The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The eagle shot into the air.

  Instantly everyone was in motion. Ramachni bolted for the bridge. Hercól and the selk archers erupted from behind their boulder and flew toward the cliff. Behind them, the rest of the party sprinted forward as well.

  The eagle, veering erratically, was already soaring away from the bridge. The archers let fly, but the surging wind over the chasm blew their arrows wildly off-target. Dastu turned to them, waving and shouting: “You’re here! Don’t shoot! Ramachni, let me explain! Don’t shoot that bird!”

  Ramachni had bounded onto the lip of the water chute and was charging up the bridge’s steep incline. He ignored Dastu’s shouts.

  Pazel surged up the stairs, gasping at the force of the wind. He glanced once into the gorge—hideously deep, the bottom so far away it was like gazing at another world—and then jumped into the chute beside Prince Olik, and felt the icy water close about his feet. The archers fired again and again, but the shot was hopeless now: the eagle still flew erratically, but it was disappearing fast.

  “You fools!” cried Dastu. “Thank the Gods you missed! That bird’s on our side!”

  “Whose side is that, boy?” shouted Cayer Vispek.

  “Yours and mine! Come across and I’ll tell you everything! What’s happened to you? Did the selk let you keep the Nilstone?”

  The question swept the last doubt from Pazel’s mind. Dastu had betrayed them a second time—was betraying them even now.

  “Tell me something, mate,” he shouted on an impulse, “are you doing this for Arqual?”

  Dastu’s response caught Pazel quite off-guard. He did not sneer or shake his head or frown with anger. He simply looked at Pazel with no comprehension whatsoever.

  Now Pazel was mystified. Had Dastu been so changed and tormented that he had forgotten even his beloved Empire?

  Then Thasha cried out and pointed west. Pazel looked up and saw the eagle fall like a stone from the sky.

  The ixchel! Pazel thought. One of them was on its back all along!

  One of them had just fallen with that corpse.

  Dastu had also turned at Thasha’s shout. When the bird fell he reached for it, clawing at the air. Then he screeched. It was the ugliest sound Pazel had ever heard from human lips.

  From the trees on the far side of the chasm, figures erupted: hrathmogs, dlömu, athymars. All of them raced toward the bridge. More hrathmogs burst onto the roof of the tower, bows in hand.

  Ramachni was far ahead of the others; he had already passed the great crack at the center of the bridge. The hrathmogs targeted him first, and Hercól bellowed at the mage to take cover. But as the archers drew Ramachni fixed them all with a stare, and suddenly three of the creatures turned and fired on their comrades. Those who were not slain leaped on those who had attacked them, and the tower descended into chaos.

  The diversion gave the attackers the chance they needed. They gathered into a tight column, huddling beneath the shields of the fighting men, and charged. Ramachni, meanwhile, leaped onto the bridge’s stone foot, and then onto the snow. He was making for Dastu, and the youth was retreating, shrieking and gesturing for aid. The hrathmogs with their great axes were too slow to strike at Ramachni, but the dogs came on like furies. When their fangs were inches from him the tiny mage whirled and made a sweeping motion with one paw. The dogs were tossed backward away from him like so many dice. Ramachni turned to Dastu. The youth was at the edge of the chasm, still screeching like a lunatic.

  Suddenly he turned to face the cliff.

  Credek, no!

  He leaped. The wind cupped him and spun him as he fell and thrashed his body against the cliff. Pazel watched, sickened, torn. Rotter! Quitter! Piss-ignorant fool! You didn’t have to do that, you—

  “Oh, Gods,” said Thasha, “he’s changing.”

  It happened so quickly Pazel almost doubted what he saw. Dastu’s body blurred, then grew suddenly enormous, and solidified once more. Below them now was a nightmare beast: humanoid body, long snake-like neck, leathery wings, whiplash tail. It was the maukslar: foulest servant of Macadra, the very demon that had hunted them in the Infernal Forest. Its wings filled. As the party turned the creature rose before them, yellow runes burning on its forehead, and then that snake’s head struck with blinding speed, and Big Skip’s arm was in its jaws.

  Skip howled. Pazel saw his face for an instant, transformed by pain and the imminence of death, and then the mauklsar’s neck jerked back, and Skip was wrenched from his feet and hurled into the abyss.

