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Manglers Never Lose – Josh Reynolds

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A Black Library Publication

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Manglers Never Lose

Josh Reynolds

It was the night before game day, and Marius Hertz, star player for the number-five-ranked Middenplatz Manglers, was dead. Not dead to the world, or even dead to rights. Just plain dead. Proper dead. Ready for the deep six in the bone yard, food-for-ghouls, dead. The ex-Blitzer lay on his bed, naked save for some artfully arranged pillows. Two flat-chested, whey-faced elvish cheerleaders sat nearby, determinedly not looking at the corpse. Neither of them wore any clothes either, which wasn’t surprising.

‘Are you sure he’s dead, Doc?’ Tyros Bundt, the Manglers’ coach, asked, staring down at the body. ‘Maybe he’s just sleeping.’ Bundt was a former Blitzer, growing round in middle age, once-solid muscles going to fat. After a certain point it was all downhill, and he’d decided to enjoy the trip. He felt he’d earned it. Few Blood Bowl players survived long enough to retire, let alone get fat. Marius certainly hadn’t.

‘He’s purple,’ the doktor said. It was that sort of keen diagnosis that had earned Doc Morgrim a position as the Manglers’ team doktor. He was a thickset dwarf, covered in scars and tattoos beneath his greasy smock. His hair and beard had been stiffened with bear fat and dyed in Manglers’ colours, giving him the look of someone who’d wound up on the wrong end of a lightning bolt in a dyers guild.

Morgrim poked the body with a blunt finger. ‘Which, as any dwarf will tell you, is not a proper colour.’

‘Maybe that’s his natural hue,’ Bundt said. ‘My old da turned blue one time. Granted, it was cold that winter, but he never complained.’

‘Marius was poisoned,’ Morgrim countered, firmly.

‘He didn’t drink that much, surely.’ Marius had been celebrating in his usual fashion. Bundt picked up a bottle and sniffed it. He gagged. It smelled like potatoes and old socks. But then, Marius hadn’t cared about smell, or taste, only that it got him good and snookered. A simple sort of soul, their Marius. Simply foul.

‘His insides look like porridge,’ Morgrim said, opening Marius’ mouth and tilting his head so Bundt could see down his throat. It wasn’t pretty in there. It did look like porridge, though, albeit with lumpy bits in.

‘Maybe–’

‘No, it’s not supposed to look like that. Someone poisoned him. Or several someones. I’ve detected traces of four different poisons in this mess.’ Morgrim swept out a hand, indicating the trashed room. ‘The coloration is due to a combination of bloat-toad venom and bile-dragon spew, the leaking and… general melting is from some Lustrian concoction – and that smell that’s coming out of his pores? That’s Lahmian Rhapsody, or I’m a beardling.’

Bundt goggled at him. ‘Four?’

‘Four.’

‘That’s quite a few.’

‘Three more than is entirely necessary, in my experience.’

‘Maybe they’ll counteract each other?’ Bundt asked, hopefully. He glanced at the cheerleaders. Neither would meet his gaze. The Manglers had lost star players before, but usually due to game-related mishaps. But it wouldn’t have been the first time a team’s rivals tried to tip the odds with a bit of extracurricular homicide. All was fair in love and Blood Bowl, especially with a tournament on the line.

Morgrim frowned and let Marius flop back down onto the bed. ‘Only in the sense that they’re making him dissolve.’ He wiped his hands on his smock.

‘Can’t you prescribe something?’

Morgrim peered at the body, doing a quick calculation. ‘A bucket.’

‘But the game is in three hours!’

The Manglers were set to face the Haakenstadt Screechers in the final game of the DeathHex Doom Bowl. The Screechers were a vicious bunch of vermin – literally. Half the starting line were skaven, and the other half wore vaguely rat-themed gear, in the name of team spirit.

‘We could… paint the bucket in team colours?’ Morgrim said, with a shrug.

Bundt frowned. ‘Would that work?’

‘No,’ Morgrim said.

‘You’re not helping,’ Bundt said. With Marius down, they were one player short of eleven. The semi-finals had been rough on the benchwarmers, and the Manglers had lost a lot of players over the course of the tournament. And now Marius… It was as if the gods were out to get him. Bundt shook his head. Without Marius, they’d have to forfeit. ‘There’s got to be something you can do.’

‘I’m a doktor, not a necromancer.’

Bundt snapped his fingers. ‘Yes!’

‘No.’ Morgrim shook his head. ‘That won’t work. The sponsors…’ The Manglers had the misfortune to be sponsored by Errantry Illustrated, the Magazine of Chivalric Virtues. Their gold spent as well as anyone else’s, but it came with strings attached. Namely, the morals clause in the sponsorship contract. No lying, cheating or stealing – off the field, anyway – and certainly no drunken shenanigans with elf cheerleaders. If word of this got out, the sponsorship would be pulled, and any hope the Manglers had of competing in the tournament with it.

