A battle that made shields and armour useless, that made flailing swords futile. A soul hardened beyond humanity was the only defence, and for Itkovian that price was too high. I am the Shield Anvil. I surrender to what lies before me. Thicker than smoke, the grief unleashed and now lost, churning this lifeless air. A city has been killed. Even the survivors huddling in the tunnels below – Fener take me, better they never emerge ... to see this.

Their route took them between the cemeteries. Itkovian studied the place where he and his soldiers had made a stand. It looked no different from anywhere else his eye scanned. The dead lay in heaps. As Brukhalian had promised, not one pavestone had gone uncontested. This small city had done all it could. Pannion victory might well have been inevitable, but thresholds nevertheless existed, transforming inexorable momentum into a curse.

And now the White Face clans of the Barghast had announced their own inevitability. What the Pannions had delivered had been in turn delivered upon them. We are all pushed into a world of madness, yet it must now fall to each of us to pull back from this Abyss, to drag ourselves free of the descending spiral. From horror, grief must be fashioned, and from grief, compassion.

As the company entered a choked avenue at the edge of the Daru district, a score of Barghast emerged from an alley mouth directly ahead. Bloodied hook-swords in hands, white-painted faces spattered red. The foremost among them grinned at the Shield Anvil.

‘Defenders!’ he barked in harshly-accented Capan. ‘How sits this gift of liberation?’

Itkovian ignored the question, ‘You have kin at the Thrall, sir. Even now I see the protective glow fading.’

‘We shall see the bones of our gods, aye,’ the warrior said, nodding. His small, dark eyes scanned the Grey Swords. ‘You lead a tribe of women.’

‘Capan women,’ Itkovian said. ‘This city’s most resilient resource, though it fell to us to discover that. They are Grey Swords, now, sir, and for that we are strengthened.’

‘We’ve seen your brothers and sisters everywhere,’ the Barghast warrior growled. ‘Had they been our enemies, we would be glad they are dead.’

‘And as allies?’ the Shield Anvil asked.

The Barghast fighters one and all made a gesture, back of sword-hand to brow, the briefest brush of leather to skin, then the spokesman said, ‘The loss fills the shadows we cast. Know this, soldier, the enemy you left to us was brittle.’

Itkovian shrugged. ‘The Pannions’ faith knows not worship, only necessity. Their strength is a shallow thing, sir. Will you accompany us to the Thrall?’

‘At your sides, soldiers. In your shadow lies honour.’