“I have never been otherwise in your presence, Sergeant. But I think you will find the commodore’s visit an act of providence. At least, I hope you will.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Darabik stood abruptly. His eyes were hawk-like in their ferocity: all pretense had dropped away. “It means,” he said, “that for years I have placed myself before men like you, and called on them to keep their oaths, not break them. To prove their courage and the hard steel of their loyalty—”
“Well, then—”
“—by daring to fight for the only one who, by law and Rin’s favor, deserves to sit in the Chamber of Ametrine. I mean Her Majesty the Empress, Maisa, daughter of Magad the Third. She lives, and many thousands of true Arqualis are fighting, bleeding, dying for her cause. We were not wrecked in a storm, Turach. We were fired upon by the warships of the Usurper, Magad the Fifth.”
Haddismal started forward, snarling. “Usurper! You’re speaking of His Supremacy, you traitorous son of a whore!”
“His Supremacy’s own grandfather named Maisa to the throne,” said Hercól quietly. “And your grandfathers, dare I remind you, swore an oath to that man.”
The Turach hesitated. He looked hard at Darabik again. “You weren’t making for Pulduraj,” he said. “Where were you headed, and why?”
Darabik paused, studying the face of the huge marine before him. “We were bound for the island called Serpent’s Head, and a gathering of all Maisa’s forces.”
“And Maisa?” asked Haddismal. “Will she be there, rallying her turncoat troops?”
Darabik shook his head. “That I cannot say.”
The Turach’s eyes narrowed. “Beg to differ, Commodore: you can.”
Never taking his eyes from Haddismal, the old commodore unbuttoned his shirt. Pazel recoiled: the man’s chest was like a window cracked by a stone, but the cracks were raised red scars. They had very clearly been made with a knife.
“The Secret Fist thought so too,” he said. “I chose not to betray our country to the Secret Fist. Do you think I will betray them to you?”
Sergeant Haddismal was leaning forward, hands in fists. But he made no move against the commodore.
“It has been a savage fight, but a proud one,” said Darabik. “Generals and governors, princes and counts have joined our rebellion. Whole legions have broken with Etherhorde. And Magad faces other enemies, too: the Mzithrinis still bleed him to the west; Noonfirth has cut supplies from the east. The Crownless Lands support us with shelter and armaments and food.”
“The Crownless Lands,” scoffed Haddismal. “So you’re begging from waifs. Doesn’t sound like a winning hand to me.”
“We are not winning, but we have not lost. This time last year our forces numbered ninety thousand.”
“Ninety thousand!” cried Hercól, his eyes flashing.
“Ninety thousand my bleedin’ arse,” growled a Turach. “Commander, this is all rot and betrayal.”
“Aye, lad, it is betrayal,” said Darabik sharply. “You marines were the first betrayed, when you were told all manner of lies about your Empress. You have given your lives and blood for a false king, a warped image of the Arqual you deserve. Oh, to the Pits with you all—”
Darabik spread his hands wide. “Kill me and be done with it. Or be as brave and true as you have sworn to be, and choose the harder fight.”
A terrible stillness followed. The Turachs stood like wolves before the pounce. But it was Hercól who moved. With a speed Pazel had only ever glimpsed in Sandor Ott, he struck the sword from the hand of the Turach nearest him, then twisted around Haddismal’s sudden thrust so that he stood behind the man. Hercól’s left arm slid over Haddismal’s shoulder; his elbow caught the marine under the chin.
Hercól gave a brutal backward heave. Both men crashed to the floor and were suddenly still: Haddismal flat on his back, Hercól beneath him, with Ildraquin across the sergeant’s throat.
“Stay!” wheezed Hercól. “Sergeant Haddismal, hear me: I did not wish to assault you. Indeed I fear what I have done.”
“You should,” said Haddismal.
“We cannot go on divided,” said Hercól. “If shipmate kills shipmate again, we shall all be lost. I feel this in my heart’s core, Sergeant Haddismal. I am not an Arquali, nor wish to be. Yet I have served the true Empress of Arqual in secret these many years. I trust this Darabik. And I shall trust you, now: with my life, and the life of Alifros itself.”
“Hercól—no!” cried Thasha. She tried to shove a path toward him, but the Turachs seized her arms.