Bundt glanced at the cheerleaders. Neither wore Manglers’ colours, which was a mixed blessing. One was from the Galadrieth Gladiators, the other the Elfheim Eagles. Both teams had been knocked out of the Doom Bowl early, though the Manglers had played neither. He wondered how long it had taken them to notice that Marius was a stiff, and not the good kind. The elf-woman bent forward and made a peculiar gulping, heaving sound, before spilling the contents of her stomach on the floor. Her friend patted her back, his thin face twisted up in sympathy. Bundt frowned.

Decision made, he turned to Morgrim. ‘What the sponsors don’t know won’t hurt us.’ Bundt pointed to the door. ‘Go find me a necromancer. A good one.’

‘Good ones cost money.’

‘Good point. Go find me an adequate one.’

‘What about the elgi?’ Morgrim said, hiking a thumb at the elves.

‘What about them?’

‘One – or both – of them probably did for Marius.’

Morgrim glowered at the cheerleaders suspiciously. The elves shrank back from the dwarf’s gaze.

‘There’s only two of them,’ Bundt said.

‘They could’ve administered two poisons each!’

‘I don’t care who did for Marius. He was obstreperous, obtuse and off-putting, even if he did look good on the field. Someone, somewhere, at some point was bound to do for him.’ Including Bundt himself, though he didn’t say that. ‘No, I care about the game.’ Bundt raised his fists to the heavens. There were stains on the ceiling, and a pair of breeches hanging from the cross-guard of a knife. Probably belonging to Marius. ‘We cannot lose this game. I will not lose. We have never lost! Manglers never lose! That’s our mantra, our guiding philosophy.’

‘What about our game against the Duffenbrau Decimators last month?’

‘We have lost one game! Never again!’

‘Or that time against the Catrazza Birdmen the month before that?’

‘Two games – there will not be a third,’ Bundt growled, still staring at the ceiling. His eye began to twitch. Loss was not in his dictionary. It was something that happened to other people. People who were not Tyros Bundt.

‘Or–’

Bundt whirled, veins throbbing. ‘Why are you still here? Go and get me a moderately priced, relatively capable necromancer. I’ll meet you in the locker rooms. We’ve only got a few hours before game time, and I want this problem gone by kick-off.’

Morgrim gave a lazy salute. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He reclaimed his axe from where he’d left it propped by the door and stumped out of the hotel room.

Bundt turned back to the cheerleaders. ‘Now… how much to keep this under your pom-poms? Ten gold apiece, say?’

The elves glanced at one another, and then at Marius’ purple corpse. The woman wiped her mouth and said, ‘How much have you got on you?’

Bundt’s hands twitched as he considered their fragile, elven necks. Then he sighed and reached for his coin-pouch. One corpse to deal with was enough.

After paying off the elves and the hotel staff, Bundt had managed to get the impressively limp body rolled up into the Arabayan carpet that had been on the floor. It wasn’t his first time rolling up a body in a rug, and he knew to keep the loose bits folded in and all tied tight with curtain cords and belts. Wouldn’t do to have feet or fingers flopping about, attracting unwanted attention. He had to break Marius’ ankles to make it work, but he figured any necromancer worth the name could fix that.

Once he’d finished disguising the body, he awkwardly manhandled his burden outside, wincing every time his star player’s bonce struck a step, and onto the streets of Drachenstadt. Drachenstadt perched precariously in the heights of the Grey Mountains, spreading outward like a stain from the collapsed ruins of the ancient castle which had given the border town its name. The castle had been abandoned since the ill-fated semi-finals of the Konigswald Classic, but the town was still a riotous cauldron of scum and villainy. The perfect place for a Blood Bowl tournament, in other words.

Drachenstadt was crowded this time of year. The streets were thick with accents from as far north as Praag and as far south as Tobaro. Orcs, men, mutants and worse things rubbed shoulders, traded punches and sang boozy team songs. Everyone was in team colours, and alcohol flowed freely. The sound of impromptu celebrations and the inevitable, accompanying carnage echoed out of taverns and public halls. The air smelled of smoke, and somewhere, something large was burning, flooding the crooked streets with a flickering light. The Doom Bowl brought money into the town, so the merchants’ association was willing to overlook a bit of property damage – or impromptu urban renewal, depending on your perspective. Besides, it wasn’t a proper tournament until something burned down.

Bundt had managed to find a willing pair of porters at the first tavern he stumbled across. Marius was heavy, and Bundt’s knees weren’t in the best shape. It cost him all the gold hidden in the hollow heel of his boot, but it was worth it. The sooner he got Marius to the stadium, the better. It was almost game time.

