The Night of the Swarm

walking right over a topman who had fallen flat in his haste to get out of the way. Everyone below was shouting. He could hear the panic in their throats. He plunged out onto the orlop deck, raced through the fire-scarred compartments, and stepped at last into the manger.

Great devils, there he was.

A huge, hideous man, seventy if he was a day, raged into the centre of the chamber, his bare feet stamping in an effluvium of grime, straw and fresh blood. In his eyes was more mad viciousness than Rose had glimpsed in any living soul. The Shaggat Ness, the lunatic king, the most hated man in Mzithrini history. He was tangled in chains looped around an indestructible wooden stanchion. But the chains had been placed to secure a statue, a lifeless thing of stone, for that is what the man had been for five months.

No longer. The mink-mage had told Arunis he could only reverse the spell when someone aboard the Chathrand died. If Lady Oggosk was correct, that someone was Arunis himself. What happened? Did he die trying to master the Stone? Could that gang of children and mutineers possibly have killed him?

No time to wonder. The Shaggat was gesturing, flailing with both hands: the unharmed right, and the dead, scarecrow-stick left, the hand that had seized the Nilstone. His jaws were wide, his screams insufferable, a bomb that kept going off, Where is it, who stole it, bring it to me, you lice.

His eyes found Rose. He lunged, and the stanchion shook.

Sandor Ott rubbed his chin. He stood with Sergeant Haddismal and several other Turachs, conferring quickly, eyeing the Shaggat like a rabid dog. Ignus Chadfallow, the Imperial Surgeon, was in the room as well, bending down to talk to old, befuddled Dr Rain, whose gape of horror made him look like an eel. The captain stepped towards them — then leaped sideways with a curse. The Shaggat had lunged at him again.

‘BRING ME THE NILSTONE! BRING IT! BRING IT!’

‘Monster-’ said Sandor Ott.

‘I WILL PACK YOUR MOUTH WITH SCORPIONS AND GLASS!’

‘Listen-’

‘I WILL TEAR OFF YOUR MANHOOD AND THROW IT TO MY HOUNDS!’

‘Your toe.’

‘BRING ME THE — WHAT?’

‘Your toe.’

The Shaggat looked down. And dropped in his chains, howling, seizing his foot with his one living hand. The foot was gushing blood: where the big toe should have been was an open wound.

Undrabust!

It came back to Rose in a flash: how Neeps Undrabust had pulverised the Shaggat-statue’s toe with a lump of iron. Arunis had managed to heal the other damage, the long cracks in the Shaggat’s stone arm: wounds that would have killed a living man. But he had forgotten the toe.

A sailor appeared in the doorway, clutching Dr Chadfallow’s medical bag. The surgeon and Sandor Ott rushed to the man. Chadfallow seized the bag and withdrew a folded cloth and small blue bottle. He glanced dubiously at the Shaggat.

‘This will suffice, but how exactly-’

Ott snatched both items, uncorked the bottle and sniffed. He coughed, then doused the rag with the contents of the bottle. The doctor retreated as a cloying smell of spirits filled the room. The Shaggat raised his head too late. Ott threw himself on the huge man, and caught his chin in the crook of an elbow. The mad king erupted, clawing at him, crushing him against the stanchion, rolling atop him on the bloody floor. The Turachs surged forward, weapons drawn.

‘Hold!’

Ott’s voice, loud in the sudden silence. The Shaggat’s bellowing had ceased. His arms went limp, and he toppled over in his chains.

Sandor Ott hurled the rag away. ‘Stop the bleeding, fools!’ he said. Then he too collapsed. During the struggle his face had been only inches from the rag.

A cold claw touched Rose’s elbow. Lady Oggosk was there, suddenly, her shawl splashed with blood and fur, staring up at him with her milk-blue eyes. ‘They will press you harder than ever, now that he’s returned,’ she said. ‘Do not yield to them, Nilus. You know what must be done.’

Rose studied the two men at his feet. He felt a bottomless disgust. The mastermind of Arqual and his tool. Better for everyone if they had strangled each other, if that sleep were the sleep of death.

But what of Nilus Rose? He had sworn to his father that he would bend these creatures to his will. But that was only hubris — the kind of talk his father wanted to hear, demanded to hear. Over and over, decade after decade. The long, daft proof of their power. The family epic. Rose had never stopped writing it, even though a fool could tell you that the premise was absurd.

‘He was unhinged before, or partly so. Now I fear his derangement is complete.’

Dr Chadfallow lowered himself stiffly into a chair, scanning the other faces around the table. The wardroom was cool, bathed in grey-blue light from the glass planks in the ceiling. Old Dr Rain took the chair to his right, glancing at Chadfallow with a mixture of jealousy and gratitude; it was only through Chadfallow’s courtesy that he’d been included at all.

Fiffengurt, the quartermaster, sat down as well, glancing at the other faces as though tensed for a fight. That one will take it badly, thought Rose, studying him.

Fiffengurt was almost old. He had white whiskers and a rogue eye that spun randomly in its socket. He looked anxious, and more than a little guilty. Chadfallow, Rose saw now, was much the same. Allies of Pathkendle and company — even the doctor has at last chosen sides. I must expect the worst from both of them.

No one looked healthy, in point of fact. No one but the ghosts. Three had slithered into the chamber when the door was ajar. Captain Kurlstaff was among them, his pink blouse faded, his painted lips the colour of a man’s intestines, his battleaxe huge and unwieldy in the crowded room. He watched the living with interest. He was the only one of the Chathrand’s former commanders with whom Rose deigned, at times, to consult, although today the old pervert merely stood and stared.

At least Kurlstaff had the decency not to sabotage the meeting. Captain Spengler was rummaging in the chart locker behind Rose’s head. And Maulle, the pig, had actually taken a chair, in which he slouched and squirmed and bit his fingernails. The man had the worst facial tic Rose had ever seen; when it happened his face compressed like a sponge, and a puff of chalk powder lifted from his ancient wig.

‘Sir?’ said Chadfallow.

Rose pivoted away from the ghosts. ‘So the Shaggat is mad,’ he said. ‘Is that news, Doctor? Have you nothing else to report?’

Chadfallow took a careful breath. ‘The Shaggat is seventy-four years old. And he has just suffered traumas that would strain the faculties of any man. The touch of the Nilstone. The killing fire that ran up his arm. The transmutation into a dead statue, through Pazel’s Master-Word, and this morning’s reversal. But above all, he is disturbed by the loss of the Stone. To gain it was his lifelong obsession. He thinks the Gods themselves chose him to wield it, along with that lesser artefact, Sathek’s Sceptre. And because he cannot have had any sense of time’s passage while enchanted, he must perceive that the Stone has just been taken from him.’ Chadfallow shook his head. ‘His mind is warped beyond all healing, now. What you saw is likely all that remains.’

Old Dr Rain cleared his throat. ‘He exhibits a certain unease, Captain Rose. That is to say, he is uneasy.’

Rose turned him a choleric stare. The old medic looked quickly at Chadfallow.

‘I cut off the dead hand,’ said Chadfallow. ‘He felt nothing. Below the wrist the limb was dry and brittle. It’s a wonder it did not break during that wrestling match.’

‘It did not break, because I did not break it,’ said Ott. ‘What else?’

Chadfallow shrugged. ‘His body is otherwise sound. The man is a war elephant. You’ve heard the legend about the arrow that broke off in his chest, the head of which was never extracted? I saw the scar, I felt the hard nub with my fingers. The wound was two inches above his heart. There are flecks of iron embedded in his left eyeball, too, and signs that his feet were blistered by walking through fire, or over coals. He is indestructible, in a