The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Such questions would have to wait, he knew. They fought their way down the Silver Stair to the upper gun deck. Somewhere in the crowd, the Mzithrini commander was shouting: “Why this panic? We are three warships, and she cannot maneuver with her back to the cliffs! Is the maukslar so very deadly?”

  Neeps and Pazel stepped through the invisible wall and raced along the aft-leaning corridor to the stateroom. Most of their friends were already here. Thasha had gone straight to her cabin, leaving the door ajar.

  “Macadra!” shrilled Felthrup. “She is every bit as vile as her brother! But is she mindless, too? Can she be blind to the abomination above us?”

  “No,” said Ramachni, from the bench by the gallery windows, “but perhaps she believes that with the Nilstone in hand she can simply banish the Swarm. If so, she is deluded. The Swarm is close to swallowing Alifros, as a snake gulps down an egg. No spell will affect it now.”

  “But how did they manage to repair the Death’s Head so quickly?” asked Marila. “They needed two masts just for starters.”

  “They did not act quickly,” said Kirishgán. “Don’t you see, Marila? The sorceress needed only to choose a better moment than we did to plunge through the gap in the Red Storm. It was weakening, after all. For every day she waited, she could expect to reach this side earlier, not later. The Death’s Head may have spent a month in some sheltered harbor in the Island Wilderness, cutting and fitting those masts, and yet arrived well ahead of us.”

  “They made short work of the Mzithrini patrol boats, in any case,” said Bolutu. “Who knows? Perhaps they have driven the Shaggat’s worshippers inland, if there were any nearby.”

  “Or enlisted them,” said Neeps.

  Pazel moved to the gallery windows. There it was: the Arrowhead Sound, a great fissure in the towering cliffs of southwest Gurishal. And right in the mouth of the sound stood the Arrowhead itself: a truly monstrous stone, the size of five hundred Chathrands. It had evidently once been part of Gurishal, for it matched the cliffs in height and color. But the rock had eroded from the waves upward, leaving the base much thinner than the crown. The Arrowhead was balanced on its tip.

  He thought of his sister’s words. The rock that ought to fall, but doesn’t. The place the old masters went to die.

  And from atop the Arrowhead, he knew, the maukslar was watching them. It had flown there, clutching a half-eaten Mzithrini sailor, when the burning patrol ship finally sank. You could see the demon plainly through a telescope, though not with the naked eye. The Chathrand stood four miles out, and Fiffengurt was keeping them here until they chose their next move. Pazel could see the Death’s Head, however. She stood at anchor beneath that massive stone, as though tempting fate. They could not possibly enter the sound without confronting her.

  Hercól arrived and made at once for Thasha’s chamber. Pazel and the others followed. Thasha had opened the outer door of the hidden cabinet. The bottle of Agaroth wine stood on her desk beside the Polylex. On her bed lay the two halves of Big Skip’s steel box and the gauntlets from Uláramyth. Thasha looked straight at Hercól and held out her hand.

  Reluctantly, Hercól passed her the silver rod. Neeps was right: they had no choice but to prepare. Thasha had used the Nilstone twice already and survived. Once more and it would all be finished: the wine, the poison, the temptation.

  Thasha turned the key in the round hole, then seized the handle and gave a fierce tug. With a shriek of metal the iron slab slid out into the room.

  Everyone winced: the Nilstone was throbbing, blazing with an energy so fierce it was like the heat of a bonfire. And yet there was no heat. Pazel shielded his eyes. Was it because they were so near their goal, so near the end of the River of Shadows, so close to death’s kingdom? Was the Nilstone reaching out for the land it came from?

  Thasha returned the key to Hercól and put on the gauntlets. “What do you mean to do, Thasha?” asked Felthrup.

  “Show Macadra the Stone,” said Thasha. “If she clears out I’ll let her go. But if she so much as aims one cannon our way, I’ll hit the Death’s Head so hard she’ll have nothing left to repair.”

  “Alas for my brothers aboard,” said Bolutu. “Some of them serve only out of fear or hunger, I expect.”

  “Like soldiers everywhere,” said Kirishgán. “But Lady Thasha, hear me a moment. Macadra will have mighty telescopes, and things more powerful than telescopes, trained on us. I do not think you should show her the exact location of the Nilstone.”

