Terry Pratchett - The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“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 .”