The Night of the Swarm

Two hours later the sun was fully risen, and the prince stood atop the headland, wild rosemary about him and Taliktrum on a stone nearby, looking down at the Kirisang, the Death’s Head, Macadra’s hideous ship. ‘Why, it’s almost a twin of the Chathrand!’ the ixchel had exclaimed. And of course that was true: though much older and heaped with strange Plazic weaponry, the Kirisang was a Segral-class ship like the one the humans had arrived in. Olik turned away from the sight: he knew that Macadra herself was on that ship, unless she had gone ashore to look for him. The sorceress had not stirred from Bali Adro City in thirty years, but lust for the Nilstone had drawn her out.

Then the prince had raised his eyes and looked north, through the gap in the Sandwall where the Chathrand had sailed five days before. ‘I wonder if they are truly out there, waiting for an all-clear signal, so that they might return and collect their missing crew. Rose’s eyes were shifty when he promised to do so. And that bloodthirsty Mr Ott never left him alone. “Stath Balfyr, Captain; our goal is Stath Balfyr.” He was in a fever to reach that isle.’

‘He should not have been,’ Taliktrum had replied. ‘If they ever do reach Stath Balfyr, it will be the end of the voyage for them all.’

‘You sound quite sure of that.’

‘I am,’ said Taliktrum, ‘but ask me no more about it, Sire. There are some oaths even an exile must keep.’

He was a cipher, this tiny lord who’d saved his life. The prince knew almost nothing about ixchel. They had suffered under the Platazcra, but their own habits of secrecy disguised the extent of their persecution. They were found occasionally aboard boats plying the Island Wilderness, and were said to be tolerated by the people of Nemmoc and other lands west of Bali Adro. Yet Taliktrum had given him the impression that the Northern ixchel who had come with the Chathrand were of a very different sort: rigidly communal, even indivisible in their clan structure and ethos of ‘us’ before ‘me’. Which made Taliktrum’s own defection rather startling. On the headland, with as much delicacy as he could muster, Olik had asked Taliktrum if he regretted leaving his people behind. Taliktrum had stared hard at the sea.

‘I left myself no choice,’ he said. ‘I am like the hunter who falls into his own snare. I could blame my father, of course: he persuaded us all to go hunting to begin with. But I took up the horn and blew until my face was red. And when my father became frail I named myself not just the master of the hunt, but its guardian spirit, a visionary, a prophet.’

‘You do not strike me as so proud.’

Taliktrum laughed. ‘I might have before,’ he said, ‘but even that would have been an illusion. Pride did not lead me on, though at the time even I thought it had. No, I named myself a prophet as an act of rebellion. I lacked the courage to turn from my father’s path, so I tried to escape another way: by going too far. Unfortunately, my own people called my bluff.’

‘By believing in you?’

Taliktrum had nodded. ‘And trapping me, thereby. I could not deliver what I promised them, and so I fled. And when I had been gone a little while, free from their needy eyes, my mind cleared and I saw my own need at last. But before I could return and claim her, I saw her vanish into this wilderness, joining you giants in the hunt for the Nilstone, abandoning the comfort of the clan. She was the one of vision. I was the blind fool who never saw her until she was gone.’

They raced on up the slope. The prince was vaguely disgusted with himself: a mere five hours and he was winded, and the path had not been that steep. He should have started earlier; he should have spent the night on this mountain.

‘The hounds are closing already,’ said Taliktrum. ‘Mother Sky, but they’re fast.’

‘Wait until they reach level ground,’ said Olik.

‘I’d rather we didn’t, Sire.’

If he had started at dusk yesterday he would have reached the Sarimayat River by now, and could have sent the dogs safely home. Now look at him: desperate, pretending to a calm he didn’t feel, hoping for a miracle, or the kind of strength he’d not felt in a decade.

Your strength, for example, he thought, glancing at Taliktrum out of the corner of his eye. If an ixchel stood six feet tall, and his strength were raised proportionally, well, the prince wasn’t quite sure what that would mean, but something astonishing. Taliktrum stood eight inches tall and could leap forty from a standstill.

There were rocks by the sea cliff, however. Tall rocks, and many. On an impulse, the prince dived from the trail and ran among them. He had rope. Perhaps there was a way down the cliff where they could not follow, or even a path along the shore.

Or no path. They are almost upon you. Best be ready for an ocean swim.

But a swim to where? Last night in Masalym he had studied maps, traced his possible avenues of escape. He’d known Macadra was coming, bearing down on the city in the Death’s Head, knew she thought the Nilstone might still be there and would commit any atrocity to obtain it. The Stone was not there, of course — but was Arunis? Olik had sworn not to abandon the city until he could swear to its citizens that the sorcerer had fled. At last Hercol Stanapeth’s fire-signal from the mountains let him do so. But by then Macadra’s ship was already in the harbour, and Olik had barely managed to slip away.

The river, he thought. The Sarimayat. You can lose them there, hide your scent, crawl out after sunset on the nether shore. Gain that river and you live.

‘Prince, you must abandon these rocks,’ said Taliktrum. ‘They can trap you here. This was a mistake.’

The ixchel was right again: he should have crossed the summit at a dead run and simply hurled himself down the western slope. Or called his pack in to fight at his side. The prince had no illusions about his talents. He was a passable swordsman, nothing more than that. His strength was archery, but he had no bow. What he did have were nine kryshoks: steel disc-blades, each the width of his palm, and bulging slightly at the centre with the weight of lead. They were less accurate than arrows, but no less deadly when they found their mark.

‘A vantage,’ he said to Taliktrum. ‘Find me a vantage point, an outlying rock. Some of them will follow their noses in here. I want to be waiting where they emerge.’

Taliktrum nodded, seeing the plan. He crouched tight as the prince grabbed him bodily. Olik threw him high, like a ball, and at the zenith of his ascent Taliktrum spread his arms, thrust deep into the gauntlets of the swallow- feather suit, and soared west over the rocks.

Behind him, the athymars suddenly bayed: a deeply chilling sound. They were on the summit. Olik dashed, slipping and squeezing through tight places in the rocks. Macadra would not use athymars if she meant to take me alive. They will devour me, probably, devour the evidence. And she will still have them slaughtered and cremated, lest their stomachs be opened by the Platazcra Inspectorate, looking for fragments of a missing prince.

Taliktrum returned, alighted on his shoulder. ‘That way, run,’ he gasped. ‘It is far, but no other place will serve.’

The prince ran where he was told. The dogs’ howls echoed among the rocks. If they caught him here, with no throwing-room, no room even to swing a sword. .

Grey fur: the prince wheeled, groping for his dagger. But it was only Nyrex, his pack leader, a great rockhound with the tented ears of a fox. Her mouth was foamy with exhaustion and her tongue lolled like a skinned eel, but her eyes still begged for orders.

‘Out of these boulders, out! Scatter!’ Olik flung his arm, and the dog sprang away like a hare. Then the prince emerged from the rocks, and Taliktrum pointed to the one that stood apart. Flat-crested: fine luck. He raced the sixty feet and vaulted onto the stone. Eight feet: tall enough. But the rear of the boulder had a shelf halfway up its side. Bad luck. He lay flat at the centre of the stone.

‘Circle me at dog-height,’ he told Taliktrum. ‘Can you see me? Quickly, pray!’

Taliktrum flew low about the stone, arms working furiously. He landed, rolling, by the prince’s arm. ‘You’re hidden from view,’ he said. ‘But Prince, their noses-’

‘Yes,’ Olik whispered. ‘I’m counting on it. When I toss you again, Lord Taliktrum, you must fly off shouting — and not return until the killing’s done.’