The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Fire and ruins were everywhere. Shrouds and brace-lines snapped; the longboat was crushed like an eggshell; the jiggermast collapsed into the sea. The two foes roared, rolled, twisted, an impossible writhing mass of flame and fangs and talons and blood. Sailors ran for their lives, hurling themselves down the hatches, even leaping over the sides. Pazel, Neeps and Hercól stood pinned against the bowsprit. Suddenly Pazel recalled the mage’s words at Stath Bálfyr, after the killing of the sharks: You must not depend on me if it comes to fighting again.

  That was exactly what they were doing. But how could they help? The eguar’s fumes alone were so strong that men were dropping senseless at thirty feet.

  The warring creatures rolled to the portside rail, splintering it to pieces, nearly toppling into the waves. Then the maukslar tore itself away from Ramachni and leaped upon the forecastle. Its tail crushed a sailor against the foremast, then wrapped around another and began to squeeze.

  Hercól looked at Pazel, a strange twinkle in his eye. “You’re not a bad diver, Pathkendle,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Prove it again. Hold your breath.”

  He took a great gulp of air and leaped to the attack. Terrified, Pazel knew he must find a way to do the same. He circled left. The maukslar was spitting fire at Ramachni, still below on the main deck, but its tail seemed to have a mind and malevolence all its own—that long, lethal tail that had plucked Big Skip from the bridge over the Parsua Gorge. The sailor tried to stab at the coils, but they tightened, crushing his chest. The tail let him drop and groped for another victim.

  What it found was Ildraquin. Hercól brought the dark sword down in a flashing arc, biting deep into the flesh.

  With an infernal scream the maukslar turned its fell eyes on Hercól. Bleeding but still serpent-quick, the tail circled his waist, raised him high and dashed him down against the deck. Hercól fought on even then, hacking with his one free hand.

  Ramachni, seizing the moment, began to haul his elephantine body onto the forecastle. The maukslar tossed Hercól away and closed on him, hissing. Pazel saw his chance. He leaped once, twice, over the whiplash tail. Just as the maukslar crouched down to leap upon the eguar, Pazel stabbed downward with his sword, two-handed, and pinned the demon’s tail to the deck.

  The maukslar’s lunge fell short. Recoiling with a scream, it tore Pazel’s sword from the deck plank, struck him aside like a trifle, and spread its wings.

  A roar. The eguar pounced. Its crocodilian jaws snapped shut on the demon’s snake-like neck. Its talons shredded the wings, then gripped the creature’s torso. It ripped. With a gush of black blood the maukslar’s neck parted from its body. It fought on, biting and snapping, as Ramachni thrashed it against the forecastle. At last the red eyes went dark, and the thing lay still.

  Pazel fell on all fours, gagging. Everyone left alive on the forecastle was struggling to breathe. The eguar looked at the devastated ship, the burned and dying men. Its eyes turned last of all to Pazel. Then it leaped at him.

  Pazel was knocked off his feet. The creature landed almost atop him, its toxic vapors like a blow to the stomach. Pazel’s vision dimmed. Ramachni, he thought. You’re killing me. Why?

  A monstrous crack rent the air, followed by the pop and zing of snapped cables. The foremast fell and shattered across the eguar’s back.

  The creature’s legs buckled. With a groan of agony, it shrugged off the mast to one side of Pazel. It was bleeding, black blood that sizzled where it fell. One white-hot eye passed over Pazel, Hercól, Neeps, the whole of the ruined ship. Then the eguar leaped over the starboard rail.

  Pazel tried to stand up, and failed. He crawled, and burned his hands and knees. Then Hercól loomed over him, wheezing, bloody from scalp to shoulders. Pazel felt the warrior lift him and begin to stagger away. The two most terrible languages his Gift had forced on him—those of the eguar and the demon itself—were roiling and seething in his brain:

  I will never (ITHAPRIGAL codex of hatred heartsblood burning blistered eater of life) speak another (IMGRUTHRIGORHIDISH realms of damnation codex of pain) word (CURMASINDUNIK nine Pits nine lairs nine soul-shattered Gods Arunis among them eater of worlds kill the fair kill the gentle the morning mountains minerals rivers forests insects oceans angels newborns hope) for as long as I (codex of misery) live.

  Hercól slapped him. “Breathe, lad! Get that poison out of your lungs!”

