Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Rosander was already in motion, tireless, inhuman. The warriors of the Thousand Spines pushed themselves to the front and strode forwards into what must surely be the final battle for Myna. Stenwold saw a ripple of shock course through the Imperial lines at the first sight of them.

  Kymene kept advancing, sending her soldiers into the buildings on either side to break up the Wasp shooting positions, and Stenwold pushed forwards to keep up with her, the Maker’s Own spreading out to his right, shooting at any Wasp target that presented itself. The sky was still busy, but the Airborne were being thinned out rapidly, those who could not find cover being picked off by the Collegiate snapbowmen. When did we become veterans? Stenwold wondered. But, of course, his own city had been through a lot in the last few years. The Empire had forged the merchants and tradesmen of Collegium into soldiers, and now the Beetles had come to show them their error in that.

  Beyond the diminishing Airborne, the remaining flying machines duelled and danced – not a Spearflight to be seen now, just Stormreaders and Farsphex, and it looked to Stenwold as though his own pilots – veterans too – were carrying the day.

  A crash sounded from ahead, and he saw a Sentinel plough into the Sea-kinden at full speed, scattering them, crushing a handful beneath it. Its single eye spat fire, the leadshotter ball carving a bloody trough through the Collegiate lines. Then the Onychoi had converged on it, prising and levering at its armour as it tried to shake them off. The cover over its main barrel gaped again, and a Fly-kinden in Maker’s Own colours darted past its face, shoving a grenade into the opening. The flash of the explosive gutted the machine itself but was so well contained by its armour that the surrounding Sea-kinden were barely shaken by it.

  He heard Kymene’s clear voice yelling: ‘For Myna! We will rise again!’ and he was just about to throw in his own, ‘Through the Gate!’ when she cried out in pain.

  He saw her fall, leg pierced by a snapbow bolt, and a handful of her men cut down with her, Wasp snipers above suddenly making their presence known.

  ‘Kymene!’ He was immediately labouring over the uneven ground towards her, knowing that he would be too late. ‘Paladrya, stay back!’

  He had no idea whether she would or not, but he was closing on the Mynan leader, seeing her clutch at her holed leg while trying to inch herself into cover. A bolt skipped off the stone by his foot, and another cut past his shoulder.

  ‘Back, Maker!’ Kymene yelled at him, her face pale with pain. A squad of Mynans was pushing into the building to dislodge the snipers, and others were rushing to protect their commander, but they were still too far off. Stenwold had almost reached her, one hand stretched out, waiting for the moment when the next bolt would find her, to snuff her out even as her city was being won.

  Something struck him a hammer blow to the skull, and his world flew apart.

  The Red Watch man seemed to be on the point of apoplexy when he heard the news. ‘How can they have reached us so fast? How much further to the Mynans?’

  Too far, Gannic thought. Lugging the artillery had done it. The Lowlanders – or whatever those things were, because they didn’t look like any Lowlanders he had ever seen – had lacked anything resembling a siege train. If the Imperials had just holed up in the garrison, then they could have held out for tendays against a rabble of infantry, but Red Watch’s tactical genius – or his skewed priorities, rather – had brought them all out into the open like this.

  ‘Hold them off! Throw them back! Keep up the advance! The Empress wills it!’ Red Watch insisted, and Gannic saw his own despair mirrored in the faces of the other officers nearby. There is no way, he thought. You can’t have it all.

  Some of the mid-ranking garrison officers, a couple of majors and some captains, were organizing what defence they could, and were plainly ignoring the voice of the Empress for the foreseeable future. They were sending their best snipers forwards to give the enemy’s sides and rear something to think about, and were trying to throng the buildings on either side with Light Airborne so that the advancing force would get caught in a crossfire. Too little, too late. Too many of those buildings were ruinous shells that gave precious little cover, and besides there were Mynans already rushing inside them, braving the shot to fight over the best vantages. And then they’ll be shooting down on us.

