The Night of the Swarm

32

The world lurched, and Thasha woke in the sling they had fashioned to keep her from being tossed from her bed, and for a time she could not be made to understand.

It was Neda’s turn at her bedside, and their lack of a strong common language made things harder. Bright spots danced before Thasha’s eyes, and her fingertips were numb.

‘We’re out of the Storm, then?’

Neda mumbled something. Thasha repeated her question, louder.

‘No, no, Thasha. You are not feeling it?’

What she felt was the Chathrand heaving violently beneath her — climbing mountainous waves, clawing over the crests, rushing like a landslide into the troughs — and the soreness of muscles flung too many times against the canvas sling. What she saw was her old cabin, swept clean of any objects that could fall or fly; and Neda, balancing with sfvantskor grace, barely touching the bolted bedframe; and the sea foaming grey and furious over the porthole glass.

The bright spots were shrinking. Thasha breathed in warm, wet air.

‘I mean that we’re out of the Red Storm,’ said Thasha.

‘Of course.’

‘And smack in the middle of a blary gale. A killer.’

‘Not middle. Ending, maybe. I wish you sleep through it, sister.’

Thasha reached for Neda’s hand. Sister. To wake and find one watching over you. A sister, something new under the sun. The voyage had brought her far more than loss.

‘How long has it been?’ she said.

The ship rolled and heaved. The noise of the storm was strangely distant. Neda looked at her and said nothing.

‘Well?’

‘You’re awake. I am calling Pazel; he is exciting for you.’

Thasha didn’t release her hand. ‘Just tell me, Neda.’

‘Five years.’

‘FIVE YEARS! RAMACHNI PUT ME TO SLEEP FOR FIVE GODS-DAMNED YEARS?’

‘No, no.’

Thasha freed herself from the sling and was thrown at once upon the floor. Her balance gone, her limbs sleep-clumsy. Neda helped her to her feet. ‘You sleeping fifty-three days,’ she said.

‘Then what’s this rubbish about — Oh. The Red Storm.’

‘Yes,’ said Neda.

‘It threw us forward in time after all. But how in Pitfire do you know?

Have we made landfall?’

‘Not yet,’ said Neda. ‘We knowing by stars. Some stars turning like wheel, over and over the same. But the special stars — they are drifting, tachai? Little bit each year. Old sailors know. Captain Fiffengurt checking Rose’s book, also Ramachni knows, also Lady Oggosk. Is the truth, Thasha. We lose five years for ever. Or six, if counting travel.’

‘But the war-’

‘Maybe over. Or very big, or huge.’

Thasha was shaking. ‘The Swarm, Neda. I. . pushed it out of the gap, into a deeper part of the Red Storm.’

‘More in future. You saving us, giving us time. These fifty-days we not seeing the Swarm.’

‘Neda, what about your dreams, yours and Pazel’s? The ones where your mother speaks to you?’

Neda turned a little away, looking angry or confused. ‘Nothing. Silence. Maybe she is getting dead. Or thinking us dead, giving up.’

And her father: he’d surely have given up. ‘Oh Gods,’ said Thasha. ‘Where’s the Nilstone? What have they done with the wine? I’ve got to do something about all this-’

‘Foolish talk.’

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

Neda’s hand seized her chin. Thasha looked up into the fierce warrior eyes.

‘Kill that fear,’ said Neda. ‘You taking Swarm in your hands and throwing sideways. Then striking Macadra’s ship like toy. Now no whimper. Be quiet. Put the raincoat. We are going up into this storm.’

It might have been noon. Or sunset, or dawn. The wind was monstrous, the light dull nickel; the globular thunderheads seemed low enough to touch. Thasha clung to the Silver Stair hatch coaming, appalled. The rain like fistfuls of tiny nails flung endlessly at her face. The Chathrand was the toy; and what did that make her crew? A towering wave seemed frozen above the portside bow, then the illusion shattered and the great wave pounced, and somehow, impossibly, they slithered up its flank and toppled over the crest. Then the sick plunge, the weightlessness, the vanishing horizon and the next wave looming like death.

