The Ant-Man of Malfen

by Derek Prior; C. S. Marks

Venn flashed a malign glare over his shoulder. “It’s a name to be feared.”

  “Indeed,” Nameless looked about in an exaggerated manner, his gaze returned by the hungry eyes of rats watching from the gutter.

  “What is it?” asked Venn through clenched teeth.

  “Trying to find somewhere to relieve myself.” Nameless rubbed his guts. “All this scare-mongering is unsettling my stomach.”

  “No time,” said Venn. “We’ve arrived.”

  The path opened onto a circle of flagstones beneath the central district. A giant of a man in a hotchpotch of armour—studded leather cuirass, bronze besagews, a steel gorget, and fluted silver cuisses—stood guard over a grill set into the ground. Nameless reckoned he must have been at least seven feet tall.

  “Ripper, Cat’s Claw,” the giant acknowledged them in a rumbling bass. “What’s this? A dwarf for Shent?”

  Nameless met the giant’s gaze, keeping his eyes hard but fixing a broad smile. “A dwarf no longer, I’m afraid,” he rubbed his shaven scalp, “but I’m sure your master will enjoy me just the same.”

  Venn and Carl sniggered and the giant let out a resounding peal of laughter.

  “Maybe he’ll give you to me,” he said cracking his knuckles. “That’d be fun.”

  “I’d pay to see that fight,” said Carl. “A giant hammering a dwarf.”

  “I’ve beaten bigger,” growled Nameless. “The last one wasn’t so cocky when I pulped his head with my fists.”

  A group of rats had encircled them as if waiting for a show.

  “Try that with me,” the giant scowled at him, bunching his shoulders and wringing his hands.

  “Maybe later, Arik,” said Venn, swishing his net and sounding bored. “Shent’ll have to see him first.”

  Arik’s glare promised violence before he growled and bent to heave open the grill.

  Venn led the way into a shaft, taking hold of metal rungs set into the walls and climbing down. Nameless was next, giving Arik his most dismissive sneer as he clambered into the darkness with Carl following. The grill clanged shut leaving the three descending towards a flickering orange glow from the depths.

  The shaft dropped them into an earthen tunnel with guttering torches set in brackets along the walls. Distant groans wafted to meet them amidst the constant background of clacking and scraping.

  Venn shot Nameless an evil smile and a chill started to crawl along the dwarf’s spine. The passageway opened onto a vast cavern bored out of the dry earth. Shapes scuttled in the shadows by the walls and from the ceiling hung the bodies of humans, strung up by their wrists and twirling like cocoons in the breeze.

  Nameless gasped as he saw that most of the victims were mutilated, missing chunks of flesh or even entire limbs. A withered old man came into focus, one leg severed at the knee, muscle and sinew trailing in strips as if the limb had been torn apart—or bitten off. There were too many bodies to count, suspended like cured meat in a butcher’s shop; some waxy and blotched with blue, others in the final stages of life, breath rattling from failing lungs. But the majority were already dead, little more than skeletons held together by fraying cartilage.

  Someone stepped out from behind a spinning carcass and Nameless froze in astonishment.

  “Hello again,” said Nils. The lad’s eyes flicked to the ceiling where a huge black shape was hanging, about to drop. “What happened to your hair?”

  Something crashed into the back of Nameless’ head and he fell heavily. He tried to rise but was struck again, his mouth tasting mud before he was swallowed by darkness.

  ***

  Silas Thrall saw everything, hanging by his wrists, the cords biting into his flesh and cutting close to the bone. His long legs enabled him to touch the ground with the tips of his toes but it brought scant relief. Blood oozed down his forearms, staining the once-white fabric of his shirt-sleeves. He swayed aside from the clacking mandibles of a giant ant that pushed amongst the bodies, no doubt selecting the next morsel for its master.

  Silas craned his neck, looking for another glimpse of that snivelling brat, Nils. Either the lad had set him up or he’d just acted out of self-preservation. More likely the latter, Silas thought. He doubted Nils had the intelligence to plan for something like this. If he had, and Silas had just chanced upon him out in the wilds, it was an ill fate that guided him. Maybe he should have left the grimoire alone after all. Maybe Professor Gillis had been right: no good could ever come from any work of Otto Blightey’s. Knowing Silas’ luck, the blasted book was cursed.

