down to rub Johann’s shoulders. It would have made me laugh if I hadn’t been standing almost in the guts of a fellow player.
 	‘Looks the same as the others to me. Arms and legs missing, intestines…’ I trailed off as I saw Johann gag. ‘Well, you know. Nothing obviously different. Nothing that hints who it might be.’
 	‘Three,’ Johann said, pain in his voice. ‘Three of our friends dead, and we have no idea who’s doing it or why. Who could be this cruel?’
 	I considered reeling off a list, starting with at least a dozen Blood Bowl players I could think of, some of them standing not thirty feet away, but I bit my tongue. This went beyond the usual casual violence of the game. There was something almost ritual and occult about it. Something disturbing.
 	‘Someone who hates us, I would guess,’ I said. ‘Someone who knows their way around a knife. Someone with a strong stomach as well.’
 	I sighed in frustration. ‘We still don’t even know why the killer chose those three, how he found them, how he incapacitated them… It’s not like any of them are pushovers.’
 	I gestured over to a pair of the team’s cleaning crew who’d been hanging around since they found the body. They both seemed fine – but then, our cleaners had to have strong stomachs, especially for cleaning out the privy when we hosted a dwarf team. All that ale did funny things to their bodies. 
 	‘There’s not much point in waiting,’ I told them. ‘Get the body down to the infirmary.’
 	They started loading the corpse onto a stretcher, trying hard not to step in the spread innards and fluids, and failing miserably. After a minute or two, they were joined by a stooped, gaunt man in a white coat, who kept glancing over at us as he issued them with commands.
 	‘We do have one small advantage on our side this time,’ I said with false cheer.
 	‘What’s that?’ asked Johann miserably, trying not to look in the direction of the corpse.
 	‘Our new team apothecary,’ I said, pointing over at the white-coated figure. ‘I think he used to work in a morgue somewhere down south. Maybe he can find some clues on the body.’
 	Johann looked at me warily. ‘Please tell me you don’t want to be there while he… does whatever he does with it.’
 	‘You know me, Johann,’ I replied. ‘I never turn down a chance to watch an expert at work.’
 	Johann did know me, better than anyone, just as I knew him. That had been the case for nearly two years, ever since the body-swapping incident. I’d been a cheerleader then, dreaming of being on the pitch tackling orcs rather than by the side shouting vapid slogans and being leered at by half the crowd. 
 	I’d had my chance when an incompetent wizard had cast a spell that swapped my mind into Johann’s body and vice versa. I’d scored a winning touchdown and once the mess had been sorted out and I was back in my own skin, I was quickly signed up by an Amazon coach who’d been watching the game. 
 	I spent a season over the sea in the Lustria League learning how to be a blitzer from some of the best in the business, but the warm climate didn’t agree with me and I returned to Talabheim, where Johann convinced the Titans’ owners to take a risk on a female player – one of the very few in the Old World. I still didn’t know quite what he’d done to get me on the team – he’d never told me, no matter how many times I’d asked – but I remained grateful. 
 	The owners were grateful now too – the combination of my blitzing ability (and the surprise a lot of players felt seeing a small human woman barrelling towards them) and Johann’s well-honed catching skills had made us a formidable pair. The fact that we could often get a sense of what the other was thinking helped a lot. Commentators had started referring to us as a pair more often than not, and we’d even had a few sponsorship deals as a double act – though the number of McMurty’s spamburgers we’d had to eat for a Cabalvision advert had put us both off endorsements for a while.
 	That aside, we worked well together and with us leading the squad, the Titans were in serious danger of becoming a team people outside Talabheim paid attention to. Another season like this one and we might even make a dent in one of the major tournaments. 
 	If we had any players left, that was. With three dead in two weeks – and none of them on the gridiron – things were looking distinctly shaky.
 	The infirmary was in the basement beneath the stadium, through a winding series of service corridors. It sat directly below the home team dugout, with a trapdoor and elevator that could be used to lower injured players for treatment. When they were beyond help, or if the player was particularly unpopular with the rest of the team, the elevator stayed at the bottom and the body was just pushed down through the trapdoor.
