The Night of the Swarm

Pazel surged up the stairs, gasping at the force of the wind. For an instant he gazed down 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 sounds Pazel ever heard from human lips.

From the trees on the far side of the chasm, figures erupted: hrathmogs, dlomu, athymars. All of them raced towards 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 centre of the bridge. The hrathmogs targeted him first, and Hercol 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 him, 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 backwards 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 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 maukslar’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 Hercol 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 minks do when they mean to kill the pray 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 once more. 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 down 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 dlomu, 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-