Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

Big Skip saw his gestures and understood. He flew to the other doors, slamming them one after another. Pazel and Druffle chased after him. 'We're not out of the saucepot yet,' said the freebooter, wild-eyed.

Pazel knew he was right. They had closed the doors, but the deck's central passage, which was also the widest, had no doors to shut.

'Come on, we'll block it with crates!' he said.

'Forget that — they're all bolted down,' said Big Skip. 'And who's going to hold them in place, once there's fifty rats pushing from the other side?'

Druffle looked over his shoulder, counting heads. 'Thirteen of us. And that third door looks as flimsy as the blary floorboards in the liquor vault. We're going to lose this deck, my hearts.'

Right again, Pazel thought. Armed, Hercol, Thasha and Rose were barely managing to hold a narrow staircase. The rest of them didn't have a single weapon, except for Fiffengurt's blackjack, and a crowbar Druffle had picked up somewhere. Weapons, he thought, we have to put our hands on some weapons.

He stared into the open passage, thinking furiously. The surgery lay behind them — would a doctor's blade or a bone saw be any use against such monsters? There were shepherd's hooks in racks outside the cable tiers, for guiding the great ropes into coils. Useless, useless. They wanted to kill the rats, not herd them.

Suddenly a woman's voice echoed up the passage: 'What's happening? Let us out, let us out!' And Pazel remembered: the steerage passengers were still locked in their miserable compartment, dead ahead, in the zone that any minute would be overrun by rats.

Big Skip turned white as sailcloth. 'There's more than forty people in that room. And if the rats break through their door-'

Other voices joined the woman's. Hands thumped urgently at a wall or door.

'They'll draw the rats right to them!' said Pazel. 'And blast it, Marila's still got our master key!'

'Stay here,' said Big Skip. 'I'll see if Rose has a key.'

He dashed towards the melee at the stair. Druffle fidgeted and snarled. 'They're just about ready to blary hang us, and here we are fighting alongside 'em again! There's not a stale crumb of justice in this world. And I still say Arunis is behind it all.'

'Not likely,' said Pazel. 'The rats can't sail the ship for him. And he doesn't want men dying until he gets the Nilstone out of the Shaggat's hand. No, it's got to be the Stone itself.'

'Then why don't he come out of his damned cabin and do something useful for once?' Druffle fumed. 'Why don't he call up more demons from the Pits, to fight these carbuncular bastards? Or was all that talk back in Simja a barrel of hogwash?'

'It happened,' said Pazel, remembering Dri's account of the summoning.

Druffle looked at him sharply. 'Hogwash! That's it! Ain't there pitchforks with the live animals, just round the corner?'

'Yes!' said Pazel, starting. 'There's two pitchforks, in a cabinet across from the cattle pens! They'd be blary useful, Mr Druffle!'

'I'll fetch 'em right now!' Druffle thrust the crowbar into Pazel's hands. 'Keep your eye on that passage, lad.'

He was gone — so quickly that Pazel couldn't help feeling suspicious. Did he really mean to come back, or were the pitchforks just a handy excuse to run away? Druffle had shown intense, almost ludicrous bravery in the past, when under Arunis' mind-control spell. But after Druffle's behaviour in the liquour vault, Pazel had begun to think Marila was right.

And yet the one who had betrayed him was Dastu. The one nobody thought twice about, the one they all adored. Pazel's feelings remained almost too painful to face. Ramachni, he thought, how could you tell us to trust?

The voices from the darkness pleaded, wailed. Pazel looked back towards the ladderway: Big Skip was still trying to get Rose's attention. No time, no time: surely the rats were just seconds away. There were old folks back there, and children. Whole families who'd paid dearly for the passage, believing that by now they'd be almost to Etherhorde, a great city at the start of a Great Peace, a new life for them all.

And to think Ott had wanted them aboard just to keep up appearances. They were about to die, for appearances. Pazel swore, and dashed headlong down the corridor.

Forty feet, past the abandoned third-class berths, the delousing chamber, the empty nursery. On his left, down a side passage, he heard the screams, howls, prayers of the rats, still crashing against Fiffengurt's door.

A ghastly smell of human waste: he was running between racks of tight-lidded chamber pots, which no one had emptied in days. Then he was at the steerage door. The men and women were thumping, screaming. 'Villains! Assassins! You can't leave us here to die!'

'Quiet!' said Pazel, as loudly as he dared. 'Listen to me! I can't open the door-'

'Can't, or won't?' they shot back. 'What in the Nine Pits is going on out there? Who's killing who?'

'Shut up and listen,' snapped Pazel, 'or you will be killed, and there won't be a blary thing I can do about it.'

Some of the prisoners tried to silence the rest. Pazel didn't dare tell them about the rats; it would start a panic no one could restrain. Instead he told them they had to break through the ceiling, and escape into the berth deck above. 'I don't know how,' he said, 'but you've got to do it, and fast. Believe me, nobody's going to punish you for destroying Company property! I'll try to get men to help you from up there.'

There were sounds of shoving and pushing, contending cries of 'Liar!' and 'Do as he says!' Then a fist smashed hard against the door, and a man bellowed at the top of his lungs, 'Let us out! Let us out!'

Others took up the chant; the calmer voices were lost in the din. Pazel whirled around — just in time to see a gigantic, blood-smeared rat scurry into the corridor from the side passage. It spotted him, and screeched, and from behind it came an answering howl.

Terror and ecstasy: Pazel saw the rat charge, felt the solid weight of the crowbar in his hand, felt above all the slowing of time that Hercol said came to many before combat was joined. In that instant so much of what the swordsman or Thasha achieved in battle-dance no longer seemed unthinkable. He could not do it, maybe, but he saw that it could be done. He had time to gauge the rat's strength and its madness, the momentum of its charge. Time to consider twenty steps and stances. Time to imagine it tearing him apart.

He turned sideways, giving himself room to swing. The rat was shouting Heretic! Looking him in the eye, and in its own gaze was hate and torment and an intelligence unhinged. But it was not all mad: as Pazel swung it saw the danger, and spun away, so that the blow that would have cracked its skull connected instead with its shoulder — wounding instead of killing. The rat whirled completely around and came at him again. Pazel's backswing barely kept its teeth from his face. He lashed out hard with his left foot, and struck the creature full in the flank. But the rat twisted with astonishing flexibility, and sank its shovel-like teeth into his thigh. Screaming with pain, Pazel brought down the crowbar again.

Crack. The rat shuddered, but did not let go. Pazel struck again, roaring. Again. Again. On the fifth blow the rat's jaw loosened; on the sixth it fell to the floor.

Pazel turned and sprinted for the main compartment. As he raced by a second rat entered from the side passage. He swung the crowbar, never slowing, and knocked the creature from his path. But from the corner of his eye he saw scores of the beasts flooding around the corner. Another few seconds and he'd have been trapped.

'Here they come!' he shouted, racing back into the main compartment.

For the first time in his life Pazel was overjoyed by the sight of Turachs. Eight archers stood in a gauntlet, with Haddismal beside them, looking as though he was at last in his element. 'Drop, Muketch!' he commanded. Pazel saw eight longbows levelled at him, bending, and threw himself flat on the deck.