‘I tell you, manling, it’s a sure thing,’ the one-eyed dwarf rumbled, as he shifted Marius’ dead weight to his other shoulder. He was broader than any two men, with an orange crest of hair that added substantially to his height. He was doing most of the carrying, while his red-cloaked friend did most of the complaining.

‘Yes, but that was all of our money. What happens if the Manglers lose?’

‘The Manglers have never lost,’ Bundt interjected. He’d only been half listening, most of his attention on navigating the crowded streets. He jerked to a stop as a drunken ogre lumbered past, trailing something that still whimpered from the sole of one hobnailed boot.

‘What about when they played the Blue-Blood Bandits in the Frugelhofen last year?’ the man asked, shifting his grip on the end of the rug. ‘Zwemmer pounded their starting line into muck two minutes in.’

‘Only after he infected them with Nurgle’s rot,’ Bundt snapped. His eye was twitching again. He patted it, trying to get it to calm down.

‘Hertz had mushrooms sprouting from his elbows,’ the dwarf said. ‘Kept playing though. That manling is almost as tough as a dwarf.’

Bundt glanced back at the rug. Marius wasn’t so tough anymore. ‘I’m just saying, you should have talked it over with me first,’ the man continued. ‘How am I supposed to write about your doom, if I meet mine first from starvation?’

‘I’m not paying you to write or talk, I’m paying you to carry,’ Bundt said. The man fell silent, a sour look on his lean, scarred face. The dwarf chuckled and thrust a finger beneath his eye-patch, scratching at the socket.

‘Still haven’t said where we’re going,’ the dwarf said.

‘There,’ Bundt said. He pointed. The dwarf grunted.

Drachenstadt Stadium was a bubo of rock and timber, rising outward from the side of the town, and somewhat over it. It was built on a shelf of stone, overlooking the slopes below. Rickety seating rose upwards away from the yellowing turf of the field at odd angles. The bleachers had been repaired more than once, and it wasn’t unusual for one section or another to collapse mid-game, carrying hundreds of fans to their doom. Some fans even paid extra to sit in the most dangerous sections, just for the added thrill.

‘What’s in this rug?’ the man asked, suddenly.

‘I’m not paying you to ask questions either,’ Bundt said.

‘Only it’s leaking.’

‘What?’ Bundt turned. The rug was leaking. Not blood – something less pleasant. Bundt had been in the game long enough to recognise when something inside a body had burst. The dwarf dropped his burden with a curse. The man hopped back, red cloak swishing. Bundt yelped and bent over the rug.

‘What is that stench?’ the dwarf demanded.

‘Never buy cologne from a street vendor,’ Bundt said. He grabbed the edges of the rug and began to back away. The dwarf set his foot on the other end, holding it firmly in place. He grinned, showing gap-teeth.

‘Good advice.’

Bundt straightened. ‘Your services are no longer required. I can get him the rest of the way.’ The streets weren’t so crowded, this close to the stadium. There were rumours that daemons of all sorts stalked these mean streets in the days before a game, summoned by the violent anticipation of unruly fans.

‘Him?’ the man said, quickly.

‘It. The rug.’ Bundt’s hand fell to the dirk on his hip. His eye was throbbing. He couldn’t allow them to find out. There was no telling who they’d spill it to.

The man pushed back his cloak, revealing a long sword. The dwarf groped for something, but came up empty handed. ‘Where’s my axe, manling?’ he demanded.

‘You left it buried in that tree-man back at the Poison Feast,’ the man said, without taking his eyes off Bundt. The taverns in Drachenstadt all had colourful names – the Poison Feast, Oswald’s Folly, Filthy Harald’s Fine Ales and Spirits. Despite the names, they all served the same brand of knock-off, watered down Bloodweiser.

‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It’s not like it’s going anywhere. He set down roots.’

The dwarf turned. He thrust a meaty finger into Bundt’s face. ‘You. Stay here while I fetch my axe.’ He turned and caught hold of his partner’s cloak. ‘You – come with me. I’m going to need to stand on your shoulders.’

‘But–’ the man began, as the dwarf dragged him away.

Bundt watched them go. When they’d vanished into the early morning crowd, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. His eye slowed its twitching. He looked around. No one was paying attention to him. It helped that he wasn’t the only shifty looking fellow dragging a smelly, leaky bundle through the streets of Drachenstadt at dawn. He wasn’t even the only one on this corner, he noted, as a hunched shape hurried past, a thrashing bundle under one arm. Drachenstadt was that sort of town. He reached down and grabbed the end of the rug.

