Mr Bunnsy realized that he was a fat rabbit in the Dark Wood and wished he wasn't a rabbit or, at least, not a fat one. But Ratty Rupert was on the way. Little did he know what was waiting for him.
- From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure
The three rats leapt they were already too late. There was just a Maurice-shaped hole in the air. Maurice was across the room and scrambling up some boxes.
There was squeaking below him. He jumped onto another box and saw a place in the wall where some of the rotten bricks had fallen out. He aimed for it, scrabbled on thin air as more bricks moved under him, and pushed himself into the unknown.
It was another cellar. And it was full of water. In fact, what it was full of was not exactly water. It was what water eventually becomes when rat cages drain into it, and gutters up above drain into it, and it has had a chance to sit and bubble gently to itself for a year or so. To call it 'mud' would be an insult to perfectly respectable swamps all over the world.
Maurice landed in it. It went 'gloop'.
He cat-paddled furiously through the thick stuff, trying not to breathe, and dragged himself out on a pile of rubble on the other side of the room. A fallen rafter, slimy with mould, led up to more tangled, fire-blackened wood in the ceiling.
He could still hear the dreadful voice in his head, but it was muffled. It was trying to give him orders. Trying to give a cat orders? It was easier to nail jelly to a wall. What did it think he was, a dog?
Stinking mud oozed off him. Even his ears were full of mud. He went to lick himself clean, and then stopped. It was a perfectly normal cat reaction, licking yourself clean. But licking this off would probably kill him-
There was a movement in the dark. He could just make out some big rat shapes pouring through the hole. There were a couple of splashes. Some of the shapes were creeping along the walls.
Ah, said the voice. You see them? Watch them come for you, CAT!
Maurice stopped himself from running. This was no time to listen to his inner cat. His inner cat had got him out of the room, but his inner cat was stupid. It wanted him to attack things small enough and run away from everything else. But no cat could tackle a bunch of rats this size. He froze, and tried to keep an eye on the advancing rats. They were heading directly for him.
Hold on… hold on…
The voice had said: You can see them…
How did it know?
Maurice tried to think loudly: Can… You… Read… My… Mind?
Nothing happened.
Maurice had a burst of inspiration. He shut his eyes.
Open them! came the immediate command, and his eyelids trembled.
Shan't, thought Maurice. You can't hear my thoughts! he thought. You only use my eyes and ears! You're just guessing what I'm thinking.
There was no reply. Maurice didn't wait. He leapt. The sloping beam was where he remembered it. He clawed his way up, and hung on. At least all they could do was follow him up. With any luck, he could use his claws…
The rats got closer. Now they were sniffing for him down below, and he imagined quivering noses in the darkness.
One started to climb the beam, still sniffing. It must have been within inches of Maurice's tail when it turned around and went back down again.
He heard them reach the top of the rubble. There was more bewildered sniffing and then, in the dark, the sound of the rats paddling through the mud.
Maurice wrinkled his mud-caked forehead in amazement. Rats who couldn't smell a cat? And then he realized. He didn't smell of cat - he stank of mud, he felt like mud, in a room full of stinking mud.
He sat, still as stone, until through muddy-caked ears he heard claws heading back to the hole in the wall. Then, without opening his eyes, he crept carefully back down to the rubble and found that it had piled up against a rotten wooden door. What must have been a piece of plank, soggy as a sponge, fell out as he touched it.
A feeling of openness suggested that there was another cellar beyond. It stank of rot and burned wood.
Would the… voice know where he was if he opened his eyes now? Didn't one cellar look like another?
Perhaps this room was full of rats, too.
His eyes sprang open. There were no rats, but there was another rusted drain cover which opened into a tunnel just big enough for him to walk through. He could see a faint light.
So this is the rat world, he thought, as he tried to scrape the mud off himself. Dark and muddy and stinky and full of weird voices. I'm a cat. Sunlight and fresh air, that's my style. All I need now is a hole into the outside world and they won't see me for dust, or at least for bits of dried mud.
A voice in his head, which wasn't the mysterious voice but a voice just like his own, said: But what about the stupid-looking kid and the rest of them? You ought to help them! And Maurice thought: Where did you come from? I'll tell you what, you help them and I'll go somewhere warm, how about that?
The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. It still wasn't anything like daylight, or even moonlight, but anything was better than this gloom.