 	‘I hate it down here,’ muttered Johann. ‘It twists and turns so much you could play Dungeonbowl in it.’
 	‘That’s not a bad idea, actually,’ I said. ‘It would be something a bit different for the fans. Maybe a bit tight for the camra wizards though. They’d be right in the thick of the action, and you know how they hate getting their robes dirty.’
 	‘That was one time,’ said Johann. ‘And I paid for a new set when the blood wouldn’t wash out.’
 	I glanced at him and saw a thin, slightly pained smile on his face. I knew he appreciated my attempts to keep the mood light even in the face of tragedy. 
 	We reached the open door of the infirmary and I stopped, giving a tentative knock on the frame. Inside, a thin, reedy voice said, ‘Come in.’ I glanced back at Johann, and he nodded and stepped inside.
 	The smell of the open corpse on the metal table in the room’s centre was almost masked by the exotic scent emanating from a dozen or so censers that had been strung around the walls. Each had a burning candle hanging beneath it, and was stuffed with herbs. I moved to the closest and sniffed it curiously. I couldn’t place the smell.
 	‘Ah, interested in my counter-microbials, are you? Trade secret recipe, I’m afraid. The Guild of Morticians would be most upset if I gave that away.’ 
 	I turned to face the new apothecary. Close up, he seemed quite short, possibly because he walked with a hunch, and he was very slender, to the point of being gaunt. His pinched, pointed face gave him a vaguely sinister look, and though he was well-dressed in clothes that were clearly very expensive given their cut, there was something about him that gave me the strangest sense of shabbiness.
 	‘I am Doctor Werner von Blaustein,’ he said, bowing slightly. ‘And you need no introductions, of course. Johann Walsh and Juliana Tainer. “Beauty and the Beast”, Spike! Magazine calls you, I believe.’
 	‘Only because Johann’s so pretty,’ I said.
 	‘And because of the way you broke their reporter’s wrist when he grabbed your bum,’ Johann added.
 	‘I gave him a warning first. He chose not to listen.’
 	The apothecary laughed hollowly. ‘I see your reputation as a double act off the field as well as on is well earned. I don’t want to appear prurient, but tell me, is there more than mere friendship here, hmm?’ 
 	‘Yes,’ said Johann sharply. ‘Juliana is like my sister.’ He emphasised the last word strongly. We were both sick of getting that question from, well, pretty much everyone. Not to mention being splashed on the sports pages whenever we were out in public together, as if that was at all relevant to the game.
 	Von Blaustein got the hint. He coughed. ‘I used to have a sister,’ he said, then, as an awkward silence fell, he moved on to business. ‘I’ve had a preliminary look at the body of your erstwhile comrade,’ he said. ‘I’d say he’s been dead for about six hours, and that he died from exsanguination as a result of the dissection of his torso and removal of his limbs.’
 	It took me a moment to translate the medical terms – I’d never been much for biology – and I’m sure my face must have mirrored Johann’s as he did the same and paled. 
 	‘You mean he was alive when he was cut up?’ I asked in horror.
 	‘Oh, absolutely,’ said the apothecary.
 	‘What kind of person could do that?’ asked Johann.
 	Von Blaustein answered the rhetorical question as he bent over the body and examined it more closely. I saw Johann turn away and study the wall. ‘One with training and some considerable skill. The cuts are clean and made in strategic places, such as they would be in a limb for transplant. The removal of the intestines was performed by a practised hand. All in all, I’d say that you’re looking for a surgeon. In fact, looking more closely, I would say…’
 	He paused, raised a finger and stepped over to a door on the other side of the infirmary that I recalled led to his office. He emerged a moment later carrying a large wooden box. ‘What do you know of surgical knives?’ he asked.
 	‘Nothing,’ I answered.
