The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Some of the vines have broken,” said Hercól. “Come here, Neda, and help me lift the frame. You too, Undrabust.”

  Thasha felt like running. She marched up the foggy beach and stepped into the trees. After a dozen yards she stepped behind an oak, then leaned out to look back at the shore. The others had stayed close to the raft. Pazel bent and tried to help with the repairs, but Hercól waved him firmly away—in her direction, as if by chance. She could have hugged him. Nothing escaped her mentor.

  When Pazel drew near, she whistled softly, then beckoned him near and hid again. Eventually she heard his footsteps approaching. When she could stand it no longer she stepped out and dragged him behind the tree.

  “You blary imbecile,” she said. “Why didn’t you help me with him?”

  Pazel made no reply. He shrugged off her hand and walked deeper into the mist-shrouded trees. Furious, she plunged after him. The land rose, and they scrambled up the brief incline. When the ground leveled off the mist was brighter, and a pale green moss covered the feet of the oaks.

  Thasha cornered him against a fallen tree. “I could kill you,” she said. “You just mucking stood there! Couldn’t you see how bad he was getting?”

  Pazel nodded.

  “Look at me, you sorry—”

  He kissed her, gently at first, then with abandon, his hands under her clothes, his hips pressing hard against her. Thasha gasped; her arms went around him, and for a moment she did not know if she was struggling or urging him on, helping him free of his trousers, giving in to his need and her own. His eyes were half shut, he was devouring her with kisses, how could she stop him, how could she keep these boys from pain?

  “Thasha—”

  “Stop talking. Stop talking.”

  He had a hand between her legs; she had her shirt up so that her breasts could touch his skin. This was the end, they were ruined. She was going to scream.

  He was still. She hadn’t screamed but her mind had gone elsewhere. Those were only his fingers, his fingers; she had lost all restraint but he hadn’t, thank Rin. Her mind was racing, bliss and sadness and memories and mad notions of her destiny, all bent by the prism of his touch. That wanton girl, Arunis had cackled. Not everything he’d said was a lie.

  Warm rain on her shoulder: Pazel was crying. “Neeps wanted this,” he said.

  “Maybe. Yes.”

  “I was trying not to hate him. I was so angry I could barely breathe. I couldn’t look at the two of you.”

  “It’s not his fault,” she said.

  “I know, I know. And it doesn’t matter, either. If it helps him somehow I don’t care what you do.”

  They still had not moved. “It wouldn’t help him,” she said. “Making love doesn’t protect you from the mind-plague.”

  “Maybe it does, though. Maybe he senses something. Like animals do when they’re sick.”

  “No,” she said. “If this were enough, humans would still be here, wouldn’t they? Besides, he and Marila did it eight times—”

  “Eight?”

  “That’s what she told me.” Thasha kissed his cheeks, his eyelids. “Pazel … you were in nuhzat, just now.”

  “What?”

  Appalled, he tried to break away, but Thasha held him tight. “Hush, hush. It was over in seconds. But I saw your eyes change, turn solid black like Ramachni’s. It was beautiful, you were beautiful. That’s when … I stopped thinking.”

  He was barely listening. “It’s the second time it’s happened to me,” he whispered.

  Thasha knew that only dlömu could experience the nuhzat, that waking trance with its visions and powers, its fear. Dlömu and, in the rarest of cases, humans who had been raised by them. Or loved them. She knew also that Pazel had slipped into nuhzat in the temple at Vasparhaven. He had told her that much. But he had told Neeps more—and Neeps, in his disordered state, had babbled some of it to Thasha.

  “You were with a dlömic woman,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound accusatory.

  “No!” said Pazel. “I mean, yes. But not with her, not like this. I can’t explain.”

  She did not like the change in his voice, or the way his eyes stared past her as he spoke. “Anyway,” he added, “I’m not sure she was a dlömu.”

  “What else could she have been?”

  Pazel hesitated. “A spider,” he said at last.

  “You’re insane,” said Thasha. “Or I am. Oh credek. Pazel, listen: we can’t do this anymore. Not until we’re safe somewhere. You know that, don’t you?”

  His answer was a kiss. She returned it, not caring if the kiss meant yes or no, for the blackness was flickering in his brown eyes again, and her youth was her own and not Erithusmé’s, that was as certain as his beauty, his urgency, the rising of the sun.

