Contents

Cover

Bad Loon Rising – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Prologue

Badwater Drop

In a dank cavern on the outskirts of Badwater Drop, Zograt the runt shovelled squig droppings. It was a dangerous and thankless task. He had to stretch through the crudely built fence of the squigs’ paddock to reach their leavings, not helped by his twisted leg or scrawny stature. The grot’s rudimentary shovel was little better than a stick topped with a tough flange of fungus. Zograt thrust it hurriedly into the mounds of ordure, scooping as much dung as he could before hastily withdrawing. Each time he cringed, anticipating a squig snapping its mantrap jaws shut on his arms.

‘Keep dat jingler goin’, Driggzy,’ Zograt panted as he nerved himself up for another lunge. Driggz glanced down from his perch atop a tall bloatcap fungus, whose broad brim jutted over the paddock.

‘Yoo jus’ keep shovellin’,’ called Driggz. ‘An’ hurry up. Skram’s takin’ da ladz out soon. We don’t want ’im to find us still doin’ dis. Yoo know wot ’e gets like before a raid.’

Though also a runt, Driggz was slightly bigger and stronger than Zograt. Accordingly, he had bullied his way into the job of distracting the squigs instead of having to do the shovelling. Not that this was a much safer task, since it involved balancing precariously atop a ’shroom while dangling a cluster of bells over the squigs on the end of a long pole. The snarling, spheroid beasts jostled one another to leap and snap at the bells. Zograt reckoned all it would take was one moment’s inattention by Driggz for the squigs to bite down on bells or pole and haul him screaming into the pen.

Still, it was a safer job than shovelling, and Zograt cursed himself for winding up on dung-duty. He was normally quick-witted enough to trick Driggz into thinking his suggestions were Driggz’s own bright ideas, but today he had been too distracted by his nerves. It had been a while since their Loonboss, Skram Badstabba, had taken the ladz out on a raid. He was bound to subject Zograt to a beating if he stumbled across him before setting off. Such a display of bullying would impress Skram’s ladz – for every self-respecting grot enjoyed watching those weaker than them being picked on. Zograt had nothing but contempt for Skram, who was stupid enough that many of his ladz wondered if he wasn’t part orruk. He also feared him. The Loonboss was taller and thicker-set than Zograt by far. He had been the one to give him not only his twisted leg but also his crooked, thrice-broken nose. Just the thought of receiving yet another beating at Skram’s hands made Zograt’s own shake a little more.

‘It’ll go fasta if we swap, Driggzy,’ he suggested. ‘Yoo’z stronger dan me. Ya got longer arms.’

‘Yeah, an’ I wanna keep ’em, so keep shovellin’ and I’ll keep jinglin’,’ replied Driggz.

Zograt scowled, then lunged through the fence and scooped another pile of dung. He cursed his treacherous body as his shaking caused squig droppings to spill from his shovel. Zograt tipped what remained onto the stinking heap of dung and refuse that loomed over him. He gritted his cracked teeth in frustration. This entire task was pointless, he thought. Even an idiot like Skram must be able to see that. The dung and rubbish just heaped up and up until eventually it toppled, often straight back into the pens. Zograt could think of half a dozen ways the foul heap could be disposed of, or even used to fertilise the tribe’s fungus crops.

‘Skram ain’t smart enuff to fink of stuff like dat though, is he?’ he muttered to himself. ‘And he wouldn’t lissen to a runt like yoo. No-grot does. So jus’ keep shovellin’ and get out of ’ere before–’

‘Oh zog it, he’s ’ere,’ hissed Driggz.

Zograt went cold. His gaze darted frantically about as he sought for a hiding place. His shaking became a convulsion that saw the shovel spill from his hands and spatter dung across his shins and the ragged hem of his black robe.

Nowhere to go, he thought. Backed up with the squig pen on one side and the dungheap on the other, he was cornered.

‘Oi, runt!’ Skram’s shout froze Zograt in place. He had a deep voice for a grot, and there was no mistaking the glee in his tone. ‘Yoo’z meant to be shovellin’ dung, not rollin’ in it!’

Skram’s words were greeted with massed cackling. Zograt forced himself to turn and face the Loonboss and the crowd of toadies trailing in his wake.

‘Oh zog me, dat’s ’alf da tribe,’ muttered Driggz, sounding dismayed.

