The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Five yards from where they lay, the rider turned his horse and looked back in the direction of the road. ‘Nothing here,’ he shouted. ‘You saw a dust-devil, Captain, if you want my guess.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me of devils!’ shouted a second voice, from closer to the road. ‘We’d be out of these wastes by now if the maukslar hadn’t smelled something odd in the mountains. Well, get out of there! We’ve have that cursed dog-pack to locate yet.’

  The rider spurred his horse back towards the road. Kirishgan took his hand from his sword, and Pazel let himself breathe. Not today, thank Rin in his heaven. At a shout from their captain, the host gallopped on into the east.

  The travellers regrouped. ‘Four hundred horsemen, and fifty more on sicunas,’ said Prince Olik. ‘An Imperial battalion, no less.’

  ‘And the maukslar was with them,’ said Thasha. ‘I wonder if it had taken Dastu’s form already.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘The mucking idiot. I expect they’ve killed him.’

  ‘That is one possibility,’ said Kirishgan. ‘Let us not speculate on the others. But it is the fate of your mage that worries me now.’

  A heavy silence descended, and it fell to Hercol to break it. ‘We must try to keep our spirits up, as Ramachni would no doubt implore. Well, Kirishgan, what shall we do? Crawl?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the selk, ‘crawl. And that is not a bad thing, for very soon we shall bid this good land farewell. It is fitting to touch it with our hands, to breathe the air closest to its skin. The wicked have many servants — even the selk have been corrupted now and again, to our shame. But stone, snow, grass, forest: these are ever willing to help us, in their humble ways. I shall ache for this land when we depart. It is an ache that can only end when I find my way back here, or my errant soul finds me.’

  So they crawled, knees aching but sore feet relieved, and passed slowly across those miles of open grass. An hour later, the host of riders swept back westwards along the road, sounding horns for the pack of athymars that lay dead at the foot of Urakan.

  Finally the trees resumed, and the travellers stood and continued their painful run. The ground rose and fell; sharp rocks pierced the earth among the roots and leaves. The forest was pathless, dense. They scrambled down into ravines, pushed through walls of savage thorns, forded rivers with the icy spray about their hips. But that night Kirishgan brought them to the shelter of a cave, and the fire they built in its mouth warmed them all. There the selk told them a tale about Lord Arim and Ramachni, and their battle with Droth the Maukslar-Prince. It was a harrowing tale, and the others listened, rapt. All save the wolves: they paced uneasily in and out of the cave, and raised their muzzles often, appraising something on the breeze.

  ‘What do you smell, Valgrif?’ Myett asked, rising and touching his flank.

  The wolf looked down at her. ‘Nothing, little sister,’ he said at last. ‘ The enemy is far away.’

  That night Pazel slept deep, his fingers and Thasha’s interlaced. He did not dream, except for a single, phantom moment, when he thought a dog’s tongue licked his chin. But at daybreak Myett was sitting cold and apart, and the three wolves were gone without a trace. Then Pazel knew. Valgrif had smelled salt. He feared no living thing, but waves and surf filled his heart with dread. Waves and surf, and farewells perhaps.

  They nibbled some seed-cakes, sipped wine against the morning chill. Hercol and Kirishgan swept out the cave, hiding every trace of their visit. Then the travellers set off through the last of that dense wood. In time they came out upon a windy plateau and crossed it running, scattering a herd of spotted deer. From the plateau’s rim they saw a silvery tongue of water below them, twisting among dark cliffs, and tracing it with their eyes for several intricate miles, the sea.

  22

  Practical Men

  No man can know his deliverer, nor yet the thief of his soul. Their faces are covered; they swirl in the mob at the masquerade ball. Wine flows, and dance follows dance, and we are never certain of their names until that Midnight when all masks are removed.

  — Embers of Ixphir House by Hercol Ensyriken ap Ixhxchr.

  1 Fuinar 942

  For Ignus Chadfallow, Mr Uskins had become an obsession. Not only had the first mate achieved something no other human ever had — recovery from the madness produced by the plague — but he had actually rebounded into a state of clear and lucid thought greater than any he had previously enjoyed. He was a smarter, saner man. And today Dr Chadfallow was no closer to discovering what had cured him than on the day his investigation began.

