The Prophet of the Termite God

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  In the quiet they heard the scampering of what remained of the sentries in retreat—for now. Polexima looked above her. The locust scouts were flying widdershins, signaling that the Seed Eater parade was near.

  “Majesty, look!” shouted the Slopeish roach rider at her side as he pointed north. Polexima and Punshu turned to see crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers leaping up and out of the weeds, jumping towards them. The marsh marigolds across from them were shaking. Punshu seated himself on the roach and offered his hand to Polexima. She hesitated, then grabbed the sentry’s quartz sword before ascending to the saddle. After refilling her quiver from the saddle’s box, she loaded her bow, then looked to the sky and awaited the signal.

  The Ledackis neared the mouth of the Petiole to find refugees running and screaming as they abandoned their camps. Thousands had fled east, and were struggling through the mud of the Tar Marsh or wading in its shallows, unable to go any farther without risking drowning. Thousands more were struggling to climb up to and through the rough rock piles of the West, with their jagged edges and cramped spaces.

  The Ledackis’ huddle came apart. The men stood before the Petiole, shields before them, weapons at the ready, to defend their women and children. The crying of the children was drowned in the screams and panic of the masses behind them. Princess Jakhuma stepped forward with the nameless baby and looked at the approaching forces, and knew they had no chance. Who are they? Hulkrites? she wondered. Have they gathered to attack on some other ant? A long arrow hit Sebetay’s shield and broke it in two. Other arrows shrieked overhead.

  “Sebetay, to the right!” Jakhuma shouted. “Into the marsh!”

  “To the marsh!” Sebetay shouted, and the Ledackis scrambled down the low incline.

  “Get away!” shouted the refugees in the marsh, packed tightly at its edges and threatening weapons. All along the marsh, the refugees struggled to stay close to the boggy edge, and were both slipping and stuck in its mud. Panicked screams came from those who had been pushed into the water and were thrashing and drowning. More of them were backed into the water as the Ledackis pressed in.

  “I said stay back!” shouted a brown-skinned woman who aimed her spear’s tip at Jakhuma’s throat. She looked at the woman’s face, bumpy with ritual scars, and knew the marsh as a refuge was pointless.

  “Ledackis—to the West,” she shouted.

  “West!” she heard Sebetay repeat as he yanked Kula and Tsepalang from out of the grip of the mud. As they crossed to the piles of pebbles and rocks, Jakhuma could see what was coming.

  Roaches. Grass roaches, from their dark color.

  The men helped the women and children to the treacherous piles of rocks leading to the Great Jag. They were pushing the children up to climb when refugees from above pelted them with sand and poked them with pikes. A rough pebble came tumbling down and knocked Kula and Hopeful to the ground. She clutched the baby tighter in her arms after she landed on her back.

  “Get away!” shouted a yellow-skinned youth from above as he pushed a pebble to the edge. “We’ve no room here for black Ledackis!” The rest of his clan attacked the Ledackis as they tried to climb by stomping and stabbing at their hands, or kicking their chins until they fell to scrape down the rocks.

  The Ledackis clustered together, the women wailing, and looked north, behind them, to see tens of thousands of refugees milling as a panicked, screaming barrier as the roaches came closer. All of them wondered, as Jakhuma did, what to do next.

  No going back, she realized.

  “Weapons!” Sebetay shouted as the army on roaches came near. “If we can’t live, we will die fighting!” Jakhuma stood behind him and spoke in his ear as she tried to comfort the baby in her arms.

  “Thank you, Sebetay,” she said. “If I never get to tell you, I bestow the honor of Whapenzee Sebetay upon you, for you are one of my beloved.”

  He barely nodded his head. The roaches came close enough that they could see their riders. At their head was an older, yellow-skinned man with the close-set eyes and grass-yellow hair of a Dneeper. On the roach next to him was a younger man, who might have been his son. The younger man raised up a cone and spoke something that sounded like Hulkrish.

  “You occupy promised land of Dneep people,” he shouted. “Leave. Now. Or die.”