  She turned from him again.

  “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “This time I wouldn’t have stopped.”

  “I didn’t stop,” he said. “I just— It was just—”

  “Oh, Pitfire.” Thasha stepped back, lowering her shirt. “That’s it. I can’t end up like Marila. You have to promise me you’ll stay away.”

  He laughed, reached to touch her again. Glaring, she caught his hands.

  “Night Gods, Thasha,” he said. “A few minutes ago you wanted to kill me because I was keeping away. Listen, stop worrying—”

  “Oh, why should I worry? You listen, you blary ass. This time we got lucky. The first time I kept my head. No more.”

  He was fumbling with his trousers, which were literally held up with string. Loving him desperately, she gripped his chin and raised it.

  “Promise.”

  She was quite certain about what she was doing. Pazel, however, managed to surprise her again: he turned and rushed down the hill in the direction of the raft. Suddenly she realized that he was limping. You idiot! she thought. Why did you let him climb the hill?

  She closed her eyes. His stubbornness had left her shaking with rage. When she looked again Pazel had vanished in the fog.

  Once more she bolted after him. She had no clear idea what would happen when she caught up—tears, apologies, violence? Aya Rin, don’t let him fall on that leg.

  She reached level ground. The fog was now so thick that she could see just a few trees ahead of her, and only realized she was nearing the shore when the earth grew sandy among their roots. Where had he gone? She drew a breath to shout, but some instinct for caution made her hesitate. She rushed forward to the river’s edge. There was no one in sight. Had they descended the wrong side of the island? Of course not, there was the raft, and—

  Pitfire!

  Thasha drew her knife, whirled into a defensive stance. The raft was destroyed. The vines cut, the bladder-mushroom slashed—and the Nilstone gone. The ropes that had secured its sacking trailed in the water. Footprints surrounded the raft, a confusion of footprints, radiating in all directions from the shore. She could see no other sign of the party.

  As ever in a crisis, she thought of Hercól, his wisdom and severity. Her mind became clear. She bent low beside the nearest footprints. River water was trickling into the heels, softening them even as she watched. The prints were only seconds old.

  She turned at bay. Now she heard it: a wide, dispersed sound, as of many persons or creatures moving in near-silence. The heart of the sound was at too great a distance to be coming from the island itself. The shore, then. Or other boats. Whatever it was, the party was no longer alone.

  Thasha stepped carefully away from the raft, then turned and darted along the shore, putting distance between herself and that unseen host. She had taken no more than ten steps when Pazel materialized out of the fog.

  “Don’t move, Thasha,” he hissed.

  Pazel was stock-still. And the next instant she saw why. A hrathmog stood facing him, gripping a huge, double-bladed axe. Water dripped from its black fur; long white fangs showed in its mouth. The shoulders beneath the crude leather jerkin were enormous.

  The creature’s eyes wer
e fixed on her now. It stood head and shoulders taller than either of them. She held her breath, muscles twitching with apprehension. The hrathmog fingered its axe.

  Then Pazel spoke: a single word in a hard, guttural tongue such as Thasha had never heard. The creature gave an uncertain reply, its voice like the growl of a bear.

  “It’s afraid of us—afraid of humans,” Pazel murmured in Arquali. “It said it didn’t know this island belonged to the Lost People. That it was ordered here by its chief on the far shore. That it’s sorry for disturbing our rest.”

  “It thinks … we’re dead?”

  Pazel nodded, then spoke again in the hrathmog’s tongue. The creature shuffled back a step. “Where are the others?” Thasha whispered.

  Pazel shook his head: no idea. The hrathmog lowered its axe. Thasha imagined it was breathing easier. She was not.

  “The raft’s destroyed,” she said.

  Pazel shot her a look of dismay. Then his eyes snapped back to the creature. “Right,” he said, “we’re ghosts, see? And we’re just … going to … back away.”

  They began a slow retreat, foot by careful foot. “Into the river,” he said, “just until we’re out of sight. Then we’ll swim.”

  “Not too deep, though,” she said. “Ramachni warned us—”

  “I know.”

