The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  She dived twice more. Then I unhooked the lamp & dropped her the chain. The first tug nearly broke my back—that babe will surely be a giant, parents notwithstanding—but there was no choice, I was going to haul her out or die trying. I fought for inches. There was no good footing; the chain snagged on the edge of the hatch. Just when I feared to disgrace myself by dropping her back into the bilge, out she came: a stinking, beautiful seal. I wrapped my coat around her. In the sack were forty gold cockles & a silver Heaven’s Tree with gems for fruit.

  [Two hours later]

  Something is amiss with the little people. This afternoon Lord Talag & the two islanders returned once again, & as usual there was a crowd of ixchel waiting to depart. But as the swallows descended Talag suddenly began barking orders. We couldn’t hear the words, of course—it was all in ixchel-speak—& I dare say his native escorts didn’t fully understand them either. But his own clan did. At Talag’s first word they scattered in all directions, & in a matter of seconds they were gone below.

  Talag brought the birds swooping down, but his gestures were different this time, more erratic, & the flock surged about in confusion. The islanders were suddenly outraged, screaming & threatening; one even waved a knife. Talag appeared to be protesting his helplessness. But after a moment he reassembled the flock, & the three flew back across the bay.

  At my elbow, Sergeant Haddismal turned & gave me an accusing look. “What are yer little darlings up to now?”

  “Talag’s no friend to me and never has been,” I snapped. “But Stath Bálfyr’s not workin’ out like he planned?”

  “Oh, ho,” said Haddismal. “And how do you know that?”

  “By that scene, of course. By his blary face.”

  “You can’t read a crawly’s face. And what’s this plan you’re talking about?”

  “I’m not talking about any plan! What I mean is, they’re fighting, or arguing at least. So maybe these islanders didn’t greet their brothers with wide-open arms.”

  Haddismal cracked the knuckles of his enormous hands. “If they’re fighting, let ’em fight on. Let ’em bleed! I’d step on ’em one by one if I could.”

  “Gods damn it, tinshirt, they ain’t all the same! Talag’s a lunatic, and his son’s a fool, but Lady Dri was—”

  “Scum!”

  I jumped a foot in the air. It was Sandor Ott. The snake had slithered up behind me.

  “What is happening?” he hissed. “What message did Talag pass to his clansmen, just now?”

  “How should I know? Do I have crawly ears?”

  “Tell us of their plan, Fiffengurt.”

  At that my self-control just snapped, & I raised my eyes to heaven: “I DO NOT KNOW THEIR PLAN. I DO NOT KNOW THAT THEY EVEN POSSESS A PLAN. I AM NO BETTER INFORMED THAN YOU, YOU OLD—”

  His arm moved in a blur. I felt a sharp sting beneath my good eye & recoiled. He had drawn his white knife & cut me, with a surgeon’s precision, just deep enough to break the skin.

  “If I learn that you have conspired with the crawlies again, I will kill you, and slaughter that whore Marila like a pig. Do not imagine my threat is as empty as the sorcerer’s. It will be done.”

  Saturday, 7 Fuinar 942

  All day there is eerie silence from Stath Bálfyr. Then at dusk a man on the foremast reports hearing a strange echo: maybe a trumpet, maybe the bellow of some forest beast. Ott’s own beastly instincts are surely triggered, for he persuades Rose to roll out the guns & flood the deck with Turachs. The drums sound, the officers scream; the men & tarboys fall terrified into their practiced roles.

  And nothing happens. The night grows dark & chill. Hours pass, the gunnery crews crouch drowsy by their weapons. Rose paces, stem to stern. I too am on deck & waiting, for what I cannot say.

  It comes at six bells, three o’clock in Rin’s blessed morning. But it is not the attack we fear. No, it is only the swallows again, swooping down for another group of ixchel. This time the exodus begins on the quarterdeck, not the forecastle. Men start to race there, who knows why. I hear bellows from the soldiers in the lead.

  I’m halfway to the bow but make a run for it. I see Ott far ahead. “Alive!” he’s shouting. “Take them alive! Catch them, sweep them up, you slow-arsed dogs!”

