The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “—but we both know your bluff is empty. You cannot take the Nilstone through one of those doors. Living flesh is one thing, but death given form is quite another. The Stone will leave Alifros by one path only, and that is by the River of Shadows, where it falls into the Gurishal Abyss. Of course, that is why you are making for the island. That was Erithusmé’s plan from the start.”

  Felthrup pinched his eyes shut, rubbed his paws against his face. He was gasping a little; Pazel feared he had been beaten. Then the rat’s eyes opened wide and he shrilled, louder than ever:

  “How gravely, grossly, wantonly you wade in error, sorceress! Have you forgotten your great-uncle, Ikassam the Firelord? He knew a thing or two about journeys by night!”

  “He taught me the art, vermin. But how did you learn of him?”

  “In a book, in a book, a special book you may not borrow. Ikassam the Firelord, the tamer of beasts. His brother was your grandfather, and said that you should be hanged, and instead you hanged him. His father crossed the Ruling Sea and married the queen of Opalt, and their grandson had the tail of a pig.”

  “Turn your ship, Captain,” said Macadra.

  “You may ask what this has to do with giving you the Nilstone,” Felthrup went on, gesticulating with his paws. “Everything, everything! For who are you but the product of your history? And who are we but the servants of our own? And this transaction, this epochal surrender you seek—someone must understand it, record it, write it down for the sake of history. And what of Sathek?”

  “Sathek?” shrieked Macadra, staring down at him again.

  “Yes, yes—no. Sathek himself is not the point. But his scepter! Who can forget? Your Raven Society tried to steal it, just as you did the Nilstone, three times in six centuries, and Arunis makes four, last year on the Isle of Simja. He had a demonic servant too, and sent it to make off with the scepter, but instead our wonderful Neda used it to bludgeon the little demon to death—I was under the chair, the chair!”

  Felthrup was squealing and hopping and running circles around her boots. Macadra seemed appalled and transfixed.

  “Orfuin’s chair, I was beneath it, I say! Not a rat, not a rodent, I was the little wriggly thing, the yddek, Arunis called me a masterpiece of ugliness, Orfuin invited you to gingerbread and you ignored him, you went on scheming, but you schemed in bad faith, bad faith, bringing two servants with you instead of coming alone, now again you make promises, how can we ignore such evidence, Macadra, some of us have a sense of history and this, this is a HISTORY OF DUPLICITOUS INTRIGUE—”

  Macadra wrenched her eyes away from Felthrup. Pazel did the same, and only then did he realize that five hundred sailors had quietly set their hands to the ropes. Pitfire, thought Pazel, the wind—

  “HEAVE BOYS! IT’S NOW OR NEVER!” screamed Fiffengurt.

  The wind was turning, swinging round to blow from the east, and gaining strength by the second. Roaring in unison, the men hurled themselves at the brace-lines, scrabbling for purchase on the heaving deck. The augrongs heaved alongside the humans, bellowing like bulls. The masts groaned; the huge squaresails turned; Fiffengurt and Elkstem all but leaped upon the wheel.

  The Great Ship came violently about, rolling deep on her starboard quarter. “That’s what I like!” cried Fiffengurt with a cockeyed grin. Men aloft swung like marionettes; those on deck seized the nearest fixed objects and held fast. Pazel snatched up Felthrup; Ramachni sheltered between Thasha’s feet. Only Macadra did not sway: her feet touched the boards so lightly she almost seemed to float like a tethered balloon.

  The ship made her turn, leveled out, and began to fly downwind. “Shore up those stays, Fegin!” roared the captain. “We’re in a ripper and we mean to ride ’er like one!”

  Suddenly Macadra charged at Fiffengurt, hands raised before her like talons. But Ramachni was faster. He leaped from the deck straight at Macadra. Just before his claws reached her, however, she vanished without a trace. Ramachni twisted in midair and landed on his feet.

  “Ha! I expected that. Macadra was never truly here: we were addressing a phantom. But her mind certainly was here—and what a fine job you did of keeping it occupied, Felthrup, my lad. You need no weapon but words.”

  “Another minute and I should have been forced to improvise,” said Felthrup.

  “But where did this mad wind come from?” cried Pazel.

