The Bone Desert

Chapter Eleven

Darkness was sliding along the gorge when Aziz returned and kindled a fire outside the barn door. He had been right about Gotrek’s Fyreslayer gold going far. The pot he had purchased was soon full of an alluring mixture of beans, herbs and spices. Despite herself, Maleneth had slipped into a half-sleep as she waited, her usual care in such an unfamiliar place overcome by fatigue. It was not an easy rest – memories of Jakari and their forced separation haunted her for the first time in years. It was a relief when the aroma of Aziz’s cooking woke her.

‘The warabi beans add the flavour, and the spice unlocks it,’ he said as she sat back on her haunches next to him, staring into the bubbling pot. He drew out a spoonful and held it out for her, nodding earnestly.

She was far too hungry to resist. It tasted good, but it only made her stomach ache all the more.

Gotrek arrived back soon after. He’d found or purchased fresh linen from somewhere and had bound his injured arm tightly. Going by the amount of blood staining the cloth, it would still need to be treated.

‘How does the pyramid look?’ Maleneth asked as he joined them at the fire. Aziz had begun doling out his broth into a trio of clay bowls he’d bought along with the food supplies.

‘The entrance is sealed,’ the Slayer said. ‘The umgi are trying to blast their way inside, but they don’t know the first thing about a mining charge or where to plant it.’

‘And you’re not going to enlighten them?’

Gotrek made a barking noise that Maleneth thought might be a laugh.

‘Better to watch the manlings blow each other up. See how high the different pieces fly. I’ll just get inside another way.’

‘Another way?’ Aziz asked, as he passed the bowls around.

‘There is always another way,’ Gotrek said, taking the bowl and sniffing it. ‘What is this?’

‘A recipe of my tribe,’ Aziz said. ‘We call it kalem. You will enjoy it, master duardin, I promise you.’

Gotrek took a sip, and grunted noncommittally. Mal­eneth had no such reservations – she was too hungry to show the Slayer’s reserve. She gulped down the broth, enduring the strength of the spices Aziz had seasoned it with.

‘I went up the gorge side,’ Gotrek said, eyeing the flames of the fire burning low beneath Aziz’s cooking pot. ‘There are paths. Old paths. The rock has been marked with tunnel-work.’

‘There are stories about hidden ways into the great pyramid,’ Aziz said between a mouthful of warabi beans. ‘Many have sought them, but none have succeeded.’

‘I doubt many were dwarfs,’ Gotrek said.

‘If there are hidden passages, the priests of the Temple of the Lightning would likely know more about them,’ Maleneth said, setting her bowl down momentarily. Her stomach was aching, and she chided herself for eating too quickly and too greedily. It had been years since she had last been pushed to such extremes of fatigue and hunger.

‘For the last time, I won’t go to see your accursed priests,’ Gotrek spat. ‘If you want this damned rune then why not draw those pretty little steak knives of yours, come over here and see if you can carve it out of my chest?’

The suggestion didn’t appeal. A part of Maleneth knew she should stop pursuing the need to submit the Slayer to the Order of the Azyr, but this close to one of their outposts the opportunity was infuriating her. If she could turn him over to them, she could finally be rid of the duardin and his insufferable stubbornness.

‘You won’t find the axe you seek alone,’ she pressed. ‘The Eight Realms are vast – even the gods themselves cannot wander them at will and hope to perceive all things. Or perhaps you do not really seek the axe…’ She paused. ‘Felix. Was that his name?’

‘Do not speak of the manling, aelf,’ Gotrek growled. ‘He is gone.’

Another blast rang through the gorge, reverberating from its sheer sides as though in harmony with the duardin’s anger. Maleneth ignored it.

‘The Order can help you,’ she reiterated. ‘If he lives, they can find him.’

‘A rust plague on your damned Order! I told you, he is gone! I care not for him any more!’

Maleneth cackled gleefully. ‘Again, another lie, duardin.’

Gotrek’s response was not the one she expected. He didn’t speak. Instead, his eye refocused past the cooking fire, and after a few seconds he uttered a curse in his strange dialect. Maleneth had just registered the word before a crashing noise made her leap to her feet, her half-empty bowl spilled into the dirt. She followed the duardin’s gaze.

The explosion that had rung out just before wasn’t another attempt to crack open the pyramid, or even one of the pillars. Whether deliberately or not, someone had set off explosive charges at the base of the western gorge face. Now a crashing sound was heralding an avalanche of shattered stone and dirt, as a portion of the gorge came tumbling down towards the nearest pillar and the makeshift camp surrounding it – the one the three of them had chosen for the night.

