They were on a tundra, an immense, glassy plain covered in ice. The only feature to be made out was a black mountain range straddling the horizon.
Snow was falling, a bitter wind blew, and the band, still wet through from the swamp, felt the cold to their bones.
“There!” a grunt yelled, his breath jetting like steam.
Jennesta and her henchmen could just be seen, actually not too far away but almost obscured by the driving snow. Stryke thought he caught a glimpse of Thirzarr.
“After ’em!” he shouted over the storm. “ Before they-”
The sorceress and her followers became one with nothingness.
“Shit!” Jup cursed.
“Dynahla!” Stryke bellowed.
“I’m on it!”
The band took a leap to somewhere other.
They were in semi-darkness.
It took a moment for them to realise they were underground, what little light there was coming from a myriad of tiny crystals embedded in the walls of a large cavern.
Pepperdyne knew Coilla was less than keen on confined spaces, and he gave her hand a supportive squeeze.
A number of tunnels ran off from the chamber they were in.
“What the fuck way do we go?” Haskeer demanded.
“Ssshhh!” Spurral held a finger to her lips.
He was about to badmouth her when he realised what the others had already heard. Echoing sounds, like footfalls.
“ That way!” Keick bawled.
They ran for a tunnel with a larger entrance than the others.
It was long, and twisting, and the clatter of their boots bounced off the walls like a hailstorm.
They came out in another, even bigger cave, resembling a scaled-down canyon. A subterranean river ran through, with a wall-hugging ledge running round it. Where it reached the far side it widened to a natural platform, a great slab of yellowish rock. Jennesta and her horde stood there. But not for long.
“Not again! ” Spurral exclaimed.
Dynahla applied the remedy.
At first they thought they were back in the world of the malicious angels.
It was temperate and their surroundings were not unpleasant, but it was a scrubbier, less verdant scene. There was grass, though it was patchy, and trees that could have been fuller. They could see modest, whitish-grey cliffs in the distance.
The band stood on a road, more accurately a trail, wide and well trod. Their prey was nowhere to be seen.
“Listen,” Coilla said. “What’s that sound?”
21
“Drums,” Jup said, tilting his head to one side and listening intently. “And getting nearer.”
“Not just drums,” Pepperdyne added. “Can anybody else hear horn blasts?”
They could. And Jup was right; the noise was growing louder. Soon, they could make out rhythmic chanting and the tramp of marching feet mixed into the din.
“An army?” Dallog wondered.
“It’s an undisciplined one if it is, making that much of a racket,” Stryke said. “But whatever it is there’s a lot of them. Best to get out of sight.”
At the side of the road there was a row of substantial boulders. The band concealed themselves behind them as the sounds increased.
“Can anybody understand what they’re chanting?” Coilla asked.
“There’s more than one language in it,” Spurral said. “A hell of a lot more.”
“Damned if I can make sense of it,” Jup admitted.
“Watch out!” Dallog warned. “Here they come!”
There was a bend a little way along the road. A number of figures were rounding it. The band recognised them immediately.
“Elves?” Coilla said. “It’s not like them to raise such a clamour, is it?”
“It’s not just elves,” Pepperdyne told her, nodding at the road.
The elves, twenty or thirty strong, may have been leading the mob but they were by no means representative of it. Right behind them came a herd of centaurs, trotting in pairs, many of them holding long silver trumpets to their lips. An ogre followed, wearing a harness. It was acting as a guide to a line of trolls, their eyes bound against the hated light, who clasped two thick ropes extending from the harness. Next came a company of swaggering goblins. After that, the races were more or less mixed together. Gnomes walked with satyrs, dwarfs with kobolds. Humans strode alongside bands of dancing, tambourine-twirling pixies. Brownies accompanied gremlins and leprechauns. There were howlers, hobgoblins, harpies, fauns, chimeras and giggling nymphs. Swarms of fairies, mouth-watering to the orcs, fluttered above the horde. There were many other species the Wolverines didn’t recognise, mammalian, insectoid, reptilian and unclassifiable.
While most walked, slithered, hopped or flew, some rode, on carts, horses, lizards and giant fowl. Wagons bobbed along in the mass carrying tanks that housed water-going creatures such as merz and river sprites. Flags and banners were waved. Musical instruments were blown, pounded and plucked over the babble of a hundred tongues. The throng was many thousands strong and the noise was deafening.
“There are races down there who never get along,” Coilla said, “at least on Maras-Dantia.”
“This isn’t Maras-Dantia,” Dynahla reminded her.
“Could have sworn I saw orcs,” Haskeer blurted, shocked at the notion.
“Why not? Anything’s possible-”
“In an infinite number of worlds,” Coilla finished for him. “Yeah, we get it.”
The shape-changer didn’t take offence. In fact he smiled.
More and more creatures flowed past, over-spilling the road.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Jup wondered. He had a thought. “Could this be something to do with that bunch who were following us? That Gateway Corps?”
“No, this is something else,” Dynahla assured him. “And if the Corps were following you, they still will be.”
“Oh good, something else to worry about.” He turned to Stryke. “We haven’t a hope of finding Jennesta in this lot. Where do you think they’re going?”
“There’s one way to find out. Join ’em.”
“Why not? We’d hardly stand out in a mob like this.”
Stryke had to shout so they could all hear over the tumult. “If we have to get out of here fast, with the stars I mean, we need to keep together! So stay close or risk being left behind in this madhouse!” He noticed his sergeant eyeing a cloud of fairies. “And Haskeer! Don’t eat anything.”
They left their hiding place and, staying close, elbowed their way into the procession. The crowd was good natured about it. They looked passionate but apparently they weren’t hostile. For the band that made a change.
The flow of bodies swept them along. The movement, the noise, the swirl of colours and the smell, of incense and excrement, was near overwhelming. What they could see of the terrain beyond the press of flesh was unremarkable and more or less unvarying. It didn’t look cultivated, or even inhabited, consisting mostly of scrubland, a scattering of trees and the road. Always the road.
Some of the band, principally Coilla and Jup, tried to engage fellow marchers in conversation. But they got little out of them beyond grunts, and what sounded like exaltations, as far as they could tell above the uproar.
Dynahla, walking beside Stryke, shouted into his ear. “I think this is a crossroads world!”
“A what?”
“ A crossroads world. Not all travel between worlds is purposeful, using the instrumentalities,” he explained, articulating as clearly as he could. “Sometimes there are worlds that have wormholes that beings fall through from all over. By chance, I mean.”
“I remember Serapheim saying something about Maras-Dantia once being like that. Which is why there were so many races there.”
The shape-changer nodded. “And I think these-” he indicated the throng they were part of “-may be pilgrims, and this is some kind of religious festival.”
“Could be,” Stryke conceded.
“The question is, what could have united such a mixture of beings?”
The road was on the rise, and they were starting to climb, but it was still impossible to see what their destination might be. Stryke looked back, and with the advantage of the extra height caught a glimpse of the multitude of beings following behind. They seemed endless.