The gale had blown for seven days already, Neda shouted. ‘And you sleeping through first one.’The crew was thin, frantic, exhausted, grinning welcome-back smiles at Thasha like gap-toothed ghouls. The next wave pounced. They had been pouncing for seven days.

Thasha frowned: something was definitely wrong with her hearing. The whole battle with the storm was occuring in cottony undertones. Even the mad wolf-howls of the wind through the rigging were subdued.

Neda told her that Pazel and Neeps were aloft, somewhere, but in the maelstrom Thasha could hardly recognize a soul. She wanted to lend a hand on the ropes, but she was weak: she’d had no food in fifty-three days. Nor could she imagine swallowing a morsel in weather like this.

She found a job passing flasks of fresh water to the men on the ropes. The officers had to scream at the men to drink: they were sweating away their life’s water despite the soaking and the chill. Hours passed. She met her friends, haphazardly. Bolutu sang out with joy and kissed her on both cheeks; Marila dropped the buckets she was hauling and hugged her, tight barrel-belly pressing Thasha’s own. Thasha touched it: three months to go. ‘Chew this!’ Marila told her, taking a somewhat dusty, leaf-wrapped ball of mul from her pocket. ‘Trust me, they don’t make you sick. Some days it’s the only thing I can eat.’

‘I still wish I knew what’s in those blary things.’

‘Eat it, Thasha. You’re paler than a cod.’

They met Ramachni near the galley (he could venture nowhere near the topdeck). ‘What? Your ears?’ he said. ‘I save you from destroying yourself with the Nilstone, and you complain about your ears? I ask you, girl: has there ever been a better time to be deaf?’

‘I’m not laughing, Ramachni.’

‘No, you’re not. Well, Thasha, you will not be deaf for long. The healing sleep dulled all your senses; they return at different speeds. But you are still in mortal danger. The sleep cooled your hunger for the Stone, but it could do no more than slow the poison in your blood. The latter has been slowed a great deal: it may be weeks before the poison strikes you again.

‘But it will strike, Thasha, and when it does you must be ready. Hercol carries the silver key, and is never parted from it. The wine remains in your cabin. At the first sign of illness you must drink it all: down to the dregs, and the cure. Swear that you will obey me in this.’

‘Then I’ll never use the Stone again.’

‘You were never meant to, Thasha. Erithusme was. And use it she will, when you release her.’

How can you still believe that? she wanted to ask. But she gave Ramachni her word.

The storm raged on. Thasha kept working, biting off chunks of the rubbery mul, gnawing at them until they dissolved. A little of her strength returned. She began to carry heavier loads, and to broom water from the gun decks into the drains. After two hours she rested, gasping, flat on her back in the stateroom on the bearskin rug. Jorl and Suzyt curled up against her. Felthrup chattered about the days she had missed.

It seemed that every last soul had gone blind and senseless in the Red Storm, which poured its strange light even into their minds. When their senses returned, they found the ship adrift and heaving on great Nelluroq swells, and barely saved her from foundering. Nolcindar’s navigational advice was rendered useless, for there was no land in sight, and no telling just where the Red Storm had released them. ‘We’ve made fine speed north since the Red Storm,’ said Felthrup, ‘but north from where? That we cannot determine. We could be three months from landfall, Thasha. Or three days.’

‘Landfall where?’

Felthrup just shook his head. How far east or west they had drifted was beyond all reckoning.

When she ventured out again she met Hercol, who embraced her warmly, but somehow would not meet her eye. Thasha studied him, alarmed. Could he still be hurting from that kiss?

The storm finally ebbed. The waves shrank to mere fifty-footers, and a pulsing behind the clouds suggested the existence of a sun. Down from the masts came Pazel and Neeps and fifty others: rope-whipped, spray-blinded, near-naked monkeys, all muscle and bone. The two tarboys waved and grinned from across the tonnage hatch. Beside her, Marila looked from Thasha to Pazel and back again. ‘Why aren’t you married yet?’ she asked.

