Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The slaves were fighting harder than they had a right to, was Thalric’s assessment. Even with all their dependants at their back, and nowhere else to go in the world, he would have thought they should have crumbled by now. Instead, the Worm had rushed them again and again, and the volleys of slingshot had beaten into this attacking force, slowing them, tripping them over their own dead, so that when they reached the first line of slave-held swords the speed of their charge had been checked. There were mounds of the dead, now – dead from both sides – whole charnel barricades for the Worm to clamber over. It was all mounting up, impeding the enemy, making them slow down and wasting their numbers.

  Of course, it’s still a hopeless fight, Thalric acknowledged. I’m not exactly going to get a chance to go around and tell everyone ‘Well done,’ am I?

  He had been leaning heavily on his Art: aloft much of the time and battering down on the Worm with his sting – each shot just a tiny effort, but he was feeling the drag of it now. There were just too many of the enemy, and they didn’t care if they died. Or perhaps the problem was that there was only one of the enemy, and they could kill these husks forever and still not win the war.

  The Mole Crickets were proving surprisingly effective, too, he considered. Of course he knew them back from his Empire days – big, slow, dull brutes, fit for mining and with a surprising turn for artifice, but seldom much use as warriors. Then, again, they were scarce in the world above, but here he had them in the hundreds, a hulking second line armed with clubs and hammers and the great reach of their long arms. The swordsmen in the front row were just concentrating on staying alive and fending the Worm off, whilst the big Moles reached forwards between them and hammered and crushed and slapped.

  But we’ll run out of sling stones soon, I suppose,Thalric reflected. How ridiculous, to be trapped in this hole in the ground, and yet meet your end because there aren’t enough stones in the world.

  He let himself drop down again, trying to conserve his strength. Below, down the slope, the lines shifted and wavered, and still the wretched slaves somehow held – the slingers thinning out the Worm even as they came so that what reached the defending lines was just manageable. There was a simple mathematics, though, of attrition and exhaustion, neither of which appeared to be problems the enemy suffered from.

  It’s been an education, Thalric admitted. But they’re still slaves all the same, and when that line breaks there’ll be no recovering from it.

  With that in mind, he began working his way back, keeping an eye on the ebb and flow of the fight. It was not from some desperate need to preserve his own skin, but he wanted to be closer to Che. When the inevitable worst happened, and these doomed defenders were overwhelmed, he wanted to get her out somehow. They would trust to their wings and risk the White Death and the carnivorous stars, and they would find some way out of this place, just the two of them.

  He looked back up the slope, and saw fighting there too. For a moment, by the light of their single fire up there, he could not see who was crossing blades with whom, and he let his wings lift him up and carry him over, utterly bewildered. Then he saw them: who else could it be, really? After all, the world had ceased working to comprehensible rules some time ago, so why not these players acting out this scene one last time?

  Tisamon, Tynisa, and the appealing thought: I could just go, right now. I don’t have to get involved in this little knot any more.

  But he did. He did if he wanted Che. He let his wings carry him towards them. He launched himself forwards and a sling stone from the Worm’s ranks struck him solidly in the shoulder and brought him down.

  Forty-Four

  Esmail and the Hermit trailed the prisoners across the Worm’s vacant stone city, the Assassin taking care to step virtually within the other man’s shadow. Even then, and despite the fresh scars on his hide, there seemed to be a growing hostility amongst the Worm’s warriors. Those empty faces were turning his way more and more, as though catching him out of the corners of their eyes.

  No, not just me – the Hermit as well.

  Ahead of them, the band of Scarred Ones and their guards were picking up speed, the robed Centipede-kinden becoming more and more agitated.

  ‘What is going on?’ Esmail hissed.

  ‘Just keep moving,’ the Hermit shot back, and then, almost to himself, ‘I fear . . .’

  ‘You fear what?’ demanded Esmail. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What is there here to fear, save one thing?’ was the Hermit’s hurried response.

