‘Sigmar, if you can hear me, guide my steps,’ she prayed as she ran, and tried to ignore the sickening drop to either side of her into the fungus-thick streets below.

They were halfway across the rooftops when Aelyn heard the cries of greenskins behind them. She glanced back, still running surefooted across the roofboards. Thackeray and his remaining watchman were close on her heels, Romilla lagging slightly further back, looking pale but determined.

A hundred yards or so further behind them, Moonclan grots were spilling up like insects from a collapsed attic space, swarming up the fungus-dotted roof tiles and onto the boards of the roadway.

‘Romilla, faster!’ shouted Aelyn, and saw the wounded priest dutifully redouble her efforts. Aelyn swung herself up onto a chimney stack and crouched there like a gargoyle. She swept her bow off her back and swiftly strung it. Thackeray and his watchman passed her at as close to a run as they dared, their cloaks flapping behind them.

‘Get to the guild hall and secure our entry,’ she ordered as they dashed past. Then she drew an arrow from her quiver, drew back her bowstring and, ignoring the foul Bad Moon hanging fat and low overhead, she loosed. The shaft whipped through the air, passing over Romilla’s head and dropping neatly into the eye socket of a Moonclan grot. The creature shrieked as it was spun from its feet to topple bonelessly down the roof and into the void beyond. Its body hit the cobbles far below with a distant splat. By that time, Aelyn had loosed three more arrows that sped through the air and plucked three more greenskins from their feet.

As she had hoped, the rest lost their nerve and scattered to cower behind buttresses, chimney-pots and the like. Romilla kept running, reaching then passing Aelyn’s position with a grim nod of thanks.

‘It won’t keep them back for long,’ said the aelf, dropping from her vantage point and following her comrade.

She ran, and as she did black-fletched arrows the length of her forearm started to fall around her. One skipped off the roof tiles just feet to her left. Another thrummed over her shoulder and thumped, quivering, into the roofboards in front of her. Aelyn kept running, turning her innate talents to blurring her outline and blending with the shadows. Yet there was so little cover, exposed as they were, silhouetted against the skyline with the bloated Bad Moon shining its light down upon her like a beacon. At any second Aelyn expected to feel an arrow thump into her back and pitch her from the roof.