“Be still, Thasha!” cried Hercól. “All of you, be still! Turachs, I disarmed your leader so that you might know that it was hope, not fear, that led me on. Now I say the same as Darabik: stand with us, or kill us. We will not kill you.”
He opened his hand, and Ildraquin fell to the floor. Instantly a Turach lowered the tip of his sword to Hercól’s neck. Haddismal rolled to his feet and took the weapon. His gaze was murderous.
“You were a mucking fool to disarm,” he said. After several gasping breaths, he added, “Or a saint. I don’t know. Corporal Mandric’s risked his own life since he returned, swearing that you’re all in the right, that the Nilstone’s the enemy, that your quest is the only one that counts. He called Magad a fraud. I had to throw him in the brig or throw him to the fishes.” Haddismal swallowed. “He ain’t with the fishes, yet.”
“As for you—” The sergeant shot a glance at Darabik. “—you sound like the kind of officer my old man was. The kind who could hold his head up, before the world and Rin’s judgment. Get up, Stanapeth, and take your weapon back. I’ll stand with you lot. I’m mucking tired of lies.”
33
Nightfall
28 Modoli 947
360th sailing day from Etherhorde21
Burned, battered, weary, leaking, lost. And for all this, a ship united. The other Turachs followed Sergeant Haddismal’s lead, and few appeared to regret it. Many even looked relieved to be siding with Pazel and his allies, and nodded to them when they passed, as though they’d been conferred some honorary rank. Corporal Mandric was let out of the brig.
Marila said that the ground had been shifting since Ott’s murder of Captain Rose. “For a while everyone pretended not to know. If you said out loud that Ott had killed him, the Turachs might kill you.” Now even the Turachs began to speak of Ott with contempt. Something in Pazel felt healed. The Chathrand was one ship, and this time no one had died for her.
Thanks to Darabik, moreover, they were not lost for long. The commodore knew with some accuracy where his ship had gone down: just fifty or sixty miles south of the Baerrid Archipelago, and some eight days west of Bramian. Fiffengurt kept the Chathrand on her northern course, and by six bells land was in sight: two tiny islands, little nuggets of tree-crowned stone, the serpent’s vertebrae. Yes, these were the Baerrids. Fiffengurt had seen the island chain several times over the years—from the North side, of course.
“You haven’t lied about our position, anyway,” he told Darabik.
“I rarely lie,” said the commodore, “but perfect honesty—well, that is a luxury reserved for those who suffer neither want nor pain. I have suffered both. After Maisa launched her rebellion, we divided our naval forces into thirds. I said goodbye to Thasha’s father in Ormael, and sailed east across the Nelu Peren. On the third day, a huge force of warships from Etherhorde surprised us, and decimated my squadron. My own quarterdeck was blown out from under my feet. I fell into smoke and darkness, and when I awoke I was in the hands of the Secret Fist.
“For months they tortured me, body and soul. I prayed for death. I told them lies, then truth. At last I confused the two myself, and said whatever I thought would make them stop. Nothing made them stop. I tried to starve myself; they injected me with a poison that left me limp, and forced gruel down my throat.
“But a day came when I was delivered from agony. Only then did I learn that I had been taken to Etherhorde, a
nd tortured in the bowels of Castle Maag itself, somewhere beneath those pretty walks and gardens. Word of me had reached the Admiralty, and Emperor Magad surrendered me to my brothers in arms. Above all he feared a soldiers’ revolt. He got it anyway, of course.”
“It’s gone that far, has it?”
“Much further, in fact. Burn the Lord Admiral and his son to death in their kitchen and you’ll pay, even if you do wear the crown.”
“Night Gods, Commodore!”
Darabik shook his head. “A shameful tale, and a long one. The point is, there was a revolt: nearly a third of the Home Forces abandoned the Usurper, fled west, and joined Maisa’s campaign. I went with them, and have been fighting ever since. In that time I have won more battles than I have lost. But things have changed recently, and not for the better. Captain, you must make for Serpent’s Head.”
The gathering of Maisa’s forces was to occur on the fifth day of Teala, barely one week away. They could still make it, said Darabik. Fiffengurt reminded him that their task was to rid Arqual of the Nilstone, not the Emperor of Arqual.