  When I draw near I see that Talag has come from ashore without his minders, & with a much larger flock of birds. On the quarterdeck, hundreds of ixchel are waiting to leap into their claws. They are earnest & grim. No sense of victory here. Every last man & woman is armed to the teeth.

  The Turachs have nets. Someone—Ott, Rose?—has commanded them to prevent this exodus, lest we find ourselves holding no hostages, & thus no cards. But the ixchel have mostly slipped through our fingers. Maybe a dozen get nabbed, or crushed underfoot,19 but the bulk of the clan flows straight up the rails & rigging, like beads of oil drawn magically skyward, & the urgent swallows pluck them & make off across the bay, with Talag circling, shouting them on.

  Ere they vanish I catch one glimpse of his face. For an instant I think he is disfigured: something (an ear, an eye?) has surely been ripped away. Then I realize it’s nothing physical. It’s his confidence that has ruptured, his certainty. And that is a thousand times crueler in Lord Talag, that colossus of pride. He is still fighting, still leading his people somewhere, & furiously, but the reason behind it is gone.

  Monday, 9 Fuinar 942

  Marila has come running. The Green Door has appeared on the mercy deck, & Felthrup’s mind cannot be changed. We are to meet there at once, to bargain with a creature of the Pits.

  17. The mariner’s fashion refers to a solution of vinegar and potash, to which any of the following may be added, in any concentration: alum, arsenic, germanium, fluid styrax, ambergris, flowers of sulphur, cedria, wood aloe, xanath gum, sapwort, capsicum, turpentine, walrus oil. Results, to no educated person’s surprise, are at best erratic. —EDITOR

  18. And within a few yards of the spot where Myett attempted suicide, after Lord Taliktrum abandoned her and the Chathrand. —EDITOR

  19. Here Fiffengurt scribbles in the margin: Remember it, the savagery of your own kind, a woman crushed beneath a soldier’s boot-heel, the crackle of bones & the woman protruding only from the waist up, screaming, screaming until she faints or dies, & not the least whisper of her agony could my human ears discern. Is this why we murder them, why we find them so easy to kill? —EDITOR

  25

  The Flight of the Promise

  25 Halar 942

  Her figurehead was a white horse, and its flowing mane swept back in delicate whorls along the prow. Thasha sat beneath it on the little platform that fronted the keel. Dawn light on her face, salt stinging her eyes. Before her was a spread of countless islets, drops of wax on the vast blue cloth of ocean. Thasha was murmuring a song that had come to her in a dream. Leheda mori che gathri gel, leheda mori arú. A melancholy song, she imagined. A song of farewell.

  The Promise was a swift, sleek three-master. Like the selk who built her, she somehow conveyed the presence of another world, or perhaps a version of this world governed by subtly different laws. There was a stillness about her, even as she rose and plunged on the waves. Her sides were painted silver, her masts and spars of a pale white wood such as Thasha had never seen. Her crescent sails were the blue-white of the mountain peaks behind them. Yet all these colors shifted slightly with the changing sun or clouds, as if the Promise were trying to blend in, to vanish against the sea and sky.

  You know what we’re facing, don’t you? Thasha asked the ship in silence. You know we’re a rabbit among wolves.

  She was far too small for the Ruling Sea. But Nólcindar, who captained her, had assured the travelers that she was ready for any waves to be found here in the Island Wilderness—and as fast as any boat in Bali Adro.

  Just as well, Thasha had reflected, for the Promise was no fighter. There were gunports, but no guns: the selk had long ago chosen lightness over force. But the crew looked forceful enough: twenty selk and tw
enty dlömu, the former from Nólcindar’s band, the latter fishermen from the tiny villages that were all the barren coast could support.

  The fishermen were a restrained, self-conscious lot: Thasha had yet to see one smile. The presence of Prince Olik left many speechless with awe, but the selk affected them even more profoundly. They were indebted to the people of Uláramyth for some deed long ago. Thasha gathered that it was this debt that had saved them, for when they looked at the humans the fishermen’s looks grew dark.

  “They are what they seem,” Prince Olik had explained. “They are human beings, such as the oldest among you may recall from childhood. You need not fear them.”