  He looked down, suddenly aware that the weight was gone from his shoulder. The bag—and the grimoire it contained—was gone. Silas thrashed about at the end of his tether and felt the first clutch of need around his heart. A thousand shards of ice pierced his veins and sweat beaded on his forehead.

  Shent’s henchmen, the brawny hook-nosed one and the lean blackguard with the daggers, hauled the dwarf into position beside Silas and started to string him up. The dwarf moaned as the ropes tightened and he was lifted from the ground. Hook-nose kicked the dwarf’s pack aside and slung his axe on top of it.

  “Not so smug now,” said the lean one.

  “Come on,” said his brawny side-kick. “Let’s tell Shent what we got for him.”

  Silas waited until the two exited down one of the many tunnels leading from the cave. The ant rubbed past him again, a human hand clutched in its mandibles, dripping gore. When he was sure it had gone, Silas swung himself towards the newcomer and kicked him in the shin. The dwarf’s head came up, he muttered something, and then sagged back down again.

  “Wake up!” Silas hissed, looking around furtively in case any ants or Shent’s thugs were coming.

  He took another kick, this time catching the dwarf in the groin.

  “What the shog!” the dwarf roared, eyes wide and furious. It took him a moment to realise his hands were tied and that he hung like dead mutton from the ceiling.

  “Quiet,” said Silas.

  “Something hit me,” the dwarf grumbled, rolling his neck. There was a swelling the size of an egg on his bald head.

  “You a dwarf or just a very small human?” Silas asked.

  “Neither.”

  “I see. In any case, my friend, you are the brightest hope I’ve seen since being accosted last night. I take it you had a good look at our neighbours before the skinny one hit you.”

  The dwarf nodded, scanning the cave again, brows knitting darkly, eyes like black pebbles taking it all in.

  “You have a plan?”

  “Always,” said Silas. “Only, on this occasion I required a bit of muscle to see it through. You didn’t happen to see a canvas bag on your way in did you? Always sleep with it beside me and couldn’t bear to lose it.”

  That was the mother of all understatements. Before the dwarf could answer there was a flurry of activity from the tunnels and scores of giant ants scuttled into the cave.

  “This is new,” Silas whispered. The dwarf merely frowned. “Silas Thrall, by the way. Thought you should know that, if we’re to die together.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  Silas tried to quell the panic welling up within him.

  “I wasn’t expecting this.”

  The hook-nosed thug and his scrawny companion entered next, and behind them shambled the aberration that had confronted him at the foot of the scree slope.

  “See what they mean by Ant-Man,” the dwarf muttered. “In case you’re wondering, laddie, I have no name, but friends call me Nameless.”

  “Nameless?” Silas licked his lips and despised the quaver in his voice. “It has a pleasing irony.” He squirmed and wriggled, cursing his misfortune and the fact that he desperately needed to urinate.

  Shent’s mandibles clacked in short bursts that were answered in kind by the monstrous ants fanning out around the room. Silas counted twenty but more were still pouring through the openings.

  The Ant-Man’s body was more visible in the flickering light of the
cave—his torso a parody of a human’s, but chitinous rather than fleshy. The head was pure ant, sleek and glistening, incarnadine eyes reflecting Silas’ face back at him until they mercifully turned on the dwarf. Bulging humanoid arms terminated in long sinewy fingers, but the legs were insectoid with hooked claws that caused him to shuffle.

  “A dwarf,” Shent wriggled his fingers before Nameless’ face. Silas tensed, expecting the Ant-Man to rip the dwarf’s eyes out.

  “A fellow victim,” Shent reached out to stroke Nameless’ cheek. “One of Gandaw’s creatures.”

  “I’m no one’s creature,” said Nameless, eyes not wavering from the insect-thing facing him.

  Shent made a series of clicking noises that might have been laughter. “Cutting your hair doesn’t change what you are; what he made you.”

  The dwarf glowered beneath heavy brows but then dropped his chin to his chest.

  “We are related in purpose,” the Ant-Man tilted his head as if trying to make eye contact. “Gandaw melded the flesh of humans to that of the homunculi to form the dwarves. Your people were made for the deep places of the earth—for the mining of Scarolite.”