At least, nearly anything.
He pushed his head out of the pipe into a much larger one, made of bricks that were slimy with strange underground nastiness, and into the circle of candlelight.
'It's… Maurice?' said Peaches, staring at the mud dripping off his matted fur.
'Smells better than he usually does, then,' said Darktan, grinning in what Maurice considered was an unfriendly way.
'Oh ha, ha,' said Maurice, weakly. He wasn't in the mood for repartee.
'Ah, I knew you wouldn't let us down, old friend,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I have always said that we can depend on Maurice, at least.' He sighed deeply.
'Yes,' said Darktan, giving Maurice a much more knowing look. 'Depend on him to do what, though?'
'Oh,' said Maurice. 'Er. Good. I've found you all, then.'
'Yes,' said Darktan, in what Maurice thought was a nasty tone of voice. 'Amazing, isn't it. I expect you've been looking for a long time, too. I saw you rush off to look for us.'
'Can you help us?' said Dangerous Beans. 'We need a plan.'
'Ah, right,' said Maurice. 'I suggest we go upwards at every opportun-'
'To rescue Hamnpork,'said Darktan. 'We don't leave our people behind.'
'We don't?' said Maurice.
'We don't,' said Darktan.
'And then there's the kid,' said Peaches. 'Sardines says he's tied up with the female kid in one of the cellars.'
'Oh, well, you know, humans,' said Maurice, wrinkling his face. 'Humans and humans, you know, it's a human kind of thing, I don't think we should meddle, could be misunderstood, I know about humans, they'll sort it out'
'I don't care a ferret's shrlt for humans!' snapped Darktan. 'But those rat-catchers took Hamnpork off in a sack! You saw that room, cat! You saw the rats crammed in cages! It's the rat-catchers who are stealing the food! Sardines says there's sacks and sacks of food! And there's something else…'
'A voice,' said Maurice, before he could stop himself.
Darktan looked up, wild-eyed. 'You heard it?' he said. 'I thought it was just us!'
'The rat-catchers can hear it too,' said Maurice. 'Only they think it's their own thoughts.'
'It frightened the others,' mumbled Dangerous Beans. 'They just… stopped thinking…' He looked absolutely dejected. Open beside him, grubby with dirt and paw marks, was Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. 'Even Toxie ran off,' he went on. 'And he knows how to write! How can that happen?'
'It seemed to affect some of us more than others,' said Darktan, in a more matter-of-fact voice. 'I've sent some of the more sensible ones out to try and round up the rest, but it's going to be a long job. They were just running blindly. We've got to get Hamnpork. He's the leader. We're rats, after all. A clan. Rats will follow the leader.'
'But he's a bit old, and you're the tough one, and he's not exactly the brains of the outfit ' Maurice began.
'They took him away!' said Darktan. 'They're ratcatchers! He's one of us! Are you going to help or not?'
Maurice thought he heard a scrabbling noise at the other end of his pipe. He couldn't turn around to check, and he suddenly felt very exposed. 'Yeah, help you, yeah, yeah,' he said hurriedly.
'Ahem. Do you really mean that, Maurice?' said Peaches.
'Yeah, yeah, right,' said Maurice. He crawled out of the pipe and looked back along it. There was no sign of any rats.
'Sardines is following the rat-catchers,' said Darktan,'so we'll find out where they're taking him '
'I've got a bad feeling that I already know,' said Maurice.
'How?' snapped Peaches.
'I'm a cat, right?' said Maurice. 'Cats hang around places. We see things. A lot of places don't mind cats wandering, right, because we keep down the vermi-we keep the, er-'
'All right, all right, we know you don't eat anyone who can talk, you keep telling us,' said Peaches. 'Get on with it!'
'I was in a place once, it was a barn, I was up in the hayloft, where you can always find a, er-'
Peaches rolled her eyes. 'Yes, yes, go on!'
'Well, anyway, all these men came in and I couldn't get away because they had lots of dogs and they shut the barn doors and, er, they put up this kind of, kind of big round wooden wall in the middle of the floor, and there were some men with boxes of rats and they tipped rats into the ring and then, and then they put some dogs in, too. Terriers,' he added, trying to avoid their expressions.
'The rats fought the dogs?' said Darktan.
'Well, I suppose they could have done,' said Maurice. 'They mostly ran around and around. It's called rat-coursing. The rat-catchers bring the rats along, of course. Alive.'
