Gotrek Gurnisson
The Bone Desert
(Robbie MacNiven)
From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.
Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.
But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.
Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.
The Age of Sigmar had begun.
To Mickey, the Big Nephew that started it all.
Prologue
Hazim’s Parlour was closing early. Hazim himself, rarely seen in the hasham den, emerged not long after nightfall with two of his burly Karami bodyguards. They started ushering the patrons out, regardless of how delirious or inebriated they were. Those who tried to resist were forcibly ejected. The regulars went quietly. Even affected by the den’s opiates, they weren’t going to argue with Hazim. Not tonight. Not when the normally unflappable hasham seller was so obviously afraid.
The parlour’s front doors and windows were boarded, but business continued unseen. The rear rooms had been commandeered, bought for a price that Hazim hoped he was never offered again. He withdrew to his private chambers without dismissing the two Karami, and barricaded the door for the rest of the night.
His new clients were not the sort of people he wished to spend the night-time hours with.
‘Barkash?’ asked one of them. The parlour’s rear room was supposed to be kept for only the wealthiest of clients, but the new edicts by the city’s ruling council had brought hard times on downtown business. The chamber was now mostly given over to storage space, the walls stacked with sacks of unfiltered hasham leaf and the various other contraband goods Hazim’s criminal network had acquired over the years – silk from Merport, counterfeit coins forged by renegades from the Jelali banker guild, grain stock being held for merchants wishing to avoid the city’s market tithes. The air, lit by a single tallow candle set on a small table at the room’s centre, was dark and heavy with dust.
‘Yes,’ came the answer to the question. ‘The target is expected to arrive there within the next three days. How long they will stay, I do not know, but I doubt they will wish to linger.’
‘And beyond Barkash?’ the original speaker asked. He was a Kharadron, clad in the bulky silver armour plates and rubbery sky-suit worn by the airborne duardin reivers, his face obscured by a grim, gold-etched ancestor mask. There was another of his kin beside him, a heavy blunderbuss slung casually over one shoulder.
‘Now, that, I do not know,’ answered the voice, lost in the shadows at the far end of the room. ‘But it is likely Khaled-Tush, and from there the Eight Pillars, or the Temple of the Lightning.’
A murmur ran through the assembled group. Besides the Kharadrons there were four others present in the back room. Two were human females, dark-haired and black-eyed, clad in the shimmering, multi-hued silkweave and pearl strings of traditional tribal dancers of the Alharab. The third stood apart from the others, wearing a heavy cloak, its species and gender unknowable behind cowl and veil.
‘And you wish the target dead?’ one of the two Alharabi dancers asked. ‘Not taken?’
‘Dead,’ the voice hissed. ‘Plus proof of its demise, by whatever means you can procure.’
Silence followed, disturbed only by the clawing and scratching sounds of the rats that seemed to infest the hasham den.
‘Full payment only to the group that makes the kill?’ the Kharadron asked eventually.
‘That is correct, duardin.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ the duardin growled, nodding his kinsman towards the door.
The assassins left, the Kharadrons first, followed by the Alharabi. The cloaked figure went next, saying nothing. Only after they were all long gone did the being in the shadows stir and depart, melding instantly with the refuse-stinking darkness in the crumbling alleyways outside.
It was a long time before Hazim dared check the back room and bar its open door.
Chapter One
‘How much further?’
Gotrek’s growl ended the last hope Maleneth had of sleeping. She opened one eye to look at her companion, but the sunburned duardin hadn’t been speaking to her. He’d been addressing their guide.
‘A half-day’s journey yet, sellah,’ Aziz replied, glancing back nervously from his perch atop the front of the wagon. The scrawny young merchant had chattered incessantly when their journey had first begun, his words clearly driven by the anxiety he felt at being in the presence of the cantankerous red-crested duardin warrior. Gotrek’s surliness had quickly drained him of words, though.
‘You spat those lies half a day ago, manling,’ Gotrek snarled. Aziz cringed, and Maleneth grimaced. The duardin’s perpetual ill mood was becoming infectious.
‘The temple inscriptions have been there for the better part of an age, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ Maleneth responded over Aziz’s stammered apologies. ‘I doubt one turning of day to night will alter that.’
She closed her eyes again, trying to ignore the incessant rocking motion of the wagon, the sack of meal grinding her back, the infernal heat cooking her tight-bound leathers. She tried to ignore existence itself, but to no avail. Silently, she cursed everything – the heat, the journey, the sleeplessness. Most of all, she cursed Gotrek Gurnisson, the greatest monster-slayer of a dead age and the being – some said demigod – that Maleneth was murder-sworn to protect.
As though the mad red-crested Doomseeker needed protecting.
‘Will there be any dwarfs at our destination?’ she heard him ask. She could tell from the pained silence which followed that Aziz was struggling with the question.
‘Will there be… duardin, at the outpost,’ Gotrek rephrased, pronouncing the name of his own race with painful hesitancy.
‘Duardin at Khaled-Tush, why yes, sellah!’ Aziz said eagerly, grasping on to any perceived good news he could offer his ill-tempered companion. ‘It is the beginning of the Golden Season, when the master smiths of the Great Karagi will ply their wares to the tribes up and down the trails. Some of their retainers will likely already be setting up at Khaled-Tush.’
Gotrek spat on the golden sand. The gobbet sizzled. ‘Then when we arrive, you be sure to keep me and my axe away from them,’ Gotrek said. Aziz lapsed back into silence, clearly unwilling to enquire what dark deed had left the lone duardin estranged from his kindred. Maleneth knew well enough – in the months since Gotrek had hammered the Master Rune into his flesh and bonded with its power, his name had surged from one duardin hold to another. Some warriors of the Fyreslayer lodges believed him Grimnir reforged, their shattered god made whole once again. It hadn’t been long before Gotrek had found the genuflecting too much to bear. He’d sent them all away, made them swear oaths not to follow him. All except Maleneth.