  Now the captain himself had the plague. All the signs were clear — the lemon sweat, so easily overlooked; the wild swings of emotion, the slowly mounting struggle to think clearly. It had cost Rose a great deal to admit the latter, but in the end he had done so: right there in front of Fiffengurt, Marila and Chadfallow (Lady Oggosk had yet to awaken from her faint).

  ‘Need I describe what would follow should my condition become known to the crew?’ Rose had asked them. ‘Have no doubt: it would be anarchy and death. There is no one else around whom to rally. Fiffengurt is easily the most capable sailor-’ the quartermaster looked stunned by the compliment ‘-but he is tainted by mutiny, and he lacks the fire and rage of a commander. Elkstem is pathologically quiet, and thinks only of things mechanical. Coote is too old, Fegin and Bindhammer too stupid.

  That leaves no one; that leaves a deadly void. Ott and Haddismal will attempt to fill that void. They’ll try to run the ship like an army camp, at spearpoint. The gang loyalists will conspire against them, and each other. The dlomu will withdraw; there will be murders, riots, suicides. And all this at a standstill in a protected bay: on the open sea matters will be infinitely worse. Do you doubt these predictions, any of you?’

  They had all stayed silent. ‘Very well,’ said Rose. ‘Chadfallow tells me to expect a few more weeks of life. I wish to use them efficiently, provided the crawlies do not manage to overwhelm us somehow.’

  ‘You’re not even angry!’ Marila had blurted. ‘That we kept the truth about Stath Balfyr from you, I mean.’

  Rose’s eyes had smouldered at that. He appeared to struggle for words, breathing heavily, staring her down like a bull. At last he said, ‘I have been anger’s slave for sixty years. I will not die a slave. I will die trying to save this ship, and if that means cooperating with fools and mutineers, I will do so. But understand this: if you hide anything from me, ever again, I shall treat you to a death more slow and excruciating than ever Ott devised for a traitor to the Crown.’

  After his words there fell a silence, in which they all heard Oggosk snoring in the captain’s bed.

  ‘Fiffengurt is quite correct, all the same,’ grumbled Rose. ‘Knowledge of the crawlies’ deception would only have led to our abandoning the South that much sooner. And I know we must not do that without the Nilstone. I too have seen the Swarm.’

  ‘Then what shall we do presently, sir?’ asked Fiffengurt. ‘The duchess has it right, I’m afraid: we’re better off not trying for a landing, easy as it seems to drop a boat over the side.’

  Rose had stalked slowly away from his desk, around the formal dining table and the admiral’s chairs, to the smaller, round meeting table near the stern windows. He had placed his hand on its dark surface.

  ‘What shall we do? Wait for the tide to turn again, and then slide back out of this bay before sunset. We will not spend the night here, even though a mile of deep water lies between us and the closest beach. Never again will I underestimate the crawlies.’

  He raised his eyes, but they were closed; he was looking at something held tight in memory.

  ‘The nearest islands are small and dead. But forty miles to the east stands one with greenery: we will find fresh water there, and silage for the animals. I saw no good landing spot, but we will manage.’ He opened his eyes. ‘There remains an overriding danger, however.’

  ‘Macadra?’ Chadfallow offered.

  Rose shook his head. ‘Sandor Ott. He will m
ove against me if I give such orders without explanation. And if he learns the truth about Stath Balfyr, he will kill everyone who knew and said nothing. I do not know if Haddismal’s men will side with him or with me, but the odds are in his favour. As he told me once, treason nullifies a captain’s powers. He will cry treason, and the Turachs may choose to believe him.’

  ‘We’d have to hide in the stateroom,’ said Marila.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fiffengurt, ‘until he starved us out.’

  ‘We will have to come up with another reason for leaving,’ said Chadfallow.

  Rose gave him a withering look. ‘In this whole, enormous Southern world, Ott has taken an interest in just one place: Stath Balfyr. He believes this island to be his gateway for attacking the Mzithrin, for stabbing Arqual’s enemy from behind. Nothing else interests him. Tell me: what reason for abandoning it will he accept?’

  ‘Perhaps if he thought we were mistaken,’ said Chadfallow, ‘if he believed that Stath Balfyr were really that island to the southeast-’

  ‘He has studied the same charts and drawings that I have, and he is no fool,’ said Rose. ‘He knows where he is. And he will skewer anyone who tells him a less-than-perfect lie. Now be quiet.’

