Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

The riders and mounts acted as a windbreak, and I had no current to balance on for the last few metres. I fell down heavily and landed in a crouch. My coat-tails flopped to the ground. There was a smash and tinkle of broken glass in my deep right pocket. Crouching in the hoof-printed mud I wondered what it could be. Shit. The jar with the Vermiform worms.

I hadn’t thought about it at all up until this instant. I looked down, and worms were wriggling out of my pocket.

Worms, bursting from my pocket, squirmed down my coat in rivulets and dropped off onto the ground. They scattered in all directions and began sinking into the mud, wriggling and twisting around my feet as they burrowed their way down. I scrabbled frantically with both hands, trying to catch hold of them, but they disappeared right under my fingers. I went after others, and the same thing happened. They were too quick; the ends of their tails vanished into the mud. In a few seconds, they had all gone.

I looked up at the Emperor, who was leaning forward over his horse’s neck, watching me curiously. I said, ‘Ah, my lord…’

‘Comet?’

I stood up. ‘Lightning sent me to say he’s halted the advance and is recalling the men to camp.’

‘So I see. Why?’

‘There are millions of little Insects with extendible jaws, coming out of the lake. They killed Hurricane; now Tornado and Wrenn are surrounded. Lightning’s sending the Awian lancers to their aid.’

‘Little Insects?’ the Emperor queried.

I felt something tighten around my ankle. I looked down and so did the Emperor. A thick tentacle of worms was pushing from the soil like the fat stem of a vine. It had wrapped twice around my ankle and the tip was halfway round another loop.

The Emperor’s eyes widened but he said nothing. Apologetically I tugged my leg. The tentacle paused, tugged back, then yanked me off my feet. Before I could hit the mud the tentacle shot out of it, a thick column, hoisting me up. I dangled helplessly from my ankle as it poured up, past the Emperor. It kept going, bursting from the ground like the trunk of a tree. Its surface had a linear texture; millions on millions of worms streaking into the air.

The Emperor and all the square of horses shrank quickly below. I could see the whole battlefield now. The Imperial Fyrd’s faces looked up, pale and shocked. On all sides of the square they were turning their horses and taking flight. Those in the middle were stepping this way and that trying to push a way out. San, in complete control of Alezane, was looking up at me calmly.

Further off, the canvas city; the pavilions and interlaced ropes-I swung round and caught a glimpse of the clash of lancers and dazzling armour against the Insect larvae, and behind them the lake’s brown mirror.

I yelled and yelled. My other leg flailed, knee bent, and my bitten foot was throbbing. My arms dangled, and my coat swished somewhere below my head like a slashed leather curtain. My letters dropped out of my pockets and started fluttering to the ground. My keys and hip flask plummeted after them.

The blood was rushing to my head. My wings slipped open and settled down past shoulder level, loosely spread. My ice axe bounced around, hanging in the space between them. I waved my arms about but couldn’t find anything to grab on to. My ankle was agony-the worms were squeezing it tight and my leg was stretching.

I did a sit-up to see the thick snake of annelids wrapped around my ankle, a branch from the solid column stretching to the ground.

‘Hey!’ I yelled at the stem. ‘Let me go, you fucking thing!’

I felt something give and I plummeted a metre. It went taut and held me again.

‘No!’

It let me go…caught me. The worms moving over and clinging to each other gave an elasticity, so I bounced slightly. My joints stretched to popping point. It let me go, caught me. I automatically flapped my wings, looking like a hawk hanging upside down in a snare. I wouldn’t have time to turn and fly if it dropped me on my head.

‘No! Don’t let me go! Please don’t drop me! Let’s talk.’

It just shook me, furiously. My jaw clattered, my bangles jingled and my hair, streaming out under me, swept against my coat skirts.

I stomach-crunched up again and tried to grab the tendril but it just twirled me around. The mud and horse-backs streaked round and round beneath me.

‘Aeee! No! Talk to me! Vermi-’

Three more branches spurted out of its stem; the tips pointed, quested towards me and coiled around my wrists and other foot, faster than I could move them. I felt my limbs gradually drawn out with a strength I couldn’t resist, until I was spreadeagled like a starfish.

The Emperor’s horse backed off until he checked it. He was still looking at me, emotionlessly.

The worms kept pulling me taut. My shoulder joints cracked. I screamed, ‘Oh, god, no!’

They stopped pulling and suddenly whipped me the right way up. I was standing in the air, twenty metres above the battle. I had never been upright and stationary in the air before, and the chaos was going on all around me.

Among the rivers of soldiers streaming past in retreat, people were pausing, making a slower flow of steel helmets and heads looking up. Some had stopped completely to gawp and the flow went around them; there were collisions here and there. An enormous, clear space had formed where the trunk went into the ground. Nobody was prepared to approach it. God knows what they were making of a clearly recognisable Messenger stretched like a spider in a vast flesh vine.

Worms slid over worms, providing a greater strength by far than muscle fibres-another tentacle snaked out from the mass. Its tip came to within centimetres of my face and seemed to look about, then it flattened, turned upright and formed into a stylized female face, like a mask, with no eyes in the almond-shaped sockets. I could see down to the mud through them. The well-sculpted lips moved quickly but the Vermiform’s polyphonous voice was not in synch; it harped out from both the mask and the main trunk: ‘What have you done? How could you bring this on yourselves?’

Wonder and despair vied in its voices but I was panicking too much to care. ‘I’m sorry I put your worms in a jar. It was wrong. I-’

The Vermiform pulled my limbs smoothly. Bands of shredding pain flamed up my back and across my chest from shoulder to shoulder. I shrieked. There was something experimental in the pull, as if it could haul much harder if it wanted to.

It said, ‘Not that! The water…’ It swung me from side to side and pushed its mask close to my face. ‘Where did the lake come from? You stupid, stupid people! You’ve made a hatching pool!’

‘We built the dam to flood the Paperlands,’ I said.

‘You have caused the death of this entire world!’ It sent out thread-thin but steel-rod-strong strands and jabbed me all over my body, which was as effective as a slap. ‘You gave the Insects a place to breed! They lay their eggs in still water! Didn’t the Somatopolis tell you anything?’

I looked to San; his face raised and eyes narrowed to see me against the bright sky. His horse was trembling and so dotted with sweat his cloak was sticking to it.

Lightning galloped in, standing in his stirrups, his reins tied down and an arrow at string on a longbow. He drew and loosed. The arrow passed clean through the trunk-the worms seethed aside making a hole, then resealed.

He came to the Emperor’s side, nocked another arrow, his face white. His horse paced back and forth, stomping the mud, pawing and snorting, head lowered, but he wouldn’t let it bolt. He kept beside the Emperor-his spurs drawing blood from its white flanks.

‘The Emperor…’ I gasped.