The Night of the Swarm

famished peasants fled westwards before they could be drafted to the city’s defence. The avalanche was coming; the Thrandaal ogres were merely the stone that set it off.’

‘Were you there?’ asked Thasha.

Ramachni shook his head. ‘I saw Isima only in smoking ruin, with Lord Arim at my side. It was the first and last time I ever saw him shed tears. He had tried to warn the city, and when that failed, to defend it. But it was too late: the ogres had already conquered the southern mountains, and were advancing on Urakan. Still Arim worked a mighty spell, at great cost to himself, diverting a blizzard that would have closed the Royal Highway. By his deed the city’s children were evacuated and saved. To this day the descendants of those children inhabit the Ilidron Coves, and bless themselves in Arim’s name.’

Night fell, but Valgrif and Myett did not return. Thaulinin gazed anxiously down the trail. ‘I consented too easily,’ he said. ‘Who knows how treacherous the path becomes when one approaches the Gorge?’

‘Valgrif is a wise beast,’ said one of his men. ‘I watched him train his sons to respect the dangers of the ice. He will come to no harm.’

But when another hour had passed they all felt the same anxiety. Then Thaulinin lit a torch and called his men together. ‘Bring rope, and your spikes and mallets,’ he said. ‘We may find them clinging to some ledge.’

Hercol and Vispek wished to go along, but Thaulinin refused. ‘You are mountain-trained to be sure, but even the best human feet cannot move as swiftly as our own.’

Then Ensyl laughed. ‘Wolf feet are another matter, it seems. Look there!’

She pointed not down the trail, but above them, on the icy ridge over the cistern. Pazel squinted, and at last made out Valgrif cutting a zigzag path towards them downhill. Moments later he slid to a halt at their feet, Myett still clinging to his shoulders. The wolf was exhausted and panting.

‘Enemies!’ he gasped, dropping on his stomach. ‘And the bridge-’

‘The bridge has fallen,’ said Myett. ‘We came to its foot: there are only fragments arching out over that terrible gorge. And Valgrif smelled dlomu on the far side, when the wind gusted towards us.’

‘You didn’t see anyone, then?’ asked Pazel.

Myett looked from face to face. ‘We saw one figure only,’ she said. ‘We saw Dastu.’

‘Dastu! Here!’ cried the others.

‘He was among the trees on the far side of the gorge,’ said Myett. ‘We did not let him see us. He was pacing back and forth.’

‘What in the devil-thick Pits can that rotter be doing here?’ said Neeps.

‘Nothing good,’ said Prince Olik. ‘I remember that one: he followed your spymaster about like a dog, but he also had a cunning of his own.’

‘That he should have come here from where he ran from us strikes me as all but impossible — without help at any rate,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Perhaps Nolcindar found him and took pity. She might be there right now, along with Valgrif’s sons.’

‘I smelled neither selk nor wolves,’ said Valgrif, ‘and the scent of the dlomu came faintly, from the far side of the gorge. We waited, and once there came an echo of a voice — not a dlomic voice — from above us.’

Myett pointed at the ice-slick path. ‘This trail ends at the fallen bridge, but when we heard that echo I climbed the cliff above us, and saw another bridge around a bend in the chasm. It was high above me still, and oddly built, with the far side higher than the near.’

‘The Water Bridge,’ said Thaulinin. ‘So one span at least survived the earthquake. That bridge is part of the King’s Aqueduct, which ran for nearly two hundred miles, carrying snowmelt from the high peaks to the farmlands below. Alas, it was built too late to save them.’ He looked at Ramachni. ‘The Water Bridge is not a pleasant way to cross the Parsua. But cross there we must, unless we would retrace our steps all the way to Isarak.’

‘That we cannot do,’ said Ramachni, ‘but there is another explanation for Dastu’s presence, is there not?’

‘Yes,’ said Neda. ‘Selk not bringing him. Macadra bringing, as the trap.’

