‘That’s impossible!’ Atraea insisted. ‘They’ve only just . . . they’ve been, already been.’
‘And you still have children to spare, so they will come again, and again, until you have no more, and you are no use to them. Then they will come for you instead, for your own flesh. They will tax and tax, and take and take, and in the end your fires will be cold ash, your homes just empty caves.’
‘And how do you know this?’ the Moth demanded.
‘He has shown me.’ Che indicated the Hermit. ‘He knows. The Worm is entering the Old World, as your Teacher calls it, those lands beneath the sun that so many of your ancestors sprang from. They will not need you any more.’
Atraea made to speak again, but Forge-Iron laid a broad hand on her shoulder. ‘Evastos, fly a circle and look for the Worm.’
A younger Moth – barely more than a boy and therefore one of the younger generation’s few, a veteran of taxes that must have stripped away his siblings – flared his wings and rose unsteadily into the air. It was quite the worst flying Thalric had seen in a long time, but then, he had even wondered if the Moths here had lost the Art altogether. Che had mentioned the unpleasantness that hunted above them, the star-makers and their sticky threads, and the appalling flying monsters – the White Death as the locals charmingly called them.
‘And if they are coming, what do you suppose we should do?’ Atraea exclaimed, although Thalric felt that she was losing the sympathy of the crowd a little. ‘We cannot fight the Worm!’
‘You must,’ Che told her flatly. ‘You have no choice.’
There was a chorus of despair and denial already rising up, but Orothellin struck his staff once on the stone and they all fell silent. Thalric blinked: for a moment the haggard, run-down giant had mustered a little of the majesty of the Masters of Khanaphes, his voice resounding with the cavernous echoes of their last stronghold, and tomb.
‘Listen,’ the huge man said, not loud, yet clearly heard. ‘These are the end times. No prophecy, but a promise. The Seal is broken – it has been real, all this time, and now it is gone. The Worm works its way upwards to claim the world that I still remember, just. That world is vaster than you can dream of, peopled by kinden you cannot imagine. The Worm is ambitious. It will scour this place of everything it can use and consume so as to gain its foothold, and after that it will treat the people of the Old World – your cousins – just as it has treated you. And for you – nothing. Oblivion. If you think that would be kinder, then await it. For those who wish a chance at tomorrow – and a tomorrow where none come demanding a tax of your flesh and blood – then take up arms now. Fight, now. Die, if you must, so that others may live, for you will die anyway in the end, and better it be for something.’
Silence fell, after that, and Thalric found himself nodding, impressed despite himself. Give that man a general’s rank badge.
Then the Moth boy, Evastos, was back, already yelling out as he dropped from the sky, ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’
My cue.
‘Fight now!’ Che was calling. ‘Take up the same weapons you’ve made for your oppressors, and put them to use. Take up your hammers, your slings, your staves, the blades of your Art! Fight now, because they will take the last of your children, and then they will take your lives! Fight, or be extinguished so that none will know you ever were!’
Thalric had stepped into the air, his Art wings catching and lifting him, already looking for the Worm’s soldiers encroaching into the light spilling from Cold Well’s fires. Before, when they had fought outside the Hermit’s hole, the darkness had been his greatest enemy. The Worm’s slaves feared the dark, though, even those of them without eyes. They feared the cold and the isolation. They feared the Worm, and kept the fires burning, and now Thalric could see.
The band of the Worm approaching was made up of a couple of pack millipedes, a score of warriors and a Scarred One, not unlike the group who had come to exact the tax before. It was Thalric’s job to strike, to use his natural advantages to kill as many of them as he could. He would give the slaves a little time to overcome their fears and arm themselves. He would also commit them. He was not sure whether Che had quite seen her plan evolving in that light but, by striking first against the Worm, they would be forcing the slaves’ hands.
They’re dead anyway, so who cares? In this subterranean world there was no place for sentiment.
And here they come. The first of the Worm resolved from shapes in the dark to shapes in the light, the lead soldiers rushing forwards with that constant hurrying tread as they danced to the mindless urgings of their god. Thalric coursed over them and wheeled, seeing them begin to spread out as they sensed him but could not quite locate him.
There. And Thalric’s sting spat fire, and the Scarred One in their midst, the only human mind amongst the lot of them, was down and smoking before he had had the wit to look up.
Thalric had hoped that there would be a few shots’ worth of milling panic or blank stillness as they tried to digest what had happened, but the Worm’s bodies were on to him almost before their priest had hit the ground. Some of them had slings, and they had the weapons to hand on the instant, fitting stones to them and whirling them up to speed.
At least the bastards don’t have bows, and Thalric let his hands speak for him, lashing into them with his sting, his Art searing streaks of gold across them, striking down, burning them, melting their armour. Of all the gifts of the Wasp, this one had always been strong with him, reaching further, striking harder, sapping his strength less. He kept on the move, darting and diving through the air above them, lashing left and right with both hands, feeling his wings eat up his strength. Let the Worm be as coordinated as it might be, let its aura of denial smother all thoughts of Aptitude in him, but he was no artificer and he needed only what nature had given him.
Then a sling stone struck the armour of his shoulder hard enough to spin him in the air, and the next moment he was skimming the rocky ground, knowing that they would be running for him with those nasty little swords drawn. He tried for height, but then another rock hit him in the chest, knocking him on to his back even though his mail took the brunt of it. He lurched to his feet, hands out and blazing, seeing one onrushing figure cut down in the flash. How many did I get? Not enough, apparently.
Then Esmail was with him, darting past to open up a Centipede-kinden as a conjurer would, mail and all, just with a sweep of his hand. Thalric took the chance to back off, hands up and hunting for targets, seeing a dozen of the Worm still on their feet and running full-tilt towards them. Another slingshot skimmed past his ear.
Tynisa was there too, although she was holding back with him, and he remembered how she had fallen before the Worm the last time, how her fighting grace had deserted her and left her crippled. Che was on his other side with her sword drawn, and he wanted to shout at her to get back – except she was rousing the rabble, and the rabble sometimes needed to be led by example.
His hands flashed again to send a further Worm down, seeing Esmail dancing between two of them, another whose Art was equal to the task.
And if something doesn’t happen about now then we know this is a lost cause.