Bundt was red-faced and puffing by the time he got to the side door, where players and staff entered the cavernous tunnels which served as the locker rooms. The tunnels stretched all the way from the ruins of the castle, and smelled worse than the sewers of Nuln. Bundt had seen worse in his time, but not by much.

Gritting his teeth against the smell, he shoved, kicked and heaved Marius’ body down the corridor towards the locker rooms the Manglers had claimed as their own after a vicious three-day brawl in the opening hours of the tournament. There were only a few safe spaces in the tunnels. The annual free-for-all to claim one was used to determine the starting teams for the Doom Bowl. If you were tough enough to hold on to a locker room, you were tough enough to play. It wasn’t unusual for whole teams to meet their doom before the Doom Bowl even properly began. And thanks to the Necromancers Broadcasting Circle, fans got to enjoy the pre-show bloodletting from the relative safety of the stands.

A silent line of spectral monks drifted past Bundt as he hauled Marius along the uneven corridor. They whispered the odds to him, placing bets on games that had been played centuries ago. The ghosts were as much a part of the tunnels as the screaming skull in the privies, and Bundt paid them no heed. It was the living that worried him at the moment.

Despite his protestations to Morgrim, Bundt couldn’t help but wonder who’d poisoned Marius. The Manglers had made a lot of enemies this season, so there wasn’t a lack of suspects. And Marius made enemies the way a spendthrift spread gold. He sighed as he dragged the rug and its contents into the locker room. ‘If you weren’t dead, I’d kill you myself,’ he muttered.

Alive or dead, Marius was costly to keep around. The only reason he’d put up with the Blitzer for so long was Marius’ almost supernatural skill with a ball. Some men were just built for Blood Bowl. Terrible at everything else, though. In Bundt’s day, personal issues had been the leading cause of player death, besides the game itself. Nowadays, it was rare for a player to play injured, let alone go haring off to the far side of the world on a doomed quest for a missing sibling, and Nuffle be praised for that, at least. Annoying as Marius was, he’d needed the Blitzer. Bundt was willing to do anything – put up with anyone – to keep the Manglers in the game. Even if it meant selling his soul to a necromancer.

‘We’ve never lost,’ Bundt said, to himself. ‘And we’re not about to start now.’ He dragged the rug along the row of lockers. He would hide the body until Morgrim showed up. He found Marius’ locker easily enough – it was the only one stuffed to capacity with empty bottles, undergarments and fan mail. It was also the biggest.

The lockers were made from old, iron-banded coffins of varying sizes and degrees of craftsmanship. What hundreds of empty coffins had been doing down in the tunnels under the castle, Bundt didn’t like to think about. Marius’ was roughly ogre-sized.

The Blitzer always claimed the biggest locker for himself. Just like he got the best hotel rooms, the most fan mail… everything. Marius was the Manglers, in all the ways that counted. Even more so than the other players and even Bundt himself. He untied the rug and pried Marius’ sticky corpse free. The smell hit him like a punch to the nose. Luckily, they were in a locker room.

As he opened the locker, it vomited its contents onto the floor – clothes, bottles and… gold? Bundt stared at the money. More than a few coins. In fact, there was a sack, hidden in Marius’ spare helmet. He ran his hands through it, enjoying the feel of coins clinking through his fingers. Money was always in short supply. A competitive team, even a successful one, racked up expenses. He glanced at the body.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, frowning. Marius didn’t answer. Bundt shook his head, as the barest shadow of suspicion took shape. Four poisons, and now money. What was going on? He forced the thought aside. None of that mattered. Only the game mattered. And he intended to win, dead star player or not.

Bundt unwrapped Marius. He needed to get him into his uniform before he hid him. That would make things easier. He unrolled the rug and leaned Marius against the locker. The poisons in his system had made him fairly floppy, and Bundt wondered if he had any ligaments left. It felt like trying to dress a bag of sand, but he got the flaccid limbs in the proper holes eventually.

As he was finishing up, a door slammed. Rough voices grumbled. Bundt, surprised, stumbled and fell back into Marius’ open locker and inadvertently pulled the body towards him. The more he struggled, the deeper he sank into the coffin, drowning in unwashed, bloodstained clothes and perfumed fan mail. There was no way to get Marius in, or himself out, before the intruders arrived. He grabbed hold of Marius to keep him from toppling over, and leaned back. Hopefully it would just look as if the Blitzer were drunk and vomiting into his own locker. Purple, but drunk.

The voices got louder. Orcs, he thought. Lockers rattled as green fists pummelled them. Two sets of fists, two voices. ‘Marius… come out to play,’ an orc rumbled, as it stepped around the end of the row. ‘Thought that were you, Hertz. They said you snuck out of the hotel in a rug. Dead clever, you are.’