'Rat-coursing…' said Darktan. 'How is it we've never heard of this?'
Maurice blinked at him. For clever creatures, the rats could be amazingly stupid at times. 'Why would you hear about it?' he said.
'Surely one of the rats who-?'
'You don't seem to understand,' said Maurice. 'The rats that go into the pit don't come out. At least, not breathing.'
There was silence.
'Can't they jump out?' asked Peaches in a little voice.
'Too high,' said Maurice.
'Why don't they fight the dogs?' said Darktan.
Really, really stupid, Maurice thought.
'Because they're rats, Darktan,' said Maurice. 'Lots of rats. All stinking of one another's fear and panic. You know how it happens.'
'I bit a dog on the nose once!' said Darktan.
'Right, right,' said Maurice soothingly. 'One rat can think and be brave, right. But a bunch of rats is a mob. A bunch of rats is just a big animal with lots of legs and no brain.'
'That's not true!' said Peaches. 'Together we are strong!'
'Exactly how high?' said Darktan, who was staring at the candlelight as if seeing pictures in it.
'What?' asked Peaches and Maurice together.
'The wall… how high, exactly?'
'Huh? I don't know! High! Humans were leaning their elbows on it! Does it matter? It's far too high for a rat to jump, I know that.'
'Everything we've done we've done because we've stuck together-' Peaches began.
'We'll rescue Hamnpork together, then,' said Darktan. 'We'll-' He spun around at the sound of a rat coming along the pipe, and then wrinkled his nose. 'It's Sardines,' he said. 'And… let's see, smells female, young, nervous… Nourishing?'
The youngest member of the Trap Disposal Squad was trailing after Sardines. She was wet and dejected.
'You look like a drowned rat, miss,' said Darktan.
'Fell in a broken drain, sir,' said Nourishing.
'Good to see you, anyway. What's happening, Sardines?'
The dancing rat did a few nervous steps. 'I've been climbing up more drainpipes and along more washing lines than is good for me,' he said. 'And don't ask me about krrkk cats, boss, I'd like to see every last one of 'em dead-savin' yer honour's presence, o'course,' Sardines added, eyeing Maurice nervously.
'And?' said Peaches.
'They've gone to some kind of stables right on the edge of the town,' said Sardines. 'Smells bad. Lots of dogs around. Men, too.'
'Rat pit,' said Maurice. 'I told you. They've been breeding rats for the rat pit!'
'Right,' said Darktan. 'We're going to get Hamnpork out of there. Sardines, you will show me the way. We'll try to pick up others as we go. The rest of you should try to find the kid.'
'Why are you giving orders?' said Peaches.
'Because someone has to,' said Darktan. 'Hamnpork might be a bit scabby and set in his ways but he's the leader and everyone smells that and we need him. Any questions? Right-'
'Can I come, sir?' said Nourishing.
'She's helping me carry my string, boss,' Sardines explained. Both he and the younger rat were carrying bundles of it.
'You need all of that?' said Darktan.
'You should never say no to a piece of string, boss,' said Sardines earnestly. 'It's amazing, some of the stuff I've been finding-'
'All right, so long as she's useful for something,' said Darktan. 'She'd better be able to keep up. Let's go!'
And then there was just Dangerous Beans, Peaches, and Maurice.
Dangerous Beans sighed. 'One rat can be brave, but a bunch of rats is just a mob?' he said. 'Are you right, Maurice?'
'No, I was… look, there was something back there,' said Maurice. 'It's in a cellar. I don't know what it is. It's the voice that gets into people's heads!'
'Not everyone,' said Peaches. 'It didn't frighten you, did it? Or us. Or Darktan. It made Hamnpork very angry. Why?'
Maurice blinked. He could hear the voice in his head again. It was very faint, and it certainly wasn't his own thoughts, and it said I will find a way in, CAT!
'Did you hear that?' he said.
'I didn't hear anything,' said Peaches.
Perhaps you have to be close, Maurice thought. Perhaps, if you've been close, it knows where your head lives.
He'd never seen a rat so miserable as Dangerous Beans. The little rat was huddled by the candle, staring unseeing at Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure.
'I hoped it would be better than this,' said Dangerous Beans. 'But it turns out we're just… rats. As soon as there's trouble, we're just… rats.'