The sun peeked out. Captain Fiffengurt poured blessings on the crew. ‘You’re beautiful, my lads: you’re magnificence itself! You’ve got the blood of blary titans in your veins!’ But it was on Thasha that the most praise was heaped. Every man aboard knew how she’d saved them from the Death’s Head, and every man aboard wanted to kiss her or touch her fingers or kneel down and offer his service, or his life. Even Sergeant Haddismal snapped his heels together sharply and offered a salute — a gesture mimicked at once by every Turach in sight.

‘You’ve done it at last,’ said a voice in her ear, as Ensyl leaped nimbly to her shoulder.

‘Done what?’

‘Made the ship safe for crawlies, Thasha. Or at least for Myett and myself. Not that we’ve dared come near the topdeck since the storm began. Heridom, this ship is a mess.’

‘Ensyl,’ said Thasha with feeling, ‘we haven’t talked. You don’t know-’

‘That you saw Diadrelu, on the night you almost died?’

‘Hercol told you?’

‘No,’ said Ensyl, ‘he didn’t have to say a word. I saw your face, Thasha: I knew you were going to kiss him before we stepped out of your cabin. And I heard what you said: I have something for you. Something you were passing along from another.’

Thasha bit her lips. Dri had sent the same words of hope to Ensyl and Hercol — but the kiss, that had been meant for just one. She wished she could lie, could spare this woman’s feelings. ‘Dri loved you deeply,’ she said.

Ensyl had the grace to smile. ‘I knew the fates would punish me, for unchaste dreams of my mistress.’

‘Oh, Ensyl — rubbish!’

‘Maybe. But the dreams were not.’

Thasha caught up with Pazel and Neeps on the berthdeck, where they had collapsed against a wall among a dozen others fresh from the rigging, every one of them asleep. Pazel’s hand was closed around a half-empty cup of rum. Neeps lay with his head on Pazel’s shoulder, opened-mouthed and drooling.

Thasha took the cup from Pazel’s hand, and he woke and reached for her. Neeps opened his eyes and sat up. ‘Hello, Thasha,’ he said. Then he rolled away and retched. Seconds later he was asleep against the man on his right.

‘He took a beating up there,’ said Pazel.

‘And you didn’t?’

She dabbed at his cuts with her soggy sleeve, and felt quite married, and then recalled that that would never do. She might have to die; this boy had to live, unhitched, unentangled, free. He’d do the living for both of them.

‘Did you dream of me?’ asked Pazel.

‘Endlessly. Dragonflies and buttercups and little songbirds and you. For fifty-three days and nights.’

‘Come back to the stateroom with me, Thasha.’

‘Oh you fool.’

‘I want children. With your eyes. Don’t you want that at all?’

She kissed him. ‘No.’

Pazel went on smiling. He didn’t believe her, the egotist. She didn’t know if she believed herself.

Then Pazel’s eyes darkened. ‘You don’t know, do you? About them.’

‘Who? Neeps and Marila? What are you talking about?’

Pazel reached over and tugged up Neeps’ shirt. On the smaller boy’s chest, roughly over his heart, was a tattoo of a black and sinuous animal. ‘Mr Druffle did that for him. He’s a box of hidden talents, the old drunk.’

‘Is that supposed to be Ramachni?’

Pazel looked at her. ‘It’s not a mink, Thasha. It’s an otter.’

Thasha sat back. ‘Lunja. They called her the Otter, didn’t they?’

Pazel nodded. ‘She’s all he thinks about.’

‘Wake him up,’ said Thasha, ‘so I can slap him back to sleep.’

Instead they just left him there and headed for the stateroom. Thasha was feeling weak again, and her thoughts were awhirl. One sip of wine left. One last, brief use of the Nilstone. She could quell this storm, maybe, and bring fair winds. But could she ask the Stone where in Alifros they were?

What else, in three minutes of magic? Could she find the Swarm, and push it back through the Red Storm a second time? Could she fix Hercol’s broken heart, make Neeps forget Lunja, tell Pazel’s mother that her children were alive?

They had barely reached the ladderway when the shouting began: Failed rigging! Emergency! All hands above to save the mainmast!

