“Assuming they do have a star, maybe we could parley for it.”
“What with?”
“I should think the pellucid’s a good enough trade, wouldn’t you?”
“And if it isn’t? Or they just decide to take it off us? I’ll be leading just half of an already depleted band. The whole band would have a job coping with who knows how many centaurs, and on their home ground.”
“Alfray, I’m not asking you to take them on. All I want is for you to get yourself to Drogan and judge the lie of the land. You don’t even have to make contact with them if you think it’s too risky. Just wait for the rest of us to get there.”
“When’s that going to be?”
“I want to give at least another couple of days to searching. Then there’s travelling time. Say five days, maybe six.”
“Where would we rendezvous?”
Stryke thought about it. “East bank of the Calyparr Inlet, where it enters the forest.”
“All right, Stryke, if you really think this is the only way,” Alfray conceded resignedly. “How do we allot the groups?”
“A straight split of the troopers, which gives each party an even number.” He looked them over. “Alfray, your group will be made up of Gleadeg, Kestix, Liffin, Nep, Eldo, Zoda, Orbon, Prooq, Noskaa, Vobe and Bhose. Jup and I will take Talag, Reafdaw, Seafe, Toche, Hystykk, Gant, Calthmon, Breggin, Finje and Jad.”
He made a point of including the last three in his group because they voted with Haskeer not to open the cylinder containing the first star. He had no reason to doubt their loyalty, but thought it best not to have them on Alfray’s mission, just in case.
Alfray didn’t object to his allocation, and when Stryke gave the grunts themselves an opportunity to protest, none did.
He looked to the sky. “I want as little delay as possible, but I reckon a couple of hours’ rest’s in order. Get yourselves ready. There’ll be two turns of guards, an hour each. The rest of you get your heads down. Dismissed.”
“I’m going to share out my healing herbs and balms between both groups,” Alfray announced. “Chances are they’ll be needed.” He went off, less than cheerfully.
Jup lingered with Stryke.
Reading his expression, Stryke anticipated his sergeant’s thoughts. “Purely in terms of rank you should be leading the Drogan mission, Jup. But to be blunt, you know there’s prejudice against dwarves, maybe even in our ranks. Anything that erodes your authority, inside or outside the band, imperils the mission.”
“Leading the rescue of you and Alfray doesn’t count for anything?”
“It counts for a hell of a lot with me and Alfray. That’s not the point, and you know it. Anyway, I’d like you with me. We work well together.”
Jup smiled thinly. “Thanks, chief. Matter of fact, I don’t feel that bad about it. When you’re one of my kind, you get used to attitudes. Can’t argue, either; my race mostly brought it on themselves.”
“All right. Now get yourself some rest.”
“One thing, Stryke: what about the crystal? Should Alfray’s group take more of it, given they might have to use it for barter?”
“No, I think we’ll keep things as they are. Each band member carrying a ration’s the best way of handling it. Still gives Alfray enough should he need to trade. But we make it clear again that nobody dips in without permission.”
“Right, I’ll get on that.”
He left Stryke to bed down for a while.
Wrapping himself in a blanket and laying his head on a saddle, Stryke realised how bone tired he was.
As he drifted into sleep he fancied he caught a whiff of pellucid in the air. He put it down to imagination and let the darkness take him.
Something large and indistinct loomed over him
.
His vision was blurred and he couldn’t make out what it was. He blinked several times, focused, and realised it was a tree, lofty and of ample girth. Looking around, he saw that he was in a forest where all the trees were tall and robust, with abundant greenery. Beams of sunlight knifed through the emerald ceiling high above
.
There was an almost palpable sense of peace here. Yet it wasn’t entirely silent. He was aware of gentle birdsong, and behind that a sound he couldn’t identify, like continuous, muted thunder. It wasn’t threatening, just totally unfamiliar
.
In one direction, where the woodland thinned, brighter light entered. He walked that way. Passing over a bed of crisp fallen leaves, he came to the forest’s edge. The roaring, crashing noise was louder. Still he had no notion of what it might be
.
Away from the shade of the trees, he was briefly ankle deep in succulent blades of grass. As the ground swept into a mild incline, the grass gave way to an expanse of fine white sand
.
Beyond the sand lay a mighty ocean
.
It stretched as far ahead as he could see, and to the left and right. It sent white-flecked waves rumbling lazily to the shore. Its opulent blue near matched the perfectly cerulean sky, where chalky, sculptured clouds majestically drifted
.
Stryke was awed by it. He had never seen the like
.
He went out across the sand. A pleasantly warm sea breeze caressed his face. The air was perfumed with the quickening bouquet of ozone. Looking back to the treeline, he saw the trail his footprints had left in the sand. He could not say why he found the sight so strangely affecting
.
It was then that his eye was caught by something reflecting the sun, perched atop a rocky rise perhaps half a mile along the beach and set a hundred yards back from the shoreline. They were structures of some kind, sharply white. He moved in that direction
.
The bluff proved further away than it looked, but was no great hardship to reach. Trudging the hot sand, he passed dunes massed by the industrious wind. Here and there, brilliantly green shoots of tiny plants stabbed through the powdery layer
.
As he approached, it was obvious more than one construction sat on top of the black rock. Reaching the seaward face of the cliff, he discovered it was tiered. So he began to climb
.
Soon he arrived at what turned out to be a modest plateau. What it housed was ruins: tumbled fluted columns, the remains of buildings, scattered blocks of fashioned stone, a cracked, truncated staircase. It was all surrounded by a crenellated wall, now breached and crumbling. The material used to construct the place had the bleached look of old marble. Mosses and ivy colonised much of its soft dilapidation
.
