‘An eye? Hendrick, I’m kicking myself for not bringing some ­specimen jars,’ replied Bartiman.

‘Quiet, both of you,’ hissed Olt from up ahead, his voice sounding muffled. ‘Tunnel starts heading down pretty steeply up ahead. Getting narrower too.’

Hendrick’s face was a frown of concentration as he continued to press forwards. Sure enough the ground began to slope away, and the tunnel shrank in until his shoulders knocked loose soil from its walls. Claustrophobia threatened. The touch of the fungi that clung to the walls was foul, and worse, the walls themselves had begun to ooze a kind of thick, clear slime that was cold and tingling to the touch. The trail of glass fragments continued down the tunnel, and translucent insects crunched underfoot.

Hendrick kept his breathing steady and focused on the thought of finding a solution to the mystery of what threatened this city. Things had not progressed how he had hoped, thus far, and he desperately wanted a real enemy to fight. Racketeers didn’t count.

If he was honest with himself, Hendrick had pictured their arriving in the nick of time to warn of some invading army. He had hoped to reap a tally of Chaos worshippers in return for his brother’s death. Perhaps some part of Hendrick had hoped to follow Varlen into death’s embrace, that he might be reunited with his sibling. Instead, they had mysteries and holes, ominous signs and a religious autocrat who believed Sigmar would save them from all of it.

Hendrick was keeping his temper reined in by the thinnest of margins, and the events of the night of their arrival kept playing out in his mind’s eye. How he had stammered himself to a stop in front of the regent militant. How their warning had fallen on deaf ears. He felt as though he had let Varlen down, one last time, and the familiar sense of self-loathing had returned in force. That, in turn, frustrated Hendrick as he knew it was horribly counterproductive, but the anger he felt at his own weakness only made him loathe himself more.

Bartiman stopped so suddenly that Hendrick bumped into him, nearly knocking the old wizard from his feet.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Olt’s stopped,’ hissed Bartiman.

‘Something doesn’t feel right,’ said the scout, placing a palm against the slimy soil of the wall. A moment later, in a voice of tightly controlled panic, he hissed ‘No, no, go back, back, back now!’

Hendrick had fought alongside Olt for a year now. He knew well enough not to argue. However, as he tried to turn and retreat up the passageway the horrible realisation struck him that he couldn’t.

‘I can’t turn around,’ he hissed. ‘There’s not space.’ Hendrick felt his body trying to freeze on him as intense claustrophobia clamped its hands around his throat. He sucked in a tight breath.