Ogreball: Rag and Bone Warriors Read online

  CONTENTS

  PART I: THE FLAMING GOAT

  Chapter 1: The Stadium

  Chapter 2: Escape

  Chapter 3: The Train to Slimewater

  Chapter 4: The Flaming Goat

  Chapter 5: In Brunda’s Office

  Chapter 6: Hatching a Plan

  Chapter 7: B. O. R. I. A. L.

  PART II: THE HEIST

  Chapter 8: B.O.R.I.A.L. HQ

  Chapter 9: Going Up, Going Down

  Chapter 10: Caught

  Chapter 11: In The Laboratory

  Chapter 12: The Plan

  Chapter 13: Breaking and Entering

  Chapter 14: The Heist

  Chapter 15: Escape

  Chapter 16: Slimewater Dungeons

  Chapter 17: A New Plan

  PART III: THE BIG GAME

  Chapter 18: Getting In

  Chapter 19: Loadout

  Chapter 20: The Hand of Hardgrim

  Chapter 21: The Scoring Harness

  Chapter 22: Weapon Selection

  Chapter 23: Qualifying

  Chapter 24: Game Watching

  Chapter 25: The Game Begins

  Chapter 26: Halftime

  Chapter 27: Back in the Game

  Chapter 28: Complications

  Chapter 29: A Quick Detour

  Chapter 30: Aftermath

  Chapter 31: The Return

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART I

  THE FLAMING GOAT

  Chapter 1: The Stadium

  I woke up screaming.

  And I don’t mean screaming like a little old lady that just won ten million dollars in the lottery. That would be the good kind of screaming. I’m talking about the bad kind of screaming: screaming like a twelve-year-old kid that just slammed his tongue in a car door. Only it wasn’t just my tongue that hurt; every single cell in my body felt like it had been smashed with a giant flaming hammer covered with pain sauce. That kind of screaming.

  It was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything. I was inside some kind of box, scrunched up and folded in on myself. I couldn’t straighten my arms or legs or twist around at all. I ran my fingers over the rough surface in front of me until I found something that felt like a rusty hinge. It was mounted along a crack that separated the box into two parts. So the box had a lid. I pushed up but couldn’t get it to budge. It must be locked. Crud. On the bright side, at least the pain had gone away quickly.

  I told myself to keep calm. Don’t get hysterical. You’re only trapped in a box; it’s not the end of the world. Your sister and her stupid friends are probably just pulling another one of their mean jokes on you, just like the time you fell asleep on the couch and they picked you up – couch and all – and carried you across the street to the playground. This was probably going to be just like that. She was definitely going to get grounded even longer this time if I had anything to do with it.

  I struggled against the lid and was working myself up to a world-class freak out when I heard muffled voices. Two muffled voices. And they sounded like they were in a hurry.

  I felt the box being lifted, and I shouted for help, “Hey! Get me out of here!”

  Whoever it was dropped the box instantly. Wham! That hurt. I heard their muffled voices again, and that’s when my freak out hit, full force. I pounded on the sides of the box as hard as I could, which was really feeble because I could only move my arms enough to do little baby swings. When that didn’t work, I rocked myself back and forth spastically and screamed at the top of my lungs. That did the trick.

  By the time they opened the lid and the light hit me, I was gasping for air and sweating like Eddie Swirple before a math test.

  Man, was I going to give it to my sister and her friends this time! I came up out of that box – which turned out to be some kind of wooden chest – as mad as I’d ever been. And then I froze.

  I was staring at a big guy – a really big, green-skinned guy – made up to look like some kind of monster, only he was in a dress that looked like it was from one of those mushy Jane Austen movies my mom likes to watch, all frilly and old-fashioned. I laughed. And then I turned to see the other guy. He was a dwarf with the same kind of green monster makeup as the big guy, only he was dressed up like an old-fashioned baby. I laughed again.

  “I’ve got to give her credit this time,” I said.

  “Give who credit?” the big guy said. His voice was low and growly, but not in a scary way.

  “My sister.”

  “Who’s your . . . sister?” said the dwarf baby. He looked at the big guy, puzzled.