‘As a trap,’ corrected Mandric automatically, ‘but I was thinking just the same. Rin’s gizzard, that’s all we need: another young pup helping the enemy.’

‘It does seem the likeliest explanation,’ said Hercol, ‘but if Dastu is helping Macadra, I am sure he does not do so willingly. Dastu is flawlessly loyal: both to his master and his master’s religion, which is Arqual. He is not Greysan Fulbreech.’

‘There is something very strange about him,’ said Valgrif. ‘I cannot explain it even to myself. I wish I had caught his scent.’

‘One thing is certain,’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘His presence at that bridge is no coincidence. He is waiting for someone, and who could that someone be but us?’

Thaulinin squatted down beside Valgrif and put his chin on his hands. ‘We have been fortunate, and I have been rash. We should have sent you out ahead of us each day, Valgrif: the enemy would not know you for a woken animal, let alone the citizen that you are. If Macadra has sent Dastu here, then she has not overlooked the Nine Peaks at all.’

‘And we’ve lost already,’ said Big Skip.

‘No, not yet,’ said the selk, ‘for she has many roads to watch, and on some of them my brethren will have harried her forces and led them astray. If she is trying to watch every road, then she cannot dedicate too many servants to each. And what better place for a small number to guard the high country than at the bridge over the highest gorge of all?’

‘So she sends a team of soldiers here to wait for us, along with Dastu,’ said Pazel, ‘and finds the bridge destroyed. What then?’

‘Then she waits to see if we come blundering up to the Gorge, as I would have led us to do,’ said Thaulinin. ‘A fall of sleet may well have saved us, this day.’

‘They’ll be watching the aqueduct, too,’ said Thasha.

‘Presumably,’ said Hercol. ‘We must approach in stealth.’

They passed a night of great unease, and Hercol roused them all before sunrise. ‘Now more than ever, take care with the metal on your persons, lest it be seen or heard,’ he said. ‘Remember the council at Thehel Bledd: we could doom our quest just by being seen, if one of Macadra’s servants flees the mountains and sounds the alarm.’

The selk had been out already, and chosen their path up the ridge. It was a rough, cold climb under frigid stars; and a very long one, as they struggled up one sharp rise after another, winding among sheer falls of rock. Pazel thought of Bolutu, struggling with the weight of the Nilstone on his back. He had asked no one else to carry it since Ularamyth.

After nearly three hours they broke suddenly onto a jagged ridgetop. It was not the very summit of the ridge but rather a broad, irregular shoulder that curved away towards the chasm, studded with boulders and small shrubs and rounded, ice-glazed drifts of snow. By now the sun was beginning to glow behind the eastern mountains. Thaulinin made them all crouch low. ‘I can hear the wind in the canyon,’ he hissed. ‘We are very close.’

Like a band of thieves they crept across that flattened ridge. Pazel could see what looked like a gap ahead, and soon he too heard the change in the wind, as though it were moaning through a narrowly cracked door. Pazel tried to keep his teeth from chattering. He could hear his every footfall on the icy ground.

The wind rose, and so did the light. And suddenly before them lay the aqueduct. It was an astonishing relic: a stone chute some twelve feet wide and half as deep, built right into the ancient rock. The chute was pitched gradually downhill, and when he looked to his right Pazel saw that where the ridge fell away the chute emerged from the ground and was held aloft by columns, so that the angle of descent never changed. Straight as an arrow it raced away across the mountainside, until at last, very far away to the east, it made a sharp turn and set off northwards.

Pazel was awed. Two hundred miles. How many years, how many decades, did the Mountain Kings’ people give to the building of the waterway? Even now there was a little ice-fringed water flowing along the bottom of the chute.

Thaulinin beckoned them all to drop back, and then led them west, parallel to the aqueduct but on lower ground. It was a sheltered area, crowded with boulders and small, dense firs. After a few minutes they found themselves on a narrow trail.

Hercol flung out his arm, stopping the party in its tracks. The aqueduct loomed before them, suspended on its