Suddenly, there were no more squig riders, just a smouldering pit surrounded by bleeding, dying bodies. Aelyn dragged her blades from the body of a fallen squig and took stock. Thirteen left standing, she saw: Captain Morthan and five of her watchmen, the three Swords, three militiamen and a single, bloodied palace guard. Most of them were wounded in some way or other, and all were breathing hard. Aelyn realised with alarm that they were all sucking down the spore-thick fumes with every breath, heard suddenly the wet congestion in her lungs.

‘Let us get away from this pit,’ she said, feeling nausea stirring in her gut.

Morthan coughed wetly, took her meaning and nodded. ‘You soldiers, you’re with us,’ she said. ‘We push along the Fieldway and join the muster at Fountains Square. No damned greenskin invasion is going to take Draconium from us, you hear me? This is Sigmar’s own city, and we–’

She broke off, her inspiring words interrupted by a bout of phlegmy coughing. Morthan spat and scowled angrily.

‘Just follow me,’ she snarled, and was off again, leaving the square by its eastern edge. Aelyn and her companions followed.

The Fieldway turned out to be a wide arterial street that connected Marketsway to High Drake near the city’s centre, and to Pole Hill in the east. Aelyn saw it had been built broad enough for ranked formations of soldiery to move along as easily as foot-and-trade traffic, and understood why Morthan had chosen this route to reach Fountains Square quickly. Yet it was clear that many others had had the same idea, friend and foe alike.

Grots roved in packs between panicked masses of city folk, who fought back against their leering attackers with whatever implements came to hand. Many fled screaming, only to be dragged down and knifed cruelly. Aelyn saw greenskins maliciously hacking off fingers and toes and stuffing them into dirty cloth bags tied to their belts.

She saw a spider-legged grot picking his way through the carnage, a gnarled staff in one hand with what looked like a beast’s stinger jutting from its end. The awful creature had a cluster of red eyes scattered across its face, and a bulging wicker basket lashed to its back that clinked with bottles and vials. A militiaman charged the arachnid greenskin with a yell, spear levelled. The grot hissed and spun its staff, weaving aside from the man’s blow and driving the stinger into his throat. The soldier staggered back, clawing at his neck as his flesh swelled and turned black around the wound. The corruption ran through his flesh like wildfire, bloating and distending his skin even as it turned it bruise-black and splitting it in splatters of fluids. He crashed to the floor, choking on his own swollen flesh, then lay still, a blackened and bloated ruin.