‘Knew we was on his trail, innit?’ the other orc said, laughing nastily.

Bundt struggled not to make any noise. The orcs couldn’t see him, wedged into the coffin-locker as he was, with Marius leaning against it. For the moment, at any rate. He didn’t like to think about what would happen when they did.

‘We need to talk, Hertz,’ the first plug-ugly growled. The orc thumped a fist into his palm. Through the locker slats, Bundt could just make out a rat-skin jersey stretched tight over the greenskin’s barrel chest. Screechers’ fans. As if things weren’t bad enough. ‘Word is, you is planning on trying to win, tomorrow.’

‘But you is supposed to lose,’ the other orc growled. ‘The boss paid you to lose. So you can’t win, see?’

Boss? They could only mean the Screechers’ coach, Red Warpbite. Red wasn’t above a bit of strategic cheating when it suited him, on and off the field.

Bundt stifled a growl. That explained the money he’d found in the locker. He wasn’t against a player making money on the side, but not during the finals. And certainly not without cutting the rest of the team in on the action. Especially his coach. He glared at Marius’ slack, empurpled features. If the poison hadn’t done for him, Bundt might’ve killed the Blitzer himself.

‘We is supposed to hurt you a bit, Hertz. But we is thinking you might need a bit more than hurting.’

Bundt heard the sound of metal sliding over leather. He knew the sound of a knife being drawn when he heard it. The orc stopped, just on the other side of the locker door. ‘Oi… why is you purple?’

Bundt jerked Marius to the side, driving his dead weight into the orc. The orc fell with a roar, and his companion lunged. Marius was wrenched from Bundt’s hands, a knife jutting from the side of his skull. Bundt slammed into the locker door, causing it to smash the orc in the face. As one greenskin fell down, unconscious, the other scrambled back, piggy eyes wide in shock. ‘What–?’ he began. Then, ‘Urk.’ The orc toppled forward, a dwarf axe buried in the back of his head.

Morgrim clucked his tongue. ‘What happened?’ he asked, as he retrieved the axe from the orc’s skull. A small, thin man, all in black robes, stood behind him, nervously cleaning a pair of tinted spectacles. He wore a cloak made from black feathers, and a tastefully distasteful necklace of finger bones.

‘You killed him,’ Bundt said, trying to free himself. It was no use; he was properly wedged into the locker. He had a momentary panic, as visions of being buried in a coffin full of stained breeches and perfumed letters welled up in his mind. Morgrim sighed and reached for him.

‘I meant before that.’

‘They killed Marius,’ Bundt said, as Morgrim pried him out of the coffin-locker. ‘Again.’ Bundt crouched beside Marius’ body and jerked the knife free. ‘At least it was in the head. Nobody will notice the hole if we get a helmet on him.’

‘He’s leaking.’

‘He was already leaking.’ Bundt turned to the thin man. ‘You’re a necromancer?’ Bundt asked, looking him up and down. He was certainly dressed like a necromancer – all in black, with that necklace and his teeth stained black. He wore scratched spectacles and had too many rings on his thin, pale fingers. As Bundt looked closer, he realised the feathered cloak wasn’t made of crow or raven feathers, as he’d thought, but pigeon feathers, dyed black. His heart sank. What sort of necromancer couldn’t even get proper crow feathers?

‘I consider myself more a facilitator for the magic of death. Necromancer sounds so unpleasant.’ The necromancer grinned, showing off his teeth. His accent was vague, from someplace full of sun and wine. ‘I am Franco Fiducci. I can provide references.’

‘I bet you can.’

‘Living ones.’

Bundt blinked. ‘Oh. Well, no time for that.’ He kicked Marius. ‘What can you do about this?’

‘The colour, you mean?’

‘No. All of it. His general state of – of…’ Bundt shrugged helplessly.

‘Death,’ Morgrim said, helpfully.

‘I can’t bring him back to life, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Fiducci said.

‘I don’t care if he’s alive – I just want him to play,’ Bundt said.

Fiducci smiled. ‘That I can do.’ He rubbed two fingers together. ‘It’ll be expensive.’

Bundt looked at Morgrim. ‘I thought I said find a cheap one.’

‘He is – comparatively,’ Morgrim said. ‘He only wants money, rather than your soul.’

‘Preferably lots of money,’ Fiducci interjected.

‘Yes, it must cost quite a bit to dye all those pigeons.’ Bundt sighed and reached into Marius’ locker for the gold. ‘Is this enough?’ he asked, as he tossed the helmet to Fiducci. The necromancer weighed it in his hand and nodded jerkily, eyes wide.

‘Practically a retainer.’