  It’s time to leave, I think. But before he could put that thought into practice, Red Watch had hold of his shoulder. ‘Into the orthopter!’ the man was shouting, and Gannic just stared at him blankly.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘The orthopter, the Farsphex!’ And, yes, in the direction of Red Watch’s shaking finger, there was a Farsphex, summoned here by who knew what signal. ‘Get in. You can drop the Bee-killer directly on them from the air.’

  Gannic stared at him in utter astonishment. ‘Sir, I’m not a pilot.’

  ‘It’s got a pilot. You can be the . . . what, the bombardier! Do it!’ Red Watch cuffed him across the head with a gauntleted hand. ‘Do it!’

  ‘Sir, have you seen the size of the gas canisters? The Farsphex aren’t kitted out to drop anything that big.’

  ‘Then you’ll set the thing off and just roll it out of the side hatch!’ Red Watch roared into his face. ‘Go! The Empress commands!’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  Another blow fell. ‘Do it, you traitor!’

  ‘No, sir, the Mynan—!’

  ‘We will hold the Mynans!’

  Gannic held up his hands, desperately trying to fend off the man’s fists. ‘The other Mynans, sir! They’re here!’

  At last the Red Watch man stopped and looked round. They had been advancing along one of the main thoroughfares of the city, offering a good straight run up the tiers of steps leading all the way to where they had the Mynan population bottled up. Except the bottle had broken. The locals had realized that help was on the way, and they had not been content to sit around waiting for it. A veritable avalanche of angry Mynan soldiers and citizens was flooding down from the heights with vengeance in mind.

  ‘Trigger them now!’ Red Watch spat out. ‘The canisters . . . set them off now. Here and now, all of them.’

  ‘In the middle of our own soldiers?’ Gannic shrieked at him. ‘Are you insane?’

  For answer, the Red Watch man grabbed him by the arm and began hauling him towards the laden automotives, shaking him fiercely every time he tried to resist. The man was insane, that seemed undeniable, but he possessed all the strength that madmen were supposed to have.

  So sting, Gannic told himself. Sting him. Stab him. Do something. And yet he did not. Even considering what Red Watch was going to make him do, even with the enemy on all sides and any chance of escape rapidly vanishing, he found that he was more frightened of the consequences of disobedience right now than of obedience a few minutes later.

  Do it, then fly, he told himself. Fly and don’t look back.

  Then Red Watch was down, a javelin-like bolt skewering his chest, and Gannic tumbled to the ground with him. He scrabbled up only to see the monstrous armoured shock troops of the Lowlanders virtually on top of him. The Imperial lines had broken, unable to contain them. They were all around him, hacking and shooting.

  He found that he was still stumbling towards the automotives, as though the Red Watch man had left some posthumous hook in his mind that he could not escape.

  He had a second of clarity, caught halfway there, locking eyes with a Beetle-kinden soldier down the length of the woman’s snap-bow barrel. He opened his mouth to make his excuses, to beg some kind of exception – I’m just an engineer – and then she shot him. The bolt struck him through the shoulder, throwing him to the ground. A moment later a vast armoured form loomed over him, blotting out the sun.

  Gannic shrieked, and a curved sword descended and made an end of him.

  After it was done, with Mynans rejoicing on every side, Rosander took off his helm and sucked in a deep breath.

  ‘Enough,’ he decided. ‘This has to be enough. The bastard was ri
ght. It just goes on and on.’

  His armour was now a great stone weight around him; it had felt as light as air when he had donned it first. He was hot. He was thirsty.

  He was happy, though. He would return to the sea and his warriors would tell the tale: how the Thousand Spines had invaded the land.

  And we’ll be back, no doubt. All that nonsense of secrecy that Maker had cooked up with Hermatyre was well and truly broken open now. A world of opportunity. It seemed likely that land and sea were both going to have to make plenty of adjustments.

  But we’re Onychoi. We’ll profit. He felt fiercely proud of his people – not just their fighting spirit, but the engineering and artifice that had allowed them to export it so far. Chenni’s going to laugh, when she hears.