  Pazel gasped and bolted upright. The battle raged on. From the Death’s Head, bursts of fire were still leaping, and now the Chathrand had opened up with her own forward guns. Along the rails, Turachs and ordinary seamen—and Mzithrinis, by Rin—stood with pikes in hand, ready to repel boarders, gazing down into the waves. They looked hurt and tired. How many had just been killed?

  He became aware that his whole body was one agonizing itch. He turned and saw Neeps beside him, reeking, vomit-covered. Simply disgusting.

  “Hold still.”

  Someone began to douse him repeatedly with seawater. Feeling stronger, he looked up to see Swift and Saroo, his old antagonists, gazing down at him with concern.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  The brothers looked at him, a bit shamefaced. “Yeah, Muketch, I reckon you are,” said Swift. They leaned down and helped Pazel to his feet.

  The Chathrand’s guns were deafening: Fiffengurt was throwing everything they had into the forward batteries. Still the Death’s Head came on: Pazel could see her white sails looming beyond the wreckage of the forecastle. “How many dlömu are attacking?” Neeps bellowed in Swift’s ear.

  “Lots of ’em. Hundreds.”

  Hundreds? Pazel looked at the ship’s defenders, strung out along the rail. Where was his own sword? No time for it: he found a cutlass in a tangle of rigging, the hilt still smeared with the blood of the man who’d dropped it. Then he pushed his way to the rail.

  The sea was full of dlömu, swimming as only dlömu could. The fastest were already close to the Chathrand’s pitching hull. The Death’s Head, barely a mile off, was firing its regular guns, firing with a will. But something strange was happening: all the shots were falling hopelessly short. And some of the Chathrand’s defenders were putting down their pikes, and casting about the deck for other tools. “What’s going on?” he shouted.

  A face glanced up at him: Mandric. “Don’t ye blary see, they—”

  BOOM.

  A great fireball rose from Macadra’s ship. “Oh, hang me from Heaven’s Tree!” snarled Mandric, as they dropped below the rail. The fireball screamed, then detonated—twenty yards from the Chathrand. The flame licked her hull, but there was nothing left in easy reach to burn.

  Except the dlömu in the water.

  Pazel looked at Mandric and the others near him: they were holding ropes and life preservers. The dlömu were deserting Macadra’s ship.

  They stood up. The sea looked empty. Then a black leg surfaced. Then a body without a head.

  “That hag,” said Mandric. “She don’t want to sink us and lose the prize, but she’s fine with killin’ her own. She just slaughtered a third of her mucking crew.”

  Beside the Turach, Bolutu’s eyes were bright. “They almost made it. We could have pulled them aboard.” He looked at Pazel in sudden wonder. “There was a selk among them.”

  “A selk?” said Pazel. “A selk aboard the Death’s Head?”

  Cries from the opposite rail. Confusion, then wild urgency, pointing fingers, laughs. The dlömu were surfacing on the far side of the Chathrand. The protected side. Nearly all had dived in time to escape the fireball, crossed under the Chathrand’s belly, risen unscathed.

  Pazel sprinted for the far rail. Neeps was there ahead of him, beckoning. “Pazel, look!”

  He leaned out over the rail. Among the two hundred or so black-skinned, silver-haired dlömu, one pale olive face stood out. It was Nólcindar.

  Nólcindar!

  “Macadra didn’t kill everyone on the Promise,” said Neeps. “She took prisoners. An
d that means—”

  “Olik!” cried Bolutu. “Prince Olik!”

  There he was, stern and serene as ever, helping a wounded dlömu seize the accordion-ladder someone had just sent clattering down the hull.

  Pazel could scarcely believe what he was seeing: Arqualis and Mzithrinis, helping dlömu (and one selk warrior-woman) out of the waves.

  A second ladder appeared. Once on deck, the dlömu knelt in surrender, unbidden. Some kissed the humans’ feet. Prince Olik, among the last from the water, knelt as well.

  Sergeant Haddismal pushed forward. “Your Highness,” he said, “Captain Fiffengurt’s just spoken. You have the freedom of the ship, but these sailors crewed a boat that’s attacked us twice. We’re to bind them, at least until the fighting’s done. We’ve been double-crossed too many times.”

  “Then bind me also,” said the prince.

