The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  ‘Now.’

  The old fellow turned, took aim, and fell on his bottom in the centre of Rose’s chest. He began to bounce, vigorously.

  ‘Onesie! Twosie! Threesie — erch!’

  Sandor Ott shoved him aside. He knelt over Rose’s chest and started pressing down with both hands. ‘Just twice!’ said Chadfallow, and at once started breathing again. We waited. The captain lay limp. The dlomu who had rescued him was hauled over the rail in turn. ‘Press harder this time, Ott,’ said Chadfallow, and the process went on.

  I heard an old woman mumbling beside me: Lady Oggosk. She too was praying softly, leaning on her stick, tears caught in the wrinkles of her ancient face.

  Ott and Chadfallow worked on. From above came an eerie sound: the beat of wings. Niriviel had just alighted on the fighting top.

  The rain began at last. Then Sandor Ott ceased his efforts and stepped away. ‘It is over,’ he said. ‘Rose served his part well enough. And your skills are needed elsewhere, Doctor.’

  Chadfallow ignored him, delivered the compressions himself. No one spoke save Ott and Niriviel, discussing what the bird had seen of the Behemoth’s weaponry. ‘A glass cube?’ said Ott, sounding almost delighted. ‘How intriguing. But are you certain it had no entrance, no doors?’

  The rain strengthened. The light sank low. Finally, ashen, Chadfallow sat up. He licked a finger and held it to Rose’s parted lips. Then he shook his head. ‘Now it is over,’ he said.

  Lady Oggosk shrieked.

  From the look of agony she wore, I thought her heart had burst. Nothing of the kind: she raised her stick high and swung it like a club, narrowly missing the doctor’s chin. ‘Backstabbers! Parasites!’ she cried. ‘You’ve sucked his blood every day he’s been on this ship!’ We retreated. Oggosk swung her stick over and over, as though fighting wolves in the night. ‘I dare you! I dare you to stand there and watch him die!’

  ‘Duchess,’ said Chadfallow, ‘he has passed on. If I had any remedy-’

  ‘Silence, bastard, or I’ll kill you!’ She threw her stick away, dropped on her knees by Rose’s head. ‘I will drive you from the ship! Chamber by chamber, deck by deck! I’ll uproot you, tear you out with these hands, watch you blow away like dust!’ She curled her old fingers in Rose’s beard. ‘Are you listening? After all this time do you doubt my word?’

  It was too sad. I knew she cared for the skipper, but this was beyond anything. It wasn’t just her heart that was broken but her mind.

  Then Rose bolted upright.

  He gave a horrendous, moaning gasp. His mouth was open and his eyes were bugging from his head. We stood transfixed. There were no cries of joy, only staggered silence. Lady Oggosk had raised the dead.

  But wasn’t there something changed in Rose? Not just his pallor, which was still that of the drowned. No, it was something less tangible, but undeniably there. Like the charge in a cat’s fur: you could feel it, even before the spark that made you jump.

  ‘Captain,’ I whispered, ‘d’ye hear me?’

  ‘CLEAR THE DECK!’

  The cry was in his old, storm-shattering voice. All at once he was scrambling to his feet, bellowing the command again as he did so, waving and gesticulating.

  There were quite a few gawkers to be sure. ‘You heard the captain!’ I cried. ‘Clear out, there, give him some breathing room! Topmen, back to your-’

  Rose leaped on me, smacked his hand over my mouth. ‘I SAID CLEAR THE DECK! ABANDON MASTS, ABANDON RIGGING! ALL HANDS BELOWDECKS! THE LAST MAN BELOW GETS HIS BUTTOCKS WHIPPED TO BLARY RIBBONS!’ He released me and waved his arms. ‘Officers! See them below in ninety seconds or I’ll have your hides! Run!’

  There was of course no room for argument. We carried out his orders as though we had not just seen him lying dead at our feet. Even as we did so, a cry of dismay rang out: the men aloft had spotted something heading our way. ‘Down, down!’ we screamed, and down they came like troops of monkeys, some of them from three hundred feet above the deck. What had they seen, though? I heard ‘shiny’ and ‘spinning’ on a few lips, but nothing I could make sense of.

