Brida Devholm, captain of the Freeguild company Lady’s Justice, watched with dismay as the most incompetent of her new recruits staggered, fell and landed hard on the stone courtyard that made up the ground floor of the watchtower known as Greenspire. The barrel he was carrying slammed onto the flagstones and split, and a cascade of fine black powder spilt forth over him and the stone while clouds of it plumed into the air.

Brida leapt back on instinct. ‘Careful, idiot,’ she shouted. ‘You want to blow us all up? That’s gunpowder! Why not just strike a spark while you’re at it?’

It was no use. Kende had hit his chin on the top of the barrel as he went down and was sitting in the drift of gunpowder, bleary-eyed and spitting blood from a bitten tongue. ‘Sorry, captain,’ he managed. He made it to his knees, upended the broken barrel and began scooping the powder back into the hole cracked into it, scraping handfuls up off the stones.

Brida ran forwards and snatched the barrel from him, spilling more onto herself and the ground with the violence of the movement. ‘By the Lady, are you stupid?’ she demanded, despite the clear evidence confirming her suspicion. She pointed at the ground as he blinked up at her, confused. ‘That powder’s contaminated now, full of dirt and dust, your blood and sweat, stone chips even. You’ve just mixed it with the pure still left in the barrel.’ He stared at her, still not understanding, and Brida cursed him silently.

‘Do you know what happens when you put dirty gunpowder in the firing pan of your musket? Either it doesn’t fire, leaving you unarmed against the hordes trying to claw your guts out of your belly, or it backfires and blows your damn hand off. Which would you prefer, Kende?’

Kende wiped blood from his chin with a blackened hand and scrambled to his feet. ‘Um, neither?’ he ventured.

Brida nodded. ‘Neither. Good choice. Now think what would happen if you loaded it into the breech of a cannon.’ She cursed again as she peered through the split wood and gave the barrel a tentative shake, judging its weight. It had been full. She groaned and gave it back to him. ‘Congratulations. Your first month’s wages are forfeit to enable me to purchase more powder, though it’s anybody’s guess when the suppliers will be back this way. And don’t even think about complaining.’ She stared him out and Kende closed the mouth that had been about to utter something very unwise.

‘Shovel the rest of it back in there and then mark up the barrel with chalk so we know not to use it in the weapons. Might be we can sprinkle it in some of the traps out front, add a little excitement for when the beasts come again. And then sweep this yard – I don’t want a stray spark setting my company alight because the ground’s dusted with gunpowder. And then report for night duty – no, I don’t care that you’ve just pulled a day shift. And try not to fall over your own feet next time, yes? Alarielle knows what you’ll be like in an actual fight.’

The torrent of orders and abuse withered the man like a tree before Nurgle’s rot and he nodded, mute, his black-stained face slack with chagrin. Brida bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself saying more, and sighed. She shouldn’t be too hard on him; he’d been a farmer before a tzaangor warflock from the Hexwood took everyone he loved and he swore to end his days fighting them. The problem was, he was doing a damn fine job of trying to take Lady’s Justice and Greenspire with him when he went.

His was a common enough tale in Verdia and, truth be told, she knew a thing or two about that driving need for vengeance and where it could take a person. She just had to hope Kende could learn weapons easier than he could carry barrels of gunpowder across a flagstoned courtyard. And he wasn’t the only one. The last skirmish had left her company under-strength, and they’d replaced the dead with a dozen raw recruits – some barely more than children, the others merchants or farmers like Kende. A dozen who didn’t know which end of a sword was safe to hold. One, Raella, who’d discovered she didn’t like heights and cried every time she stood watch on the third level, spending most of her time with her eyes screwed shut and clinging to the guard wall until they prised her loose and sent her down to the ground floor again.

A muscle jumped in Brida’s jaw, but she managed to keep her frustration trapped behind her teeth as Kende resumed funnelling wasted powder into the barrel. He’d learn or he’d die, all of them would; that was the way of it out here on the Emerald Line, which stretched from Fort Gardus to Hammerhal-Ghyra. Brida’s concern was that they didn’t take too many seasoned soldiers with them into death.

Above, Greenspire’s bell rang the changing of the watch, and Brida left Kende to his task with a final reminder to bathe and change before going near any naked flames. She jogged up the stairs to the top floor of the tower and marched a brisk round of all four sides. This evening the approaches from the Hexwood were clear, although there was a tangle of vine crawling out from the treeline towards them, already closer and thicker than it had been at dawn. Brida rubbed a weary hand across her face. The Lady of Leaves would need to be propitiated and placated before they could hack away the vines; left untouched they would strangle Greenspire, cracking the strong stone foundations and tumbling it into ruin, leaving a gap in the Emerald Line through which the beastkin and tzaangors of the Hexwood could launch attacks.