  The dwarf snorted contemptuously. “And what were you made for? Harvesting shit?”

  Shent stiffened, his mandibles vibrating with tiny tremors.

  “The dwarves were made hardy,” he went on, but his voice was strained. There was an atmosphere between him and the dwarf as taut as a bowstring. “The homunculi could find the ore and work it, but they lacked the strength to cut it from the rock. Gandaw knew the power of Scarolite and knew what it would be worth to others. That’s why he made my ants—to guard the mines, to protect his secrets.” Shent lowered his eyes and a shudder passed through his carapace. “I was made to control them, for they lacked a queen and could not understand the speech of humans.”

  “What happened?” asked Silas. “How’d you come to be here?”

  Shent’s eyes rolled towards him and Silas berated himself for not keeping quiet. After a pause, the Ant-Man gave his answer to the dwarf.

  “When your people rebelled, when they turned against Gandaw during his first attempt at the Unweaving, there was no more use for my ants. We were forgotten. At least, we thought we were forgotten until the metal demons were sent to eradicate us. You see, Sektis Gandaw never liked to leave loose ends. He was a perfectionist, a trait that found its fulfilment in his lunatic project of unmaking the worlds. Thousands of my ants were incinerated by the death-magic of Gandaw’s Sentroids; the rest, I led towards the relative safety of Qlippoth. We got as far as the Farfall Mountains but my ants would go no further. It was the first time they had refused my command. That is how we came to Malfen.”

  “And you,” Shent turned his eyes on Silas who wished he knew a spell that could stop him wetting his breeches. “What brings you to Malfen in the middle of the night? Did you think to avoid my toll? You look like an intelligent man. Did it never occur to you to wonder why others hadn’t tried your plan?”

  Silas shook his head so hard it made him giddy.

  “I wasn’t trying to sneak in. I was trying to help my companion who’d just slid down the scree. And whilst we’re on that point, don’t believe a word the little toe-rag tells you. He didn’t bring me to you—I came of my own accord.”

  Shent gave a staccato clack of his mandibles. For an instant Silas thought that the walls behind the Ant-Man were writhing and shifting, but then he focused and saw that scores of giant ants were crawling over every available inch. He looked up and struggled to make saliva—there were dozens of them clinging to the ceiling.

  “So,” said Shent, “you came to pay me a visit, did you? Did you book an appointment?” More clicking, and this time the giant ants seemed to join in. The hooked-nosed goon and his scrawny comrade hooted with mirth.

  “Tell me your name,” Shent went on. “Perhaps I will remember you.”

  “Silas Thrall,” the voice came out as he intended, brazen and strong.

  Shent shook his head and rubbed a mandible with his thumb and forefinger.

  “No, sorry. I have no recollection of any such name. Tell me, Silas Thrall, where are you from, and what business have you with the Ant-Man of Malfen?”

  “I’m from New Jerusalem originally, but now I’m a traveller and a man of many talents.”

  “Talents that might be of use to me?” Shent cocked his insectoid head and watched Silas with a look both malign and indifferent.

  “They used to call me ‘Fingers’ in the city.” They didn’t—what they called him had been a lot worse than that. “Could pick a miser’s pocket even if he was a hyper-vigilant paranoiac with an escort of eagle-eyed legionaries. I can meld with the shadows, creep as silent as death and scale any wall like a spider.” He was exaggerating, but it was the sort of thing to impress these kinds of lowlife.

  Shent folded his arms across his chest and let out a hiss. “You expect me to believe you came to Malfen for employment?”

  “I seek your counsel.”

  The thugs roared with laughter but Shent shushed them with a wave of his hand. “Regarding what?”

  Silas grimaced and flicked his eyes towards the dwarf. “It’s a rather sensitive matter.”

  “Is it now?” said Shent. “Let me guess: you’re seeking something beyond the mountains; something hidden in the wilds of Qlippoth?”

  Silas sucked in his top lip and bobbed his head.

  “I’ve seen what you carry in your bag,” said Shent, “and I judge that it would be foolhardy for you to persist in your quest, and even more so for me to permit it.”

  “But—” Silas tried to protest but Shent turned back to Nameless.

  “And what can you do?”

