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Bossgrot – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Bossgrot

by Eric Gregory

‘It’s the wrong way, innit?’

Gribblak opened the visor of his helm and squinted through the rain to survey the valley. His skrap was an avalanche before him, but it was falling in the wrong direction, falling back, a tide of grots and squigs and troggoths crashing towards Gribblak and the safety of the foothills.

His cave-shaman, Oghlott, fidgeted. ‘They’s leggin’ it, boss.’

‘I en’t told ’em to leg it.’

‘All respect,’ Oghlott said, ‘they’s bein’ chopped to bits.’

Gribblak’s visor creaked down over his eyes again. He left it down this time, stared at his shaman through the eye-slits. Oghlott was a keen enough shaman, but given to glumness. Now and then he needed some conviction slapped into him. Gribblak smacked the other grot’s back.

‘That’s rot. They’s just got to shape up.’ He cupped his hand around the grille of his helm and shouted, ‘Go back, you half-gitz! Shape up and go back!’

The dusk light was muted behind the clouds, and the freezing rain was picking up, turning to sleet. Out of the roiling clash bounded a clump of squig-riders, the grots clinging to their panicked mounts. Squig-breath fogged the air, and the beasts crashed through the outlying yurts of the enemy encampment like red fists pounding muddy slush.

That looked mighty fine to Gribblak. Smashing the camp, driving the roving ’umies away from King Skragrott’s territories – it was the whole point of this raid on the valley nomads. These weren’t even the cleverest ’umies. A bunch of blood worshippers, by the look of their banners. Fools enough to worship the mess inside ’emselves; fools who had wandered too far into Skragrott’s claim.

So why was Gribblak’s skrap running away?

He glanced aside at Oghlott. The shaman clutched his robes tight against his body, anxious or cold or both. Braids of roots and cave-fungi swayed from his neck as he shivered. Maybe…

‘Give us a Dincap,’ said Gribblak.

Oghlott’s frown deepened. ‘Why–?’

Gribblak snatched a deep purple mushroom from the braid around the shaman’s neck, opened his visor and swallowed the fungus whole. The moment the flesh of the Dincap touched saliva, it began to vibrate.

His throat thrummed and his guts shook as he swallowed the mushroom in a gulp.

Being a boss was about words. Anyone could see that. The boss-gods of the realms – the bloated pus-bag gods and big rat gods and shiny gold git gods – you didn’t see them out here scrapping. You didn’t see them at all. They were stories. They were words in the heads of their warriors.

The big bosses knew how to put the right words in the heads of their mobs, and that was why they won. That was Gribblak’s way, too, and it had got him this far: boss of Gobbolog Skrap.

And it was going to take him further. Maybe Gorkamorka had taken a bite out of the Bad Moon, but Gribblak was going to eat the whole thing.

He was going to be the boss of gods.

‘OY!’ he shouted, and his voice reverberated down the valley. The Dincap’s vibration in his stomach and chest and throat gave him the voice of a hundred grots, the voice of a riot.

‘OY!’ he shouted. ‘LOOK ’ERE.’

In the muddy, rain-lashed valley below, the stampede of his skrap slowed. The eyes of his grots turned up to him; even the cave-squigs hesitated and turned around, confused. Now that the fighting slowed and Gribblak commanded the attention of the valley, he could see that the ’umie nomads looked up to him, too, clad in their crimson armour and furs, axes and butchers’ knives in their hands. A thrill of pleasure ran across his scalp.

Look at ’em all, looking at me!

Gribblak imagined how he must have appeared to these common grots and ’umies, his lunar helm gazing down like the Bad Moon itself. Proper majestic.

‘YOU LOT,’ he thundered. ‘SHAPE UP AND SHOW ’EM WHO’S BOSS!’

The grots of the skrap looked back and forth amongst one another. Now Gribblak raised an angry finger towards the enemy line.

‘AND YOU. COWARDS! SEND YOUR BEST AND I’LL GIVE ’IM A POINTY ENDING.’

The entire valley seemed to hesitate as Gribblak’s words echoed. The sleet drummed against his armour, and satisfaction welled in his chest.

This was how you did it. This was how fights were won. You didn’t need to go down in the mud and actually stab an ’umie. Inspire your skrap, goad the other side, and watch the show – that’s how gods did their business.

And then it stormed out of the fog of dirt and snow and flesh: the ’umie blood-boss.

It had to be the boss. Its armour was stained the colour of sunsets, and steam rose where the rain fell on its skin. It rode a beast like nothing Gribblak had ever seen, metal and sinew clenched around hellfire; the eyes blazed, and slag-spittle dripped from the jaws. The warboss’ axehead burned, too, an otherworldly crimson borne aloft like a torch. A wreath of skulls hung around its neck.

