The Night of the Swarm

I toyed with mentioning Stath Balfyr, and the master plot of the ixchel. I considered trusting him with the knowledge of Hercol’s sword. What could be gained by either confidence, however, save further danger for us all? ‘They’ll know,’ was all I managed to say.

He nodded, and I left him to his rest. A new ally, in the person of Jervik Lank. There’s no end to wonders under Heaven’s Tree.

Teggatz reassembled the hog (Refeg and Rer did not eat it; they live on a diet of fish meal and grains) and roasted it in the galley stove, with cooking sherry and dlomic onions and snakeberries and yams. Everyone aboard got a bite of that beast, and it was sumptuous beyond all telling. I was wrong: Latzlo is no fool. For such a splendid pig the royals on Simja would have showered him with gold. I took him a plate. He nibbled with tears in his eyes.

As for the officers, we ate in the wardroom. Uskins joined us for the first time in days, looking like something a dog had tired of chewing, as Sergeant Haddismal informed him to general delight. Rose and Ott were elsewhere, which made for looser tongues, and I dare say the rich food made us wild. Fegin told us about one such hog that got loose in a slaughterhouse in Ballytween and killed every man in the place, and seven delivery boys one after another, and the foreman who came to see why the packing was so slow.

‘And they all knew about the hog. It didn’t just appear like a fairy.’

‘This weren’t no mucking fairy,’ said Haddismal.

Mr Thyne speculated that the hog might have gotten into a dark corner of the hold and gone to sleep — hibernated, in a word. The notion brought jeers. ‘Listen to the company man! Telling us about pigs!’

‘The Red River is on Kushal,’ I explained. Seeing his blank look, I added: ‘Where it’s warm all the time. No need to hibernate if you’re a tropical pig.’

‘Latzlo hid the creature,’ said Haddismal, matter-of-fact, ‘and I hope Rose hangs him from the yards by his thumbs. No worse moneygrubber alive than that man. You heard him in the passageway: “My property, my investment.” Gangrune and Bindhammer lying at his feet, half killed, and he’s got eyes only for this.’ He waved at the platter of bones. ‘He’s the guilty party, no doubt about it. Still thought he could sell it, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Sell it to whom?’ asked Mr Elkstem.

‘To us, of course. Later on, when the fresh food ran out, and we got hungry again.’

‘Brainless twit,’ said Uskins, through a mouthful.

Haddismal looked at him with contempt. ‘That depends on who he’s compared with,’ he said, and chuckled at his own jest.

‘I wasn’t speaking of Latzlo,’ said Uskins.

Our busy jaws stopped dead. Haddismal stared in amazement. Uskins normally flinched at the very sight of the marine, who smacked him about with some regularity. But now he just went on eating.

‘I didn’t quite catch that remark,’ said Haddismal, low and deadly.

Uskins shrugged, chewed faster. Haddismal kept drilling him with those eyes, then slowly shook his head, as if he’d decided Uskins wasn’t quite worth interrupting his dinner for. The rest of us exchanged glances, started breathing again. Thyne hiccupped. Haddismal took another rib from the platter.

‘This hog was smarter than you on a good day,’ said Uskins.

The Turach exploded from his chair. Thyne and Elkstem dived out of his path as he rounded the table.

‘Because nobody kept it, you see,’ said Uskins, the only one of us still seated. ‘It was woken, intelligent, and we’re eating it anyway, how d’ye like that, Sergeant, hmm? The Sizzies always did call us cannibals.’

The Turach was reaching for Uskins’ collar, but he froze there, agog. Now we were all shouting at the first mate, in rage and disgust. Woken? What in the brimstone Pits did he mean?

Uskins swallowed a large gristly bite. ‘Of course woken,’ he said. ‘How do you think it got away from the rats? Day after day in that wooden crate. Thinking, knowing its circumstances. Knowing it was travelling to its death. What did piggy do? It watched and waited. And when the rats came it kicked that crate to pieces and fled into a vanishing compartment. Just like mages have done for hundreds of years. Just as Miss Thasha used to do, in olden times, when the ship was hers. The cows and goats went too, but they were just lucky.’

He pushed more flesh into his mouth. ‘Uskins,’ I said, ‘the hog never talked.’

‘Neither do I, most days,’ he said. ‘Why talk when nobody listens? You’re a bilge-brain, too.’ He gave me a meaty grin. ‘What would it say? “Hello, Mr Latzlo! It’s your thousand-pound piggy, let me out and I’ll play nice with you, I’ll fetch your slippers, I’ll never bite off your head.” ’

‘Raving lunatic,’ said Haddismal.

Uskins lurched forward and dragged the whole platter to himself, knocking his plate to the floor. He began to eat with both hands, chin low, making slobbery sounds like a dog. Yet somehow he managed to keep talking.

‘Vanishing compartment. Vanishing compartment. The same trick the crawlies pulled to escape us — they never went ashore, they’ll be back to fight us yet — the same trick that let Arunis hide so long in the-’

Smack. His face went right into the pile of meat, as though shoved by an unseen hand. He began to squeal and writhe, in terrible fear, and it took all of us to restrain him, and hours for him to wear himself out. He is in his cabin now, strapped to his bed lest he hurt himself. A few of us are taking turns watching over him; I am writing this by his bedside in fact. I’ve tried to talk with him, to tell him that whatever’s happening is not his fault. When I raise the candle he stares at me with the blank eyes of an ape.

6

School Mates

14 Modobrin 941

243rd day from Etherhorde

‘Barley and rye,’ shouted Captain Gregory Pathkendle, stretching his arms up the halyard.

‘And a fair lady’s thigh.’

The five men hauled as one. They shouted the refrain philosophically, without a hint of arousal or mirth. Admiral Eberzam Isiq hauled too, sandwiched between the bald man with hoop earrings and the white-haired giant. For Isiq the work was agony: needles of pain danced from his heels to his spotted, shaking hands. And yet he hauled, and knew he bore a share (a paltry, old-man’s share) of the weight. The yard rose. The sail billowed out. Forty years, forty years since he’d worked a boat that eight men could handle alone.

‘Brandy and tea.’

‘And a fair lady’s knee.’

They hauled a third time, and a fourth. The topman kept the sail knife-edged to the wind. Spray doused the men on the line (cold spray; it was late winter in the Northern world) and the tarboy tossed wood shavings under their feet for traction. Isiq smiled, his mind as clear as his body was tortured. Nothing had changed, everything had changed. One day you’re that tarboy, insolent and quick. The next you turn around and you’re old.

‘Honey and bread.’

‘And a fair lady’s bed.’

‘To us all, brave boys, they will come to us all,’ sang Gregory, and made fast the halyard to the cleat. The men dropped the slack end; Isiq groaned and staggered away.

Before he had gone three paces Captain Gregory was on him, seizing the admiral’s hands and turning them palms-upward for inspection. The hands were rooster-red, the blisters already forming. Captain Gregory shot him an angry look.

‘Pace yourself,’ he said. ‘Torn hands don’t earn their keep.’

‘Oppo, sir,’ said Isiq, with just a hint of irony.

Captain Gregory didn’t smile. His finger jabbed Isiq smartly in the chest. ‘Get fresh with me, you old walrus-gut, and you’ll-’

Cannon-fire. Both men snapped to attention, twin hounds on a scent. By old habit Isiq found himself counting: