Men of a thousand different centuries passed and repassed there before my eyes, men who had been flashed through the ages and brought there by the same alien being that had seized Cannell before my eyes, and that had seized, only a few hours before, the five newcomers who had come down the great stair with Denham and me.
For these, these crowds and masses of men that choked the streets and squares and buildings of this city of hell, these were the spoils of the Raider, gathered together for some unholy purpose of his own, and prisoned here in the pit, far beneath the city of the Kanlars. In a living panorama of the past, they streamed by me, a brilliant, barbaric throng.
Many of them were unknown in race to me, but many others I could recognize by their dress or features. There were Egyptians, shaven-headed men in long white robes, strangely aloof and silent in that noisy gathering. They carried short swords and bows, and I noticed that every one of the figures that passed before me wore weapons of some sort. I saw Assyrians, here and there, ravagers of the ancient world, wolf-faced, black-bearded men with burning eyes, clad in strange armor.
Three courtly, spade-bearded Spaniards sauntered by, carrying themselves as proudly as on the day when their galleons ruled the seas. A hulking, shock-headed savage clad in evil-smelling skins shambled by, with a giant gnarled club in his hand, his receding brow and jutting jaw proclaiming him a troglodyte, a man of the world's dawn. And right behind him came two stern-faced men in medieval armor, with the cross of the Crusaders blazoned on their battered shields.
Indians passed, with bow and tomahawk, hawk-faced and alert. Clear-skinned Greeks, laughing at some jest of their own. Chinese, quiet and inscrutable, whose eyes narrowed even further as they caught sight of the two wizened Tartars who had come down the stair with us. A tall frontiersman in suit of buckskin, with bowie knife in his belt, strode past, conversing with a helmed Phoenician sea-captain. And everywhere, clustering always together in little groups, were Romans, legionaries in tunic, breastplate and helmet, with bronze short-swords, who looked contemptuously on all other races in the passing throng.
A hand descended on my shoulder, and I turned, startled, to find that I had completely forgotten the Englishman, Denham, who stood behind me.
"Deuced strange, at first, isn't it?" he asked, smilingly, gesturing toward the moving pageant of the past, around us. Before I could answer, he went on, "You'd best come with me, now."
"Where?" I asked.
"Why, to my own barracks," he answered. "That's what these buildings are for, you know, but as a newcomer, you'd be in trouble here in a minute, without someone to answer for you. And, too, I want you to meet my own friends."