The Night of the Swarm

realised. Why? Not even Arunis could control that deadly thing.

The Death’s Head had touched land at the naval bases called Fandural Edge and Sibar Light, where Macadra had dispatched more teams to the interior. Finally, three weeks out of Masalym, they had docked at the great smoke-lidded, soot-blackened city of Orbilesc.

He’d flown ashore that first night under cover of darkness. But there was no true darkness in Orbilesc, only shadows and blinding smoke. The city stretched on and on, over hills and around the slopes of mountains, along both banks of a river the colour of diluted blood. Parts of it appeared to be on fire: they throbbed in the distance like open sores, their orange glow reflecting dully on the filth-laden sky. The city was a point of convergence for great roads leading deep into the continent, to Bali Adro City and Kistav and other centres of Imperial might. Dlomu by the thousands thronged its squares, encamped in its denuded gardens and gutted shops. They were mostly poor and filthy, huddling with their scrawny dogs beside illicit fires that the rain was always putting out. It appeared that they had come to work the hellish factories, but whether voluntarily or at spearpoint he could not ascertain. There were other races too in those shabby streets, mystifying creatures that fascinated and repelled him. All of these strange beings, dlomu included, spoke Imperial Common, but in such a variety of forms and accents that Taliktrum doubted everything he heard.

Worst of all were the shipyards. He hardly dared approach those grim towers and black belching mills, from which great plumes of fire erupted, and cold shimmerings of yellow light, and noises loud as the maiming of Gods. Carrion birds wheeled above them; titantic sea-serpents of the sort that had threatened the Chathrand off Naribyr writhed in the polluted bay, flailing at their chains. Huge gears and moving cables brought steel and lumber and lead and brass into the open jaws of the shipworks. Taliktrum flew nearer, alighting on one of the countless outbuildings surrounding the mill. Creeping to the edge of the roof, he found himself looking down on corpses, mangled corpses impaled on hooks, being cabled away towards a mountain of smoking rubbish to the south. Prisoners? Criminals? Aghast, he realised that they were neither: they were workers, slain and discarded by the monstrous industry they served. And for every dlomu killed there were surely five or six lined up at the doors.

The city generated a kind of fear Taliktrum had never before imagined. Great Mother, he’d thought, don’t let me die in such a place. Send me to sea again quickly, far from this nightmare world.

But the ship had lingered, day after day. Macadra kept to herself, awaiting word from her inland scouts. For five days she did not stir from her cabin. Then one morning she had stormed out on deck, screaming for horses. A vision had come to her in the night: battle in a wintry gorge, the maukslar killed or driven from Alifros, and another creature of great power slain as well. Macadra had been certain that the Nilstone was involved.

Taliktrum frowns at the sorceress, wading like a rapacious bird. He still does not know what a maukslar is. But he knows somehow that he must stay near this vile mage. If he is to fight her, that is. If he is to have any chance of mattering in this world, after so much error and cowardice.

‘Look at her now!’ hisses someone. The riders grow still. Macadra has drawn a knife, and bared her bone- white arm to the elbow. With a swift motion she slices her own forearm: a deep, cruel cut. But she does not bleed: the wound gapes red, but dry.

The sight is too much for the dlomu. ‘No blood!’ they whisper. ‘Macadra has no blood in her veins!’ Cursing, Macadra works her hand, in a motion like squeezing a ball. At last Taliktrum sees it: a slow, dark trickle on the too-white flesh. She lets it drip into the river: five drops, and then the wound runs dry.

From out of the Parsua, something leaps into her palm: a red ruby, glittering in the sun. Macadra encloses it in her wounded hand.

Her eyes shut. Then she screeches, with more lunacy and rage then ever Taliktrum has heard on giant’s tongue.

‘Mina Scaraba Urifica! We ride, we ride! They have passed over the Water Bridge and descended Urakan! They are west of us and making for the sea!’

She is flailing for shore, knife still in hand, snarling: ‘Assist me, you dogs!’

One of the generals plunges in and wades towards her, extending his hand. ‘My lady,’ he shouts, ‘the horses are nearly spent.’

‘Did you not hear me? We ride at once!’

‘Yes, lady,’ says the general, ‘but what of your demon? Is that not why we came here?’

Macadra grasps his hand, pulls hard, and with a speed that even Taliktrum finds startling, cuts the general’s throat. The man’s mouth opens with hideous silence. He drops face-first; his coat balloons with trapped air. The sorceress presses down upon his neck as though feeding him to the river.

‘It lives, dog,’ she says. ‘It will heal, with time and blood.’

24

From the final journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt

Monday, 2 Fuinar 942.

It is truly extraordinary: our ixchel have charmed the birds of the air. One sort of bird, anyway — the swallows of Stath Balfyr — and in truth just one ixchel appears to have the knack. He is Myett’s granddad, the old duffer they call the Pachet Ghali. At six bells today he pulls out a tiny flute and sets to playing on the forecastle, and in they swarm from the island, skimming low over the bay. Lord Talag stands among them in his swallow-suit, pointing and shouting, and thirty more of the little people materialize out of their hiding places, laughing at the birds with delight. Who’s in control, I wonder: the musician or the feathered lord? But how they do keep coming, until they outnumber the ixchel four to one.

Suddenly they descend in a jabbering mass. Grown men fall back, protecting their faces, but the birds have no interest in humans. They seize the ixchel in their claws and rise, bearing them away towards the island and its steamy woods. Only the Pachet is left behind.

This, then, has been their plan since Etherhorde: to bring us all the way here from Etherhorde, and then depart on swallows’ wings. They mean to repeat this trick again and again, until their whole clan is on dry land. And what then? Ott declares for a certainty that they’ll not let us go, and this time I fear the old snake is right. What if we talked about this place? What if we came back with catapults and fire-missiles, and burned Stath Balfyr to a crisp? What if we came back with a navy?

But there are surely hundreds of ixchel hidden on the Chathrand yet, and thus far only thirty have departed. When the first group vanishes from sight the old Pachet (the word’s his title, not his name) sets the flute aside and talks to us quite reasonably. He invokes Diadrelu, ‘our lord’s dear departed sister’, and compliments Marila and Felthrup and myself for befriending her.

‘She would have wished us to part without illusions, and without hate,’ he says. ‘You are guilty of many crimes, but hating you has served us ill. Lady Dri understood this and would not pretend otherwise. She would not lie to us, or to herself. But the cost of seeing that truth was death.’

I suppose I’m in the mood for a fight. ‘It ain’t just that she saw, old man,’ I say. ‘It’s that the rest of you refused to.’

‘Not all of us,’ he replies.

I tell him he’s a mucking hypocrite. ‘If you think so much of her, why d’ye still serve the bastards who stabbed her in the throat?’

The old man looks at me, untroubled. ‘I serve the clan,’ he says, ‘as she did, to the end.’

Some hours later the birds return. With them are just three ixchel: Lord Talag and two strangers, hard-faced sorts dressed only in breeches and weaponry. They are the first proof we have that ixchel really live on Stath Balfyr. They’re outlandish, too: they have fantastic, elephant-like creatures tattooed on their chests, and their hands and forearms are painted red as though dipped in blood. They flank Talag and nod to him courteously, but Talag is all business as he speaks with the Pachet in that tongue we humans cannot hear. Now the old man looks surprised and