 	He nodded. ‘Anyone who practices surgery, on the living or dead, will have a highly prized set of knives and scalpels. These are mine.’ He opened the box and I peered inside at a set of a dozen pristine blades of various shapes and sizes, some of them frankly terrifying. He pulled a couple out and bent over the corpse again. He seemed to be comparing the blades to the cuts on the torso and where arms and legs had once been.
 	‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
 	‘Applying scientific method,’ he said. ‘I have a theory, and I’m gathering evidence. And I’m pleased – or perhaps that’s not quite the right word – to say that I am quite certain the cuts were applied with blades very much like these. In fact, they may have been exactly these blades. I don’t suppose my predecessor had a grudge against the team at all?’
 	I laughed. ‘He didn’t last here long enough. The last three have all upped sticks and gone within a few weeks of starting. No idea where. They just cleared their desks and vanished in the middle of the night.’
 	Von Blaustein raised a narrow eyebrow. ‘How intriguing. I hope I last a little longer than them.’ He looked thoughtful for a second. ‘You intend to investigate these crimes?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘In that case, I’d look at people who have reason to hate the Talabheim Titans. I assume your security team keeps any threatening letters the team has received, hmm?’ 
 	Going through the hate mail was a worryingly long and tedious task. We drafted in Gerhardt to help, and Doctor von Blaustein hung around as well after he’d finished whatever he was doing with Hans’ body. It turned out that for every fan who loved the Titans there was another who would happily stab half the team to death for extremely spurious reasons. We’d been there for hours before we had any sort of a breakthrough.
 	‘Here’s one for Hans,’ said Johann, waving a piece of parchment. ‘Says he should die because he missed with that pass in the Nuln Oilers game a few months back and bruised Karolina’s face with the ball. I guess this guy is a big fan of hers.’
 	I glanced at the signature and rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah, I know that one. He’s gone through an obsession with every cheerleader on the squad, myself included. He’s harmless though. Also definitely doesn’t have the skills we’re looking for. He can barely dress himself.’
 	‘What about this one?’ piped up Gerhardt from the corner of the room, where he was cross-legged on the floor surrounded by parchment next to the apothecary, who seemed sound asleep. ‘I know the name. He’s a barber in the old town who also does surgery. He took out my uncle’s tooth a year or two back. Took half his jaw with it too.’
 	Johann leaned over and grabbed the parchment from Gerhardt’s hand. He gave it a scan and nodded. ‘Looks promising,’ he said. ‘Some very… vivid imagery in here. Including disembowelling. One to check out, I think.’
 	‘Does he threaten anyone in particular?’ I asked.
 	‘The whole team in general. Seems to think we’re responsible for a reduction in his business for reasons he doesn’t really make clear. Seems a bit mad, to be honest.’
 	‘Old town, you say?’ I asked Gerhardt. The boy nodded. 
 	‘Yeah. Down by the big warehouses. He converted one into his shop and surgery.’
 	‘Should we pay him a visit?’ I asked Johann. He thought for a moment and shook his head.
 	‘Could be dangerous. I think we need to keep an eye on him instead. Watch his shop and see if we can catch him leaving and follow him.’
 	I’m not entirely sure what I expected from a stakeout. The word conjured scenes of sitting in a coach – borrowed from the stadium for the night, with a quick covering of mud obscuring the team logo on the side and the horse sent back with Gerhardt so it wouldn’t draw attention – trading wisecracks with Johann and keeping an eagle eye for anything going on in the barber’s shop. Johann wasn’t convinced it would be quite as exciting.
 	‘I think you’ve been watching too much of Zavant Konniger’s Mystery Hour on Cabalvision,’ he grumbled. 
 	He was right.
 	The first hour was reasonably good fun. Johann brought snacks, and it was a bit like a two-person party in a cramped and smelly carriage. We peered out the windows through the rain towards the dark barber shop and gossiped about the latest ridiculous rumours we’d heard. The novelty soon wore off though. Perching on the uncomfortable bench in the back to see out the window put my leg to sleep. 
