from its lipless mouth. It turned, slid into the water and disappeared.
The silence that followed was finally broken when Jup said, “That was… bizarre.”
They waited, exchanging whispered thoughts about what Dynahla had just done, looking out for an ambush and swatting flies.
Before long there was a disturbance in the water. The snake surfaced and slithered ashore. Immediately, the reversion to Dynahla’s original form took place. At its completion he was on his hands and knees, head down, wet hair hanging lankly. He shook off droplets of water, not unlike a dog, and stood.
“That way,” he stated simply, pointing out across the water. “Not far. On another plot of dry land. Well, drier.”
“You all right? Coilla asked.
He nodded. “Transformation can drain me, particularly the more extreme ones. I’m fine.”
“Up to moving again?” Stryke said.
“Yes.”
“Then you’d better have these.” He held out the instrumen-talities.
Dynahla seemed taken aback. He accepted them and half whispered, “Thank you.”
Everyone collected their gear and they set off, with the shape-shifter and Stryke in the lead.
When they neared their destination, as signalled by the fetch, they tried to move as quietly as they could given they were practically swimming. Even so, when rounding a vast outcrop of foliage they came upon Jennesta’s party almost unexpectedly.
The two sides spotted each other at the same time. A couple of arrows winged the band’s way. Taking cover in the thick vegetation, they returned fire. The exchange grew heavier, the enemy’s arrows zinging through the greenery all around the Wolverines, and theirs flying back.
One of Jennesta’s archers was bold enough, or foolish enough, to let himself be seen as he made to loose a shot. An orc arrow smacked square to his chest and he toppled into the water. It stirred, rippled and churned as the scavengers living in it were drawn to blood and set to devouring his corpse.
Jennesta herself took a hand, lobbing a searing fireball the warband’s way. Dynahla deflected it and sent her one of his own. Jennesta swept it aside.
The duel was short-lived. Jennesta employed the stars and her force was gone.
Dynahla quickly checked that everybody was together and did what was necessary to follow.
“She is taking the piss!” Haskeer raged.
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.
