Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 37

The dirt shifted beneath Maggie’s feet, and she felt herself sliding. She screamed. Gallen reached, grabbed her arm. Detritus rumbled down from the ceiling. As the ground opened to swallow her, Maggie had but one thought: my baby!

Gallen must have thought of the child, too. As he fell, he pulled her on top of him, to cushion her fall with his own body.

Maggie’s breath left her, expecting they’d tumble dozens of meters, but instead the floor dropped only one. Dust filled the air in a cloud. Maggie squinted through the dust and smoke, spitting dirt out of her mouth.

Their path ran along the spine of an ancient dew tree. A section of it had given way, spilling only a meter. The tunnel to the sfuz was blocked by a cave-in, but the path back to the ship remained open. If anything, now that the floor had dropped, the passage was more open than before.

Fresh air was rising from somewhere beneath them.

“This way. Quickly,” Gallen said, grasping Maggie’s hand, pulling her back down the trail toward the ship.

She looked around. Orick and Tallea seemed fine, indestructible as bears are. Zeus crawled about blindly. A chunk of dirt had struck his head.

Gallen stopped at his side. “Can you stand?”

“Uh, uh, fine.” Zeus waved Gallen away with his pistol.

Hurry,” Gallen urged Maggie. “The sfuz might dig through.”

Perhaps, Maggie considered, but they wouldn’t dig soon. The plasma discharged from Zeus’s pistol would stay at ten thousand degrees for several minutes, longer if buried beneath this dirt.

Still, she pressed forward. She stumbled over the trail, thick with fallen rubbish, following Gallen, checking to see that Zeus got up.

When they reached the fork in the trail, Gallen stopped. One path led to the sfuz graveyard and the cliffs beyond. The other led back toward the ship.

Distantly, Maggie heard the ground rumbling. Another cave-in? A mistwife? Another firefight? She couldn’t be certain. She stopped, unwilling to run until she knew where the danger lay.

Gallen looked up. “Gunfire. Somewhere above.”

Orick grumbled, “Gallen, we can’t keep running. Between the dronon, the mistwives, and the sfuz, one of them will get us.”

Gallen stared at the dirt roof, held by cross-fallen bits of timber. He shook his head in frustration.

Maggie felt worn to the core. It wasn’t just the physical work of dragging herself through this maze, it was the stress of worrying about her child. Gallen held her tenderly.

“All right. We’ll hole up. I’ll go down the trails and see if I can find a path to the city. There has to be one.”

He led them past the sfuz burial pit, until they reached a small chamber near the cliffs, perhaps five meters wide and ten meters high. It looked fairly defendable, should it come to that, and any attack could come from only one direction. Maggie only hoped that she wouldn’t get cornered in here.

Gallen opened his backpack and set out a blanket for Maggie to rest on. Then he drew food from his pack-a bottle of juice and fresh bread. Maggie bit into the bread, surprised at how good it tasted. It seemed she’d come down here ages ago, not hours.

Zeus just threw himself to the ground, lay dirty, exhausted, holding his head. The bears next to him panted. Maggie smelled smoke. She remembered she hadn’t reloaded her pistol. She pulled out the clip, inserted a hundred caseless cartridges.

Gallen knelt at her ear and whispered. “Maggie, I’m going to search for a way into the city.”

“No, stay here and rest with us,” Maggie said, uneasy at the thought of Gallen leaving.

Gallen shook his head. “The dronon are attacking up above us. I don’t know how many there are, but my mantle is picking up thousands of signals-up above us, in the tangle. We need this diversion. We need the dronon to draw the sfuz off, but I can’t be asking you and the others to run constantly like this, not in the shape you’re in.

“I’ll try to find a way into Teeawah-sneak in if I can. Or if I can’t, I’ll come back for you. If I’m not back in six hours-”

“-Three hours, just let me rest for three hours,” Maggie said.

“Four hours, then,” Gallen said. “If I’m not back in four hours, I probably won’t be back at all. Do you understand?”

Maggie’s heart pounded. The stress was making her chest and arms ache. She nodded dumbly. “I love you.”

Gallen brushed some fallen hair from her eyes. “I love you, too. Don’t take my robe off. Maybe it can hide your scent. I’m going to cover your tracks up ahead, where the trails cross. But keep your eyes open. Don’t take the safety off your weapon.”

Maggie licked her dry lips. Gallen kissed her, long and slow. She savored the taste of his lips, the smell of his hair. She held him for a moment. When he pulled back, it felt as if he’d been wrenched from her. She had an odd feeling. I’ll never see him again, she thought. It was a fear she’d never faced before, one she’d never conceived. Not when Karthenor took her prisoner on Fale, not when the Inhuman took his mind on Tremonthin. She’d never believed she would lose him.

Yet now the fear came, as if the future held a black certainty.

When Gallen pulled away, she almost grabbed him and held. When he turned his back and hurried into the darkness, she almost followed. He carried no light, just jogged into the shadows, relying on his mantle to help him place his next step.

Maggie sat with her weapon across her knees and ate her bread, no longer noticing its taste. Everyone remained awake.

Zeus came up beside Maggie, stood watching her for a moment. “Will he come back if he finds a way into the city?”

Maggie shook her head, staring at the ground. The soil here was so thick, so rich, she imagined. She wished she’d found such soil elsewhere, in a place where she could have planted a garden. “I don’t know. No, he won’t come back. Not unless he has to.”

“He’ll go searching for the Waters alone?” Zeus asked.

“He will, if he thinks it’s safest for us,” Maggie answered.

Zeus said nothing, but after a moment she realized he was breathing hard, just staring off into the darkness, as if he could peer through the dirt and darkness of the tangle.

“He’ll come back,” Maggie said.

Zeus nodded, then asked, “Do you have an extra glow globe?”

“Check your pack,” Maggie said. “I’m sure Gallen left each of us one.”

Zeus went off, a little nearer toward the entrance to the tunnel and sat. It was a good place to take guard duty. He laid his pistol over his knee. then opened his pack, pulled out his light, some grenades, and a bit of food, began munching something that Maggie couldn’t make out.

Nervously, he watched the opening to the tunnel.

Maggie felt the ground shake from time to time, evidence that fighting still continued above.

She measured time by the beating of her heart. No one spoke for many, many minutes. No one dared disturb the silence.

Orick and Tallea began whispering softly, Orick telling her of the saving ordinances of the gospel, and after a few moments, they headed farther back into the tunnel, back into the wider chamber, where the tunnel met the cliffs. Maggie imagined that they wanted to be alone.

Zeus held his light, letting it grow dimmer and dimmer, until it gave no light whatsoever.

Maggie busied herself by recalling songs she’d sung as a child, songs about green trees and young girls in love.

And death. Songs about death. Really, there seemed to be no theme to the songs that came to mind, just one senseless tune after another.

After a long time, her eyes grew gritty and tired. She closed them, and might have slept.