  “We do not fear them,” said the leader of the fishermen. “But two days ago the Platazcra was here, with a warship many times larger than the Promise. This was no surprise: they often snatch our ablest sons for crew, or for darker work in Orbilesc. But this time they had another purpose. They spoke of tol-chenni who had recovered from the plague: human beings who could think and talk, like men. They swore they were unnatural, and aided by criminals and traitors from Masalym.”

  “Such names the mighty have always given their enemies, and always will,” said Kirishgán.

  The fishermen went on staring. “Tell them the rest, Jannar,” growled a voice from the back of the crowd.

  Their leader’s face was grim. “We were told,” he said, “that should we aid the tol-chenni, or even fail to keep them here, we would all be killed, after seeing our children burned alive.”

  Silence fell. Prince Olik and Lunja bowed their heads in shame.

  “Those prepared to issue such threats will also be prepared to act on them,” said Nólcindar. “I am sorry we came to you in this way. Of course, you must try to keep us, and we must fight and flee you, who have been our brothers so long.”

  The dlömic fishermen had bristled.

  “You do not understand,” said their leader. “They have tortured us already, robbed us of our children, poisoned the very fish we eat. But things were different once. We came here starving, out of the Wastes of Siralaç, and food appeared at the margins of our camps, and medicines that saved our children. We settled here, and in two years there were nut-trees sprouting in the clefts of the headlands, and fruiting vines. Whose gifts were those, Nólcindar? And when we were besieged, who came to us with blue steel burning, and put our enemies to flight? We are poor, and our numbers have dwindled, but we will never break faith with the selk. Your boat is waiting as it ever has been, in that cove no Imperial eyes have ever seen.”

  Their plan, it appeared, was to abandon their villages before Macadra’s forces could return. Thasha did not know how they would flee—by land, by boat?—or what havens they might find when they arrived. Nor did the fishermen themselves know where the Promise was bound.

  Safer that way, Thasha mused. Any of us could end up in Macadra’s hands.

  It had not been easy to escape the Coves. The fishermen had sent out scouting vessels, and placed lookouts on the headlands, peering into the darkness of the Gulf. For six hours the Promise had stood ready, every soul aboard waiting tensely for the all-clear signal. When at last it came they raced to their stations, and the ghostly vessel glided out from the dark cliffs and swept north by starlight.

  The Gulf was not actually empty; it was never empty, this close to the Imperial heartland. There were large vessels to the south, and beyond them a fell light over the shore, as of a bonfire of poisonous things. Another pool of light, due west, was so large that Thasha took it at first for an army encamped on an island. Then (her stomach lurched) she saw that the island was moving, crawling southward like a monstrous centipede over the waves. Glowing shapes wheeled above it, and sudden flares like heat lightning illuminated its flanks. She did not know it then, but she was looking at the same Behemoth that had attacked the Chathrand, groping its way back to Orbilesc to fill its maw again with coal and slaves and sailors.

  Eleven days had passed since their departure from Ilidron. Behind them lay the charted islands, claimed by Bali Adro and heavily patrolled, no longer a true wilderness at all. Ahead lay the sprawling, uncharted northern archipelagos—and the Chathrand, as Ildraquin’s whispers to Hercól still confirmed. For a week they had been skipping and sneaking through these little foggy isles, their beaches crowded with nesting birds, or seals that lay in the sunshine like cast-off coats. Eleven days, and dangers aplenty. Hardly had they left the Coves when a fierce squall tried to dash them on the lee shore. They had scraped off with the sand showing yellow between the breakers, and the wives and children of the fishermen in plain sight atop the cliffs, near enough to wave, but too horrified to do so. Two days later a warship had risen up suddenly from the east, flashing an order to hold position. Of course Nólcindar had declined the invitation: the Promise had fled, and been chased as far as the Redvane before losing their pursuers in a fog bank.

  “We escaped,” Prince Olik had murmured to the youths, “but this is a disaster all the same. For they were close enough to see us—to see selk and dlömu working the ship together. Macadra will hear of this in no time.”

  Nólcindar appeared to be of the same opinion, for that night they played a desperate trick: sailing the Promise through the narrowest gap in the Sandwall. The long barrier islands were breached in many spots, but the Empire kept close watch on all the larger, permanent inlets. That left only the shifting channels, washed open by one storm or cyclone and closed by the next.

