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Manglers Never Lose – Josh Reynolds

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!’

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A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-282-0

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