The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  And the rats came. Out of the shattered floor, the frothing bilge, they leaped and squirmed, eight, twelve, twenty, more struggling behind. Like a welling stain, they spread in all directions, and with them spread a chaos beyond anyone’s control. The Turachs stabbed and stomped, killing many, but the creatures were entering the vault faster than they died, and the floorboard was in too many pieces to replace. The Turach with the lamp whirled, slamming it into Big Skip’s chest and cracking the glass. The lamp sputtered, darkening.

  Rose was choking, with a sound like a slaughtered bull, even as rats climbed his limbs and boiled across his back. Master Mugstur had bitten off part of his tongue, and Rose had inhaled enough of his own blood to drown a smaller man. The four bound prisoners were screaming for their hands to be freed. Sandor Ott gazed at the bald-headed, gore-stained rat who shrieked the praises of his Emperor, and for one instant appeared to forget where he was.

  That instant was all Thasha needed. With a blow fueled by rage, she drove her fist down against his knife-hand, and at the same time slammed her head back against his face with all her might. Both blows connected; the knife flew from Ott’s grasp, and Ott himself staggered backward into the open doorway.

  Thasha knew her only chance was to press the attack, and she did. Whirling straight into a third blow, she struck at Ott’s sword-arm just as he started to draw the weapon out. It was a point-blank strike to the forearm: the spymaster snarled with pain. And then he took her. Ott’s right hand, the one that had held the knife, was not too wounded to strike her bare-fisted. He smashed her chin with an upper cut. She struck back, lightning-fast but weak; she was stunned. He brought his hand slicing down against her neck. Thasha’s knees buckled, and as she fell her head struck the edge of a crate. Eyes locked on her, Ott flung a fist sideways at Neeps (who was lunging in desperation) and knocked him flat on the deck. Then he drew his sword.

  Pazel cried out and heaved to his feet. To his amazement, Rose also lurched at the spy. But they were both a step too far away, and too late. Thasha looked up, bloodied, disoriented. Ott grimaced and swung.

  The blow was meant to kill, and would have, but for the violent collision of a body with the spymaster’s own. Hercól had driven like a cannonball through the last Turachs in the passage, and the force of his leap at Ott knocked over half the men still standing in the liquor vault. Pazel was crushed once more beneath Rose, but over the captain’s shoulder he saw Hercól fighting like a man possessed, his face contorted with an emotion more acute than hate. Agony, thought Pazel. Agony he doesn’t mean to get over. Hercól’s momentum never seemed to break, only turn into spiral energy as he rolled and whirled Ott through the room, smashing, bludgeoning him against crate and floor and soldiers and carcasses of rats. Ott’s sword was gone, his blows Hercól did not seem to feel. When at last he managed a damaging blow to Hercól’s jaw the Tholjassan rose with a cry and hurled him the length of the room.

  Ott struck the back wall and fell senseless upon a carpet of squirming rats. When Pazel’s eyes caught up with Hercól the man was pouncing, Ott’s own knife in his hand, drawn back over his shoulder with the point aimed downward at his old master’s throat.

  “Kill!”

  Hercól froze. The voice came from just above him. It was Mugstur, perhaps the only conscious creature in the room less rational at that instant that Hercól himself. Mugstur’s mad, bulging eyes glared down at him, urging him on.

  “Kill, kill! It is the promised end! The Angel comes! Arqual shall be purified through blood!”

  “Diadrelu,” said Hercól, and he was suddenly, obviously, a man broken by grief. He stabbed not downward but upward, driving the knife into the white rat’s side.

  Master Mugstur did not seem surprised by what had happened to him. “The Angel comes!” he cried, gurgling. “The Tree bleeds, the Nilstone wakes, and a thousand eyes are opening! Glory! Glory! War!”

  Mugstur gave a last twitch and fell limp. Hercól lifted the creature on Ott’s knife, then lowered the blade and let the rat slide onto the motionless spymaster. “No more dreams of glory,” he said. “They are finished, for all of us.”

  But it was not finished. Ott stirred, moaning, and as he did so the white rat twitched again. The next moment it was on its feet, bleeding but very much alive. And at the same moment all the surviving rats grew still, and raised their narrow faces to look at the men. They were knowing looks, looks of conscious intelligence.

  “War,” said Mugstur, and the rats began to grow.

  38

  Holy War

  9 Umbrin 941

  The humans rushed bleeding from the Abandoned House. Rose was the last one out of the liquor vault, and he personally cut the bonds on the four prisoners, screaming orders at them as he did so. Haddismal carried the half-conscious spymaster, Neeps supported Pazel, and Thasha tried her best to drag Hercól into the passage as he swung and stabbed and bludgeoned and hacked, and a mound of twitching fur rose about him.

