The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Then Niriviel swept down out of the sky. “I could not warn you,” he cried, hovering. “Those creatures have never emerged by daylight. We did not know what we faced.”

  “Never mind,” shouted Hercól. “But tell us, brother, has Fiffengurt prepared the ship? Is she ready for the Ruling Sea?”

  “The Ruling Sea!” cried Niriviel. “You do not know what you are saying. The crawly lunatics will never let us depart. Can you not see them, riding on the heads of the monsters ashore?”

  “Riding them!” said Ramachni. “Well, there is the secret of Stath Bálfyr’s defenses: the ixchel have tamed the drachnars, or at least allied with them to fight intruders. No, falcon, our eyes cannot match your own. But hurry, now: back to the Chathrand. Tell Fiffengurt to start weighing anchor, if he has not begun already.”

  “I will tell him,” said Niriviel, “but there is no way out of this bay.”

  The falcon departed. Pazel glanced over his shoulder at the Chathrand, caught Thasha’s eye, and forced himself to smile. Whatever lay ahead, they were almost home.

  Two of the dlömic swimmers returned to the boat. They were clearly weakened, and once they were aboard Thasha saw that they were bleeding from many spots. “Bandages, Undrabust!” shouted Hercól. “You two: are no others hurt?”

  “How could we know?” they said. “In dark water it is hard to judge your own wounds, let alone someone else’s. But Lunja must have had the worst of it, for she led us through that coral maze.”

  “Then she should come in!” cried Neeps.

  “So we told her. But she paid no attention.”

  “The Chathrand is lowering a skiff,” said Ramachni, gazing ahead. “We must see the wounded aboard first—and then the Nilstone, and Thasha. Pazel, you must go too, since Erithusmé bid you escort her, and— Oh, fiends beneath us, no!”

  On either side of the boat, dark fins sliced the water. They were sharks: the same gray, man-sized creatures that had trailed the serpent off Cape Lasung. But these sharks were not following any serpent. They were following blood.

  Everyone in the boat howled a warning. Someone among the swimmers must have heard, for they all broke formation, and then began to pull for their lives.

  “They’ll be slaughtered!” cried Neeps. Hercól stood and raised his bow.

  “Put that away, are you mad?” cried Ramachni, leaping onto the prow. “Cut the swimmers free, and row on!” With that the little mink launched himself from the prow, and took owl-form before his body could strike the waves.

  Hercól drew his knife and slashed at the ropes. He was leaning far over the prow, and Thasha clung desperately to his belt, terrified that he too would fall among the sharks.

  “Who’s that one, what’s he doing?” cried Pazel.

  Thasha squinted: one of the dlömu was peeling away from the rest—and the sharks were following. As they had done off Lasung, the creatures hunted in a tight school that never divided. It seemed that terror had overcome one swimmer, who must have expected the sharks to follow the larger group. But who knew how that collective mind made its choices? The lead shark reached the swimmer, and Thasha saw the dlömu turn and open its arms—a gesture strangely like an embrace. Thasha closed her eyes for an instant; when she looked again the swimmer was gone.

  Ramachni passed over the sharks, folded his wings, and dived.

  The dlömu were making for the Chathrand with what remained of their strength. But now the sharks turned like a single body, resuming the attack. The lifeboat fell farther behind. Neeps was almost sobbing as he cried Lunja’s name.

  Suddenly a change came over the water around the sharks. At first Thasha could not tell what it was. Then she knew: the water was boiling. Seconds later it was turning to lethal steam.

  Oh, thank the Gods. Ramachni was surfacing, in eguar form, and the unimaginable heat of his body was literally vaporizing the sea. They could see him, a dark monstrosity suspended in foam; and they could smell the sulphuric fumes. The nearest sharks were killed instantly; those behind swam on, blood-maddened, to their deaths. Many scattered in confusion, but they never regrouped and pressed the attack. In another minute the first dlömu were hauling themselves into the skiff that bobbed by the Chathrand’s side.

  The beast that was Ramachni kept its distance, but its white-hot eyes blazed at them out of the steam. “Row on!” cried Hercól. “Our mage himself is in some danger, I fear—else he would not turn those eyes upon us.”

