Ryn was brought out of sleep by the sound of screaming, explosions and crunching timber.

At first he thought he was having another nightmare because the last two times he had been unconscious he had had nightmares of his mother and father being killed and his hometown burning. Just as these images invaded his waking mind, they invaded his sleep.

But as he blinked awake and peered at the nightstand next to the bed he lay in, then over at the stirring form of Sagar in the adjacent bed, Ryn realised that the sounds were real.

His chest constricted, sending a shockwave of distress through his body.

“Sagar! Get up!” he cried. “Someone’s attacking the inn!”

“Mmmmbbbrrr...wha?” said Sagar.

Another explosion sounded, like someone had set light to a barrel of oil outside, and more screaming followed, high-pitched and hysterical.

Sagar’s one exposed eye opened wide and he scrambled around, then fell out of bed in a tangle of sheets, banging his head on the floor. “Ow!”

In a heartbeat he was up again, pulling on his shirt and jacket. “What in the hells is happening?”

“I don’t know!” said Ryn, hurriedly shoving himself back into his woolspun tunic. “It must be the Empire!”

“The Empire!? That’s ridiculous! We’re safe from the Empire here! Imis pays her levies, and we’re too far away to be of any interest to them!”

Another explosion outside. The room shook slightly and some dust dislodged from the ceiling, tickling Ryn’s nose. More screams. Shouts.

Nuthea burst in through the door, Elrann behind. Both their faces were pale white.

“The ship,” said Nuthea and Sagar at the same time.

Sagar finished strapping on his sword-belt and bolted out the door. Nuthea and Elrann followed him without another word.

Ryn went after them. He hurtled down the stairs of the inn, taking them three at a time, past the desk at the front of the house where the innkeeper knelt on the floor cowering with his head in his hands, back out onto the cobbled streets of Ast.

He looked up into the sky and nearly collapsed and gave in to horror and despair there and then.

Not just one broad black Imperial airship with a pointed prow and cannons protruding from each side filled the sky, but a whole fleet of them.

He counted at least five, and those were just the ones he could see from his current position through the thatched and tiled rooftops of Ast.

They rained down cannonballs on the city, bright flashes erupting from their hulls, emitting thunderous echoes and sending up clouds of debris into the air.

But they were raining down something else as well. From the front of one of the ships Ryn saw a jet of flame spurt out, like the breath of a dragon, spraying down onto the buildings of Ast and setting them alight.

He stood mesmerised by the violence.

“Ryn, come on!” Nuthea called to him from somewhere ahead.

His legs were heavy. For a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to move them, but then his body came back to him and he darted forwards, pulse pounding between his ears.

As they ran they had to weave in and out of people stumbling out of their houses, looking up and wailing in terror, or dashing this way and that trying to find shelter, or just kneeling frozen in panic, like the innkeeper had been.

“Stay with me!” yelled Sagar over his shoulder and trailing ponytail. “I know the way back to the airfield!”

They ran round corners, down alleys, through streets, jumping over sacks, sidestepping out of the way of the panicked citizens, ducking their heads down instinctively whenever another cannonblast sounded and splinters and dust were thrown into the air. Ryn had never run so fast in his life.

It’s happening again, he thought as he ran. Wasn’t it enough that he had lived through one Imperial attack already? Why was he having to live through another one? Would he live through another one?

Eventually they made it back to the airfield at the edge of the city, its perimeter marked by the little stone cottage that the airship marshall they had met the day before, Roldo, lived in.

All of the moored airships that Ryn could see were on fire.

“Where is she? Where is she?” cried Sagar, charging into the field of flaming ships, apparently calling for his own vessel.

“Sagar!” someone called out to him in a choked voice.

Roldo, a little way away, crawling on his hands and knees. He coughed like he had swallowed some of the smoke. A big gash on the side of his face bled down onto his black leather coat, soaking it even darker in blotches. “Get out of here! Run, fools! Run for your lives! They went for your ship first!”

“What?!” said Sagar, and kept on running into the airfield.

They ran with him past more of the burning vessels, billowing black smoke pluming from them into the sky, some of them broken into pieces, some of them with men on fire jumping off their decks to break their legs on the ground, others lying suffocating on the floor, others just standing and watching the destruction in horror, until they reached Wanderlust.

Sagar stopped dead in his tracks and Ryn, Nuthea and Elrann pulled up beside him.

Wanderlust was not on fire.

Instead, soldiers in black armour were moving around on board it. Corpses lay strewn on the deck. Some wore black armour, but the majority of them were unarmoured, wearing simple sailors’ clothing. Puddles and spatters of blood decorated the spaces between them.

And there in the midst of them, stood in the middle the main deck, was a hulking, unhelmeted man in black armour, with flame-red hair.

General Vorr.