  He still leaned on the table, head cocked to one side, brooding. Finally he stood and walked to the wine cabinet and drew out something that did not look like wine. It was a large glass jar of the sort that Mr Teggatz had once used for lime pickle and other condiments. Rose brought it back to the desk and slammed it down before them.

  Marila screamed. Fiffengurt and Chadfallow turned away, quite sickened. Inside the jar, floating in a red-tinted liquid, was the mangled body of an ixchel man. The left arm and both legs had been torn away, leaving only shreds of skin. The abdomen too was torn open, and the head was a ruined mass of hair, skin and fractured bones.

  ‘Sniraga brought this one to Oggosk a fortnight ago,’ said Rose. ‘I hoped it was a rebel from the clan, one who had stayed aboard when the others deserted us in Masalym.’

  ‘Sniraga killed one of the ixchel who attacked Felthrup,’ said Marila, with tears on her brown cheeks.

  ‘Belay that snivelling,’ said the captain. ‘I have moved beyond sparing your lives and am trying to save them. When Ott asks me how I learned the truth about Stath Balfyr I shall display this crawly. He will be angry that I did not let him take part in the supposed interrogation — but not as angry as he would be to learn that the real source was you, and that you hid the truth for months. If he should learn that, I will be unable to protect you. Throw yourselves over the rail, or take poison if the doctor can provide it. Anything quick and certain. Do not fall into his hands.’

  From the bed, Oggosk was moaning: ‘Nilus, Nilus, my boy-’

  ‘We are finished here,’ said Rose. ‘Quartermaster, you will begin preparing a landing party, just to keep up appearances. My countermanding order will reach you in a few hours’ time. As for you, Doctor, I hope your investigations may yet save a few of us from dying like beasts.’

  A fine hope, thought Chadfallow now, but very possibly in vain. For the hundredth time he tried to focus his thoughts on Uskins. What stone had he left unturned? Diet? Impossible; the man ate the same food as any officer. Habits? What habits? If needling others and gloating at their misfortune counted as habits, well, the man had broken them at last. Sleep? Average. Drink? Only to impress his betters, when they too were drinking. Lineage? A peasant, from a crevasse of a town on the Dremland coast, though he had claimed noble birth until an old friend of the family exposed his charade. Abnormalities of blood, urine, faeces, hair follicles, ocular secretions, bunions, breath? No, no, no. The man had been remarkable only for his malice and ineptitude. Remove those and he was painfully normal.

  As the victims mounted, Chadfallow had started going without sleep. He questioned Uskins repeatedly about his interactions with Arunis, whom Rose had commanded him to observe for some weeks. The first mate recalled no telling moments. Arunis had never touched him, never tried to give him anything, only grunted when Uskins delivered his meals: ‘I was beneath his notice, Doctor,’ he’d said, ‘and for that I shall always be grateful.’

  And their capture in Masalym? Uskins had been sent to that awful human zoo, but so had eight others from the ship, including Chadfallow himself. They were never separated in those three days, which Uskins had spent largely hidden in a patch of weeds. He was mentally frail before the plague struck, certainly. But on the Chathrand that was hardly a distinguishing trait.

  At his wit’s end, Chadfallow even turned to Dr Rain. The old quack at least let him talk without interruption, and this helped Chadfallow sort his observations into mental drawers and cabinets. Rain took it all in gravely, and then sat quietly doodling in the corner of sickbay, face to the wall: the living emblem of a doctor’s pledge to do no harm.

  Hours passed. Chadfallow heard the order go out: To your posts, lads: the captain don’t like this bay after all. So it was dusk already; they were leaving with the tide. He stared at Uskins’ answers to his questionnaire, the words swimming before his eyes.

  ‘I know!’ Rain shrieked from his corner (Chadfallow gasped; he had forgotten the man was there). ‘Uskins was already a dunce! You’ve said so, you called him a puffed-up buffoon. Well, what if intelligence is the trigger, and the first mate didn’t have enough? What if the plague couldn’t sense any mind in there to attack?’

  Chadfallow’s mind leaped, clutching at the idea. He wondered if he had not voiced it to Rain himself, and forgotten it in the fog of exhaustion. Then the flaws in the theory began to pop like gophers from their holes.