  “Ah, Pathkendle, you were distracted too!” said Fiffengurt, laughter in his voice. “We saw, didn’t we, Ramachni? Two albatrosses. Two lovely birds moving like avenging angels, but hardly flapping their wings. Coasting, that is, due west along the edge of the storm. If we’re lucky, and I think we are, then we’ll find this wind’s gushing right through the gap ahead, like a breeze through a window.”

  The ship was now racing west, and when the log was tossed the midshipman cried out their speed: eighteen knots.

  “Eighteen’s grand, but we’ll see twenty-eight when Fegin’s done, boys. There’s still two reefs to let out.”

  “The Death’s Head will catch the wind too, soon enough,” said Kirishgán.

  “Aye,” said Fiffengurt, “but she won’t catch us. Not before we reach that gap.”

  A shout went up; a hand pointed forward. There! Pazel saw it, twelve or thirteen miles out: a ragged, roiling edge to the scarlet light.

  “What if she follows us through the gap?” asked Elkstem.

  After a moment’s pause, Thasha said, “She won’t.”

  She descended the quarterdeck ladder, and Pazel followed. Most of their friends were still gathered below. “Warn the crew,” Thasha told them. “Tell everyone to brace for a shock. I’m going to put an end to this.”

  “Stay with her, Pathkendle,” said Hercól.

  The next moment a shock did come, although Thasha had nothing to do with it.

  “FIRE! FIRE! ENEMY ORDNANCE!”

  Everyone flinched. Pazel looked back: the Death’s Head was wreathed in smoke. Then the sound reached them: clustered explosions, ten or twelve strong.

  “Hold fast to your stations!” roared Fiffengurt, swinging his telescope skyward. “You can’t run, lads, you can only keep the blessed ship running! Think what Captain Rose would say if—”

  He choked on the words, a look of disbelief washing over his face. “Aloft there, lookout! Those are no fireballs! What in the Pits are they throwing?”

  “SWEET TEARS OF RIN, CAPTAIN! I CAN’T TELL YOU, BUT THEY’RE ALMOST—”

  “TAKE COVER! TAKE COVER!”

  Something slammed into Pazel, lifting him right off his feet. It was Hercól. He had tackled Pazel and Thasha both, knocking them flat upon the deck. From above came a scream like cannon fire—but not quite like cannon fire. Pazel twisted his head around and looked up. Through the netting he saw a dozen black, undulating shapes fly over the Chathrand, missing her. Then a roar went up from the topmen. A shadow fell. Close at hand something began to sizzle, and then Hercól gave an enormous lurch and rolled with Pazel and Thasha clutched tight in his arms.

  They came to rest in a dogpile with Neeps and Neda and half a dozen sailors. Pazel looked back where they had lain. A huge, viscous black glob hung suspended in the battle nets, eight feet above the deck. It smoked and stank of burning tar. Large droplets oozed and separated and fell bubbling upon the deck.

  More cries from aloft. Pazel looked and saw that one of the projectiles had struck the main topsail and splattered like an enormous black egg.

  Night Gods, what sort of weapon—?

  Then he understood. The tar was running down the sail—and devouring it, like acid. It took just seconds: where the white flax had been there was a lengthening hole.

  Fiffengurt stood waving his arms, howling: “Cut the mainsail free! Get it out of there!”

  Too late: the sticky mass had reached the foot of the topsail. The cloth split. Black tar poured down upon the mainsail, the largest canvas on the ship.

  Farther forward, there were howls of agony. Two more tar-bombs had land
ed near the forecastle, coating some twenty men in scalding tar. Pazel shut his eyes. No hope. Their screams like knives to his brain.

  “Where are the Gods-damned fire-teams?” bellowed Coote.

  “Thasha, Pathkendle: go!” shouted Hercól. “We will do what we can here, but I fear it will not be enough. We have just lost half our speed.”

  “She’s going to lose more than speed,” said Thasha. With that she was gone, racing down the Silver Stair, and Pazel was rising, stumbling after her, shouting her name.

  “Be careful, damn it!”

  She was well ahead of him. Pazel wasn’t sure what he was afraid of—would she forget to drink the wine before she touched the Stone, would she hold it too long in her fury?—but he knew that if he wasn’t beside her in the crucial moment he would never forgive himself. Down the Silver Stair he plunged, through mobs of rushing sailors, through the Money Gate, along the passage of abandoned luxury chambers, through the invisible wall.