  At last they neared the ship. High above, men were laboring at the capstan, raising the skiff and the wounded dlömu to the deck. Then a high voice rang out over the water:

  “Triumph! Triumph! Triumph! Triumph! Triumph!”

  Thasha looked up and burst into tears of joy. Fiffengurt and Marila were waving from the rail, shouting their names over and over. The mastiffs were baying to raise the dead, their paws and faces appearing and vanishing again. Suddenly Fiffengurt turned and beckoned, and a mob, a throng rushed the rail, cheered them, bellowed at last without reservations, without divisions or doubt. And through it all she could still hear Felthrup, hysterical, squeaking Triumph! as though it were the only word he knew.

  Ramachni, still in eguar form, raced away from them at high speed. “Where in the Nine Pits does he think he’s going?” asked Pazel. But at that instant the great, black form of the eguar vanished, and the small, helpless form of the mink took its place.

  “Gods of death, he is barely swimming!” said Bolutu. He stood and dived without another word, and swam powerfully toward the mage.

  “Don’t you understand?” said Thasha. “Ramachni had to be moving fast when he changed back. If he let the water heat around him he’d have been killed just like the sharks.”

  When Bolutu returned with his small burden, the mage was too exhausted even to stand. Thasha took him, tried to dry him with her shirt.

  The cheering went on and on. Soon the lifeboat from the Promise was snug in the davit-chains and rising up the Chathrand’s side. “That transformation has cost me,” said Ramachni. “I may recover my strength before I leave this world—but then again, I may not. You must not depend on me if it comes to fighting again.”

  “Just rest,” said Thasha. “We’ll do the fighting, next time.”

  Ramachni let his head drop onto her knee. “I believe you just might,” he said.

  The moment they cleared the rail, Neeps jumped to the deck and threw his arms around Marila. She had watched them ascend, wild-haired, round-bellied, hands in fists. She had screwed her face up into a frown, struggling desperately not to cry. Now he kissed her and the struggle ceased. Her arms went around her husband, and her loud, nasal sobs made Thasha understand why she tried so hard to repress her feelings at other times. Neeps laid a gentle hand on her stomach, and a look of wonder came over his face.

  Felthrup, for his part, had stopped shouting only because he too had been choked by tears. “Thasha, Thasha, you have been gone a lifetime. You have brought goodness back to this ship and redeemed her!”

  “Not yet, Felthrup dear.”

  “And you have done it, you have taken the Nilstone back from Arunis, and killed him!”

  “Felthrup! How did you know that?”

  “Arunis,” said the rat. “Oh, dear, there are volumes to tell—”

  “Rascals! Reprobates!” Fiffengurt was laughing, an arm around the neck of both tarboys, coating his uniform with soot. “Lady Thasha, how’d you manage to live so long with this pair of apes?”

  “How did you manage to keep the ship afloat without us?” said Pazel. Neeps was about to make a quip of his own, but his smile vanished when he looked at the wounded dlömu, who were being treated a short distance away by the tonnage hatch. The youths had been making their way to the dlömu to give them their thanks, and to help bind their wounds if they could. Hercól and Bolutu were already among them.

  Marila looked at Neeps’ face. “What is it?” she said.

  Neeps pulled away from Fiffengurt and ran ahead. He pressed amon
g the wounded, shouting. Then Hercól rose and took him by the shoulders.

  Neeps cried out, his voice sharp as a child’s, and covered his face with his hands. Marila turned to the others in a panic. “Someone’s died,” she said. “Who was it? Tell me, Thasha, for Rin’s sake!”

  Bolutu came and spoke to them. It was Lunja who had peeled off from the other swimmers. Not with the hope of saving herself, but because she knew the sharks would follow her, bleeding profusely as she was from her cuts on the reef. “That is the Bali Adro I remember, the way of love and sacrifice,” said Bolutu. “My brethren owe their lives to Sergeant Lunja as surely as to Ramachni.”

  “What about Neeps?” asked Marila. “Did she save his life too?”

  Yes, they told her, so swiftly that they sounded false. As though there were something to be ashamed of, some betrayal. Marila closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I want to hear it from him.”

  Thasha looked at Pazel. “The berth deck,” she said. “Take me right now. Before anything else happens.”