‘A captain’s work is never done,’ Brida muttered under her breath, though in truth she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her hand found the thick gold ring hanging from its cord around her neck and she squeezed it, feeling the reassuring weight and warmth of the metal – more habit than reminder of all she’d lost to bring her to this point. It wasn’t often she thought of her life before, but Kende’s earnest incompetence and the hesitant, awkward actions of the other recruits brought back an old pain, one never fully healed.

She was relieved when Drigg, her duardin second-in-command, appeared at her side and the memory rolled like a corpse in a river and submerged again. It’d be back, it never left her for long, but hopefully not tonight to steal her sleep.

‘All quiet?’ Drigg asked. He’d been awake for a couple of hours and already knew the answer, but she appreciated him asking. It signalled the formal transference of power from her to him for the night watch.

‘Too quiet, and for too many days,’ Brida said. ‘I don’t like it.’

Drigg laughed, the sound rusty and low in his throat, and shifted the double-headed axe hanging from his belt. ‘You wouldn’t like it if Sigmar and Alarielle themselves came down here and proclaimed the war against Chaos over, the enemy defeated, and all of us able to go home to peace.’

The corner of Brida’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m a careful sort,’ she acknowledged.

Drigg shook his head. ‘You say careful, the rest of us say suspicious and untrusting. And this is a duardin speaking. Careful is what we do.’

Brida glared at him for a long second, but there was no heat in it. ‘It’s strange how often the two sentiments can be confused. Check floor two for me, would you? Orla reported an issue with cannon one, something about the vent hole being blocked, so I’ve ordered crossbow emplacements set up at each corner. I know, I know, I’d have told you earlier if I’d known earlier. I didn’t. You’ll have to tinker with it in the morning, we can’t risk moving it now. Even a visual deterrent’s better than nothing. Oh, and Kende’s pulling a double shift – or maybe a triple if I decide he’s on duty tomorrow as well, so keep an eye on him. He’s greener than springtime and clumsier than a one-legged tzaangor, but he needs to learn, and fast.’

‘Because you have a bad feeling?’ Drigg asked.

‘Because I have a bad feeling, and because he’s fouled an entire barrel of gunpowder,’ Brida confirmed. ‘You have the watch, lieutenant.’

Drigg saluted and stepped back. ‘I have the watch,’ he confirmed formally. ‘So you can take your bad feeling off my wall,’ he muttered, and only their long familiarity allowed him the privilege – and then only when no other soldier could overhear. Drigg and Devholm, backbone of Lady’s Justice for twenty years. Other than Brock, Orla and a couple of others, the only surviving members of the company from back when it was formed. Years and battles and deaths and horrors they’d been through, saved each others’ lives more times than she could remember, and she’d never once got Drigg to admit her bad feeling had been right. He always insisted it was coincidence.

She listened to his footsteps retreating along the walkway, the crisp commands as the watch was handed from the day to the night units. The wind hummed around the watchtower, warm and pleasant and vibrant with life – and, every so often and only from the west, tainted. The tiniest breath of foulness, there and then gone so fast she almost couldn’t detect it. But there.

Brida’s scarred fists clenched on the waist-high guard wall and though she was now officially off-duty, she didn’t move. There was something wrong.

There was something coming.

The watch changed again at dawn and Kende was found asleep at his post. So was Raella, who should have been preparing the meal that would end the night watch’s shift and begin the day watch’s. Instead, all of them went hungry for an extra hour while she frantically stoked the ovens and baked, in some cases burned, the bread and scalded the porridge. It was poor fare, and it put the whole company in a mood.

Brida was staring through an arrow slit at the tangle of vine, taller than she was now and closer than ever, when Drigg brought them both to her. He was shame-faced and furious in equal measure – the night watch was his duty, so the failure was also his. He offered to endure the recruits’ punishment along with them, in a voice loud and clear that carried across the yard and brought everyone within earshot to a halt. Those recruits who’d managed to stay awake muttered to the more experienced Freeguilders, surprised and a little awed by Drigg’s offer. Their respect for him grew, but Brida knew if she agreed, their opinion of her would fall.

She turned him down, but she had no choice but to punish the pair, smacking her spear shaft across their backs three times each and driving them to their knees, welts and bruises springing up on their skin. It was worse than they’d anticipated though less than the proper flogging they deserved, and both shouted in pain; Raella begged to be allowed to resign from the company.

