Romilla immediately saw what had alarmed Thackeray, and she became very still. Barely visible in the half-light, thick strands criss-crossed the chamber. They gathered in thick drifts in its corners, and in places formed dense cocoons that dangled from the ceiling and swayed in a hot breeze.

Spider’s webs.

Masses of huge, thick spiders’ webs.

Romilla shook her head in despair and clutched her hammer amulet tight.

‘Sigmar,’ she prayed in a whisper, ‘give us strength.’

At first, they tried to pick their way between the cobwebs without touching them. It quickly proved impossible. The sticky strands filled the chamber in layers, forming complex interwoven patterns that Romilla couldn’t begin to trace or avoid. Thackeray broke first, recoiling in disgust as a mass of web clung to his face. He hacked angrily at it with his halberd. Eleanora and Romilla joined him in simply clawing the webbing out of their way as best they could.

It was no mean feat, even still. Romilla had rarely had cause to wish she fought with a blade rather than a hammer. She wished it now.

Worse, she had enough bestiary lore to know how spiders hunted their prey. With every tug upon the mass of sticky strands she expected to see arachnids large as men come scuttling down the stairs from above.

Still, nothing emerged to attack them as they fought their way across the web-choked chamber and reached the foot of the iron staircase. Romilla looked up the funnel of webbing that filled the stairwell and felt atavistic terror threaten to freeze her in place. Up there was their goal. An escape from these underground chambers and a return to air and light, no matter how poisonous both might be by now. Yet how could they make their way through this nightmare?

‘Eleanora, do you know where we’re going?’ she whispered. To her alarm, it took Eleanora a long moment to focus on her before the engineer answered. She was feverish, her hands shaking as though palsied and her eyes shot through with red-black veiny streaks. Heat baked off her.

‘Up the stairs two floors until we reach ground level,’ she said, blinking and swaying. ‘Right along a tunnel lined with pipes, then up another flight of stairs. Or… no, left. Left up another… is it? Yes, right, up another flight of stairs into the exchanger chamber. The controls are… up… near the ceiling. The roof is glass, Romilla. We’ll be exposed… to the moonlight again.’ She gestured vaguely with one of her guns.

‘Is she going to be able to do this?’ asked Thackeray, frowning in concern.

‘Yes, she is,’ whispered Romilla with absolute conviction. ‘Even if we have to carry her there. You can do this, can’t you, El?’

Eleanora’s gaze sharpened, and she looked down at the mechanisms of her guns for a moment before looking back up at Romilla.

‘I don’t want any more of us to die,’ she said quietly.