The ’umie clutched a wriggling grot by the waist – a fanatic still gripping his ball and chain. The blood-boss raised the grot to its mouth and tore his head from his neck, then hurled the limp body aside and emitted a garbled, throaty scream.

The hooves of the beast burned the ground where they fell. The blood-boss crashed through the skrap’s already tattered line and made straight for Gribblak.

‘Leg it,’ he squeaked, and his tinny alarm echoed across the valley. ‘LEG IT!’

The blood-boss stormed past a troggoth, and the troggoth’s arm – still wielding a stalactite plucked from an old lurklair – whirled into the air. Squigs scattered from the front lines, screeching their distress and bounding into the hills. And the sleet turned to hail.

Gribblak ran. He was already unsteady, breathing hard inside his helm as the ponderous thing bobbed with every step, but now he was slipping in the mud, and pellets of ice threatened to knock him flat. ‘Oh please oh please oh please,’ he panted, and his own voice thundered all around him, ‘OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE–’

The cave mouth was close. From his perch in the crags of the foothills, he could wriggle into the damp, dark safety of his caverns. Squeeze his way into a narrow passage where no fire-eyed ’umie monstrosity could follow.

But the blood-boss was quick, and Gribblak couldn’t turn his head to see how close it was. He couldn’t see much of anything, ahead or behind. He was almost to the cave mouth, wasn’t he? He tried to blink away sweat and sleet. The ground was shaking, or he was – then something massive slammed him in the back and he went skidding through the mud.

‘Please,’ he screeched. ‘I en’t boss of ’em! Don’t kill me! I en’t bossgrot!’

And his throat vibrated, and his helm thrummed, and the words sounded all through the quicksilver valleys in the northern reaches of King Skragrott’s claim:

‘PLEASE! I EN’T BOSS OF ’EM! DON’T KILL ME! I EN’T BOSSGROT!’

He hardly knew he was talking, at first, he was so lost in his terror. He wanted to move, to run, but he was frozen where he lay. Was he dead? The rain drummed on his armour. He heard his own words playing around him, his own begging, and another voice, too.

‘Shut up!’ said the voice. ‘Just a squig.’

Gribblak looked up at his cave-shaman. Grimacing down at him, Oghlott gripped his arm and hauled him upright. ‘Up,’ he hissed. ‘Shut up and run, go!’

He ran. And as he scrambled towards the cave mouth, an echo of his begging chased him:

‘I EN’T BOSSGROT, I EN’T BOSSGROT, I EN’T BOSSGROT…’

A lot of bosses liked to boast that they’d never taken a shanking, but that wasn’t Gribblak’s way. You had to reckon your losses, he said, in order to know who to blame.

Once the shakes had died down and he felt fit to hold court in his Reckonin’ Room, Gribblak set his Gobbapalooza to work up a ledger of the damage. Oghlott recited the totals:

A full two dozen fanatics. A contingent of snufflers. Seventeen squig hoppers, and most of the squigs. Two Dankhold troggoths. One gargant named Hurg. A coterie of stabbas that no one actually remembered joining the skrap, but whose remains were present and who had definitely themselves suffered a stabbing.

‘And,’ Oghlott finished, ‘morale.’

The boss and his counsellors sat around the fossilised toadstool that served as a round table. Luminescent mould lit the lair a sickly blue.

‘Who?’ Gribblak asked.

Oghlott hesitated. ‘Wot?’

‘The last one. Whoizzit? Mor–’

‘Mor-ale.’ Oghlott pursed his lips. ‘The fightin’ feelin’ in the mob.’

Gribblak frowned and rubbed his eyes. ‘Is these the gitz I got to hold Skragrott’s claim?’ he asked no one in particular.

Several of the Gobbapalooza – his shroomancer and scaremonger and boggleye – exchanged glances. Hazzlegob, the scaremonger, munched absently on what looked like a small bat’s wing. He stuffed the wing through the mouth-hole in his Glareface mask, which was painted to make him look like the primal enemy of all grots: the great burning face in the sky, bright-death incarnate, Glareface Frazzlegit.

‘I got to show the Loonking I’m keen,’ said Gribblak. ‘Show ’im I got this skrap in hand. But they got no stick-it-to-it, do they?’

‘No stick-it-to-it,’ repeated Hazzlegob glumly. He was the only one who answered, but he didn’t seem entirely attentive.

Gribblak had tried to be a good boss, a kind boss. A lot of grots wanted to rule with an iron claw, to command fear and timid obedience, but that wasn’t Gribblak’s way. If you lived on your skrap’s fear, you’d lose everything the second someone scared ’em more. What you wanted, what you really wanted, was unqualified adoration. Or failing that, some grudging respect. Gribblak thought he’d done right and proper by his mob – he gave ’em a place in the deep and dark, let ’em carouse a bit in between raids…

But maybe he’d gone too easy on ’em. Let ’em get soft. Some of these young grots hadn’t seen real scrapping since they were wee spores, and perhaps not even then. The moment they hit a band of blood-drunk ’umie daemon-worshippers, they turned tail and ran.

