Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

The bows sang. Yards behind him, the rats gurgled and screamed, and the deck shook as bodies crashed to the ground. Pazel dragged himself aside, not daring to raise his head. The bows twanged again, and the sounds of agony redoubled. At last Pazel realised he was out of range, and turned over just in time to see the remaining rats fleeing back down the corridor. Ten or twelve lay dying.

Haddismal beckoned to his men. 'Advance! Advance with me! Viper stance, blades and bows! Onward, in Magad's name!'

In tight formation, the soldiers ran into the darkness. Pazel hurried back towards the stair. But halfway across the main compartment he saw Hercol, no longer needed at the ladderway, cutting across his path at a run, Ildraquin still naked in his hand. Thasha ran close behind him. She gave Pazel a look of grim apprehension, a look that begged him to follow. Hercol's face was darker than ever.

Pazel rushed to catch up with them, and even before he did so, he realised where they must be bound: the surgery. It was just a few yards off the main compartment. But why were they running in such a panic? Had Hercol taken some new injury? He wasn't bleeding, except a bit around his bandaged fingers. Someone else, then, Pazel thought, someone wounded before he came down to the hold.

He and Thasha caught up with Hercol just as he reached the surgery door. There, for one breath, Hercol paused; and squeezed his eyes shut. Then he flung the door wide.

Wreckage, everywhere: the floor was strewn with broken glass, scattered surgical tools. Fluids dripped from the screwed-down tables. The single patient, Old Gangrune the purser, was squatting atop Chadfallow's desk in the corner. His forehead was bandaged; his lips trembled in fear. Then Pazel's eyes swept right, to the far end of the chamber, and he gasped.

Ignus Chadfallow stood backed against a cabinet. With his left hand he gripped a jagged staff, part of a broomhandle, maybe. With his right, he held a small, bloody bundle to his chest.

Ranged before him on the tables stood some fifty ixchel. All were tensed for battle. About a dozen had their backs to Chadfallow, in a protective semicircle; the rest surrounded this smaller group, menacing it with all manner of arms.

When the door flew open the ixchel scattered, like chess pieces swept from a board. At the same time Old Gangrune scrambled off the desk and bolted for the door. 'Crawlies! Crawlies!' he howled, barrelling past them into the corridor.

The ixchel, to Pazel's amazement, simply let him go. After their first startled movements, they snapped back into positions that were almost unchanged. The larger group merely angled to one side, keeping the newcomers in view.

Hercol made straight for the doctor and his unexpected guard. 'Chadfallow, have they-'

'Stay where you are, monster!' shouted a familiar voice. It was Taliktrum.

The young lord stood among his shaved-headed guard. His swallow-suit draped on his shoulders like a holy raiment. Steldak stood just behind him, whispering something. A slim, catlike girl clutched at his arm.

Hercol took another step. Taliktrum shouted something, and ten archers fitted arrows to bows.

'We will drop you with the same poison you used on Lady Thasha,' said Taliktrum.

'I will kill half of you before I fall,' said Hercol.

'Gods below, man!' shouted Chadfallow suddenly. 'Are you out of your head? Why did you have me guard this body? What is her importance to you? I have seen them, that's enough. Rose will know what to do.'

'Hear the giant!' cried the ixchel with loathing.

'Who are you talking about? It's Dri, isn't it?' Thasha pushed past Hercol, as if daring Taliktrum to make good on his threat. Hercol gripped her shoulder.

'If I shoot you with pure blane this time, you'll never wake up, stupid girl,' said Taliktrum. 'Not without the antidote. And I can promise you none will provide it.' He turned to the dozen ixchel between him and the doctor. 'Ensyl, stand aside. You know the rites must be observed.'

'I know what my mistress believes in,' said a young ixchel woman at the head of the group, 'and how you betrayed her.'

'You will quit this room, my lord,' said Hercol softly, 'or by the infernal fires, I'll end your reign here and now.'

Steldak looked up with fear at Ildraquin. 'My lord,' he said in ixchel-speech, 'this man felled Ott in seconds, alone. Do not fight him. We can come back later, when they sleep.'

Despite himself, Pazel laughed aloud. 'Sleep! When's that going to be, you mad dog? Have you seen what's going on out there? Do you know what's happened to your friends the rats?'

Taliktrum frowned sharply. 'Friends?' he said. 'Steldak, you know what I think of those vermin. Have you been consorting with them again?'

Steldak looked suddenly exposed, and frightened. 'My lord, the boy speaks rubbish. Like any of us, I bump into rats, they can hardly be avoided-'

'Especially,' said Pazel, 'when you're squeezed into a space the size of a shoebox with one of them, waiting to attack the captain.'

Taliktrum's face tightened. His lips curled back from his teeth in a grimace of fury. 'Again. You dare defy us again — defy my father's last order, when your first breaking of it put him in the jaws of that cat.'

'Don't take his word-'

'Should I take yours, rather? No: it is your head I should take. Get out of my sight before I do so.'

Steldak backed away, sputtering with indignation. From outside the room, Pazel heard screeches and cries. The rats were getting closer.

Hercol flexed his bloody fingers on Ildraquin. His face astonished Pazel. This was what he used to be, he thought. A man without kindness, a man of use to Sandor Ott and his order. A man capable of anything.

'Quit this chamber, Lord Taliktrum. Now.'

The young leader's nerves were clearly frayed. All the same he bristled at Hercol.

'What I do matters little. Steldak is right in one thing: we can come back when we please. You've lost more than her, you know. Wait a bit longer, and-'

'Now!' Hercol exploded.

Taliktrum fled the table, and his people fled with him, leaping, whirling, so many copper leaves in a gale. But with that uncanny ixchel coordination, they came together again a heartbeat later, schooling, sprinting as one body out the surgery door. The dozen ixchel standing guard in front of Chadfallow did not move.

Thasha rushed towards the doctor. Pazel followed, although a part of him wanted to run the other way, close his eyes, stop his ears. Anything rather than see what he was about to see.

The young ixchel woman brandished her sword at them. 'You are not to touch her, either,' she said.

'Peace, Ensyl,' said Hercol, his voice close to breaking. 'They will use only their eyes.'

'Pazel,' said Chadfallow, looking at him sternly, 'how long have you known they were aboard?'

Pazel ignored the question. He stared at the bundle the doctor held against his chest. He could not move. He felt Hercol standing close behind him, frozen like himself. At last, trembling, Thasha put out her hand — careful not to touch the bloodstained cloths — and gently tugged the doctor's sleeve. Chadfallow lowered his arm.

Diadrelu lay there, pale and beautiful and dead, her neck wrapped in a crimson bandage. Chadfallow had washed the blood from her shoulders and her hands, which were folded across her breast. She had never looked more calm, more full of vision, although her eyes were closed. Pazel didn't know just when he started to cry, but he knew he had never cried like this in his lifetime. Louder, sure, for his lost family, for Ormael, but not with this despair, this sense of something that was both part of him and too good to be part of him, and at the same time something he'd built — trust, love, language — torn away and trampled, gone. He was pathetic. Sobbing in front of Chadfallow. But so was Thasha, her head on Pazel's shoulder; and so was Hercol, leaning upon the table, his sword cast aside. The three stood there, weeping, stripped naked by their grief. Chadfallow looked at Pazel with shock. It was as if he had just realised that the boy had stepped onto some other ship, swiftly departing, leaving him behind. The ixchel too stared, as the humans cried for their queen; and one of them, Pazel never learned which, spoke under his breath.