‘No. You signed up for a year and a year is what you’ll give me. We’re under-strength and I can’t afford to lose you. You’re going to learn to be a soldier, and a damn good one at that.’

Raella burst into tears again and ran for the kitchens. Brida didn’t like punishing her soldiers, but Lady’s Justice was a tight-knit company, a hard and disciplined company, and over the years they’d all received punishment for similar infractions. Brida herself had the scars that told of her own insubordination back when she’d been a grunt.

Just because Kende and Raella were new and still grieving whatever horrors had led them here, that didn’t mean they got a longer rein than the rest of the company. And best to find out Raella’s mettle – or lack of it – now than when they were beset by the worshippers of Tzeentch. Lady’s Justice didn’t break and run. Raella had broken already and Brida couldn’t afford sympathy for the woman. Her job now was to take Raella’s broken pieces and fit them together into something hard and sharp – a weapon. She hoped she’d have enough time to do it before the next attack.

‘We’re on the frontier, Kende,’ she said. ‘We’re part of the thin line between Hammerhal-Ghyra and the Hexwood, between civilisation and Chaos. Between joy and despair, and life and death. We’re here to prevent what happened to your family from happening to everyone in the realm. I have to be able to trust you and know that you’ll follow my orders, that I can depend on you. At the moment I can’t. You have ten days to prove me wrong. Shadow Lieutenant Drigg, learn from him, and for the Lady’s sake try and stay awake.’

He didn’t ask what would happen after ten days. He didn’t argue and he didn’t beg for leniency or even promise to do better. He just gave her a sloppy salute and walked away too fast for dignity. She watched him go, frowning, wondering if she’d made a mistake. Perhaps it would be better to cull him and Raella now, cut the rot from her company before it had a chance to spread. He’d been sullen, and there was no place for resentment in Lady’s Justice. No place for anything except dedication to the cause and belief in the Lady of Leaves.

Twenty years as a soldier had taught Brida much, and she knew with bone-deep certainty that Kende wasn’t going to make her believe in him in ten days. But what else could she do? She needed him. She needed them all.

The beastkin attacks had been increasing in frequency of late, increasing in cunning too, which worried her more. Greenspire’s neighbouring watchtowers, Highoak and Willowflame, had both reported growing pressure from skirmishes. Couriers were vanishing on the roads strung along the Emerald Line, and the green alchemical flames that burned day and night at the top of each tower were changing to red to signal attacks more and more often. Even on a clear day, the flames were all that could be seen through the miles separating each tower, and usually by the time Lady’s Justice had marched to the aid of a red-crowned neighbour, the attack was over.

Part of Brida longed for a full-scale battle, a chance for all the Freeguilders to unite to crush the enemy. This probing of the Line worried her. It suggested an unexpected intelligence guiding the horde’s attacks.

Mostly, those dazed and lucky few who survived an attack fled to bigger towns and cities, abandoning their farms and orchards to scrape a living on the streets or as labourers in the sky-docks. Only a very few found the courage to transform their loss into fire and join the Freeguild. Lady’s Justice had been under-strength for half a year before Kende and the rest were finally allocated to them and Greenspire. Even if they’d each had the resourcefulness and skill of five soldiers, they would not have made up the shortfall. And if Kende’s anger or Raella’s timidity infected the other recruits… Brida’s gut wound another notch tighter.

‘I should have meted out their punishment,’ Drigg said from behind, and then yawned wide enough to swallow a cannonball. ‘They slept on my watch.’

‘No, better they hate me and respect you. Kende’s going to need a lot of babying – I’ve given him ten days – and you’re better at that than me. Help him but push him wherever you can. I’ll put Brock on Raella – his charm and encouragement might work better on her. We need them all, and none of them are ready for anything except feeding to monsters.’ She slapped him on the arm. ‘Go on, fix that cannon for me and then get some sleep – we’ll speak again before dusk.’

Brida found Drigg at noon. He was hunched over the cannon in his workshop following a complicated hour spent with rope, tackle and pulleys lowering it from the second level to the courtyard, then trundling it into the sooty, alchemical-smelling gloom. The duardin leapt to his feet when Brida’s shadow fell over him, and she noted the instinctive dart of his hand towards his axe. A cold weight settled into her stomach.

‘Look at this,’ he grated. She advanced and took the object he handed her, then looked from it to where he was pointing on the cannon and back again. Brida had always preferred spears and swords to cannons and muskets, but that didn’t mean she didn’t understand artillery.

Air hissed through her teeth. ‘Someone’s spiked it?’