 	We spent a while working out a new way of communicating on the field – a system of taps on our armour that the other could see, with different plays and suggestions for different combinations of taps. That took up a good while, but as the hours wore on, my eyes started to close – but I couldn’t let myself drift off, not least because Johann was already out for the count, having fallen asleep shortly after we came up with the tap for buying the other time for a risky play.
 	At some point, sleep overcame me. I woke to find light piercing the clouds. The rain had stopped during the night, and the grimy old district of the city looked almost pretty in the morning sunshine. My head was also cloudy, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why I was in a carriage on the street with Johann snoring beside me. When it hit me, I sat bolt upright, hitting my head on the carriage ceiling, which made me swear loudly.
 	‘Not the pliers!’ shouted Johann as he was shocked from his slumber. He shook his head and looked around. ‘Juliana? What are we– oh! The stakeout. What time is it?’
 	I wasn’t quite sure, but one thing seemed certain – it was late enough that the barber shop should have opened, but it was still dark inside. I swore again and opened the doors of the coach, hopping out. Johann followed, blinking blearily up at the sun.
 	I marched over to the door of the barber shop, the expression on my face obviously enough to stop the people on the street from getting in my way. I banged hard on the door, which yawned open. Inside was a small room with a couple of chairs in front of mirrors, and a door at the back. I moved cautiously towards that, and tentatively pushed it open. A smell hit me, a rich metallic stench that was becoming all too familiar, with another undercurrent that I couldn’t quite place. It was almost like spoiled fruit.
 	Cautiously, I stepped inside, Johann following behind. ‘Not another one,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Who do you think it is this time?’
 	I didn’t answer. The inside of the back room was large and wreathed in shadows. In the light from the door, I could see a dentist’s chair with its back to us. Blood soaked the ground around it, and I thought I could see intestines snaking down from the seat. I pulled up my top, over my mouth and nose, moved towards the chair and slowly turned it around, ­bracing myself for the sight of another one of my teammates with his insides in the wrong place. 
 	I got half of what I expected. 
 	In front of me was another eviscerated corpse, with arms and legs missing, but it neither wore the crimson and white of the Talabheim Titans, nor did it have a face I recognised. It was a heavy-set man, past the prime of his life (well, obviously, but even before he died, he was getting on a bit) with a full greying beard and shaved head. He’d clearly been well muscled once, but it had gone to fat.
 	‘Who is that?’ asked Johann, the mystery obviously overwhelming his usual physical reaction.
 	‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘that it’s our suspect.’
 	‘Ah. That’s awkward. Unless you think he cut himself open.’
 	‘I’ve seen stranger things,’ I mused. ‘But I think we can probably rule that out, unless he somehow hid his arms and legs before he bled to death.’ I looked back into the shop and saw an oil lantern sitting on a low bench beneath the window, and pointed to it. ‘Light that, will you? I want a closer look at this.’
 	‘Why do you always want a closer look?’ he asked, as he grabbed the lamp and a long match from the box next to it, and lit it with shaky hands. He held it up and the light illuminated more of the shop… including something in the now receding shadows. Something that moved.
 	I jumped, and bumped the chair. The remnants of the corpse fell forward and slumped to the ground. Innards ­scattered over the floor, blood and other bodily fluids sloshing onto – and into – my shoes. A pair of expensive Orcidas, limited edition, ruined. And whatever was in the shadows started to come towards us.
 	A low moan echoed through the space, and a figure emerged, arms outstretched. It was followed by another, and then more. They were slow and shambling. I suddenly realised what that other scent was that I’d been unable to place: the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh that I’d experienced playing Blood Bowl against undead teams. The figures were zombies.
 	As they came closer to the light, I saw that they were unlike the zombies I’d seen on the field. Those had clearly been humans who had died and been resurrected through dark magic. Flesh sloughing from bone and rotting teeth peering from behind peeled-back lips had been hideous enough, but what was in front of us now was an order of magnitude worse.