  “Really? You’re going to act like you don’t know her? After she got you all dressed up . . . like that.” I pointed at their costumes.

  The big guy and the dwarf – did I mention they were green? – looked at each other and arched their brows. Notice that I didn’t say eyebrows . . . because they didn’t have any. They didn’t have any hair at all. Bald as a cue ball, both of them.

  I climbed out of the treasure chest and looked around. It was like I was on a movie set – a really convincing old-time monster movie set: everything was made out of rusty metal, beat up copper, and grimy glass. There were pipes with valves on them running everywhere, and the lights were bizarre: frosted globes filled with glowing, swirling blue plasma that made a soft noise that cycled between crackling and buzzing. There was an electric smell in the air.

  “Wow!” I spun around, taking it all in.

  Through the walls I could feel and hear the rumble and roar of a huge crowd cheering and stamping their feet.

  The big guy and the dwarf turned towards the door. “Somebody must’ve scored,” said the dwarf, a look of longing in his eyes.

  “Focus!” said the big guy. He shook himself to clear his head. “We need to focus on the job.” They both turned back to the chest . . . and me.

  “Right,” said the dwarf. He rolled his shoulders. “We’re here for the money . . . that was supposed to be in the chest . . . that turned out to have a kid in it instead of the money.” He looked at me and then the big guy. “This is not goin’ well, is it?”

  Just then, there was a loud commotion right outside the door: somebody blowing a whistle, the sound of running feet, somebody shouting orders. The big guy and the dwarf jerked to attention, looked at each other, looked at me, and rushed over to the door. The dwarf pressed his ear against the rusty metal while the big guy stood on the tips of his toes and peeked out through an iron grill above the door.

  “Looks like the other guys are having some trouble,” said the big guy. “I can see the guards chasing Gruntknuckle and Snarkbite.”

  “Sounds like our cover is blown,” the dwarf said. “Better get out while we can.” He hustled over to the far wall, unlatched and opened one of the dirty windows, stuck his head out, and looked down. “They know we’re here. More guards. There’s a bunch of ‘em down there.” He smiled and waved down at whoever he was talking about below. “They’re not happy.”

  “So, we can’t go back out the way we came in. We’re going to have to make a run for it,” said the big guy. “Escape Route B?”

  “Out the west windows? Sounds good to me,” said the dwarf. “Let’s go.” The big guy pulled on a crazy black wig, threw open the door, and ran out into the chaos.

  The dwarf pulled his own wig on and grabbed me as he dashed past, “Come on, kid!”

  So, suddenly I’m running like crazy with these two weirdos dressed up like monsters. We ran out onto a huge balcony crowded with hundreds of other people wearing green monster make up like the big guy and the dwarf.

  I could see out past the balcony; we were in a giant stadium, and the place was packed. There were thousands of people dressed up
like the big guy and the dwarf, like their clothes were from my great-great grandparents’ time, or like the costumes from when we did A Christmas Carol for our school play.

  Most of the crowd on the balcony was facing away from us, pushed up against the rail, cheering for whatever it was that was going on in the stadium. A handful of them were watching video monitors that looked like giant antique television sets mounted along the back wall. The monitors were metal with levers and tubes and knobs all over them; the glass screens displayed a black and white image of a mean looking green monster guy carrying a skull in one hand and an enormous hammer in the other. And by enormous I mean the hammer was almost as big as he was. As he was running, another green monster guy stepped in front of him and growled at him. Without even slowing down, the guy carrying the skull swung his hammer and knocked his attacker flying. The crowd went wild.

  That was when I realized that this wasn’t some kind of prank my older sister was pulling on me. I mean, I was in a stadium full of these monster people. There were way too many of them for it to be something my sister would be willing to pay for. She was mean, sure, but she was also cheap. This was seriously crazy.

  As the truth dawned on me, I slowed down. I was walking like one of those people you see in shock on the news stumbling away from a disaster.

  I stopped. I turned slowly and looked around, trying to take it all in. None of this made sense. I looked down at myself and saw that I was dressed a lot like the monster guys – the players – I’d seen on the video screens. I held my hands out in front of me, and they were green. Green! Just like everyone else here.

  Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. I could see the crowd cheering and laughing and clapping, but everything sounded like I was listening to it through cotton balls stuffed in my ears. There was a dull roar coming from inside my head.

  From up ahead of me, through the crowd, the big guy shouted to the dwarf, “Hang on! Something’s wrong with the kid.” He circled back through the throng of monster people and grabbed my arm as I crumpled to the floor.

  The dwarf pushed through the crowd and joined us. He tilted his head as he looked at me. “Dang. We’re gonna have to carry him.”

  “We?” said the big guy.

  “Alright. You’re gonna have to carry him. Let’s go.”

  There was a sudden commotion a short distance away from where we’d stopped. “There they are! That’s them!” someone shouted.

  “Double dang!” said the dwarf. “It’s the guards.”

  Chapter 2: Escape

  I was sitting on the floor of the stadium with the big guy holding me up. My head was spinning.

  “Let’s do the ‘Baby Up’ routine,” he said.

  “I hate the ‘Baby Up’ routine,” said the dwarf. “You know I hate the ‘Baby Up’ routine.”

  The big guy let go of me, lifted his skirt, and stepped over me as he scooped up the dwarf with his free arm. He dropped his skirt, hiding me completely. “Everybody comfy?”

  He was fully dressed under his skirt – leather pants and boots – but his pants were made from some kind of shaggy yak hide that made my nose start to itch immediately. “Guys, I don’t think this is going to work!” I said. “Allergies.”

  “Shhhhhh! Here they come,” said the dwarf. “Don’t make a sound. If we get caught, they’ll throw us in the dungeons.”

  The dungeons? What?

  “Stop squirming,” said the big guy to the dwarf.

  “You know how much I hate this. It’s humiliatin’. How would you like it if you had to pretend to be the baby?”

  “I don’t think you could hold me,” said the big guy. “Besides, I don’t think you’d make a very convincing mommy.”

  I felt a giant sneeze growing in my sinuses, so I ducked down as low as I could, covered my nose, squeezed my watering eyes shut, and tried to imagine that I was a million miles away from the stinky yak pants.

  “What do we . . . have here?” It was a new voice. It sounded out of breath, gasping. “Something about this . . . just don’t . . . look right.”

  “Good evening, officer,” the big guy said in a squeaky, fake girl-voice. “Enjoying the game?”

  “Not here . . . to enjoy . . . the game,” the guard wheezed.

  The crowd roared again, and a horn blared. I could feel the big guy twist around toward the sound. His movement stirred the air under the skirt, blowing a fresh wave of yak stink right up my nostrils. I tried to hold back a cough, but that only made me force half the air out through my nose instead of really coughing. It came out sounding like an asthmatic dog bark.

  “Goal!” shouted the guard. “Yes!”

  How did he not hear me?

  “Fan of the Moldy Crust team, then?” said the big guy, acting like nothing unusual had just happened under his skirt. “The Moldy Crust is my favorite bakery. I’m glad they sponsor a team.”

  “Wha . . . ?” said the guard. “Well, I, uh, no. I’m not a fan. And besides, I’m on . . . duty.”

  “Of course,” said the big guy. If I could‘ve seen him, I’d bet he was batting his eyelashes at the guard. “Has there been some sort trouble, officer?”

  “As a matter of fact, there has been . . . a bit of trouble,” the guard panted. “Looks like there’s a band of thieves . . . trying to make off with some of the profits . . . from the game tonight. The guards on duty on the ground floor . . . spotted someone looking out the window of the treasury. Little guy they said.”

  The dwarf made a grumbly baby noise.

  “Baby’s a bit . . . fussy,” said the guard. “Ugly little booger.”

  The dwarf growled and snapped his teeth.

  “Not very social.” the guard chuckled.

  And then it happened. I sneezed the biggest, loudest sneeze I’d ever sneezed. And I mean it was massive. It was a real, rip-roaring, nasty monster sneeze. I blew so much ogre snot out of my nose that I thought my head was going to cave in.