  “What could happen?”

  “Oh, Pazel, don’t say that! Just take me there, you buffoon.”

  “One thing first,” said Pazel. “I won’t be a minute, I swear.”

  He ran forward, skipping through the well-wishers who tried to stop and cheer him, who slapped his back and shouted, “Bravo, Muketch, you’re a wonder, you’re a man!” Then he raced down the Holy Stair and was gone.

  Thasha smiled. “He’s heading for sickbay,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me he’s ill,” said Marila.

  Thasha shook her head and laughed. “For once, he’s not. There’s nothing wrong with him at all.”

  A look of understanding, and deep dismay, came over Marila. She glanced at Fiffengurt, whose face had also darkened. Then she raced after Pazel, shouting his name.

  “Oh, missy,” said Fiffengurt. “There ain’t been time even to mention it yet. Dr. Chadfallow was murdered.”

  Tears, once more—how they could surprise one. She had never warmed to Chadfallow, but surely that would have changed. She knew Pazel loved the man, though he had spent half the voyage pretending otherwise.

  “Niriviel told us that there was just one doctor aboard,” she said. “I thought he meant that Dr. Rain didn’t count. Who killed him, Mr. Fiffengurt? Was it Ott?”

  “Oh, no,” said Fiffengurt. “That bastard’s in no position to hurt anybody. He’s got himself in a fix, and I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “Who did it, then? Who would kill a blary doctor?”

  Fiffengurt drew a deep breath. The weight of all that had transpired seemed etched in his dry and weary face, and Thasha knew that she would only ever grasp a part of it, that most of the tale would be lost.

  “Arunis,” said Fiffengurt.

  Shark bites were ragged, hideous things. Eleven dlömu had been attacked; one man was in danger of losing an arm. Neeps moved among them, his eyes red, cleaning wounds with an iodine solution someone had brought from the surgery. The survivors grinned morbidly, passing around a yellow, serrated tooth the size of a playing card. It had been extracted from a swimmer’s leg.

  At length Bolutu took the humans aside. “Your help is a blessing,” he said, “but another task awaits you. Go, and take the Nilstone, and do what my people fought and died to let you do. We have enough hands here.”

  “We must find Pathkendle first,” said Hercól.

  That was not hard: Pazel and Marila were seated in the passage outside sickbay, leaning against the wall. Pazel’s eyes were very red; Marila held his hand.

  Across from them, bearded now but otherwise unchanged, sat Jervik Lank. He jumped to his feet.

  “I wanted to greet you up top,” he said, “but the ward’s a handful, m’lady, and there weren’t nobody to cover for me.”

  “It’s horrible in there,” said Marila. “The beds are full of deathsmokers, strapped down so that they can’t hurt themselves. And others who’ve been knifed or beaten up. The gangs don’t have tactics anymore. They just hate each other, and the marines, and anyone who tries to stay neutral.”

  They too stood up, and Thasha put a hand on Pazel’s cheek. He smiled sadly at her. “It’s all right,” he said. “Ignus wasn’t my father, you know. Although in the end he’d have made a pretty good one.”

  “This ship’s gone mad,” said Jervik. “Until this morning, anyway. I could hear ’em cheering you, all the way down here. They did that for Rose, on New Year’s Day. But there ain’t been a blary moment since when the crew felt like a crew. You done a fine thing just by comin’ back.”

  “And you’ve helped save the ship we came back to,” said Thasha. “I’ll always be grateful for that. A lot of men would have just given up.”

  “A lot of men did,” said Marila.

  The older tarboy fairly glowed with their praise. “When a Lank makes up his mind to do something, he does it.” Then all at once he looked abashed. “No, no. That ain’t the truth. You know what my life’s been—the life of a great pig, eh, Muketch? I nearly killed you, once or twice.”

  “Forget it, mate,” said Pazel, barely listening. “We’ve all of us changed.”

  “Have we?” said Jervik. “You’re all still clever. And me—” He shrugged. “Ragweed don’t make roses, and dullards don’t grow wise. That’s me, ain’t it? You don’t have to pretend.”

  Marila stepped close to Jervik. She reached up and took hold of the tarboy’s jaw, which dropped in amazement. “Promise me something,” she said.

