The Night of the Swarm

be just another shepherd, another hermit.

Even as the prince watched, more dogs came up behind the first. Some of them lay down upon the hilltop.

‘They must be winded,’ said Taliktrum. ‘They started out in the wrong direction, after all, and had to double back when the first ones caught your scent. They may have run twice as far as those you killed.’

‘They are not tired enough,’ said the prince. ‘Jathod, look at them all.’

The dogs kept coming: ten, now fifteen. ‘Very well,’ said Olik, ‘we are going to start off walking. No, better yet — hobbling. Old. I think I can imitate a bent old hermit. And then, if they let me hobble around that curve in the trail there, we shall fly. Watch them, Taliktrum, and tell me if they start to move.’

He bent his knees, and his back. The performance was harder than he’d imagined. For the first time since his departure from Masalym, the prince felt afraid. It was this slowness, this charade. It made him aware of the trembling of his skin.

Halfway to the curve. The dogs remained still. ‘I count nineteen,’ said Taliktrum.

‘My lord,’ said the prince, ‘do you know what the nuhzat is?’

‘I heard you speak of it, that night on the derelict boat.’

The night Taliktrum had saved him, striking down his assassins with a poisoned blade. ‘The last man to fall,’ said Olik, ‘the one Sandor Ott kicked to death. He was in nuhzat. That is why he began to fight so well.’

‘What of it, Prince?’

‘I will be in nuhzat soon; I can feel its onset already.’

‘Ah!’ said Taliktrum. ‘Is that good luck or bad?’

Before Olik could answer the pack behind them erupted in howls. ‘They’re coming, they’re coming like fiends!’ cried Taliktrum. Olik burst into a run, his dogs flowing beside him, and this was it, no more resting, no more tricks. Only speed. He swept around the bend, clawing at the rocks for purchase, gravel scraping under his heels. The path was narrow; there were sheer falls on his right. He flew headlong, screaming at his dogs to keep their distance: one stumble and the athymars would have them.

His throat was raw. This was a long descent — but was it the descent, the start of the river valley? No, damn it all, there was a plateau before him yet. And structures. Many structures. Could he possibly be approaching a town?

The ridge grew steeper. The earth sheared off in patches beneath his feet. It was like skiing at one of the Emperor’s mountain retreats, that freefall sensation, one’s balance miraculously restored again and again. He thought of his mother. You’ll know a world beyond me, Olik, a world I’ll never see. If there be peace in your lifetime perhaps you’ll be an artist, and paint the glories of this kingdom — I mean the beauty of it, not the deeds. If there be war, you’ll fight.

‘There are riders with them!’ cried Taliktrum. ‘Seven riders! Olik, you must go faster! On that plateau they’ll run you down!’

I’m not one for fighting, Mother; I’ve told you I can’t stand the blood.

‘Prince Olik!’ Taliktrum was shouting in his ear.

I know that about you, darling. That’s why you’ll matter, when the world looks back. Others will be bloody-minded; you’ll fight to bring us to our senses.’

If he had wings sewn to his arms he would spread them now, and lift like a falcon from this wounded earth. But instead there came a quietness, and a change in the light. The nuhzat had begun.

Thank you, Mother. Thank you for easing this pain.

For his raw throat, the burning in his chest, the ache of his bitten arm: gone. Nothing hurt any more, and yet his senses were rarefied and keen. And he was running faster, much faster. Already the buildings were flying by.

‘That’s it! Don’t stop!’

They were ruins. Not ancient, merely old. He was sprinting down the centre of a wide, dead street, his own dogs barely matching his pace. Then he remembered: Ved Oomin. Human Settlement. The words in pale red ink upon his map. This was a township, wiped out in the mind-plague and never settled again.

Sudden snarling behind him. He could not look back; he was a running spirit, an idea of speed. Taliktrum shouted that the first athymars were catching up with his pack. Olik clenched his teeth and ran faster. The village was ending. A ruined wall crossed his path. Olik cleared it in one bound.

Steel horseshoes on cobblestones. The riders were behind him. ‘They have bows,’ said Taliktrum. ‘Never mind, they’re not using them; it’s still the dogs you’ve got to outrun.’

Tombstones. Human graves lost in brambles and weeds. Names melting with the years, souls fallen like raindrops in this silent land.

Another wall, another leap. And now he was in forest, wet and tangled. He slashed through vines and cabbage palm and tall soaked ferns. Bad luck. The forest would slow him more than the dogs.

Then the ground began to drop, steeply. At last, he thought, the descent.

‘There’s the blessed river!’ cried Taliktrum, ‘but Prince, they’re too close! You must push one more time, a little faster, do you hear? Olik, you will not make it at this speed.’

Half a mile, less. Then came an explosion of canine fury. On his right, two dogs were rolling, a coil of fur, claws, teeth. Olik shouted to the rest of his pack: Go free, disband, leave the fight and turn home. But there was Nyrex, keeping pace with him, disobedient again. She caught his eye. So much trust in that creature, so much unwarranted faith.

Taliktrum was screaming: ‘Faster, faster! Herid aj, man, you’re almost there!’

A quarter mile. The final stretch looked terribly steep. An arrow flew past him, wildly off the mark. His pursuers were desperate; they could see the river too.

A last scramble before him. Maybe a leap from the high green banks. ‘Pitfire, you’re doing it!’ cried Taliktrum, almost laughing in his amazement. ‘You’re losing them, man, you’re the royal leopard incarnate!’

Of course he was; he was Bali Adro. There was no stopping his family. Given time they would conquer the sun.

Then an athymar caught his heel.

It was a nip, not a bone-crushing bite, and yet it was enough to send him sprawling. Any semblance of control was gone; the world spun madly. But the athymar had fallen, too. Nyrex had pounced on it, and the three of them and half a ton of loose jungle soil were rushing for the river; it was a landslide with heads and limbs, his boots fending off the athymar, its four fangs seeking him, Nyrex tearing at the larger dog’s hindquarters and-

Freefall.

The banks were high, all right. They plummeted in their squall of mud and debris, revolving helplessly, and then they struck and it was done.

Olik was in the water, and Nyrex surfaced beside him, paddling. The athymar, not five feet to his left, had struck a fallen tree projecting out into the river. Dead already, it hung before them, impaled on a jagged branch.

Arrows fell. On the banks fifty feet above them, the other athymars were massed and baying. They pulled away from the shore into the swifter current, the rushing chariot that would bear them away. A mad river, a beautiful thing, burrowing deep into the Peninsula and the wild lands that remained.

But before they gave themselves to the current, Olik made for a rock, and Nyrex came up beside him, and they waited there, struggling to be still. Olik watched the shore, murmuring the hope-chant that for the dlomu takes the place of prayer. But no winged shape flew to him out of the jungle, only arrows and sounds of rage. The athymars jostled along the banks, now and then looking back over their shoulders.

Olik knew that the riders would soon brave that last slope, and spy him, and that once they did they would never turn back. He made a small sound of grief. If there was a lonelier soul than Lord Taliktrum’s, he could not have said whose it might be.

The prince and his one companion swam away.