It was very unusual for Maurice to feel sympathetic to anyone who wasn't Maurice. In a cat, that is a major character flaw. I must be ill, he thought. 'If it's any help, I'm just a cat,' he said.
'Oh, but you are not. You are kind and, deep down, I sense that you have a generous nature,' said Dangerous Beans.
Maurice tried not to look at Peaches. Oh boy, he thought.
'At least you ask people before you eat them,' said Peaches.
You'd better tell them, said Maurice's thoughts. Go on, tell them. You'd feel better.
Maurice tried to tell his thoughts to shut up. What a time to get a conscience! What good was a cat with a conscience? A cat with a conscience was a… a hamster, or something…
'Um, I've been meaning to talk to you about that,' he muttered.
Go on, tell them, said his shiny new conscience. Get it out in the open.
'Yes?' said Peaches.
Maurice squirmed. 'Well, you know I do always check my food these days…'
'Yes, and it does you great credit,' said Dangerous Beans.
Now Maurice felt even worse. 'Well, you know how we've always wondered how come I got Changed even though I never ate any of that magical stuff on the dump…'
'Yes,' said Peaches. 'That has always puzzled me.'
Maurice shifted uneasily. 'Well, you know… er… did you ever know a rat, quite big, one ear missing, bit of white fur on one side, couldn't run too fast 'cos of a bad leg?'
'That sounds like Additives,' said Peaches.
'Oh, yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'He disappeared before we met you, Maurice. A good rat. Had a bit of a speech… difficulty.'
'Speech difficulty,' said Maurice, gloomily.
'He stammered,' said Peaches, giving Maurice a long, cool stare. 'Couldn't get his words out very easily.'
'Not very easily,' said Maurice, his voice now quite hollow.
'But I'm sure you never met him, Maurice,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I miss him. He was a wonderful rat once you got him talking.'
'Ahem. Did you meet him, Maurice?' said Peaches, her stare nailing him to the wall.
Maurice's face moved. It tried various expressions one after another. Then he said, 'All right! I ate him, OK? All of him! Except for the tail and the green wobbly bit and that nasty purple lump, no-one knows what it is! I was just a cat! I hadn't learned to think yet! I didn't know! I was hungry! Cats eat rats, that's how it goes! It wasn't my fault! And he'd been eating the magic stuff and I ate him so then I got Changed too! Know how that feels, seeing the green wobbly bit like that? It doesn't feel good! Sometimes on dark nights I think I can hear him talking down there! All right? Satisfied? I didn't know he was anyone! I didn't know I was anyone! I ate him! He'd been eating the stuff on the dump and I ate him so that's how I got Changed! I admit it! I ate him! It wasn't my faauulltt!'
And then there was silence. After a while Peaches said, 'Yes, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?'
'What? You mean have I eaten anyone lately? No!'
'Are you sorry for what you did?' said Dangerous Beans.
'Sorry? What do you think? Sometimes I have nightmares where I burp and he-'
'Then that's probably all right,' said the little rat.
'All right?' said Maurice. 'How can it be all right? And you know the worst part? I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling sorry! Or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like, saying "Hello food, can you talk?" That's not how a cat is supposed to behave!'
'We don't act how rats are supposed to behave,' said Dangerous Beans. And then his face fell again. 'Up until now,' he sighed.
'Everyone was frightened,' said Peaches. 'Fear spreads.'
'I hoped we could be more than rats,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I thought we could be more than things that squeak and widdle, whatever Hamnpork says. And now… where is everyone?'
'Shall I read to you from Mr Bunnsy?' said Peaches, her voice full of concern. 'You know that always cheers you up when you're in one of your… dark times.'
There was a nod from Dangerous Beans.
Peaches pulled the huge book towards her and began to read. 'One day Mr Bunnsy and his friend Ratty Rupert the Rat went to see Old Man Donkey, who lived by the river-'
'Read the bit where they talk to the humans,' said Dangerous Beans.
Peaches obediently turned a page. '"Hello, Ratty Rupert," said Farmer Fred. "What a lovely day it is, to be sure-"'
This is mad, thought Maurice, as he listened to a story about wild woods and fresh bubbling streams, being read to one rat by another rat while they sat beside a drain along which ran something that certainly wasn't fresh. Anything but fresh. To be fair, though, it was bubbling a bit, or at least glooping.
