‘What was that?’ Darke asked. Anyone else might have clutched the length of metal tighter in the face of such an event, potential threat as it could be. She dropped it, to free her hands.

‘It’s the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension,’ Wanden said. ‘Could it be a firework?’

‘That was no firework, you imbecile,’ Darke snapped. ‘We’ve been hearing fireworks all evening! That was something exploding!’

‘Quiet!’ Radimir said, holding up his hand. He strained his ears as, for a wonder, they both obeyed him. ‘There!’

It was faint, but just discernible: a whistling, rushing noise, distant but growing closer. Something large and heavy was falling through the air, without any noise of engines. Radimir had a sudden image of one of this world’s flyers, the victim of a catastrophic engine overload, falling out of the sky and obliterating all his careful handiwork. Truly, his gods could be fickle, but would they possibly be so cruel? Had they turned their faces from him so spectacularly?

No.

There was a sudden loud hum that lasted for only a few seconds – Radimir recognised the sound of an Imperial anti-grav drive – and then a muffled crash of metal on rock and dirt. It wasn’t close, but neither was it far.

Darke looked at him, and her hands began to glow again.

‘None of that!’ Radimir told her sternly. ‘We don’t want to attract attention.’ He raised his voice a little, to carry to the nearest of his followers. ‘Pass the word! Everyone stay still and quiet. I’m going to investigate.’

He turned and walked quickly, out of the light cast by Wanden’s luminator and away from Darke’s fading hands, and then sent his senses questing through the darkness that surrounded him. He reached out in the direction the last noises had come from, but fell short. He found a small pack of mutated canines, squabbling over the corpse of something that had perhaps once been human, and steered his attention away from them. So too did he avoid the lurking presence of a smog spider, the top of its abdomen on a level with his chest, waiting in a fallen water tower for something warm and juicy to wander carelessly past. He wanted to draw as little attention as possible.

It was so dark down here that he could move virtually anywhere within range of his powers. He stepped easily, slipping through the darkness to his new location, then reached out once more as soon as he’d orientated himself.

Ah, yes. Now he could see what had happened.