‘Credek,’ Pazel swore, and he was gone, running. Thasha trailed behind him, exhausted. On the topdeck she found disaster averted, the mainmast straightening, the men’s hands torn and bleeding on the backstays. Thasha stood and watched. She loved these men, these worker ants. Nothing could kill them. They bore everything and went on serving the ship.

Then the wind rose and the waves climbed higher and they fought the storm all night, and all the next day and night, and when the sun rose at last on a clear calm morning they found two men still out on the bowsprit, dangling where they’d lashed themselves, drowned by rain and spray.

Neeps was among those sent to retrieve the corpses. He had napped for forty minutes in the last twenty hours, and had dreamed of Ularamyth, the bamboo grove, long dark limbs entangled with his own. The woman loved him; she was saving his life. He threaded his fingers through hers and told himself he would never let go. Then he woke. The hand he held was all wrong. Not webbed, not black. Marila asked about his dream, but Ularamyth was a word that she could never hear.

‘I dreamed of home,’ he said. ‘Nonsense stuff. Can’t remember a thing.’

Marila looked at him, then laid her round cheek on his arm. ‘I am home,’ she said.

He ought to say something to that. Something grand and gentle. About how he’d felt the child kick, as he had, when Marila’s tight spherical belly pressed his own in the night, trying to nudge him off the bed. He stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, saw Lunja in the galley of the Promise, back against the door, eyes in nuhzat, angry. Give me something, give me something back, boy. Quickly, quietly. Now.’

Marila raised her head. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Don’t be daft. Let’s get out of this bed.’

Lunja had arms like a wrestler’s. She had whispered the whole time, but the words melted into sounds, just sounds, urgent and then more urgent, and Neeps thought her voice had become like the sea’s voice for an old mariner, inescapable, behind and under everything for the rest of his life. But not that day. Three minutes and it was over, for the last time, and later she did not speak to him at all.

‘Nothing blary fits any more,’ said Marila, struggling into her pants.

They went out. The sun rose; the dead men were discovered. Coote’s crooked finger directed Neeps to the team scrambling out along the bowsprit. Marila stood and watched, making him clumsy, making him nick himself with the knife. The dead men were so cold and tangled. Their eyes wide open, astonished. Neeps couldn’t help himself: he followed the dead man’s gaze.

So it was that he, Neeps Undrabust, saw the light that flashed on the horizon. Blink. . blink-blink…blink. A lantern, not a mirror-signal. In another minute it would have vanished in the brightening day.

For all the changes in his life and heart, Neeps was still a tarboy, and knew his Sailing Code. The light was a distress signal — from an Arquali ship. Neeps stood and shouted, and marked the light’s position relative to the sun, and by midday they were fishing survivors from the sea.

Their commander said his name was Captain Vancz, his boat an Urnsfich grain-hauler, its doom a sudden gale that carried her south into the Ruling Sea. ‘We were halfway to Pulduraj, Captain Fiffengurt. Sixth year in a row I’ve been hired as a barley-boat. Never saw a storm like that one, by all the Gods.’

He was a young captain with a sleek brown moustache and wary eyes, one of twenty men they’d found bobbing like corks on the waves. Now Vancz and a handful of his men had been brought to Rose’s cabin. They sat in a circle, wearing the last, precious dry clothes on the Chathrand, drinking hot grog. Except for one bewildered, grey-bearded senior they were all young and fit: the sort you would expect to find still fighting for life twenty hours after a shipwreck.

‘You’re an Urnsfich man yourself, sir?’ asked Pazel.

‘Born and raised, worse luck,’ said Vancz.

‘Your boat’s prow was still above the waves this morning, when you signalled us,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘How’d you manage to lose her slowly, way out here? You can’t have struck something?’

Vancz shook his head. ‘Not in these depths. She was just smack-battered by the storm and sprang a fatal leak. We never did find it. The end was slow, but not that slow.’

‘You look a mite familiar,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Have we met?’

Vancz glanced quickly at his men before he answered. ‘I’d be surprised if we hadn’t,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was in Ballytween, a few years back? At that public house, what’s it called now — the Merchant Prince?’

‘No doubt,’ said Fiffengurt.

No doubt at all, thought Pazel, because everything he’s saying is a lie.