  “And me,” said Nólcindar. “None of these men are officers. They served like slaves on the Death’s Head, and risked their lives to free us from the brig where we were held and tortured. Some leaped overboard and swam to the beach inside the Arrowhead Sound. Those Macadra did not slay fled into the mountains, chased by savage-looking men with tattooed necks.”

  The Nessarim, thought Pazel.

  The dlömu were holding out their wrists. “Bind us!” they said. “Tie us, lock us up. Only do not send us back to her, back to the White Raven. Better to die than to return!”

  Something, a surge of anguish, made Pazel turn. The main topsail was gone: the Death’s Head had struck it dead-center with one of the burning tar projectiles it had used during the chase along the Red Storm.

  “Tree of Heaven, what does it matter if they’re on our side or not?” said Saroo. “There’s enough of ’em still manning those blary weapons. Just look at this ship.”

  “He’s right, Your Highness,” said Mandric. “You should have taken your chances ashore. We’re beaten, and she’s still comin’ on.”

  “We are not beaten,” said a sharp, high voice.

  It was Felthrup. Pazel turned and saw him standing on Captain Fiffengurt’s shoulder. And beside them, between her dogs—

  “Thasha Isiq,” said Hercól sternly, “you promised to stay below.”

  “For as long as it made any difference,” said Thasha. “But it doesn’t, not now. Macadra’s not a fool. She knows I’d have used the Stone to save the Chathrand if I could. And if it comes to a fight—well, I killed her brother. I can kill her too.”

  “Macadra does not have the Nilstone,” said Felthrup, “and while she lacks it, we still have a card to play.”

  “Rin’s truth,” said Fiffengurt. “She’s hurt our rigging, not our hull. We may be dead in the water, but we’re blary far from sunk. Change of orders, Sergeant.” He waved a hand at the dlömu. “These men don’t need shackles, they need swords in their hands. Get busy!”

  The crew raced back to their stations. The dlömu who were able leaped up and cried out their readiness to fight.

  Pazel put his arm over Thasha’s shoulders. He looked across the dwindling space between the vessels. The deck of Macadra’s ship was a confusion of fires, gears, struggling men, clouds of smoke.

  “Nólcindar!” Kirishgán raised his kinswoman and embraced her warmly. But Nólcindar’s eyes were grave.

  “The humans are valiant,” she said in the selk tongue, “but if the White Raven closes, all is lost. That ship is full of killers and madmen. They will burn the crew off the topdeck, and kill them below with canisters of gas. Any survivors will be torn apart by athymars, or simply left to drown once she takes the Nilstone and staves in the hull.”

  “We can barely move,” said Kirishgán. “How are we to prevent her from closing?”

  Nólcindar had no chance to respond, for at that moment a bird of prey cried just overhead. It was Niriviel, of course. They looked up: the falcon crouched on the main yard, leaning forward, gazing intently at the Death’s Head. Then he shrieked: “By the Throne of Arqual! That one!”

  He shot away toward Macadra’s ship. “What was that about?” asked Thasha. “What in Pitfire did he see?”

  Kirishgán narrowed his eyes. “There is something … a small bird, I think. But it flies as if wounded. Yes, that is what Niriviel is aiming for.”

  Then both selk winced. “Too late,” said Nólcindar. “The bird has fallen into the sea. Unless—well! Your falcon dives better than a fish-eagle. He has snatched the little bird up in his claws.”

  Dimly, Pazel saw the falcon returning. Then his eyes were dazzled by several concurrent flashes from the Death’s Head. Three fireballs streaked skyward. But what sort of attack was this? One shot climbed so high that it entered the Swarm, where it vanished without a trace. The other two, wildly off-target, exploded over the empty sea. Cannon fire followed, but it too was erratic.

  Then Pazel saw why.

  The Death’s Head was sinking.

  Roars of war-engines, howls of fear and rage. Some of those manning the ship’s terrible arms were still trying to bring them to bear on the Chathrand. There were more wild cannon-shots, even as the Death’s Head wallowed deeper.

  Pitfire, what’s happening to her?

  Gradually the frenzy on the Chathrand subsided; her crew stood transfixed. The vessel’s stern was sinking fastest. On the topdeck, men were fighting, shoving forward and backward at once. Suddenly, by dint of greater numbers or greater panic, the forward-pushing mob prevailed, and the whole throng moved in a rush. But the shift in weight was catastrophic. On the next wave, the bow came thundering down, and the sea flooded in through the chaser gunports.

