Hendrick gave a grunt of agreement. ‘Could be our warning comes a little too late,’ he said.

‘No, the storm still gathers,’ she replied. ‘We should be swift. You don’t need omens to feel there is something deeply wrong here.’

‘Let’s be about it then,’ he said, and set off for the distant city walls.

The marshes were easier to cross than Hendrick expected. Packed-earth pathways extended through them, some wide enough for carts to pass two abreast and patched where necessary with wooden planks. Smaller paths wound away towards scattered peat-diggers’ huts and shepherds’ lean-tos.

‘Looks like there are some folk unwilling to trade their independence for the protection of the city’s walls,’ commented Bartiman. His voice was deep and mellifluous for one who looked so wrinkled and old. It only matched his eyes, which sparkled impishly.

‘Fools. The realms are dangerous enough without eschewing what Sigmar offers,’ said Romilla.

‘Where they are, though?’ asked Olt. ‘I see the homes, but not the people or their herds.’ Hendrick saw their scout was right; no whisp of smoke rose from any sod hut, no herd-beasts chewed at the tough grass of the marshes.

‘Maybe not such idiots after all,’ he said, taking in the full scale of Draconium’s southern wall. It ran from one craggy mountainside to the other, its end-towers carved right into the craggy rockfaces. The wall blocked off the pass entirely and loomed like a menacing shadow over the fringe of the marsh.

Mud squelched underfoot as Hendrick crossed into the long shadow of that wall, over which loomed the smouldering volcanoes and, above them, a slowly massing immensity of black storm clouds. For a moment he felt a claustrophobic sense of panic, as though the whole lot might come thundering down to bury him alive.

‘This is for your brother, coward,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Just get the job done.’

Ignoring Aelyn’s amber-eyed glance, Hendrick led his small mercenary band into the shadow of the wall, to where a wide and well-maintained roadway ran along its base. That road, he saw, ran off along the feet of the Redspines to the west, while to the east it passed before the wall’s formidable gatehouse, then slid in alongside the Hammerhal Canal and sped away southwards.

‘If we’d have come from the other direction, it would have been a much easier march,’ said Eleanora, counting on the fingers of her right hand, then her left, oblivious to Olt’s irritated glare. ‘When we get into the city I’m going to find a map of this region and see about buying it, so that we don’t make that sort of mistake again. And I’m going to get access to a workshop so that I can make my spider repeller.’

‘If we get into the city,’ said Borik. ‘Gate’s shut.’