The man did not speak a word of the Urnsfich tongue: Pazel had called him a dung-eating sow, and got a vague grin in return. Pazel glanced at his shipmates. Lady Oggosk was chewing her lips, furiously impatient: she knew. So did Neeps and Hercol and Felthrup. Sergeant Haddismal was less certain, but more threatening: he stood behind Vancz, sighing like a hippopotamus, his massive hands on the rescued man’s chair. Each time Vancz leaned back he met the Turach’s knuckles.

Pazel glanced at Thasha. For some reason she looked ready to laugh.

‘This truly is the Great Ship,’ said Vancz for the third time, ‘but how can it be? You struck a reef off Talturi. You went down with all hands. I saw the story in the Mariner. I’ll never forget it. That awful summer of Nine-Forty-One. Just before the start of the war.’

His listeners moved uneasily. The start of the war, thought Pazel. He’s already forgetting it. Rin’s eyes, but this is going to be hard.

‘Tell me, Vancz,’ said Fiffengurt, ‘do you have much trouble with our lads in uniform, out Urnsfich way? I mean the Imperial navy?’

‘What, Arqual’s navy? Why should we have any feud with them, Captain?’

No one answered. Vancz looked at his men again. ‘Why are you all staring at me?’ he blurted at last. ‘What kind of rescue is this? And what in Rin’s name was that creature on your topdeck — you called it a Bolutu — that black thing with fishy eyes?’

‘Smack him!’ said Lady Oggosk. ‘The man answers questions with questions! You should have left him squirming in the sea!’

‘Now Duchess, have a heart,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Captain Vancz, when a man does you a good turn, you ought to be generous awhile. If he asks something small of you, for instance, you hand it over with a smile. Call it plain gratitude, if you like.’

‘The principle of reciprocity!’ squeaked Felthrup.

‘The principle of intelligence,’ said Haddismal.

Vancz looked at his hands. ‘Right you are, Captain Fiffengurt. And I do hope I can show you a little intelligence. The kind any skipper from Arqual has a right to expect.’

Pazel started: something in the man’s voice had thrown open a door. Arqual. He gets more nervous every time he speaks the word.

Fiffengurt pressed on. ‘Those bits of hull we found floating all around you — they weren’t from cannon-fire?’

Vancz looked shocked. ‘But of course not! We’ve seen no combat, sir. We’re neutral in the whole affair.’

‘What affair?’

Vancz started, closed his mouth.

‘Would you indulge us,’ said Hercol, ‘by naming the date?’

‘The date?’

‘Today’s date, you prevaricating worm!’ shrieked Oggosk. She exploded to her feet and hobbled towards him. Vancz looked rather more afraid of her than of Haddismal.

‘Modoli the twenty-sixth!’ he said. ‘Or the twenty-seventh; I can’t swear I didn’t lose a day in the storm! Rin’s blessings, lady, there’s no need to — Ouch!’

Lady Oggosk had poked him in the eye. ‘No need! If Captain Rose were still alive you’d be dangling from the main yard by your thumbs! We are on a mission of death, you bit of flotsam, and you’re spreading lies thick as kulberry jam! Fiffengurt, if you won’t get the truth out of this man let the tinshirts get it for you. Glaya Lorgus! I never thought I’d miss Sandor Ott!’

At the mention of the spymaster the man visibly paled. Then Thasha put a hand on Oggosk’s arm. She was laughing, now. ‘Duchess, stop,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for any of this. Commander, you’re a navy officer yourself. Don’t bother to deny it.’

‘But my dear lady-’

‘Not you,’ said Thasha. She pointed at the older, grey-bearded survivor of the wreck. ‘He’s the man you should be talking to, Captain Fiffengurt.’

The old fellow gaped at her, eyes wide with amazement.

‘The beard almost threw me,’ said Thasha, ‘but I know you now. My father used to point you out in parades.’

‘P-parades?’ gasped the bearded man.

‘What’s going on here?’ barked Haddismal. ‘You’re saying he’s Vancz?’

‘There isn’t any Vancz,’ said Thasha. ‘This man’s name is Darabik, Purston Darabik. Why have you been lying to us, Commodore?’

