Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

The sword point burst from its back, pushing out a length of cream-streaked steel. It forced itself down the blade until the hilt was flush against its thorax. It stooped to bite Wrenn’s arm. Wrenn shook his hand free of the swept guards and jumped backward, leaving his thin sword embedded through the Insect.

I cleared the height of the foredeck, came in fast.

Wrenn’s face set in a grim expression. He cut with his dagger left to right, scratching the Insect’s eye, but the blade skittered off, only etching a thin line over one hexagonal lens. It struck; he slammed the dagger into its mandible. The dagger blade shattered from tip to ricasso so violently that two long glittering steel splinters spun away from the gangplank in different directions. Wrenn was left holding the grip.

My wings shadowed his head. “Here!” I dangled the pole from its very end. He had enough sense to drop his hilt and jump for the brass hook speeding toward him. I let go and passed it to him.

Our contact caused a drag that slowed me down too much and slewed me to the left. The quayside rushed up; I saw the pavement cracks. Too big, too close! I was going to crash! I leaned right and beat down-my wingtips smacked a crate of oranges. The shock transmitted through my feather shafts and hurt my fingers. I pulled out of my dive; the crate tops scraped my knees and feet. I flapped, stubbing my wings. I banked up steeply, groaning with effort, my feathers rasping the air.

I glanced at Wrenn and saw him teetering, the pole held out for balance. He recovered, pointed the boathook at the Insect. It crouched, lowered its head and pounced at Wrenn, forcing him sideways. He swung the boathook and clubbed it weakly as it pushed past him. The spines fringing its legs lacerated his skin.

Its barreling bulk threw Wrenn off balance. His boathook flourished in the air; he toppled off the gangplank and fell headfirst, spread-eagled. The soles of his feet vanished below the level of the harbor wall, into the strip of deep water. A second later I heard the splash.

I glanced at the crowd; their faces were full of doubt and disbelief. The Insect was real; this was no drama laid on for entertainment. It was coming down the gangplank. About half of them trotted backward, still staring, then turned and fled for the streets. The rest seemed frozen. Those not gaping at the Insect were gawking at me.

“Go!” I yelled. A couple more people responded to the urgency in my voice.

The Insect landed on all six legs on the harbor pavement. At first it moved unevenly, angularly; it leapt and hobbled. It quickly became accustomed to freedom and the sailors’ blood it had lapped up helped the hydraulics of its legs function properly. It ran as smoothly as it had done in the Paperlands and the people scattered before it.

They fled with screams, leaving one woman sitting alone. I recognized Danio instantly; at the water’s edge near Melowne’s hull, in exactly the same place as I had left her last night, her bare legs dangling over the harbor wall. She remained transfixed a second too long, not knowing what to do. She pulled her self to kneel, then sprang up, all the while watching the Insect with a mixture of fascination and fear. She sprinted, arms out stretched, very fleet of foot. But she was too slow.

The Insect bounded after her. Its claws in the small of her back brought her down, face to the paving. She started screaming, high-pitched, struggling to turn around and beat it off.

The Insect dipped, sheared Danio’s leg off at the knee and picked it up with its middle pair of arms. Its external mouthparts stripped the calf muscle from the severed limb. It held the dripping muscle with two sets of palps, which hung down like black sticky fingers. The maxillae behind its jaws guillotined up and down as well as left and right, masticating it into paste. Danio kept screeching until the Insect grabbed her around the hips, mandibles sinking deep, and tossed her into the air. She crashed full-length on the paving. The Insect jumped on her body and decapitated her with one powerful bite.

I flew low over them, frantically looking for a space to land. The Insect paused as my movement caught its attention. Its single elbowed antenna waved; the stub of the other one was covered with a yellow crust. Now all the Capharnai had gone from the harbor but a merchant in a tunic had stopped at a distance to look back at the abandoned goods, his chubby face white and eyes bulging.

Danio! I thought. It’s killed Danio; what have we done? I found a clear gap between the baskets and boxes, but I was moving so fast I was in danger of breaking my legs. I stretched my wings back fully and flared off some speed. Gasping at the strain in my stomach muscles I swung my legs ahead and hit the ground braced, knees bent. I put my hands down and somersaulted over and over, till I crashed into a crate of cinnamon bark.

Winded, I picked my axe from the ground and crawled to my feet. The Insect had reached the entrance to the boulevard. It had slaughtered the corpulent man and was standing on his body with front and middle legs. It ducked its head, its lamellar segmented abdomen high in the air. It closed its jaws until they clicked, cutting across the fat man’s belly. It backed, claws skidding on the blood. It pulled taut a length of blue-green intestine, then ate it all the way back down into the man’s body cavity. His sightless eyes and pale mouth were stretched open, rigid; I could see the inside wall of his ribs.

I thought, I must distract it till Lightning shoots it. Breathing painfully, I dashed across. As I ran, avoiding the discarded cloaks and piles of produce, I curved to approach from behind, thinking that the Insect would take a second to turn around and I could chop at its rear. But the Insect did not wait to be attacked. I don’t know whether it recognized me or understood I was armed, but it crawled swiftly from the fat man’s cadaver and leapt toward the boulevard. I swerved between it and the town and headed it off. I chased it. I lengthened my stride to sprint with Rhydanne instinct as if it was a stag. I closed in on the darting legs and aimed a blow at a hind femur, driving it to change direction.

The Insect slowed as it sensed a group of boatmen who, trapped against a villa’s portico, prepared to use their paddles as maces. I made it switch toward the ships where Lightning should be, but it slashed a mandible at the last man, a thin teenager who fell clutching his thigh.

The Insect still carried Wrenn’s sword through its thorax, the hilt like a silver badge. It had stopped bleeding. Its legs swept repeatedly fore to rear along its body. I aimed between them at a suture line that crossed its back like a joint in armor. I tore the glassy tips of its immovable little wings that projected from the middle segment, pressed close to its glossy shell. I tilted over and hit, but the blow nearly ripped the shaft from my hand, wrecked my running rhythm. I pushed hard at the ground to accelerate, change direction; to control the Insect.

My resounding strikes had more effect than Wrenn’s clearly articulated technique. The Insect limped, but still ran rapidly on the bristly black pads under its slightly raised claws. I swung at the three small round eyes that formed a triangle between its compound eyes. But at this angle the plate of its forehead was too thick to crack.

The slabs cool beneath my bare feet, my ankles ached from the pounding. I panted the air. The Insect put on a burst and reached racehorse speed trying to escape. I sprang forward and kept pace with it although my leg muscles burned. I was exhilarated, keyed up with my own vigor. I sped my swiftest, desperate to snatch one more chance-I’ll hook my ice pick into the copper-striped abdomen and I’ll bring it down.

I forced the Insect’s route nearer to the glittering sea as we raced the length of Capharnaum’s harbor. The last building had a blank stone wall. At its base was a semicircular drain opening as tall as my shoulder, edged with blocks. A shallow stream of dirty water flowed out of it into a channel, then over the side of the harbor wall. It was stained dark green and fuscous with flaking algae. The Insect sheered, rattled down into the sloping conduit and splashed straight into the black archway. I lost sight of it instantly in the darkness. I scrambled to a halt, scraping my heels on the verge.