‘Good. Consider yourself on the payroll.’ He looked past the necromancer. Morgrim was questioning their prisoner.

‘Why did you poison him?’ Morgrim demanded, dragging the dazed orc up, until they were nose to nose. The orc’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus.

‘What?’

Morgrim punched the greenskin and let him flop back down. ‘I don’t think they poisoned him.’

‘And I said I don’t care who poisoned him. This is Blood Bowl, Doc. People die. Usually on the field, granted, but Marius was never all that considerate.’ He looked at Fiducci. ‘Well?’

‘It will take much time to recall his ghost and–’ Fiducci began.

‘How much time to get him moving?’

‘A few minutes. But he’ll be a mindless husk, fit only for menial tasks.’

‘In other words, the perfect Blood Bowl player.’ Bundt rubbed his hands together in glee. ‘Get him moving. The others will be arriving soon.’

It took Fiducci longer than a few minutes. ‘It’s the poison, you see,’ he said, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. ‘Poisons, I should say. It’s rather like trying to animate an empty sack. Only the sack is full of rubbish.’

Zombie-Marius twitched and flopped on the floor like a suffocating fish. Fiducci gestured sharply, clawing at the air. Marius slid up, and sank down with a faint squishing noise. Bundt gnawed on a thumbnail. ‘If he can’t walk…’ Morgrim began.

‘As long as he can stumble to his starting position, I don’t care. I’m not forfeiting this game. The Manglers have never forfeited a game!’

‘What about the Wasteland Bowl?’ Morgrim said.

‘The dugout collapsed,’ Bundt said. Eight players had died, his dreams (and their bones) crushed by cheap construction materials. A dark day for the team.

‘We still forfeited,’ Morgrim said.

‘Not by choice!’

Morgrim shrugged. ‘We call it now, we can get out of town before the fans realise what’s happening. We might even make it back to Middenplatz without losing anyone else.’

Marius bobbed up again, feet slipping on the floor. His jaw hung slack, and something oily, and possibly acidic, drooled from his purple lips. His big hands twitched, groping blindly.

Fiducci waved a hand in front of the Blitzer’s opaque eyes. The zombie lurched forward, reaching. Fiducci jerked back as Marius tried to bite him.

Morgrim caught the zombie’s arms and Bundt crammed a helmet on the wobbling head. The visor of the helmet acted as a makeshift muzzle. Fiducci’s fingers lit up with purple light and he tapped Marius on his chest. The zombie stiffened and slumped, dribbling quietly. ‘That should do it,’ the necromancer said.

‘He can play?’

‘More or less.’ Fiducci cleaned his spectacles. ‘Not as well as he did, obviously. But loss of skill is more than made up for by durability. The average zombie is good for… two, three games at least, if you take care of them.’ He hefted his helmet full of gold. ‘Now, I’ll just be on my–’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Bundt said, grabbing the necromancer by his skull necklace. ‘Retainer, remember?’ Fiducci made to protest, but whatever he saw in Bundt’s twitching eye silenced him. ‘Welcome to the Manglers, Mister Fiducci. I only have one rule – the Manglers never, ever lose. No matter what.’

Fiducci frowned in puzzlement. ‘Wait – didn’t the Dwarf Giants pummel you in Dungeon Bowl last season?’

‘That was a statistical anomaly,’ Bundt said, from between clenched teeth. His eye was twitching so badly, it felt as if it were going to rip itself off his face.

‘It looked more like a Deathroller.’

Bundt gently took Fiducci’s neck in his hands. ‘A. Statistical. Anomaly.’ He stared deep into Fiducci’s wide, terrified eyes. ‘Are we clear?’ He took Fiducci’s squeak as a gesture of assent and loosened his grip.

Voices reached them, slithering through the corridors. The Manglers were arriving. ‘Get him into Marius’ locker,’ Bundt hissed. Morgrim grabbed Fiducci and stuffed the protesting necromancer into the open coffin and slammed the lid. Bundt forced the blank-eyed zombie to sit, just as the first of the Manglers shuffled in. Most of them looked the worse for wear and, for a moment, Bundt wondered if Marius was the only dead man on his team.

Marius attracted a few second glances. Most of that was due to his new necrotic colouration, and possibly the copious drool. But some of those glances were more than curious. Bundt had been a coach long enough to tell when some of his players were feeling guilty. He traded looks with Morgrim. The dwarf nodded sourly and held up four fingers. Bundt sighed. ‘Take a knee, lads – and lasses, sorry, Sora,’ Bundt said, waving off a protest from Sora Oflrsdottir. The henna-haired, late-season trade from Vanheim Valkyries scowled and leaned her muscular frame against a locker.

