He saw Varlen again, as he had been at the end, with his flesh running like tallow and one eye bulging forth on a distended stalk, with his tongue split in two and a nest of three-foot, lashing worms where one arm should have been. Varlen, covered in the blood of the villagers, with that damned crown still embedded in the flesh of his forehead, the stone in its centre still blazing blue. Varlen, who he’d failed.

‘Hendrick!’ snapped Romilla.

‘The regent militant,’ barked Hendrick in reply. ‘Captain Morthan ordered us to keep him safe, and if there’s a chance we can still save him then we’ve got to take it. We can’t let her down.’

Bestial howls rose from the feastgoers who had already contracted the spore sickness. The crowd surged and heaved around the Swords of Sigmar, threatening to sweep them away from one another. Glass shattered, metal rang against marble as plates scattered to the floor, people wailed and shrieked and sobbed. Some, who had made the theoretical connection between the regent militant’s last drink and his horrible fate, rammed fingers down their throats to make themselves vomit. By the stench, others had soiled themselves in terror amidst the crowd. For an instant, Hendrick was struck by how swiftly the veneer of genteel civilisation was stripped away to reveal little more than frightened animals fighting for their lives.

‘We need our real weapons!’ said Borik. ‘I don’t fancy our chances fighting those things off with shivs and side-blades. I want my damned cannon.’

‘They put them in the guard-post just inside the main entrance on the left as you come in,’ Eleanora said rapidly, a look of barely contained fear on her features. She was sweating, Hendrick saw, and looked almost feverish.

‘All right, whatever this is we can’t fight it here, like this. Not with side-blades. Aelyn, take Eleanora and secure the rest of our weapons. Don’t try to get them all back to us, you’ll never fight your way back here against the human tide carrying all that. Get them ready and we’ll come to you.’

Aelyn shrugged off her sling bandage and winced as the crowd surged against her. She grabbed hold of Eleanora’s arm and set off, all but towing the young engineer behind her.

‘Borik, Bartiman, Olt, get as many people out of here as you can,’ Hendrick continued.

‘Why waste time on these fops?’ snarled Olt, shoving a portly, panicked man in a skewed hat away from himself.

‘Whatever this thing is, it’s spreading from one person to the next,’ said Bartiman, nodding understanding as he clung on to Hendrick’s arm to steady himself against the crowd. ‘They might deserve saving, they might not, but it’s a question of limiting the exponential explosion of enemy numbers.’

‘What he said,’ said Hendrick. ‘Just do it!’