‘Yes, and done a good job, too. It was sitting flush with the vent, barely visible. On casual inspection it looked fine. Whoever’s done this didn’t want us to realise we couldn’t fire her until we needed to. Say, when we came under attack.’

Brida met the duardin’s deep-set eyes. ‘You’re saying we’ve a traitor in Lady’s Justice?’

‘I’m saying it’s taken me most of the morning to bore out the spike without damaging the vent. We’ll still need to test-fire a few balls and I won’t allow anyone near it when I do in case she blows. I don’t know who spiked it or why, but after I’m done here I’ll be checking the other cannons and the muskets too. I’ll be checking firing pans and barrel rifling and everything else I can think of.’

Sweat prickled at Brida’s hairline. There was a joke in there somewhere about how he thought her untrusting, but there was nothing funny about the situation. ‘You check the cannons, I’ll check the rest. Then get some sleep, that’s an order. I need your eyes sharp for the enemy.’ She gestured. ‘Outside Greenspire – and maybe inside it.’

Drigg nodded and bent to the cannon without another word. She left him to it, striding back out into the bright day with suspicions blackening her heart.

She spotted Brock and called him over, reassured as ever by his easy competence, his ready smile. If she was the head of Lady’s Justice, Brock was the heart, and his return from Fort Gardus had given them all a boost. A joke and a wink at the right time from him solved most disputes before they escalated, and his easy reminiscences of mistakes made when he first joined up served to reassure the recruits that they, too, could get better with practice.

‘What do you think of the new lot, sergeant?’ she asked as she led him to the armoury.

‘About as useful as you’d expect, captain,’ the tall man said. ‘Though they’re having much the same issues even at Fort Gardus, if that’s any consolation, as well as along the Line. Too many youngsters and old folks, not enough steady hands. That Kende’s a waste of uniform and I wouldn’t be surprised if Raella poisons us all.’

Brida gave him a sharp look. ‘Can they be trusted?’

Brock’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Trusted? That’s a strange question, captain. They’re young and they’re nervous, but they’re decent enough. Why do you ask?’

They ducked inside before she answered. ‘Someone sabotaged cannon one. Spiked the vent. I trust the rest of Lady’s Justice with my life – gods, most of them have saved it at least once, you included – but the recruits? That’s a different matter.’

Brock’s mouth was hanging open, but he snapped it shut and thought. Brida reached for the first musket in the rack and let him. Slow and steady, was Brock. No point in hurrying the man. She checked the firing pan and cocking mechanism, peered down the barrel.

‘I haven’t noticed anything so far. I mean, Kende’s useless, but I’d have said he was harmless, too, before this. He was stationed by the cannon yesterday – could he have done it then? Would he even know how to spike a cannon? I can fetch his records, check his background.’

Brida selected the next musket, repeated her inspection. ‘Vinetown, down west. A small agricultural town that provided wheat, oats and barley to Fort Gardus. Attacked and destroyed by tzaangors eight months ago. Kende was one of only a dozen survivors.’

Brida made a point of knowing the histories of every one of her soldiers. For the longest-serving members of Lady’s Justice, their histories were hers and as familiar as the feel of her spear in her hand. She’d learnt the stories of the recruits as well, but they didn’t open up to their captain the way they would to a friendly, easy-going sergeant, and Brock had been on a supply run to Fort Gardus for pig iron when Kende and the rest arrived.

It wasn’t Brock’s responsibility to assess the recruits, of course, but over the years she’d come to rely on his judgement and now she needed it more than ever. ‘Work your charm with Kende and the others,’ she said as she picked up another musket. ‘Let me know if anyone seems off to you, but don’t make it obvious. You know the drill.’

‘Yes, captain,’ Brock said. ‘I won’t let you down.’

Brida found a smile for him. ‘You never have.’

Drigg and a team of ten had manoeuvred the cannon back into place, and he’d checked the other two as promised and found everything in perfect working order. It was mid-afternoon before he’d tumbled into bed in the small room in the officers’ barracks. Brida could hear his snores from where she sat outside, checking the supply lists in the shade away from Ghyran’s fierce sun. Even after twenty years, the sound amused and infuriated her in equal measure.

‘Captain?’

‘What is it, Orla?’ she asked the gunner.

The short woman’s freckled face was pale despite her tan. ‘Three day watch taken sick, captain. It’s coming out both ends, if you get my meaning. They’re in the infirmary.’

I wouldn’t be surprised if Raella poisons us all. Brock’s words rang in Brida’s head as she shoved the papers onto her desk and weighed them down with a mug. ‘What have they eaten?’ she demanded. ‘Who made it?’

