Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'The Vortex,' Pazel said, 'that has to be the Nelluroq Vortex. O Bakru, Bakru! Call off your lions, save the ship.'

He had never meant the prayer more sincerely. For the last strange thing about the topdeck was how empty it was. Bow to stern, there could not have been more than thirty men at the sails. A few dozen more were flying up and down the deck, hauling the sheets, relaying orders. There should have been ten times as many hands on deck.

'Pazel,' said Thasha, her voice gone deadly cold, 'that's the whirlpool from my dream. The one I've been having since Etherhorde.'

'Of course it is,' he said. 'You've been dreaming about the Vortex.'

'But I didn't just imagine it,' said Thasha. 'I saw it, perfectly. It's exactly the same.'

Pazel looked at her with alarm. She had changed before his eyes. Gone was the confident thojmelee fighter. In its place was the haunted Thasha, the one who appeared each time she read the Polylex. The one who looked inexplicably older. 'What happens in this dream?' he asked her.

Thasha closed her eyes. 'I'm striking a bargain,' she said. 'Someone wants me gone from wherever I am. And I say that I'll go, as long as they agree to leave too. Whoever it is always agrees, but at the last minute they add something to the deal. Something that makes leaving much harder. Ramachni's there, looking on — guarding me, maybe, in case there's cheating. But I still have to say yes. As soon as I do, I start moving — very fast, with no effort at all. Straight towards that whirlpool. And I think, This is how it feels, to die and remain alive. And just as I start to fall into the Vortex I wake up.'

She opened her eyes and smiled ruefully at him. 'I'm waiting for you to say, "You're not crazy, Thasha." '

Pazel said nothing. He was trying to think of better, more comforting words. Whether or not he still fully believed in her sanity hardly mattered. Thasha stared, clearly upset by his hesitation.

Then Uskins appeared, barrelling around the starboard longboat. He was hysterical. He did not appear to be wounded, but his eyes had a wild light in them, and his face was red. He skidded to a halt before them and screamed.

'Muketch! Girl! Don't stand there, grab a line! Get forwards, to Lapwing's team on the port halyard! Run, blast you, we need everyone we've got!'

Pazel and Thasha did as they were told, if only to get away from Uskins. As they ran, Pazel became aware of a new sound, distant but immensely powerful. A sound that was neither wind nor waves. It made him think of a titanic millstone: inexorable, grinding. It was the sound of the Vortex.

'You're all right, Thasha,' he huffed as they ran, 'it's the world outside your head that's gone mad.'

Thasha burst out laughing: 'Thanks, I feel much better.'

'Don't mention it.'

She was so perversely amused that he couldn't help joining in her laughter. He wished he could stop right there, kiss her full on the lips.

'There's Neeps!' cried Thasha suddenly, pointing. He was halfway up the mainmast, a good hundred feet above the deck, working alongside a dozen sailors trying to reef the topsail. They were crawling out along the yard, fighting the wayward canvas, not looking down.

'They need more men for that job, don't they?' Thasha asked.

'You're damn right,' said Pazel. 'Twice as many, and hands on the halyards. Come on, let's help. Maybe together we can pull it off.'

They ran to the port rail, swung out to the great mainmast shrouds, and began the ascent. They were both sure-footed climbers: what Thasha lacked in experience she made up for in strength. But as they rose, so did the wind, quite suddenly in fact. Pazel, already exhausted by blows and blood loss, found he had to slow and catch his breath. 'I'm dizzy,' he said.

'What?' she shouted.

'DIZZY.'

How the men on the topsail yard could hear a thing he had no idea. At last Neeps saw them, and his face glowed with relief. He beckoned urgently. Hurry up!

Pazel resumed the climb. They passed the titanic main yard, that vast tree lashed horizontally above the ship, and for a few minutes the broad platform of the fighting top cut off their view of Neeps and the sailors. He could just hear them, though: it sounded as though Neeps was shouting his name. 'I'm coming, mate, I don't have blary wings,' he muttered testily.

They reached the fighting top, and Pazel squeezed up deftly through the climbing hole. The wind was momentarily blocked. Suddenly he could hear Neeps and all the others above him. They were screaming.

'No! No! No! Look out! Turn around!'

Pazel twisted, looking wildly everywhere for the source of their fear. Left, right, out, downDown.

The rats had broken out onto the topdeck. The space around the mainmast was thick with their squirming bodies. And a dozen or more were clawing straight up the wooden pillar towards them, salivating. 'Mine!' they screeched. 'Angel! Heaven! Kill!'

Pitfire, thought Pazel, they were five decks below!

Everything happened quickly. Pazel and Thasha could not descend, and to climb higher would have been sheer madness. The only possible choice was to make a stand on the fighting top. 'Don't slash,' Thasha shouted in his ear. 'Lunge. Thrust. If you let 'em get in close they'll tear you to bits.'

Scarcely had the words left her mouth when the first rats came boiling up from the hole. Pazel was starkly terrified. He had fought them one-on-one with the crowbar, but now there were three on him at once, and a pitching mast, and sixty feet between him and the deck. He stabbed, kicked at their faces and bellies, managing only to stay alive as Thasha killed and killed. More than once she skewered a rat through the neck or chest just as it drove its four-inch teeth past his defences. She was protecting them both, he knew, and the thought enraged him. Focus. He groped for an edge, for the speed required to know what those teeth and claws were doing before the creature he fought knew the same about his sword. It was possible, with fury it was possible. There, and there.

Neeps and the sailors climbed down to join the battle. With them, Pazel realised, was one other tarboy: Jervik. As he dropped onto the platform he caught Pazel's eye. 'Yaarh, Muketch! Now yer fightin' like a man!'

He dived into the fray, brandishing the knife he considered 'rusty trash,' throwing the rats' curses back at them. He had none of Thasha's finesse, but he did have speed and muscle, and a furious instinct for battle. Yet even with the reinforcements the fight seemed endless. The rats kept coming, in a foul geyser of teeth and claws and fur. Everything was red: their eyes, Pazel's arms, the light from the soundless storm. What was happening below Pazel didn't dare imagine.

But a moment came at last when he killed a rat and no creature took its place. Thasha stabbed a grizzle-jawed beast on his right; Jervik kicked a third to its death. And then there were no more.

They looked down. Turachs and sailors once more held the deck, which from where he stood resembled the floor of a slaughterhouse. Big Skip was hurriedly climbing the shrouds.

'The bastards wormed their way up a light-shaft, got round behind us!' he boomed. 'Come down, lads, the fighting's nearly done. Just the hold to take back now.'

There were muttered thanks to Rin. 'We still have to set that muckin' sail,' said Jervik, glancing hastily at the Vortex.

Pazel sighed. 'Right. Let's do it, then.'

'I never found Marila,' said Neeps. 'Uskins nabbed me the minute I came outside.'

'She's dead, I reckon,' said Jervik bluntly. 'I saw what them rats-Eh! Crawly! Crawly!'

He was shouting, pointing at a spot in the topmast shrouds, about eight feet from them. There in his swallow-suit, looking very small and harried in the wind, clung Taliktrum.

They hushed Jervik with some difficulty. The ixchel man watched, clearly impatient. 'You should get down from the rigging,' he said at last, bending his voice so they all could hear.