  “How can we leave?” Jakhuma shouted. The older man, a king, she gathered from the spangled straw miter on his head, gave a command. Archers from the back of the roaches shot arrows that arced above the Ledackis, then fell on the refugees behind them. As the arrows hit random marks, they incited new screams of grief and panic.

  “Back! To Palzhad!” commanded the Dneepish young man as the roaches pushed forward in a slow, steady crawl.

  Sebetay and Jakhuma looked at each other.

  “North! To Palzhad!” she shouted to her people, and to those behind her, not of her tribe. “North to Palzhad, to save your lives!”

  “North!” shouted Sebetay. “To Palzhad!”

  The Ledackis turned their backs on the roach people of Dneep and took tiny steps. The slow, churning mass of hundreds of thousands trudged, stumbled, and crawled to the North as the men on roaches herded them. Jakhuma burst into tears when she stepped over the corpse of Tsepalang, an arrow in her slender back.

  Jakhuma clutched the baby girl in her arms tighter.

  Darling infant, you will see another day. You will have another chance.

  “Chance,” she said out loud to the girl. “I’m going to call you Chance.”

  Brother Moonsinger looked around his chambers and was haunted by its quiet. Everyone was at Shishto or Cajoria, awaiting a battle. Perhaps it was under way. Here in Palzhad, in this empty palace, he had no one to talk to, no one to perform for, and very little to do as he waited for Nuvao to return. The brother had already eaten, already bathed, and already dressed. And he had already made his request, futilely, for a messenger to relay the urgent news that the Yellow Mold had appeared. This mound will never become a learning center. It’s about to implode, and the priests knew it—wherever they are.

  Shame and regrets were gathering over him like a storm cloud. I should have gone to Cajoria and insisted on joining the defenders—even if I am nothing more than an old eunuch who talks too much. I’m not any safer here. And what will happen, gods forbid, if the Seed Eaters prevail? The only way they welcome me in the West is as a big, fat sacrifice to Mantis.

  He sighed. I have to leave. I must tell someone—anyone—what I’ve seen here. And if a dying ant can’t take me to Mound Smax, I’ll walk.

  Though his stomach was full, Moonsinger ate the rest of some fermented buckwheat and mealworm cakes, then changed into practical clothing and walking boots. The servant entered after calling, “Creet-creet”; she had a dozen deep ridges in her brow, and was muttering inaudibly as she shook her head.

  “Anything else we can bring you, Brother?” she asked as she picked up his tray and muttered some more.

  “Yes, Barhosa. I’ll need a water bladder and some travel food, please.”

  “Yes, Brother,” she said. “Though I don’t know about traveling.”

  “Why not?”

  “You might want to take a look at the South.”

  Moonsinger rushed from the bedchamber to the hall, then to the nearest exit. He squeezed out to the uppermost ring, empty of ants and people, and trotted south to view what had been the border weeds. The refugees were still spread to the far East and far West, and from what he could see, they looked to be just as dense in the South. Something caught his eye and he gasped to see a couple of refugees making their way over the border wall and through the sentry ants. The ants had gathered all their diminished numbers at the wall, but they seemed to be greeting the intruders instead of destroying them. These cheeky intruders were easily dodging the ants’ attacks as they zigzagged under and through them. The intruders seemed even less intimidated by the last of the human sentries who rode atop the ants.

  More refugees crawled up the
wall—a hundred of them, loosening the barrier as it flattened under their feet to brandish their weapons. The human sentries jumped from their saddles and ran north to take shelter. Once these had left, the refugees attacked the ants. They were clubbed, pierced, and ripped into pieces. The ant killers swarmed north, taking their pieces with them to the stadium, where they found privacy and space to sit and lick their lymph. Thousands more refugees were rushing over what had been the wall. A moment later, no ants, not even dead ones, were visible in Palzhad’s southern clearings. Moonsinger bit his fist as he looked down at the flood of human beings splitting east and west to the housing rings on the north side.

  Soon enough, they will occupy every abandoned shelter!

  Then challenge the occupants of those which are not!

  How soon before they are up here? Inside this palace?

