Chapter 3 -- Welcome to Grimgor

When I awoke this time, we'd stopped in some sort of a camp--maybe one of their slums. As I craned my neck around from my position on my back, I could see the tops of crude wooden huts amid crumbling stone buildings. It was early evening as far as I could tell, the sky a deeper shade of gray, a pale slice of moon hanging to the west.

Before I could gather any more of my bearings, a dark green face blotted out the sky. It's snout hung inches from my nose, drooling orc spit and panting down a thick wind of rotting flesh, stale blood, and a scent I can only describe as horse manure stewed in garlic.

I stared up at the beast's face, and all I could think of were Coach Hammerhand's words on how to spot the toughest black orc on the pitch--"The darker the green, the more blood the brute's seen."

Black orcs, he'd taught us, we're just regular orcfolk who'd done more killing. The more they killed, the greener they got. The greener they got, the tougher they were.

This sucker's face was so green it almost looked blue. He squinted at me, his red eyes closing into slits. He sniffed twice with his wide upturned nose, black as a bull's, and then spoke.

It was something in orcish, a language almost indiscernible from growls and grunts, but one I'd heard enough of over the years to learn a few words. Given that I'd just been dragged roughly 10 miles and had headache the size of a troll turd though, the only words I could make out were "eat," "kill," and "hurt." But, of course, it's possible those were the only words this one knew.

When he finished his little speech, he opened his maw and leaned closer, that breath stinging my eyes, setting off a gag-reflex I thought I'd lost years ago. One of his four large front teeth, long and sharp as a tent-spike, brushed against my cheek. I swallowed hard, resigned that since I'd consumed nothing but mead over the last week, I'd at least make for a bitter meal.

But then a large green hand came into view. Its forefinger fish-hooked the mouth and pulled it a way. Now a new face, hovered upside down above me, this one a lighter shade of green, a run-of-the-mill orc face. Same snout, black beefy nose, red eyes, but something less animal there. I could see that he was studying me, his head shifting back and forth, the faint traces of a grin pulling up the corners of his mouth.

Though the black orcs were stronger than their smaller, less green brethren, regular orcs could be crueler and more cunning. On the Blood Bowl pitch, they were the blitzers and throwers, planning the cheats and orchestrating the death blows, often barking orders at the black orc linemen to carve a path as they went after the ball--or the ball carrier's jugular.

In warfare, they became the pack-leaders and war-bosses, devising the cruelest torture methods. While a black orc could kill and eat a man before his shattered shield hit the ground, a pack-leader could stretch out a death for months. A war-boss could keep you alive for years--long enough to forget that life offered anything other than searing, flesh-ripping pain.

Suddenly, I was thinking that being eaten alive might be my best option here. I wriggled against the rope binding my wrists. "Where the hell am I, pig face?" I asked.

The orc let his stone-black tongue dangle from his mouth, licked one of his jagged front teeth, and then spoke in human tongue, his words telling me I was in far more trouble than I thought.

"Welcome to Grimgor," he said. "The War Boss been waiting for you."

Chapter 2 -- Running Down the Gutter

As usual, I had no one to blame but myself for the predicament I was in. Since losing my spot on the [ ] roster two years ago, I'd done little but soak myself in mead and gamble away every coin I'd earned scoring touchdowns and separating opponents from the ball or their limbs in the previous six years.

But lately I'd moved on to more ambitious stabs at self destruction. A week ago, I'd fleeced 50 pieces of gold from an ogre in an arm-wrestling match before his halfling buddy pointed out I was using two hands and a sizeable brick to win. I think there's still some brick dust stuck between the few teeth I have left.

As soon as I regained consciousness, I tried to out-drink a dwarf and earn back some gold. I woke up in a beer barrel three days later wearing only an elf-maiden's leather skirt and a purple feather.

That's when I decided to head for Styrnwood. We'd all heard the legends as kids. Walk deep enough into the dark shade of those trees that had outlived humankind by thousands of years, and you'll forget your past, forget even what it means to be a man, join the beasts in that savage dance of nature that ends in death but at least makes a stop or two in oblivion along the way. And so what if I had to cross three miles of orcish wasteland to get there. Broken or not, when Birk Brambleson does something, he does it full tilt. If my life was going down the drain, then I was going to make sure it got their faster than skaven gutter runner dodging a death roller.

The cowards must have snatched me as I slept though. I had no memory of a battle, and if there'd been one, you could be sure I would have died before being taken captive. I'd heard too many tales of borderland men, women, and children kept alive so they could watch their legs and arms being eaten to want that fate for myself. Apparently, the best orc chefs insisted that nothing could rival that live-flesh flavor.

Staggering shirtless in an elf skirt with a feather in my hair, you'd think I would have made an easy target for a day-light raid, but you can never overestimate the sheer cowardice of these green-skinned brutes. Why do in sunlight, what can be covered in darkness? Why do in honor, can be done in dishonor?

Even on the Blood Bowl pitch, I'd seen the best orcish star-players stoop to the dirtiest tricks not even to win, but just to pad their casualty statistics. Wearing dagger-toed boots against halfling teams, lighting tree-men a blaze with stadium torches during a night game, paying off a mage to de-horn a beastman before a match--you name the cheat, and they'd done it twice.

So this was how it was going to end, I thought, straining to lift my head as I passed over a larger paving stone. Birk Brambleson, the only human to KO 5 black orcs in a single match was now going to feed at least that many.

So be it, I told myself, and in that moment just before the back of my head slammed into another stone jarring me loose from consciousness once again, I saw in that fate a certain beauty. It would make a heck of a where-bleed-they-now write up. Too bad the stadium scribes will never know. Too bad the world stopped giving a wad of goblin snot about the Broken Bramble years ago.

Chapter 1 -- What a Drag

When I came to, my head was bouncing against the broken stones that once made up a road. I was being dragged. That much was as clear as the taste of blood at the back of my throat, but everything else was hazy--smeared.

The sky hung gray as a dull blade above me, blurred by something in my eyes. Was it sweat? Maybe more of my blood? Hopefully at least a little of someone else's?

I was still trying to figure it all out, trying to think through all the bone-deep pain, and quickly too, because there was a sound that was getting clearer now as well. A sound I remembered from the days when I was still "Blitzkrieg" Birk Brambleson, star of the Blood Bowl pitch. A sound that could make even 300-pound linemen soil their codpieces. A sound that used to curl my hands into fists back before that doe-eyed wood elf turned me into the "Broken Bramble," just another one of the sport's sad, where-bleed-they-now bootnotes.

That sound was growing clearer, breaking though the scrabble of the back of my head skimming across those stones, and as far as I was from any Blood Bowl pitch, I knew it promised even more trouble than when I'd heard it the past.

It was grunting--low, guttural, animal grunting. A sound that meant only one thing: black orcs, and plenty of them.