For a moment, Zograt seriously contemplated scrambling through the bars of the squig pen and fleeing for its far side. He despised himself for the thought at once, however; it wasn’t just cowardly, it was also stupid. He didn’t doubt that Skram was about to hurt him, maybe badly, but the squigs would kill him for certain.

Skram loomed over him, a hulking mass of stringy muscle and ragged scars with a big cleaver hanging from his belt. The loonstone amulet hanging about Skram’s neck glowed with sickly light. His small, deep-set eyes glimmered like embers of spite in the dark shadow thrown by his cowl.

‘Told yooz to get dat job done,’ snarled Skram. His tone was surly, but his features were twisted into a leer of delight. Dozens of grots pressed in behind him, their expressions eager. Zograt noted that many were decked out for a raid, festooned with quivers of black-fletched arrows or lugging shields, pokin’ spears or dented brass gongs.

Zograt tried to reply. He was furious with himself when all that came from his tightened throat was a strangled wheeze. Skram, however, appeared delighted.

‘Wossat, runt, yoo ferget ’ow to speak? Or is yoo too stoopid?’ Skram advanced on him, knuckles bunched, and Zograt took an involuntary step back. He bumped against the paddock fence. From behind him came a scrambling and snarling. Zograt realised to his horror that he couldn’t hear Driggz’s bells and that, while watching the spectacle playing out below, the bigger runt must have forgotten to jangle them.

Fear of the squigs’ jaws eclipsed all else. Driven by instinct, Zograt lunged away from the fence. From behind him came a jarring thump and the splintering sounds of huge fangs sinking deep into rotten wood. Zograt barely heard it, for in throwing himself clear of one danger he had literally run straight into another. He rebounded from the solid bulk of Skram’s chest and landed on his backside in scattered squig dung with his heart racing and his head swimming from the impact. Skram loomed over him.

‘Daft zogger nearly got hisself eaten!’ crowed Skram. Most of his ladz jeered and hooted with laughter. A few just chuckled dutifully, or else looked bored and a bit disgusted by the entire spectacle. One of these stepped up to Skram’s side. Zograt recognised Nuffgunk Manstrangle, Skram’s second-in-command.

‘Boss, we gotta get da ladz movin’,’ he said. ‘Dunno ’ow long da Twitchleggz will be away for. Don’t wanna miss our chance to raid ’em while yoo is wastin’ time on dis runt.’

Skram’s expression became petulant, the look of a cruel child forced to stop tormenting an insect. He snarled at Nuffgunk, then back down at Zograt.

‘Fine, but I told dis runt to get a job done, an’ he ain’t done it. No-grot gets away wiv dat in Badwater Drop!’

Skram took double handfuls of Zograt’s threadbare robe and hauled him up so they were almost nose to nose.

‘Yoo wanna roll about in squig shit instead o’ shovellin’ it? Fine, I’ll stick yoo where da dung goes,’ Skram growled. For one horrible moment Zograt’s mind became a blank scream of panic as he envisioned the Loonboss hefting him up and throwing him into the squig paddock.

Instead, Skram kicked Zograt hard in his twisted leg, causing an explosion of pain to rocket up the limb and cramp Zograt’s guts with its severity. Skram punched Zograt in the stomach, doubling him over and driving a thin spray of air and spittle from between his lips. Then, even while Zograt still retched, he felt himself spun around and pushed face first into the teetering dungheap.

His mouth and nostrils filled with ordure and festering food waste. His gorge rose, and only the terror that he might choke prevented him from vomiting. Instinct drove Zograt to recoil. He was prevented by the weight of one of Skram’s hobnailed boots, which landed none too gently on the back of Zograt’s neck and shoved him deeper into the dungheap. Something wet and wriggling squirmed up one nostril and made him gag again. He could hear the muffled sound of grots laughing uproariously, over the nauseating squelch of muck and the roaring of his own blood in his ears. The fear came to Zograt that he was going to end his short and miserable existence drowning in squig droppings, and he scrabbled to gain purchase on something and force his head up for a breath.

Skram shoved back, harder. The laughter redoubled. Suddenly Zograt felt angrier than he had ever been in his life. The pain he was used to, could bear with weary resignation as simply being his lot as a runt. But the mockery of creatures so much more stupid than him enraged Zograt beyond words. What he could do, if he had even half their strength, or even if he simply hadn’t had the horrible misfortune to be the smallest and weakest of his tribe.

