The Bone Desert

Chapter Two

They walked. The heat raged against them like a physical force, a beast that sought to bear them down into the shifting sands. They followed the tops of the dunes running parallel with the trail markers. Maleneth didn’t trust them not to end in the dragging sands once more, but they were the only apparent clear route to Khaled-Tush.

They hadn’t gone far before they stumbled across the last thing Maleneth had expected to find in the desert – water. In a cleft between two dunes they discovered a timber trough, its bottom full. Next to it was what looked like a hitching post, the rope tied around it lying abandoned in the sand.

‘A waypoint for message riders?’ she wondered out loud. Gotrek said nothing. They filled up the water skins and carried on, the shadows cast by the dunes starting to stretch.

They reached Khaled-Tush just as the bone-chill of deep night was beginning to creep over them. Chamon and Ghyran were ascendant overhead, soaring half-lit spheres amidst the constellations spread across the ink-spill of the aetheric void. The lights above were mirrored by the lights below, a thousand campfires creating a flickering firmament surrounding the mirror sheen of the great oasis of the Khaled.

The trading post’s veiled guards intercepted them as they approached the outer wagons, peering at the strange travellers by the light of raised torches. One of Gotrek’s coins saw them safely through.

Ahead, Khaled-Tush sprawled, a great encampment of desert traders, tribespeople and travellers. What had once been little more than a watering hole for those moving between the cities of Barkash, Hedina and Merport had become a settlement in its own right. Ranks of wagons, carts and covered caravans surrounded wooden structures constructed from the trees that clustered around the banks of the oasis – counting houses and taverns, brothels and guard posts, the heart of an ever-expanding trade hub on a route made rich by the astute ruling councils of the Triumvirate Cities, and the wares of the duardin known by the desert peoples as the Great Karagi.

‘I didn’t think I could find a more miserable kruk of a place than the Unbak lodge,’ Gotrek grumbled as they halted on the edge of an opening between the circled wagons. ‘But it seems this mannish age knows how to disappoint.’

Ahead of them lay a dirt square formed between the idle caravans and a row of ramshackle buildings. Despite the lateness of the hour, it was bustling with trader stalls, haggling booths and merchants selling wares from the backs of their carts. The cool night air was thick with the aromas of spices and perfumes, and lit by the light of braziers and firepits.

‘We trek for half a day through blistering desert, with no food and little water, yet the sight of this place dulls your spirits?’ Maleneth demanded. ‘Hysh must have cooked whatever remains of your addled brains, duardin.’

‘I’d wager they’d still be more filling than whatever this place has to offer,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘We require fresh food and water,’ Maleneth said, forcing herself to ignore the Slayer’s retort. ‘And a place to rest. Tomorrow we can start looking for someone to give us passage to the Eight Pillars.’

‘Thagi,’ Gotrek spat. Maleneth assumed the duardin insult had been directed at her, and was instinctively forming a Khainite curse back when she noticed Gotrek was moving off into the crowd. She started after him, realising what he had seen.

Aziz tried to run. The crowd around him hemmed him in though, and he squealed with terror as Gotrek snatched him with one scarred fist.

‘Thought you’d seen the last of us, beardless thaggaz,’ the duardin barked.

‘Please no, sellah,’ Aziz wailed, cringing back. ‘I went to get help, I swear!’

‘Then where was it?’ Maleneth demanded, reaching Gotrek’s side.

‘There were riders,’ Aziz insisted, eyes darting between the aelf and the duardin. ‘Three riders, I told them you would pay them well if they could reach you.’

‘Liar,’ Gotrek snarled, and for a second Maleneth though he was going to strike the youth.

‘I can still help you,’ Aziz yelped. ‘Please, sellah, I know many traders here at Khaled-Tush!’

‘We need food,’ Gotrek growled. ‘And shelter for the night, then transport to the Eight Pillars.’

‘I can bring you all of those things, sellah,’ Aziz insisted. ‘My uncle, Fazeel, is a moonfin trader posted here. He will not turn me away.’

‘You are thinking about running,’ Maleneth said, her voice lower and altogether more chilling than Gotrek’s. ‘I know your kind, desert rat. Do not do it. Go to your uncle, and when every­thing is arranged, return here and find us. Or I will find you and I will skin you, slowly, using these.’

She tapped the long fyresteel knives in her belt. ‘Do you doubt me?’

‘N-no,’ Aziz stammered, tears in his eyes. Gotrek released him, and he stumbled away into the press.

Gotrek harrumphed. ‘We will never see him again,’ the duardin grumbled.

‘We will,’ Maleneth replied. ‘He is but a boy. He is terrified we will use our mystical powers, or blades, to hunt him down.’

