Army of Shadows

13

The bottom had dropped out of the universe.

They were living sparks, sucked through an endless, serpentine tunnel of light. On its supple walls flashed endless images of other realities, moving so fast they were almost a blur. And beyond, outside that terrible shaft, an even more breathtaking actuality: a limitless canopy smothered in countless billions of stars.

The band's only sensation was of helplessly falling. A ceaseless and unremitting plunge into the black maw of the unknown.

Then, after an eternity, they dropped towards a particular chasm, a whirlpool of sallow, churning light.

It swallowed them.

They landed hard. The collision with what seemed to be solid ground was bone-shaking. But they had no leisure to recover from the impact. Wherever they had fetched up was hostile. Murderously so.

The place was in the grip of a violent sandstorm. Trillions of grains of sand lashed them like shards of glass or tiny diamonds, bathing them in pain. The sand not only pummelled them, it all but blinded them: they could see practically nothing. It was hard to stand, let alone walk. The heat was terrific, and in no way mitigated by the never-ending, roaring wind. Even for a group of warriors as toughened as the Wolverines, it was intolerable.

Coilla was vaguely aware of other figures clustered about her. She happened to be standing next to Stryke when he slotted the instrumentalities together. If she hadn't, she probably wouldn't have been able to find him now. But by luck, when she stretched out her hand she brushed his arm. She took it in an iron grip.

Thrusting her mouth to his ear, she bellowed, " Get us out of here! "

Coilla had no way of knowing that was exactly what he was trying to do. The cluster of stars was still in his hands, and hampered by being unable to see what he was doing, he was battling to rearrange them.

After what seemed an agonisingly long time, choking with the sand filling his mouth and nose, he managed to slot them into another random assembly.

The void snatched them again. They were back in the swirling, never-ending spillway, taking a stomach-churning tumble to another unknown goal.

The band was pitched into a blizzard, having exchanged insufferable heat for unspeakable cold. All they could see was white. Stinging snow pricked them like innumerable needles. The temperature was so low they found it difficult to breathe. Stryke's fingers froze instantly, and it was all he could do to manipulate the stars. Teeth chattering, hands shaking uncontrollably, he finally altered them.

Once more, the cosmic trapdoor flipped open.

They were standing in torrential rain in a landscape that seemed to consist solely of mud that was nearly liquid itself. The air was uncomfortably humid. In seconds they realised that the rain was corrosive. It nipped at their flesh and singed their clothing as though it was vitriol. Stryke manipulated the stars.

A jungle embraced them. At first it seemed endurable. Then gigantic swarms of flying insects appeared, tenacious and hungry. They covered the band, fibrous wings beating, stingers seeking unprotected skin. Stryke manoeuvred the stars into another configuration.

They were deposited on a vast, featureless plain, the only variation being a distant range of blue-black mountains. Three Suns beat down, one of them bloody red. Of more immediate import were the two armies the Wolverines found themselves between. One consisted of creatures resembling giant lizards, with purple hides and flicking, barbed tongues. The other was made up of beasts that seemed to be a cross between bears and apes, only with four arms. Each horde numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and they were moving rapidly forward, with the warband squarely in their path, like a nut in a vice. Stryke fiddled with the instrumentalities.

Icy salt spray splashed their faces. They were on a tiny rock in the middle of a turbulent ocean, battered by winds and towering waves, beneath an angry sky. The rock was jagged and slippery, and the band clung to each other for fear of falling and being swept away. Stryke acted.

He kept on readjusting the stars as they were transported from world to world in search of somewhere bearable.

In dizzying succession they flashed in and out of lands of startling diversity, including some they found incomprehensible as well as hostile. In one they were attacked by carnivorous birds; another was an environment with a noxious gas for its atmosphere that they were lucky to escape in time. They witnessed abundant orc-sized fish emerging from a huge lake, revealing legs, and jaws bristling with fangs; sentient snakes as big as elephants, devouring each other; a land of perpetual earthquakes where enormous fissures opened and closed with frightening rapidity; a world stifled by sulphur and riddled with blue lava flows; a mighty river inhabited by multi-tentacled beasts with the faces of rodents; gigantic flies that supped on struggling spiders in sticky webs that spanned valleys; a place where great prides of felines waged war amongst themselves; rampaging worms as large as mature oaks; dominions ruled by plagues of rats, and on and on.

Eventually they materialised somewhere that didn't seem immediately threatening. It was a dead world. They couldn't tell if the desolation was the result of war or natural disaster, but it seemed complete. Not far away stood acres of debris and twisted uprights, just recognisable as the ruins of a city. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even vegetation, which the soil looked incapable of supporting in any event. Everything was grey and spent.

The Wolverines stood wordlessly for several minutes, in anticipation of something unfriendly happening. When it didn't, they did more than relax. They collapsed exhaustedly. They were in a sorry state: drenched, tattered, bruised and bleeding. The tyros were near unhinged, and Standeven was a wreck. Some of the band were vomiting. Others nursed wounds or crouched with their heads in their hands.

" That was… one… hell of a… ride," Coilla said when she stopped fighting for breath.

" Couldn't… set the… stars… properly," Stryke gasped back. "No… chance to."

She started to pull herself together, as most of the others were doing. "I… know. Who would… have thought… so many… of the worlds were… so shitty?"

"Least it looks safe here."

"Maybe." She surveyed the barren landscape suspiciously.

"We'll rest for a bit, tend wounds. Then I'll fit the stars for Ceragan."

She nodded and perched herself on a half-melted rock, head down, arms dangling.

As soon as he could, Stryke got some of the recovering grunts to mount guard. He had Dallog look at injuries, fortunately none of which called for major treatment, and ordered iron rations to be broken out.

They spent the next hour or more recuperating and getting their heads straight, during which time Jup came to Stryke with a question.