  ‘The plague did attack him, Claudius,’ he said. ‘Uskins did lose his mind; he simply got it back again. And the plague has claimed others of dubious intelligence. Thad Pollok of Uturphe answered to “Dummy”, according to his friends. He lost a finger by placing it in the mouth of a moray eel. Just to see if he could.’

  Rain looked thoughtful. ‘I would never do that,’ he said.

  A sound at the doorway: Mr Fegin was hovering there, hat in hand. ‘Another victim, Doctor,’ he said. ‘A lad from Opalt. He was ninety feet up the mainmast, and he started howlin’ like a blary baboon. They had a time of it, getting him down in one piece. He bit a lieutenant on the ear.’

  ‘Off we go!’ said Rain, reaching for his grubby medical bag. They examined each and every new victim, of course. Or rather Chadfallow did, while Rain mumbled trivialities.

  Chadfallow massaged his eyelids. ‘Might I ask you to take a first look?’ he said. ‘I might just be getting somewhere with Uskins, and want to read a while longer.’

  It was a bald lie, but Rain did not argue. He glanced at the papers spread across Chadfallow’s desk. ‘We could draw a little of his blood, and inject a drop into everyone aboard.’

  ‘I’ll consider it,’ said Chadfallow.

  ‘Or take away his scarf.’ Rain slouched out the door. Chadfallow sighed, staring at a vial of the first mate’s urine and wondering what else he could do to it.

  Then he turned in his chair, blinking.

  Scarf?

  He stood up and went after Rain, who had only reached the next compartment. ‘What the devil are you talking about? What scarf?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen it?’ said Rain. ‘That old white rag of his. Threadbare, filthy. He keeps it under his shirt, but it’s always there. He clings to that scarf.’

  Rain chuckled and moved on, but Chadfallow stayed where he was, transfixed. A white scarf. He fetched his own bag from sickbay and made for Uskins’ cabin.

  The Chathrand was once more nearing the mouth of the bay: outbound, this time, with the reefs to portside and the cliffs towering high over the starboard bow. Fiffengurt had relieved Elkstem at the wheel; the sailmaster had gone to the chart room to consult Prince Olik’s sketches and notes. It was easy sailing once again: if ever a bay were made for smooth ingress and egress, it was this one at Stath Balfyr.

  Nonetheless Fiffengurt was sweating p
rofusely. Sandor Ott was at his side.

  ‘A crawly in a pickle jar,’ he said. ‘Preposterous. This is all a sham, Fiffengurt. Another delaying tactic, in the service of your insane devotion to the Pathkendle crowd.’

  ‘It ain’t my order,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Aloft there, mizzen-men! Is that a close-reefed sail, by Rin? Look sharp, or I’ll send a tarboy up to teach you your trade!’

  ‘Tell me what is really happening,’ said Ott.

  ‘We’re preparing to thread a needle between reefs and rocks, that’s what. And you’re making it blary difficult.’

  ‘It is not difficult. You’re putting on a performance. Like a circus bear, only much clumsier.’ He turned and spat. ‘I tell you I will tolerate this no longer.’

  ‘Take it up with the captain, Mr Ott. Unless you mean to drag me away from the — Great Gods of Perdition! ’

  Straight ahead, boulders were raining down from the clifftop.

  The ship erupted in howls. Fiffengurt threw all his weight on the wheel. ‘Help me, you useless blary butcher!’ he screamed. Ott seized the wheel beside Fiffengurt, and together they spun it hard.

  The Chathrand heeled wildly to port, bow rising, stern digging deep. Up and down the ship men stumbled, grabbing for handholds. ‘Furl topgallants, fore and aft!’ bellowed Fiffengurt. ‘Standby anchor! Rin’s gizzard, something up there is hurling those stones!’

  Even as he spoke a particularly enormous boulder struck the water, some fifty yards from the ship. ‘Did you see that?’ cried Fiffengurt. ‘That stone was bigger than the wheelhouse! A rock like that could stave us in!’

  Rose burst from his cabin and raced to the starboard rail, unfolding his telescope as he went. But there was nothing to look at: for the moment, the onslaught had ceased. The ship levelled, motionless on the bay.