More laughter. More boasts about how many of the enemy were going to die in the days to come. More talk of how they would all be heroes in the song of the siege of Praag. Felix looked around again. He could see that there were plenty who disagreed with these sentiments. Many men looked worried, and they were the sort of men who looked as if they knew there was something to be worried about. Hard-faced men, wearing well-worn armour and carrying weapons they appeared to know how to use. Felix knew that the sort of boasting he was hearing was stupid, but he did not want to contradict it. He did not want to be the one to bring the spirits of all these people down. The weasel-faced man was apparently having second thoughts too. A city soon to be under siege by the powers of Darkness was no place to be suspected of being a Chaos worshipper.

“Aye, you’re right,” he said. “They died quick enough when me and my boys stuck steel in them.” Even so he still could not manage to get much enthusiasm into his voice. Felix looked at him sympathetically. It was obvious this man had faced beastmen before and knew what he was talking about. It was just that no one wanted to listen. By the way Ulrika was shaking her head, he could tell that she agreed with the weasel-faced man.

“Soft southerners don’t know what they are talking about,” she muttered. “A gor would eat that fat pig like he’s gobbling down that chicken.”

Felix smiled sourly. For him the folk of Kislev were a byword for hardiness, a people who lived in a dangerous land of constant warfare. It never occurred to him that they might look down on each other. Of course, Ulrika had grown up on the northern marches, the very boundary of human territory and Chaos. If anyone in this room knew about such things it was her. She rose smoothly from his knee. “I am going upstairs. To our room.”

Her tone made it obvious that he was supposed to follow. Under the circumstances, given a choice between doing that and staying downstairs to listen to this chatter of war, it seemed like the sensible thing to do.


Ivan Petrovich Straghov stared off into the distance. He was a big man and he had once been fat. The past few weeks had burned most of that off him. They had been weeks spent in the saddle, snatching sleep and meals where he could, fighting desperate battles against overwhelming numbers of beastmen, and retreating at the last second so that he could fight another day. He tried to tell himself he was harrying the flanks of the Chaos army, slowing its advance, giving its generals something to worry about to their rear. He suspected that his attacks worried that mighty force the way a flea’s bites worried a mastodon.

He rubbed the bandage around his head.