"What do we do about the humans?"

"Do?"

"Yeah. You planning on taking them back to Ceragan with you? Come to that, what about me and Spurral?"

"I've not been thinking straight," Stryke confessed. "That's a problem I hadn't weighed."

"Can't be blamed for that. But what are you going to do with us non-orcs?"

"You and Spurral are welcome to join us in Ceragan. You'd be the only dwarfs, but you wouldn't be without comrades."

"That's a generous offer, Stryke, and I thank you for it. But I'm guessing it's not one you'd be happy making to Pepperdyne and Standeven."

"No, there'd be no place there for them. But suppose we took them back to Maras-Dantia?"

" That I hadn't thought of. Seems right, seeing as it's where you picked them up in the first place."

"We could do the same for you. Get you back to your own kind."

Jup sighed. "I dunno, Stryke. We had good reasons for leaving. I'm not sure either of us would relish going back, for all that we were born there. Maras-Dantia's fit only to break hearts these days."

"Then my offer of Ceragan stands. Who knows? Maybe we can figure out how to use the stars to find a dwarf world for you."

Jup grinned. "Trying to get rid of us already and we're not there yet. But I reckon we've got no real option. Though I've doubts about us ever finding a dwarf needle in that haystack of worlds we've just seen."

"Maybe. Anyway, that's settled. Maras-Dantia for the humans and you two with us."

"I'll have to talk it over with Spurral, mind. But I reckon she'll agree with me."

Stryke nodded. "Don't be too long about it. I want to get out of this place."

The dwarf glanced at the bleakness surrounding them. "You're not alone."

He left.

Coilla took his place. "Had any ideas on who they might have been?"

"Who?"

"You're not working with a sharpened sword yet, are you, Stryke? Who do you think I mean? That mixed bunch of races that tried frying us, of course."

"No. We've seen a lot we can't explain these last few hours; they got kind of pushed out of my head."

"But what do you reckon? Bandits? Mercenaries?"

"With the way their ranks were made up? And with magic? Really powerful magic? I've never seen any marauders like them before."

"And all they wanted was the stars. Why?"

He shrugged. "Damned if I can figure it."

"Know what I can't understand? Why didn't that elf… what was her name?"

He thought about it. "Madayar. Pelli Madayar."

"Right. Why didn't she kill us when she had the chance? I reckon she could have, with magic that strong. Don't you?"

Stryke nodded.

"Yet she just gave us a bit of a knock. And those magic beams or whatever they were — funny how none of them took any of us out, isn't it?"

"It does seem… odd," he conceded. "Maybe she lied about being with Jennesta, or maybe they were mercenaries who saw the value of the stars."

"How did they know we had them? Or even that they existed?"

"I… don't know. But does it really matter? How likely is it we'll run into them again?"

"There's something you're forgetting. That Madayar more or less told us they'd come from somewhere else, like we did. That can mean only one thing, Stryke. They can world-hop too."

"But they'd have to have stars to do that."

"Unless there's another way we don't know about. Mind you, who says we've got the only set there is?"

"If they've stars of their own, why did they want ours?"

"Search me. Maybe they collect the bloody things. What I'm trying to say is that if they have stars, could be we haven't seen the last of them."

She left him to ponder that.

Shortly after, he gathered the band.

"We've had an interesting day," he told them, raising a few wry laughs. "But now we've had a chance to steady ourselves I can use the stars to take us where we want to go."

"Where's that?" Standeven asked.

"Us and the dwarfs to our world, Ceragan. You two back where we found you."

"Centra — Maras-Dantia?"

"Unless you want to stay here."

"But…"

"But what? Enjoy our company so much you can't leave us, is that it? Or maybe you'd prefer being taken back to Acurial. I'm sure the orcs there'd be glad to see you again."

"Don't we get a say in this?"

"What say do you want? Stay here or go back to Maras-Dantia. That's your choice."

"I think you're being very high-handed," Standeven protested, "and you should at least — "

"Let it go," Pepperdyne told him. He knew his one-time master still harboured thoughts of gaining the instrumentalities, and thought even less of the idea now than he had originally.

"When I want your opinion — "

" Let it go," Pepperdyne repeated coldly, laying an emphasis on the words that he hoped would convey to Standeven exactly what it really was he should let go of. "We're lucky Stryke doesn't leave us here. Or somewhere worse."

"Too fucking right you are," Haskeer interjected. "Though I reckon it's what we ought to do."

"We do things my way," Stryke reminded him. "Maras-Dantia it is." He took out the instrumentalities and laid them on a rock beside him. Then he reached into his shirt for the pendant. "Get ready to brace yourselves."

He was becoming more adept at fitting the stars together, and now he did it with great caution, careful to follow exactly the order that would get them to their old homeworld.

Just before he clacked the fifth one into place he took a look at the faces staring at him. Many were apprehensive. Several, notably Standeven's and Wheam's, wore expressions that were positively sickly. Stryke couldn't altogether blame them. He wasn't looking forward to what came next himself.

He slammed the star into position.

Reality instantly dissolved and the now-familiar, dread sensation of falling was on them again. They were drawn through the hellish kaleidoscope with no more means of controlling their passage than if they had been leaves in a gale. The only scrap of comfort they had was knowing where they'd end up.

Several lifetimes later, as it seemed, they came to themselves in another actuality.

They were standing on a large circular rock that had been raised like a dais and smoothed flat. The rock was inside a colossal cavern. Surrounding it were a hundred or more startled dwarfs, apparently in the throes of some kind of ritual. Stryke began fumbling with the stars. The dwarfs moved faster. Scores of them swarmed up onto the rock podium, and in a second the tips of multiple spears were pressing against the Wolverines' throats.

"I don't think this is Maras-Dantia," Coilla said.