  Gone. Even his scream swallowed instantly by the wind. Pazel thought he would go mad with the horror of it. But he did not go mad, and he did not freeze, and neither did anyone else. They flew at the demon, and Hercól was out ahead of them all, swinging Ildraquin in a killing arc. But the maukslar was too quick: just in time it flung its head back, and the sword only grazed its jaw. Then the creature dropped beneath the bridge. The party turned at bay: it was directly under them, screaming. One clawed hand rose above the rim on the bridge’s north side—and while their eyes were turned that way, its tail whipped up from the south, caught a selk guard by the neck, and hurled him after Skip into the gorge. Pazel whirled. His will was strong and his sword raised, but there was nothing to strike at, nothing he could reach. Then a hideous cry, and the maukslar rose, wings beating hard, neck retracted like a cobra preparing to strike.

  But it did not strike. As Pazel watched, the demon began to tremble, then to writhe with great violence, beating itself against the bridge. The party fell back, for the very bridge was shuddering. It was worse than any seizure—worse than what the creature’s own body should be capable of, Pazel thought.

  He cast his eyes about for an explanation—and found it. Ramachni had come back to them. His fur stood on end, and he was shaking, shaking in wild fury, snapping his tiny head back and forth as mink do when they mean to kill the prey in their teeth. The demon was twenty times Ramachni’s size, but was caught in his spell all the same, and Ramachni meant to shake it to death.

  The maukslar screamed and flailed. It clawed at the bridge, ripping stones away. It tried to fold its wings before they were crushed but could not turn its body to do so. The others lunged and stabbed, and Neda’s sword pierced its side. Even as she did so, however, the beast knocked another stone free with a swing of its arm. The stone ricocheted off the wall of the chute, narrowly missed Neda’s head, and struck Ramachni on the flank.

  The mage was briefly stunned—and in that instant the maukslar was free. With a croak of pain it released the bridge and fell into the chasm.

  “Arpathwin, it can still fly!” cried Thaulinin, gazing over the rim. “It is departing! It is going to Macadra!”

  Ramachni stood and shook his fur. “That disguise,” he said. “I should have guessed. Once upon a time I would have guessed. And now there is only one way to proceed.”

  He leaped deftly onto the rim. Then he looked back at them, a tiny creature buffeted by the wind. “You know what you must do,” he shouted. “Fight on, stop for nothing. Find and kill them all.”

  “Ramachni?” said Thasha.

  “I hoped never again to leave your side,” he said, and jumped.

  Thasha screamed. Pazel grabbed at her, irrationally fearful that she would try to follow the mage. “Where is he, where did he go?” shouted Neeps, leaning over the rim.

  Pazel heaved himself up and looked into the abyss. He could not see Ramachni, but he could see the maukslar: the demon was soaring away, following the contours of the Parsua like a great bird. Then came the ghastly thought: Ramachni’s magic had failed, the demon had blocked it somehow; he had stepped off the bridge and fallen straight to his death.

  Then Thasha pointed.

  Far below the bridge, yet still hundreds of feet above the maukslar, soared an owl. It was no creature of the mountaintops; it looked very small and out of place. Yet its wings churned the thin air powerfully, and when the demon turned, so did the owl.

  “That’s him!
” shouted Neeps. “He took that same shape exactly in the forest. But what will he do if he catches that thing?”

  No time for further talk. The enemy had regrouped, and five or six hrathmog archers were firing from the tower. The three dlömu, including their fell-looking commander with his Plazic Knife, waited by the foot of the bridge, with the athymars circling and baying at their heels.

  “Assemble, assemble!” Thaulinin was shouting. “Shield-bearers, forward!”

  Clenching his teeth, Pazel stepped back into the frigid water. The column reformed; they scrambled on and up. It was hard to climb in a crouch, and harder still when one’s feet were numb with cold. The floor of the water chute was very slick. But between the shields and the walls of the chute the hrathmog archers could find nowhere to sink a shaft. Beside Pazel, Bolutu’s eyes were streaming. He and Big Skip had become fast friends.