Orla stepped back from Brida’s vehemence. ‘Nothing, just the same as the rest of us and we’re fine. Do you want–’

She was cut off by the sight of Raella running from the kitchen. Brida’s hand went to her spear, but then the woman was on her knees in a corner vomiting. ‘Bring her to the infirmary,’ she said, and ran for the building herself.

Over the next hour fourteen more soldiers arrived, until there were no beds left and the room stank of vomit. ‘Heatstroke?’ Brida asked Tomman as Raella sipped from a cup and promptly threw it back up again. The physician shook his head. ‘Poison?’

‘It seems most likely, but the method of ingestion is unknown. Perhaps they’ve touched something smeared with it, or–’

But Brida wasn’t listening. ‘We all ate the same, yes. But you and I haven’t drunk from the water barrels on the levels. Orla?’

The gunner shook her head and patted the waterskin slung over her shoulder. ‘From this morning,’ she said.

Brida slapped a fist into her palm. ‘That must be it. Orla, go and wake up Drigg. Brock, with me. You too, Tomman.’

The sergeant hurried after her and they met Orla and a bleary-eyed Drigg in the courtyard. ‘We’re low on gunpowder, a cannon gets spiked, and now my soldiers are taking sick,’ she said to the huddled group. ‘Tomman, I need you to test the water barrels on each level for poison, then the well – day shift will have been drinking a lot in this heat. Brock, Orla, see anything suspicious around the barrels or well in the last couple of hours?’ They both shook their heads. ‘Damn. Fine, Drigg and I will begin questioning–’

The bell on Greenspire’s third level began to ring. ‘Attack, attack from the Hexwood. Warflock, some hundreds!’

Brida exchanged a horrified look with Drigg. ‘All hands,’ she said. ‘Tomman, get those samples, then Orla, confiscate the barrels. Brock, cap the well. Tomman, do whatever you have to to get the sick on their feet and ready to fight. Powders, potions, I don’t care. Just do it, and then find or create me a clean water supply. Fighting soldiers are thirsty soldiers.’

Freeguilders began sprinting to the armoury for muskets, powder and shot. Others stumbled from the barracks, cursing and fumbling with the buckles of their armour. Dusk was beginning to pool in the sky. Brida looked at the duardin, her mouth dry. ‘Crimson the flame.’ Drigg blinked away the last of his fatigue and broke into a run for the nearest stairwell.

Brida snatched up her spear and took the stairs two at a time, cracking her knee into the wall at the second level turning, and cursing as pain spiked through her leg with every step. She was breathless when she reached the third level and sprinted onto the allure, craving water now she knew she couldn’t have it.

The sight that met her eyes dried her throat even further. Tzaangors, their beaks and horns sheathed in steel and reflecting the dying light, raced across the open ground bearing jagged weapons. Beastkin, twisted giant wolves and maddened bear-things with too many teeth, too many claws, thundered alongside.

Brock reappeared. ‘Well’s capped, captain. And, I don’t know, but does it seem a bit too convenient that Orla has a separate supply of water to everyone else on the day they’re all getting sick?’

Brida blinked at him, uncomprehending for a moment. ‘Orla? I’ve known her as long as I have you and Drigg!’

Brock wouldn’t look at her. ‘Of course, captain.’

Brida stared over the wall at the oncoming flock, but she wasn’t seeing it. Orla was the gunnery sergeant. She knew how to spike a cannon. Could it be more than a coincidence? Had one of Lady’s Justice walked into the arms of Chaos and agreed to betray Devholm and all the soldiers under her command? But why? Why?

‘Captain?’

‘Drigg, there you are. We’ve got enough powder for a dozen shots each, so get… What now?’ A throbbing pain began behind Brida’s eyes at the duardin’s gloomier than usual expression.

‘Flame won’t crimson, captain. I’ve changed the alchemical com­pounds three times – she just keeps burning green. No one’s coming.’

Brida looked up, as though she could see the fire through the stone separating them. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Sputters crimson for a heartbeat and then greens again. It’s trying, the alchemy’s there, but something’s holding it back. I’d say we’ve some sort of mage in Greenspire. They’ve spell-locked the flame, bound it to something living. Or someone.’

‘So we kill them and the flame crimsons?’ Brida asked, biting back the urge to scream. No one was coming to Lady’s Justice’s aid.