  I ran as far the forecastle house and back again, and in that time all but a few dozen sailors had made it safely to the deck. But there was trouble at the hatches. The previous attack had brought men to the topdeck in their hundreds — perhaps twice as many as could be sensibly used to fight the fires — and now they’d been joined by two hundred more from the rigging. Many were wounded; some were in stretchers. Add to this the hoses, buckets, fire brooms, fallen cables, scorched canvas and other debris in and around the hatches and it made for awful bottlenecks. Rose was nearby again, howling and kicking men down the ladderways. Somehow, in a solid shoving mass, they went. But it was not fast enough for Rose. He drew his sword and jabbed the descending men with the point, between the shoulders. A few more seconds and the last men were squeezing down.

  ‘Back from the hatches! Stand clear!’ Rose whirled around and looked at the sky once more. ‘Great flaming Gods!’ he howled. ‘Fiffengurt, you mucking fool!’

  I caught a glimpse of the missile — a cube of glass the size of a house, plummeting from above. Then Rose slammed into me like a stampeding rhino, and he bore me backwards into the tonnage hatch.

  There was battle-netting over it, of course, but the nets were scorched, and we narrowly missed a hole that would have meant the death of us both. The captain seized me in a bear hug and rolled, three or four times, and when we stopped he was above me, and the dark mass of the longboat on its sling loomed over us like an umbrella. And then came the blast.

  It was not as loud as I expected and no conflagration followed. Instead I heard a sound like fine furious hail, and the sky around the longboat filled with glass. The cube had exploded in mid-air, showering the Chathrand in a million needle-thin slivers of death. Screams erupted from the ladderways: not everyone had made it safely below.

  ‘Gods, what a weapon!’ Ott’s voiced echoed up through the tonnage shaft. I turned my head: there he was, one deck below, displaying a handful of sharp, shattered crystals. ‘It could kill an entire ship’s company, and leave the vessel perfectly sound!’ he cried, delighted.

  ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘you saved my life.’

  Rose looked at me somewhat hatefully, as if I’d accused him of a crime. Then he heaved himself over so that we lay side by side. ‘Bedour spoke the truth,’ he said. ‘Captain Bedour. He’d seen it used, that weapon. He knew what was coming at us out of the sky.’ Rose stared up at the belly of the longboat. ‘I was dead, Fiffengurt. The ghosts were thick over the water, clawing at me, biting.’ He raised a hand to his face, remembering. ‘They were trying to tear my soul away from this flesh. Your time’s come, they said. You’re one of us now. Let go. Give in.’

  ‘You were lifeless on the deck,’ I said. ‘We did everything we could to revive you. Chadfallow finally gave up.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose, ‘but I didn’t. They were going to have to rip me away. And they were getting down to it too. Oggosk’s threats scared them off at first. They need this ship to carry them to their final rest, and don’t fancy being cast to the winds. But the eldest ghosts are so tired of being trapped aboard Chathrand that they have ceased to care. They kept at me, even on the deck. My grip on this flesh was breaking. In the end it was the bird that saved me.’

  ‘The b-b-?’

  ‘Ott’s falcon. It spoke of that cube, and Bedour overheard. He recognised the cube, somehow, and knew it would be the end of the Chathrand.12 And there was only one man aboard who could do something about it. That was when they understood that they had no choice. The ghosts shocked my heart back into service, so that I could save this ship.’

  His eyes drifted skyward. ‘You see, Fiffengurt? Everyone, even the dead, ultimately depend on Nilus Rose.’ Then he looked at me and barked: ‘Off your back, Quartermaster! Did some other commander grant you a holiday? Get the men to their blary stations! We shall tack west, a close reach around that island! Now, Fiffe
ngurt. I want immediate headway, is that clear?’

  He was alive, all right. And in the next few minutes, as the light failed, he showed us what he’d been building those many hours. It was a barge made of barrels, with a sturdy platform atop it, and a steel tripod mounted on the latter. Dangling from the tripod was a big emergency signal lantern: one of our spares. Coiled beneath it, in a kind of metal chimney, was a long braid of tobacco leaves. The end of the braid was tucked into the lamp’s ignition chamber.

  ‘A tobacco fuse,’ said Sandor Ott, inspecting the contraption with a smile. ‘Very good, Captain. How long do you imagine it will burn?’

  ‘Longer than my patience with your insolent questions.’ He picked up a fine hand-drill and set about boring a tiny hole near the top of one of the barrels. This action he repeated on every second barrel, until he had worked his way completely around the barge. Then he lifted an oil canister and soaked the lamp’s wick, but poured none at all into the tank beneath it.