Everything's going down the drain and they have this little picture in their heads about how nice things could be…
Look at those little pink sad eyes, said Maurice's own thoughts in Maurice's own head. Look at those little wobbly wrinkly noses. If you ran out on them and left them here, how could you look those little wobbly noses in the face again?
'I wouldn't have to,' said Maurice, out loud. 'That's the point!'
'What?' said Peaches, looking up from the book.
'Oh, nothing…' Maurice paused. There was nothing for it. It went against everything a cat stood for. This is what thinking does for you, he thought. It gets you into trouble. Even when you know other people can think for themselves, you start thinking for them too. He groaned.
'We'd better see what's happened to the kid,' he said.
It was completely black in the cellar. All there was, apart from the occasional drip of water, were voices.
'So,' said the voice of Malicia, 'let's go over it again, shall we? You don't have a knife of any kind?'
'That's right,' said Keith.
'Or some handy matches that could burn through the rope?'
'No.'
'And no sharp edge near you that you could rub the rope on?'
'No.'
'And you can't sort of pull your legs through your arms so that you can get your hands in front of you?'
'No.'
'And you don't have any secret powers?'
'No.'
'Are you sure? The moment I saw you, I thought: he's got some amazing power that will probably manifest itself when he's in dire trouble. I thought: no-one could really be as useless as that unless it was a disguise.'
'No. I'm sure. Look, I'm just a normal person. Yes, all right, I was abandoned as a baby. I don't know why. It was something that happened. They say it happens quite a lot. It doesn't make you special. And I don't have any secret markings as if I was some kind of sheep, and I don't think I'm a hero in disguise and I don't have some kind of amazing talent that I'm aware of. OK, I'm good at playing quite a few musical instruments. I practise a lot. But I'm the kind of person heroes aren't. I get by and I get along. I do my best. Understand?'
'Oh.'
'You should have found someone else.'
'In fact, you can't be any help at all?'
'No.'
There was silence for a while and then Malicia said, 'You know, in many ways I don't think this adventure has been properly organized.'
'Oh, really?' said Keith.
'This is not how people should be tied up.'
'Malicia, do you understand? This isn't a story,' said Keith, as patiently as he could. 'That's what I'm trying to tell you. Real life isn't a story. There isn't some kind of… of magic that keeps you safe and makes crooks look the other way and not hit you too hard and tie you up next to a handy knife and not kill you. Do you understand?'
There was some more dark silence.
'My granny and my great-aunt were very famous story-tellers, you know,' said Malicia eventually, in a strained little voice. 'Agoniza and Eviscera Grim.'
'You said,' said Keith.
'My mother would have been a good story-teller, too, but my father doesn't like stories. That's why I've changed my name to Grim for professional purposes.'
'Really…'
'I used to get beaten when I was small for telling stories,' Malicia went on.
'Beaten?' said Keith.
'All right, then, smacked,' said Malicia. 'On the leg. But it did hurt. My father says you can't run a city on stories. He says you have to be practical.'
'Oh.'
'Aren't you interested in anything except music? He broke your pipe!'
'I expect I'll buy another one.'
The calm voice infuriated Malicia. 'Well, I'll tell you something,' she said. 'If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.'
'And what if your story doesn't work?'
'You keep changing it until you find one that does.'
'Sounds silly.'
'Huh, look at you. You're just a face in someone else's background. You let a cat make all the decisions.'
'That's because Maurice is-'
A voice said, 'Would you like us to go away until you've stopped being human?'
'Maurice?' said Keith. 'Where are you?'
'I'm in a drain and believe me, this has not been a good night. Do you know how many old cellars there are here?' said the voice of Maurice, in the blackness. 'Peaches is bringing a candle in. It's too dark even for me to see you.'
'Who's Peaches?' whispered Malicia.
'She's another Changeling. A thinking rat,' said Keith.
'Like Pilchards?'
'Like Sardines, yes.'
'Aha,' hissed Malicia. 'See? A story. I am smug, I gloat. The plucky rats rescue our heroes, probably by gnawing through the ropes.'
'Oh, we're back in your story, are we?' said Keith. 'And what am I in your story?'
'I know it's not going to be romantic interest,' said Malicia. 'And you're not funny enough for comic relief. I don't know. Probably just… someone. You know, like "man in street", something like that.' There were faint sounds in the darkness. 'What are they doing now?' she whispered.