  He lumbered off to find the Lowlander leaders, with the Mynans making sure to get well out of his way.

  He found Kymene quickly enough. With her leg being attended to by a surgeon, she was taking reports from her people, but he wasn’t much interested in her. Instead he kept on looking until he found Paladrya sitting huddled outside one of the buildings.

  ‘Where’s your man? Inside?’ he boomed. ‘I need to speak with him.’

  Rosander was not by nature sensitive, but something moved within him as she looked up, red-eyed and trembling, so that his voice was almost gentle when he asked her, ‘What is it?’

  Forty

  Che looked out, with eyes that knew no darkness, and saw the Worm.

  Had I ever realized they were so many, would I have done this differently?

  Because, of course, this was not all the Worm’s bodies. Far more than this were now funnelling inwards through their city, climbing the gradient leading into the wider world above, seeking to bring the Worm’s gift to all the world.

  The Moths did an evil thing when they sealed this place away. She wondered if they had ever known – when Argastos and the rest forged the Seal – just what abomination they were opening the way for. Had they any idea what the desperate Centipede-kinden would do, cut off from the outside world and desperate for any means to survive?

  And they had failed, in the end. Save for pathetic remnants like the Scarred Ones, they had given themselves over to something that cared nothing for them, and it had merely hollowed them out and consumed them.

  Now those shells that were rushing towards the slaves’ prepared positions were not even born of the Centipede. They were the children of the Worm’s slaves, the stolen generations remade in their old masters’ image, force-grown, hollowed out and sent to butcher those who had brought them into the world.

  The first sling stones were flying on both sides. Che saw the twin heads of the Worm’s advance ripple with casualties which the main body just moved on over. They barely slowed.

  She was here at the highest point of all, the last place the Worm would reach, once all her followers were dead. She was here because this was where the magic would last longest. Here where she might have been able to accomplish something. Here where she had found the limits of her Inapt strength.

  There was not enough magic in the whole of the Worm’s world simply to open a door where she pleased, but even if there had been, she could not see her way to it. She could not find the logic unique to ritual that would bring such a result about. She was not enough of a magician, anointed heir to the Khanaphir Masters or not.

  She looked back over the host of those who had followed her here – the fighters who were even now bracing themselves against the onrush of the Worm, slingers, rock-pushers, the untrained and awkward who had been given swords and told to stand. She looked over the far greater number who hid behind them: the weak, the young, the old, the desperate. She felt so very, very sorry.

  There seemed no other option now, no better use she could make of her power and her time. She could not save these people. They would die, and nobody in the world beyond would ever know that they had even lived.

  But there was something she could achieve while she still had time before the Worm took her. There was yet a cause she could give herself over to.

  She understood Seda’s plan now, the terrible details, the ocean of blood the woman would drown herself in. She understood why – the inexorable logic to save the world from the Worm.

  And I know the horrors of the Worm, of all people. Seda had called on her, all enmities put aside. What little Che still possessed, she needed.

  Seda, she sent out, do you hear me?

  And the distant response, Seda’s voice strung as taut as a bow. Che? Tell me, Che. Tell me you see that this is necessary.

  Che felt sick at what she must do, the betrayal of so much, but what else was there? There was a point when all pretence was stripped away, and she could see herself just as she was, and know the limits beyond which she could not go. Yes, I see what must be done. I will do it. I will help you.

  There, I’ve said it. Had she doomed herself and Thalric and Tynisa and all these people, or were they doomed already? I think that this graveyard of a world is the one place that even I cannot make worse with my mistakes.

  Esmail was a planner by nature. He was used to having time to prepare, absorbing all the information he could raid from the minds of his victims, then to plot his entrance, his exit, his fallback. He was also used to having his magical abilities to hand, and to facing an enemy that acted and reacted in something like a human manner.

  He winced as he sliced a new scar on his arm with one finger. The locals had started to notice him again.