He wasn’t sure if it was anger, lack of oxygen or perhaps discarded scraps of hallucinogenic fungi forced down his throat, but Zograt’s mind filled suddenly with lurid visions of the horrors he would unleash on Skram if he had the chance. And not just Skram either, but his whole stupid tribe, and all the uncaring realms that had left him so completely to this ignominious fate.

The visions lent Zograt the strength to heave himself back out of the filth long enough to spit out a mouthful of muck and drag in a shrieking breath. Then he heard Skram snarl with outrage and was shoved back down again.

‘Mucky little runt!’ roared Skram. ‘Stay in da filth where ya belong!’

Zograt’s lungs burned in his thin chest. His maimed leg throbbed in time to his labouring heartbeat. Dimly, he heard a voice that might have been Nuffgunk’s, but the words no longer made sense to him. Colours swam across Zograt’s vision and he felt a tickling sensation like the feather-light scrabble of insect legs against his skin. The moist darkness of the dungheap seemed to seep through his robes, through his flesh, into the very heart of him, and Zograt lost himself to it.

Deep in the Shudderwood, a few days later

Skram Badstabba crept through the Shudderwood, hoping not to meet a monster. The Loonboss was an imposing figure, bulky for a Moonclan grot with scars to prove his toughness. The tall cowl of his black robes was pierced with the bones of ex-rivals. His cleaver had been torn from the grasp of a dying orruk and was festooned with hidden slittas. Skram believed the talisman about his neck, a Bad Moon hewn from loonstone by his tribe’s shaman, protected him from danger, though as he had quickly bored of the aged shaman’s explanation, he was hazy on the details.

The point was, Skram thought as he took stock of his leaderly assets, he was a tough Loonboss with blades aplenty and the magic of the Bad Moon to protect him. Yet none of this staved off the crawling unease bred by his surroundings.

The trees of the Shudderwood crowded in. Their translucent trunks twitched with insectile movement within. Overhead, their branches meshed conspiratorially. Leaves like black satin whispered against pale fronds glimmering with bioluminescence, while many-legged things scuttled everywhere. Tree roots had torn up the ground. Skram had to watch his step to avoid his foot plunging down some hidden hole. Liar’s Grass grew underfoot, each blade night black on one side and ghostly white on the other. It stirred fitfully as though moved by a breeze Skram couldn’t feel, creating a dizzying carpet of darkness and light.

Mist rolled between the trees and gathered so thick in dells and ditches it appeared solid. It glowed faintly, its sickly yellow-white light seeming to dance just ahead, or off to one side, or through the next thicket. Rumour had it that if a grot stared too long into those lights, they would wander away never to be seen again.

Dwelling on those rumours reminded Skram to check on his ladz.

‘Don’t wanna be out ’ere alone,’ he muttered to himself as he glanced back at the skulkmobs trailing him. Nervous grots hastened on Skram’s heels, red eyes darting beneath their cowls. The dented gongs they had bashed so enthusiastically during their raid on the Twitchleggz tribe were smothered with dirty rags lest an inadvertent clang alert something dreadful to the grots’ passing. Even their usual bickering was muted.

At the head of the skulkmobs walked Nuffgunk. His long face wore a perpetual scowl even at the best of times. Right now, Skram thought the grot boss looked as though he’d just eaten a bitterspurt ’shroom. Nuffgunk held his pokin’ spear tight and ready to stab.

‘Wot yoo jumpy for, Nuffgunk? ’Fraid of da monsters?’ Skram spoke as loud as he dared with mocking bravado. Nuffgunk cringed. Skram’s courage was bolstered as the closest grots cackled. In Skram’s experience there were few things a Moonclan grot liked better than bullying, except perhaps a shiny bottle or wicked blade. A pleasant memory came back to him of giving that runt Zograt a good beating just before they had left Badwater Drop. He wondered briefly if the little git had survived his dive in the dungheap. If so, Skram thought, he was going to be in for a repeat performance when the raiding party got home.

Skram had stopped walking, unable to pick a path across the treacherous ground and engage in ridicule at the same time. Nuffgunk stalked past, baring his back to Skram defiantly.

‘Know wot dey sez, boss,’ he hissed. ‘Monsters always takes da noisy ones, or dem wot falls be’ind.’