“Yes, the Nilstone,” said Darabik uncertainly. “Prince Eberzam spoke of it with dread. I still don’t know what exactly it is.”
“And you don’t want to,” said Fiffengurt. “You’ve got the Gods’ own luck anyway. We’ll take you to Serpent’s Head, by way of the archipelago. There’s no safer course to Gurishal from here.”
Darabik had gone suddenly rigid. “To … Gurishal?”
Fiffengurt grinned the grin of a suicide.
“But that is madness, man. You cannot hope to slip past the Mzithrinis.”
“Hope? What’s that? But you’re right, Commodore: that’s why Ott sent us off into the Ruling Sea to begin with, you know: to get around the White Fleet, and come up on Gurishal from behind.”
“Madness,” said the commodore again. “Perhaps before the war, the western flank of Gurishal was left unguarded. But not today. The Sizzies know Ott wanted to give the Nessarim back their Shaggat—we told them, we announced it to the world! Every harbor is watched, and every approach. The whole island is under quarantine.”
Fiffengurt’s grin was melting away. “You can’t quarantine an island that enormous,” he said.
“Can’t you? If it’s bursting with fanatics awaiting the return of the greatest mass murderer in history?”
“Trouble is, Commodore, we have to go to Gurishal.”
“You can’t.”
Darabik said no more, and Fiffengurt was left blinking at the sunset, and trying to calm his nerves. But when darkness fell, Pazel and his allies gathered in the wheelhouse and spoke to the commodore again. Darabik’s mood had also darkened. He asked that they light no lamp. On that moonless night they could barely see his face.
“I told you we numbered ninety thousand a year ago,” he said. “That is true, and I might have said more: we took Opalt, for a time, and held the mainland all the way to the banks of the River Ipurva. But this year the fight has gone poorly. Magad has turned the east into a war-making machine. We sink a ship, and two more launch from the Etherhorde shipyards.”
“North and South begin to mirror each other,” said Kirishgán sadly.
Darabik took no notice. “The Mzithrinis are willing to sell us ships, but our coffers are empty,” he said. “Without gold we are nothing to the Black Rags. Lately they have seen fit to drive us from their waters, into the teeth of our enemies. And … there is another rumor, though I do not know whether to believe it.”
A deep note of worry had entered his voice. “Tell us,” said Ramachni.
Darabik hesitated, then his dark shoulders gave a shrug. “A cloud that kills. They say it is as large as Bramian, and that in movement it is less like a cloud than a living thing. Nonsense, probably. Tall tales sprout like weeds in wartime.”
The allies sat in rigid silence, barely breathing, until Darabik asked them what was wrong.
All through the night the Chathrand sped west. With the first glimmer of dawn Fiffengurt sent men aloft to spread more canvas, indeed all the canvas she could bear. More rain fell, lashing and cold. More jagged islands appeared off the starboard bow. The ship followed these Baerrid Isles, tacking along one side of the snake. No one who had heard Darabik’s words repeated them—the crew was close enough to despair as it was—but they could not stop themselves from glancing at the sky. The Swarm was here already, and it had grown huge.
The days passed, gray gloomy light. Between the wave-tortured islands the lookouts spotted ships, plying the calmer waters of the Nelu Rekere, but they were too distant to be identified. Darabik was confident that they were Maisa’s forces, but Fiffengurt took no chances, and lit no flares. The nights were cool, but Pazel could not sleep. When he closed his eyes he felt the darkness crushing him, drowning him, a black wax pouring down from the sky.
In the outer stateroom Neeps and Marila shouted at each other, and some of the last dinner plates were smashed. The dogs howled and Felthrup wept. But late at night Pazel would creep out and find Neeps and Marila sleeping under the gallery windows, curled up together like children, arm in arm.
They are children. They were. All of us were, so recently.
Lying awake one night, Pazel saw a flicker of red in the window glass. He reached out a hand: the glass was trembling in its frame. Quietly, he left Thasha’s cabin. In the outer stateroom he found Felthrup staring out at the Chathrand’s wake.
The rat crept to his side. “You saw it too,” he whispered. “We are almost there, Pazel. I can smell the reek of the volcano.”
