The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  His unblinking eyes remained fixed on the Mzithrini commander. On the next hill, a spark leaped to sudden life, and with a whoosh the oil-soaked mound of brush went up in flames.

  The officer’s response was commendable, Pazel had to admit. He did not kill anyone. Indeed he ordered no reprisals, although it was clear that his prisoners were somehow to blame. His only command was to attack the beacon-fire, to smother it, drown it, snuff it out. The task proved impossible, however. The ‘special chemicals’ were everything the man had claimed. The fire roared like a blast furnace; the soldiers could do nothing but watch. From out at sea it might have appeared that a new and tiny volcano had erupted in this quiet end of Serpent’s Head.

  Kirishgan looked into the distance. ‘The White Fleet is setting sail,’ he said. ‘Already the vanguard is heading this way.’

  ‘They were prepared,’ muttered the officer, snapping open his telescope. As he studied the horizon, he ordered his men to break camp. ‘The Arqualis will see the fire too, and mark the spot. No sense waiting for them to come ashore and investigate. We’ll sleep tonight at Yellow Cliff.’ He turned to Ramachni. ‘Well, mage, you’ve proved you can light a match at fifty paces. Any other tricks at your disposal?’

  Ramachni just showed his teeth.

  ‘Do you intend to fight eighty soldiers of the Pentarchy? For that is the only way we will give your prisoners up.’

  ‘I will not hold you to that boast,’ said Ramachni, ‘but I will not fight you either — yet.’

  The officer shrugged, then gestured at the prisoners. ‘Get some food in their mouths, unless you want to carry these lunatics.’

  Once more Pazel was amazed by his calm. The soldiers brought them meat and bread, and then marched them, at the centre of the battalion, down the hill and back into the maze of rocks and lava-flows and gullies. The soldiers walked in single file. Ramachni scrambled alongside the column, always safely out of reach.

  Darkness came quickly. Hands still tied, the prisoners stumbled often on the rugged ground. They were marching generally uphill, but avoided peaks or vantage points of any kind, and Pazel soon lost all sense of where they were. He slogged on, footsore and anxious. He thought the commander had probably ordered Druffle’s killing in the same casual way with which he had called for his telescope. The only passion the man had shown was his contempt for Neda, whom he had looked ready to kill.

  Hours passed. Pazel’s wrists and shoulders went from painful to numb. The moon rose but vanished at once into dense clouds. Occasionally, by the light of particularly powerful lava-bursts, Pazel saw that they had indeed climbed much higher into the volcanic foothills. He never once glimpsed the sea, but at some point late in the night Ramachni called out to them softly in the tongue of Arqual:

  ‘Do not give up! Magad’s forces spotted the White Fleet before darkness fell, as I hoped. They have ended their attack on Maisa’s ships, and are regrouping to face the new threat. Alas, most of their work was done. Many lives have been saved, but the Empress has lost her navy, or the bulk of it.’

  ‘What about the Chathrand?’ Pazel whispered. But the soldiers hissed for silence, and Ramachni said no more.

  One more weary hour, and they reached a stand of tall pines, and pitched camp. It could not have been more than an hour before dawn, but the darkness was nearly absolute, and the Mzithrinis did not so much as strike a match. The prisoners were chained together by the ankles, and the ankle-chains secured to the trees. Only then were their wrists untied. Pazel collapsed among his friends, and thought the pine needles beneath him the most perfect bed he had ever known. He heard the soldiers murmuring, something about the war’s approaching end, but before he could consider just what they meant he was asleep.

  Drowning. Sinking. Buried alive.

  Pazel woke with a gasp. A dream, horrible and vague, a sense of being crushed beneath some monstrous weight. He sat up. There was daylight, but it was dim and strangely sidelong. In the trees, birds sang uncertainly. Was it morning or not?

  The air was distinctly cold. His friends were waking, moving slowly in their chains. All the soldiers were on their feet. Something was very wrong. They were peering up at the sky, and even by the faint light Pazel could see that they were afraid. He stood, felt a cold claw in his stomach. The weight of the air. The pressure, the chill.

  Neeps rose beside him, steadying himself on a tree. He gave Pazel a look of knowing dread. Beside them, Thasha’s father was fumbling on hands and knees. ‘What is it, boys, tell me!’ Not a prince or an admiral in this moment, just an old man in chains.

