The Night of the Swarm

Bali Adro and heavily patrolled, no longer a true wilderness at all. Ahead lay the sprawling, uncharted northern archipelagos — and the Chathrand, as Ildraquin’s whispers to Hercol still confirmed. For a week they had been skipping and sneaking through these little foggy isles, their beaches crowded with nesting birds, or seals that lay in the sunshine like cast-off coats. Eleven days, and dangers aplenty. Hardly had they left the Coves when a fierce squall tried to dash them on the lee shore. They had scraped off with the sand showing yellow between the breakers, and the wives and children of the fishermen in plain sight atop the cliffs, near enough to wave, but too horrified to do so. Two days later a warship had risen up suddenly from the east, flashing an order to hold position. Of course Nolcindar had declined the invitation: the Promise had fled, and been chased as far as the Redvane before losing their pursuers in a fog bank.

‘We escaped,’ Prince Olik had murmured to the youths, ‘but this is a disaster all the same. For they were close enough to see us — to see selk and dlomu working the ship together. Macadra will hear of this in no time.’

Nolcindar appeared to be of the same opinion, for that night they played a desperate trick: sailing the Promise through the narrowest gap in the Sandwall. The long barrier islands were breached in many spots, but the Empire kept close watch on all the larger, permanent inlets. That left only the shifting channels, washed open by one storm or cyclone and closed by the next.

‘And even these may be guarded,’ Prince Olik warned. ‘It would be a simple matter of dispatching a few more boats from Masalym, or Fandural Edge.’

So it had proved. The waterway was tiny and twisting, barely wide enough for the Promise to make her turns. And yet a dozen soldiers were encamped there, and two had enormous, feline mounts.

‘Sand cats,’ Bulutu declared, frowning into the telescope. ‘Sicunas bred for desert work. They’ll run fast along the beach.’

‘To some larger outpost, maybe,’ said Prince Olik, ‘or to a signal-point. Either way we cannot let them go.’

The fishermen were in clear distress. ‘What do you mean to do, Prince?’ asked their leader.

But it was Hercol who answered, not at all proudly: ‘We shall ambush them,’ he said, ‘like thieves in the night.’

When darkness fell they brought the Promise to within three miles of the Sandwall. They tied swords and knives up in canvas, and the canvas to floats made of cork. Then some twenty selk and dlomic fighters began to undress and slip down ropes into the waves. Prince Olik and Lunja went with them, and so did Neda and Hercol.

Thasha too prepared for the assault, tying back her hair and starting to undress. But when Hercol took notice he caught her roughly by the arm.

‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘Have you forgotten everything? Have the tarboys and I been talking to thin air?’

‘You blary well know I can fight.’

‘Irrelevant,’ he snapped. ‘If we lose you we shall very probably lose this whole endeavour. Cover yourself, girl, and step back.’

‘Girl, am I?’

‘You will stay aboard, Thasha Isiq. We need another sort of strength from you.’

He was trying to avert his eyes. Thasha knew with sudden certainty that she had aroused him, and that the distraction made him furious. She crossed her arms over her chest. Hercol was right, this was unforgivable, what in Pitfire was wrong with her?

‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It’s just — fighting feels easier than-’

‘Than freeing Erithusme? I’m not surprised.’

He still would not look at her. He had scars on his torso that she had never seen.

‘Do you recall what Ramachni said at the Temple of the Wolves?’ he asked suddenly. ‘About how quickly the Swarm is gaining strength? How long do we have before it covers Alifros, do you suppose? How many nights, before the night that never ends?’

He climbed over the rail, naked but for Ildraquin and a cloth about his hips. ‘We can’t lose you, either,’ she stammered. ‘I mean I can’t. You know that, don’t you?’

He made no reply, not even a smile or a frown. He just dived. Thasha stood there with her shirt open, watching the swimmers vanish in the dark. When she was barely of age she had dreamed that Hercol would touch her, take her, in the study or the garden or the little scrub room where she changed before their fighting lessons. Gently or furiously, silently or with whispers of love. She had never quite renounced those dreams, but they had fled somewhere so distant as to become almost chaste, part of the love she felt for the man, a love that was nothing at all like her love for Pazel, which could blind and devour her. To lose either of them — how could she survive that? And what if no one else survived? What if she were left alone?

It could happen. Erithusme might give her a way out that was closed to everyone else. Could the world be so cruel as to force her to take it?

But Hercol had not fallen that night, and neither had Lunja or Neda. The Bali Adrons, surprised and outnumbered and bewildered at the sight of Prince Olik, mostly obeyed his call to surrender, and those who did not were quickly subdued. The sicuna-riders sped to their mounts and tried to flee westwards, but Neda and Lunja were ready and waiting. Racing down from the dunetops, they leaped and tackled the riders, battling both men to the ground.

Only two died in the operation: Neda’s rider, who fought to the death; and one of the dlomic fishermen, who was bringing up the rear as the raiders swam back to the Promise. The man simply disappeared. The captured warriors spoke of sharks, hunting along the inside of the Sandwall. Hercol nodded grimly. ‘We have met with them before. And this time there was blood in the water.’

There was one other casualty: Lunja’s cheek, raked by the claws of the sicuna. The beast had whirled on her in fright when she tackled its rider, before the selk arrived and calmed the creature with a touch. Thasha winced at the sight: the wounds were pale and livid on her blacker-than-black dlomic skin. Later, as the Promise moved cautiously through the gap, Thasha heard Neeps and Lunja talking in the shadows.

‘What are you holding against your face?’

‘My cloth from Ularamyth. Kirishgan says I should cover the wounds with it until dawn.’

‘You must be tired of holding it. Give it here.’

‘I am not tired, boy.’

A silence. Then Neeps asked, ‘Your people can grow back fingers and toes. Can you grow fresh skin as well?’

Thasha saw the fierce gleam in Lunja’s eye. ‘Will I be scarred, do you mean? Will I be ugly? What is that to you?’

Thasha moved away from them, not wanting to hear more. She took a turn at the halyards, in a line of selk, their blue eyes shining in the darkness like living sapphires. An hour later, as they cleared the Sandwall and emerged into the high, thrashing seas beyond, she saw Neeps and Lunja seated side by side against the hatch coaming. The dlomic woman was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and Neeps was still pressing the cloth to her cheek.

That night Thasha held Pazel close, and he murmured a song into her ear. It was in the selk language he had learned on Sirafstoran Torr, but he himself could not say where he had learned the tune.

‘Someone must have been singing it in Ularamyth,’ he said. ‘There are times when I feel as if we spent years in that place. As if a whole stage of our lives passed there in safety.’

They slept, and Thasha dreamed they made love, and in the dream Pazel changed many times. He was a selk, and then he was Hercol, and then a dlomu with the voice of Ramachni, singing Allaley heda Miraval, ni starinath asam, and then he was a sea-murth with sinuous limbs, and he sang a murth- song, and when she woke there were tears in Pazel’s eyes.

The shadow of a bird swept over her face. Starting from her reverie, Thasha reached up and grasped the carved mane of the horse above her, and stood. It was very early; only a handful of selk were about, and none were near. She had spent an hour on this platform already, puzzling over the erotic dream and the song that came to her