The aelf slipped from the alleyway, her bow slung easily on her back next to a quiver full of arrows. Romilla held her breath as Aelyn loped swiftly across the street, fully exposed to the grots’ view, then leapt high and caught hold of a gutter outside a first floor window. As she moved, her outline seemed to blur. Aelyn became difficult to watch or to follow. Romilla had seen the waywatcher employ her strange talents before, but it never became any less unsettling. Aelyn swung her legs forward to gain momentum then swung back and out, twisting her body in a way no human could have emulated. She executed a neat flip and landed catlike upon the windowsill.

She sprang from one windowsill to the next, and then to the next, before bounding diagonally upwards in order to catch hold of a windowbasket outside the second floor of some merchant’s house. Romilla tensed as the basket gave under Aelyn’s weight and broke away from its moorings. Moving faster than even Romilla would have believed possible, Aelyn caught hold of the windowsill with one hand and hung onto the basket with the other, preventing it from falling and smashing in the street below. For a few heartbeats she dangled, and Romilla prayed fervently to Sigmar that none of the greenskins would think to look up.

Aelyn swung herself first one way then the other, back and forth several times before managing to hook one foot over the sill. Sinuous as a snake, she hauled herself up and placed the broken basket gently upon the sill. Then she vanished into the dark interior of the building.

‘What is she doing?’ whispered Thackeray as they waited. ‘There are other routes we might have tried.’

‘Any of them as direct as this, or any less likely to be infested?’ asked Romilla. The watchman sheepishly shook his head. ‘Trust Aelyn, she will handle this,’ said Romilla. ‘Just be ready to move when she signals.’

Romilla counted her heartbeats and tried to ignore the half-visible face of the Bad Moon staring down at them with hollow eyes. Its gaze made her want to take her hammer and smash it into her own skull as hard as she could. It made her want to swing the weapon into Thackeray’s jaw, and then to scream out praise to the Bad Moon as the grots descended upon them all. It made her want to–

Romilla shuddered and shook off the vile waking nightmare, which left her with a sense of disoriented nausea. She leaned against the wall, then snatched her hand back as something with a pale, segmented body and too many legs scurried across it.