The Night of the Swarm

Cross that line, and lose everything. Give the order, and never again see Anni, never know your child.

Another boom, and Fiffengurt saw a man plucked from the rigging and carried by the iron ball out over the sea. He fell at least three hundred yards off the bow. Something Fiffengurt had never seen in all his years of sailing.

Then Kirishgan pointed back at the Death’s Head. ‘There! Look there! Arpathwin has done it!’

Fiffengurt raised his telescope. The enemy ship’s forecastle was burning. Tall flames surrounded the giant gun and trickled back along both rails. Men scattered and fell, their bodies like torches. Several hurled themselves into the sea.

‘That is your mage’s work,’ said Kirishgan. ‘He was searching for the minds of those gunners, and he found them. He knew he could not affect them greatly, or for long. But one does not need long: only a brief confusion, with matches and that horrible fuel.’

The flame trickled down the vessel’s armoured sides. The cannon stopped firing. The jibsail burst into flames, and then the flying jib above it. But the flames spread no further. Already a large team was dousing the blaze.

Ramachni came back to the wheelhouse. ‘Bless your soul, you’ve delivered us,’ shouted Fiffengurt.

‘Not for long,’ said the mage. ‘After this attack, Macadra will not even pretend to offer quarter. Nor will she permit any further mind-assaults. How soon will we reach the gap?’

‘If we’re not slowed further, thirty minutes.’

‘Thirty minutes!’ cried Oggosk. ‘In thirty minutes that sorceress will be standing here in our place, or this boat will be in splinters.’

She was right. Fiffengurt saw it, the next fifteen or twenty minutes, the several forms that ruin could take.

New explosions; new shots screaming by like furies. They had recovered already.

He walked out to the quarterdeck rail, fighting his body, and the urge to cling to the wheel, to pretend. When he was certain his voice would not betray him, he shouted the order to his crew. Hard to starboard. Into the Storm.

They dragged nearly the whole contents of the bedroom out into the central chamber. They ran with armfuls of books and charts, dumping them, sifting them, running back for more. They combed through the remains of the limewood desk from the chart room, the shards of floorboards, the shattered cups and inkwells, magnifying glasses and drafting instruments, Rose’s tactical chalkboard, Elkstem’s brass spittoon.

‘Did you feel that?’ cried Pazel. ‘That was a direct hit to the hull.’

‘Glancing, not direct,’ snapped Mr Druffle. ‘Drop that rubbish, Undrabust! I told you I checked it!’

‘And you watch those blary boots,’ Neeps shot back. ‘That’s Myett you nearly trod on.’

They fetched lamps, got in each other’s light. They shook out the bedclothes in which Thasha had lain. They found Pazel’s mother’s ivory whale, last seen before the ship reached Bramian; and a diamond earring that could only have belonged to Syrarys, which Thasha hurled at the wall.

‘We’re changing tack again,’ said Thasha, stumbling to the porthole. ‘Oh Gods, he’s heading into the Storm!’

They flung aside the horsehair mattress, the remains of the brass bed. They kicked and scrabbled through the ruins, checking everything again, waving at dust clouds, cutting their hands.

Suddenly, from the topdeck a great collective scream. Midnight blackness drowned the glow of the Storm.

Felthrup wailed as though his heart would break — ‘No! No! Not yet!’ — and then Ensyl found the key, caught beneath the broken foot of the dressing mirror, still bolted to the floor.

It came out of the east like a sentient cloud. It had swollen, larger than the bay of Stath Balfyr, larger perhaps than the island itself, and it flew arrow-straight and arrow-swift for the gap in the Red Storm. Kirishgan gave a keening cry and turned his face away. Ramachni faced it, but his tiny body shook.

The Swarm of Night. Hercol looked at the thing that had leaped skyward months ago, when Arunis held the Nilstone. Leaped from the River of Shadows, no larger than a little fish. It was obscene, solid, writhing like a clot of black worms. It reached the Death’s Head first, and only then did Hercol realise that it was lower than the mast-heads. The Swarm flowed around the high timbers, and those sailors who did not dive into the sea were swallowed by it, and when the Swarm moved on the ship’s rigging was devoid of life.

‘Abandon masts!’ Hercol screamed, waving his arms. ‘Down, down for your lives!’ A few men heard; a few were quick enough to live. Then the thing was above them, swallowing the masts as low as the topsails, and not even screams escaped.

There above the Chathrand the Swarm of Night stopped dead, like a cat with a mouse beneath its foot. The ship heaved; the masts were immobilised, and the waves wrenched and tore as though the ship had run aground. Hercol braced himself for the snapping that would mean death to them all. But it did not come. The masts held; the Swarm flowed on, anxious for the gap. The red light of the Storm washed over them again. But of the sixty men who had been working the upper masts, not one was left alive.

The Swarm entered the gap, racing towards the North and its bloodshed, its feast of death. It had almost vanished when a new light appeared on the Chathrand. A strange, white-hot light, pouring out through her gunports, and then up from the Silver Stair.

‘Thasha!’

She looked like a woman possessed. The light came from the Nilstone in her naked hand. Hercol shouted again but there was no reaching her; she knew what she meant to do. With the Stone thrust high she reached out with her free hand, as if to seize the vanishing Swarm. And indeed her fingers seemed to close on something. Thasha screamed, in fury or agony or both, and every muscle in her body tightened with effort. She threw her head back; she clawed at the air. Miles away, the Swarm of Night faltered, swerved.

Thasha gave a violent wrench of her arm. The Swarm leaped sideways, right out of the gap and into the Red Storm’s light. There was a brief flash and it was gone.

Not a voice could be heard. Thasha straightened, flexing her shoulders and her neck. A wild fury still glowed in her eyes. The ship was spinning, bobbing like a derelict. She staggered to the rail and Hercol followed. The light of the Nilstone was dimming. When he drew near her he caught the smell of burning skin.

‘Put it down, Thasha! Put it down before it kills you!’

She nodded. She made to drop the Stone at his feet. Then her eye caught something beyond the rail, and she froze.

The Death’s Head had spun into view, no more than half a mile away. Replacement crew were scaling her masts, and even as they watched, cannon were sliding out through the gunports, sixty or eighty strong.

Thasha stared at the vessel. She looked as though vomit or blood might be rising in her throat. But what she unleashed from her chest was a howl of rage and madness, and a force that leaped the water and slammed like a hurricane into Macadra’s ship. The Death’s Head rolled onto her beam-ends, the dlomu who had raced up the masts were swept away. Hercol fell on his knees, covering his ears, feeling the noise shake the Chathrand to her frame.

Thasha gave a strange, feline twist of her head and dropped the Nilstone. Hercol’s foot shot out and held it still, even as Thasha collapsed in his arms. Pathkendle appeared, and the others close behind. Hercol looked at the Death’s Head. It was not sunk, but its rigging was destroyed, and two of its five masts had been flung like straws across the sea.

Fiffengurt began to shout: ‘Strike the jibs! Get that mess off the jiggermast, we can’t steer a blary wreck! Fast boys, we’re drifting!’

Thasha raved: ‘Pazel, help me. Oh Gods. Oh Gods.’

Pazel turned over her hand, and stifled a cry: Thasha’s palm was a mass of blisters, white and oozing. ‘Get some bandages, Neeps! She’s scalded!’

Thasha spoke through her gasps. ‘Doesn’t matter. . I have to kill them, Pazel. . bring the wine.’

No one moved to obey her; no one was even tempted. Hercol raised his eyes. ‘Look, girl! We’re going to make it, thanks to you.’

They were in the mouth of the gap. It was undulating, and rafts of red light drifted across it like icebergs, but