She shook her head and hastened through the back door, throwing up the hood of her cloak and pulling her sleeves down as far as they would go before stepping back into the curdled light of the Bad Moon. She stopped in surprise as she saw the wagon that Borik had been eyeing a few days earlier, parked up under cover with a gnarlkyd in its traces.

‘That’s us,’ said Bartiman.

Romilla raised an eyebrow at him.

‘Borik wasn’t wrong, it’s a solid wagon,’ said Bartiman. ‘We needed it more than Gathe, so I conducted a swift negotiation and paid the man a fair price. He seemed keen to be rid of us, did he not?’

‘I won’t ask how much,’ she said, her ears still ringing. ‘A fine idea, Bartiman. Let’s move.’

They hurriedly loaded everything they had salvaged into the back of the wagon, tucking it under a heavy tarpaulin that had already sprouted several pale mushrooms. Then, bundled as thickly in cloaks and garments as possible to ward off the moonlight, they scrambled aboard the driver’s bench and Bartiman took the reins.

As Romilla’s hearing returned fully, she took in the rising cacophony that floated from across the city. Screams of pain and terror mingled with the howls of the hopelessly insane. Creaks, groans and crashes told a tale of structural devastation. Yet the worst sounds were those of the invaders. Gibbering shrieks and malicious cackles, great booming roars, terrible hissing sounds and the constant clangour of crude gongs and bells echoed from every direction. Romilla felt fear for the friends they had left out amidst this madness before the moon rocks fell. She prayed hard that they remained alive and unharmed, but she feared that amidst the fervent tide of prayers surely rising from Draconium in that moment, hers would be lost long before they reached the God-King’s ear.

The moment Bartiman drove their draybeast out into the moonlight, the creature lowed in panic and discomfort. A row of blood-red mushrooms popped out of its spine as though emerging from the forest floor after a gentle shower, and Romilla squashed her revulsion at the little spurts of blood and pus that squirted out as each broke the surface of the creature’s flesh. The gnarlkyd tried to buck and fight, but Bartiman plied the reins with skill. He muttered words in a strange tongue that Romilla couldn’t place, causing the beast to stiffen as though with fear and then surge out through the inn’s back gates and into the benighted streets beyond.

The journey that followed was a surreal and nightmarish experience. The Bad Moon leered down at them, its malice a palpable force beating upon their brows. Heaps of wreckage and the collapsed ruin of buildings forced them to detour, and then detour again, every delay driving them further away from Fountains Square and increasing Romilla’s fear and frustration.