The Bone Desert

Chapter Ten

They caught sight of the Eight Pillars as darkness crept over the dunes once again. Maleneth, moving ahead of the other two, crested a rise of craggy desert rocks and found it sprawling abruptly below them – the towering, sand-blasted pillars that gave the place its name, and the great pyramid structure that lay at the end of the ancient colonnade, the final resting place of some human desert lord and, according to the seer coven in Barkash, the site of an inscription bearing the location of the Axe of Grimnir. The crumbling structures lay at the end of a long gorge, flanked by sheer walls of arid yellow stone.

When they had first set out from Barkash on the back of Aziz’s cart, the pack driver had told them that long ago a town had clustered around the pyramid, forever in the shadow of their entombed master. The slow, insidious work of the desert had wiped away any trace of the old settlement, but the recent affluence of the Triumvirate Cities had aroused interest in the Bone Desert and its potential secrets. Adventurers, artefact-hunters and looters had begun flocking to the Eight Pillars, lured by tall tales relating to the wealth the pyramid’s founder had supposedly been buried with.

Their arrival had resulted in a new town springing up. Like Khaled-Tush, it was largely ramshackle, a conglomeration of wagons that had been converted into dwellings. Tents and lean-tos and rough huts of dirt and stone clustered like growths around the bases of each of the eight great pillars, the spaces between teeming with people. The sound of voices and the crack of picks and shovels rose up on the humid wind.

‘It looks like trouble,’ Maleneth said darkly, surveying the dilapidated camp-turned-settlement.

‘No more than usual,’ Gotrek said.

They descended to the bottom of the gorge and moved along the craggy path to the outskirts of the Pillars. Hysh was setting, and the cliffs on either side provided relief from its burning gaze. Maleneth was too weary to offer any sort of thanks for the reprieve. She was bone-tired and ravenous. A part of her wished she’d perished in the skyship crash. Surely whatever fate awaited her beyond death was preferable to the heat that had scorched and burned her arms, neck and face, the ache that had worked its way into her limbs, the thirst that had turned her throat raw or the hunger that gnawed at her insides.

Aziz seemed little better, limping along in her wake, but Gotrek appeared indefatigable. She was certain it was more than just the legendary endurance of the duardin race at work. Perhaps it was more, even, than the power of the Master Rune. Once Gotrek had decided upon something, nothing seemed capable of stopping him, least of all trifling things like physical exhaustion or hunger.

Gotrek had decided he would go to the Eight Pillars, and so to the Eight Pillars he would go.

As they neared the furthest-flung wagons, the sound of an explosion reverberated down the gorge. As it echoed away, smoke and dust rose in the distance to their right, near the base of the pyramid. No one in the encampment sprawling before Maleneth seemed surprised by the detonation, and she realised some wealthy treasure-seeker was probably using a form of explosive to crack open one of the tombs.

She wondered what the Priests of the Lightning thought of such desecration. They had tended the temple nestled into the mountains a few miles from the gorge for as long as any in the Bone Desert could remember. The priesthood had served the ruler whose tomb now lay before Maleneth, guiding him towards the will of Sigmar. The presence of the Order of the Azyr among the priesthood had been a more recent development, but it was an easy accommodation to make – they both served the Lightning God, and the temple gave the Order an outpost in Aqysh, in a region whose cities were growing in importance.

Maleneth had resolved to report there, whether Gotrek would go with her or not. Perhaps the Order would permit her to cease accompanying the irascible duardin.

‘These manlings,’ Gotrek growled as they moved in among the edges of the settlement, ‘are they seeking the axe too? I’d sooner spend the rest of my days eating grobi dung than allow the woeful umgi of these realms to find it first.’

The words had been directed at Aziz. The cart driver raised weary eyes from his feet and shook his head.

‘No, sellah,’ he said. ‘At least, I do not believe they seek anything so specific here. There are many legends about the riches of the Eight Pillars, not only of the axe.’

That much was clearly true. As they continued up the main track towards the pyramid Maleneth was afforded a proper view of the work being done by the prospectors. Not content with trying to break into the tomb itself, they were seeking to crack open the pillars as well. Rickety wooden scaffolding surrounded the nearest ones, and Maleneth could see dozens of men and youths, many stripped to their waists, hacking at the old structures with all manner of tools. The air rang with the sounds of hard labour, punctuated by the report of another excavation blast sounding down from further up the gorge.

‘You still think you’ll find the axe before everyone else?’ she asked Gotrek as they trudged deeper into the camp. ‘If there is an inscription within that tomb pointing to its location, dozens of hotheads and fools will be seeking it the moment it’s translated.’

‘The axe, my axe, won’t be found unless it’s meant to be found,’ the duardin replied stoically.

‘You know the Order of the Azyr would likely help you to find it,’ Maleneth pressed. ‘Our agents cover the Mortal Realms. Nothing passes unseen. We can help you track down its most likely resting place.’

‘Or you will imprison me,’ Gotrek replied, without looking at the aelf. ‘You think I’m too dangerous, and that makes you afraid, aelf. So you will lock me away in your temple. Or you will try.’

Maleneth stifled her response, knowing he would only shoot back with something denigrating about her race.

‘We need lodgings,’ she said instead, directing the statement to Aziz. ‘Have you visited the Eight Pillars before?’

‘Twice,’ he responded, his usual eagerness visibly crushed by the trials of the past two days. ‘Both times carrying feed for the Master of Azalam. His contractors gave me space to sleep in one of their storage sheds.’

‘Anywhere will do,’ Maleneth said. ‘We need to eat as well.’

‘I will cook,’ Aziz said, his spirits apparently lifted at least a little by the prospect. ‘I still have the coin sellah gave me in Khaled-Tush. I will be able to buy much with it!’

Maleneth let the teamster take the lead, carrying them into the burrow-like network of rough buildings, scaffolding, shacks and wagons that nestled around one of the towering pillars. He spent long minutes haggling in his native desert tongue with a suspicious-looking man with an immaculately oiled black goatee, clad in the red robes of a Merport cattle guilder. Eventually the man conceded whatever was being debated with an exasperated wave of his hand, and motioned towards the cattle barns that sat in the shadow of the great stone column, leaning precariously between two rows of sheds being used to sift the pillar’s broken stone.

‘They say that at their core the pillars are solid gold,’ Aziz explained as he led them into the dank shadows of the barn. The stench of animal dung and the scrape and scuffle of hooves in the dirt assailed Maleneth, and her keen eyes picked out a dozen tuskers herded together behind stalls at the far end of the barn. She grimaced. For a moment she contemplated once again demanding Gotrek accompany her to the Temple of the Lightning, but the duardin’s stubbornness coupled with her own exhaustion overcame the words. She picked a heap of grubby straw fodder just inside the doorway and collapsed onto it.

‘I will bring us food,’ Aziz said.

‘Anything you can find,’ Maleneth agreed.

‘I’m going to look at the pyramid,’ Gotrek said. ‘Don’t follow me. Your blundering attracts too much attention.’