  “Kirishgán’s right,” said Pazel. “Remember the Promise. She wants to take the Stone, not sink it to the seafloor. That may be the only reason she hasn’t—”

  A howl cut him off: a cry of abject terror from the topdeck, on five hundred throats.

  “It’s started,” said Hercól simply, leaping for the stateroom. The others followed. Through the gallery windows, Pazel saw that a ball of red fire had risen from Macadra’s ship. It was hurtling toward them, slower than a cannonball but still very fast, illuminating the black underbelly of the Swarm.

  “Away, away from the windows!” howled Felthrup. “Thasha, call your dogs!”

  Neeps was standing on the window bench. “Get down from there, idiot!” screamed Marila, hauling at his arm. Neeps tugged his arm fiercely away.

  “Look! That ball’s off-target. It’s going to miss us by a mile. Unless—”

  The fireball screamed by the Chathrand to portside. There came a boom and a blinding flash. Literally blinding: Pazel groped forward, seeing nothing but white-hot stars. As his vision returned he saw that someone had thrown open the door to the reading room, which had a view to portside. Through the doorway he saw the Mzithrini ship in flames. The ball, it seemed, had exploded against her stern.

  The ship was devastated. Her sternpost split in two. The decks above the waterline were pulverized; the quarterdeck collapsed into the inferno below. Already the sea was gushing in through the shattered hull.

  Oh, Gods. All those people.

  There were two hundred men on the Mzithrini ship.

  “Now we know what happened to all those Mzithrini patrols,” said Marila.

  Thasha looked Pazel straight in the eye. Her face was set, her look beyond fury. She removed the selk gauntlets, let them fall to the floor.

  He almost stopped her, almost said Wait—but how could he? The next target would be the Nighthawk. What exactly were they waiting for?

  They followed her back into the cabin. Thasha lifted the bottle from her desk and stepped in front of the pulsing Nilstone. Then she tore open the stopper, tilted the bottle to her lips and drank it dry.

  Her gaze softened. She lowered the bottle and passed it to Marila. In the sudden silence Pazel heard Fiffengurt giving orders for a rescue operation. Thasha placed a hand on her chest.

  “I’m … cured,” she said. “The poison is gone. I can feel it.”

  Pazel threw his arms around her, undone with relief.

  “And if I touch the Stone again I will die.”

  The feeling of doom that gripped Pazel in the next few minutes was unlike anything he could recall. The dregs of the Agaroth wine had done their work, but had given Thasha no last moment of fearlessness. She would never use the Nilstone again—not as Thasha, at any rate. And now they were helpless. Macadra had weapons they could never hope to match, and the maukslar as well. Pazel glanced at Neeps and saw an echo of his own shame. They had never admitted it, but they had counted on Thasha to save them once more.

  “Say nothing about this,” urged Hercól. “Let the men hope: if they cease to, we are finished.”

  They sealed the Nilstone in the cabinet and returned to the topdeck. All was mayhem. Eight or ten lifeboats were already in the water, and the rowers were pulling with all their might for the Mzithrini ship, already more than half submerged. “Hard to port, Elkstem, bring us up behind them,” shouted Fiffengurt. “Mr. Coote, the Nighthawk is following in our lee! Where’s your blary signal?”

  “Already sent, Captain. T
hey ain’t listening, is all.”

  “Gods damn the old fool!” bellowed Fiffengurt. “Does he want his people killed as well?” Then, seeing Thasha, he cried, “Get up here, Missy, and show yourself to your father! He’s watching us through a scope this very minute. Wave him off, for Rin’s sake, before Macadra fires on the Nighthawk. One more boat can’t help us now.”

  Still in shock, Thasha hauled herself up the ladder. She took the signal-flags from Coote and mimicked his Desist-and-withdraw signal, her movements jerky, her face a blank. But the Nighthawk held its position, cannon at the ready, men-at-arms upon her deck.

  The rescue effort, meanwhile, was well under way. The first lifeboats were already reaching the Mzithrinis. Dlömu had swum ahead of them, seeking out the wounded and the weakening, pulling them toward the boats. And now the Chathrand herself was drawing near. Jervik was standing by with a stretcher-team. Accordion-ladders snaked down the hull.

  Then the Death’s Head fired again.

  “Cover, cover, fore and aft!” howled Fiffengurt.