  ‘The Swarm is here,’ whispered Pazel. ‘I think it’s just above our heads.’

  ‘The what?’

  Ramachni crept from the shadows. ‘Death has come between us and the mountain,’ he said, looking up. And Pazel realised it was true: he could no longer hear the volcano. Only birdsong — that, and the pines, which were bending and creaking, although there was no wind.

  The others were all awake now and struggling to rise. Murmurs of terror were spreading among the troops. Pazel could see their breath, white and ragged in the unnatural cold.

  Suddenly all the birds fell silent. The Mzithrinis were whispering prayers. Then came a curious sound: a soft thumping, as if small purses were raining down on them by the score. It lasted just seconds. Pazel stretched out a foot, felt the tiny body, and knew: the birds had fallen dead from the trees.

  A soldier bolted. Seconds later dozens of others followed his example, their comrades cursing and shouting Come back, come back, you whimpering dogs! Then the ones who had been shouting began to run.

  For a terrible moment the prisoners were left alone, still shackled to the bending trees. Then a pair of soldiers came crashing out of the gloom, and one of them began to unlock their leg-irons. ‘You must go to the commander,’ he shouted. ‘This way, near the overlook. Run!’

  Soldiers and captives blundered through the pines. Ahead the light was a little stronger — and the hideous underbelly of the Swarm more plain to see. It was combing the treetops, flowing north like a suspended tide. A black tide, pulsing, animate, a tide of worms and flesh.

  ‘Don’t look, Admiral!’ shouted Hercol, as he and Thasha supported Isiq by the arms.

  The trees ended, and they stumbled out into a barren stretch of earth scarred with ashes and yellow, sulphurous stones. Pazel saw that they were on much higher ground than yesterday’s hill. Just ahead, the commander and some twenty of his men were crouching near the top of a cliff.

  In their eyes, naked horror. The hideous mass stretched for miles in every direction, over land and sea. It had flowed around the volcanoes to the west of them. South and east Pazel could see no clear border, just a pale glow near the horizon to prove it did end, somewhere. Only the Swarm’s northern edge was plain to see, and this too was growing swiftly away from them.

  ‘Now do you believe us, Commander?’ asked Pazel.

  The officer just stared up into the Swarm. He appeared to have lost the power of speech.

  ‘Gods above, it’s as big as the whole Rekere!’ said Darabik.

  ‘It has feasted on death since last we saw it,’ said Ramachni, ‘and it will soon do so again.’

  They reached the cliff where the soldiers stood. Pazel looked north, in the direction the Swarm was growing: dark island, dark coast. The limping remains of Maisa’s forces. Ten or fifteen miles of empty sea-

  And there it was: the Swarm’s prey.

  Under vast clouds of cannon-smoke, the two greatest navies in the Northern world were blasting, pummelling, burning, and hurling every manner of deadly ordnance at each other. The Arquali loyalists had no intention of being pinned against the anvil of Serpent’s Head. They had sailed out into the Nelu Rekere, engaged the Mzithrinis head-on. The scale of it. There was so much fire, so much flung iron and splintered wood, that Pazel wondered that the clash did not end instantly, each side torn to pieces by the other’s onslaught. But in truth neither was prevailing. The Mzithrinis w
ere more numerous, and the wind was still at their backs. The Arqualis had heavier armour, longer guns. Their attack formations had crossed, splintering. Masts had toppled; rigging burned in sheets.

  ‘Commander, the mage is here!’ said the soldier with the keys. Still the Mzithrini officer only stared into the Swarm.

  ‘Mage,’ said the soldier, ‘did you summon this cloud? Banish it; banish it and name your price!’

  Ramachni looked sorrowfully at the man. ‘I did not bring it here,’ he said, ‘and nothing I can do will prevent what is to occur.’

  The Swarm passed over Maisa’s forces. It was accelerating as it neared the battle-front. Pazel felt its cold in his bones. He wondered how many of the sailors had noticed it, through that pall of cannon-smoke.

  ‘Turn away, soldiers,’ said Ramachni. ‘Do not force yourselves to see this thing.’

  Pazel reached out instinctively, pulling Neeps and Thasha close. He would not shut his eyes. How could they fight something they could not bear even to see?

