Robert Redick - The Night of the Swarm

‘I will not tolerate slander of Magad the Fifth,’ said Ott, taking aim.

Rose was bellowing. ‘Greater Arqual, the defeat of the Mzithrin — rubbish and rot. One of these sorcerers is going to clap hands on the Stone and make sausage out of us. Out of your precious Emperor, out of Arqual and the Sizzies and the whole Rinforsaken North. Blind fool! You’re a soldier in an ant war, and the mucking anteater’s coming down the trail.’

‘Rose,’ said Ott, ‘do you recall that you’d become a disgrace? Removed from command by the Chathrand Trading Family, wanted in twenty ports, living off the last spongings from your creditors? Do you know what a boon of trust His Supremacy gave you, when he restored you to the captaincy of the Chathrand , and gave you nominal command of this mission you advise me to forget?’

‘We will see how nominal it is when the waves hit eighty feet,’ shouted Rose. ‘As for that boon : rubbish again. Put the bow down, Ott. The game was never winnable, but without me you couldn’t even play. You didn’t dare attempt the Ruling Sea — put the bow down, I say — without Nilus Rose at the helm. I alone know the soul of this vessel. I alone have the sanction of the ghosts.’

‘You alone see them.’

Rose’s body was rigid. ‘I am the captain of this ship. You are an adjunct, a supernumerary. If you challenge me openly you will bring anarchy down upon us all. That’s as clear today as it was when your mucking Emperor-’

Ott’s bow sang. There was a caterwaul (horrid, held) and Sniraga became a red tornado of fur and fangs and blood. The arrow had pinned her tail to the floor.

Rose leaped on the hysterical creature. He was bloodied instantly from hands to shoulders, but he wrenched the arrow free. Sniraga flew from beneath him, crashing against furniture, painting the room with the red brush of her tail. Ott leaned on his bow and laughed.

Then the wailing changed. Rose turned, bewildered; Ott snuffed his laughter. A second cry, a human cry, was drowning out Sniraga. It rose through the floorboards, a voice they had not heard in months. The only voice as deep as the captain’s, or as cruel as Ott’s.

‘ WHERE IS IT? WHO TOOK IT? FAITHLESS VERMIN, PARASITES, OFFAL WORMS! UNCHAIN ME! BRING IT BACK TO ME NOW!’

Alongside the screamer, other voices began to rise, shouting in fear and wonder. Then commotion at the door. Ott dashed to it, flung it wide. A gnarled stick poked him in the chest, and Lady Oggosk, tiny and raging, hobbled into the room.

‘He’s dead, Nilus, get up! He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s alive!’

‘Duchess-’ began Rose.

‘Is she mad, Rose?’ Ott demanded. ‘Who is dead? Who is shouting below?’

‘Nilus, your arms are soaked in blood!’ shrieked the witch. ‘Get yourselves together, you pair of fools. The sorcerer’s been killed, and Pathkendle’s charm is broken. The spell-keeper was Arunis , all along. Do you understand now, Sandor Ott?’

A wild gleam lit the spymaster’s eye. He flew from the cabin, shouting at the Turachs to clear a path. Rose looked at Oggosk, but there was no hope under Heaven’s Tree of explaining, so before she noticed Sniraga he charged after Ott. He had a presentiment of disaster. It grew with each roar from below.

Sailors thronged the topdeck; some of them already knew. The captain waved them off, needing to see it before he heard them speak, needing to mark the disaster with his eyes. Down the broad ladderway called the Silver Stair he plunged, bashing aside Teggatz and his tea service, bellowing at dolts who froze at the sight of him, walking right over a topman who had fallen flat in his haste to get out of the way. Everyone below was shouting. He could hear the panic in their throats. He plunged out onto the orlop deck, raced through the fire-scarred compartments, and stepped at last into the manger.

Great devils, there he was.

A huge, hideous man, seventy if he was a day, raged into the centre of the chamber, his bare feet stamping in an effluvium of grime, straw and fresh blood. In his eyes was more mad viciousness than Rose had glimpsed in any living soul. The Shaggat Ness, the lunatic king, the most hated man in Mzithrini history. He was tangled in chains looped around an indestructible wooden stanchion. But the chains had been placed to secure a statue, a lifeless thing of stone, for that is what the man had been for five months.

No longer. The mink-mage had told Arunis he could only reverse the spell when someone aboard the Chathrand died. If Lady Oggosk was correct, that someone was Arunis himself. What happened? Did he die trying to master the Stone? Could that gang of children and mutineers possibly have killed him?

No time to wonder. The Shaggat was gesturing, flailing with both hands: the unharmed right, and the dead, scarecrow-stick left, the hand that had seized the Nilstone. His jaws were wide, his screams insufferable, a bomb that kept going off, Where is it, who stole it, bring it to me, you lice.

His eyes found Rose. He lunged, and the stanchion shook.

Sandor Ott rubbed his chin. He stood with Sergeant Haddismal and several other Turachs, conferring quickly, eyeing the Shaggat like a rabid dog. Ignus Chadfallow, the Imperial Surgeon, was in the room as well, bending down to talk to old, befuddled Dr Rain, whose gape of horror made him look like an eel. The captain stepped towards them — then leaped sideways with a curse. The Shaggat had lunged at him again.

‘BRING ME THE NILSTONE! BRING IT! BRING IT!’

‘Monster-’ said Sandor Ott.

‘I WILL PACK YOUR MOUTH WITH SCORPIONS AND GLASS!’

‘Listen-’

‘I WILL TEAR OFF YOUR MANHOOD AND THROW IT TO MY HOUNDS!’

‘Your toe.’

‘BRING ME THE — WHAT?’

‘Your toe.’

The Shaggat looked down. And dropped in his chains, howling, seizing his foot with his one living hand. The foot was gushing blood: where the big toe should have been was an open wound.

Undrabust!

It came back to Rose in a flash: how Neeps Undrabust had pulverised the Shaggat-statue’s toe with a lump of iron. Arunis had managed to heal the other damage, the long cracks in the Shaggat’s stone arm: wounds that would have killed a living man. But he had forgotten the toe.

A sailor appeared in the doorway, clutching Dr Chadfallow’s medical bag. The surgeon and Sandor Ott rushed to the man. Chadfallow seized the bag and withdrew a folded cloth and small blue bottle. He glanced dubiously at the Shaggat.

‘This will suffice, but how exactly-’

Ott snatched both items, uncorked the bottle and sniffed. He coughed, then doused the rag with the contents of the bottle. The doctor retreated as a cloying smell of spirits filled the room. The Shaggat raised his head too late. Ott threw himself on the huge man, and caught his chin in the crook of an elbow. The mad king erupted, clawing at him, crushing him against the stanchion, rolling atop him on the bloody floor. The Turachs surged forward, weapons drawn.

‘Hold!’

Ott’s voice, loud in the sudden silence. The Shaggat’s bellowing had ceased. His arms went limp, and he toppled over in his chains.

Sandor Ott hurled the rag away. ‘Stop the bleeding, fools!’ he said. Then he too collapsed. During the struggle his face had been only inches from the rag.

A cold claw touched Rose’s elbow. Lady Oggosk was there, suddenly, her shawl splashed with blood and fur, staring up at him with her milk-blue eyes. ‘They will press you harder than ever, now that he’s returned,’ she said. ‘Do not yield to them, Nilus. You know what must be done.’

Rose studied the two men at his feet. He felt a bottomless disgust. The mastermind of Arqual and his tool. Better for everyone if they had strangled each other, if that sleep were the sleep of death.