  The deck was awash. Some dlömu were making for Gurishal; many simply vanished into the swirling sea.

  “They were getting ready to board us,” said Thasha. “They’re in armor. Gods of death.”

  Not one figure was swimming for the Chathrand.

  Pazel had never seen anything like it. Their deadly enemy had foundered. A ship the size of the Chathrand, lost in ten minutes flat.

  Hercól approached, with Ensyl on his shoulder. “How did it happen?” Thasha asked her mentor. “We never managed to scratch her, did we?”

  “Not through that armor-plating,” said Ensyl. “I cannot guess what breached her, but that iron hastened her sinking, beyond any doubt.”

  “Along with the weapons heaped on her like scrap,” said Hercól. “Still, she must have been seaworthy. She did not fly over the Nelluroq, and …”

  His voice trailed off. He gazed at the vanishing wreck, suddenly quite still. Then he exploded, leaping up and catching the mainmast shrouds, and bellowing over the heads of the crew:

  “On guard! On guard! She is coming, the sorceress is coming! It can only be her!”

  Pazel never saw it coming. It was simply, suddenly there: a coagulating black smoke that moved like a flock of blackbirds, all around them, touching them with a horrible chill, then pulling together into a low column between the mainmast and the forecastle. The apparition shimmered, formed a torso, limbs, a face.

  Macadra stood upon the deck.

  Instantly Hercól lashed out with Ildraquin. But just as the blade reached her head, the figure became smoke once again, tunneled through the air, and reformed closer to the quarterdeck.

  She loomed over them: tall and bone-white and deathly. “Where is it?” she shrieked. “Bring it to me. Act quickly, and I will let you land this carcass of a ship.”

  Nólcindar lunged, faster even than Hercól. This time Macadra did not vanish, but merely shouted a spell-word so powerful it crackled in the air. Nólcindar’s knife shattered like a thing of glass. The selk warrior fell upon the deck, rigid, unable to move a muscle.

  Then something rather astonishing happened. The entire crew attacked the sorceress. No one called for it, no one shouted Charge! But charge they did, from every side, and not a soul held back.

  Macadra threw up her arms. A pale white light swept away from her. Pazel felt it strike him in the face, and then he felt himself
fall, along with scores of others. He was conscious, but his strength had suddenly vanished, and so had that of everyone within ten yards of Macadra. The sorceress stood alone in a wide ring of bodies. She laughed.

  “Come, see reason,” she said. “I could kill you as easily as I have lain you flat. But what if I could not? Suppose you drove me from the Chathrand, what then? Do you know how close you are to death? Thirty hours: that is how long you have before the Swarm seals this world beneath its pall. Shall I tell you what will happen then? It will drop from the skies, and become the death-skin of Alifros. And still it will grow, deeper, thicker, until it is nine miles thick, and the last cold bacterium has perished at the bottom of the Ruling Sea. Then the Night Gods will declare my brother one of their circle, and free him from the kingdom of twilight. But for you it will be too late.

  “I alone can prevent this. Frail creatures like yourselves die at the Stone’s touch, but I will use it to put an end to death. I can do it. I can banish the black horror that even now is destroying your minds. You can feel it, can you not? The madness claiming you, the madness born of too much fear? Come, I am your only savior. Give me the Nilstone, and live.”

  “Never,” said Captain Fiffengurt from the quarterdeck. “You’ll not divide us, and we’ll not give the Nilstone up. We’ve not sailed round this blary world for nothing. We mean to remove the Stone from Alifros.”

  “By floating it away down the River of Shadows, into death’s kingdom?” said Macadra. “Has Ramachni truly made you believe it can be done? Simpletons! If only I had time to watch you try!”

  Pazel felt a tingling in his toes. His strength was trickling back. Around him, Macadra’s spell’s other victims were also stirring. That spell cost her. She’s not as strong as she wants us to believe.

  “You fear to land on Gurishal, is that it?” said Macadra. “You fear the Shaggat’s lunatics will come upon you in the night and slit your throat? Well, I will not pretend there is no such danger. But the one who speaks up, and tells me where the Stone is secreted—him I will bear away on wings of sorcery, to a land of his choosing, or to my fair court in Bali Adro, if he prefers, where he will know ease and pleasure and the thanks of Macadra. Only speak. Even your shipmates will thank you, when the Swarm departs the skies.”