‘Theoretically. Need to know who it is first.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Come to think of it, I took Kende up there last week. He was curious, asked a lot of questions about the flame – how it changes colour, when we’d signal for help and how long it’d take to arrive. Thought we might’ve had a budding engineer on our hands until his recent lapses in discipline.’

Brida stared between her two officers and then out at the approaching warflock again, closing fast on their position. She didn’t have time for this, but she couldn’t let a traitor run around loose in Greenspire, either. She sucked air through flared nostrils. ‘Drigg, prime the cannons.’

The duardin blew out his cheeks. ‘Orla’s gunnery sergeant,’ he began, and Brida rounded on him.

‘And right now you’re one of only two people I trust, so you’re gunnery sergeant. Get to it.’

Drigg stepped back from her fury and saluted, then clattered down the stairs without a backward glance, giving no indication of what he thought of her implication.

‘Brock, get me Orla and Kende, now.’

The warflock had reached the broken ground and pit traps dug into the rich soil around Greenspire. She had to make this fast. Please don’t be Orla, she thought as she waited, the tower humming with activity and shouted orders, the controlled panic of a company about to come under attack.

Orla, Brock and Kende arrived at her position. ‘Captain? You don’t want me on the cannons?’ the woman asked, a wrinkle of confusion between her brows.

‘Where were you both when people started getting sick?’ Brida demanded, turning from the enemy picking their way through the maze. The cannons would open up any minute now, the crossbows when they reached the marker flags that signalled they were in range.

Orla’s frown deepened; Kende just looked confused. ‘On watch, captain. As always. Forgive me, but didn’t we have this conversation in the infirmary? I haven’t drunk the water.’

‘I was counting supplies with Raella in the kitchen before she felt ill,’ Kende said.

‘Who replenished the water barrels?’ Brock demanded. ‘It was you and Raella, wasn’t it? And you oversaw it, Orla.’

‘I did,’ the woman said with stiff indignation. ‘You saw me. You watched me do it. What are you saying, sergeant?’

Brock glanced at Brida as though that settled it. Perhaps it did.

‘You’re both relieved of duty and will be confined to the cells to stand trial once we have repelled this attack,’ Brida said heavily. It didn’t sit right with her, but they were fast running out of time before the enemy was at the very walls of Greenspire. And the cannons still weren’t firing. ‘Put your weapons on the floor and step back, keep your hands where I can see them.’

‘Captain,’ Orla tried, but Brock muscled in between them and wrenched the spear from her. Kende threw his to the stone and put his hands up, his habitual confusion drowned beneath fear. Fear of her, or of discovery? Or of the hordes coming to tear them to pieces?

‘Get them out of here, sergeant,’ Brida snarled. She didn’t turn her back until the trio had vanished into the stairwell, but as soon as they were gone, she ran to the middle of the allure and leant down to see the gun emplacement at the corner. ‘Drigg! For the love of the Lady, fire! They’re nearly on us.’

The duardin looked up at her shout, then around the men and women standing in tense silence on the wall. None were working the cannon. He pointed to the gunpowder barrel and drew his finger across his throat. ‘All of them,’ he shouted back.

‘Get up here,’ Brida roared, instead of the curses that crowded her throat. ‘Crossbowmen and archers, start loosing in volleys as soon as the enemy breaches the marker flag. No let up. Independent firing when they’re twenty feet out.’

‘What in Sigmar’s name is going on?’ she hissed as soon as her lieutenant arrived. ‘We lost one load when that fool Kende smashed it. Didn’t he mark it up like I said?’

‘There’s flour mixed into every barrel, captain. Put that in a cannon and you blow up the cannon. Dropping them on the warflock is about all our artillery’s good for now.’

Brida gaped at him, her mind a momentary fizzing blank. How? Why? Then she forced herself to think, to plan some way to save her company. ‘Get back up to the flame. I don’t care how you do it, but crimson it. We’re not going to outlast this attack without aid or artillery. Barricade yourself in there, Drigg,’ she added, squeezing his forearm, ‘and Alarielle guide you.’

‘The defence?’ Drigg asked, already backing away.

Brida hefted her spear. ‘I’ve got the defence.’

Bows and crossbows were taking a toll among the warflock, finding the joins in armour and punching through them, the ground shuddering beneath the thunder of running feet and falling bodies. The demi-wolves and half-bears, though, shook off the missiles as if they were stinging insects, leaping across the pit traps and sharpened stakes, gaining ground. Without Drigg, Brida was everywhere, running between the second and third levels, shouting down to the ground to ensure the gates were fully braced.