  The fireball rose from Macadra’s ship. But once again they were not the target. “That one’s for the Nighthawk!” shouted Coote.

  It was all so swift. The fireball closed. Thasha cried out, the sound of a heart breaking if Pazel had ever heard it. And then, explosions—eight, twelve, sixteen cannon, booming from the stern windows of the Arquali warship.

  Mere yards from the Nighthawk, the fireball disintegrated. Its flame swept on, parting like water around both sides of the hull. But it had not exploded. It had been torn to bits, and the Nighthawk emerged from the short bath of fire apparently unscathed.

  “What happened?” cried Ensyl, from Hercól’s shoulder.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” said Fiffengurt. “Grapeshot! The admiral filled his stern chasers with grapeshot, and took that blary projectile apart! Rin’s gizzard, he’s a tough old bird!”

  The “old bird” did not need more urging to withdraw, however. As Thasha wept with relief, the Nighthawk’s mainsails rose and billowed, and the warship began to glide away from shore.

  Pazel turned to face the Arrowhead, and the small, menacing shape that was the Death’s Head. One ship had been driven off, another destroyed. And Macadra’s vessel hadn’t even moved.

  Corporal Mandric appeared on the quarterdeck. “Captain,” he said to Fiffengurt, “my sergeant’s advice is that we fall back too. Approach Gurishal from somewhere else, get the Nilstone ashore that way, carry it overland to this death-portal, wherever it is.”

  “No, Mandric, we cannot withdraw,” said Ramachni. “Have you forgotten how Dastu taunted us at the beginning? How he said that even those who studied Gurishal, and lived here, had never heard of that portal? We have no time to go searching, to fight our way up cliffs and through mountains, to say nothing of battling the Nessarim. It is darker today than yesterday. Tomorrow, the darkness may be complete. And remember that Macadra, too, must act before the Swarm kills us all. I do not think she will permit us to sail away.”

  Ramachni looked at Hercól, Fiffengurt, and the youths in turn. Pazel gazed into his black eyes, breathed deep, and nodded.

  “Captain—” he said.

  “Save your breath, Pathkendle, I understand,” said Fiffengurt. Then, raising his voice to a roar: “Mr. Elkstem, bring us around if you please. Fegin, Coote, to your stations, and lit matches on the gun decks. This is it, gentleman: we go forward, or we go down.”

  They were a ship of lunatics, thought Pazel, and so much the better for it. The men perhaps only dimly grasped what they hoped to do in the Arrowhead Sound. But they knew the goal—to wipe away that hideous cloud—and they knew that death alone would follow if they failed.

  He and Neeps helped set the mizzen topsail. The Chathrand turned neatly, despite her wallowing stern, and began to plow straight for the Death’s Head. From four miles out, it appeared that they could enter Arrowhead Sound on the opposite side of the great rock, avoiding Macadra altogether. But that would merely have told the sorceress that she had nothing to fear—and a bluff, Hercól noted grimly, might be their only chance.

  “But is it even a chance?” Neeps whispered to Pazel, tightening the sword-belt he had just strapped about his waist. “Last time Thasha was here with the Nilstone in her hand, and Macadra saw her, sure as Rin makes rain.”

  “I know,” said Pazel, sliding his own sword half out of its sheath. “This may not fool anyone, but there’s nothing else we can do, unless we bring Thasha up on deck waving a pumpkin.”

  The tarboys were on the forecastle, gazing straight ahead. Thasha had agreed to stay below until the charge was over. As it would be, soon: the Chathrand was gaining speed. And now at last the Death’s Head too was spreading canvas. Macadra had no intention of being pinned down against the cliffs. She was sailing out to meet them.

  Three miles between the ships, now. Fegin blew his whistle, hustling a crowd of gawking steerage passengers below. Lady Oggosk stood alone by the mainmast, the high wind tearing at her hair and shawl. Refeg and Rer, for once, were already on deck, pacing, breathing like bulls. Someone had had the foresight (and courage) to wake them. Niriviel wheeled in circles overhead.

  Pazel glanced around the deck. “Where’s your wife, mate?”

  Neeps jumped, looked at him sharply.

  “Pitfire, what’s the matter with you?” said Pazel. “Didn’t you marry her? Didn’t you want to?”