Skram hastened to overtake Nuffgunk, ignoring the nasty chuckles from his ladz.

‘You is scared of da monsters!’ Skram crowed. His lieutenant looked incredulous.

‘Course I is, boss,’ Nuffgunk whispered. ‘Yoo ’eard da stories, ain’t ya? Snikkersnak jawz, slithaquick clawz, an’ all dat.’

The grots told tales of the Gob-hole monster, which stayed still so long the moss grew over it until some curious grot decided to explore the dripping cavern that turned out to be a mouth. Then there were the Ganglers, swaying through the trees on spindle limbs, lantern eyes watching for stragglers, cavernous ears alive for loud voices. There were the Snatchers, said to squirm from the soil and wrap wormy fingers around the necks of grots who lingered above ground, and the Glintygrab, who tracked down wasteful grots by the trails of discarded shinies they left behind.

Skram realised he’d slowed, lost in ghastly contemplation. Nuffgunk had pulled ahead again. Skram sped up, jostling his lieutenant as he passed. He wouldn’t shiv an underling as useful as Nuffgunk, who did a lot of the hard work of being in charge, but Skram wasn’t above using his brawn to remind the grot boss of his place.

‘I ain’t afraid of monsters! Dey’s afraid o’ me,’ bragged Skram. ‘I just gave dem Twitchleggz a zoggin’ good kickin’!’

Nuffgunk spat a gobbet of phlegm into a bush. ‘Right, boss. Yeah.’

Skram’s hand strayed towards the handle of a concealed slitta as he wondered whether maybe he should shiv Nuffgunk, just to make an example. To his alarm, his loonstone pendant glowed sickly yellow. Skram stuffed it inside his robes lest it shine like a lantern between the trees.

‘Wot yoo mean?’ he demanded.

Nuffgunk gave him a look of weary disgust. As the two of them scrambled up a muddy rise over coiling roots, Skram felt an unaccustomed twinge of self-doubt. It had been a good raid, hadn’t it?

‘We didn’t ’zactly bring da Everdank, did we, boss?’ said Nuffgunk.

‘We gave da Twitchleggz a good kickin’,’ Skram insisted. ‘Half o’ Funnelsnare Pit woz on fire by da time we got done wiv ’em!’

‘Only cos Raznut dropped ’is torch when dat spider bit ’is legs off,’ Nuffgunk retorted. ‘Right before da Twitchleggz grabbed all ’is ladz and dragged ’em off ta feed Arghabigskuttla. Told yoo we shouldn’t ’ave wasted time kickin’ da runt about.’

Now that Skram thought about it, the living spider god of the Twitchleggz probably had dined well today.

‘Raznut an’ his ladz woz a useless bunch o’ gitz,’ said Skram, waving the point aside. ‘We pushed over dat big spider statchoo, stabbed up a bunch of dere ladz, an’ nicked a load o’ dere spider eggz to feed to da squigs!’

‘You know dey can just stand dat statchoo up again?’ Nuffgunk asked. ‘An’ I reckon dey cut up as many of our ladz as we did deres.’

‘Still got da eggz!’ Skram insisted.

He looked back to where Spruggit’s ladz carried bags full of lumpy white egg sacs. He cackled as he saw several of the grots were tangled in the sticky wisps of web that fronded the eggs. Others bore purple swellings where infant arachnids had bitten their kidnappers. These luckless grots staggered, eyes glassy, lips flecked with foam.

‘Might be good, if we can get ’em back to Badwater Drop wivout our ladz gettin’ eaten alive,’ replied Nuffgunk. ‘All I’m sayin’ is…’ His voice trailed off as he crested the rise and looked down into the dell beyond.

‘Oh zog,’ he said.

Skram thought this seemed an odd conclusion to Nuffgunk’s point, until he too reached the top of the rise. The tunnel leading down to Badwater Drop was across the dell, a few hundred yards further through a dripping tangle of boulders and rotting trees. Between the grots and sanctuary squatted a hulking thing of chitin, luminescent eyestalks and grot-sized claws, so huge that it filled the dell.

It struck Skram belatedly that scouts might have been useful.

‘Er,’ he croaked. A dozen bulbous eyes swivelled in his direction. The monster rose on segmented legs, antennae quivering with a sound like wind through dry reeds.

He looked at Nuffgunk.

Nuffgunk looked at him.