 	Each of these creatures seemed to have been constructed – there was no other word for it – from a variety of different corpses. Mismatched limbs had been neatly stitched to torsos in a fusion of magic and mad science that I’d only witnessed before in some of the creations that unscrupulous skaven teams tried to sneak onto the pitch.
 	Horror froze me in place, and I guessed it was the same for Johann – even the shaking of the lantern light had stopped. The exit was behind us, but we couldn’t just leave and let the stitched-together zombies escape onto the street. There would be carnage. As I tried to formulate a plan, instinct took over. This was just like a game of Blood Bowl, and we could win it, Johann and I. 
 	‘Johann, long pass!’ I yelled before barrelling forward. I don’t think I took the zombies by surprise, exactly – that feeling was probably beyond them now – but they certainly didn’t have a chance to grab me as I pushed them aside. One grasping arm came close, and I noted a faded word emblazoned on it that seemed familiar, but that thought could wait. When I reached the far wall, I turned and shouted, ‘Now!’
 	Johann was a Catcher, not a Thrower, but he made the pass of his life with that lantern. It arced over the heads of the zombies, trailing sparks, and I caught it out of the air by the handle, and swung it into the body of the nearest creature. It smashed and splashed the zombie with burning oil. The patchwork undead monster went up in flames like dry tinder. The fire spread quickly, and I went low, dodging between their legs and grabbing Johann as I passed him. We sprinted through the door and Johann slammed it shut behind us. We quickly exited the shop, watching through the dirty window as the zombies burst through the back door, setting the fixtures and fittings aflame. In short order, the entire building was ablaze, and it looked like the fire might spread to adjacent structures. 
 	I looked at Johann, who tore his eyes away from the conflagration and fixed them on mine.
 	‘After my job, are you?’ he asked. ‘That was a hell of a catch.’
 	I smiled, but only briefly. ‘We should get out of here before we’re blamed for this fire,’ I said, and headed away from the scene. We were being ignored for now as people ran for water, ran for help or just ran around in a panic, but that wouldn’t last. The very last thing we needed just now was another mention in the gossip columns. We left the carriage. Without the horse, we had no way to get it back, and it would just draw attention. 
 	As we walked back in the direction of the stadium, the adrenaline high subsided and I remembered what I’d seen on the arm of one of the zombies.
 	‘Johann?’
 	‘Yeah?’
 	‘Hans had a tattoo on his arm, didn’t he?’
 	Johann let out a little laugh. ‘Yeah. He got it on a drunken night out after we beat the Barak Varr Pirates. He asked for “Mother”, but he was slurring, and he’d lost some teeth during the game when a Trollslayer hit him, so the tattooist didn’t understand what he was saying.’
 	‘That’s what I thought,’ I said.
 	‘Why do you ask?’
 	I paused for a moment before I answered. ‘Because I really don’t think there’s likely to be more than one arm in Talabheim with “Muffer” tattooed on it.’
 	‘You’re sure it was that tattoo?’ Johann asked for roughly the hundredth time as we entered the Light’s Hope Stadium and started navigating the corridors towards the Titans’ dugout.
 	‘Unmistakably, and if you ask me again, you’ll be getting a broken kneecap,’ I said firmly.
 	‘What’s that about a broken kneecap?’ Doctor von Blaustein asked, emerging from a corner in front of us. I thought I saw him quickly stuff something into his pocket, but I paid it no mind.
 	‘Just a hypothetical break,’ Johann told him as we continued walking and he fell into step with us.
 	Von Blaustein smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘Not much I can do about hypothetical injuries, I suppose. How did your surveillance go?’
 	I shook my head. ‘Not well. The barber wasn’t the killer.’
 	‘Oh, and how do you know?’
 	‘He was dead and missing–’
 	The last words were knocked from me as we came up through the dugout and stepped onto the field… where another Titans player was dead.
 	‘He looked a lot like that, actually,’ said Johann, his voice devoid of any humour whatsoever.
