The Night of the Swarm (Chathrand Voyage 4) by Robert V.S. Redick Page A

beside him, paddling. The
athymar,
not five feet to his left, had struck a fallen tree projecting out into the river. Dead already, it hung
before them, impaled on a jagged branch.
    Arrows fell. On the banks fifty feet above them, the other
athymars
were massed and baying. They pulled away from the shore into the swifter current, the rushing chariot that would bear
them away. A mad river, a beautiful thing, burrowing deep into the Peninsula and the wild lands that remained.
    But before they gave themselves to the current, Olik made for a rock, and Nyrex came up beside him, and they waited there, struggling to be still. Olik watched the shore, murmuring the
hope-chant that for the dlömu takes the place of prayer. But no winged shape flew to him out of the jungle, only arrows and sounds of rage. The
athymars
jostled along the banks, now and
then looking back over their shoulders.
    Olik knew that the riders would soon brave that last slope, and spy him, and that once they did they would never turn back. He made a small sound of grief. If there was a lonelier soul than Lord
Taliktrum’s, he could not have said whose it might be.
    The prince and his one companion swam away.

 
     
     
     
4
Fires in the Dark

     
     
     
     
    12 Modobrin 941
    241st day from Etherhorde
     
    The raft did not inspire confidence. The party stood around it, staring; none of them could quite believe what they had built. ‘It looks like a pig’s stomach tied
to a loom,’ said Neeps.
    ‘Your imagination does you credit,’ said Bolutu.
    ‘It is sturdy enough,’ said Hercól, ‘but I dare say it will be like no float any of us has ever taken.’
    ‘I don’t like it,’ said Dastu, probing the raft with his foot.
    ‘What would you like?’ Pazel asked him. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a highway to follow.’
    ‘Or wings to fly,’ said Ensyl, gazing upwards.
    Thasha felt a stab of grief. It was about this time yesterday that Myett had been taken. Pazel had slept through the tragedy, but Thasha had seen Ensyl leap up as though stabbed, hearing what
they could not: a fellow ixchel’s cry. Looking skyward, they had all seen the bird of prey, fighting in midair with something gripped in its talons, before beating a swift path to the south.
They had raced up the stairs, crying Myett’s name. Ensyl had continued far up the ruined wall, her shouts and wails so eerily silent to human ears. She had come back stone-faced. ‘We
are thirteen now,’ she’d said.
    Of course Dastu had a point about the raft. It was a freakish thing. Its body was a huge bladder-mushroom, a tendril-fringed bag some fifteen feet in diameter. Half the party had ventured into
the forest in search of such a fungus, Ramachni lighting the way, one last time, with fireflies. Thasha had joined the search: loath as she was to set foot in that hot, dripping hell, the thought
of waiting for others to return from it was worse.
    And light made all the difference. Beneath the bright canopy of insects the forest had mostly shrunk from them, closed its petals and pores. The flesh-eating trees withdrew their tentacles; the
lamprey-mouthed fungi turned away. What could replace the fireflies, once the journey resumed?
    It had taken hours to locate a bladder of the right size, and immense care to drain it from a single incision and cut it free of the ground. Even emptied, the thing was heavy, like a great
rubbery hide. They slogged back to the clearing with it draped on their shoulders. When they arrived it was well past sundown. A fire burned in the clearing, with two geese roasting on spits, and
when she tasted the sizzling meat Thasha groaned with pleasure.
    ‘I am telling you, no?’ said Neda, catching Thasha’s eye. ‘My master is best to kill with a stone. He is hitting anything, whatever you want.’
    There were a handful of young pines in the clearing; those who had remained behind had felled and stripped them already. When dawn came, they had