  The soldiers had forgotten them. They stood in a line along the cliff’s edge, staring. The edge of the Swarm reached the first of the warships.

  ‘No,’ said the commander, suddenly coming to life. He gave a sharp gesture, then shouted: ‘No! Men, men! This isn’t going to happen, what you think is going to happen cannot possibly-’

  The Swarm dropped.

  It was a river pouring over a cataract, a curtain of gore, a great formless limb of the floating mass above. It fell to sea level, swallowing forty or fifty miles in an instant — and the battle was gone. No light or sound escaped. From the edge of the mass, dark tentacles groped across the waters, snatching at the few boats that had fallen outside the initial onslaught, dragging them within. Pazel couldn’t move. He’d thought he was hardened to horror but this, but this. Someone was laughing, a sick sound like the whinny of a goat. Their commander buckled at the knees. A man was violently sick. The blackness throbbed and quivered; it was a diseased muscle, it was clotted death. Pazel heard his friends swearing, weeping, almost choking him with their arms, and he was doing the same, bleeding inside; was it over, was he allowed to look away? The Swarm twisted, writhed, and fragments of ship began to leak from it like crumbs through teeth. Make it stop. Make it end. From the men around him came sounds of lunacy and damnation; a soldier was eating gravel, a soldier flung himself over the cliff; others were crawling, fighting, shouting blasphemies, their faces twisted like masks.

  The Swarm rose again into the sky.

  Beneath it sprawled the remains of the warring fleets. Gigantic, mingled, dead. Some vessels were crushed and sinking; others were intact but drifting like corks. Not a gun sounded. The pall of smoke had disappeared. Every fire had been extinguished, and every life.

  The commander had curled into a ball. He was pale and utterly still; perhaps he too was dead. Perhaps you, Pazel, are dead. No, no. Your mouth is bleeding, you’ve bitten your tongue and the blood is warm and trickling. You can taste it. You can kiss your friends and see your blood on their foreheads. You’re alive.

  The commander turned to look at Ramachni. ‘Tell me exactly what you need,’ he said.

  34

  From the final journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt

  Monday, 22 Teala 947.

  Surely this is how men feel on the Redemption Path through the Tsordons, at the end of six months afoot, looking up at the last, steep slope of the Holy Mountain. I can’t climb that. I must climb that. If I climb another foot something in me will shatter. If I don’t climb, Rin’s light will never again warm my soul.

  We are that close, and that desperate. Sixteen days north from Serpent’s Head, most of them in the Swarm’s frigid shadow, fighting leaks we cannot locate, fighting scurvy, numb with fear. Who will remember for us? Not me, not good Captain Fiffengurt: I can’t remember last night’s dinner, though Teggatz has served the same three Gods-damned dishes for a month. A poor memory is one reason I fill these pages. Another is because the very hunt for words helps me stumble on through this fear. Towards what? An end to the Nilstone? A dream of Anni and our child, my seven-year-old boy or girl? Or the cold end of Alifros, the Swarm grown larger than the world it hovers over, the sun extinguished, the Chathrand crushed like an eggshell by the frozen sea.

  In the year 900 I went ashore in Uturphe and paid eight pennies for a peep show, as tarboys will. When I stepped out again my mate said there were Mzithrinis in the city trying to burn the docks. We were thrilled. We raced each other to the port. I was fast then and left him behind, but I didn’t know Uturphe and misjudged the distance. Before I knew it I was at the waterfront and there I saw a Mzithrini soldier gut a man like a mackerel. The victim was flat on his back and holding the killer’s forearm as though offering assistance and his face was like a mackerel’s too. The Sizzy glanced up at me and saw my abject horror and grinned. I ran and hid in a basement until Arqual retook the port. That was my first death. I thought I’d never recover, and in a sense I was right. The foolish, openhearted scamp who ran to those docks vanished there; it was a changed, colder boy who got away.

  Now look at the sea of blood through which he’s passed. Hundreds slain on this voyage. The whole of humankind dead or mindless in the South. Dlomu killing dlomu, armadas burning cities, mages and generals wielding engines of death. In the North, a Third Sea War’s raging, the ‘Big One’ of which we’ve all lived in fear. Now this. A levitating horror. A shapeless mass that swallows fleets, that has grown so large we have spent the last nine days beneath it, never glimpsing its edge. We are freezing and afraid. Night brings infinite blackness. Dawn brings a feeble twilight that lasts all day.