  Abruptly there was a choked cry from the group ahead, and Esmail’s lantern caught a fine mist of blood glittering in the air. The group barely slowed down – and soon it was moving faster than before. A corpse was left in their wake, though – one of the captive slaves, though thankfully not the man that Esmail was here to free.

  ‘Someone couldn’t wait for the sacrifice?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Just keep moving,’ repeated the Hermit, a real edge of urgency to his voice.

  There was definitely a disruption to the pattern of movement across the city. The steady spiralling that had dominated the general flow through the streets kept breaking up, individual segments of the Worm finding themselves outside it, waiting blankly as though about to receive new instructions.

  ‘Seriously, will you tell me—’

  There was another scuffle ahead. No cry this time, but Esmail saw a blade flash, the group moving on as before.

  ‘They’ll not have anyone left to offer up,’ he commented, and then he saw the body clearly.

  Sprawled there, abandoned and now claiming that common kinship all human corpses shared, it took him an additional moment to understand why it was so wrong. It was a Scarred One, a priest – one of the elite.

  ‘A falling-out between your people?’ he asked of the Hermit.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then? He didn’t knife himself.’ The old man’s reticence was maddening.

  ‘It’s all coming apart at last.’ The response was close to a whisper. ‘He was killed by the Worm, by its warriors. They saw him, truly, for the first time in his life. They saw he was not of them, not really of them.’

  A chill came over Esmail. ‘The Worm is rejecting its kinden?’

  ‘The Worm has no kinden, save these husks,’ the Hermit whimpered. ‘We only played at being priests, and it overlooked us. Now our god is turning away from us. Can you imagine?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in it?’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more. But I know how it must feel,’ the Hermit said hoarsely. ‘It’s the end of everything.’

  An unpleasant thought caught up with Esmail. ‘Wait, doesn’t this mean that we . . .’

  ‘Yes, even we,’ the Hermit agreed. ‘They will penetrate our deception, yours and mine both, soon. It will be soon.’

  ‘Then we . . .’ Esmail saw the prison party vanish into one of the caves, down a steeply sloping tunnel that could lead only to one place. Immediately he was heading after them with as much speed as he could muster, desperately trying to blot from his mind the image of what he would find down there.

  At the cave mouth his courage failed him at last – not the courage required simply to go on, but that additional strength of mind that would be needed to face the Worm itself.

  ‘We’ll catch up with them in the tunnel,’ he decided. ‘We’ll kill them there, then we’ll . . . Then we’ll . . .’ His plan had no second act. ‘You can scar him up quickly.’ Despite what the Hermit had said about the time that process would take, and the time they didn’t have. ‘We’ll . . .’ And he was running, then slowing for the Hermit to catch him, horribly aware that ahead of them the prison party was still speeding up, the stately stride of the priests shattered into outright panic. They were now desperate to appease their god with their offerings, to earn themselves a place back in its good graces.

  Don’t they know? thought Esmail wildly. Don’t they understand that it doesn’t care? Certainly it had let them li
ve in its shadow thus far, little parasites it could not be bothered to scratch at. But it was vast and inhuman, and how could its priests think it capable of entering into any bargain or contract that they might conceive of?

  He wondered if it was his presence that had set off the Worm’s instincts: a foreign agent masquerading as one of the kinden that had created it. Or perhaps it’s just that it’s the end of the world, and nobody’s getting out.

  He should have caught up with them by now, he knew, but the Hermit was slowing him – the old man growing more and more reluctant to follow in Esmail’s footsteps, until the Assassin realized that some old hook of his former life was still lodged in him – the awe, the dread, the sacrilege of it was tripping him up and holding him back.

  Then it was too late, because they were there. Esmail was stumbling out into that vast cavern, seeing the group of warriors and priests and their victims right ahead, poised before that sudden drop, the abyss of the Worm.

  They had a prisoner forward already . . . no, they were already throwing some others over the edge, just giving them to the pit as if desperate to attract their god’s attention, to reaffirm their non-existent bonds of mutual understanding with it.

