They had heard movement several times, slapping footfalls and harsh, inhuman voices snarling and jabbering in a tongue she didn’t recognise. Until now, though, they had been lucky. As Romilla came up behind the crouched form of Aelyn, she saw that their Sigmar-sent luck had run out.

Beyond the alleyway, several streets met around a stone well with a rain-etched slate roof over it. Something slimy and pulsating had sprouted from the well, its rubbery black flesh and thick tendrils bursting the stonework and sinking into the cobbled ground. The black tendrils were festooned with small red and green toadstools, and these were being busily harvested by a gaggle of Moonclan grots. The hunched creatures shoved and pinched, jostling to reach the best fungi. Their pointy black hoods bobbed, and sharp little daggers glinted in the sickly moonlight as they were brandished threateningly. She saw to her revulsion that most of the greenskins were grabbing fistfuls of the slimy fungi and stuffing them into their fanged mouths. They chewed greedily and, as they did, frothy black foam spilled from their jaws and dribbled down their chins. As Romilla watched, several of the grots began to shudder and gibber. They capered about the small courtyard, flailing their limbs and shrieking a single word over and over. To Romilla’s ears it sounded like ‘Gloomspite! Gloomspite!’

‘Do we fight, or do we try to avoid them?’ asked one of the watchmen softly.

Aelyn motioned upwards, and as Romilla followed the aelf’s gesture her blood froze in her veins. Spiders moved up near the rooftops, horrible bloated things as big as she was, with crude saddles lashed to them. Grots sat in those saddles, primitive-looking creatures clad in loincloths, their pale green flesh pierced with stolen feathers and daubed with war-paint. They leered as their steeds spewed silk from their abdomens and worked it with their long forelimbs. Some of them looked to be weaving a sort of roof between the buildings, Romilla saw. Others were cocooning bulky shapes in layer after layer of slimy silks and hanging them from the gutters. It was a larder, Romilla thought, trying to ignore the way some of the bundles twitched and gave muffled moans of fear.

‘Too many,’ whispered Aelyn. ‘We need to get above them. Thackeray, how do we reach the rooftop road?’

The watchman frowned as he thought, drumming the fingers of one hand against his chin.

‘We double back down this alley, take the left-hand fork at the bottom. If we can get into the fishmonger’s there, then there’s a way up through the building’s attic. There was a gang operating out of the fishmonger’s at one point, until we shut them down.’