They both glanced back down the slope to the grots staggering under their spidery burdens.

‘Leg it,’ shrieked Skram.

He and Nuffgunk dashed in opposite directions. Behind Skram, the screaming began. He kept running. In his opinion, a grot who couldn’t escape a monster attack didn’t deserve a place in his skrap anyway.

By the time Skram made it to the entrance to Badwater Drop, he was gasping for breath. The cave was a diagonal slash of darkness, like a maw opening amidst slimy stone and rotting vegetation. Most sane beings of the realms would have viewed such an entrance with fear. Skram plunged gratefully into its promised safety, ducking to avoid a curtain of stragglenekk fungus that hung like sweaty meat. The fungus would strangle unwary victims, drinking their juices once the squirming stopped.

Cool shadows welcomed Skram back like old cronies. He felt safer without open space above him, at least until a roar from the direction of the dell sent him scurrying deeper. The cave narrowed into a dank tunnel that wormed its way into the deeps. Thick mycelium straggled along the walls and ceiling, sprouting outcroppings of thumb-sized mushrooms that gave off a pallid glow.

Moisture dripped.

Insects squirmed and scuttled.

Skram took a moment to compose himself. He pulled his hood back into place and gulped deep breaths as he leant against the wall. Fungal fronds fumbled at him with idiot curiosity. Skram batted them away before any could prick his skin and seed him with spores. A fat millipede trundled from a crevice to investigate Skram’s hand and he snatched it gratefully, biting the insect in half and sucking down its bitter juices. The back end of the insect flopped about, little legs kicking. Skram exhaled slowly.

‘Well, dat woz zoggin’ ’orrible,’ said a voice behind him. Skram jumped and squashed the other half of his snack. He turned to see Nuffgunk slinking down the tunnel, a score or so of grots behind him.

‘Yeah,’ replied Skram. He fixed his lieutenant with a beady eye.

‘Wouldn’t want to get blamed fer dat mess,’ said Nuffgunk.

‘Da monster must’ve ’eard them squigwitz staggerin’ about wiv da egg sacs. So dey’s to blame, right?’ Skram drew himself up so the peak of his hood scraped the tunnel ceiling.

In the foetid ’shroomlight, he saw the swift calculus of self-preservation behind Nuffgunk’s eyes. Could the grot boss take Skram in a straight fight at such close quarters? Did he have the guts to try? A tingle shot through Skram’s body, part anticipation, part millipede poison. The glow of his loonstone pendant showed through the threadbare fabric of his robes like a blessing from the Bad Moon.

Nuffgunk’s shoulders sagged.

‘Yeah, boss, musta been dem gitz wiv da eggz,’ he said, eyes downcast.

Skram grunted his satisfaction before baring his back to Nuffgunk. He licked insect juices from his palm, then set off down the passage, allowing himself a leer as he heard his ladz following.

The route down to Badwater Drop was long and tortuous. The grots passed through slime-slick caverns where water plopped into stagnant pools and pallid worms writhed. They scrambled over the remains of ancient statues long disfigured by time and mineral accretions. They squirmed through claustrophobic tunnels and between rocks like jagged fangs, picked their way through glowing thickets of bulbous fungi, and balanced over boulders jutting from pools teeming with leech-beetles.

By the time they reached his tribe’s lurklair, Skram had convinced himself anew of his raid’s success. Like every raid he ever led, he told himself, it had been glorious. So convincing a job had he done of lying to himself that he entered Badwater Drop with the swagger of a conquering hero.

Skram’s confidence soared as he passed under the ancient arch that was a last remnant of some other, long-ago fastness, now defaced by fungi and crude trophies. The feeling held as he entered the outer slinkhole and found its ramshackle barricade abandoned but for scurrying insects.

His good mood faltered as he followed the tunnel from the slinkhole towards the main lair and found himself crunching over a carpet of bugs. Badwater Drop had its fair share of creepy-crawlies, but Skram thought this infestation was unusual. The walls and roof of the tunnel churned with movement. He swatted away scrabbling things as they dropped onto his shoulders or tried to swarm up his shins. Skram did his best to ignore the nervous muttering of his ladz as he pressed on, determined to find out where all these bugs had come from.

It was only as he emerged into Da Big Cave, where the more important grots of his tribe had their huts, that Skram’s self-assuredness took a serious knock. He halted so suddenly that Nuffgunk, hurrying to extricate himself from the infested tunnel, walked into his back.