‘Aelf nonsense,’ Gotrek said. ‘You don’t know the first thing about mystical. The gods themselves have tried to betray me, slay me even. I have broken daemons and fought deranged wizards and slain beasts and monsters that would tear apart legions of your gold-armoured champions. I have fallen from the skies amidst fire and battled through the depths of the earth for days at a time. I have been flung into an ocean of madness and filth and then clawed my way back out. The boy knows nothing of fear, because these realms know nothing of it. I spit on your idea of fear.’

Maleneth leant against the wheel of the nearest wagon. Exhaustion was trying to drag her down. The pack on her back felt like a lodestone. A part of her just wanted to curl up beneath the closest cart and sleep.

It took her a few seconds to realise that Gotrek was no longer beside her.

‘Duardin,’ she snapped as he headed off deeper into the square. He didn’t stop or turn. Cursing, she followed him.

‘Do your kind never rest?’ she demanded as she caught up.

‘Rest is something for people without anything to do,’ Gotrek said, not looking at her. ‘Rest comes when you find your doom. I have never known rest. Sometimes I wonder whether I ever will.’

The marketplace embraced them. They passed a row of stalls selling Hedina silks, the traders calling for their attention, then had to brush aside the advances of a Hilathi tribal spice-seller offering samples. The aroma of cooking meat drifted over them as they passed a half-tusker being slow-roasted in one of the firepits, and Maleneth’s aching stomach lurched. A little further on they had to move aside for a sect of white-veiled Shezpah priests swinging sweet-smelling censers. None spared either of them a glance. At Khaled-Tush, a weary aelf and a sunburned duardin were hardly the strangest sights on show.

They moved on, deeper into the busy menagerie, the market and its inhabitants pressing in on every side. Maleneth found herself fingering the hilt of one of her daggers, the compulsive motion concealed by her cloak. She didn’t like crowds.

Gotrek seemed unperturbed. She didn’t demand he tell her what he was looking for. She knew he’d give no clear answer. In the months since they had first met, she had grown accustomed to his sudden bouts of melancholy, to his distant gaze and to the unexplained interludes where he would stomp off on his own. Sometimes she left him to do so, trusting he would always return, but occasionally she would follow him. It always seemed as though he were looking for something or someone, though exactly what or who she was never quite sure.

She felt something bump into her shoulder, the pressure a little more than the mere passing of bodies in the teeming space. Her fyresteel knives were out in a flash, faster than the eye could follow, every one of her aelf senses poised to kill before conscious thought had even engaged.

She found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes. To her surprise, there was neither fear nor anger in them, only a reserved, knowing amusement.

‘Shemali, sellah,’ said the woman, taking her hand off Mal­eneth’s shoulder. She was human, young but almost as tall as the aelf, dusky-skinned and clad in gossamer folds of pink and purple silk. Maleneth realised she was smiling. She took the knife away from her throat.

‘My apologies, travellers,’ she went on, offering a curtsey. ‘I have been sent by the mistress of my troupe.’

Her eyes travelled from Maleneth to Gotrek. The duardin had stopped his progress through the market, and one scarred fist was clenched firmly around the haft of his fyrestorm greataxe.

‘The Fyreslayer with only one rune hammered into his flesh,’ the woman said, her smile dissipating as she addressed him. ‘We possess something of great value to you, Runetamer. A man who has seen the words you seek.’

‘Who are you?’ Gotrek growled. ‘You look too much like another damned aelf to me!’

‘We are dancers of the Alharab,’ the woman said, giving the duardin an elegant bow and producing a slip of paper between two fingers with a flourish. ‘We see much, and hear even more, especially in a place like this. The man my troupe has made contact with is not the only one to have gazed upon the riddle of the Eight Pillars. My mistress, Shaldeen, awaits your pleasure at the black top.’

‘And why would we trust you, or your mistress?’ Gotrek demanded. He reached for the paper, but Maleneth snatched it first.

‘I am only a messenger,’ the woman said, beginning to move away through the crowd. ‘That is not for me to say.’

‘Not much of a message, is it,’ Gotrek growled after her, but she was gone. Maleneth laid a hand on his shoulder. She had glanced down at the parchment – it was an invitation in native Alharabi script, inviting weary travellers to the night-time performance of the Seventeen Blades. Maleneth tensed. The Seventeen Blades was a traditional aelf dance, still popular among the Murder Temples. She had rarely heard of a human troupe performing it.

You remember the last time you saw it danced, don’t you, Witchblade?

‘What is it?’ Gotrek demanded.

‘Nothing,’ Maleneth said, shrugging off the voice of her former mistress. ‘We should not follow her. It is some sort of trap.’

