Life is born from rot.
And so it goes.
Mud was our first womb.
And so it goes.
We shall rot again.
And so it goes.
—Lodoroi Prayer of Acceptance
Mosk was beginning to realize why the Vestigarchy had never cared to govern the swamps of Garron. Well, apart from the stench of rot, the ever-present mold, and the complete lack of useful resources.
It was the unpredictably explosive zealotry of the natives.
The Hiveking had been forced to kill four of their tribal chiefs and put down a half dozen insurrections in the past three days alone, and still nobody would give him a straight answer. He feared he’d run out of Swampmen before too long.
Scratching at a new patch of yellow mold at his arm joint, he turned to look out from the wooden tower he’d erected upon arriving at this muddy “capital.” These humans were odd. They had no centralized government, just an amalgam of chiefs whose own power was relative to the size of their specific tribe—and even that power was dependent upon the ability of their tribe to cleverly breed new animals. It was a chaotically shifting morass of merit, indulgences, and unspoken hierarchies.
The construction of their cities—if you could call them that—reflected this chaos. Sprawling and borderless, they bled from swamp to swamp in a scattered mess. You couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. No highways, no centers of commerce, and no standing army. The Swampmen didn’t seem to see the problem with this, but it made the orderly coldmen searches his Clots had perfected an impossibility—unless he was willing to commit them to years of scouring every stagnant pool and rotten tree for hundreds of miles. And this would surely inspire countless more insurrections. These people were oddly protective of their stinking home. In fact, Mosk could still hear the cries of righteous anger as these fanatics threw themselves on his spurs. Pitiful. If they saw these mud-brick huts as “hallowed ground,” the frog ponds as “sacred treasures,” then they could have them. Mosk had grown tired of this place—it seemed deliberately grown to discomfort the coldmen.
He scratched at the mold again.
It was humiliating, but the mold was another serious problem. Two of his Clots were effectively out of commission from the stuff, which built up on the joints and restricted movement. He’d had to send them back to Babel to dry out and recuperate. The worst part was how the mold affected his Matrons, newly arrived from the west. Their last batch of eggs—meant to provide replacements for the Clot he lost back in Midian—had arrived dead. The Matrons said the mold clogged the breathing slits in their abdomens, and the eggs suffocated before they could be delivered.
Mosk gnawed at his upper jaw, the coldman equivalent of a sigh. He motioned to his guard. “Tell the handlers to prepare the draconflies. We fly at sundown.”
His guard clicked assent and moved down the tower mast. Coldmen could use their claws and uniquely jointed legs to scale a bare post easily. They had no need for ladders or those wide human stairs which wasted so much space. Coldmen towers were practically inaccessible to grounded attackers, perched atop smooth posts like berries on a thorn.
Mosk didn’t know why he’d wasted time building this one. These Swampmen were pitiful, woefully armed with green spears, bone knives, and poison darts which snapped off his shell like toys—wonderful tools for hunting a frog, he supposed, but useless against coldmen. The poor natives couldn’t even find rocks to throw on this soggy ground! Putting down their sad little mobs had been like slaughtering grubs back in the warren feedpens.
Exciting, even nostalgic in its own way, but Mosk couldn’t help but yearn for battle against an able enemy. The Centek, with their unbelievable speed, their devious skill with explosives—that was an enemy to be respected. Or the Nahuat blademasters! The complexity of their swords, the deadly, flowing movements. How Mosk missed those battles—the memory brought a rush nearing ecstasy. He remembered the shock on their faces, the fear in those wet little eyes when these consummate swordsmen realized that they faced a coldman who could read their moves. Who could break their patterns.
This was why Mosk was Swarmlord. His mind was almost human.
And this was why he hated having to rely on a human. Until he received more Clots from the Vestigarchy, Mosk simply didn’t have enough claws to search all of Babel and secure the northern kingdoms from this supposed Pensanden threat. Nyraud was a painful necessity for Mosk right now, but the Hiveking had no illusions as to the man’s loyalties. Fear for his city, that alone kept the man searching for the etherwalker—fear and his ridiculous obsession with hunting. Why this “Hunter King” chose to revel in the art of sneaking up on an inferior enemy rather than the fire, blood, and glory of battle was beyond Mosk’s desire to comprehend.
Regardless, he’d had to rely on the silverwitch Kai to keep Nyraud in line for now. She had plans for the city that were . . . unsettling, even to the Hive King.
It was time to return. Mosk had wasted enough time in the swamps. If the Pensanden were here, he’d be as useless as the rest of the natives. North was where the real danger remained. North, where remnants of the old tek still slumbered and dangerous knowledge still moved through hidden channels. The Pensanden would eventually have to go there, wouldn’t be able to resist—and while Mosk may have failed at catching the hatcher en route, all that really mattered was keeping him from Tenocht.