The ride’s a little bumpy on the famous Road of Skulls…

'My God, what’s happening!' Sammil Mc9 cried, waking up.

The cart he and his companion had hitched a ride on was shaking violently.

Mc9 put his grubby hands on the plank of rotten wood which formed one of the cart’s sides and looked down at the legendary Road, wondering what had caused the cart’s previously merely uncomfortable rattling to become a series of bone-jarring crashes. He expected to discover that they had lost a wheel, or that the snooze-prone carter had let the vehicle wander right off the Road into a boulder-field, but he saw neither of these things. He stared, goggle-eyed, at the Road surface for a moment, then collapsed back inside the cart.

'Golly,' he said to himself, 'I didn’t know the Empire ever had enemies with heads that big. Retribution from beyond the grave, that’s what this is.' He looked forward; the cart’s senile driver was still asleep, despite the vehicle’s frenzied bouncing. Beyond him, the lop-eared old quadruped between the shafts was having some difficulty finding its footing on the oversized skulls forming that part of the Road, which led… Mc9 let his eyes follow the thin white line into the distance… to the City.

It lay on the horizon of the moor, a shimmering blur. Most of the fabled megalopolis was still below the horizon, but its sharp, glittering towers were unmistakable, even through the blue and shifting haze. Mc9 grinned as he saw it, then watched the silent, struggling horse-thing as it clopped and skidded its way along the Road; it was sweating heavily, and beset by a small cloud of flies buzzing around its ear-flapping head like bothersome electrons around some reluctant nucleus.

The old carter woke up and lashed inaccurately at the nag between the shafts, then nodded back into his slumber. Mc9 looked away and gazed out over the moor.