  Ott looked at me; his eyes said, Your skipper’s a madman. The lamp would light, sure enough, but with an empty tank it would not shine for more than a minute.

  I had a prior worry, though. ‘Captain, you do realise that it’s only just gotten dark?’

  ‘Since I am neither blind nor witless, yes, I do.’

  ‘Oppo, Captain. What I mean is, they may have been able to see us, when we made our turn for westward.’

  ‘May have? Your imprecision wears on me today, Fiffengurt. They did see us; the point is not open to question. Tanner! Get this barge above, along with the deadweights. Fiffengurt, see that no one comes anywhere near us with a source of light — douse every light on the topdeck, in fact. And close the gunports. And see that the gallery windows stay dark. And bring me four cables, six fathoms long apiece. Use the fallen rigging, there is more than enough.’

  We all scrambled. Tanner’s men hoisted the barge by cargo-crane to the topdeck, which was by now quite dark. The Chathrand was on her new heading already, drawing away west of the island’s rocky point. Behind us, the Behemoth glowed like a weird, pale gaslamp, and the daughter-ship had gained another several miles. At this rate it would catch us by morning.

  Rose stood by his invention for some fifteen minutes in silence, as we dragged the four lines he wanted into position, and secured them to Mr Tarsel’s 200-pound deadweights. Then Rose ordered the barge lifted a few feet in the air. On her underside we found four iron rings, and to these we tied the other ends of the cables. Then Rose struck a match and eased it into the metal chimney. The odour of sweet tobacco wafted over us.

  ‘Get her afloat,’ he said.

  We raised the barge and swung it over the rail. Deadweights dangling, the whole assemblage descended into the lightless sea. When it was safely afloat Rose gave the order to cut it loose.

  ‘Now, Officers,’ he said, looking at us all, ‘hard about, and brace up fore and aft. We are going east around that headland. As we did off Talturi: silent and invisible. Go to.’

  It was vintage Rose. The turn was sharp but not perilous, and the wind from the south was as friendly to our new course as it had been to our old. The men stepped lively, too: they knew Rose was trying to bluff death once again, somehow, even if they couldn’t guess the particulars.

  The daughter-ship, in no fear of us apparently, still had her running lights ablaze. She had not turned to intercept us, but was coming on straight at the point. For nearly two hours she kept that course, as we made east under the cover of those blessed clouds. Once the Behemoth fired another round of living fireballs, and we braced ourselves for the worst. Two went east, three west, but they all burned out well before they neared us, and no one was the wiser of our position, I’m sure.

  Suddenly, miles behind us to the east, a light flared up bright and fitful. It was the signal-lamp, of course, and it sputtered and winked and died in thirty seconds, just as Rose had intended. And not three minutes later his gamble paid off: the daughter-ship broke westwards round the point.

  What could I do but smile? The ruse was brilliant. We’d had to break left or right around sprawling Phyreis, and had waited to choose until the darkness was almost upon us. But under that barrage of hellish weapons we’d seemed to panic, turning west before the light was truly gone. A feint? Well maybe. The daughter-ship had taken no chances and kept straight on, hoping for some sign, some giveaway. And that’s what Rose’s decoy had provided. It would seem an accident: a carelessly opened gunport, a lamp carried above deck by some foolish lad and quickly smothered. And the beauty of it was that they would never spot the barge and learn that they’d been tricked, for all this while the sea had been trickling in through the holes Rose had drilled in the barrels. Soon the weight of lamp and tripod would sink the barge like a stone. They’d sail west all night, trying to catch up with a ship that wasn’t there.

  ‘You’re a prodigy, Nilus,’ said Lady Oggosk, clinging with both scrawny hands to his arm. ‘And to think how they scorned you back in Arqual: a low-born smuggler with the arrogance of a king. But there were some who meant that as a compliment, you know.’

  Friday, 22 Halar.

  Left Phyreis behind this morning. No pursuit, no sails. For two days we’ve been alone on the seas. Five men and one dlomu dead of their burns. And I escaped with no more than a hair-scorching, and a little spot behind my left ear that crackles at the touch.

  Winds steady and growing, as though the South were anxious to be rid of us. One or two charted isles left ahead of us, then what I must assume is barbarous territory all the way to the edge of the Ruling Sea.