  They backed offshore until the water reached their knees. The hrathmog watched, unmoving. Already its form was dimming in the fog. Pazel murmured a last word to the creature, and Thasha silently exhaled. His Gift had just saved them again.

  Then her legs collided with something in the water. She whirled. A second hrathmog was floating beside her, faceup. An arrow protruded from its throat. Although quite dead, the creature still gripped the arrow shaft with one hand.

  Whose arrow? Their party had no bows.

  Suddenly the hrathmog on the island rushed forward, narrowing its eyes. When it saw the body, it threw back its head and gave a monstrous howl. From the far shore, dozens of voices rose in answer. But the hrathmog did not wait for its comrades. The two hairless creatures were not ghosts but tricksters, murderers. It raised its axe and charged.

  Thasha grabbed Pazel by the shirt and flung him behind her. They stumbled backward, flailing for deeper water, and then the hrathmog raised the great axe over its head, preparing to hurl it, and Thasha saw her death. The water had slowed her. She was offering the blade her chest.

  The beast hurled the axe. But as it stepped into the throw, an arrow pierced its calf. The hrathmog stumbled; the blow struck the water a foot from her chest. As the creature charged, Thasha groped for the weapon, pulled it from the river bottom, and swung.

  How weak, how feeble, but somehow she’d cut the creature’s hand. She kicked backward, swimming now, screaming at Pazel to Go go go! The hrathmog snatched at the weapon; Thasha flung it away. Chase it, chase it, please! The hrathmog lunged and caught her by the leg.

  Thasha’s knife flashed: now both its hands were bloody. Then those maimed hands caught her by the throat.

  It tried to close, to bite. She forced an arm under its chin. They fell back into deeper water, the current whirling them downstream. Her knife was gone; Pazel groped for her and was gone; hairy thumbs dug into her windpipe. She twisted, clawed at its eyes. She was failing, the thing was killing her, it was just too strong.

  All at once a spasm shook the creature. Pazel was on its back, his head over its shoulder. The creature screamed; its hands released Thasha and seized Pazel and hurled him away, and in the half-light she saw that Pazel had most of its ear in his teeth.

  In a killing frenzy the hrathmog dived after Pazel. She clung to it, knowing it would tear her lover to pieces. The creature dragged her on, heedless—and then, suddenly, it was dead. Other beings surrounded them. Knives flashed. Dark blood billowed from the hrathmog’s neck.

  She was choking: she must finally have gasped. Her vision dimmed and a roaring filled her ears. Her last sensation was of the veins of darkness in the river’s depths, coiling about her ankles, pulling her down.

  5

  From the Final Journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt3

  Monday, 21 Modobrin 941

  A dlömic woman spat a seed into the waves today & made me cry. She never saw me watching her. First her lips worked round & round, then her face lifted & she made kissing-lips & when the seed flew her eyes tracked it like a gunner his cannonball. At first I couldn’t account for my tears; then I knew I was seeing my Annabel on a picnic, with a sweet green mush-melon, spitting seeds in Lake Larré, the juice runnin’ down her lovely chin.

  Nine days since the Shaggat’s waking, the torture of Chadfallow, the proof that Rose has ceded his captaincy in all but name to Sandor Ott. We are blazing west by northwest under topgallants & triple-jibs, over waves like rounded hills, putting mile after mile between us & our abandoned shipmates. Coward, traitor, fair-weather friend: at night the accusations churn my stomach, though no one makes them but me.

  A queer dark spot in the sky this morning. It moved closer & we saw it was a solid mass, very low in the sky. We beat to quarters, ran out our guns. The object bobbed & turned. It seemed adrift in the air, & with indescribable horror we saw that it was the bow of a sailing ship, fifty feet of hull & deck & shattered framewood, the stump of a foremast, the whole bowsprit thrusting upward like a narwhal’s tusk. Rin as my witness, the thing looked torn, like a heel of bread from a loaf. Two cables reached skyward from the anchor ports, a quarter mile maybe, & at the end of ’em we could now see one of those weird skysails used by the dlömic armada: half kite, half balloon, kept aloft by some power none of us could explain. The wreck blew right over us, some hundred feet above our forecastle. There were flames inside her, & dlömu, living dlömu, holding fast to the rigging & rails. They looked down at us & I expected to hear calls for help, but they were silent. Maybe they thought us phantoms, heralds of doom, as their cousins did that first night in the port in Masalym.