 	Von Blaustein ordered us down to his office while he arranged for the body to be brought to what I could only think of now as the morgue. He arrived a short while later and bustled around the small space making tea. I peered at the walls, which were filled with hand-drawn anatomical diagrams, many of them painted with delicate watercolours. The apothecary must have seen my interest.
 	‘I did those myself during my studies,’ he said. ‘The human body is a fascinating thing, and the bodies of other races even more so.’ He pointed to the wall behind me, where cross-sections of an orc, a skaven and a beastman were displayed. ‘Never been able to get permission to autopsy an elf or dwarf,’ he mused. ‘And I’d love to see what a lizardman is like inside.’
 	‘Mushy, in my experience,’ I said absent-mindedly, thinking back to my time in the Lustria League.
 	‘It’s astonishing how many similarities there are between the various species under the skin,’ von Blaustein said, handing me a large mug of steaming tea, and then passing another to Johann. ‘It’s curious, isn’t it, that despite the similarities only humans seem to take to being raised as undead?’
 	‘Undead?’ Johann asked, glancing at me. What had brought on this abrupt turn in the conversation?
 	‘Yes,’ the apothecary said. ‘You only ever see human zombies and skeletons in Blood Bowl teams, don’t you? And have you ever met a dwarf vampire or orc werewolf?’
 	I relaxed and took a long sip of my tea. It was much sweeter than I liked, and had a herbal flavour I didn’t recognise, but I was hardly a tea connoisseur. I sat back and looked at Johann as he swallowed half his mug of tea in one long gulp, only half listening as von Blaustein continued.
 	‘I’d imagine all the patchwork zombies you encountered in that barber shop were made entirely with human parts as well, weren’t they?’
 	It took a minute for what he’d said to filter through. Johann was quicker than me. He sat up sharply, spilling some of the remnants of his tea and wincing as it scalded his hand. ‘How do you know there were zombies?’ he asked cautiously, setting the mug on the desk.
 	‘I heard you mention them when we met in the corridors,’ the apothecary said. I thought back. It was possible – it had been a long morning so far, and my memory of exactly what had been said was hazy. But Johann was staring at von Blaustein now. 
 	‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We haven’t used the word “zombie” anywhere near you. And we certainly never mentioned that they were made up of different parts.’
 	Von Blaustein smiled again, though he seemed very far away now, as if I were watching him through a long, dark tunnel. He straightened himself up, and I realised for the first time that he was quite tall when he wasn’t hunching over.
 	‘Hunching is a funny word,’ I slurred, though I wasn’t sure why.
 	Johann looked at me in alarm. ‘Juliana, what’s wrong?’
 	‘I think I’m drunked,’ I grinned at him. ‘Nonono. Not drunked. Drugged.’
 	I felt like I needed a little sleep now, and my body seemed to agree, because I was lying on the floor, and I didn’t remember telling it to go there. I looked up at Johann, who had launched himself out of his chair, but he seemed to be falling like a treeman after a hard block, verrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly and at a funny angle. Or maybe I was at a funny angle. It was hard to tell, and then Johann had fallen on top of me and his body was warm and everything went dark.
 	I opened my eyes, and it was still dark.
 	I blinked several times, and my eyes started to adjust to the gloom. My brain took longer to get into gear. I felt fuzzy. How much had I had to drink? I couldn’t even remember being anywhere near an inn, let alone drinking anything with a little umbrella in it. I remembered… a cup of sweet tea. In an office. With… a serial killer. I swore loudly and repeatedly and tried to sit up, but realised that something was holding my wrists and ankles tightly. Something cold, dry and papery. Something that smelled dangerously familiar. I blinked again and looked around. And screamed.
 	I was lying on a long stone table, and my arms and legs were being held in literal death grips – by patchwork zombies. 
 	‘You’re awake then,’ came Johann’s voice from nearby. Relief flooded through me.
 	‘Johann, where are we?’ I asked.
 	‘Best I can tell, Doctor von Blaustein’s murder den. He’s been in and out, muttering to himself.’
 	‘Do you have a plan to get out?’