  The next man was thrust forwards, bleeding from their swords until he chose the drop over the steel. But he did not fall, for the vast darkness of the Worm surged into view and caught him between its pincering claws, its whiplike antennae thrashing like mad shadows about the ceiling. Esmail had frozen, his eyes fixed on the one armoured figure amongst the prisoners: Totho. How the poor Apt bastard must be shaking.

  As he watched, he saw Totho strike out at the nearest priests, knocking them to the ground. The warriors encircling him got him at their blades’ points, but he was ignoring them, glancing briefly over at Esmail and his lantern’s light – so obvious to his surface-dweller’s eyes and yet something that the Worm simply couldn’t see.

  Tynisa’s rapier point scored a line down the side of Tisamon’s helm, caught his return strike on her guard and cast him off, taking a step back to make distance her ally again.

  Her leg buckled as she did so, the pain flooding back in double measure, lashing her for every step she had taken since the last time. Tisamon faded to a shadow even as he drove for her, and she stumbled sideways, seeking Seda. She had to bring this fight to a close quickly, or one of these sudden shifts would tear her apart.

  Or the Worm would get here and kill them all. But, then, that was going to happen anyway, sooner or later.

  Seda was standing with her good hand thrust towards Tynisa, but her face was crawling with conflicting expressions, and her eyes clearly saw something other than the crippled swordswoman before her. Tynisa could only assume Che was inside her mind, fighting the Empress furiously, taking up every ounce of her concentration.

  The Wasp’s sting spat, nonetheless – Che’s hold on the Empress failing as the Worm’s influence smothered her magic – and Tynisa dropped to one side to avoid that wavering aim, the resulting shock of pain feeling fiercer than death. Then she was lurching back to her feet, screaming out a war cry to fight back the waves of weakness that threatened to drag her down. Abruptly her strength was back and she sprang forwards, desperate to close the distance before . . .

  He was there again, claw scything down onto her, and she skipped out from under it, tried a jab towards Seda but then had to drag her rapier back to deflect Tisamon’s next blow. He fought her back by three hard-won steps, battering at her guard, the meticulous precision of his style disintegrating, as though he was infected by Seda’s own panic. She scored half a dozen strikes against his mail, failing to penetrate the ancient Mantis craftsmanship. The inequality of the fight was weighing on her, knowing that he only needed one good hit, and every step she took would be paid for when the tide of the Worm closed in on them again.

  Thalric struggled to his feet, feeling something grind agonizingly within his shoulder. The Worm had so few slingers, it seemed dismal luck that one should have gone for him. For a moment, surrounded by the slaves, caught in the push and pull of the conflict that yanked and jarred him painfully, he could not think what he had been doing. Then it came back to him, and he tried his wings.

  The Art had barely flickered before his shoulder was screaming at him, and he staggered, feeling the fight around him start to unravel, the inevitable triumph of the Worm on its way again.

  He had to get to Che. He had to get to her and . . .

  Of course now he would not be able to go with her. His own escape route had just been snatched from him.

  He began pushing through the throng, good shoulder first, forcing his way upslope as fast as he could, as though he could outstrip the conclusion he had just come to. No escape, not this time. He had stayed alive a long time, had Thalric. He had outlived a mad Dragonfly set on vengeance, the rejection of the Rekef, capture by his enemies and an entire bloody siege dedicated to his personal extermination. He had even survived so far in this night-black place, but now it looked as though his legendary resilience and luck might just have reached their limits.

  Someone crashed into him from behind and he let out a bark of pain and found himself falling. A moment later hands had caught him, and he was hauled up to stare directly into an eyeless, nightmare face.

  ‘Messel!’ he got out. ‘Help me. I need to get to Che – help me up there.’ His tone was somewhere between command and plea.

  The blind man got an arm around him wordlessly and started pulling him upslope. He had brief, contradictory glimpses of the fighting up there. Tynisa and Tisamon crossing blades. Then Tynisa was falling, and her father was gone. Then they were back again, the girl recovering from the stab of her intermittent injury just in time to defend herself. It was as though he was watching the moments of this battle out of sequence.