The architecture was unfamiliar to him, its detail and decoration resembling nothing he had seen before. But there were elements that told him what he was looking at was obviously a fortification. Its positioning too, overlooking the ocean and on a high point, confirmed this. It was exactly where he would have put it himself. Anybody with a military slant would have done the same
.
Palm shading his brow, he surveyed the view. The wind whipped at his face and clothes
.
He stood that way for some time before he noticed movement. A group of riders was coming along the beach from the opposite direction to the way he had. As they got nearer, he could see there were seven of them. Nearer still, it was apparent they were heading for the fortification. A small voice in the back of his mind warned of the possibility of conflict
.
Then he saw that they were orcs, and the voice was stilled
.
The riders stopped at the foot of the rock pile. As they dismounted, he recognised one of them. It was the female he had encountered here before. Assuming it was here, and wherever “here” might be
.
He let that thought pass over him like a night zephyr
.
She led her party in climbing the bluff. Her movements were agile and confident. Reaching the top before the others, she stretched a hand to him. He took it and hoisted her the remaining couple of feet. As with the last time he had her hand in his, he noticed how firm and pleasantly cool it was
.
Nimbly springing to him, she smiled. It warmed her strong, open face. She was a mite shorter than Stryke, but the difference was made up by the ornamental headdress she wore, this time a shock of lustrous green and blue feathers. Her physique was fetchingly muscular, her back straight. There was no denying she was a handsome orc indeed
.
“Greetings,” she said
.
“Well met.”
The other orcs scrambled on to the plateau. Two of them were female. They nodded as they passed him, seemingly friendly and unconcerned with who he might be or why he was there
.
“Some of my clansfolk,” she explained
.
He watched as they went to stand on another part of the level. They looked out to sea and talked amongst themselves
.
Stryke turned back to her. She was staring at him. “It seems we are drawn together again.”
“Why is that so, do you think?”
Her expression indicated she found the question eccentric. “Fate, the gods. Who knows? Would you have it otherwise?”
“No!
Er, no, I wouldn’t
.”
She smiled again, a little knowingly, he thought, then grew more serious. “You always look so troubled.”
“Do I?”
“What is it that ails you?”
“It’s . . . hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“My land is tormented. Greatly so.”
“Then leave it. Come here.”
“There is too much of importance to hold me in my own place. And how I get here is something over which I seem to have no say.”
“That’s hard to understand. You visit with such facility. Can you explain?”
“No. I’m puzzled too, and I have no explanation.”
“Perhaps in time you will. No matter. What can be done to ease your burden?”
“I’m on what could be called a mission which might do that.”
“There is hope then?”
“Might,
I say
.”
“All that should concern you is doing that which is right and just. Do you think you are?”
He answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
“And you believe you are being true to yourself in undertaking this mission?”
“I do.”
“Then you have made yourself a promise, and since when did orcs go back on their word?”
“Too often, where I come from.”
She was shocked by that. “Why?”
“We are forced to.”
“That is sad, and all the more reason not to bend this time.”
“I can’t afford to. The lives of comrades are at stake.”
“You’ll stand by them. It’s the orc way.”
“You make it all seem so simple. But events are not always easy to master.”
“It takes courage, I know, but I can tell that’s not something you lack. Whatever this task you have set yourself, you must undertake it to the best of your ability. Else why are we alive?”
It was his turn to smile. “There is wisdom in your words. I’ll reflect on them.”
They felt no discomfort in letting a moment pass in silence
.
At length he said, “What is this place?” He indicated the ruins
.
“Nobody knows, except it’s very old and orcs lay no claim to it.”
“How can that be? You’ve already told me that this country of yours is home to no other race but ours.”
“And you’ve told me that your land is shared with many races. I find that at least as great a mystery.”
“Nothing I see around me accords with my experience,” he confessed
.
“I thought I hadn’t seen you waiting here before. Is this the first time you’ve come to greet them?”
“Waiting? And who am I supposed to greet?”
She laughed. It was good-natured. “You really don’t know?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he told her
.
Turning, she scanned the ocean. Then she pointed. “Them.”
He looked and saw the billowing white sails of several ships on the horizon
.
“You’re so strange,” she added kindly. “You never cease to make me wonder, Stryke.”
Of course, she knew his name. But he still didn’t know hers
.
He was about to ask when a black maw opened and swallowed him
.
He woke up haunted by her face, and sweating despite the cold.
After the brightness he had experienced, it took a few seconds for him to adjust to the watery daylight that was becoming the norm in this world. He checked himself. What was he doing thinking in terms of “this world”? What other world was there, apart from the one he’d created for himself in his dreams? If dreams they were. Whatever he called them, they were becoming more vivid. They made him doubt his sanity. And at a time like this the last thing he needed was his mind playing tricks on him.
Nevertheless, though he didn’t understand the dream, it had somehow stiffened his resolve. He felt absurdly optimistic about the decision he’d made, never mind the many fresh obstacles it threw in their path.
His reverie was broken by a shadow falling across him. It was Jup’s.
“Chief, you don’t look too good. You all right?”
Stryke gathered his wits. “I’m fine, Sergeant.” He got up. “Is everything ready?”
“More or less.”
Alfray had mustered his half of the band and was supervising the loading of their horses. Stryke and Jup went towards him.
As they walked, Stryke asked, “Did anybody use crystal last night?”
“Not that I know of. And nobody would without permission. Why?”
“Oh . . . no reason.”
Jup gave him an odd look, but before he could say anything they were with Alfray.
He was tightening his horse’s saddle straps. Giving the leather stay a final jerk, he said, “Well, that’s it. We’re all set.”
“Remember what I said,” Stryke reminded him. “Don’t make contact with the centaurs unless you’re sure there’s no danger.”