The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  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 awhile 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 Bálfyr.

  Nonetheless Fiffengurt was sweating profusely. 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 leveled, motionless on the bay.

  Fiffengurt looked at the spymaster. “Preposterous?” he said.

  “You cannot believe that crawlies were responsible for that,” said Ott.

  Fiffengurt said nothing. He certainly did have his doubts, but he’d be damned if he’d give Ott another stick to beat him with.

  “Come around and try again,” said the spymaster, “but farther from the cliffs, this time, out of range.”

  The quartermaster turned to face him. “Mr. Ott. When those rocks began to fly, we were still edging nearer the cliffs. There’s no mucking way we can sail any farther from ’em, unless you want to tear the bottom out of this boat. Have a look at the reefs, away there to starboard. With the sun behind us you can see ’em with the naked eye.”

  Ott did not walk to starboard, or look at the reefs. He stared up at the high, broken clifftop. “A bombardment like that could finish us in minutes,” he said.

  “Less, if a couple of those big bastards found their mark,” said Fiffengurt. “I think the first time was a warning.”

  “Quartermaster, that cliff is half a mile long. The enemy could get off dozens of shots before we cleared it.”

  Fiffengurt nodded. “You’re getting the idea. We’re trapped in this bay.”

  “That is correct,” shouted a voice from above them.

  They jumped, searching, shading their eyes. Twenty feet overhead, seated at his ease on the main spankermast yard, was Lord Talag.

  “Crawly, crawly aloft!” shouted someone, causing a general stir. Lord Talag paid no attention. The swallow-suit hung loose upon his shoulders.

  “You are trapped again,” he said, “but not by us, this time. We took some of you prisoner once, by necessity. The deed gave us no joy. To cage any living creature is a deed that sickens the heart. We struggled to keep you alive and comfortable. When you escaped you killed as many of us as you could.”

  “And we’re not done yet,” said Sandor Ott.

  “Be silent, you wretched man!” hissed Fiffengurt.

  Captain Rose appeared on the quarterdeck ladder. He climbed up stiffly and walked up to the wheelhouse, his eyes never leaving the ixchel.

  “On this day,” Talag continued, “my island brethren have made prisoners of you all. Be glad that you did not kill me in Masalym, Sandor Ott. If I had not flown ashore and greeted them, they would have sunk you as you tried to enter this bay.”

  “How do they move the rocks?” asked Fiffengurt.

  Lord Talag smiled strangely. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Your brethren kept it to themselves, did they?”

  Talag frowned at him. “We are not a sentimental race. We do not spill our secrets at a first encounter, not even with our long-lost kin.”

  “We’re a mile from shore,” said Sandor Ott. “How do you plan to leave us, exactly?”

  “That is not your concern,” said Lord Talag.

  “What if I make it my concern?”

  Talag got to his feet, eyes locked on the spymaster. “My people watched you for years, Sa
ndor Ott. In the Keep of Five Domes, in the tunnels under Etherhorde, in the blue chambers of Castle Maag. I myself heard you planning deaths, from Thasha Isiq’s mother to guards of the Castle you deemed too inquisitive. I saw you mate with that whore Syrarys, never guessing that years before you made her a spy in Isiq’s household, Arunis had picked her out to be a spy in yours. I saw you cackle with glee over the charts we forged. You are a failure, Ott. Like all giants, you confuse brute power with absolute power. And now it is time to pay for that mistake. Oppose our exodus, and we will wait you out. How long can you survive without fresh water? Two months? Three, if you kill off the sickly? But we can wait a year, Ott, or longer. We will not even be thirsty when the last of you falls dead.”

  “And if we do not oppose you?” said Rose.

  Talag turned his burning eyes on the captain. “I would give a great deal to know what you truly expect of me,” he said. “What does a crawly do with his eight hundred tormentors, when he has them at last beneath his heel? Eight hundred sadists, bigots, butchers? I know what a giant would do. Make the crawly beg. Increase the pressure, slowly. Watch him suffer, fascinated; pretend to consider his pleas. Then step down hard and crush his skull.”