'Trying to light their candle, I think.'
'Rats play with fire?' Malicia hissed.
'They don't play. Dangerous Beans thinks lights and shadows are very important. They always have a candle alight somewhere in their tunnels, wherever they-'
'Dangerous Beans? What sort of name is that?'
'Shssh! They just learned words off old food tins and signs and things! They didn't know what the words meant, they just chose them because they liked the sounds!'
'Yes, but… Dangerous Beans? It sounds as if he makes you'
'It's his name. Don't make fun of it!'
'Sorry, I'm sure,' said Malicia, haughtily.
The match flared. The candle flame grew.
Malicia looked down at two rats. One was… well, just a small rat, although sleeker than most of the ones she'd seen. In fact most of the ones she'd seen had been dead, but even the living ones had always been… twitchy, nervy, sniffing the air all the time. This one just… watched. It stared right at her.
The other rat was white, and even smaller. It was also watching her, although peering was a better word. It had pink eyes. Malicia had never been very interested in other people's feelings, since she'd always considered that her own were a lot more interesting, but there was something sad and worrying about that rat.
It was dragging a small book, or at least what would be a small book to a human; it was about half the size of a rat. The cover was quite colourful, but Malicia couldn't make out what it was.
'Peaches and Dangerous Beans,' said Keith. 'This is Malicia. Her father is the mayor here.'
'Hello,' said Dangerous Beans.
'Mayor? Isn't that like government!' said Peaches. 'Maurice says governments are very dangerous criminals and steal money from people.'
'How did you teach them to speak?' said Malicia.
'They taught themselves,' said Keith. 'They're not trained animals, you know.'
'Well, my father does not steal from anyone. Who taught them that governments are very-?'
''Scuse me, 'scuse me,' said Maurice's voice hurriedly, from the drain gate. 'That's right, I'm down here. Can we get on with things?'
'We'd like you to gnaw at our ropes, please,' said Keith.
'I've got a bit of broken knife blade,' said Peaches. 'It's for sharpening the pencil. Would that be better?'
'Knife?' said Malicia. 'Pencil?'
'I did say they weren't ordinary rats,' said Keith.
Nourishing had to run to keep up with Darktan. And Darktan was running because he had to run to keep up with Sardines. When it came to moving fast across a town, Sardines was champion of the world.
They picked up more rats on the way. Nourishing couldn't help noticing that these were mostly the younger ones, who'd fled because of the terror but hadn't gone far. They fell in behind Darktan readily, almost grateful to be doing something with a purpose.
Sardines danced on ahead. He just couldn't help it. And he liked drainpipes, roofs and gutters. You got no dogs up there, he said, and not many cats.
No cat could have followed Sardines. The people of Bad Blintz had strung washing lines between the ancient houses and he leapt onto them, clinging upside down and moving as fast as he would on a flat surface. He went straight up walls, plunged through thatch, tap-danced around smoking chimneys, slid down tiles. Pigeons erupted from their roosts as he sped past, the other rats trailing behind him.
Clouds rolled across the moon.
Sardines reached the edge of a roof and leapt, landing on a wall just below. He ran along the top and disappeared in the crack between two planks.
Nourishing followed him into a kind of loft. Hay was piled in parts of it, but a larger part was simply open to the ground floor below, and supported by several heavy beams that ran right across the building. Bright light shone up from below, and there was the buzz of human voices and - she shuddered - the barking of dogs.
'This is a big stables, boss,' said Sardines. 'The pit's under the beam over there. Come on…'
They crept out on the ancient woodwork and peered over the edge.
Far below was a wooden circle, like half a giant barrel. Nourishing realized that they were right over the pit; if she fell now, she'd land in the middle of it. Men were crowded around it. Dogs were tied up around the walls, barking at one another and at the universe in general in the mad, I'm-going-to-do-this-for-ever way of all dogs. And off to one side was a stack of boxes and sacks.
The sacks were moving.
'Crtlk! How the krrp will we find Hamnpork in this lot?' Darktan said, his eyes gleaming in the light from below.
'Well, with old Hamnpork, boss, I reckon we'll know when he turns up,' said Sardines.
'Could you drop into the pit on a string?'
'I'm game for anything, guv,' said Sardines, loyally.
'Into a pit with a dog in it, sir?' said Nourishing. 'And won't the string cut you in half?'