They went above. The rain had stopped and the night was clear. There off the port bow stood Serpent’s Head, a tall black mountain-mass, spitting fire in great arcs over the western ocean, like a queen throwing riches to a mob. Pazel could smell it now, too: the rotten-egg smell of sulphur, the world’s carbolic breath.
The burning mountain terrified Felthrup. “Why would anyone choose to hold a gathering there?” he asked.
“Because no one lives on Serpent’s Head,” said Pazel. “No villagers, no fishermen.”
“No one to talk about you later, to an enemy?”
“Or be tortured for their silence. That’s my guess.”
For the rest of the night they watched the strange island grow nearer. Several times ash fell from the heavens, a black sticky snow. But Serpent’s Head was not all smoke and fire: steep hills dominated the eastern half of the island, and at daybreak Pazel saw palm trees silhouetted against the sky.
There was also a ring of jagged islets about Serpent’s Head: spires of magma, coughed out by the volcanoes over the centuries. By the growing light, Pazel saw that their course would soon take them between these islets and Serpent’s Head.
“I’ll be damned,” he said to Felthrup. “Someone aboard knows this place. Look there, off to starboard. Do you know what that is?”
“A seagull?”
“A beach, Felthrup. Not much of one, but definitely a beach. And these little islets, they’re as good as a seawall.”
“Meaning that we could land a boat there?”
“We could try.”
A moist hand dropped on Pazel’s shoulder. “We will be trying, lad.”
It was Mr. Druffle: stone-sober, grinning. “Don’t look so shocked. The twenty-foot launch can handle these waves. At least that’s the captain’s expectorant.”
Pazel and Felthrup blinked at him. “Expectation,” corrected Felthrup.
Druffle shrugged. “Go roust your mates,” he said. “Them as want to go ashore should assemble in ten minutes flat.”
“Ten minutes?” cried Pazel. “But Mr. Druffle, they’re not even awake!”
“Tough blubber, my Chereste heart. Empress Maisa’s officers are already landing on the north shore. It’s five Teala: her war-council starts today. And sure, the waves are becalmed here, in the lee of them lava-isles. But there’s a ripping strong current too. We can’t hold position, unless we anchor, and what fool would anchor here? No, the
ship’s better off out in the Nelluroq, where she’ll have no company. She’ll circle round and collect us tomorrow, after we learn what Maisa’s rebels can give.”
“But why not just head to the north shore ourselves?”
“Because we’re a weird sight, that’s why. Think, Pathkendle! This ship was at the heart of Magad’s blary conspiracy, and no one’s seen her in six years! We can’t just pop up like the provisional weasel.”
“Provisional!” shrilled Felthrup. “Sir, your imprecisions are disastrous. First of all, the word is proverbial. Second, there is no proverb; there is only a nonsense rhyme.”
“A schoolmaster rat,” muttered Druffle, still grinning. “Riddle out this one, then: Froggy and field mouse walked to the fair. Froggy said to field mouse, ‘Tie back your hair—’ ”
“Impossible!”
The argument was cut short by the peal of the ship’s bell. At once boots began to pound, and orders began to fly: Mainsails in, capstan teams to their stations! Fegin blew shrill notes on his whistle. Mr. Druffle slapped Pazel on the back.
“Get your mates on their feet! Bite ’em, pour soup on ’em, kick ’em till they curse! We’re going ashore!”
The landing was dismal. The twenty-foot launch flipped in the breakers. Groping at the hull in the icy froth, Pazel watched their food parcels sink like stones. The next wave lifted him, thrashed him down, ground him between the boat’s gunnels and the sand. Pazel just waited; the sea shrugged the boat aside. When he stood the wind’s bite was colder than the sea’s.
They fought the vessel ashore, counting heads. Druffle, Darabik, Thasha, Neda, Neeps, Bolutu, Hercól, Kirishgán: no one was missing; everyone was bruised. Neda spat a mouthful of sand and blood; Neeps kicked the boat, then cursed and grabbed his foot. Darabik cursed with more flair and passion than Pazel had ever heard in an officer. It was his second dunking in a week.
Only Ramachni was dry: he had leaped from the boat in owl-form, glided to the beach, and resumed his normal shape. He watched their struggle from atop a warm-looking stone.
The Night of the Swarm Page 76