Stan Nicholls - Army of Shadows

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?"