  The dwarf glared into those blood-pool eyes.“Kill. A lot.”

  “See, I told you so,” said Nils stepping out from a cluster of ants. “I’ve seen him in action. That is one dangerous shogger.”

  “You backstabbing little runt!” Silas spat towards the lad but Nils ducked back out of sight.

  “Excellent,” Shent’s mandibles vibrated with apparent relish.

  “But not for you,” said Nameless.

  Silas groaned. The dwarf just had to go and ruin it.

  “If not kill, then maybe trap.” Shent drew close to the dwarf, his crimson eyes boring into him. “Your people eluded me; they found passage deep beneath Malfen—ancient tunnels seldom used, even by my ants. They owe me a toll. A sizeable one.”

  Nameless stared at Shent wide-eyed.

  “The dwarves came here? You saw them?”

  Shent snapped his mandibles together.

  “Just the stragglers,” he said. “The rest escaped to Qlippoth. If they are canny enough to survive, I want them back. No one passes through Malfen without my say so.”

  “Yes,” said Silas, seeing a glimmer of hope. “We go into Qlippoth after them and bring them back. Surely a fellow dwarf could persuade them, spin a tale with your silvery tongue.” Except he’d heard no evidence that the dwarf had a silvery tongue. “On second thoughts,” he said, “leave the talking to me.”

  Shent gave him a dismissive look.“I have no need of you, sorcerer, except to fill my stomach.”

  Silas winced and shut his eyes, trying to think, and think quickly. He’d hoped to bargain with the Ant-Man, find out what he knew, but he was hardly in a bargaining position. He scowled at Nils as the lad re-emerged, a huge smirk stretching from ear to ear.

  “And I’ve no use for you either, boy,” said Shent.

  The smirk quickly dropped from Nils’s face and he stepped back, straight into the embrace of a giant ant.

  “But…I…I’m with the Night Hawks—the biggest guild in New Jerusalem. Just think what we could do together.”

  “All I’m thinking,” said Shent letting a thick rope of drool drip from his maw, “is how good your flesh will taste.”

  “But I can help,” said Nils in a shrill voice. “I’ll do anything you like. Anything.”

&
nbsp; Shent eyed him for a long moment and then clapped his hands together.

  “We’ll see,” he said. “Go to the surface. Find The Wheatsheaf Tavern and ask for Travid Yawl. Tell him time’s up and Shent wants his money. Have you got that? Succeed in this and I may find a use for you. Fail and you’re supper.”

  “Yes, sir,” stammered Nils as he backed out of the cavern. “I won’t let you down. You’ll see.”

  “I’ll not lie to you, Ant-Man,” said Nameless, watching Nils scurry away. “I’ve already caused my people enough harm. If I caught up with them, I’d tell them never to come back this way.”

  Shent hissed—it may have been a sigh. Silas was starting to wish he had a spell to make the dwarf shut up, or at least have the good sense to mislead Shent a little.

  “Then perhaps they’ll pay a ransom,” said Shent. “If I sent this dolt after them with the message that I have you as my prisoner.”

  Nameless laughed at that, a booming roar from the pit of his belly.

  “They might pay you to kill me, but what would be the point? If they didn’t play your little game, you’d kill me anyway, so they might as well save their money.”

  Shent’s mandibles shook and clacked. He reached out with human hands and looked as if he were about to throttle the dwarf. He paused for a moment, fingers quivering, and then Silas saw his antennae twitch.

  Shent stepped away as two gigantic ants scuttled towards Nameless. One bit into his shin and the dwarf gasped but clamped his mouth shut. The other used its front legs to drag itself upright on his back and then ripped into the flesh beneath the dwarf’s shoulder. Blood spurted from the wound and Nameless twisted and twirled at the end of his rope.

  “My ants will eat you piece by piece, creature of Sektis Gandaw. Little by little, sparing you no pain. It will be a slow death, a death filled with despair. Once they start devouring muscle you’ll be helpless to move, even if your bonds were released.”

  Shent started to turn away.

  “You really are a shogging waste of space,” Nameless growled, his face screwed up with pain. “Gandaw must have been drunk when he put you together. What did he do, get a hive of ants to crawl up your mother’s crack and spray their stuff?”