The Night of the Swarm

‘Vermin.’

Felthrup sat back on his haunches. ‘There is a great deal more, but you must earn it.’

‘I shall skin you alive, each of you. I shall roast you on a spit.’

‘You will answer my questions,’ said Felthrup, ‘or we will depart.’

The maukslar roared. It threw itself against the bars again, with even greater violence. The charmed door held fast. Twisting, screaming, the demon changed its body: suddenly a tall, savage- looking man with a red beard took its place, eyes fixed on Captain Rose.

‘Nilus!’ the man thundered. ‘Free me at once!’

Rose’s eyes went wide. The man in the cell bellowed again, and the captain flinched, as though expecting a blow. Then his eyes narrowed again, and he looked at the figure squarely. ‘You are not my father,’ he said.

‘Worthless cretin! I order you to open this door!’

‘But I wish you were,’ Rose went on, ‘that I might stand here before you, and lift not a finger on your behalf.’

The figure gaped at him — and then, in an eyeblink, it changed again. Within the cage there suddenly appeared Neeps Undrabust, dressed just as he had been the night before he left the Chathrand. The night Rose had married him to Marila. Neeps turned to his young wife, eyes brimming with emotion, and reached out a trembling hand.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘It’s truly me. Come here, let me touch you. Let me touch our child.’

‘Marila, leave at once!’ cried Felthrup. But Marila’s eyes remained fixed on her lover; she stood as though turned to stone. Fiffengurt closed one hand tightly on Marila’s arm. She started and shook her head.

‘I’m dying, you know,’ said the thing that looked like Neeps. ‘The same way Rose is dying. Of the plague. I don’t want to die without touching you again.’

Tears streamed down Marila’s face. Then she placed two fists over her eyes, and began to shout in Tholjassan. Felthrup could not understand the words, but he knew curses when he heard them, and so did the maukslar. The figure of Neeps disappeared, and was replaced by a perfect replica of Marila herself.

‘Your man does not love you,’ it said, in Marila’s own voice. ‘He’s found another lover. A finer one, a beauty.’

‘Liar,’ said Marila calmly. ‘You don’t know him. I do. Besides, he’s in a land without human beings.’

The false Marila laughed. ‘And you think that has stopped him? You are the one who does not know the man, or the soul of men writ large. No depravity is beyond them.’The creature touched its bulging stomach. ‘What do you think is growing, here? A healthy baby, from his seed? Shall I tell you the truth?’

At that Fiffengurt suddenly came to life. Spitting out a few choice curses of his own, he lifted Marila from the ground and ran with her down the passage. In the cell, the maukslar laughed and clawed at its belly. ‘A grub, a flesh-eating grub! It is gnawing you, gnawing its way to the light!’

Felthrup heard the quartermaster’s voice at the distant doorway, and a croaking reply from Oggosk. Moments later Fiffengurt returned alone. He had torn open his pouch. Before Felthrup could stop him he poured out a shower of golden coins upon the floor of the cell. The few that rolled in the maukslar’s direction he stamped flat under his boot.

‘Fiffengurt, Fiffengurt!’ cried the rat. ‘That is not the procedure!’

‘It is now,’ snarled Fiffengurt. ‘Go on, bastard, eat your muckin’ fill.’

The maukslar resumed its true form. Its small bright eyes fixed on the gold, and a moan came from its chest. It dropped to its knees and stretched out its jewelled hands as far as it could go. The nearest coin was barely an inch out of reach.

Crack. Mr Fiffengurt brought the broken end of Oggosk’s staff down on the fat, squirming knuckles. The maukslar’s hand jerked back. It sat up, wings half-spread, its eyes flickering between their faces and the gold.

‘Give me some,’ it hissed.

‘Answer the rat’s blary question!’

‘One coin first. Just one.’

Fiffengurt shook his head. ‘Two, when you talk.’

The maukslar was gasping with want. Set free, it would tear them all to pieces; of that Felthrup had no doubt.

‘Arunis is banished,’ it said. ‘He trapped Uskins through the white scarf, which was his soul’s portal. Without it he cannot return, until the Swarm completes its work, and Alifros lies dead and cold.’

The quartermaster glanced at Felthrup. ‘Well, Ratty?’

Felthrup shook his head. ‘That answer does not merit two coins.’

Before the maukslar could howl again, he raised a paw. ‘It merits twenty.’The maukslar started, eyes ablaze with doubt and hunger.

‘Yes, twenty coins,’ said Felthrup. ‘If you will swear that what you say is true.’

‘Wretched animal. I spoke no lie!’

Felthrup told Mr Fiffengurt to count the money out. The quartermaster looked dubious, but he bent to the floor and gathered twenty coins, and stacked them at Felthrup’s side.

‘Now swear,’ said the rat.

The demon’s eyes were locked on the coins. ‘I swear that what I have said of Arunis is true.’

‘And that everything you say to us henceforth shall be true.’

‘Yes, yes — I so swear! Give me the gold!’

‘Now repeat after me. “I shall speak no word of falsehood to those gathered here before me.” ’

‘I shall speak no word of falsehood to those gathered here before me.’

‘ “Nor seek to harm them, or their friends, or their just interests.” ’

‘Nor seek to harm them, or their friends, or their just interests.’

‘ “To this I swear by my name-” ’

‘To this I swear by my name-’

‘ “Kazizarag.” ’

The maukslar’s eyes snapped up. Then he exploded in horrible wrath, flying about his cage wreathed in yellow flame. Felthrup and the two men waited for a time, then gathered the coins and made to depart. Only then did the creature relent, and swear by his true name.

‘Very good, thing of evil!’ squeaked Felthrup. ‘I knew you were no Tulor. And since a promise from your kind is binding only when witnessed by the living and the dead, I thank you for confirming the presence of ghosts in this chamber. Now feed him, by all means! We keep our promises too.’

Fiffengurt tossed the coins by twos and threes, and the maukslar snatched them up and devoured them like a starved zoo animal. When it had eaten all twenty it sat down in the middle of the cell, closed its eyes and crooned with pleasure.

‘Kazizarag,’ said Rose. ‘The spirit of Avarice. How did you deduce this, Felthrup?’

Felthrup almost choked on his answer: the captain had never before used his name. ‘I know more of the history of this ship than you might suppose, Captain,’ he said. ‘There are long passages in the Polylex, along with many words on the art of extracting oaths from things demonic. I even learned why Avarice here was imprisoned, and by whom.’

‘Then you know I have served my time,’ said the maukslar, still glowing with contentment.

‘If that’s a bid for freedom, you can choke on it, blubber-pot,’ said Mr Fiffengurt. ‘We’ll never in a thousand years let you-’

‘Fiffengurt!’ shrieked Felthrup.

The maukslar’s eyes opened wide. ‘I should have known,’ it hissed. ‘You decided my fate in advance. Well, rat, I am sworn to speak nothing but truth. But I took no oath to speak at all. What is more, I can wait you out. That meal was my first taste of gold in centuries. It will hold me for. . some time.’