‘Darabik?’ said Captain Fiffengurt.

‘Darabik?’ Haddismal straightened his back.

Another stunned pause. Then Lady Oggosk shrieked the name a third time, hobbled over to the old man and starting beating him about the face.

‘Stop, stop!’ cried the old man.

‘Darabik!’ cried Oggosk. ‘You chased Captain Rose across the seas for thirteen years! You made our lives a living hell!’

‘Of course I did!’ The man’s voice and bearing had utterly changed. ‘Rose was a common criminal! He swindled everyone from the Chathrand’s owners to the Boy Prince of Fulne!’

‘He saved our lives, over and over,’ said Pazel. I guess he was a criminal, but there was nothing common about him.’

The one they had called Vancz looked fearful. ‘Sir, I told ’em just what you said — they muddled me-’

‘Drink your grog and be quiet, you — Ouch! Gods damn it, Fiffengurt, can’t you get this pet vulture of yours under control?’

‘Is that an order, Commodore?’

‘It blary well is! Flaming devils, where did this mad ship come from?’

Then, for the first time, Ramachni spoke. ‘She came from across the Ruling Sea. Your Emperor Magad launched her, and Magad’s operatives held sway aboard her for many thousands of miles. But all is changed today. From Captain Rose to the youngest tarboy, from Brother Bolutu to the ixchel, we have all forged new alliances. Our loyalties evolved. That is one reason we are still alive.’

‘Sandor Ott’s loyalties evolved?’

Ramachni shook his head sadly. ‘No, not his.’

Darabik’s mouth twisted. ‘You see now why I did not announce myself. Lady Thasha, from you alone will I beg forgiveness for this act. We thought you dead. And even when the witch’s dreams told us other wise, we still thought you a prisoner of these people.’

Thasha stepped towards him, barely breathing. ‘We?’ she said.

Darabik nodded. ‘I speak of the leadership of our rebellion, Lady Thasha. Including its military commander, Prince Eberzam Isiq.’

Thasha cried out, laughing and sobbing at once. Her friends embraced her, and Felthrup gave a piercing squeal. Pazel had no idea what minor queen or princess Admiral Isiq had married, but who cared? Thasha’s father was alive.

‘Rebellion, is it?’ Haddismal moved to the cabin door and flung it open. ‘You there, marines! Draw and enter! All of you, move!’

Move the Turachs did. In seconds there were twenty or more shoving into Rose’s cabin with swords in hand.

‘Our loyalties haven’t evolved either,’ growled Haddismal. ‘We serve the Ametrine Throne, and will do so ’til our hands drop the swords. Be careful, mage.’

‘I have never been otherwise in your presence, Sergeant. But I think you will find the commodore’s visit an act of providence. At least, I hope you will.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Darabik stood abruptly. His eyes were hawklike in their ferocity: all pretence had dropped away. ‘It means,’ he said, ‘that for years I have placed myself before men like you, and called on them to keep their oaths, not break them. To prove their courage and the hard steel of their loyalty-’

‘Well, then-’

‘-by daring to fight for the only one who, by law and Rin’s favour, deserves to sit in the Chamber of Ametrine. I mean Her Majesty the Empress, Maisa daughter of Magad theThird. She lives, and many thousands of true Arqualis are fighting, bleeding, dying for her cause. We were not wrecked in a storm, Turach. We were fired upon by the warships of the Usurper, Magad the Fifth.’

Haddismal started forward, snarling. ‘Usurper! You’re speaking of His Supremacy, you traitorous son of a whore!’

‘His Supremacy’s own grandfather named Maisa to the throne,’ said Hercol quietly. ‘And your grandfathers, dare I remind you, swore an oath to that man.’

The Turach hesitated. He looked hard at Darabik again. ‘You weren’t making for Pulduraj,’ he said. ‘Where were you headed, and why?’

Darabik paused, studying the face of the huge marine before him. ‘We were bound for the island called Serpent’s Head, and a gathering of all Maisa’s forces.’

‘And Maisa?’ asked Haddismal. ‘Will she be there, rallying her turncoat troops?’