 	‘Maybe. I–’
 	The banging of a door somewhere above us cut Johann off, and I looked up to see the light of a lantern, a hooded figure carrying it. I heard booted footsteps banging down rickety wooden stairs, and a moment later the traitorous apothecary stood before us, bathed in the lantern light. He had swapped his white coat for a long black robe, and with his gaunt features and stooped gait, he looked every inch the necromancer I now knew him to be.
 	‘I thought I heard you talking,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’
 	‘If you’re sorry, you can let us go,’ snapped Johann.
 	‘Not that sorry, dear boy,’ he laughed. ‘I’m afraid you’ll both have to die tonight. On the plus side, you’ll both provide excellent parts for my players.’
 	‘Your players?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’
 	‘Allow me to explain,’ he said. ‘It all began some twenty years ago, right here in Talabheim. I grew up in the city, you see – in this very house, in fact. The middle child and youngest son of the venerable von Blaustein family. And I was immensely talented. My tutors couldn’t keep up with me, I outclassed great thinkers at my family’s banquets. I was, even if I say so myself, a prodigy. But I wanted only one thing. Can you guess what, hmm?’
 	‘To be a murdering psychopath?’ Johann growled.
 	‘I’m no psychopath, young Johann. I kill only in service to my greater goal. That I enjoy it is just an added bonus. No, I wanted only to play Blood Bowl for my favourite team. The mighty Talabheim Titans. This was back in the glory days of the NAF, you understand, when the Titans were a truly world-class team. Not the rabble we have now.’
 	I bristled at the insult and tried to pull my arms away from their restraints, but the gripping hands were too firm. 
 	‘I had every piece of merchandise the team sold. I attended every game, home and away. I donated huge amounts of my father’s money to the team’s coffers. So when open tryouts came up, I was sure that my contributions would be enough to get my foot in the door. I went along, in the finest gear money could buy…’
 	He trailed off and went silent. I had a funny feeling that I knew what was coming next.
 	‘And you were totally humiliated, weren’t you? Failed miserably, I’m guessing?’
 	Von Blaustein slammed his fist down on the stone slab I was held against. ‘My name should have been enough. My money. But I was told none of that mattered. Only skill! I could have learned the skills. I just needed the opportunity, and I should have been given it! Instead I was laughed off the pitch. It was clear what I needed to do.’
 	‘Practise and become a better player?’ said Johann.
 	‘After such a humiliation? No,’ spat the necromancer. ‘I had to get my revenge. No one could be allowed to get away with treating me like that. No one. So I planned. I planned so carefully. I would bring the Titans down and replace them with my own team – made up of parts of their players. The ultimate vengeance!’ 
 	Silence fell. I was too stunned to know what to say. He continued: ‘So I went away and studied medicine, learning all the intricacies of the human body so that when the time came, I could take them apart and put them back together again. And then I turned my attentions to a darker art. You may have heard that I studied and worked in the south, hmm? But perhaps not exactly where…’
 	‘Stirland, I heard,’ I said.
 	‘Technically, yes. After all, Sylvania is nominally a province of Stirland.’
 	Sylvania – realm of the undead. Ruled by the vampire counts, it was renowned as a mist-shrouded land where horror lurked in every shadow. Clearly von Blaustein had learned the dark arts there.
 	‘I returned to Talabheim and decided the best way to get my hands on Titans players was to join the team as its apothecary. I got rid of the last few until I was the best person left for the job. And in the meantime, I started working on the players. The first I followed to an alehouse and drugged his drink, just enough that he’d fall unconscious when he got home. The second…’
 	I ignored his droning explanation and focused on another sound in the basement. Beside me, Johann was tapping his fingers against his stone slab, in a pattern that it took me a moment to recognise – it was the system we’d worked out in the carriage what seemed like months ago, but was only the previous evening. Johann was asking me to buy time for him to enact a risky play. I had no idea what he was planning, but it was going to be our only chance. I tried to grab and keep von Blaustein’s attention.
