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.