  Thasha’s dogs were barking. She was already in the stateroom; she had left the door ajar.

  “Thasha, Thasha! Wait!”

  She screamed. A wordless agony. Pazel thought his heart would stop. He flew into the chamber and thrashed toward her cabin, only to collide with her in the doorway as she tried to exit again, still screaming.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m a mucking fool, that’s what’s wrong! The key, the silver key! I can’t get to the Nilstone without it. Do you have it?”

  “Me?”

  “When I was poisoned, did you—”

  “No. I’ve never touched it.”

  Thasha tore at her hair. “Marila. Oh, Pitfire. I gave it to Marila—didn’t I?”

  Back to the topdeck, faster than they had descended. The bombardment had stopped. Were they reloading? Heating more tar? Whatever had caused the delay, the Chathrand was still moving, however erratically, toward the gap. But now the Death’s Head had caught the ripping wind along the Storm’s edge, and was coming up behind them with terrible speed.

  “What do you mean you don’t have it? Marila!”

  Thasha’s cry was soon echoed by Neeps, who seized his wife by the shoulders.

  “You can’t have mucking lost it!”

  “Lost it! I never had it!”

  “On the table! I saw it on the table by the biscuit tin!”

  “That was days ago, fool!”

  What could they do? All four charged back to the stateroom, with Neda and Bolutu and Felthrup in tow. Pazel heard the first cannon-shots as he entered the chambers: the Death’s Head was close enough to try conventional fire now. The dogs howled, frightened less by the explosions than the onslaught of people (shouting, frustrated, furious) who set about tearing the stateroom apart. Pazel himself did not know where they had all come from: Mr. Druffle was here, bug-eyed, reeking of rum; Myett and Ensyl were searching every inch of the floor.

  “It has to be in Thasha’s cabin!”

  “Or the master bedroom. We were all there, she was dying—”

  “Someone went for towels—”

  “Chadfallow’s bag—”

  “If you say biscuit tin one more time—”

  Thasha was already holding the bottle of the Agaroth wine. “Just calm down and think,” she shouted. “Who does remember holding it, that night?”

  CRASH.

  Horror. A direct hit on the wardroom, just below. Glass, chairs, timbers atomized; Pazel felt the shot burst through the compartment wall and carry on into the lower gun deck, heard the screams of the men on the chaser-guns. They had yet to fire a single volley.

  Another hit: the rigging, this time. The Chathrand pitched; the room heaved skyward. Thasha stumbled, cradling the bottle to her chest.

  “Gods damn it, people! Where’s that key? You can’t all have never touched it!”

  BOOM. A third hit, horribly close, maybe just above the master bedroom. From the latter, Bolutu and Neda cried out. Through the open doorway, Pazel saw part of the ceiling collapse.

  “Neda! Bolutu!” They staggered from the bedroom, choking but unhurt. Dust and smoke billowed from the doorway. It was the chart room that had been hit, and its ruined contents had just collapsed into the master bedchamber.

  “Thank the Gods the chart room was deserted,” said Ensyl.

  “Oh, no,” said Neeps. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  “What is it?” said Pazel. “Did you remember something?”

  “Maybe I had the key.”

  “Maybe?”

  Neeps looked at them in panic. “I had it.” He gestured at the smoking doorway. “I put it down on the bed, when Thasha was waking up. I didn’t think about it. I was so glad she was alive.”

  Marila’s glare could have melted an anchor-plate. “Just be glad you are, because when this is done I’m going to kill you.”

  She charged into the bedroom. The others followed on her heels.

  On the topdeck all was mayhem. Eight sails had been destroyed, and the bow was digging deep after each wave: they were in danger of foundering. The Death’s Head had come within three miles, and dlömic soldiers were already mustering on her deck. Somehow the Chathrand was still weaving toward the gap in the Storm.

  Three hits at three miles, thought Captain Fiffengurt. Tree of Heaven, they’ve got fine gunners aboard. But so have we. Drop us a mast, Mr. Byrd.

  They were firing back at last. The mad pitch of the Chathrand—bow dropping, stern lifting like a pump handle—had forced the men at the stern chasers to Rin-knew-what sort of alterations to the gun carriages, and the strange angle would do nothing for their aim. Still, there was hope, and every shot fired was a taste of it. And the gap was drawing near.