Bundt studied the faces of his players. All of them were human, or close enough for book-keeping purposes. Nine men and one woman, as fine a team as one could get on short notice. ‘Is Marius okay?’ Sora asked.

‘He’s fine,’ Bundt said.

‘He’s leaking. And not like normal.’

‘He always does that. Ignore it.’

‘Only it’s eating through the floor…’

Bundt shook his head. ‘Never mind. Now… what is it, Mueller?’

Horst Mueller shot a nervous glance at Marius. He was the team’s thrower, with an arm like a trebuchet and a brain like one of those rocks that the trebuchet threw. ‘There’s a foot sticking out of that locker, Coach.’

Bundt leaned towards him. ‘Do I pay you to look at lockers, Mueller?’

‘No, Coach. Only it looks like there’s someone trapped in there.’

‘What about me, Mueller? I’m trapped in here – in a cage of despair.’ Bundt slapped his chest. ‘My heart is aching, Mueller. Why not think about me, for once?’

Mueller stared at him in horrified fascination. Bundt’s eye felt as if it were doing a jig. He looked around, good eye narrowed in general reproach, of the players, the world, the fates themselves. ‘Right. So which one of you poisoned Marius?’

Uncertain faces glanced nervously at one another. Bundt pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m not mad. Nuffle knows, I considered it myself. But the night before a game? Especially this game? Which of you idiots is responsible for this?’

Five hands went up, including Sora’s. Bundt wasn’t the only one surprised. As the players looked at one another in shock, Morgrim chuckled. ‘Guess I missed one.’ He looked at Sora. ‘Lahmian Rhapsody?’

‘What? No. Lustrian Hisser. Makes the veins go kerplop.’ She mimed an exploding vein. Then, defensively. ‘He hogged the ball.’

Bundt shook his head. He looked at another player – Berkut. The Arabayan tapped his lips. ‘Mine was the Rhapsody, Coach. I thought no one would notice if he keeled over during – ah… you know.’ He gestured and shrugged. ‘Served him right, after what he did to my sister… my brother… my cousins… our goat…’ He trailed off. ‘He was an honourless dog.’

The other three were much the same story – Marius had borrowed money from one, stolen a lucky charm from another, and had left the third with a bar tab the size of Altdorf. Old resentments, boiling over into murder. It was always the way. Normally, murder was confined to the field, but Marius had been a special case.

Bundt looked at Mueller. ‘What about you? Anything to contribute?’

‘No, I only stabbed him, Coach,’ Mueller said. The others threw stray bits of armour at him, forcing him to cover his head with his hands. ‘What? He kept snapping me with his towel – a man can only take so much!’

Bundt shot a look at Morgrim, who blinked. ‘That explains the knife blade broken off in his stomach. I thought he’d swallowed it.’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t seem relevant to the poisoning, so I didn’t think to mention it.’

‘Why would he have swallowed a knife?’ Bundt asked, his voice deceptively calm. He wondered if hiring a dwarf doktor for a human team had been the smartest of moves.

‘Who knows why you humans do anything? I’m a doktor, not a philosopher.’

Bundt rubbed his face and patted Mueller on the shoulder. ‘Thank you, Mueller. Your restraint is noted. As for the rest of you… you’re a bloody team! Why don’t you act like it?’ He looked around. ‘I know Marius was a living stain, but five poisons? And a knife?’ He wagged his finger. ‘Next time, gentlemen, consult with your teammates. Consult with me, for Nuffle’s sake! Set the play, follow it through. Trust each other. What’s a team without trust?’

Sora raised her hand. ‘Are – are you sure he’s fine?’

‘Just a bit of an upset stomach,’ Bundt said, with forced cheerfulness. His twitch was growing worse, and it had brought reinforcements. ‘He’ll be right as rain, soon enough.’

‘Speaking of rain, he’s leaking again,’ Morgrim said.

‘Stuff a sock in the hole to plug it up.’ Bundt clasped his hands behind his back. ‘Let’s go, Manglers. We’ve got a game to win.’

Bundt had to admit that this year’s Doom Bowl sponsors had gone all out. A ghostly advertisement floated above the field, surrounded by a flotilla of agitated spirits– ‘DeathHex – When they absolutely, positively have to die overnight!’ –and crackling with ominously cheerful, amethyst lightning.

Word was, with Tomolandry the Undying finally considering retirement for the fifth time in five hundred years, DeathHex was looking for a new team to sponsor. Which was convenient, given that the Manglers were about to lose their current sponsors.

‘This is an outrage,’ the man from Errantry Magazine shouted. ‘Errantry Magazine won’t stand for this… this blatant violation of your ethics clause.’ He was a big man, dressed in battered chainmail and a crisp, white tabard that was bright enough to blind the unwary.