‘We got to get ’em fit and fighty,’ said Gribblak. ‘If you fall off the squig, you got to get right up, stab it in the eye and show it who’s in charge. We got to throw ’em back in a fight.’

Oghlott the cave-shaman glanced across the table at the members of the Gobbapalooza. ‘Once we heal up, build the mob back up a bit–’

‘I en’t talkin’ later. I’m talkin’ now.’

The chamber was quiet. The glowy moulds flickered.

‘Now,’ said Oghlott.

Gribblak smiled. He expected his counsellors were feeling pretty awestruck by his boldness of vision.

‘It’s got to be now. Give ’em a win ’fore they got time to get all mopey ’bout tonight. And ’fore Skragrott gets wind we took a shanking, starts to think we’s less than keen.’

‘When,’ said Oghlott carefully, ‘is now? And what fight do we got to throw ’em into?’

Gribblak felt such a surge of pride in his new plan that he spread his arms in a flourish of revelation.

‘Tonight! The Glinty Crown!’

King Skragrott’s territories had steadily expanded since his founding of the loon-city Skrappa Spill and the vast outlying network of lurklairs in the Yhorn Mountains. But in the northerly reaches, his Gloomspite hordes had hit a snag.

On the peak of Mount Pizmahr: a fortress hammered into an iron mountain of Chamon. Mob after mob and skrap after skrap had laid siege to the fastness, and each had been repelled. Not just repelled, but decimated. The fortress was cold and silent and flew no banners – no grot knew who held it, or why. But whenever a skrap approached, the massive cannons on the ramparts thundered, and even the finest mobs were broken.

A great Glinty Crown on the peak of Pizmahr, its cannons winking a taunt in the light of day. And a prize that the King of Grots hadn’t yet added to his pile.

If he could give Skragrott the Crown, any little missteps or embarrassments would be forgiven, forgotten. Surely he’d ascend to the ranks of the king’s most favoured generals alongside the likes of Izgit or Warrblag. The skrap would get its pep back – everyone would win!

‘No,’ whispered Oghlott.

The cave-shaman usually had a downcast look to him: tired or dour. But his demeanour was changed now. He met Gribblak’s gaze, and his tone was resolute. Some decision seemed to have worked itself out behind his eyes.

Gribblak blinked. ‘Wot?’

‘No,’ Oghlott repeated, more firmly this time.

‘You en’t allowed to say no,’ said Gribblak, more puzzled than angry.

‘I’s sayin’ no. The skrap’ll riot. You try to send ’em on some death-wish blunder ’fore the moon has set on the last rout, these gitz’ll tear you limb from limb and eat your tongue to shut you up. They’ll rip us all up just to be safe.’

The moulds on the wall brightened, as if in response to Oghlott’s raised voice. Gribblak sat back on his toadstool stump, aghast.

‘They’d never. They adore me. Even the meanest gitz got some grudgin’–’

‘They do not got some grudgin’ respect for you,’ Oghlott spat. ‘Not before, and sure as Gork’s fist not now. Not after the raid on the Corroded Hills, not after that awful sortie with the stunties and the time we lost a lair to some tree-aelves. Not after you ran squealing from the ’umies where any git could hear…’

The memory floated up out of his guts unbidden: Please! I en’t boss of ’em! Don’t kill me! I en’t bossgrot!

He shook his head to dislodge the words. The valley had been noisy. No one had paid him any mind.

‘Stop talkin’ rot,’ he said. ‘This skrap is mine. I built ’em up with my own hands. I know what’s best for ’em, and they know I know what’s best for ’em.’ He stood up. ‘You lucky I don’t shank you.’

Oghlott looked to the assembled Gobbapalooza, and all save for Hazzlegob – who had fallen asleep – nodded their support.

‘We’s all tried to do our jobs,’ said Oghlott. ‘But if we got to stop you to do right by the Loonking and the skrap, that’s what we goin’ to do.’

His counsellors stared at him, unified and obstinate. The mould-light flickered again, and each of their eyes glowed red in the dark.

Gribblak had been afraid of a great many things in his day, but never his own Gobbapalooza. None of them were very fighty taken alone, but together they commanded an awful brew of shroomspells and hallucinations and danksome magics. He backed out of the Reckonin’ Room slowly.

‘You en’t boss,’ Gribblak hissed. ‘Y’hear me? By sun-up you’ll see. I’ll take the Glinty Crown and this skrap’ll call me bossgrot and cheer. Mark my words. By sun-up.’

And with that, he turned and ran from his own skrap.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Alex Boyd.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-711-8

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