‘Consider it done.’ I prepared to take off.
‘And you must inform the Emperor of what I have ordered.’
I stared at him. I had to tell San we were
retreating
? ‘Yes, but …’
‘Do it. I will meet you at the Imperial Fyrd once I have finished here.’
Back in the air I could see the formations below beginning to reorganise themselves with glacial speed, drawing together more tightly. I shuddered at the thought of being land-bound, encased in metal, clumsy and slow in the face of the darting nymphs.
The Queen’s cavalry were gleaming on the extreme west flank. As they were not treading in the infantry’s tracks they had escaped the worst mud and, being upwind of the Insects, the horses were calm. At the point of their wedge I could see Eleonora’s upturned face calmly watching as I circled down to land nearby.
She spread her wings in greeting, called, ‘Why, Jant! You honour us with your presence!’
I approached her. She sat confidently astride her steel-clad thoroughbred, armoured in her usual mix of shining metal and self-assurance. She held her helmet beneath one arm and lance in the other hand, a pale blue pennon lazily waving from it. Her dark hair was immaculate and I even imagined I could detect a trace of rose perfume. An oval shield and a selection of weapons were slung from her saddle. She looked just as formidable on the battlefield as in her boudoir. ‘Such a shame to bring you down here, when you look so … graceful in the air.’
I had no time for Eleonora’s crap. ‘We’re being attacked! ‘Leon, there’s a new kind of Insect coming out of the lake. Lightning has ordered a retreat. A total withdrawal! Tornado and Serein’s hastai will soon be cut off at the front. Lightning commands you and your lancers to charge, rescue them, and carry as many as possible back to town.’
I described the larvae. Eleonora frowned, then changed to an overhand grip on her lance, pointing it at the ground like a spear.
‘Tell Lightning I accept his command.’ She turned, shouted, ‘Lancers
of Awia! Follow your Queen!’ She glanced at me and pulled her helmet visor down over her smile. I staged my own tactical retreat.
I flew to the Emperor and tipped my wings to him. He raised a hand and the Imperial Fyrd walked their horses aside to let him through. As he did so, Frost on her dapple stallion emerged from behind the last riders on the corner of the square. She urged it into a trot and began to advance, even as the call to retreat was going up. Her bodyguard trailed her. I circled, trying to keep her in view. She’s an experienced Eszai, she should realise how serious this is. What was she playing at?
I glanced down, acutely aware of San watching me. Frost could look after herself. I descended. The horses of the Imperial cavalry tossed their heads and held them high, their white-edged eyes watching my great wings beating. The horses were actually shaking as their riders struggled to still them.
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.
‘
Where
?’
‘Down there.’
The Vermiform snapped its mask back into the trunk and started retracting. It carried me down, still stretched out – I saw the mud rushing up closer and closer. It brought me to the Emperor, though San didn’t give me so much as a glance. It stopped, jerking me to a halt a metre off the ground.
The top of the curving trunk overhung San’s head but the surface nearest him extruded its mask and brought it close to his face. He returned its gaze equably, without moving a muscle.
Lightning aimed at the mask and loosed. His arrow passed harmlessly through it – the worms parted again. The arrow whistled past me and through a sudden gap in the trunk. With the slightest ripple the holes closed and the mask regained its composure.
‘Comet,’ San said, without moving his gaze from the female visage. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s the Vermiform. And arrows are no good against it.’
The Vermiform addressed the Emperor: ‘So you are the one whom Dunlin has told us about?’
San tilted his head as if asking the Vermiform to continue. It said, ‘Ourselves in the soil see that larvae are already coming out of the lake. Why? Why did you do it? Do you all have a suicide wish? Do you even
know
what you’ve done?’
‘What have we done?’ the Emperor said emotionlessly.
‘Created a breeding pool for Insects in this world! Was there a mating flight? Do you know they lay a hundred eggs a minute? Have you any idea how many more are to come?’
The Emperor said nothing.
The Vermiform threshed, furious. ‘Are you going to miss this warrior?’ and slowly drew my bonds tighter and tighter. I tried to pull back but it was hopeless: agony flared straight through my shoulders – my arms and legs were riving out. I started screaming – I could feel the suck of the cup-joints in my hips stretched to the point of dislocation.
The pauldrons of San’s armour moved infinitesimally, as if he shrugged. He did not look at me, only at the mask.
The Vermiform said, ‘Dunlin is a better commander than you ever were, San. He is marshalling an army in several worlds that is much better than anything you’ve managed to establish here.’
San said, ‘I thought that would happen.’
‘Dunlin will be infuriated when he hears it’s come to this.’
‘That is the least of my concerns … Could you put my Messenger down, please?’ he added, although he said it as if my shrieking was irking him rather than if he cared that I was being torn limb from limb. I was released abruptly. I fell in a loose tangle, hit the ground heavily and curled up in the cold mud, hugging my shoulders.
‘These are just the first nymphs emerging,’ the worms choired. ‘There will be hundreds more of these waves. Larvae are so ravenous that if they all hatched together they would devour each other for want of food. Countless worlds have fallen this way.’