  “Don’t talk rubbish. Of course.” But Neeps’ voice was bitter, and his eyes were cross. After a moment, he said, “If you had to die for someone—no, forget that. If you had to die next to someone, are you sure you know who you’d choose?”

  “Yes.”

  Pazel’s certainty did not help his friend at all. “Well, good for you, damn it, but I’m not such a—never mind, you can’t—oh, Gods damn it.”

  Neeps shut his mouth. Two miles. Pazel went to Hercól and borrowed his telescope. There were dlömic soldiers crowding the deck of Macadra’s vessel, and standing thick upon her spars.

  “They could be an amphibious unit, like the ones we fought at Cape Lasung,” said Hercól. “That would be one way of taking the Chathrand without sinking her.”

  “I guess we’ll know,” said Pazel, “if they start diving into the sea. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Our stern is riding lower than ever. If they strike us there, who knows how fast we’d flood and sink? And it can’t be the crack in the keel that’s causing it—we’d already have sunk if the keel were that far gone. In fact, we don’t have a clue why it’s happening.”

  “I have a clue—or a guess at least.” said Ramachni.

  Pazel jumped: he had not heard the little mage approach. “Tell me, then,” he said.

  “Later, Pazel. Right now, I must ask you to remember the clock. Thasha’s clock. If we should have to evacuate this ship, do not leave it behind. Remember that it belonged to my mistress.”

  “That’s a good reason to leave it behind,” said Pazel.

  “Pathkendle,” said Hercól with a sigh.

  “Many things have failed to go as Erithusmé hoped,” said Ramachni, “but that does not mean that she acted without reason, or in ignorance.”

  Pazel looked away. He could not bear to think of Erithusmé. She was here, even now, a soul within Thasha’s soul. And she could save them, slap the Death’s Head away like a gnat. But it wouldn’t happen. A wall no one could see or touch or explain had thwarted her, and now they stood alone.

  “We will safeguard the clock, Ramachni,” said Hercól.

  “Good,” said the mage. “And now I’d best be on my way.”

  “What?” shouted Pazel. “You’re leaving now, by the festering Pits? Leaving us again?”

  Ramachni just looked at him, unblinking. Then the cry went up: “The demon, the maukslar! It’s taken to the air!”

  Pazel whirled. He could see it, a moving speck in the half-light, swooping toward them from the summit of the Arrowhead. When he looked for Ramachni ag
ain the little mink was gone, and a black owl was climbing into the sky above the Chathrand, making for the distant enemy.

  “I’m a blary idiot,” he said aloud.

  “But we tolerate you somehow,” said Hercól.

  The maukslar was closing with frightful speed. Pazel could see the broad, leathery wings, the searchlight eyes, the sputtering glow of its fire-spittle. The owl that was Ramachni looked smaller and smaller as the two forms converged.

  “Motion on the Death’s Head,” said Hercól, his eye to the telescope again. Then his voice rose to a warning howl. “Dlömu in the water! They’re diving, diving by the score! Ah, Dénethrok, take cover! They’re aiming those Plazic guns!”

  The warning swept the ship. There were curses and terror, but no panic: the men had left that emotion behind. Pazel and Hercól stood their ground. Above them, the maukslar spat a huge glob of liquid fire, straight at Ramachni, but some unseen power summoned by the mage parted the fire in a wedge to either side of him, and the owl flew on.

  The maukslar gave a sinuous twist. Ramachni swerved in answer, but he was too late: the creature was past him, hurtling for the Chathrand. Behind him, Neeps was shouting: “Clear the deck, clear the mucking deck! It’s going to burn us to a crisp!”

  Sudden flashes from the Death’s Head. Pazel and Hercól threw themselves flat as the thunder of cannon smacked the ship. But no fire or cannonball followed, no burning tar. Pazel rolled over to face the sky.

  Oh, Gods.

  Ramachni was diving, closing the gap. Even as Pazel watched he reached the maukslar, fanned his black wings—and exploded into eguar-form.

  The maukslar screamed. The huge black reptile seized it with jaws and talons, and the two spun flailing in the air. No fire, demonic or otherwise, could harm Ramachni now. He tore at his foe, merciless and deadly. But he had not counted on the force of the maukslar’s own dive. They carried forward as they fell. Men screamed and dived for any cover they could find. The two creatures struck the deck just astern of the forecastle, like a bomb.