  And the city was still crawling with them. Despite the host that was pursuing Che, and the army still spiralling its way out of this world up to the sunlight – and surely even now mustering in some unthinkable halfway place for its grand assault – the city still seethed with the silent host of the Worm, amidst whom paced the huddled, fearful figures of the Scarred Ones, masters and prisoners all at once.

  He could not get Totho out. He had kept watching for an opening that would never come. If he tried to extract Totho from that pit, then every eye in the city would be turned on them, and every blade shortly after. Esmail was barely maintaining equilibrium by passing himself off as a Scarred One, using the mindset he had stolen, using the scars he had copied, but only because he was doing everything possible not to draw attention to himself. A single slip would undo all his work.

  He had considered waiting for Totho to be dragged out and ambushing the priests as they led their new sacrifice towards the caves. It would be an ambush in the midst of a great host of enemies, though, sheer suicide that no amount of skill could save him from. And surely that moment of truth was coming – Totho was still within, but the hall down below must be emptying rapidly. The Scarred Ones had not been slow about their sacrifices.

  He did not want to return to Che admitting failure, but he was a professional, an agent’s agent. Sometimes a job simply could not be done. She would have to understand.

  The bitter part was that she would understand. She would not rail and shriek and demand that he do better, as some employers had. Her disappointed misery would be harder to bear.

  Then he felt a change in the crowd about him, and realized that his introspection had closed him off dangerously from keeping track of his surroundings. Through that throng of vacant bodies, a single man was making a direct line for him: one of the scarred.

  Discovered! But, if so, the Centipede-kinden had not yet alerted the host of warriors all around him. Esmail considered running, but none of the Scarred Ones ever ran. The bodies of the Worm were constantly rushing, as though appalled by what they had become, but the priests maintained a sedate pace. To flee would be to announce that he did not belong.

  So kill him. He could slide his cutting-Art fingers into the intruder’s belly as they approached each other, then help the corpse to sit down, robes bunched about the wound to soak up the blood. He could only hope that the murder would not register in the attention of the Worm, so that he would have a chance to get clear before the death was discovered.
It would not be the first time he had pulled just such a trick.

  Just moments before he sent himself striding forwards into that fatal clinch, he realized that he knew this man. It was not just some old Scarred One about to meet a well-deserved end; it was the Hermit.

  Seeing him there, after the man had refused to accompany Esmail to the city, brought the Assassin up short. Has he changed sides? Is he about to betray me? Those were the instant thoughts, followed by, So I should kill him, anyway. But the same logic prevailed: if the man had rejoined the Worm, then he would have a hundred swords already within striking distance of Esmail, and no need to risk himself.

  The Hermit stopped at what he probably thought was just outside striking distance, though Esmail could still have cut his heart out if he had risked a full extension of his arm. Eyes half buried in wrinkles studied the Assassin dispassionately.

  ‘You do it well,’ he murmured. ‘I didn’t think it was possible, but you carry yourself just like them – just like us. I never even knew we stood like that, until I see you doing it now. You’re an artist, truly.’

  ‘And you’re my audience, apparently,’ Esmail replied softly. The Scarred Ones were always murmuring. None of them seemed to dare speak as loud as the Hermit was right now. ‘Why are you here?’

  The old man looked insulted at first – after all, surely this was his place more than it could ever be Esmail’s – but then something else descended on his face, some weight of shame, and he muttered something, losing the words entirely. Only when Esmail leant closer with an exasperated hiss did he get out, ‘For him.’

  ‘Orothellin.’

  The Hermit nodded unhappily. ‘He believed in her. He wanted to help her, the Beetle girl, and he’s dead now, the fool. After so long, he finally risked too much, and let them catch him. I should hate her for that – without her he’d still be alive – but it just goes round and round in my head, the way he wanted to help. So in the end I’m here because of him, because what else have I got?’ A tear was tracking through the grime, finding the path of least resistance down the lines of his face.