  If only their mage … No, it wasn’t right to ask more of Ramachni. He stood abaft the wheelhouse, gazing fixedly at the Death’s Head, with the selk man attending him silently. Not a safe place for either of them, as Fiffengurt had already pointed out. He glanced at the Silver Stair. Where are you, Thasha? Now would be a dandy time.

  “Why haven’t they thrown more tar?” demanded Lady Oggosk. She had hobbled out in the midst of the carnage and demanded to be helped onto the quarterdeck. She never did like to miss out on a massacre.

  “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe they threw all they carried. But there’s a monster gun on that forecastle, and it ain’t fired a shot. I hate the sight of it, I must say.”

  “What does it do?”

  “For the love of Rin, Duchess, do you think I’m keeping it a secret?”

  Elkstem actually laughed. Fiffengurt wished he hadn’t; the man’s eyes were a bit unhinged. Then Kirishgán stepped into the wheelhouse. “The gun throws fire, Captain,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Liquid fire. I have seen such devices slaughter a whole ship’s company in minutes, from a distance of five or six hundred yards.”

  Fiffengurt swallowed. “There’s ten or twelve bastards working it right now.”

  The selk nodded. “They are preparing.”

  Meanwhile the Death’s Head kept blasting away with her bow chasers. Fiffengurt watched a ball shatter the crests of two waves, and in the same instant felt the thump as it struck near the keel: heart-sickening, but no death-blow. The waves had slowed the ball, and the cloudcore oak had shrugged it off.

  What if it had missed those mucking waves?

  He gazed at his ship, saw five hundred sailors at a glance. He was fairly certain he knew all their names. Don’t think of them burning. Don’t see it. Of course he saw it with terrible vividness, the scorched and writhing bodies of these boys who had never given up, whom all these months had not broken, these lads who trusted him with their lives.

  “Your weapons cannot pierce their armor,” said Kirishgán.

  “Our carronades might.”

  But the big carronades were not stern-mounted, and could not be moved in time. Another error. Fiffengurt bit the knuckle of his thumb. What, then? Smoke shots, to foul their aim? Useless in such a wind. Dump the fresh water, gain some speed? No, it would n
ot be enough.

  Turn into the Storm?

  He could still do it. One more tack, hard to starboard, straight into that scarlet light. Even if the Death’s Head followed they would be unable to attack. The light was blinding, though it inflicted no damage or pain. And based on what they’d met with on the southward journey, there was no reason to expect rough weather. Only a falling forward, a plunge through time.

  Cross that line, and lose everything. Give the order, and never again see Anni, never know your child.

  Another boom, and Fiffengurt saw a man plucked from the rigging and carried by the iron ball out over the sea. He fell at least three hundred yards off the bow. Something Fiffengurt had never seen in all his years of sailing.

  Then Kirishgán pointed back at the Death’s Head. “There! Look there! Arpathwin has done it!”

  Fiffengurt raised his telescope. The enemy ship’s forecastle was burning. Tall flames surrounded the giant gun and trickled back along both rails. Men scattered and fell, their bodies like torches. Several hurled themselves into the sea.

  “That is your mage’s work,” said Kirishgán. “He was searching for the minds of those gunners, and he found them. He knew he could not affect them greatly, or for long. But one does not need long: only a brief confusion, with matches and that horrible fuel.”

  The flame trickled down the vessel’s armored sides. The cannon stopped firing. The jibsail burst into flames, and then the flying jib above it. But the flames spread no farther. Already a large team was dousing the blaze.

  Ramachni came back to the wheelhouse. “Bless your soul, you’ve delivered us,” shouted Fiffengurt.

  “Not for long,” said the mage. “After this attack, Macadra will not even pretend to offer quarter. Nor will she permit any further mind-assaults. How soon will we reach the gap?”

  “If we’re not slowed further, thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes!” cried Oggosk. “In thirty minutes that sorceress will be standing here in our place, or this boat will be in splinters.”

  She was right. Fiffengurt saw it, the next fifteen or twenty minutes, the several forms that ruin could take.

  New explosions; new shots screaming by like furies. They had recovered already.