Camilla pirouetted through the nightmarish attackers, thrusting and parrying with a grace that surprised even her. A strange feeling of waste came over her and she found herself disappointed when she used six inches of steel where three should have done the job.  The sensation was both alien and familiar, it reminded her of how her tutor in the art of dance and seduction had scolded her for being too forward, to extravagant. She flicked aside a rusted axe and sliced a beastman across the belly spilling in intestines onto the wall. A great chaos warrior clambered over the wall and drew a great broadsword from his back. There was a thickening thrill that this might be a worthy opponent at last but as the giant locked his baleful red eyes on her he seemed to freeze, for a moment a great statue of wrought iron and brass.

“You,” the Chaos warrior spoke. His vice was like skulls grinding each other to powder, almost unintelligable as human speech.


“Mia!” Camilla declared covering her confusion with bravado and raising her blade to a duelists en garde. She had no idea why a Chaos Worshipper should recognise her and she certainly didn’t know him. They had fought enough of the Northerners that she knew some could be distinctive but most just seemed like hellish suits of armor. Without warning the warrior turned and stepped off the wall, his cape of unidentified fur fluttering behind him. Camilla stood stunned, she had known chaos warriors to do many strange things, but to retreat? Before she could ponder the matter further Skaldi strode along the wall carring a vast cauldron of smoking oil. It must have been unbearabley hot but if so, the dwarf showed no sign of it. He put one vast foot up on the parapet and pitched the sizzling contents over the side.

“Have some soup! Its bloody spoiled anyhow,” the Dwarf called cheerfully. There was a sound like frying bacon and a scream that shook loose rooftiles streets away as the sheet of boiling oil struck the fleshy tentacular monster that had been the attackers seige tower. Vast appendages thrashed and swept about madly snatching chaos worhipers from the walls as the thing went beserk with agony.

“Sorry? Not hot enough far ya!” the capering dwarf called as he siezed a torch from a ring sconce and hurled it down. With a great whooosh a sheet of flame shot skyward. The already soaked spawn screamed even louder but its tentacles whipped back like a child that has touched a hot pot. Still mewling with a sound louder than a cavalry charge it lurched away across the icy landscape, uneven footfalls making the ground shake and Camilla wonder how it had ever gotten so close unnoticed. Skaldi turned cackling madly, both his eyebrows were signed away and his beard was smouldering, but if it discomforted him he wasn’t letting on. Camilla absently thrust her blade to the right catching a lunging beast man in the throat without taking her eyes from the dwarf. 

For a moment there as silence as the last of the attackers fell to the blades of the mercenaries. Then Konrad began to laugh, the Yantz, within moments the whole force was roaring with laughter, even Camilla found herself doubled over with tears running from her eyes. It was a moment of perfect mania and their laughter shook the walls. It was only when she turned to find Cydric that Camilla felt her chest tighten. Laying in the starirwell with a pool of blood dribbling from one ear. She shrieked and leaped down to him feeling at his throat. For a moment there was nothing, then a slight thready pulse.

“We need to get him to a … medico… umm a physician!” she shouted, her heart in her throat.