  Keel and his sons were bored and yawning. “May as well tug out some spunk and take a nap,” said Tal as he lay in the hollow of a sand grain and pulled his shield over his body. “Wake me when the Seed Eaters gets here, if you’d be so kind.” Keel and his sons were laughing as they watched Tal’s shield bobbing above him, when Keel noticed the defenders to the left and right were giving them the sideways glare.

  “Get up, Tal,” Keel said. “Everyone’s giving us the shit-eyes.”

  “All right,” said Tal as he stood and pulled down his tunic. “Not really in the mood for a wank anyway. I’m just bored enough to drink my own piss. Anyone got any kwondle?”

  Keel was reaching into his tunic when a scout in sand camouflage slid down from the wall’s top to a voice-cone. “Alert! Alert! Invaders sighted!” he repeated. Scouts all along the wall passed the message from the lakeshore to Shishto.

  “Goggles up, filters up, shields up!” the captain shouted. Keel and his sons raised their eye and nose protection, then set their shields before their toes and looked out the slits at their tops. In back of them, they heard the second line of bowmen draw arrows from their quivers.

  A moment later, Keel heard the harvester ants arrive in what had been predicted as the first wave. His heart raced—I get to be in a war! The invaders were shouting, “Za yatchmin, za Volokop,” as the first of them nosed up the top of the wall. In the distance, Keel thought he could see their bowmen standing in their stirrups behind their drivers and shooting. A few arrows fell just before their division, far short of their marks, and they scattered and rolled like little sticks.

  They must be wondering why they don’t see any ants, Keel thought. And where are our ants? He felt something like an explosion in his gut—fear—when the harvester ants were abruptly thrust above the wall. Pikes were ramming up through the top holes to pierce both ants and riders. When the pikes were retracted, they left human and ant corpses to tumble down the wall. The ants and men that made it past the pikes were just as soon skewered by pikes that punched through holes in the wall’s face.

  Keel and his sons watched the carnage with mouths open, stunned at first, then laughing as the Seed Eaters kept coming and the pikes kept jabbing, again and again, to kill them by the hundreds. The corpses were shoved into a pile with long-handled push brooms from slits at the wall’s bottom. A rising barrier of dead ants and soldiers was building before Keel’s eyes, nearly as tall as the wall. When the corpses clogged the wall and the pikes could thrust no more, the enemy poured in. Keel could hear the muffled sounds of the Seed Eaters’ army as they continued their advance by climbing up the second wall of their dead.

  “Hold positions!” shouted Klonpak. Atop the corpse wall, Keel saw the first antennae and the beards of the brown ants, and then the soldiers mounted on them. With this swell of soldiers came the smaller stinger ants that darted around their larger sisters. The ants spilled down the rough, steep hill of corpses to right themselves and advance.

  “Hold positions!” shouted the captain again.

  Keel watched as the advancing ants came to a slow halt. Their bowmen were jerked out of their stirrups, and some were thrown from the saddles. The drivers panicked, unable to goad the ants forward or stop them from turning around. The ants wanted to go back. Some climbed up the wall of the dead only to be crushed under the mass of more of their arriving army.

  It’s this roach grease that keeps them back, Keel realized as he sniffed his arm. He felt humbled and embarrassed for a moment and had an annoying reminder of Anand. As the Seed Eaters’ army was turned into a tangled mass of confusion, Keel saw they had no choice but to abandon their ants. By the hundreds, they fell or jumped from their saddles to march on foot after raising up shields, and nocking arrows.

  Keel and his sons looked at each other, grinning in anticipation, even as arrows whizzed past their ears or landed in their shields. One of the Seed Eaters yelled, “Za yamiche! Bravajnay!” Their front line shot their arrows before they ran in the hundreds, swords flashing above them.

  All at once they stopped. The Seed Eaters jerked forward, their feet caught, to fall facedown in tar. Keel and his sons guffawed, watching as the Seed Eaters suffocated in a hopeless attempt to pull their faces from the black glue. A few fell back in the tar, their hands and bottoms getting stuck as they were crowded and trampled by the soldiers behind them.

  “Bowmen, forward!” shouted Klonpak from behind the defenders. Keel and his sons turned to the side to allow the bowmen to step through and aim at the helpless targets.