  Finally they reached the great crack. There were hisses and oaths, for it was even wider than they had imagined, and the gushing torrent made it difficult to tell just where the edges lay. Still lofting the shields they tried to squeeze past it, two by two, feeling out the stones with their feet. Pazel’s head was reeling: a few inches to his left there was nothing: air, spray, sucking wind. He felt a stone shift under his foot.

  Think of walking, nothing else. Others had done it, somehow. He stilled his heart, and inched forward, and he was through.

  But things only grew worse. Above the crack they were right in the flood, wading uphill against a ripping current that splashed to their thighs. Pazel wanted to scream: the cold was agonizing, like long-nailed fingers stripping the flesh from his bones.

  Now, he thought. Wait any longer and you’ll fall down dead.

  With clumsy fingers he tugged the beetle from his vest pocket and put the frozen, scaly thing into his mouth. But he could not bite; his teeth were chattering like some strange machine. At last he used his hands to force his jaws together, until the beetle’s shell cracked like a nut.

  Oh, Gods.

  The heat passed through him in a scalding wave. His mouth was a furnace; his head was on fire, and even his vision changed, as though he were seeing the world through pale red wine. He half expected to see steam rising from his body.

  Remembering Arim’s warning, he spat the beetle out, along with a fair amount of blood: the insect had literally burned his tongue. Other broken beetles floated past him: he was not the only one who had decided the time had come. But what of Valgrif and Shilu? The wolf was almost swimming, and Lunja was even now struggling to tie a harness around the neck and shoulders of the dog. They should have waited on the cliff, thought Pazel. They’ll die if this takes too long.

  Hercól stood up suddenly from beneath his shield. He fired the selk bow twice in rapid succession, and two archers fell. How many did that leave? Hrathmogs were still firing from atop the tower, several more from the foot of the bridge. A selk cried out: he had raised his bow as Hercól had done, but this time one of the hrathmogs sank a shaft deep in his side. Thaulinin lifted the wounded man, trying to guard them both with his shield. Hercól fired again, and another hrathmog fell.

  The dlömic commander turned and ran for the tower. Pazel was close enough now to see that a massive archway opened in its wall on the northern side. The commander stopped at the threshold and shouted into the tower, pointing imperiously at the bridge as he did so.

  There was a rumbling sound, and the archers on the towers swayed, as though the building had just rocked beneath their feet. Those still firing from the bridge turned and fled. Only the ravenous dogs held their ground.

  Through the tower arch something huge and pale was crawling. At first Pazel could only see its face: an old woman’s face, bloated, pockmarked, with protruding eyes and a mouth full of black and rotting teeth. An iron crown, spiked and bloody, sat upon her head, and from beneath it yards of gray, matted hair hung like sheets of bog-moss. Then the creature rose to its feet.

  “Miyanthur, save us!” shouted the selk. “That is a Thrandaal brood-mother, an ogress of the race that conquered the Mountain Kings!”

  She towered over them, dressed in rotting leather from which a few shells, bones, glass beads and other trinkets still dangled. A sack tied to her waist leaked a soot-like powder that stained the snow. A mighty chain dragged from a manacle at her wrist.

  The creature’s first act was to pounce on one of the fleeing hrathmogs. It tore the beast’s armor away, then stuffed the hrathmog headfirst into her mouth. The hrathmog’s legs still protruded, still kicked; then the ogress bit down and the kicking ceased.

  “Fear no devils!” bellowed Cayer Vispek. “Forward, while yet we may!”

  They tried to climb faster, but the current was too fierce, the ascent too steep. The ogress was chewing thoughtfully, an old grandmother with a mouthful. She was slow to notice the Plazic commander, who was howling with fury: “Not them! The bridge! Kill the creatures on the bridge!”

  The ogress trained a lazy eye in the party’s direction. She spat out a bone at the commander, and began to turn away. The dlömu leaped into her path.

  “By the curse I carry, animal, you will obey!”

  The commander gripped the handle of his Plazic Knife. The ogress hesitated, suddenly wary. Then with a gesture of agony (like one ripping stitches from a wound) the commander jerked his arm upward. In his hand shone a ghost-knife, the pale image of a blade that had once been long and cruel, but was now corroded down to a few blunt inches of bone. The commander himself gazed at it with hatred. But with that stump of a blade he struck fear into the monster: she recoiled, shielding her eyes from the weapon. Then she groaned and rushed the bridge.