‘Wot da zog ’appened ’ere, boss?’

For the second time that day, Skram could manage only a bewildered ‘Er…’

Da Big Cave had been so named because it was the widest open space in the lurklair, albeit still possessing a reassuringly low ceiling carpeted with glowing fungi, and plenty of stalagmites and stalactites to sneak between. When Skram had herded his skrap out of Da Big Cave a few days ago, it had boasted boss-huts thrown together from the shiniest scrap and best bits of rock the tribe could gather. Some had been built against stalagmites for solidity. Others had been studded with eye-catching shiny glass and stolen trinkets. A few were intermingled with the pipes and burners of alchemical stills or thickets of rare fungi, marking them out as the dwellings of the tribe’s Gobbapalooza.

Almost all the structures had now been demolished as thoroughly as though boom-squigs had detonated within them. Skram saw the ruins of his own hut, formerly the most impressive in the cave, now reduced to a slumped shell.

Insects swarmed everywhere. Now Skram could see them properly he felt his confidence wither. He had lived all his days in the underdanks, but had never seen bugs as strange as these. There were segmapedes longer than his leg, their carapaces inky black and furred with white mycelial tendrils. Arachnid things lurched through the wreckage on odd numbers of legs, their bloated bodies covered in tiny ’shrooms, their heads fanged moon-crescents. Myriad beetles scrabbled over one another in drifts, their mouthfuls of grot-like fangs visible in the ’shroomlight.

Only now did Skram register the pitiful corpses of fallen grots, half-buried in bugs. Skram realised that every one of them was distorted and bloated. Rancid-looking fungi protruded from eye sockets, yawning mouths and ruptured flesh. This horrid revelation was followed by another – he could hear terrified shrieks echoing from the tunnel mouths that led deeper into Badwater Drop. Skram realised that whatever had happened here, it was still happening.

‘Wot d’we do, boss?’ asked Nuffgunk. He sounded bewildered and dismayed. Skram considered simply legging it. He could find a new lair, he thought, get a new tribe together. Badwater Drop was cramped for a grot of his ambitions, now that he thought about it, and as for that thing that lived in Da Soggy Cave…

It was the looks on his ladz’s faces that stopped him. Skram realised that if he were to turn tail and run so soon after that business with the monster, his time as Loonboss would be at an end.

Preferring the vague threat of the unknown to the absolute certainty of half a dozen slittas in his back, Skram squared his shoulders. He donned his most ferocious scowl.

‘We find out wot da zog is goin’ on, and we stab up whoever made all dis mess!’ he said. Hefting his cleaver Skram waded through the insects towards his hut.

By the time he reached the wrecked structure, Skram had been bitten and stung many times. Fortunately for him, no Moonclan grot grew to maturity without building up a powerful resistance to the cocktail of toxins, poisons and spores inherent to their ecosystem. All the same, Skram’s head was swimming badly enough that it took him a moment to recognise the figure cowering in the ruins of his hut.

‘Hoi, Stragwit, dat yoo?’ he asked.

Stragwit Skrab was a portly grot with a bulbous nose and deep-sunk eyes, currently perching atop a pile of Skram’s favourite shiny rocks. The wreckage of a wood-and-leather harness clung to Stragwit’s shoulders, and he clutched a dented cauldron the size of his head which he was using to bludgeon insects as they climbed his rock pile. Stragwit served the tribe as its Brewgit, foremost purveyor of potions and augmentative unguents. Right now, Skram thought Stragwit just looked like a scared runt. The sight brought out his overdeveloped bullying instinct.

‘Stragwit, ya daft zogger, wot’s goin’ on? Where’d all da bugs come from?’

‘Zograt!’ screeched Stragwit hysterically. ‘It’s Zograt, he’s got da Clammy Hand on ’im!’

Skram blinked, scowled, then cursed as something bit him on the backside. By the time he had performed a swift dance of cursing and swatting at his robes, he had processed Stragwit’s words. They still made no sense.

‘Zograt don’t ’ave no Clammy Hand, he’s a wonky-nosed little scrut covered in squig muck,’ said Skram. ‘Wot really ’appened?’