  Rescued that fool Druffle from a suicidal binge. I smelled only rum on him, but his behaviour suggests some fouler liquor: grebel, maybe. He thought I was his father, and he begged, weeping, for some bread and honey — ‘island honey,’ he is on about it again.

  But Mr Uskins continues to improve. He is consigned to quarters now rather than sickbay, for there are no spare beds in the latter. He is shy, and eats alone, and perhaps suffers from some difficulty swallowing, for his hand is often at his neck.

  Saturday, 23 Halar.

  No pursuit. We are rid of both vessels, it would appear. Lest we enjoy the briefest lessening of our dread, however, a terrible vision came tonight. I was far below and did not see it, but those who did can speak of nothing else. They say it was a cloud that moved. That it raced over us with the speed of birds on the wings but paused over our quarterdeck, and even lowered a little, and that it was black as pitch, and though it boiled and writhed it was thicker than any mist, seeming almost like a black growth or tumour, half as big as the Chathrand. Off it flew northwards, and vanished into the thunderheads that broke above us shortly thereafter. Felthrup saw it and has since been impossible to calm: he declares it is the Swarm of Night. Rose saw it too — from the height of the mizzen topgallants, where he’d pulled himself for a last scan of the seas behind us. After the cloud had passed he stayed there, motionless, and when I climbed up to consult him I found his eyes distracted and his face deathly pale.

  ‘My life has been all wrong,’ he said.

  Sunday, 24 Halar.

  Star of Rin, grant me courage. The nightmare we have all feared is upon us. Two men have gone mad. I am not speaking of an attack of nerves or a delusion. They have lost speech, reason, everything. They scream and run in panic; they bite and claw and fling their limbs about like monkeys. One is young Midshipman Bravun, of Besq; the other a passenger from Uturphe.

  I have ordered the dlomu not to breathe the word tol-chenni, but in truth the precaution comes too late. The lads all know about the mind-plague. They are afraid as never before.

  Chadfallow too is mortified, and hiding his fear behind an exhaustive medical inquiry. The two men were not acquainted, did not frequent the same parts of the ship, did not even eat on the same deck. Both, however, were Plapps: the midshipman had been recruited to the gang just days ago, I’m told.

  There has already been some trouble on this score: Plapps are whisper
ing that the outbreak was engineered somehow by Kruno Burnscove, maimed and imprisoned though he be. At five bells this morning a Burnscove lad was found in the bottom of the hold — gagged and tied up in his hammock and dangling by his feet. He was positioned over the bilge well, at a height that required him to arch his back and neck to keep his head out of the bilge. He’d done just that through the night, and was found at dawn just as the last of his strength was giving out. Luckily, Rose is the sort of captain who expects to wake up to a statistical report on his vessel, written out and slipped under his door by the officer of the day. Such reports naturally include the depth of water in the well.

  If nothing else, Chadfallow’s investigation should help to stamp out such noxious stupidity. The Burnscove Boys did not inflict the mind-plague on the Plapps. We know from Prince Olik that the disease is not transmissible from person to person, that it struck Bali Adro like a snowfall — meaning slowly, uniformly, everywhere at once.

  Mr Uskins’ symptoms were of course very similar to those of the new victims — and Uskins recovered in a fortnight. That recovery bewilders us all. Prince Olik claimed, and our dlomic crew confirms, that no one ever recovers from the plague. ‘Once you burn down a house, it’s gone,’ says Commander Spoon-Ears. ‘That’s how it was with human minds. You can’t repair something that no longer exists.’

  So what happened to Uskins? Spoon-Ears can’t tell me, and neither can Chadfallow. Least of all can Uskins himself account for his recovery. ‘I was a long time afflicted, but the illness passed,’ he says. ‘I was warned that madness would come, and that it would be a fate worse than death. But I was spared. I am a new and happy man. Please forgive me for what I did to the tarboys.’

  What he did to the tarboys! That’s a subject I can’t bear to explore with Uskins, yet, though perhaps the lads themselves can enlighten me. If he means that he was cruel to them, I know it already. If he means something more, I may just turn him over to the Turach they call the Bloody Son. Either that, or find someone (Chadfallow, Sandor Ott, old onesie-twosie Rain) to attempt a little corrective surgery. I have crossed half the world without murdering Uskins, but Rin knows I’m still prepared.