‘What violation?’ Bundt asked, trying to keep one eye – the one that wasn’t twitching – on the game. So far, the Manglers were holding their own – the Screechers had looked fairly put out at Marius’ presence. Red Warpbite was probably gnawing his own tail in frustration. Bundt grinned. Served the scabby git right.

‘Your blitzer – our spokesperson – is clearly an undead monstrosity.’

‘You’re only saying that because he’s missing an arm,’ Bundt said, wheeling on the other man. ‘He gave a limb for you – what more do you want?’

‘He’s purple – bits are falling off,’ the sponsor shouted, grabbing a handful of Bundt’s shirt. ‘There are knives in him. Multiple knives!’

‘He’s passionate… determined… tough…’ The skaven had been trying to bring Marius down since the kick-off. But Fiducci’s promise of durability had proven true – Marius had been tough in life. Now, in death, he was the next best thing to an avalanche.

‘He’s lost a leg now,’ the sponsor shrieked, staring out at the field in horror.

Bundt slapped his hands away. ‘We’ll sew it back on. No one will notice – throw the gods-cursed ball, Mueller!’ He shoved the sponsor aside and leaned out of the dugout, shouting at the hapless thrower. Mueller looked around desperately as a rat-ogre charged towards him, bellowing in fury.

Morgrim sidestepped the angry sponsor as the man stomped away, scowling. ‘There goes another endorsement deal,’ Morgrim said. He winced as Marius lost his other arm to a chainsaw wielding skaven. ‘And another arm.’ Marius had the ball wedged in his helmet and was ploughing forward like a vaguely human-shaped battering ram. Skaven were stomped into squealing pancakes beneath his unfeeling feet.

‘Who cares? Good riddance. When we win, sponsors will be lining up. DeathHex is looking for a new team.’ Bundt stepped back as a stray bit of Marius bounced into the dugout. ‘Look at him go. He never ran that fast while he was alive!’

‘He’s only got one leg,’ Morgrim said.

‘He’s streamlined. Shed all that offseason weight. Touchdown!’ Bundt threw up his hands and howled in joy. Morgrim shook his head.

‘While your pet zombie was stumbling downfield, we lost Mueller,’ he said, as a pair of stretcher-bearers jogged out of the dugout, heading for the irate rat-ogre and what was left of Horst Mueller. The rat-ogre was repeatedly slamming the unfortunate Mueller into the turf. He was deader than Marius. ‘And Sora just got mobbed by gutter runners,’ Morgrim added. ‘We’re down four more players.’

‘But we’re up on points,’ Bundt said.

‘We barely have a team.’

‘Easily rectified,’ Fiducci said, fiddling with his spectacles. ‘I can have them on their feet at half-time.’ He slid his spectacles on and squinted owlishly. ‘I am on retainer, after all.’ He frowned. ‘Indeed, we might even be able to make a few improvements…’

‘Improvements?’ Bundt asked.

Fiducci nodded. ‘They’re doing wonderful things with lightning in Ingolstadt these days…’

‘Lightning,’ Bundt repeated. His eye ceased its twitching.

‘What about Sora?’ Morgrim demanded.

A mangled gutter runner bounced off the dugout and flopped to the turf. The former Valkyrie clambered to the top of a fuzzy heap, a handful of severed tails in her hand. She let out a long, ululating cry even as the half-time buzzer sounded.

‘Sora’s fine,’ Bundt said. He looked at Fiducci. ‘You mentioned lightning?’

Morgrim sighed. ‘What am I supposed to do with a team full of dead men?’

Bundt looked at him. ‘Is that what’s bothering you?’

Morgrim glared at him. ‘What’s a team doktor supposed to do if his players are past caring about medical care?’

‘Earn the easiest money of your misbegotten life?’ Bundt said. Morgrim looked at him. He blinked. A slow grin spread across his battered features and he swatted Fiducci on the back, nearly bowling the little man over.

‘Welcome to the team,’ he said. ‘Rule one: Manglers never lose.’

About the Author

Josh Reynolds is the author of the Blood Angels novel Deathstorm and the Warhammer 40,000 novellas Hunter’s Snare and Dante’s Canyon, along with the audio drama Master of the Hunt, all three featuring the White Scars. In the Warhammer World, he has written the End Times novels The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, and for Age of Sigmar he has written the Legends of the Age of Sigmar novels Pestilens and Black Rift, the Realmgate Wars novel Fury of Gork and several audio dramas including The Lords of Helstone. He lives and works in Northampton.

Dirk Hoffnung takes to the field for four epic novels covering his career in that greatest (and most deadly) of sports: Blood Bowl!

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Manglers Never Lose © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2016. Manglers Never Lose, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Blood Bowl, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-282-0

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