Stragwit clubbed at the encroaching insects with feverish intensity. Shrill screams issued from deeper into the lurklair, echoing flatly from the cavern’s low ceiling. Bugs seethed on every surface. Their massed rasp and chitter filled Skram’s ears. Growing panic fed his anger and he waded up to Stragwit, grabbing the Brewgit by the scruff of his robes.

‘Asked yoo a question,’ Skram snarled.

‘An’ I toldya!’ Stragwit replied. ‘Somefin’ ’appened to da runt while yoo woz off raidin’. Da Bad Moon blessed ’im, and if yoo knows wot’s good for ya, boss, you’ll do a runner before ’im and dat troggoth of his finds ya!’

‘Da Bad Moon blessed dat little freak?’ Skram released Stragwit then, belatedly, wondering aloud. ‘Wot troggoth? Zograt ain’t got a troggoth.’

This couldn’t be right, he thought. The Brewgit must have been bitten one too many times and was delirious. Zograt was a reedy-voiced little creep too weak to go raiding or wrangle squigs, and who Skram despised. He hated Zograt’s crooked nose and his weakling limp, and never mind that Skram had inflicted both upon the smaller grot with repeated beatings. There was just something about Zograt that got under Skram’s skin and infused him with the need to brutalise and embarrass the runt over and again.

‘Boss, wot if he’s tellin’ da troof?’

Skram brushed bugs angrily from his robes as he rounded on Nuffgunk.

‘Yoo reckon da Bad Moon would bless dat little turd over any of yooz lot?’ he demanded. ‘Over yoo, Nuffgunk? Zog it, over me, da Loonboss? Wot for? Wot’s dat limpin’ little sneak got dat I don’t?’

But Skram knew, down in the deepest grotto of his rancid little soul, what Zograt had. Zograt had brains. He thought about things in a manner that Skram found both unsettling and offensive. It was his own deficiency in that regard that had always lain at the heart of Skram’s hatred towards Zograt, even if the Loonboss only dimly understood his own motivations.

An icy tendril of fear broke through the armour of Skram’s indignation.

What if Stragwit was telling the truth? he thought. If Zograt had somehow secured the blessings of the Bad Moon, had gained the power to do all this, then how would he treat Skram now that the shiv was in the other back? And what had Stragwit said about a troggoth…?

‘Lissen, maybe we betta–’

Skram was interrupted by a sing-song voice from outside the hut. It had the reedy tone he hated so instinctively, the nasal burr that made him want to black an eye or snap a bone. Yet now it was underlaid by something resonant and deep, as though another voice echoed out from unimaginable gulfs to entwine its words with Zograt’s.

‘Welcome back, boss… Yoo like wot I done wiv da place?’

Skram turned slowly, almost against his will. Wriggling things crunched and popped underfoot with every step. He didn’t want to look, but he had to.

There was the runt, standing outside the hut in his threadbare robes, barely tall enough to come up to Skram’s shoulder. Skram took in the fungi that had sprouted in glowing tendrils from Zograt’s scalp. He saw the insects that teemed through the runt’s robes, skittered across his skin and swirled about his feet. He stared into Zograt’s bulging eyes and saw motes of poisonous green power drifting through them like spores. Skram’s gaze travelled past Zograt to take in the huge Dankhold troggoth looming at the runt’s back. The beast’s head and shoulders weren’t visible from this angle, but what Skram could see of it was enough to do involuntary things to his bowel control.

‘Wot’s da matter, boss?’ asked Zograt, his tone mock-cheerful, his words squirming between gritted fangs. ‘Don’t like da mess I made? Gunna give me anuvver kickin’?’

Skram glanced over his shoulder in the hopes that, against all odds, Nuffgunk and his ladz would be there to back him up. Surely, they too saw the wrongness of this bewildering apparition, would fight against this perversion of what Skram saw as the natural order of things?

He was in time to see the last few stragglers fighting one another to scramble out of the ruined hut, black robes trailing as they fled.

Skram looked back at Zograt, who favoured him with a grin of infinite malice. Stragwit, still stranded atop his rocks, whimpered.

‘Nah,’ said Skram, then ran for his life.

Click here to buy Bad Loon Rising.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Henrik Rosenborg.
Internal illustrations by Nuala Kinrade.

Bad Loon Rising © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2023. Bad Loon Rising, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, 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.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-922-4

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

For Mrs T-C, in anticipation of once again being asked
‘what is wrong with you?’

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.