  “Wha?”

  “That you will never say that again. You’re not stupid. It’s a lie somebody told you, because they couldn’t mucking say you were weak. Spit it out.”

  There was a silence. Jervik’s eyes swiveled to the other tarboys.

  “If you want your chin back, you’d better promise,” said Neeps.

  Jervik blinked. “No lady never asked me for my word on nothin’,” he said. “But since you want it, well—I promise, Mrs. Undrabust. On my departed mother and the Blessed Tree.”

  The tarboys’ quarters were almost directly beneath sickbay. Neeps and Pazel slipped inside first. Thasha heard boys scrambling and swearing. “All right,” Neeps shouted. “Everyone’s dressed, after a fashion.”

  Within, the compartment was a maze of dark hammocks, dropped clothes, open footlockers, unwashed plates. Had inspections ceased, Thasha wondered, or just the consequences of failing them?

  There was only a handful of tarboys about. Among them were the twins, Swift and Saroo, who had been cold to Pazel and Neeps since the massacre of the ixchel. They were cold now, too.

  “Your whole gang’s back, is it?” said Saroo. “And your pal Mr. Fiffengurt’s in charge. You must be tickled pink.”

  “Just what the Chathrand needs,” added Swift, “another gang.”

  “Ease up, mates, they’re heroes, like,” said the freckle-faced Durbee, a tarboy from Besq.

  “Fiffengurt will make a good skipper,” said Neeps.

  “I suppose from now on you lot will decide what’s good and what’s bad,” said Swift.

  “We didn’t all make it, actually,” said Pazel. “Big Skip was killed, and Dastu. And nearly all the marines. And Cayer Vispek and Jalantri.”

  “The Mzithrinis,” said Neeps, when the tarboys looked blank.

  “Oh, them,” said Saroo. “Well, now. I don’t suppose even you cried much for a pair of blood-drinkers.”

  “The stanchion’s over here,” said Pazel, as if Saroo hadn’t said a word. Despite the twins’ hostility he had spoken with no rancor at all. Thasha felt an ache in her chest—just pride, just love for her friends. These tarboys were all roughly the same age, but how much older Pazel and Neeps seemed. And no wonder, she thought. Tear your heart and your body to pieces, bleed and burn and freeze and make love and lose love and kill—and heal just partly, and hide what will never heal. Then try it. Try to stay innocent, try to pretend you’re still the person you were.

  “
That’s my muckin’ post!” said Saroo, when Pazel stopped before the stanchion with the eight copper nails. “You can’t just come back and swipe it. You ain’t slept there in months.”

  “What’s the matter, Pathkendle?” said Swift. “Fleas in your girl’s brass bed?”

  Pazel drew his knife.

  “Pitfire, mate, there’s no cause for that!” said Durbee, jumping between them. But Pazel only reached up and cut the hammock rope around the upper part of the stanchion. He sheathed the knife and glanced at Thasha.

  “Erithusmé said you’d know what to do. Was she right?”

  Thasha looked at the copper nails. They were arranged in a half circle, with the open side facing the ceiling, like a cup or a bowl. She stepped nearer the rough wooden post, ran her fingers down its length. It felt like rock.

  “Mr. Fiffengurt says that’s one of the oldest bits of wood on this vessel,” said Durbee cautiously. “He says it was ancient when the boat was built. We all figured that’s why you had such good luck, Pazel. Because there was some sort of charm on it. And that’s why Saroo claimed it after you left.”

  “Aught good it’s done me, though,” grumbled Saroo.

  Thasha closed her eyes. Trying with all her might to listen, to heed the voice behind the wall. Almost of its own accord, her left hand slid up to the nail-heads.

  She hammered these herself. She laid power away for just such a moment.

  Her hand passed through the wood as if nothing were there.

  Swift and Saroo backed away in fright; Durbee made the sign of the Tree. Eyes still closed, Thasha found that the nails remained solid: she could feel them, suspended in the phantom wood. And just beyond them, more solid objects. Two of them. She closed her hand on the smaller and drew it out.

  It was a short, tarnished silver rod. One half was quite plain, the other scored with a complex set of notches and grooves.

  “What is it?” Pazel asked her. “Do you know?”