'Ah, I've got something that helps there, boss,' said Sardines. He took off his thick coil of string and put it aside. There was another coil under it, glistening and light brown. He pulled at a piece of it, and it snapped back with a faint 'twang'. 'Bands of rubber,' he said. 'I pinched them off a desk when I was looking for more string. I've used 'em before, boss. Very handy for a long drop, boss.'
Darktan took a step back on the boards. There was an old candle lantern there, lying on its side, the glass smashed, the candle eaten long ago. 'Good,' he said. 'Because I've got an idea. If you can drop down-'
There was a roar from below. The rats looked over the beam again.
The circle of heads had thickened around the lip of the pit. A man was talking in a loud voice. Occasionally there was a cheer. The black top hats of the rat-catchers moved through the crowd. Seen from above, they were sinister black blobs among the grey and brown caps.
One of the rat-catchers emptied a sack into the pit, and the watchers saw the dark shapes of rats scurrying in a panic, as they tried to find, in that circle, a corner to hide in.
The crowd opened slightly and a man walked to the edge of the pit, holding a terrier. There was some more shouting, a ripple of laughter, and the dog was dropped in with the rats.
The Changelings stared down at the circle of death, and the cheering humans.
After a minute or two Nourishing tore her gaze away. When she looked around she caught the expression on Darktan's face. Maybe it wasn't just the lamplight that made his eyes full of fire. She saw him look along the stable to the big doors at the far end. They had been barred shut. Then his head turned to the hay and straw piled up in the loft, and in the cribs and mangers below.
Darktan pulled a length of wood out of one of his belts.
Nourishing smelled the sulphur in the red blob on the end.
It was a match.
Darktan turned and saw him staring at her. He nodded towards the piles of hay in the loft. 'My plan might not work,' he said. 'If it doesn't, you'll be in charge of the other plan.'
'Me?' said Nourishing.
'You. Because I won't be… around,' said Darktan. He held out the match. 'You know what to do,' he said, nodding to the nearest rack of hay.
Nourishing swallowed. 'Yes. Yes, I think so. Er… when?'
'When the time comes. You'll know when,' said Darktan, and looked back down at the massacre. 'One way or the other, I want them to remember tonight,' he said quietly. 'They'll remember what they did. And they'll remember what we did. For as long as they… live.'
Hamnpork lay in his sack. He could smell the other rats nearby, and the dogs, and the blood. Especially the blood.
He could hear his own thoughts, but they were like a little chirp of insects against the thunderstorm of his senses. Bits of memory danced in front of his eyes. Cages. Panic. The white rat. Hamnpork. That was his own name. Odd. Never used to have names. Just used to smell other rats. Darkness. Darkness inside, behind the eyes. That bit was Hamnpork. Everything outside was everything else.
Hamnpork. Me. Leader.
The red-hot rage still boiled inside him but now it had a kind of shape, like the shape a canyon gives to a river in flood, narrowing it, forcing it to flow faster, giving it direction.
Now he could hear voices.
'… just slip him in, no-one'll notice…'
'… OK, I'll shake it up a bit first to get him angry…'
The sack was jerked around. It didn't make Hamnpork any more angry than he was already. There wasn't any room for more anger.
The sack swung as it was carried. The roar of humans grew louder, the smells grew stronger. There was a moment of silence, the sack was upturned, and Hamnpork slid out into a roar of noise and a pile of struggling rats.
He snapped and clawed his way to the top as the rats scattered, and saw a growling dog being lowered into the pit. It snatched up a rat, shook it vigorously, and sent the limp body flying.
The rats stampeded.
'Idiots!' screamed Hamnpork. 'Work together! You could strip this fleabag to the bone!'
The crowd stopped shouting.
The dog stared down its nose at Hamnpork. It was trying to think. The rat had spoken. Only humans spoke. And it didn't smell right. Rats stank of panic. This one didn't.
The silence rang like a bell.
Then Jacko grabbed the rat, shook him, not too hard, and tossed him down. He'd decided to do a sort of test; rats shouldn't be able to talk like humans, but this rat looked like a rat - and killing rats was OK - but talked like a human - and biting humans got you a serious thrashing. He had to find out for sure. If he got a wallop, this rat was a human.
Hamnpork rolled, and managed to get upright, but there was a deep tooth wound in his side.