  The party had sixty feet to go when the ogress climbed atop the aqueduct. She stared at them with dull hate, then raised her manacled arm and swung the chain over her head. The chain came down with thunder, and the last iron link struck the wounded selk leaning on Thaulinin’s arm. Thaulinin himself was not touched, but the man was torn from him, and Pazel watched with horror as the flood bore the lifeless body away. The ogress hauled in the chain for a second swing.

  “Back, back!” cried Hercól. “That chain will be the end of us!”

  But backing up was not something they had tried; it was hard enough to keep one’s feet when climbing forward. Warning shouts; then the chain struck again. There was a great splash: this time everyone had managed to dive to one side or the other. But in so doing many had lost their feet. They clawed at the stone, the ice, one another: anything to stop themselves from sliding headlong into the crack. Pazel, luckier than most, managed to lock an arm over the bridge’s rim. Prince Olik, nearly submerged, reached out wildly and caught his other hand. With a single furious tug Pazel hauled him from the water, and then saw with amazement that he had somehow found the strength to lift Thasha too: the prince had hold of her belt.

  As he struggled to gain his feet again Pazel looked back along the bridge.

  Neda!

  His sister was whirling down the chute. She was limp, barely conscious; he thought she must have fallen and struck her head. So fast. Pazel had barely time to scream, to feel a part of him dying, to wish for death for the first time in his life. One moment his sister was there in the sunlit water; the next her body folded down through the crack and was gone.

  He howled, the world blurring with tears. He let go of the bridge and tried to follow her, and Olik and Thasha had to fight him with all their strength. Then came the next ghastly shock, as a second body reached the crack and was sucked away to oblivion: Cayer Vispek. But the elder sfvantskor had not gone helplessly. He had been wide awake. He had aimed his body for the hole.

  Crash. The chain fell again, splitting stone, but for the moment the party had slid beyond its reach. The ogress screamed at them from the edge of the watercourse; clearly she had no wish to climb out over the abyss itself. Plunging a hand into the sack at her waist, she drew out a fistful of black powder. Thaulinin bellowed a warning, but it was too late: the ogress blew the po
wder from her hand, and as she did so it burst into flames.

  A plume of orange fire billowed toward them. Above the rim of the chute it was soon dispersed by the wind, but just over the water’s surface it slithered on until it broke against the warriors’ shields. Pazel saw their faces: some of them were burned. Already the ogress was raising another fistful to her lips.

  Hercól’s bow sang. The ogress gave a murderous scream, dropping the powder and clawing at her face. The shaft was buried in her eye.

  The monster’s scream went on and on. She tore the shaft away, along with much of her eyeball. She whirled and swung the chain blindly, and the remaining archers were swept from the tower. When she managed to strike the bridge again the chain passed inches from Thaulinin’s face.

  Then the selk leader did an amazing thing: he dived upon the chain. The ogress had fallen to her knees, one hand over her bloody eye socket. With each jerk of her arm Thaulinin was pulled farther up the chute.

  The dlömic commander saw what was happening and cried out. Two athymars burst onto the bridge and were crushed when the ogress rolled on them in her agony. As she struggled to hands and knees Thaulinin released the chain and drew his selk sword. Then he reeled. A hrathmog arrow had pierced his leg below the knee.

  The ogress saw Thaulinin then, and fumbled for him. But Thaulinin was not bested yet: he leaped sidelong, into her blind spot, then reached up and caught a handful of her matted hair. The ogress whirled around, swinging him through the air, and Thaulinin drew his blade in a precise, slashing motion across her jugular.

  Blood exploded from the creature’s neck. Thaulinin was tossed high and landed in the clearing. The ogress fell forward into the chute, and for a few seconds they all felt the warmth as the torrent around them turned crimson. Then the flow stopped altogether. The body of the ogress was blocking the chute, and the water was spilling over the sides.

  Like some crazed band of cannibals, blood-splattered from feet to faces, the survivors charged. Pazel heard the savagery in his own voice and did not recognize himself. He was changed; he had lost his sister. He climbed the body of the still-quivering ogress and plunged his sword into her stomach. Only death could blot out the death inside him. He leaped down into the clearing, howling for more.