“I saw wounded being taken from there to the Temple of Shallya for healing. They say a thousand Chaos warriors attacked.”

“More like twenty. Outriders. The horde has not arrived yet.” Felix raised his hand and gestured for a barmaid. The woman sauntered over and put down two jacks of ale on the table without being asked, then moved on. Felix lifted his to his lips and took a sip. It tasted sour compared to what he was used to. Goat’s water, Snorri called it. Felix suspected that he knew enough to make the comparison exact. Snorri would drink anything. •

Ulrika lifted a jack and slugged some back herself. He would never quite get used to this. Kislevite noblewomen drank as hard as any of their menfolk. When they drank at all.

“You were at the gate?” a man asked from the next table.

“Yes,” Felix replied.

“They say you could see the army of Darkness from the gate. They say it is ten thousand strong. Twice ten thousand strong.” The man was drunk and rambling.

“It does not matter,” said a swarthy man with the drooping moustaches of a Kislevite horse soldier. “They will break against the walls of Praag as they did two hundred years ago!”

That brought a roar of approval from the surrounding tables. This was the sort of talk men liked to hear in taverns on the night before a battle. Felix had seen too many real battles to think it would be like the books and poems he had read as a lad. On the other hand, these men looked the same, and still they talked as if they were in a story. Maybe they were just whistling in the dark. Maybe just trying to keep their spirits up. If they had seen what Felix had seen flying back from the Chaos Wastes they would not sound so cheery at this moment. He tried to push those depressing thoughts aside.

“I don’t know,” a thin weasel-faced man said from the doorway. “My caravan just got in, and we faced beastmen and Chaos riders on the way here. They were tough. Even if they were Chaos spawn they were tough. Never seen anything that died so hard as those beastmen.”

Felix was inclined to believe it. A glance at Ulrika told him so was she, but the warriors in the tavern wanted none of it.

“What sort of Chaos-loving talk is that?” a huge, fat man demanded, slamming a chicken leg down on the tabletop. “Beastmen and Chaos riders die just as quick as any other living thing -if you stick two feet of good Imperial steel in them!”

More roars of approval.