  No one spoke, no one could. One of those poor devils jumped for our rigging but of course at that speed it just tore through his hands like razors & then his foot grazed something & he turned & reached the deck headfirst & Heaven’s Tree how I wish I’d shut my eyes.

  If only someone up there had thought to drop a rope. We might have reeled them down with the capstan, spread combat netting between the yards. They could have jumped & lived. As it was the wreck drifted northward, gaining height. For hours we watched it dwindle against the sky.

  I am done with journal-keeping. Let oblivion take these memories. Anni will have had the child by now; Rin knows how she’ll care for the little thing, or who she’ll turn to for comfort. Goodbye to you, journal. You’re a womanish weakness I’ve indulged & that is the true reason I kept you a secret. No more entries, no more pain. Goodbye I say. The end. Let me be an animal that labors for his food-bag, a dumb brute who does as he’s told.

  Wednesday, 23 Modobrin 941

  But what I’m told—the miracle that Rose would have me work—is to keep their spirits up. “Make them hope a little longer, Quartermaster,” he says. “You’re honest, & you’re an ally of Pathkendle & Company. It falls to you.”

  Make them hope. I close the door to his cabin, walk ten paces. Before me is a man I recruited off the streets of Etherhorde, a pious youth as I recall. He’s in deathsmoke-trance. I remember what I said to him, in that tavern doorway on a cool summer’s eve: “Finest run you’ll ever make, & the easiest. Due west to Simja, feasting & carousing at a festival that’ll be the envy of your grandkids, the pomp & splendor when we give away the Treaty Bride. Then due east to Etherhorde again, and ninety cockles in your purse by midwinter.” I believed all that myself—wanted to believe it, needed to. My own pay for that easy run would have let me clear Anni’s parents’ debts, with maybe a bit left for a humble wedding.

  Now here the fellow stands, reeking, mouth agape, so fogged he doesn’t know me, or his peril should he draw the captain’s eye. He is a Plapp, & when I alert his brother gang
sters they whisk him down to the hold to sleep it off—or to look for his stash, or both.

  That was midday. At three bells there’s a tarboy before me, horrified, whispering that a group of thugs is working the berth deck, snatching boys from their hammocks at night, clapping hands over their mouths & bungin’ ’em in the lockers until they bleed. At five bells another deathsmoker appears in the galley, in worse shape than the first. He’s a Plapp as well, but this time the Burnscove Boys get to him first, & turn him in. I suppose his execution will follow.

  Someone is knocking at my door: more bad news, or else Uskins, drooling & vague, with a word from the captain. I should have married her in secret. I should have told her old dad to get stuffed.

  Thursday, 24 Modobrin 941

  There is heat in Rose’s innards yet. I went straight to him with the tarboys’ problem, having some inkling that the crime would touch a nerve. That it did: hardly had I spoken when he exploded out of his stuporous slouch & thundered to the cabin door, bellowing for the nearest lieutenant. A moment later he was back, questioning me furiously about the incident. He was taking it very hard by the look on his face, & then he shook my hand. I did not dream that: Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose shook my hand, & did not bite it either. A knock at the door. He scowled & shoved me, but I didn’t mind. The boys would be safe. As I left I saw who was waiting to enter: Sergeant Haddismal & the Bloody Son.4

  Later there are distant explosions in the south, & flashes like bubbles of fire—rising, bursting, gone. The War Furnaces, whisper the dlömu. Fed not with coal but lead and diamonds, and above all eguar bones. Machines so huge & hot the discharge can be seen these hundreds of miles. The lads just stand & stare, as if the Nine Pits were gaping open there on the horizon, as perhaps they are.

  “Do they threaten us, away out here?” I ask the dlömic commander, a thick-chested fellow whose long, fleshy earlobes make me think of soup spoons.

  He shrugs. “When I saw the Armada pass by Masalym, I thought, They’ve emptied all the shipyards of Orbilesc & Bali Adro City; there mustn’t be a boat left to watch over the heartland. I was wrong. Those sorts of flares, you see them only when a warship launches. Part of the fleet is still here. We’ll be in danger if they spot us.”