‘The damned rats,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘Move!’ Maleneth shouted, snatching her pack from the entrance to the animal shed. Hysh’s light was suddenly bathing the pillar at their backs once more, the collapse of the top of the gorge revealing the lowering orb. It silhouetted a wall of dirt and dust that was plummeting with ponderous inevitability towards them.

Aziz was scrambling over the fire and away from the avalanche, his meal forgotten. Gotrek hadn’t moved, and a part of Maleneth wondered if he wanted to stay where he was and greet the landslide head on, stone meeting stone. In her mind’s eye she could imagine the Master Rune igniting, the rock tumbling to either side, broken apart by nothing but the duardin’s unyielding resolve.

Then she realised Gotrek was running.

She followed.

The whole world was beginning to shake, the earth underfoot and the air about them shuddering with the weight of the approaching debris. The camp around them was descending into chaos as disbelieving prospectors finally realised what was happening and tried to flee. Screams and the lowing of panicked animals filled the air. Tents were torn and trampled and lean-tos collapsed. A cart was overturned in the stampede, its occupants trapped beneath its weight, their cries for help unheeded in the tumult. Maleneth found herself pressed in from both sides by a mass of stinking, white-eyed people as they poured from their shacks and caravans.

The crowd dragged them, and for all her speed and Gotrek’s strength, it carried them along regardless of which direction they wanted to go. She could no longer see Aziz, and the thunder of the avalanche was now filling her ears, the ground tremoring so violently that whole groups of the fleeing mob were being thrown to the dirt, trampled by those rushing heedlessly on from behind them.

She tried to shout Gotrek’s name, struggling to keep her feet in the press. A sudden pain in her arm made her gasp. She stumbled, face contorted, and brought her forearm up. Blood was streaming from a long slash in her pale flesh, cut from just above her wrist to just below her elbow. She clutched the wound with her other hand, hissing with pain, trying to see who or what had struck her, but amidst the swell of bodies it was impossible to tell. All the while the avalanche filled the world with thunder, a fury so great it seemed in that heart-racing, desperate moment that it was the death knell of creation itself.

Follow the duardin, child!

‘Aelf!’

The barked word, now all too familiar, drew her attention back to Gotrek. The Slayer had ignited his greataxe, and the sight of its runic fires had served to give him the slightest amount of space. He snatched at Maleneth, managing to grasp her belt and draw her to his side.

‘Dwarfs should never run,’ he growled, turning back to the onrushing wall of dirt and rocks with his axe raised.

‘Are you insane?’ Maleneth shouted, her voice barely audible.

‘No more than you,’ Gotrek grunted, and began to charge back the way they had come.

Maleneth started to follow him instinctively before reason made her pause. Perhaps Gotrek was a demigod. Perhaps he could survive a collision with a falling cliff face. She had no such guarantees.

Foolish girl, snapped the hag. I said follow him!

‘You wish me to stand before Khaine so soon,’ Maleneth said bitterly. She was still clutching her wounded arm, her fingers soaked with blood.

I wish you to reach that spite-cursed pillar.

And finally Maleneth understood. He wasn’t running at the avalanche. He was trying to reach the base of one of the Eight Pillars before the oncoming tide.

She followed him. The crowd was less dense now. Ahead she could see the ponderous morass of earth and rock shattering and eating up the encampment. One of the pillars stood just ahead of it, a tower of defiance, scarred and chipped by the tools of greedy mortals. Maleneth raced for its base, quickly catching up with Gotrek. Heart thundering and tired limbs flushed, she reached the pillar’s shadow, then its Hysh-baked stone, slamming into its flank. Gotrek hit a moment later.

There was no time for words. The torrent of dirt engulfed them, slamming like the fist of a god into the other side of the pillar, thundering either side. The weight and momentum carried it round, but not all the way, leaving the aelf and the duardin standing in the clear wake created by the pillar’s bulk. Maleneth shielded her face behind her uninjured arm as grit and stones battered them, and for what felt like an age it appeared the shifting tide of soil would wrap the pillar entirely, dragging them into its crushing embrace to be churned and ground up with the remains of the encampment and all those souls too slow to get out.

But it didn’t. The avalanche had already expended a great deal of its force. It reached past the pillar on either side but didn’t travel much further before it finally began to settle. The stonework of the pillar itself had shifted slightly, but held.

‘Told you they don’t know how to use mining charges,’ Gotrek said.

Maleneth didn’t reply. A pain had gripped her, a burning sensation running through her torso. She hissed, and the next thing she knew she was on her knees, hand clutching her wound and both arms clenched to her sides. Gotrek was saying something, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Her hiss became a cry, and the pain surged to agony. It was as though a fire had been kindled inside her, the flames eating up her insides. She felt Gotrek’s hand on her shoulder.

‘The wound,’ she managed to snarl from between clenched teeth. ‘Someone… in the crowd… The wound is poisoned.’