‘Conquest, ruin, pure and simple,’ said Borik, in a tone intended to brook no argument. ‘Greenskins can be wily but they don’t plan ahead. It’s as the watchman said, Draconium was just in their way.’

‘I don’t think that we can choose our path until we know for sure whether that is true,’ said Aelyn. ‘Perhaps you are right, Borik. Perhaps this is simply ill fortune, and the best course of action is to clear the path of the avalanche. We could make for the towns and cities to the south, warn them of Draconium’s fate and call down the wrath of the Stormcasts to retake whatever remained of the city.’ She held up a hand to forestall Marika’s angry protests. ‘But what if that is not the right move? What if that ghastly moon hanging above us… what if the greenskins have conjured it somehow? What if they have a wider-reaching plan, and its light ends up spreading to all the corners of this realm?’

‘How do we know that isn’t already the case?’ asked Romilla darkly.

‘You said it yourself, Sigmar made the Stormcast Eternals to deal with matters of such vast import,’ said Borik, taking an angry swig of his metha. ‘If there is truly some dreadful plan afoot here, let them be the ones to deal with it. But I don’t believe it. I’ll butcher greenskins as gladly as the next duardin, but I follow the Kharadron code, and its statutes leave no room for doubt – there’s no profit in a losing battle, and the honourable dead are still dead all the same.’

‘Krysthenna’s cult tried to leave,’ said Eleanora quietly.

‘Rust it all, Krysthenna’s cult were a gang of moon-eyed fools who marched out into the wilds without a blade between them,’ snapped Borik.

‘And how much better do you believe the people of this city would fare, if they tried to flee?’ asked Marika.

‘If they have any sense, they already have fled,’ Borik replied. ‘As we should. As we’re going to.’

‘We are called the Swords of Sigmar, not simply the Swords,’ said Romilla. ‘There’s a reason Varlen and Hendrick chose that name, Borik. No matter how much you try to argue otherwise, you know that they cared more about their duty to the God-King than they did about the money they earned performing it. They became mercenaries because it suited their methods, not because they cared more about coin than they did about the war for the Mortal Realms.’