  “And even these may be guarded,” Prince Olik warned. “It would be a simple matter of dispatching a few more boats from Masalym, or Fandural Edge.”

  So it had proved. The waterway was tiny and twisting, barely wide enough for the Promise to make her turns. And yet a dozen soldiers were encamped there, and two had enormous, feline mounts.

  “Sand cats,” Bolutu declared, frowning into the telescope. “Sicuñas bred for desert work. They’ll run fast along the beach.”

  “To some larger outpost, maybe,” said Prince Olik, “or to a signal-point. Either way we cannot let them go.”

  The fishermen were in clear distress. “What do you mean to do, Prince?” asked their leader.

  But it was Hercól who answered, not at all proudly: “We shall ambush them,” he said, “like thieves in the night.”

  When darkness fell they brought the Promise to within three miles of the Sandwall. They tied swords and knives up in canvas, and the canvas to floats made of cork. Then some twenty selk and dlömic fighters began to undress and slip down ropes into the waves. Prince Olik and Lunja went with them, and so did Neda and Hercól.

  Thasha too prepared for the assault, tying back her hair and starting to undress. But when Hercól took notice he caught her roughly by the arm.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “Have you forgotten everything? Have the tarboys and I been talking to thin air?”

  “You blary well know I can fight.”

  “Irrelevant,” he snapped. “If we lose you we shall very probably lose this whole endeavor. Cover yourself, girl, and step back.”

  “Girl, am I?”

  “You will stay aboard, Thasha Isiq. We need another sort of strength from you.”

  He was trying to avert his eyes. Thasha knew with sudden certainty that she had aroused him, and that the distraction made him furious. She crossed her arms over her chest. Hercól was right, this was unforgivable, what in Pitfire was wrong with her?

  “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “It’s just—fighting feels easier than—”

  “Than freeing Erithusmé? I’m not surprised.”

  He still would not look at her. He had scars on his torso that she had never seen.

  “Do you recall what Ramachni said at the Temple of the Wolves?” he asked suddenly. “About how quickly the Swarm is gaining strength? How long do we have before it covers Alifros, do you suppose? How many nights, before the night that never ends?”

  He climbed over the rail, naked but for Ildraquin and a cloth about his hips.
“We can’t lose you, either,” she stammered. “I mean I can’t. You know that, don’t you?”

  He made no reply, not even a smile or a frown. He just dived. Thasha stood there with her shirt open, watching the swimmers vanish in the dark. When she was barely of age she had dreamed that Hercól would touch her, take her, in the study or the garden or the little scrub room where she changed before their fighting lessons. Gently or furiously, silently or with whispers of love. She had never quite renounced those dreams, but they had fled somewhere so distant as to become almost chaste, part of the love she felt for the man, a love that was nothing at all like her love for Pazel, which could blind and devour her. To lose either of them—how could she survive that? And what if no one else survived? What if she were left alone?

  It could happen. Erithusmé might give her a way out that was closed to everyone else. Could the world be so cruel as to force her to take it?

  But Hercól had not fallen that night, and neither had Lunja or Neda. The Bali Adrons, surprised and outnumbered and bewildered at the sight of Prince Olik, mostly obeyed his call to surrender, and those who did not were quickly subdued. The sicuña-riders sped to their mounts and tried to flee westward, but Neda and Lunja were ready and waiting. Racing down from a dune-top, they leaped and tackled the riders, battling both men to the ground.

  Only two died in the operation: Neda’s rider, who fought to the death; and one of the dlömic fishermen, who was bringing up the rear as the raiders swam back to the Promise. The man simply disappeared. The captured warriors spoke of sharks, hunting along the inside of the Sandwall. Hercól nodded grimly. “We have met with them before. And this time there was blood in the water.”

  There was one other casualty: Lunja’s cheek, raked by the claws of the sicuña. The beast had whirled on her in fright when she tackled its rider, before the selk arrived and calmed the creature with a touch. Thasha winced at the sight: the wounds were pale and livid on her blacker-than-black dlömic skin. Later, as the Promise moved cautiously through the gap, Thasha heard Neeps and Lunja talking in the shadows.