The Bone Desert by Robbie MacNiven

Author:Robbie MacNiven
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2018-09-25T11:44:17+00:00

Chapter Eight

She remembered being told by a human warrior, Bayzor, a fellow member of the Order of the Azyr, that whenever he awoke after being struck unconscious, it was the pain that let him know he was still living. Apparently in whatever afterlife he believed in, there was no pain, so its presence indicated that he was not yet dead.

Maleneth had no such certainties. The temples of the Black Courts and the Shadow Covens preached little other than pain, and the cold murder that eased it. As she woke, acutely aware of the spikes of agony in her side and throbbing in her skull, her sluggish thoughts wondered whether she was about to face her final trials before the Bloody-Handed, and perhaps reckon one last time with her old mistress.

A part of her, distant and icy as a Shyish morning, hoped Jakari had already crossed over, and was waiting for her.

The God of Murder would permit no such mercies. Mal­eneth’s eyes fluttered open, and she found herself looking once more at Gotrek’s scarred, blunt face. She started, trying to push herself away from the duardin and realising when she did so that she was sitting up with her back to the skyship’s hull. A section of copper pipes, ruptured, had been digging into her side, slicing her leathers. She groaned as her movements teased the dozen cuts and bruises she had gained over the previous day.

Gotrek stood, turning away from her. He had recovered his axe from somewhere, and she thought she caught a rare hint of amusement in his eye. She tested her throbbing head, touching it tentatively. Neither the lump on her scalp nor the bruises from the pipework seemed dangerous, but being flung around the hold seemed to have opened up the wound in her side given to her by the Alharabi dancers. She noticed as Gotrek moved away that his arm was injured too. Something had cut his right bicep to the bone, and the wound was still pulsing fresh blood, leaving his arm a sheet of glistening crimson.

She reached out one hand, grasping a metal strut that was broken out beyond the ribbing of what she took to be the skyship’s hull. As she stood she realised that the ground underfoot was shifting and hot – gone were the decking plates, replaced by sand.

They had landed, and they had survived. She saw that she was still in the hold, or what remained of it. The ship appeared to have grazed the top of the dune they had been plunging towards and settled on its flank in the valley between the first rise and the second. Wreckage littered the sand beyond the broken and twisted remains of the hold.

She tried to speak, but the sound came out as a dry croak, and descended into coughing. Gotrek turned back to her and undid something from his belt, tossing it down beside her. It was a flask, engraved with Kharadron markings. She put it to her lips, and was relieved to taste water rather than a burning duardin ale.

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