‘Captain Morthan tasked us with the defence of this city,’ said Watchman Thackeray into the restored quiet. ‘It’s a simple enough question. Do you plan to help us, or don’t you?’

‘It is not so simple as you imagine,’ said Aelyn. ‘I ask you, what do we face here? Why has this curse descended upon Draconium?’

‘The Moonclan grots, we know that much,’ said Bartiman, who was clutching his hot mug of metha to his breast like a talisman.

‘What, Grobi-the-blackcap? The lurkers below?’ asked Shen incredulously.

‘Is anyone even still asking that question?’ replied Romilla. ‘You’ve all seen them out there. You’ve seen the Bad Moon in the skies above. Fairy tales are only fairy tales until they’re sinking their fangs into your neck. They don’t care whether you believe in them or not, they’ll kill you either way.’

Shen looked ready to argue further, but Marika put a hand on his arm and shook her head.

‘You haven’t been out there, Shen,’ she said, her former anger replaced by a haunted tone. ‘Just believe us, it’s all true and much more besides. There’s things from nightmares roaming the streets. I saw a spider big as three coaches weaving its web right around a townhouse, for Sigmar’s sake. The people inside were still screaming…’

‘Strip away the fae-tales and underneath you find greenskins, albeit monstrous ones,’ said Thackeray. ‘They wreak destruction for its own sake, do they not? Surely the answer to your question is that Draconium is beset simply because we were unfortunate enough to stand in their path.’

‘I don’t believe so, and neither does Eleanora,’ said Aelyn. ‘Is that not right?’

The engineer looked stricken as all eyes turned to her. She counted quickly on her fingers then brushed her sweat-lank hair back from her forehead.

‘Too much planning, too many omens,’ she said. ‘Unrest, unnatural phenomena, all chipped away at the city’s capacity to fight back. Draconium was under siege but we didn’t recognise it, because the methods were too strange. Food, morale, defences all eroded over a turning or so, then when the attack came it was coordinated all across the city. Who poisoned the regent militant? That wasn’t random elemental violence, it was part of a deliberate strategy of terror and organisational destabilisation that suggests prodigious forethought.’

‘Are we sure it’s greenskins at all?’ asked Shen. ‘That sounds more like the machinations of some cult to the Dark Gods.’

‘It’s greenskins all right, but they don’t fight like any I’ve ever faced before,’ said Aelyn. ‘Orruks come at you from the front, an avalanche that sweeps away all before it. This is insidious, cunning, a poisoned blade sunk into your back before you even know you are at war. But I ask again, in aid of what?’