The next twenty four hours seemed to crawl past, and if it hadn't been for the evidence of the two suns as they crept across the sky, they would have sworn that at least three and maybe four days passed while they waited for the night of the triple moon. They slept fitfully that night, troubled by strange dreams in which hideous, inhuman monsters capered and danced crazily among the standing stones on top of the hill, gurgling their praises to Molrot through throats rendered almost useless by disease, and when they awoke the next morning and found that they had all dreamed the same thing, they glanced nervously up at the mysterious stones and moved a considerable distance further away to have their breakfasts.

     Petronax spent almost all the next day pacing back and forth, thinking of the time they were wasting and imagining the Shadowsoldiers getting further away with each passing second. We could have covered fifty miles today, he thought angrily. We're fifty miles further behind them than we would have been if we hadn't been sidetracked into this crazy mission. How can you compare the health and safety of a few girls with the survival of a whole city, maybe a whole Empire? You can't, there's just no comparison! It's not that I don't feel any compassion or pity towards them, I do, but you've got to keep a sense of perspective.

     He glanced at the girl, Janice, who was with Diana and Lirenna, discussing womanly things. They stopped talking abruptly when Shaun got too close and glared meaningfully at him until he moved out of earshot, whereupon they resumed their conversation in a quieter tone of voice with the occasional giggle and shy glance at one or other of the men. Janice caught him looking at her and smiled at him, and the soldier was struck by the expression of thankfulness and gratitude on her face. Petronax felt his objections melting like butter in a furnace. Then again, perspective isn't everything, he thought.

     After what seemed like an eternity, the two suns, now separated by only a few of their own diameters, finally set and darkness fell. They put Janice in the small space they'd cut out of the small clump of bramble, where she wouldn't be seen in the darkness, and told her to stay there out of harm's way. Then, the eight of them took their places, since they didn't know exactly when the priest and his followers would show up, and settled down for a long wait.

     The two largest moons appeared above the eastern horizon at exactly the same time as the yellow sun set, and rose slowly into the sky. They were both now full, so close together that they seemed to be almost touching and looked huge as they rose past the few windswept trees that dotted the horizon. Brilliant white craters stood out vividly against the dull grey highlands and the even darker lowland seas, making them look like round blackboards that had been bombarded by snowballs. A large, tailless comet followed just behind it, twice the size of the largest moon, and the three celestial objects formed an almost perfect straight line as they rose together. Thomas turned to look to the west and saw the smallest moon, Kronos, rising there, it’s tiny fingernail shape fattening as it rose rapidly up the sky. The triple moon would happen when all three moons came together, about four hours from now, as Kronos passed the other two moons going in the other direction. All three of them full at the same time. Once every seven hundred years the three moons actually overlapped each other while full, the smallest in front, the largest behind, forming the tri-lunar occultation, which was taken to foretell an event of global and apocalyptic importance. The last one had happened during the last days of the fall of Agglemon. Thomas wondered whether the fact that the next one wasn’t due for another four hundred years was a good omen regarding the expected Fourth Shadowwar. The Gods know we need some cause for optimism, he thought with a smile.

     The night was cold, despite their being less than a thousand miles from the equator. It was still winter, of course, so it wouldn't have been very hot anyway, but the coolness of the night was turned into a severe chill by a strange, numbing coldness that seemed to flow down the hill from its summit, where the stones stood. They wrapped their sleeping blankets around themselves for warmth, but they still shivered and their hands began to grow numb, despite the gloves that they were all, except the wizards, wearing. They rubbed their hands and blew on them, but it had little effect, and Drake became worried that if the priest and his escort didn't show soon, they might become so numbed with the cold that they wouldn't be able to fight effectively, or at all.

     Fortunately, just as he was having these pessimistic thoughts, he spotted a line of torches approaching, about a mile away. "Get ready!" he hissed. "Here they come!"

     They drew their swords and the wizards prepared their spells, ready to spring out when the followers of Molrot passed their hiding places. As the solemn procession grew closer, though, Drake began to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, and as they continued to approach he realised what it was that was bothering him. There were too many torches.

     They had expected there to be about a dozen or so soldiers, plus the captive women and the priest himself. If they were all carrying torches, which they thought unlikely, then there would be about twenty of them to light the procession's way. A more likely number would have been between six and ten, ample to produce enough light for around twenty people. There were many more than twenty torches approaching the hill, though. Almost twice as many so far as they could tell, strung out in single file like a procession of fireflies, and that meant that there could be as many as seventy or eighty people approaching, possibly as many as a hundred.

     "Uh oh," said Jerry. "I think we're in trouble."

     "Damnation!" swore Drake. He slithered out of his hiding hole and went over to where Janice was hiding. "You said the priest only had about thirty soldiers in all!" he accused. "We killed sixteen of them! Where in the name of the Nine Hells have all the others come from?"

     "I don't know," she said, hurt by his tone of voice. "I just told you what I heard while I was their prisoner."

     "Hell!" swore the priest again, and returned to his own hiding place.

     As the procession got closer, they saw why it was so large. It consisted not of one priest and his retinue, but six, each with his own loyal soldiers and female captives. The six priests walked slowly and solemnly at the head of the procession. The long, baggy sleeves of their flowing, mustard yellow robes hid their crossed arms from sight, and their downturned faces were hidden by the large hoods pulled low over their heads. Painful wheezing noises came from them. One of them walked with a limp, and now and then one of them would be wracked with coughs, doubling over and unable to go on for several seconds. They were obviously in a bad way. Any normal person in that condition would have been confined to bed, but a strong sense of evil radiated from them and none of the hidden watchers doubted that they had many years of active evildoing left in them yet.

     Behind the priests walked the captive women. Nine of them, all dressed head to foot in the same yellow robes as the priests, presumably to hide their abhorrent beauty from the eyes of their captors. They walked as if in a trance, without a trace of the fear that they would be expected to feel, and the watchers got the impression that they were actually looking forward to what lay ahead.

     "They've been spellbound," whispered Lirenna to Janice. "Don't worry, it doesn't harm them, and it'll wear off in time."

     "That's my sister there!" whispered back Janice excitedly. "Third from the front! No-one else walks the way she does!" Lirenna shushed her to keep quiet.

     Behind the women walked the soldiers, sixty of them. Not as many as Drake had feared, but still far too many. "Hell!" he cursed. "We can't ambush that many! What in the name of Hell are we going to do now?"