The Night of the Swarm

‘No doubt,’ said Saturyk, ‘but your wishes hold no currency with His Lordship. You’ve shown us who your friends are. One of them likes to dine on our brethren.’

‘You mean Sniraga? I am no friend of that cat! She is merely the familiar of Lady Oggosk.’

‘Aye,’ said Saturyk, ‘and you’re another. For your sake, I hope she doesn’t try to use you against us. We keep a fine edge on our spears.’

Felthrup was confused, frightened, exasperated with himself and them. ‘We are wasting time,’ he said.

‘There’s a bit of truth at last. You came to talk, you claim? Talk, then, we’re listening. For the moment.’

‘Talag and I are better acquainted.’

Once again Saturyk’s mouth formed that unpleasant smile. ‘Only because you’re not giving me a chance,’ he said.

‘Master Saturyk,’ said Felthrup, ‘I would kindly ask you not to favour me with a display of wit, or irony, or your rudimentary teeth. You have no order to kill me, or you should have done so already. You are presumably required to defer to your commander in anything so unlikely as a visit from the other ship. I will speak to Talag, none other. And put away your pricking tools. Only a fool points out that spears are sharp.’

He was shaking as he spoke, but he forced himself to look Saturyk in the face. The guards were enraged. ‘He mocks you,’ hissed one, passing his spear to another and drawing a knife. ‘Give the word, and I will take another inch off his tail.’

Saturyk gazed at Felthrup, expressionless, his eyes like two copper nail-heads in the sun. ‘Put the knife away,’ he told his man at last. Then he turned and started across the topdeck, one hand beckoning Felthrup to follow.

They walked a practised path through the jagged timbers, the drifted sand. Felthrup’s gaze slid down into the chasm of the tonnage shaft. There was light in the ship’s depths: sidelong light from the hull breach; and the waves moved through her, pulsing, as through the chambers of a heart.

At the starboard rail, a thin rope had been fastened to a cleat. It ran inland, taut above the surf, to a point some thirty yards up the beach. ‘Can you walk a rope, Mr Stargraven?’ asked Saturyk.

‘Hmph,’ said Felthrup. He had been walking ropes since he was weaned. Indeed he was swifter than the ixchel, as they made their way ashore. Sometimes it was good to be a belly-dragger.

But the blowing sand became a torment as they descended, and by the time they reached the ground it was almost intolerable. Saturyk urged him quickly forward, and Felthrup saw that they were making for a narrow tunnel. Soon they were all inside: a buried length of bilge-pipe, leading uphill towards the vegetation at the island’s centre.

‘You placed this here?’ said Felthrup, amazed. ‘Such industry! How long have your people been passing through that door?’

No one answered. They crawled, single file. When the pipe ended they dashed again through the blowing sand and dived into another. This one was longer, narrower. At length it brought them to the very edge of the brush. There were trees, after all: tortured and shrunken, but still a bulwark against the howling wind.

They were marching on a footpath, now. Looking left and right, Felthrup saw other ixchel moving with them, half-hidden, gliding through the patchwork of light and shadow. He knew many by sight, a few by name. He thought of the three hours’ peace in Masalym, when the dlomu had lavished food on them all. How different it could have been. And perhaps it can be yet. Watch your words, my dear Felthrup, watch your manners.

They had not walked five minutes when the brush opened into a clearing, framed by half a dozen crumbling, human-sized buildings. As Felthrup watched, the clan came out into the open, soundlessly. And it was the full clan: still hundreds strong. Never before had he seen ixchel children, wide-eyed, thoughtful; or the greatly aged, skinny and round-shouldered, but never bent like human elders.

How careworn they all were! It shocked Felthrup profoundly, this defeated look: they might have been castaways themselves. And they were angry, too: furiously angry. They stared at him as though unable to quite believe that he had come here, and Felthrup turned in a circle, meeting their eyes. No, they were not all furious. Some looked at him with fear, or simple bewilderment, and a very few with hope.

The buildings were mere shacks. They listed, nearly ready to topple. Every one of them built, of course, with salvage from the Chathrand. Here was a bench from the officer’s mess. Here a wheelblock mounted on a post: one end of a laundry line, perhaps. And Rin’s eyes! There was the ship’s bell, set upon a great flat stone like a monument in a village square.

But this had never been a village. Only three of the buildings looked as if they had ever been suitable for living in. Another might have served as a barn, the last a storehouse. There was a well, a rusty anvil, the ghost of a fence. ‘They brought a great deal ashore,’ said Saturyk. ‘At low tide the Chathrand is fully beached, and you can simply walk aboard.’

Felthrup could not find his voice. He knew these things. He knew the people who had touched them. Or at least their doubles, their shadow-selves.

They must have dreamed of rescue. Even here they did not give up. He looked at the bell: it would have taken eight men to carry it inland. Even here they fought for dignity.

Saturyk led him to the least dilapidated of the houses. The human door was shut fast, but at its foot the ixchel had carved one of their own. Saturyk gestured to one of his men, who opened the door and slipped inside.

‘How long?’ Felthrup asked.

‘Since the wreck, you mean?’ said Saturyk. ‘Thirty-four years, if you trust the giants’ memory.’

‘You found written records?’

‘Among other things.’

They waited. It was almost warm, here at midday and out of the wind. Almost. Felthrup tried to keep himself from imagining the island in a typhoon.

A sudden noise came from the woods, or beyond them perhaps. Felthrup turned in amazement. It was the lowing of a cow.

Saturyk gestured, and a number of the ixchel darted off in the direction of the noise. ‘There are not many,’ he told Felthrup. ‘They must have been brought ashore and released.’

‘And bred?’ said Felthrup. ‘Or is that the voice of a thirty-four-year-old cow?’

Saturyk looked at him with vague hostility. Neither, thought Felthrup. That is one of the beasts that disappeared on the Nelluroq. They came here, those cows and goats and other creatures. There’s another doorway on the ship!

The man returned from within the shack and whispered in his leader’s ear. Saturyk, clearly surprised, looked at Felthrup in annoyance. ‘You’re to be admitted,’ he said. ‘Follow me, and ask no questions.’

Inside it was dim rather than dark, for there were windows. The shack’s single room was clean and ixchel- orderly: tiny crates lined up along one wall, dried foodstuffs hanging in garlands overhead. Along the opposite wall stood racks of weapons. Most of the chamber, however, resembled a military drill yard. There were lines chalked on the floor, and tightropes, net ladders, high jumps, a cat-shaped archery dummy bristling with arrows.

They never rest, thought Felthrup.

‘Stop gaping,’ growled Saturyk. Then he lowered his voice and added, ‘His Lordship has a long list of worries, see? A great deal on his mind. So none of your chatter when you’re in his presence. That’s a friendly suggestion, believe it or not.’

‘I shall be on my best behaviour,’ said Felthrup.

Saturyk frowned; he was not reassured. Then he raised his eyes. Above them was a storage loft, its interior concealed by a tattered curtain. There was no ladder, but the ixchel had made a kind of staircase from a taut rope with many knots. Up they went, leaping and scrabbling. When they stood at last on the edge of the loft, Saturyk told him once more to wait. He slipped inside, and Felthrup stood staring at the ancient curtain. It had once been blue. And hand embroidered: leaf designs of some sort. And from the hem dangled a few limp threads, the remains of some decorative tassel.

Felthrup’s nose twitched. Something was very wrong. He squirmed away from the curtain. Turned his back to it. Turned to face it again. ‘No,’ he said aloud, shaking his head human-fashion. He put out his paw and touched the material, drew it up against his cheek.