The other rats were still in a boiling huddle as far away from the dog as possible, every rat trying to be the one at the bottom.
Hamnpork spat blood. 'All right, then,' he snarled, advancing on the puzzled dog. 'Now you find out how a real rat dies!'
'Hamnpork!'
He looked up.
String uncoiled behind Sardines as he fell through the smoky air towards the frantic circle. He was right above Hamnpork, getting bigger and bigger…
… and slower and slower…
He came to a stop between the dog and the rat. For a moment he hung there. He raised his hat, politely, and said, 'Good evening!' Then he wrapped all four legs around Hamnpork.
And now the rope of elastic bands, stretched to twanging point, finally sprang back. Too late, too late, Jacko snapped at empty air. The rats were accelerated upwards, out of the pit-and stopped, bouncing in mid air, just out of reach.
The dog was still looking up when Darktan leapt off the other side of the beam. As the crowd stared in astonishment, he plummeted down towards the terrier.
Jacko's eyes narrowed. Rats disappearing into the air was one thing, but rats dropping right towards his mouth was something else. It was rat on a plate, it was rat on a stick.
Darktan looked back as he fell. Up above, Nourishing was doing some frantic knotting and biting. Now Darktan was on the other end of Sardines' string. But Sardines had explained things very carefully. Darktan's weight alone wasn't heavy enough to pull the weight of two other rats back up to the beam…
So, when Darktan saw Sardines and his struggling passenger had disappeared safely into the gloom of the roof-
-he let go of the big old candle lamp he'd been holding for the extra weight and bit through the rope.
The lamp landed heavily on Jacko and Darktan landed on the lamp, rolling down onto the floor.
The crowd was silent. They'd been silent since Hamnpork had been propelled out of the pit. Around the top of the wall which, yes, was far too high for a rat to jump, Darktan saw faces. They were mostly red. The mouths were mostly open. The silence was the silence of red faces drawing breath ready to start shouting at any moment.
Around Darktan the surviving rats were scrambling aimlessly for a foothold on the wall. Fools, he thought. Four or five of you together could make any dog wish you'd never been born. But you scrabble and panic and you get picked off one at a time…
The slightly-stunned Jacko blinked and stared down at Darktan, a growl rising in his throat.
'Right, you kkrrkk,' said Darktan, loud enough for the watchers to hear. 'Now I'm going to show you how a rat can live.'
He attacked.
Jacko was not a bad dog, according to the way of dogs. He was a terrier and liked killing rats in any case, and killing lots of rats in the pit meant that he got well fed and called a good boy and wasn't kicked very often. Some rats did fight back and that wasn't much of a problem, because they were smaller than Jacko and he had a lot more teeth. Jacko wasn't that smart, but he was a lot smarter than a rat and, in any case, his nose and mouth did most of the thinking.
And he was surprised, therefore, when his jaws snapped shut on this new rat and it wasn't there.
Darktan didn't run like a rat should. He ducked like a fighter. He nipped Jacko under the chin and vanished. Jacko spun around. The rat still wasn't there. Jacko had spent his show business career biting rats that tried to run away. Rats that stayed really close were unfair!
There was a roar from the watchers. Someone shouted, 'Ten dollars on the rat!' and someone else punched him in the ear. Another man started to climb into the pit. Someone smashed a beer bottle on that man's head.
Dancing back and forth under the spinning, yapping Jacko, Darktan waited for his moment…
… and saw it, and lunged, and bit hard.
Jacko's eyes crossed. A piece of Jacko that was very private and of interest only to Jacko and any lady dogs he might happen to meet was suddenly a little ball of pain.
He yelped. He snapped at the air. And then, in the uproar, he tried to climb out of the pit. His claws scraped desperately as he reared up against the greasy, smooth planking.
Darktan jumped onto his tail, ran up his back, scampered to the tip of Jacko's nose, and leapt over the wall.
He landed among legs. Men tried to stamp on him, but that meant other men would have to give them room. By the time they'd elbowed one another out of the way and stamped heavily on one another's boots, Darktan was gone.
But there were other dogs. They were half-mad with excitement in any case, and now they pulled away from ropes and chains and set off after a running rat. They knew about chasing rats.
Darktan knew about running. He sped across the floor like a comet, with a tail of snarling, barking dogs, headed for the shadows, spied a hole in the planking and dived through into the nice, safe, darkness-
Click went the trap.