Inferno

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.

He wondered how the hell he came to be here.

Dynahla touched his arm and pointed. The road had taken a turn, and now they could see a tall hill, or possibly a mountain. On its summit stood a building. It looked like a fortress. On second thought, it might have been a temple. Then again, it wasn’t like that at all.

Pelli Madayar stood amongst the ruins of the crystal city. Weevan-Jirst was at her side, the rest of the Corps unit spread about them. The never-ending wind blew in from the plain, bringing a constant swirl of grey ash like fine snow. It all but obscured the feeble light of the ailing red sun.

“She was here,” Pelli asserted. “The traces leave no doubt.”

“And not just her,” the goblin replied. “It seems the warband was here too.”

“Yes, it does.”

“We abandon our search for the orcs to follow Jennesta and find ourselves back on the orcs’ trail after all. Is that not ironic?” There was an element of smugness in his manner.

At least he didn’t say I told you so, she thought. But she was damned if she was going to apologise. “You could say it was an example of unintended consequences having a positive outcome. As the two set of instrumentalities chase each other, we are on the trail of both. I call that an economic use of our resources. Anyway, I’ve said all along that if we found one group we’d find the other.”

“How very fortunate for you that blind luck should be so obliging.”

She ignored the jibe. “We’ve learnt something else. The Wolverines aren’t just world-hopping at random. They’re moving with a purpose. So either they’ve suddenly taught themselves mastery of the instrumentalities, which is unlikely to say the least, or somebody or something is aiding them. Not just that. We know Jennesta tampered with the orcs’ set and had a measure of control over them. That appears to no longer be the case. Whatever help they have is countering her influence, at least to some extent.”

“Yet another player. This is getting complicated. I would have said that if you were willing to contact Karrell Revers, now would be the time to request that another unit be put into the field. We could obviously use some help.”

“We’re quite capable of dealing with this ourselves. I’m competent to deal with it.” She hoped that came across with more confidence than she was feeling.

“If you say so.”

There was a stirring in the ruins. A bulky shape came out of the darkness. When it moved into the watery light it was revealed as one of the six-legged, multi-eyed fire-breathers. It came towards them, snorting orange flame.

Casually, Pelli raised a hand, palm outwards, and sent an energy pulse its way. The purple beam struck the beast and converted it into a cloud of minute fragments. They were instantly scattered by the persistent wind.

She felt a little ashamed of herself for slaying the creature. It was an act of pique, and in any event it couldn’t have harmed them as they were wrapped in a protective shield of enchantment.

“What do you think happened here, Weevan-Jirst?” she asked, as much to cool the mood between them as anything else.

“Who can say? I assume a conflict of some kind, given that all life-forms seem intent on destruction.”

“That’s a pessimistic view.”

“It is one I have formed through experience and observation. Wherever there is life, it courts death.”

“What about the Corps? We use force only when we have to, and for the good.”

“As you just did?” He nodded towards the spot the disintegrated fire-breather had occupied a moment before.

She had no answer to that, but granted, “Perhaps we do all have a primitive brute lurking below the surface, no matter how civilised our veneer. But surely that’s an argument for the Corps and anybody else that tries to bring some order and justice to bear?”

“How does that square with your sympathy for the orcs? They can hardly be called a constructive force.”

“It’s in their nature to be combative.”

“The same could be said of the creature you just killed.”

“I’ve no more affection for the orcs than any other sentient race, and no more hostility either. As I said, my interest is in justice, and my gut feeling is that they’re somebody’s pawns in all this.”

“How can you cast a species that lives for war on the same level as those that strive for tolerance?”

“I thought you said all life-forms were capable of death-dealing? Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”

“Some try to control their impulses more than others.”

“I’ve never met a race yet, no matter how savage, that wasn’t ultimately capable of some degree of compassion. Why should orcs be an exception?”

“Their actions speak for them.”

“With respect, the goblin folk don’t exactly have an untarnished reputation themselves. No doubt you’d argue that it’s unjustified, and your membership of the Corps is testament to that. But that’s my point. Everything isn’t black and white, as you seem to believe. Life’s messy. We do our best.”

Weevan-Jirst didn’t answer. He just maintained the inscrutable expression common to his kind.

She looked around, saw the broken towers, the mountains of wreckage and the desolation of a wasted world. “You know what I think? Suppose what happened here came about through an interworld conflict, because somebody who shouldn’t have got hold of a set of instrumentalities. I’m not saying it did, but it’s possible, isn’t it? In any case it can stand as an example of the kind of thing that can happen if we fail. I think that makes it a fitting reminder of our purpose. So let’s do our job, shall we?”

“I’ve never wanted anything else.”

“Then it’s time to continue the hunt.”