  The Chathrand is talking to me: she is full off odd shudders, unsettling creaks. And her stern is riding strangely low. We shift ballast forward; she levels off. But the next day there is a hint of the problem once again. I cannot account for it: we have sprung no leak, and no cargo or armaments have been shifted to the stern. This is no crisis, yet, but it is a mystery, and one more nail in the coffin of my hopes for sleep.

  What solace I find is in the new faces. We are part of a flotilla, now: five warships, nine lesser gunboats, twenty ragtag service vessels. That is all that remains of Maisa’s great rebellion, or at any rate her navy. After the slaughter at Serpent’s Head, of course, her loyalist enemies back home are hardly better off.

  Admiral Isiq spent five days with us on the Chathrand, days in which he and his dear girl were inseparable, of course. Now Isiq and Commodore Darabik have gone back to Nighthawk, the rebel flagship. Still with us, though, are some hundred rebels, the vast majority from Etherhorde. Our homesick lads must be driving them to distraction, begging for stories of home. The rebels for their part listen to our talk of Bali Adro and Floating Fortresses with a weird mix of terror and resignation. They can’t really doubt us, for just overhead is something stranger than any part of our tale. Something you could look at for a month and still think That just can’t be.

  A less enjoyable passenger is a certain stiff-necked Mzithrini commander, who was camped on Serpent’s Head with a small battalion. I hate him: Bolutu tells me he shot Mr Druffle on a lark and tried to leave the rest of our people chained to trees. All the same, he had wisdom enough to hide his own ship (a sleek little gunboat with lovely lines) well out of the fighting, in a cove on the island’s NW quarter. That vessel is our escort, now, and I am glad to have a Mzithrini in the lead as we sail into enemy waters.

  Stiff-Neck is blunt with us, all the same: ‘You are sailing to your deaths. The bulk of our navy has been destroyed, but what remains could still make a gruel of this little force. Around Gurishal we keep a wide perimeter guard, and a second patrol force near the island’s shores. They will destroy you easily — unless the Swarm has devoured them all.’

  Rin forgive me, I brightened at the thought, but Ramachni declared it all but impossible. ‘That is not how the Swarm does its work. Look at Serpent’s Head: men were still dying among Maisa’s forces, but the Swarm
passed over them, attacked the epicentre of death, and flew on in search of another place where the war was at its height. Always it hunts the largest prey. But that will only protect us while there is large prey left to hunt.’

  ‘And the Nessarim?’ added Stiff-Neck. ‘Who will protect you from them? We control the seas, but they own the land, and guard it like war-dogs.’

  ‘But this whatsit, this Arrowhead Sound we’re making for — Neda says it’s blary remote.’

  ‘They will be there, regardless,’ said Stiff-Neck.

  After Serpent’s Head we had a week of cold and blackness. Then a dawn came when even the Turachs wept with joy, for half the sky was free of the Swarm. That ugly malignancy had glided northwards, and its terminal edge was almost directly above us.

  Here was a proof that raised our hearts: proof that the thing did not yet fill all the skies of Alifros. Proof that we were not too late. We felt the sun for a good eight hours before it drifted back again and plunged us into the dark. Now it has been nine days, and I begin to wonder if we shall ever see blue sky again.

  It was in those eight bright hours that I made a play for Stiff-Neck’s trust. Pazel’s sister and Hercol urged me to it, and I see now that they were right. What we did was take him down to the manger, to the Shaggat’s filthy lair. We let him bring his men-at-arms, but told them nothing before we arrived. Neda insisted on that point.

  I unlocked the door and swung it wide. His Nastiness (as Rose called the Shaggat) stood in the middle of the chamber, wearing nothing but a rag about his privates, holding a large and soiled book. A massive chain linked his ankle to the stanchion. Chadfallow had fitted a brass cap over the stump of his left hand. The nails on his right were long and yellow, like the teeth of rats. He was glaring. He seemed somehow to be expecting us.

  Neda was first into the room. But before she entered she spat on the threshold, rubbed the spittle with her boot, and spoke some words in Mzithrini in a kind of sing-song, like an incantation or a charm.