Darabik shook his head. ‘That I cannot say.’

The Turach’s eyes narrowed. ‘Beg to differ, Commodore: you can.’

Never taking his eyes from Haddismal, the old commodore unbuttoned his shirt. Pazel recoiled: the man’s chest was like a window cracked by a stone, but the cracks were raised red scars. They had very clearly been made with a knife.

‘The Secret Fist thought so too,’ he said. ‘I chose not to betray our country to the Secret Fist. Do you think I will betray them to you?’

Sergeant Haddismal was leaning forward, hands in fists. But he made no move against the commodore.

‘It has been a savage fight, but a proud one,’ said Darabik. ‘Generals and governors, princes and counts have joined our rebellion. Whole legions have broken with Etherhorde. And Magad faces other enemies, too: the Mzithrinis still bleed him to the west; Noonfirth has cut supplies from the east. The Crownless Lands support us with shelter and armaments and food.’

‘The Crownless Lands,’ scoffed Haddismal. ‘So you’re begging from waifs. Doesn’t sound like a winning hand to me.’

‘We are not winning, but we have not lost. This time last year our forces numbered ninety thousand.’

‘Ninety thousand!’ cried Hercol, his eyes flashing.

‘Ninety thousand my bleedin’ arse,’ growled a Turach. ‘Commander, this is all rot and betrayal.’

‘Aye, lad, it is betrayal,’ said Darabik sharply. ‘You marines were the first betrayed, when you were told all manner of lies about your Empress. You have given your lives and blood for a false king, a warped image of the Arqual you deserve. Oh, to the Pits with you all-’

Darabik spread his hands wide. ‘Kill me and be done with it. Or be as brave and true as you have sworn to be, and choose the harder fight.’

A terrible stillness followed. The Turachs stood like wolves before the pounce. But it was Hercol who moved. With a speed Pazel had only ever glimpsed in Sandor Ott, he struck the sword from the hand of the Turach nearest him, then twisted around Haddismal’s sudden thrust so that he stood behind the man. Hercol’s left arm slid over Haddismal’s shoulder; his elbow caught the marine under the chin.

Hercol gave a brutal backward heave. Both men crashed to the floor and were suddenly still: Haddismal flat on his back, Hercol beneath him, with Ildraquin across the sergeant’s throat.

‘Stay!’ wheezed Hercol. ‘Sergeant Haddismal, hear me: I did not wish to assault you. Indeed I fear what I have done.’

‘You should,’ said Haddismal.

‘We cannot go on divided,’ said Hercol. ‘If shipmate kills shipmate again, we shall all be lost. I feel this in my heart’s core, Sergeant Haddismal. I am not an Arquali, nor wish to be. Yet I have served the true Empress of Arqual in secret these many years. I trust this Darabik. And I shall trust you, now: with my life, and the life of Alifros itself.’

‘Hercol — no!’ cried Thasha. She tried to shove a path towards him, but the Turachs seized her arms.

‘Be still, Thasha!’ cried Hercol. ‘All of you, be still! Turachs, I disarmed your leader so that you might know that it was hope, not fear, that led me on. Now I say the same as Darabik: stand with us, or kill us. We will not kill you.’

He opened his hand, and Ildraquin fell to the floor. Instantly a Turach lowered the tip of his sword to Hercol’s neck. Haddismal rolled to his feet and took the weapon. He gaze was murderous.

‘You were a mucking fool to disarm,’ he said. After several gasping breaths, he added, ‘Or a saint. I don’t know. Corporal Mandric’s risked his own life since he returned, swearing you’re all in the right, that the Nilstone’s the enemy, that your quest is the only one that counts. He called Magad a fraud. I had to throw him in the brig or throw him to the fishes.’ Haddismal swallowed. ‘He ain’t with the fishes, yet.

‘As for you-’ the sergeant shot a glance at Darabik ‘-you sound like the kind of officer my old man was. The kind who could hold his head up, before the world and Rin’s judgement. Get up, Stanapeth, and take your weapon back. I’ll stand with you lot. I’m mucking tired of lies.’