  Che and Seda seemed almost motionless in comparison, even as the duel jolted and surged between them. Thalric gritted his teeth and forced himself onwards, with Messel helping clear the way.

  Forty-Five

  Straessa awoke each time the rhythm of pace of the rail automotive changed, which in practice meant at least once an hour. Now they were slowing, and the irritable thought crawled through her mind: What now? Ambush, sabotage or mechanical failure? Outside the window the sky was grey with dawn.

  Then there was someone shouting at the far end of the carriage, coming closer, and it occurred to her that she was nominally at least partly in charge around here, and so she should know what was going on.

  By the time she had sat up, the shouted words had forced their way to a lobe of her brain that was sufficiently awake to understand them.

  ‘Awake! Get up! Get your kit! Clear out!’ A Sarnesh soldier was pushing his way down the aisle. ‘Ready to fight, Beetles! Come up! Out and muster ready to march.’

  ‘Wait, wait – we’re here?’ Straessa protested, snagging at his arm. He stared at her, curbing his annoyance on seeing that she was an officer of some sort.

  ‘Well, the Wasps won’t exactly let us ride the line all the way to their terminus,’ he told her, ‘so we’re now as close as we’ll get. On foot for most of us from here on in. Collegium gets the left flank, between the Mantids and the non-Sarnesh Ants. We’re centre and right. Get your people out and ready to march, then stand ready for further orders.’

  Straessa applied her mind to that, trying to think like a Sarnesh tactician. Probably they were counting on the non-Ants to give way before a determined Imperial push, resulting in the sort of slow revolution you usually got in a clash of infantry speeding up, allowing the Sarnesh to execute some sort of flanking manoeuvre or similar. Nice to know they rate us so highly.

  By that time most of the Collegiates sharing her carriage were in motion, starting to pile out even as the vehicle slowed to a gradual stop. Straessa fought her way free of them and headed off after the Sarnesh messenger into the further carriages, encouraging the rest of her contingent to get moving. She cast a guilty look about the baggage car but there wa
s no sign of the Tidenfree crew at all.

  She was still kicking her soldiers awake when she heard a distant boom, feeling the ground shake as, no doubt, the more powerful enemy engines felt out the range. She didn’t waste any time in contemplation, though, but just began shoving Company soldiers out of the doors all the faster.

  Outside, when she finally got there herself, was a study in qualified chaos. The other officers and sub-officers were forming the Collegiates into maniples, but lots of people had got out of place or gone in search of new friends over the long journey. Straessa waded in, looking for her own unit, telling anyone she saw who looked lost just to find a maniple that was short of someone. In their midst, Balkus was organizing the little Princep Salma detachment to support them: stretcher-bearers, surgeons, ammunition runners.

  Right, so where’s the rest of them? The Netheryen Mantids had an easier time of it simply because they had no battle order to speak of, just a great loose-knit mass of them armed with bows and spears, blades and the hooked arms of their beasts. They stood very still, though, far more so than the bustling Collegiates. Straessa recalled that this was the first time they had come to a war on their own terms, without just providing a mailed fist for the Moth-kinden. The thought lent them both a professional quality and also a vulnerability. The Mantis-kinden were doing something new, which in itself was new.

  On the Collegiates’ other side she saw the Vekken and the Tseni, and somehow they were standing side by side and not killing each other. Sarnesh soldiers were there, too, talking to the Vek contingent and getting them to space out rather than form the traditional solid Ant block which would offer nothing but bait for artillery at this distance.

  She clutched at her rapier hilt to steady herself, secure in the knowledge that she could whip the blade out as swift as thinking, and she had the skills to put it to good use. The thought was very clear in her mind, a source of strength and reassurance for the brief moment before she looked at all the soldiers around her, with their snapbows in hand. Her own was slung over her shoulder, and that was the weapon she needed to feel confident about. There was precious little room in this latter age for the sword. Those days of duels and champions and blade-skill were diminishing. Only the Mantids still pined for them. The rest of the world had moved on.