The Night of the Swarm

large droplet on the plank. He touched his tongue to the water. It was salty — and what was far stranger, clean. This was no seepage, no condensation. This was a splash of fresh seawater, fallen from above, and yet somehow deep in the bowels of the Chathrand.

He turned away, crawled a few feet, stopped to think again. He touched the board six inches overhead. Then he turned and nosed his way back to where the trail disappeared. The wet spot was still there. He reached up again. This time his paw met with nothing.

Felthrup stared upwards. There was clearly another hole, larger than the one he’d squeezed through. By why was there no light from the gun deck, with all those open ports? Nervously, he rose on his haunches. There! He felt the edge of the opening, ran his paws about its perimeter. It was about ten inches square.

He rose higher — and light stabbed his eyes. By sheer instinct he ducked down again, and the light turned once more to blackness. Felthrup was shaken. It had been no lamp, but sunlight: the bright, cold glow of the sun through mist. And what else? The wind: he’d heard a moaning wind, and something that sounded very much like surf.

He stood mystified. Then, with a gasp, he saw the whole thing, what had become of the ixchel, why Rose had never found a trace.

‘Felthrup?’

Marila’s voice, faint and distant. She was still waiting for him. But no, he couldn’t go back to her, now. He stood on his hind legs again, and the sunlight poured over him, and the wind and surf resumed. He pulled himself through the gap, onto chilly boards. He looked around. He was right where he expected to be, upon the lower gun deck, some fifty yards from where he’d left Marila. And at the same time he was somewhere utterly alien. Somewhere he had never hoped to see.

The deck was severely tilted, as if the ship stood almost on her beam-ends. And it was still, perfectly still; and not a soul was to be seen. The cold sunlight flooded in through the gunports, and further off, the tonnage shaft, which was cluttered with hanging debris. Felthrup climbed for the gunports, shining above him like skylights. Afraid that his body would betray him, that he might panic and run, dive for the square hole behind him. And even more afraid that if he did so, he would find that the hole had disappeared.

This is not a dream. Not a night journey from which I will wake safe and sound in my hatbox. So why does it draw me like a dream?

As he neared the gunports the surf grew louder. The cannon and their carriages were gone — no, there they lay below him, in a heap against the starboard hull. Some of the gunport doors lay with them; others dangled from their hinges, rusted and cracked. And there was another sound, a low, violent booming, reverberating in the planks beneath his feet.

He felt a cold sea-spray. He was almost blinded by the sun. Not a dream, he thought again, and crawled out through the port.

The wind swallowed his cry of horror. This was the Chathrand, all right — but only her carcass, beached and broken, utterly destroyed. She lay half-embedded in sand, and waves the height of houses were thrashing against her. Below, her keel was split, her frame-timbers shattered. A good third of her hull was simply lost, devoured by the sea.

Felthrup turned in place. Her mainmast still stood, absurdly proud, jabbing at the scudding clouds. The other masts were gone. Likewise the bowsprit, the forecastle house, and every trace of rigging save a few blackened strands still knotted to the rusted cleats. Her bell was gone; her paint was gone. The deck cannon were filled with twigs and seaweed. Bird nests. This Chathrand had been here for decades.

But where was here? An island. A low and empty place, not more than a mile long, and tortured by those thundering rollers. Beach grasses, terns and plovers, white bleached shells. No trees, unless those growths at the island’s centre were stunted trees. And no other land, anywhere. The Chathrand had died quite alone.

A feeling like intoxication boiled up in the rat. He knew the legends about magical doorways on the Great Ship, and the ‘vanishing compartments’ they led to. Marila and Thasha had stumbled through one such door themselves, and ended up on a Chathrand from long ago, crewed by barbarous men. But he, Felthrup — he was seeing the future, obviously. Decades or centuries from now, this would be the Great Ship’s end: beached and ruined on this nothing of an island, lost in the Ruling Sea. The ixchel had hidden not in space, but in time.

Then Felthrup saw the burial yard.

It stood above the beach, where the grasses were thick and the land looked almost stable, almost safe from being washed away in a storm. Rock cairns, the marooned sailors’ grave markers, surrounded by the rotted posts of what had once been a fence, a wall against the wind and sand.

Felthrup thought his heart would burst. At least some of the crew of this other Chathrand had made it ashore, and lived here for a time, and perished. Who were they? In his own time the Great Ship was six hundred years old, and had changed hands, owners, nations, countless times. How many more had she known, before this lonely end?

‘You can still read the inscriptions,’ said a voice above him.

He jumped — and nearly became the next one to die. The hull was wet and slick with algae. He tore at it, digging in with his claws, jabbing with his incisors, and just managed to regain his balance. Above him, on the broken topdeck rail, crouched an ixchel he had never seen before. He had a broad face and small bright eyes, a black sash around his upper arm, a spear crossed over his knees. The man was smiling, but Felthrup did not much like the smile.

‘Three inscriptions, anyway, etched in stone. The others are gone, or unreadable. Come up now, rat.’

‘Cousin!’ cried Felthrup. ‘I must assure you that I am not here to spy out your secrets.’

‘You’ve done that already.’

‘My purpose is to give knowledge, not extract it.’

‘Climb. You’re not safe where you are.’

At that moment half a dozen ixchel appeared on either side of the man with the sash. They were armed and muscular, with shaved heads, and they looked down at Felthrup with the hungry eyes of hawks. Felthrup recognised their faces, but he did not know their names. He doubted that they were concerned for his safety.

‘I know what you mean to do,’ he shrilled. ‘You would wait for us to reach your homeland, and then swarm back through that hole and attack.’

‘Roast me, lads, he’s seen right through us,’ said the man, as those around him laughed. ‘We give up a good home in Etherhorde. Fight giants and rats, storms and starvation, lose a fifth of our clan. And then, just as we near Stath Balfyr, we attack. Sinking the ship, maybe, in typical crawly fashion. Or whispering a bad heading into Rose’s ear. So that we can all drown together within sight of dear old Sanctuary-Beyond-the- Sea.’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘I won’t waste a weapon on you, beastie. If you will not climb, we will throw refuse down until we knock you into the waves.’

Felthrup turned to leap back through the gunport — but of course, they had closed in behind him, five more shaven-headed spearmen. They did not want him returning just yet.

You dug this burrow, Felthrup. Stop squirming and dig your way out.

He climbed. It was not as slippery as he feared: the curve of the hull worked in his favour. He reached the rail, and the ixchel roughly pulled him up. Oh, the wasteland of the topdeck! Holes, cracks, chasms. Splinters, rotting spars, rusted chains. Felthrup struggled to contain his tears.

‘Well,’ said their leader, ‘we’re not dead yet. Now you know.’

‘You won’t believe me, sirs, but I am glad of it — overjoyed.’

‘You’re damned right I don’t. I am Saturyk, His Lordship’s chief counsel.’

A twitch passed over Felthrup, one he hoped the man could not read. Saturyk. He’d heard the name many times; Ensyl had called him ‘the one whose hands go everywhere’. After the ixchels’ seizure of the Chathrand most of the little people had come out into the open, some gloating, some quiet and thoughtful. Not Saturyk: he had remained in the shadows, rarely seen, never lured into conversation. Felthrup studied the man, and felt himself studied in return, with cold exactitude. I know who you are, he told the man silently. You’re their Sandor Ott.

‘I wish to speak to Lord Talag,’ he said.