  Talag’s body had gone rigid. “I know,” he said. “I saw it done to my father when I was ten. He was as close to me as you are now, but I was in hiding, I was safe, and even as the giant screamed at him, told him to beg for his life, my father was speaking to me in the tongue your kind cannot hear, ordering me to live, to fight on, to serve our people.

  “It was five years later that I first heard the legend of Stath Bálfyr, the island from whence you took us in jars and cages. I swore then and there that I would lead any of my father’s house who would follow me home to this place, and today I fulfill that oath. You ask what will I do with you?”

  He took a deep breath. “Nothing. Live out my life endeavoring to forget your very existence. And if you are cooperative, and do not hinder our departure from the Chathrand, I shall go one step further, and waive the right of vengeance.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Rose.

  “That you shall be dealt with as my island brethren see fit. They would surely extend me the courtesy of deciding your fate: that is fitting and customary. But vengeance was never the purpose of this mission—and today that purpose is all but achieved. I will not seek your executions.”

  “But you will not ask for clemency?”

  Talag turned to him, bristling. “You kept one of us in a birdcage, in filth, and made him taste your food for poison. Your command triggered the massacre. Your first bosun wore a necklace of our skulls. Blood-red monster! This is clemency, beyond anything you giants deserve.”

  With a sharp motion he turned away, smoothing the feathers of his coat. “You are trespassers in Stath Bálfyr,” he said. “The island’s rulers will make their own decisions. For myself the end has finally come. I shall grow old here, among my people and my books. You no longer matter.”

  Dr. Chadfallow had just reached Uskins’ door when the bombardment commenced. He stumbled when the ship lurched, half expecting the passage to explode in a swarm of attacking ixchel. But none came. Whatever had just happened, the clan was still lying low. He considered putting off his investigation, then reprimanded himself: Put off until when? Until how many more succumb? He cleared his throat, straightened his sleeves with their silver cuff links, and knocked.

  The door rattled, as though Uskins was struggling with it. At last the first mate shouldered it open. “The latch,” he explained with a smile. “I tried to fix it and have only made things worse. Do come in, Doctor.”

  Chadfallow stepped into the little cabin. “I was napping,” said Uskins. “Did something happen above?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Chadfallow quietly. “Nothing important, in any case.”

  “I tire more easily now that my duties are so light,” said Uskins. “Is that not strange? I wash dishes, carry messages, feed the men in the brig, and suddenly I am fatigued. May I ask if you have made any progress?”

  “Not really,” Chadfallow admitted, studying him. The man’s shirt was buttoned to the neck. It was, thought the doctor, always buttoned to the neck.

  Uskins had begun to notice the doctor’s peculiar manner. “You have an idea, though, don’t you? Something to build on?”

  “Perhaps,” said Chadfallow, barely conscious of his words. “But it’s … rather complicated. I’m afraid I need to examine you once more.”

  “Anything to help, Doctor. But I can tell you right now that I’m unchanged.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Chadfallow, trying to evoke his usual, peremptory tone. “Sit down, sir. Take off your shirt and breathe deep.”

  Uskins consented amiably enough for someone who had been examined almost ceaselessly for a fortnight. He sat in the room’s one chair with his back to Chadfallow, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, and pulled it over his head. There it was: the tail end of the scarf. Uskins had removed it along with the shirt, and was now holding both in his hands.

  As he did each time before, thought Chadfallow. How under Heaven’s Tree did I fail to notice?

  He placed the stethoscope on Uskins’ back, went through the motions of listening.

  “I’m feeling truly fine today,” said Uskins. “My appetite is immense.”

  “Arms out to either side, if you please,” said Chadfallow.

  Uskins tucked the shirt under his leg before he obeyed. Now Chadfallow could see the scarf’s tasseled edge: just two inches, but that was enough. His skin went cold. His hand trembled on the stethoscope.

  Captain Rose had named himself a slave to anger. He, Chadfallow, had been a slave to pride. He was intelligent; he knew that. But for the first time in his life he understood with perfect clarity that he was also a fool.

  “I must … step out,” he heard himself say. “I left an instrument in the surgery.”

  “What instrument?” asked Uskins. His voice was abruptly cold.

  Chadfallow’s mind seized. “A spirometer,” he managed to blurt. “Also known as a plethysmograph. It measures a patient’s lung capacity.”

  “I don’t think you care about my lung capacity,” said Uskins.

  “Now you’re being foolish,” said the doctor, all but lunging for the door.

  But the door would not open. Chadfallow heaved at it, wrenching at the knob. The door held fast. Slowly he turned to face Uskins. The first mate had put the white scarf back around his neck.

  “No more games,” said Chadfallow.

  “Oh no,” said the other, “I quite tire of them myself.”

  “What happened to you, Uskins?”

  The man smiled: a wide, toothy, ear-to-ear grin, unlike any smile the doctor had ever seen on his face. “Your first mate is not available for questioning,” he said.

  Chadfallow did not even see the knife, but by the force of the blow, the white blaze of pain-beyond-pain, the rich smell in his nostrils and the dysfunctional lurch of the organ in his chest, he had his diagnosis at once. So fascinating. The left ventricle. If only he had time to make some notes.

  These thoughts were lightning flashes. Others followed. He had a son; his son might yet be alive; his son would never embrace him and say Father. He should have been more reckless in love. He should have noticed that life was but a heartbeat, maybe two heartbeats, nothing guaranteed.

  “Arunis?” he whispered.

  “Of course.”

  Show him no fear. He could manage that much; he always cut a good figure; he was dying without Suthinia; everything he loved he misplaced.

  “Dead …?” he whispered.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “Who do you mean? You, me, Uskins? Never mind; the answer is yes.”

  “How?”

  “How did I win control of this body? Just as you’d go about such a task. I reasoned with Uskins. He had the plague. I reminded him that a continent full of doctors had failed to cure it, and persuaded him tha
t his one chance was to let me into his mind. To sign over the house, as it were, and let me see what I could do about the termites. He hated the idea, but saw the logic in the end.”

  The doctor’s strength was gone, his vision going. Arunis lowered him quietly to the floor. “Our Imperial surgeon,” he said. “A scientist, a practical man. It was you who ended the standoff that day in the Straits of Simja. You threw me the rope ladder, let me climb aboard. I might have failed that day, but you couldn’t bear to let me strangle Admiral Isiq’s little bitch. Astonishing weakness, I thought. And do you know, nothing angers me so much as weakness? Even here in Agaroth, on death’s doorstep, it enrages me. I had hoped to keep you alive. I wanted you there on the night of the Swarm, so that you would know what your weakness had made possible. You will have to use your imagination instead. The nothingness before you, the blackness closing in: that is the future of Alifros, Doctor. That is the world that you shall never see.”

  23

  Gifts and Curses

  12 Halar 942

  A silent canyon, blanketed in early snow. The chilly Parsua dances, gurgling, between cliffs that soar above two thousand feet. Black boulders stand in the river; pines struggle along the shore; farther from the water rise old oaks and ironwoods. Upriver there are waterfalls, where the gorge descends in jagged steps. High overhead, wisps of cloud scud across a narrow slab of sky the color of a robin’s egg.

  Stillness, sunlight, cold. A finch alights and vanishes again; a pinch of snow tumbles from a branch. The wind above the Parsua can scarcely be heard. Straining, one might fancy it carries sounds of violence, of horror, from some unthinkably distant land: sounds all but dissolved in the vast, consoling indifference of the air.

  Then a noise cuts through the morning: a desperate, clumsy sound like rough shears through wool. It grows nearer, louder. It is the sound of feet in snow.

  From upriver he appears: a youth, bloodied and in rags, his white breath puffing like smoke through his lips. He is running for his life, tumbling over snow-hidden rocks, careening through drifts. His gaze swings left and right, studying the cliffs that offer no cave or crevice, no place to hide. When he glances back over his shoulder it is with naked fear.