At last, they found Bartiman Kotrin lying amidst a tangle of corpses near the edge of the ragged pit that had devoured much of the square. His tattered cloak had caught upon a jutting spar of wood and had saved him from a plunge into the yawning gulf below. Carefully, gradually, Romilla and Eleanora reeled their comrade’s body in and pulled him up from the brink, trying all the time not to dislodge the tangle of limbs and wreckage that had arrested his plunge.

All the while, Romilla’s heart was in her throat. Bartiman looked so frail, so battered and limp. There was no sign of life in him at all. She prayed with all her might that some spark of life still clung on within the old wizard’s body, but she didn’t believe it was so.

At last they had him, and as they pulled Bartiman back from the edge the corpse-mound gave way. Bodies slid and tangled, slipping one by one over the edge and into the dark depths below.

Romilla rolled Bartiman onto his back and slid the balled up remains of her cloak beneath his frail old head. He was so pale, she thought, looked so wizened. Praying fervently, desperately, she lowered her head and listened. Faint, so faint, she heard the rattling wheeze of Bartiman’s breath rasping in and out. Relief blossomed inside her, but also urgency.

‘El, he’s close to the brink,’ she said. ‘We need to get him out of here, to somewhere with clean water and a fire’s warmth. Help me make a litter.’

‘What about Aelyn? We have to find her too,’ said Eleanora as the two of them cast about for the right bits of wreckage to fashion a makeshift stretcher for their friend. Romilla stopped for a moment and looked around sorrowfully.

‘We have searched all night, El,’ she said. ‘We’ve covered every yard of this square. It is near dawn, and we have seen no sign of her. Barti­man is here, now, but he won’t be for long if we do not get him somewhere that I can care for him properly. Do you understand me?’

Eleanora looked at Romilla without expression for several heartbeats, then blinked and counted her fingers. Right hand. Left.

‘Perhaps she escaped,’ she said as she dragged a blackened branch out from beneath a scattering of rubble.

‘Perhaps she did, and we will see her again,’ said Romilla, yet as they lashed their makeshift litter together she felt a bone-deep sorrow at another lost friend. Sigmar had lent them his grace, she thought, but they had suffered terribly for it. She had not buried this many friends at once in a very long while. She had hoped never to do so again.