‘Please,’ he croaked, then he arched his back and gave a gurgling cry as a metal point burst through his chest. The man toppled, revealing a snarling grot behind him with its spear buried in his spine. Eleanora fired, the crack of her gun loud amidst the unnatural quiet of the square, and the grot was flung back into the shadows.

Fresh movement sounded around them, the splash of footfalls, the whisper of cloth. Something laughed, shrill and deranged.

‘Eyes peeled,’ hissed Bartiman, fishing in a pouch at his belt and sprinkling what looked like glittering ashes over the tip of his staff. ‘They’re surrounding us.’

Dark figures surged forward amidst the murk. Bartiman spat a string of syllables and black energy leapt from his staff to reduce half a dozen charging greenskins to withered corpses. More movement, and Eleanora lobbed a brass sphere into the smoke. There was a fierce flash and a deafening bang. A green-fleshed arm slapped into the water at Romilla’s feet, still trailing blood and smoke. She heard a wailing coming closer, a rapid slap of footfalls, and one of the infected burst from the swirling smog to her right. Romilla reacted with practised skill, side-stepping a swipe of clawed fingers and swinging her hammer into the thing’s face. Blood and teeth rained down, and the infected hit the ground. She smashed the back of its skull in to be sure.

‘No use for quiet any more,’ she said, and raised her voice to a booming shout. ‘Aelyn! Borik! Olt! Are you there?’

Groundwater rippled and leapt as something huge lumbered their way. The troggoth emerged from the smog-clouds with a roar, and Romilla realised with a lurch that it was wielding a buckled cannon barrel in both fists like a tribesman swinging a double-handed axe. The troggoth took three long strides and swung its weapon up with a growl. It jerked and staggered as Bartiman’s staff spat darkness again and blasted a blackened crater in the beast’s chest. Yet even as Romilla watched, the wound began to suck closed, the troggoth’s unnatural flesh sealing as quick as it could be harmed. It bellowed and swung, and Romilla leapt aside just in time. The cannon barrel hammered into the cobbles, raising a spray of dirty water that drenched her.

Ponderous, the troggoth raised its dripping weapon and turned, its piggy eyes squinting as its slow intellect processed the fact that she had evaded its blow. It searched the ground and found her again, raising its weapon for another swipe and roaring.