  “What was that?” said the guard.

  “I must be having a little tummy trouble,” said the big guy in his shrill voice. “Excuse me.” He curtsied as he spoke, and I watched in horror as he moved both of his feet squarely into the fresh puddle of ogre snot from my sneeze.

  I grabbed his ankles and tried to stop his feet from sliding in opposite directions, but it was too late. In a split second he was completely off balance and scrambling frantically, like someone trying not to fall on ice. I scooted backwards out of the way of his thrashing feet.

  I could hear the dwarf laughing hysterically. Between laughs he managed to get out a, “Wow! This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen!”

  “Wait a minute,” said the guard. “You’re not really a baby, are you?”

  “You, sir, are a genius. Too bad we can’t stay and chat,” said the dwarf.

  I pushed the big guy’s skirt completely out of my way, got to my feet, and stepped away from the ogre snot puddle and out into the open air again. The first thing I saw was the dwarf jumping onto the guard’s shoulders and pounding on his head with both fists. The big guy managed to scramble clear of the puddle, grab me, and drag me away through the crowd as I coughed and sneezed.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “He’ll catch up to us in a minute.”

  It didn’t take long for the dwarf to join us. We stopped in front of a door that looked like a hatch from a submarine, it was made out of rusty metal with a big valve wheel on it that you had to turn to get the door to open. The big guy and the dwarf looked around to see if anyone had spotted us.

  “Through here,” said the big guy. “This is the way down to the west windows.” He spun the valve wheel and pulled the door open. We could hear the stomping of heavy boots and lots of angry voices echoing up to us through the stairwell.

  “Maybe not,” said the dwarf.

  “Back through the crowd?” said the big guy. He slammed the big door closed and spun the valve wheel back to make sure it was sealed.

  “Looks like it,” s
aid the dwarf.

  As we turned back toward the way we’d come, a group of guards pushed through the crowd and came straight at us. At that same moment, the valve wheel to the stairwell door spun around, and the guards that had been storming up the stairwell burst through the door. They spotted us instantly.

  We were trapped. Between the group moving towards us through the crowd and the group coming out of the stairwell we had nowhere to run. Both groups fanned out around us so there was no way for us to escape. The crowd backed away and we stood by ourselves surrounded by a circle of guards. They inched towards us, menace in their eyes.

  “Out the window?” whispered the big guy, nodding towards a tall window to our right. The window was about twenty feet away and closed.

  “A little high, but we don’t seem to have too many options right now,’ said the dwarf.

  “Um, guys, the window’s closed,” I whispered.

  “Our options are kind of limited right now,” said the big guy.

  “What? Out a window? A closed window?” I sputtered. “Exactly how high up are we?”

  Each of the guards pulled out an oversized metal glove and slipped it on their right hand. The gloves instantly started to spark and crackle with that weird blue electricity that seemed to be everywhere in this place.

  “Windows not lookin’ so bad now, is it?” whispered the dwarf. He had a good point.

  The guards, all of them green-skinned and monster-like, inched even closer, tightening the circle around us.

  The big guy whispered, “You go first, then the kid. I’ll keep these guys distracted until you’re both out. Make sure he gets off the tracks before the train comes.”

  “Will do,” said the dwarf.

  “What?” I said. “Tracks? You mean, like, train tracks? What?”

  “Just get off the tracks as fast as you can, or it’ll be worse than getting shocked by those gloves,” said the big guy.

  “Wait, what?” I said. Things were moving a little too fast for me.

  He turned back to face the guards and raised his fists. “Who wants some of this?”

  “That’s our cue,” said the dwarf. “Let’s go.” He grabbed me and pulled me in the direction of the window. “Try to get up as much speed as you can,” he said as he ran. “You’ll need to clear the ledge down on the fourth level.” He rushed towards the guards blocking our way to the window and crashed through them like a bowling ball striking a bunch of pins; they flew away from him in every direction. The instant before he got to the window he jumped up, spun around so that he was facing us, and waved back at the guards and said, “See ya!” He had a huge grin on his face as he crashed through the window backwards and out into the night air, a trail of shattered glass flying after him.