She looked for Brock, couldn’t find him, and hoped Orla and Kende hadn’t resisted. She was torn between wanting it to be them so they were locked away, and hoping it was all some horrible series of accidents. A small, ugly voice in her head told her to execute them both now. If it was one of them, their death would release the spell-lock and the flame would crimson. She pushed it away and focused on repelling the attack.

The beastkin reached the walls, the still-green glow from above glistening in their eyes and teeth. They roared their pain and hate and madness, and they began to climb.

‘Crossbows, down into the beasts. Archers, take the tzaangors!’ Brida screamed. Greenspire seemed to rock under the impact of mutated flesh, and she stepped back, let an archer take her place at the wall and spun to look into the courtyard. Three figures sprawled in their own blood in all the indignity of violent death. ‘What the–’

She raced for the stairs, threw herself down them two at a time and came out into the courtyard. She whirled around, looking for enemies, but saw no one but Brock at the main gate.

Brock at the main gate.

She ran even as she processed his actions, realised he was clearing the barricade and tearing back the bolts that would let in the enemy. The gate shook as it was charged from outside. ‘Brock, no!’ she screamed as the awful realisation dawned. He’d fooled her. He’d fooled them all and damned them all.

He turned as if in a dream, exultation glazed across his face. ‘For Chaos!’ he yelled, and slipped the last bolt free.

Icy fury rose like a hurricane and Brida channelled all of it into the cast of her spear. The weapon hummed through the air and punched into her sergeant’s chest, snatching him from his feet and pinning him to the opening gate. He never lost his expression of adoration. She followed the spear and shouldered into the gate with all the momentum of her sprint, digging her boots into the stone and heaving. Seconds later, Tomman the physician joined her. He didn’t push, but darted his arm around the opening gate and threw a handful of pellets. The pressure from the other side lessened and now he did lend his strength to hers. ‘Quick-sleep,’ he panted, ‘slow them down a bit.’

‘Gate breach!’ Brida bellowed, so loud her lungs hurt and Tomman winced. Shouts of alarm from above told her that soldiers would be sprinting down the stairs to help, and across the wall above the gate to rain death on the monsters seeking entry.

It wasn’t enough. The pressure on the gate returned and then increased, and Brida and Tomman were shoved back. Shoulders and thighs burning, Brida gritted her teeth and pushed, but the beastkin had the momentum now.

She met Tomman’s eyes. ‘Count of three, run.’

‘We have crimson!’ a voice from above blared, and Brida felt a sliver of hope. Brock’s death had broken the spell-lock on the flame, and Drigg had added the alchemical compounds to change the colour. It wasn’t over yet.

‘Stay alive, physician. Help’s coming. One. Two. Three.’

They let go of the gate and sprinted away as the first half-bear tumbled into Greenspire, falling over itself as the pressure on the barrier released. Those behind clambered over it, slavering and howling, each one big enough to tear Brida in half. She didn’t give them the chance, hurling herself into the nearest stairwell behind ­Tomman and slamming the door and locking it. The stairwells were narrow and low to prevent the mutated giants of Tzeentch’s hordes from entering. Though that wouldn’t stop them rampaging through the kitchen, stores, armoury and infirmary. Anyone found alive in there soon wouldn’t be. She had to save them.

She ran into Drigg on the second level. ‘They’re in.’

‘I know. Got half the archers picking them off but there are more still piling through the gate.’ He was cut off by a splintering crash and a chorus of desperate screams: a demi-wolf had taken down the door to the infirmary. Drigg directed arrows at it, but it was already too late. The patients were gone, torn apart in seconds as Brida watched in stunned, helpless silence. Ice swamped the fire that had raged in her blood, black and lethal, and Drigg took a step back when he saw her expression.

‘You said drop the cannon,’ Brida said, the rough edge to her voice all the grief she would allow herself. ‘Drop it in front of the gate, crush those coming through so their bodies block the entrance.’

Drigg nodded once. ‘Inside the gate,’ he corrected, and she trusted him enough not to ask why, just ran for the cannon nearest the gate.

The gun carriage was wheeled, but it still took ten of them to get it moving while another two rigged a hasty pulley system from the hooks hammered into the roof. The tzaangors had cleared the last of the traps and were crowding in behind the warped backs of the beastkin at the gate. The fog of their stink was overwhelming, stinging eyes and clinging like slime inside mouths and throats.

The cannon rocked on its carriage and came free with a chorused grunt from those on the ropes. Brida helped guide it up over the guard wall and into position. She chanced a look down into the courtyard and came face-to-snout with a half-bear, talons dug into the stone blocks of Greenspire’s wall.

