The Night of the Swarm

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 killing could blot out the death inside him. He leaped down into the clearing, howling for more.

It came. The hrathmogs were returning, now that the ogress was slain. The party outnumbered them, but the creatures were tall and ox-strong, and they were better with both axes and teeth than they had been with their bows. Still Pazel felt no fear. And as he attacked he felt the rage and grief diminish also. There was no room for them; in his mind there could only be deeds. He danced through axes, judging, voracious, calm, and then he feinted left and whirled about to the right beneath an axe-blow and cut a hrathmog’s throat to the bone.

He did not kill again that day, although he helped Corporal Mandric do so, distracting one of the creatures with his charge long enough for the Turach to drive his blade through the creature’s back. Pazel was not tired, he was not cold. Through his mind all the practice and the forms and the earlier battles of the voyage danced like lightning, and he followed without a conscious thought. Hercol had said it: In the battle you make choices; when it is over you find out what they were.

A time came at last when there were no more hrathmogs to kill. Pazel turned in a circle. A selk was hacking the last of the creatures to the ground. One dlomic soldier lay twitching feebly. Another selk had died upon a heap of snow, an axe still buried in his chest.

Then Pazel saw Thaulinin.

The selk leader was near the edge of the clearing, the two remaining athymars had him in their teeth. One dog had sunk its fangs into his thigh, the other his opposite forearm. Behind them, the dlomic commander stood with his back to a tree and his ghost-knife pointing skyward. Thaulinin was awake but not resisting. Within two yards of him, Valgrif lay still.

Lunja was racing to Thaulinin’s aid, and Hercol was not far behind. Pazel sprinted after them, but even as he ran he saw Lunja fall forward, helpless and stunned. Hercol tried to stop as well, but it was too late: he dropped beside Lunja and lay still.

Pazel skidded to a halt. All three warriors had rushed into a trap, a spell-field created by the Plazic blade. Valgrif was another victim: Pazel saw now that the wolf was awake.

‘Disarm!’ screamed the commander. ‘Throw your weapons into the gorge, or I will kill him here and now!’

‘You muckin’ bastard!’ cried Mandric. ‘We’ll chuck you over that cliff, one little piece at a time.’

The dlomu shouted a word of command. At once the dogs released Thaulinin’s limbs and pounced on his unguarded face and throat. Pazel closed his eyes — too late; he had seen it and could not unsee. He turned away and vomited. Thaulinin was dead.

When he looked again the dogs were standing over Lunja. The dlomic commander pointed at the gorge. ‘Every last weapon!’ he shouted. ‘Or do you wish her to die next?’

There were no taunts this time. Thasha had thrown her arms around Neeps, who was staring at Lunja like a man deranged. Everyone was still. Pazel heard the distant cry of some mountain bird. He noted with a stab of disappointment that Prince Olik had fled somewhere; indeed he realised now that the monarch had skipped the fight altogether.

The dlomic leader, calmer suddenly, turned them a ghastly smile.

‘I will not be counting to three,’ he said.

Deep inside, Pazel felt his decision: the decision he would understand only when it was over; when everyone who was going to die had died. He walked to the cliff and threw his sword into the depths. Then he went to Bolutu and took his sword, and asked for his backpack as well.

Bolutu shed his pack, dumbfounded. Pazel tried to lift it from the ground, and failed. The pack was suddenly unnaturally heavy. Since the fight with the hrathmogs began Pazel had thought his strength inexhaustible, but it was deserting him quickly.

Not yet, he told himself. But he had to settle for dragging the backpack to the cliff.

When he was as close as he dared, he tossed Bolutu’s sword over the edge. The commander watched him, increasingly confused. ‘Why is the boy the only one who obeys? You wish the dogs to kill her? Very well, watch them, if you have the stomach for it.’

With great difficulty Pazel lifted the pack from the ground. ‘All the weapons, Commander?’ he said.

‘All of them! Is your whole company deaf?’

Pazel heaved the pack over the cliff.

‘What did you have in there, boy? Stones?’

Pazel gazed at him, winded. ‘Just one,’ he said.

The commander froze. A look of terror came over his face. He sprinted for the bridge and dashed up the stairs, bounding onto the corpse of the ogress. Looking down into the chasm, he lowered his knife and shouted: ‘Valixra!’

The magic was evidentally something unpractised, for he tried again and again, stabbing at the abyss and screaming ‘Valixra! Eidic! Rise, rise!’

At last he held still, and it appeared to Pazel that a painful energy was coursing through him. Pazel sighed and turned his back, staggering away from the cliff. He was feeling every wound now. At least every wound to the body.

The commander was shaking. His free hand made a grasping motion at the air. Then his eyes lit with triumph. Seconds later Bolutu’s pack shot past the clearing and high into the air. The commander guided it with the point of his blade, in a long descending arc towards the clearing, where it landed with a resounding boom.

Then Pazel hurled the axe.

The hrathmog weapon was long for him, and very heavy, but he had swung it like a mallet, both hands over his head. It flew straight, and struck the commander squarely in the chest. The Plazic knife flew from his hand, and the commander fell backwards off the bridge, never crying out, and was gone.

Snarling erupted behind him: the paralysis spell had broken. Lunja had stabbed the athymar nearest her face, and the others attacked it from the sides. The last dog turned and fled, and Valgrif, his face already scarlet, pursued it into the trees.

Pazel knelt in the bloodied snow. The survivors crowded to him, praising him; Mandric called him a genius, but Neeps and Thasha just held his arms and said nothing, and Pazel was grateful for that. No hiding behind the danger now. The real pain was just beginning.

But there are kind fates as well as cruel in Alifros. Even as his friends embraced him, a shout came from the direction of the chasm. It was Olik. He was on the footbridge beneath the main structure, one hand braced against the chute above him, and the other holding a body to his chest.

‘Help me, damn you all!’

It was Neda. She was drenched, and her skin was a ghastly blue, and her open eyes did not see them. But she was breathing, and in her mouth they found the shattered remains of a fire beetle. And when ten minutes later a fire blazed (dry wood in the tower, matches on their foes) she woke and asked for Cayer Vispek, and then remembered, and broke into loud, un-sfvantskor-like tears.

‘My coat snagged on the ice,’ she told Pazel in their mother tongue, when she could speak again. ‘I was hanging there in the falling water. He came through and caught one of the struts, but the force of it dislocated his