In the last centuries of their glory, they did thrust their stained hands into the destinies of those humble creatures not yet born, shaping crude tools from the near living. And in the irony of God’s justice, these crooked souls became their truest friends. And in the irony of God’s vengeance, the untouched became their truest foes.
—Rephidem’s Song of the Pensanden, Vol. 5
Mosk noticed the blood dripping from his fingers and stood, mouth watering at the sharp, heady smell. Shaking off his hunger, he walked around the still-twitching form of his Proximate to wipe his hands on the thick curtains that framed the room. A sullen clicking resonated from his chest, the sound of thin bones striking stone in endless staccato. The sound of frustration.
Proximate Isk had failed, and Mosk had killed him. The Hive was stronger. A Clot of searchers dead; the few surviving arakids gone feral and feeding on their masters’ corpses. No explanations, and still no clues as to where this hatcher had gone. It was going to be more difficult to trace this Pensanden than Mosk had anticipated, especially in such a backward land.
The Hunt had been different years ago in the civilized north—there, the Pensanden left electric footprints wherever they went, unable to resist dipping their minds into the ever-present machinery which filled the streets like honey pots. There, the commoners had been helpful, even willing allies, ever eager to see the end of such an uncomfortably powerful folk. They had betrayed neighbors and friends alike to the slavering jaws of the arakid.
The clicking grew into a hollower rattling sound from the back of Mosk’s throat, the closest his kind could come to laughter. He found himself both amused and repulsed by this peculiar weakness of mankind—ever fearful of a power greater than their own, they sought to destroy it instead of worshipping it as the coldmen did.
Except for these southerners. They were a frustrating bunch, silent and passive, yet with an inner core of strength which had surprised even him. Many had died in the newly constructed smoke pits behind this so-called palace, and Mosk’s best torturers had reported an odd resistance to brands and screws which had made many a warlord weep—even though these shepherds obviously knew nothing about the etherwalker. A strange people.
At this, Mosk glanced beyond the body of Proximate Isk over to his special prisoner, who, although bruised, bloody, and bound hand and foot, still continued to glare at him with those wet human eyes.
“Hzzk. Baron, are you still angry over the death of your child?” His bone-dry voice rattled like beetle wings. “You humans value your pets overmuch; did you not see how I dealt with an inefficient subordinate?”
Baron Mordecai Efron spat blood from his mouth and snarled. “Does the Vestigarchy fear children and shepherds so much that it must send their trained maggots across the sea to murder them?”
The last word was punctuated by a vicious blow from Mosk, which sent the man sprawling backward onto his bound hands. The Swarmlord loomed over his prisoner, then grabbed him by his stained lapels and pulled him close. Fierce carrion breath washed over the baron. “You will tell me where the Pensanden is! If it wasn’t your son, then who? Such a powerful being could not have been in this land without your knowledge!”
Mosk dragged him over to the shattered window, which looked out across the burning city, and lifted him through the frame. The baron’s feet dangled over the paving stones far below.
With pleasure, Mosk noted how the man’s eyes had widened in surprise and horror at his captor’s inhuman strength. It had been a long time since this side of the world had witnessed the power of his kind.
“I see you finally realize your position,” he whispered. “I am not here to negotiate.”
Mosk was interrupted by the clattering of horned knuckles on wood. One of his torturers called through the door: “Sire! This one, just brought in. He knows something!”
Mosk toyed with the idea of dropping the baron, but then reconsidered. The man might prove useful yet. Turning to the door, Mosk tossed the man against the table as he would a rat.
“Enter.”
The bulky torturer, carapace splotched with the rust-brown markings of the labor caste, ambled into the room. In his indelicate claws squirmed a fat, oily man with a shock of orange hair. Mosk noted that his clothes, while torn and dirty, lacked the singed edges of most torture victims. This one had spoken before the irons had even left the fire.
“This worm says that he knows a person fitting the description of a P-Pens-anden, Hiveking.” The torturer struggled with the foreign word, a word taken from a language woven for light tongues, not hinged and serrated mouthparts. Mosk looked down at the trembling man.
“Tell me what you know.”
The man gulped, and then stammered his reply. “Yes, milord! My name is Mishael Keddrik. This, eh, person,” he indicated the looming torturer, “asked if I knew of any visitors or strangers to this land who had dark coloring—”
“Yes, yes,” hissed Mosk impatiently.
The man continued fearfully, tripping over his words. “A few m-miles from my shop, there lives a shepherd and his son, except the boy looks like no blood of this land and n-nobody knows who the mother is, seeing as how the shepherd brought the child into town twelve years ago, a complete stranger from the north—”
Mosk yanked the man into the air. The last time the Hunt had been on this side of the world . . .
“Twelve years? How old was this child? Where is this village? Speak!”
The man lost control, crying like a child as he dangled by his shirt. “Y-yes, milord, yes! I wouldn’t lie, milord! The child was young, barely walking when they first came to Rewn’s Fork—Rewn’s Fork, that is my village!” The man tried to curl into himself, cringing under the glare of the Hiveking. “Just let me go, please, I beg of you. I have children . . .” His voice trailed off into sobbing.
Savoring the man’s fear, Mosk carried him over to the window; the last red streams of sunset were staining the jagged edges of the broken glass. His voice was cold and hungry.
“Hzzk. Tell me. Did the boy have power over machines? Did he bear the marks of scale and talon? What was his name? Speak! Where did he go? Where is the Pensanden!”
From the table behind him, a clear voice pierced the air. “Fool! Tell him nothing more!”
The Baron of Midian rose shakily to his feet and took a lurching step forward. He had cut through the cords binding his legs with a piece of glass and staggered toward his stunned captor. The lumbering torturer moved to intercept him, throwing the table aside so that it smashed against the wall. Mosk turned, hissing.
The baron, face flushed red by the last light of day, gathered himself up and made a mighty leap. He collided with a squealing Mishael Keddrik. There was the sound of tearing cloth as the grocer’s shirt came away in Mosk’s claw, and both men tumbled into the lengthening shadows far below.
Mosk held the fluttering cloth in the breeze for a moment and then let it follow the two men down into darkness. A black silhouette against the slowly purpling sky, the Swarmlord lowered his arm. The soldier behind him froze as a low-pitched rattle filled the room.
“You will return to your Clot Primal and ask him to slowly remove your hearts, one for stupidity and the other for sluggishness.”
“Yes, Hiveking. May my third heart serve you better.” The torturer gave a shameful click of regret before turning and shuffling out of the room.
Mosk called out after him. “And tell the Matron that I need a new Proximate by week’s end!”
Rewn’s Fork. That was near the woods where one of his earlier scout groups had gone missing. It had to have been the Pensanden, and he must have had help from a small army of these southerners to be able to dispatch an entire Clot.
Mosk had known Primal Kret, the group’s leader, since First Molt. Kret had been a ferocious, cunning creature.
Rewn’s Fork, on the edge of the Horeb Wilds. The unbroken forest extended for hundreds of miles to the west—an army could hide there for years. Mosk did not want to wait years. He decided to send a messenger back to the Vestigarchy for more matrons and whatever reserves could be spared from the Border Wars.
The forests would be black with soldiers in a week. Mosk felt his blood stir as hunting enzymes began to course through his body. As an afterthought, he decided to send a Clot of searchers north, on the off chance that his quarry might try to do the obvious.