‘If it is, then it’s about time. Almost a day has passed since the last one,’ Gotrek rumbled, shrugging off Maleneth’s hand. ‘I want answers, and I’ll have them whether they want me dead or not.’

‘If only you held your own life as dearly as the Order of the Azyr does,’ Maleneth snapped.

‘I lost it a long time ago, aelf. If this is another plot by the Grey Lord, I will slaughter his verminous griks. I always do. More so than any fool or coward in the World-That-Was, the rat Thanquol was determined to fulfil my doom oath. I should have known he’d follow me into a new reality.’

‘If you don’t care about your own life then at least consider the rune,’ Maleneth said, struggling to keep her exhaustion-stoked temper in check. ‘More than anyone else, you must be aware of its power. It cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of servants of disorder and darkness. Or do you think I have been following you merely for your good company?’

‘It’ll be hard for the rats to get their hands on it as long as it’s here,’ Gotrek replied, thumping a fist against the Master Rune on his chest.

‘For one moment, stop to consider the consequences of your actions,’ Maleneth raged, her anger finally getting the better of her. ‘At least one unknown being is tracking us, presumably the same one who shifted the trail markers and nearly succeeded in drowning us in dragging sand. That is not to speak of the ratmen assassins that have been hunting you, three in the last month alone. Whatever these dancers have for us, it is almost certainly a trap.’

Gotrek glared at her, and she noticed the grim-faced rune stamped into his skin glow a little more brightly.

‘I told you, dark aelf, the vermin have been trying to stab me in the back for as long as I can remember,’ the duardin replied, pointedly ignoring her last words. ‘If you don’t like rats, you should stop following me. The mad one, Thanquol, will never stop hunting me. From what I’ve seen of these accursed realms, he’ll probably return even after I’ve put an axe through his horned skull.’

‘You think because you have lived this long that you are immortal,’ Maleneth said, taking a step towards the duardin and pointing down at him. ‘You think you are a god–’

‘Do not insult me more than you already have, wretch,’ Gotrek barked. ‘You know nothing of the gods. I have seen foolishness and craven treachery among mortals, but none to match that of the divine. I have met many thousands of dwarfs worthier and more honourable than Grimnir alone!’

‘Regardless, you will not live forever, Gotrek of the World-that-Was. I serve a true god, the Bloody-Handed one, Khaine, Prince of Murder, and if there is one thing my devotion has taught me it is that all beings die. Even gods. Guard your own life, duardin, for there are many eager to steal it from you.’

The commotion of the market around her had stilled.

You are attracting attention, Witchblade, hissed her mistress’ voice. Sometimes I wonder whether you were ever my student.

‘I knew your god in that long-dead age,’ Gotrek growled, his eye flaring like the stoked embers of a forge pit. ‘His servants there were just as weak and pathetic as they are here. I fear nothing, dark aelf, least of all your threats.’

Before she could reply, Maleneth felt a presence intruding from her left. She half turned, lightning fast, barely resisting the murderous urge to lash out with her blades.

Aziz cringed back and yelped with fear. He had returned.

‘I’ve been looking for you, sellah,’ he stammered. ‘My uncle, he has agreed to let you stay under his roof tonight. But…’

He trailed off, and Maleneth realised he was looking at the writing on the slip of paper she still held in one hand.

‘The dancers of the Alharab,’ she said, holding the note before his eyes. ‘You know of them?’ Aziz hesitated before responding.

‘Yes, sellah. You will not find many here who have not. They perform for the councils and guilder lords of the Triumvirate Cities. I have never heard of their troupe visiting a place like Khaled-Tush to dance before.’

‘And?’

Aziz shook his head, clearly reluctant to continue. ‘They say that the daughters of the Alharab are spies, that they buy and sell knowledge to those who pay for their performances. Their dances are not merely for the entertainment of onlookers.’

‘See!’ Maleneth snapped, turning back to Gotrek. ‘It’s a trap.’ But the duardin was already pushing away through the market once more.

‘I’m going to watch the dancing,’ he barked back over his shoulder. ‘Don’t you aelves love that kind of thing?’

Maleneth closed her eyes and bit her lip, forcing herself not to spit a string of Khainite curses in the Slayer’s wake.

‘My uncle,’ Aziz said slowly, edging away from the aelf. ‘He is expecting us. It would be a disgrace to turn away his hospitality now. Please, sellah, bring the angry duardin back. The Alharabi will surely not have anything that he needs. They sell only lies and secrets.’

‘Go back to your uncle,’ Maleneth ordered. ‘Apologise for us, and try to save us some food. We will return as soon as we are able.’

Before Aziz could protest, she picked one of Gotrek’s coins from the pouch around her waist and pressed it into his palm. Then she was gone, slipping through the crowds after the Slayer.