 	‘You said you grew up in this house?’ I asked him. ‘Where are your family? Your servants? I assume there are servants. Rich types like you always have them.’
 	‘They’re around you,’ he said. ‘Some of my first experiments when I returned home after learning how to raise the dead. Oh, I learned so much, but I took it further. Fusing magic and medical science – just like with the censers in my infirmary – which helped keep bodies fresh for me to work with. The wonders I’ll be able to perform when I can start working on other races. I will truly push the boundaries of necromancy!’
 	‘I would ask if you’re insane, but I think that’s blatantly obvious at this point,’ I said.
 	‘Insane? Dear me, no,’ he laughed. ‘If I were insane, I’d never have been able to make such a daring plan work. But work it has. With you two out of the way, there will be no more real threats from your fellow players. I’ll be able to kill them all one by one and replace them with my perfect creations, my very own Talabheim Titans! But first I have to kill you. And I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, slow process. I am, you see, a very, very good apothecary, and I can keep you alive through the entire process. It makes it easier to reattach your parts to other bodies. It will hurt rather a lot though.’
 	He had moved closer as he spoke and was now much nearer to me than I was comfortable with, and had one of his very sharp knives in his hand. I breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped away again and set the lantern down, but that relief vanished when I saw the spark of a match being lit. Von Blaustein, eerily illuminated by the flickering glow, used it to light some sort of burner on a workbench that ran across one wall beneath racks of what looked like body parts suspended in liquid.
 	The burner hissed as gas escaped it, and the match found the gas and erupted into a spear of flame. The apothecary held the knife into the fire.
 	‘Heating the scalpel leads to cleaner cuts that cauterise to slow blood loss,’ he said. ‘It hurts more as well, I understand.’
 	I hoped that whatever Johann was going to do was going to happen soon. 
 	Even as I had the thought, Johann snapped into action. There was a loud cracking sound from my left, and somehow, amazingly, he was moving. I craned my neck to see and watched him punch the patchwork zombie holding his left arm, somehow having freed his right. It reeled back, and Johann pushed himself forward, kicking the two creatures gripping his legs to the ground. Then he was free and attacking the zombies holding me. 
 	The pressure on my left arm lifted and I reached up to see the necromancer above me. I grabbed his wrist as he brought the knife down. He pushed harder, but he was no match for my Blood Bowl-honed muscles. 
 	‘You really should have just worked on your physical skills and tried again to join the team,’ I told him. ‘Brains are all very well, but you can’t beat a bit of strength in Blood Bowl.’
 	I pushed his arm to the side and the blade cut into the zombie holding my other arm – it reeled back with a distressingly human-sounding scream. 
 	Johann quickly freed my legs and I swung around and kicked von Blaustein in the chest. He fell into the workbench, where the burner was still blasting out flaming gas. The necromancer screamed and flailed, hitting the shelves. Several jars shattered, spilling thick liquid onto him and the floor around him. The fluid accelerated the fire as it doused von Blaustein.
 	I glanced at Johann, then up at the stairs, which were in serious danger of being set alight. He nodded, and without a word, we ran for it.
 	We made it up through the sprawling mansion and outside. We collapsed onto the lawn and watched as the flames spread and consumed the ancient building.
 	‘We really need to stop setting fire to things,’ Johann said at length.
 	‘I’ll get right on that as soon as people stop attacking us with flammable undead things,’ I replied.
 	‘Fair point.’
 	‘How did you break free back there?’ I asked.
 	‘One of the things holding me had Hans’ other arm. I recognised it from that other tattoo he had. The one that was even worse than “Muffer”. He broke that wrist in a training accident a few years ago, and it’s been weak ever since. I used that to my advantage.’
 	‘Good old Hans. A solid team player, even in death.’
 	We lapsed into silence and watched the mansion burn until it collapsed in on itself. 
 	‘You know,’ I said eventually, ‘we’re going to need to recruit some new talent. I wonder if the coach will go for open tryouts…’
 	The look Johann gave me was indescribable, and utterly priceless.