‘Back, go, now!’ shouted Olt, abandoning all pretence at stealth. Swearing, Hendrick forced his limbs to move. He began to scramble backwards along the tunnel as quickly as he could. His head banged the ceiling, dislodging clots of soil and fungus that showered down on him. Something wriggling dropped down the back of his neck, causing him to grunt with disgust. Bartiman, who had managed to turn around to face the right way, pressed close, his old features drawn with alarm in the wavering illumination of his light.

Hendrick could feel it now too, a shuddering in the earth around them. He felt more than heard a subsonic rumble that shuddered through the bedrock and caused the tunnel to shake. Soil spilled down from above, finding its way into his eyes, his ears, his mouth.

‘Move, Hendrick, I’ve no desire to be buried alive!’ gasped Bartiman.

‘What in the realms is going on?’ he shouted, spitting mouthfuls of sour-tasting soil.

The only answer was an increase in the violent shuddering. Barti­man’s concentration slipped and his light extinguished, plunging them into absolute darkness. Hendrick caught his heel on something that gave with a spongy crunch, and almost fell backwards. His heart hammered as he found his feet and kept going, praying to Sigmar almighty that the tunnel would soon widen enough for him to turn and run before it came down on top of them all.

Hendrick realised in that moment that he truly didn’t want to die.

Not like this.

Not yet.

The sewer tunnel echoed with the furious roar of rushing water. The sound rebounded from the curving brickwork arch of the ceiling. It filled the air with a hammering tumult as thousands of gallons of acidic wastewater poured along the tunnel and away through other channels.

Aelyn kept one hand on the railing as she and her comrades picked their way along the gantry above the torrent. She had wondered if the stench down here would be unpleasant, but with so much water sluicing through the sewers the main concern wasn’t the stink so much as it was getting snatched by the acidic waters and borne away to a horrible death.

The gantries down here didn’t exactly fill Aelyn with confidence, either. Simple arrangements of wooden planking and ironwork bolted directly into the walls, they felt rickety and unstable. They creaked alarmingly under Borik’s armoured weight, so much so that she had considered ordering him back to the surface. The spark-lamp on his armour’s shoulder served as their main source of light, however, and besides, if they did run into anything dangerous down here then his cannon would prove very useful.

Of course, they had been down in the sewers for over an hour now and all they had run into was alarmed-looking rats attempting to stay above the rising floodwaters.

No, she thought, that wasn’t quite true. They had found something else.