“Chapter 16

“Come on ref, honestly!” pleaded Beds are Burning, holding up a lump of twisted bronze which had recently belonged to his armour.
The referee looked down at the smiling figure of the goblin who was doing his best attempt at looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Sadly, the chainsaw he’d brought along with him was taller than he was and it stuck up rather obviously behind him. Somewhat reluctantly, the ref nodded.
“Come on Nobbla. You’ve had yer fun. I can turn a blind eye to it once, because actually, I do have a blind eye, but rules is rules, and you know ‘em as well as any. You’re off.”
Nobbla Blackwart pouted and sulked off the field to a chorus of boos from the fans. They always liked it when one or other of the teams managed to sneak a chainsaw onto the field, and for many of them it was way too early in the game for it to be going home. What was worse, he hadn’t even managed to injure anyone with it first!

There had been blood though, and for once it hadn’t been wood elf blood. The Lion and the Unicorn, fresh from his week’s rest and eager to get back into the swing of things, had swung rather vigorously at one of the chaos dwarves who had been too stubborn, or too stupid, to be somewhere else at the time. The result was not pretty, but all the same, Coach Robsson had wandered on to the pitch to take a closer look as the remains were being dug up and collected in a sack. It wasn’t often you got to see a dead dwarf and it was something he’d like to remember for a good long while.

As for the game itself, it was little more than a walk in the woods. So Much For the Afterglow, also fully recovered from his injuries, got back into the swing of things with a couple of long passes and Robsson was pleased to see that he was comfortable enough throwing to Hayride to Hell as well as One More Cup of Coffee. Both the catchers came away with two touchdowns apiece and Beds are Burning had popped in another, just to see what al the fuss was about. All in all, it was a great game in front of an appreciative home crowd and Coach Robsson had never felt happier.


* * * * *


“What?” he screamed. “How much?”
Coach Robsson towered over the poor Halfling even before the creature began to cower in the corner of the coach’s office and now he barely came up to his knee.
“This is outrageous,” continued the coach. “If this carries on we’ll be paying out more than we’re earning. I’m trying to run a business here, not a charity.”
Mortimer, the Halfling on the receiving end of Robsson’s anger, held up a finger.
“Well technically, Boss, after we signed that agreement with the Lord High Treasurer’s Deputy Assistant, we can, in fact, consider ourselves possessing quasi-charitable status. At least for the purposes of…”
“Enough!” bellowed Robsson. “I don’t want facts, I want excuses. I want to know how we can make this figure…” he waved his hand at one of the pieces of parchment he was clutching in his fist, “…go back to being bigger, and this one go back to being nothing!” And he threw a second piece of parchment at the Halfling.
Mortimer straightened out the crumpled sheet and glanced down at the rows of figures.
“I have to say, Boss. You do seem to be paying some of your players rather a lot.”
Coach Robsson scowled.
“It’s in their contract. It was the only way I could get some of them to come along in the first place, by promising them a higher salary if we started winning matches. How was I to know they’d keep winning? And hardly any of them are dying either. That always used to be a sure fire way of bringing down a rising star’s salary. But we’ve had what, two dead players in sixteen games? That’s no way to run a business.”
“I could put the word out?” offered Mortimer.
Robsson sighed and the fight suddenly went out of him.
“No, it’s alright. Let them stay the way they are. To tell the truth, I’m finding it kind of fun, all this winning. It’s the best record any of my teams has had for years. And curse me for being the old sentimentalist I am, but I’m even getting quite fond of some of those elves. I might even be sorry to see one or two of them go, salary or no.”
The coach looked wistful for a moment but then snapped back to reality and his smile fell.
“But I’m not putting any of my own money into them, If they go bankrupt, they’re on their own. I’ve got a retirement to think about and the one I’m thinking about most is a very expensive one.”
He turned to Mortimer.
“So you do what you can to keep those books balanced in the right direction. Lie if you need to, cheat certainly and rob anyone if you think you can get away with it. I’d like to run with this lot for a little while yet.”
”