  “Shield bearers! Two hundred paces back,” was the captain’s next command, and as they had practiced, Keel and his sons and their division marched backwards. Through the slits, Keel could see the Seed Eaters’ ants were coming forward again, harvesters of all sizes. They crawled over the men trapped in the tar until they got stuck themselves. The ants struggled, then ripped out their own legs to let their bodies fall to the glue. Their riders attempted to escape by leaping from ant to ant but most of them slipped and fell and were caught. When the tar trap was full, the ants and men who struggled in it were thick enough to be a passageway for the next swell of the army. The Seed Eaters kept coming, riding over the trapped ants and the men screaming for mercy.

  Keel was dizzied and delighted as he watched the Barley people march to their own demise. But how many more have they got? he wondered. He looked with his sons at the next wave of mounted ants; these ants were larger and their soldiers were better armed and armored. The ants came closer and then halted again, repelled by the roach-scent. The ants were turning back again, but these soldiers had expected it—they jumped from the saddles to make a tight formation, shields before them, to march on foot. A line of bowmen was in the back of them, shooting thick arrows high from powerful bows to fall in a lethal rain. Keel was looking up, in fear of the arrows, when he heard a piercing scream. He turned to see an arrow had burst through Tal’s goggles and jammed in his eye socket. Tal collapsed on his back, shrieking in agony and unable to pull the arrow out of his skull. Gatherers of the wounded ran up from behind him to drag Tal off in a travois. Keel wanted to run forward and attack, to protect the rest of his sons. He would target every last Seed Eater with his blowgun, then gut them once they had fallen.

  “Hold positions!” shouted the captain a third time, and when Keel turned to look, he saw Klonpak was commanding him in particular. When Keel looked back to the Seed Eaters, their foot army had multiplied by hundreds, and he could hear their boots as they marched.

  “Ropes!” shouted the captain. Keel and his sons hesitated—they wanted to lower their breathing masks and shoot darts.

  “Ropes now!” shouted the captain. “Do not disobey me!”

  The defenders hung the top loop of their shields around their necks as a barrage of arrows whistled through them. Keel and his sons reached to the ground to raise up one of the bright red ropes spaced along the front.

  “Pull!” shouted the captain, just as an arrow pierced his arm. “Pull, pull, pull!” he screamed in pain. Keel trudged backwards, yanking the rope, when he felt a violent pang in the left of his face. An arrow had lodged between his te
eth and his cheek. His blood sprayed as he screamed before fainting. His sons dropped the rope.

  “Pull that rope!” commanded Klonpak as he ran up to replace Keel. The Seed Eaters marched closer.

  Messages were filtering back to Volokop as his ant fought the driver’s commands. “We have penetrated, deep into Slopeish territory, half our forces,” was the latest word. But there had been no messages from inside the Slope. Or Bee-Jor, or whatever these Mushroom Eaters under the boot of Dranverites want to call their country.

  Volokop was imagining his army, valiantly fighting, preparing the way for the final blows, when his ant shifted off the sand route. The stilted ants were weaving off it as well. We must be nearing these accursed roaches! If it was Britasytes who brought roaches near a battlefield they will have to be punished—kill a few, then a tax of some kind, a complete emptying of their sleds.

  The emperor’s thoughts were interrupted when the imperial ant turned in the opposite direction. The driver struggled to right it, but the ant was determined to reach a gray mudwort and climbed up its stalk. “Take control of this ant!” he commanded the driver.

  “Majesty, I can’t, it’s . . .”

  The ant righted itself on a leaf, which bent under the weight and bounced. To his right, the emperor had a view of the lake. From below he heard shouting and saw that the stilted ants had stumbled to the lakeshore, pushed by the invisible repellant of nearby roaches. The ants’ riders were wobbling as their ants’ stilts slipped in the mud and tripped through clumps of hair sedge, until half of the stilted fell in the water. The princes and princelings struggled in the lake, unable to swim in their heavy armor. They screamed for help to those on the shore, who cut down punk weeds and extended their fluffy cylinders as floats to pull them in.