The Night of the Swarm

difficult.’

‘It is not difficult. You’re putting on a performance. Like a circus bear, only much clumsier.’ He turned and spat. ‘I tell you I will tolerate this no longer.’

‘Take it up with the captain, Mr Ott. Unless you mean to drag me away from the — Great Gods of Perdition! ’

Straight ahead, boulders were raining down from the clifftop.

The ship erupted in howls. Fiffengurt threw all his weight on the wheel. ‘Help me, you useless blary butcher!’ he screamed. Ott seized the wheel beside Fiffengurt, and together they spun it hard.

The Chathrand heeled wildly to port, bow rising, stern digging deep. Up and down the ship men stumbled, grabbing for handholds. ‘Furl topgallants, fore and aft!’ bellowed Fiffengurt. ‘Standby anchor! Rin’s gizzard, something up there is hurling those stones!’

Even as he spoke a particularly enormous boulder struck the water, some fifty yards from the ship. ‘Did you see that?’ cried Fiffengurt. ‘That stone was bigger than the wheelhouse! A rock like that could stave us in!’

Rose burst from his cabin and raced to the starboard rail, unfolding his telescope as he went. But there was nothing to look at: for the moment, the onslaught had ceased. The ship levelled, motionless on the bay.

Fiffengurt looked at the spymaster. ‘Preposterous?’ he said.

‘You cannot believe that crawlies were responsible for that,’ said Ott.

Fiffengurt said nothing. He certaintly did have his doubts, but he’d be damned if he’d give Ott another stick to beat him with.

‘Come around and try again,’ said the spymaster, ‘but further from the cliffs, this time, out of range.’

The quartermaster turned to face him. ‘Mr Ott. When those rocks began to fly we were still edging nearer the cliffs. There’s no mucking way we can sail any further from ’em, unless you want to tear the bottom out of this boat. Have a look at the reefs, away there to starboard. With the sun behind us you can see ’em with the naked eye.’

Ott did not walk to starboard, or look at the reefs. He stared up at the high, broken clifftop. ‘A bombardment like that could finish us in minutes,’ he said.

‘Less, if a couple of those big bastards found their mark,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘I think the first time was a warning.’

‘Quartermaster, that cliff is half a mile long. The enemy could get off dozens of shots before we cleared it.’

Fiffengurt nodded. ‘You’re getting the idea. We’re trapped in this bay.’

‘That is correct,’ shouted a voice from above them.

They jumped, searching, shading their eyes. Twenty feet overhead, seated at his ease on the main spankermast yard, was Lord Talag.

‘Crawly, crawly aloft!’ shouted someone, causing a general stir. Lord Talag paid no attention. The swallow- suit hung loose upon his shoulders.

‘You are trapped again,’ he said, ‘but not by us, this time. We took some of you prisoner once, by necessity. The deed gave us no joy. To cage any living creature is a deed that sickens the heart. We struggled to keep you alive and comfortable. When you escaped you killed as many of us as you could.’

‘And we’re not done yet,’ said Sandor Ott.

‘Be silent, you wretched man!’ hissed Fiffengurt.

Captain Rose appeared on the quarterdeck ladder. He climbed up stiffly and walked up to the wheelhouse, his eyes never leaving the ixchel.

‘On this day,’ Talag continued, ‘my island brethren have made prisoners of you all. Be glad that you did not kill me in Masalym, Sandor Ott. If I had not flown ashore and greeted them, they would have sunk you as you tried to enter this bay.’

‘How do they move the rocks?’ asked Fiffengurt.

Lord Talag smiled strangely. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Your brethren kept it to themselves, did they?’

Talag frowned at him. ‘We are not a sentimental race. We do not spill our secrets at a first encounter, not even with our long-lost kin.’

‘We’re a mile from shore,’ said Sandor Ott. ‘How do you plan to leave us, exactly?’

‘That is not your concern,’ said Lord Talag.

‘What if I make it my concern?’

Talag got to his feet, eyes locked on the spymaster. ‘My people watched you for years, Sandor Ott. In the Keep of Five Domes, in the tunnels under Etherhorde, in the blue chambers of Castle Maag. I myself heard you planning deaths, from Thasha Isiq’s mother to guards of the castle you deemed too inquisitive. I saw you mate with that whore, Syrarys, never guessing that years before you made her a spy in Isiq’s household, Arunis had picked her out to be a spy in yours. I saw you cackle with glee over the charts we forged. You are a failure, Ott. Like all giants, you confuse brute power with absolute power. And now it is time to pay for that mistake. Oppose our exodus, and we will wait you out. How long can you survive without fresh water? Two months? Three, if you kill off the sickly? But we can wait a year, Ott, or longer. We will not even be thirsty when the last of you falls dead.’

‘And if we do not oppose you?’ said Rose.

Talag turned his burning eyes on the captain. ‘I would give a great deal to know what you truly expect of me,’ he said. ‘What does a crawly do with his eight hundred tormentors, when he has them at last beneath his heel? Eight hundred sadists, bigots, butchers? I know what a giant would do. Make the crawly beg. Increase the pressure, slowly. Watch him suffer, fascinated; pretend to consider his pleas. Then step down hard and crush his skull.’

Talag’s body had gone rigid. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw it done to my father when I was ten. He was as close to me as you are now, but I was in hiding, I was safe, and even as the giant screamed at him, told him to beg for his life, my father was speaking to me in the tongue your kind cannot hear, ordering me to live, to fight on, to serve our people.

‘It was five years later that I first heard the legend of Stath Balfyr, the island from whence you took us in jars and cages. I swore then and there that I would lead any of my father’s house who would follow me home to this place, and today I fulfill that oath. You ask what will I do with you?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Nothing. Live out my life endeavouring to forget your very existence. And if you are cooperative, and do not hinder our departure from the Chathrand, I shall go one step further, and waive the right of vengeance.’

‘Meaning what?’ asked Rose.

‘That you shall be dealt with as my island brethren see fit. They would surely extend me the courtesy of deciding your fate: that is fitting and customary. But vengeance was never the purpose of this mission — and today that purpose is all but achieved. I will not seek your executions.’

‘But you will not ask for clemency?’

Talag turned to him, bristling. ‘You kept one of us in a birdcage, in filth, and made him taste your food for poison. Your command triggered the massacre. Your first bosun wore a necklace of our skulls. Blood-red monster! This is clemency, beyond anything you giants deserve.’

With a sharp motion he turned away, smoothing the feathers of his coat. ‘You are trespassers in Stath Balfyr,’ he said. ‘The island’s rulers will make their own decisions. For myself the end has finally come. I shall grow old here, among my people and my books. You no longer matter.’

Dr Chadfallow had just reached Uskins’ door when the bombardment commenced. He stumbled when the ship lurched, half expecting the passage to explode in a swarm of attacking ixchel. But none came. Whatever had just happened, the clan was still lying low. He considered putting off his investigation, then reprimanded himself: Put off until when? Until how many more succumb? He cleared his throat, straightened his sleeves with their silver cufflinks, and knocked.

The door rattled, as though Uskins was struggling with it. At last the first mate shouldered it open. ‘The latch,’ he explained with a smile. ‘I tried to fix it and have only made things worse. Do come in, Doctor.’

Chadfallow stepped into the little cabin. ‘I was napping,’ said Uskins. ‘Did something happen above?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Chadfallow quietly. ‘Nothing important, in any case.’

‘I tire more easily now that my duties are so light,’ said Uskins. ‘Is that not strange? I wash dishes, carry messages, feed the men in the brig, and suddenly I am fatigued. May I ask if you have made any progress?’