I Parker - The Fires of the Gods

While he was up, he tried again to push upward against the boards. Again he failed. Panic rose, and he doubled his efforts, struggling desperately, slipping in the mud and falling several times, hoping that he had not squashed the rat. He gained nothing by this except that the flow of water increased from a trickle to a steady small stream filled with dirt and mud. It became likely that one or more of the walls of his prison would cave inward under the water pressure and bury him. Drowning was one thing; being suffocated in mud quite another.

He gave up trying to shift the weight above and sat down to work on his bonds. The rat eagerly climbed into his lap and leaped to his shoulder. He was becoming attached to his companion. The creature’s will to survive against all odds inspired him. Through the thin, wet fabric of his shirt he could feel the rat’s every breath, perhaps even the rapid beating of his heart.

The rat might, of course, be a female, but he liked to think of it as a male. How desperately he fought for his life! Perhaps, not having human intelligence, he felt an even greater panic. And yet, what did a rat have to lose? A constant struggle for food – his only joy outside the brief pleasure of mating – and always the threat of predators and killers, dogs, cats, and humans alike.

‘I can’t see you,’ he told the rat, ‘but you’re filled with the spirit of survival. Tora would have thought you a demon in the dark and feared you. Yes, you are a little demon, the way you fight and cling to life.’ He chuckled. ‘Now that we are intimately acquainted, you’ll need a name. I’ll call you Demon, shall I?’

The rat turned on his shoulder, perhaps to hear better, and tickled his ear with his whiskers. Akitada laughed.

He wondered if he was going mad.

He took a lesson from the rat and focused on escaping death. It was not clear how he could free himself, but if he was to die, he wanted to die fighting for his life.

Like the rat.

With his hands tied behind his back, he could do little except to work his bonds loose by pulling and stretching, or to cut the ropes by rubbing them against something sharp. He had already tried and failed to loosen them, and it seemed unlikely that the rat could be trained to gnaw the ropes apart. The thought made him laugh again. There was not enough time in any case. He shook his head, causing the rat to squeak in protest.

Perhaps the knock on his head had addled his brains, or the fear of a very unpleasant death had made him silly.

Tora had once managed to escape death by cutting his bonds with a pottery shard. Akitada started to search the floor of his prison.

His fingers just reached the muddy floor under the water he sat in. Straining, he felt about in the mud, moving around until he had covered every section of the floor. It seemed to take a long time, exhausted him, and turned up nothing but a few pebbles and small stones too smooth to do any good. Amazingly, the rat had clung on patiently, as if he knew the human was trying to save them.

And all the time, the water was rising.

Having failed to find a useful tool on the floor, he knew he must turn to the walls next. He dreaded the effort of raising and lowering himself slowly along the muddy walls.

Leaning back to gather strength, he thought he heard a faint sound, as if someone had shouted in the distance. Akitada struggled up, slipped, and sat down hard in the cold water, the rat scrambling to hold on to his shoulder. He raised his voice, bellowing for help until his throat grew sore and he had to stop.

Nobody came. Nobody heard him.

Yet the small and distant sound gave him new hope. If he could free his hands, he could scratch and scrabble at the seam under the wooden cover. Since fresh air reached him, there must be chinks. He would work more dirt loose.

But first came the slow and painful exploration of the dirt walls, covering each time only an area wide enough for his bound hands to search. Standing, he could not quite reach to the top with his hands. The slow work sitting, then kneeling, and finally standing in a bent-over position, strained his muscles and exhausted him. He slipped many times back into the water. After every third effort, he allowed himself a brief rest. Throughout, the rat adjusted its precarious hold again and again, complaining in high chirps.

‘Be quiet, Demon,’ he said once. ‘I’m trying to save your miserable life along with mine.’ After that, he imagined, the rat’s complaints diminished.

At some point during his efforts, his mind seemed to clear miraculously, and he saw how the murder must have happened and what its real motive had been. He was so startled that he stopped working for a few long moments, overwhelmed by the human suffering that had led to the crime.

But there was no time. The water was rising faster. It already reached the middle of his chest when he was sitting. Soon he would no longer be able to rest.

He found what he was looking for in the third wall. A sharp piece of flinty stone protruded slightly from the dirt. He thanked the gods that it was embedded at a point where he could work on his knees.

‘Now, Demon, we have a chance. Sit tight.’

The rat chittered softly and wrapped its tail around Akitada’s neck.

Using his fingernails, Akitada exposed a little more of the sharp edge, then raised his arms enough to press the rope against it and started rubbing. The rat bobbed up and down and adjusted his tail a few times, but he seemed to take this activity for an amusing diversion.

To his relief, Akitada felt the first strand of roping part quickly and worked even harder. Another strand parted, and the bonds around his wrists loosened slightly. By now his shoulders were sore, but he did not care. He leaned into his work, scraping the rope against the flint as fast and hard as he could.

His increased effort caused the flint to come loose and fall into the muddy water. Akitada felt like weeping. He sagged back into a sitting position and felt about without much hope of finding the flinty bit of stone. He did not, but this effort caused the rope to loosen further, and now he strained to break the remaining strands. They gave, and he brought his arms to the front, cradling his sore hands and wrists against his stomach while the throbbing pain in his shoulders and arm muscles slowly eased.

The cold and fetid water nearly reached his armpits now. He had no time to lose. Staggering back up, he explored with both hands the seams along the wooden cover. The rat squawked once or twice in protest, but managed to hold on. He found where most of the water came in, a steady flow. Something was slowly draining into his pit. Akitada wondered if it was still raining. The long-desired rain was doing its best to kill him.

On the opposite side, he managed to insert his whole hand between the wooden cover and the ground above. Here he scratched at the dirt, scraping it inside where it splashed into the water. At some point, the rat lost its precarious perch and plunged into the water, which reached Akitada’s upper thighs by now. Akitada stopped scraping and instead felt around for the animal. He found the rat when he sank his teeth into his leg in a desperate effort to save himself. Detaching the creature, he dropped him inside his shirt, a wet, irritable presence that moved about to find a comfortable place as Akitada returned to his work.

His neck and back began to hurt from standing in this awkward position, but soon he could reach outside the pit to his elbow and find the edge of the wooden cover. A large loose splinter caught in his skin, and he broke it off to use for a digging tool.

More fresh air came in, and he could hear some sounds, the rain splashing, a bird’s cry, a dog barking in the distance. He worked away feverishly.