‘Drop it!’ she yelled and the cannon vanished, scraping the bear from the wall and thundering into the mass of twisted flesh spilling from the gate. The end of the rope, smoking from the speed it went through the pulley, ripped across the side of Brida’s head as it flashed past, laying open her scalp and cheek to the bone. She reeled back, blood sheeting, a screech of pain bursting from her.

There was a wailing-howling-roaring from below as beastkin flailed under the cannon’s weight, spines cracked and pelvises shattered. They scratched at the flagstones and each other, straining to free themselves, their bulk blocking most of the gate.

Brida sagged against the wall and blinked blood from her eye, trying to formulate a plan that would see them survive until reinforcements from Highoak and Willowflame could reach them. All around the interior of the second level, the soldiers of Lady’s Justice were shooting down into the mass of the enemy choking the courtyard. More half-bears were climbing the walls while a giant wolf was half inside a stairwell and straining upwards, arrows lodged in its haunches.

The mess at the gate began to writhe. Howls rose up as broken bodies were shoved aside and tzaangors began worming through the carnage, hacking any flesh that lay in their path.

‘…powder.’ Drigg’s voice was hard to hear over the cacophony rising within and without Greenspire’s walls. She turned. The duardin was roping four gunpowder barrels together. Soldiers were breaking open the lids of the others and throwing powder and the contaminating flour into the air over the attackers until a fine mist hung above the warflock’s heads.

‘Fire arrow,’ Drigg snapped. Brida snatched up a bow, lit the arrow from the safety lantern and nocked as the duardin pushed the bomb over the edge.

Brida loosed. The fire arrow struck home when the barrels were just above the heads of the attackers. They exploded and so did the flour hanging in the air, a roiling fireball that sent those on the wall diving for cover and ripped the warflock to pieces. For a few seconds the world was nothing but noise and searing light and boiling air, and then it started raining blood and flesh.

The tzaangors who hadn’t been killed outright were running or dragging themselves away, many falling into the traps and pits they’d avoided on the way in. Drigg set archers to harry them as they fled. Brida gave him a grim nod, handed off her bow and snatched a spear, then gathered a score of soldiers and headed for a clear stairwell. There were still disciples of Tzeentch in Greenspire and it was time for them to die.

The Freeguilders from Willowflame reached them first, when they were mopping up the last of the enemy and beginning to count their own dead. That included Orla and Kende, killed by Brock instead of imprisoned. Killed because of her short-sightedness, Brida knew, her trust in a man who didn’t deserve it. Orla, a friend of decades, who’d never done anything but stand at her side and support her. And Kende, who hadn’t been cut out to be a soldier but who’d died one anyway. Because of her.

Captain Sonoth sent half his company to harry the decimated warflock back to the Hexwood, and the rest began the ugly process of piling dead tzaangors and beastkin for burning.

‘Lot of corpses considering your flame was only crimson a short while,’ he said. ‘How did they get the jump on you?’

Brida sat on the well cap while Tomman stitched her face. She’d been lucky not to lose an eye, though part of her ear was missing. She’d refused poppy extract for the pain – her penance for Orla and Kende, the scar a lifelong reminder that trust was a luxury she could no longer afford.

‘We had a traitor,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Brock, a man I’ve served with for twenty years. Took a supply run to Fort Gardus and when he came back… fouled the gunpowder, poisoned the water, framed a damn good soldier and a recruit for it, and then opened the gate to let the flock in. And I didn’t see any of it coming. I just let him back in and he nearly got us all killed.’

Sonoth’s face hardened. ‘And where is this sergeant?’

Brida met his gaze. ‘I killed him, and my only regret is that I didn’t do it slowly. Our flame was somehow spell-locked to his life force – when he died it changed colour. Either there’s a Chaos cult in Fort Gardus or one of the Emerald Line towers between here and there chose evil and drew him in. But he’s dead, so we’ll never know.’ She hoisted herself to her feet, groaning as wounds and aches made themselves known. ‘Captain Sonoth, I’ll be sending word up and down the Line about what happened here. Any new recruits, any veterans who leave your company for any period of time, especially if they’re sent out alone, they need to be carefully watched on their return. Maybe even quarantined. Tzeentch’s plans are subtle, but not even I ever considered something like this. We need–’

‘Crimson on the horizon!’ came the shout from above. ‘Highoak, Gemfire, by the Lady, Dawnspike too! Captain… captain, they’re all changing. Crimson along the line, far as I can see!’

Sonoth and Devholm looked at each other. ‘Whatever warning you have, captain,’ Sonoth said heavily, ‘I think you’re too late.’