  The rats of Chathrand were awake, and mad. They had swollen to the size of hunting-dogs, and their voices—mewling, screeching, speaking—were so loud and hideous that the men fell back as much from the force of them as from the creature’s tearing nails and bolt-cutter jaws. When Rose at last heaved himself up onto the mercy deck, he found Fiffengurt and twelve men ready to skid a carriage-sized packet of sparwood over the hatch.

  The captain rolled aside, shouting, “Do it!” No sooner were the tons of wood in place than they heard the first rats slamming their thick bodies against the door.

  “Angel!”

  “Kill them!”

  “Arqual, Arqual, just and true!”

  Rose spat a great mouthful of blood. He did not even glance at the wounds on his legs. Seizing Bolutu by the elbow and Neeps by the scruff of the neck, he dragged them at a near run toward the mainmast as a throng of near-hysterical sailors billowed around him, howling death and disaster. Pazel, Thasha and Hercól had no choice but to follow him.

  “Report!” he thundered. “Who’s the deck officer? Bindhammer!”

  “Sir, they’ve gone and turned themselves into Pit-vomited fiends!” cried Bindhammer, waving his short, burly arms.

  “I noticed that! Damn it, man, how many rats are we talking about?”

  The answer, when accounts were tallied, appeared to be all of them. Not a single normal rat had been spotted; the mutants were bursting from deep recesses in the hold like bees from a hive. Two men had perished already. The entire hold had been abandoned.

  “What did you drag Neeps and Bolutu here for?” shouted Pazel when he could get a word in edgewise.

  Rose released them both with a flinging motion. “Because I wanted to be blary sure the rest of you followed me! Shut up! Not a word! Just tell me, true and fast: do you know what’s happening?”

  The sailors looked at them with fear-maddened eyes. “There are just two things it could be,” said Thasha. “Some trick of Arunis’, though why he’d turn rats into monsters I can’t imagine. Or the Nilstone, working all by itself. I’d bet on the latter.”

  “So would I,” said Bolutu. “Captain Rose, since early summer I have tried to draw your attention to the Chathrand’s fleas. They were always large and bloodthirsty. After you brought the Nilstone aboard, however, they became positively unnatural. And there have been other deformed and aggressive pests. Wasps, moths, flies, beetles. Anything, that is, that might have touched the Nilstone. Their numbers have been greatest at the stern of the orlop, where the Shaggat stands holding his prize.”

  “The Stone?” cried Rose. “I thought the damn thing killed whoever touched it!”

  “Whoever touches it with fear in their hearts,” said Hercól. “Perhaps insects have no fear, at least not as we understand it.”

  “The effect on insects was noted centuries ago, when Erithusmé showed the Nilstone to my people,” said Bolutu, “but nothing came of it—the vermin lived only a day or two. We know also that she drew on the power of the Stone to cast the Waking
Spell. Today I fear something horribly new is occurring: the fleas must have lived long enough to infect the rats with their mutation. And as they change, the rats are also exploding into consciousness—of a sort.”

  “There is worse,” said Hercól. “Master Mugstur is still alive. He fell back, even as his servants rushed me. I did not kill him with that first blow, and I never landed another. He appeared to heal, in fact, as he grew to monstrous size.”

  “He’s been awake for months—or maybe years,” said Thasha.

  Rose glared at her, blood running freely from his mouth. “And is it months that you’ve known about him? Damn you all! I know what you think of this mission—Pitfire, I even understand it! But a rat? What could possess you to keep quiet about a blary psychotic woken rat?”

  Pazel saw a struggle playing out on Hercól’s face. With an inward gasp he realized the man was tempted to answer Rose’s question—tempted to say Because you would have killed the rats, and the ixchel with them. Rose still knew nothing about the clan. What had happened to Hercól, to tempt him to betray Diadrelu’s people?

  The moment was shattered by a blast from Fiffengurt’s whistle. They had left him behind near the scuttle; now he and eight or ten sailors came running and skidding up the passage as if demons were at their heels.

  “They’re on the deck! They’re right behind us! Run!”

  Men stampeded for the ladderways. Fiffengurt shouted at Rose as they ran: “They’re leaping up from crates, sir, through the stern cargo hatch! They must be clearing ten feet!”

  Rose glanced upward: the roof of the mercy deck, where they stood, was eight feet above the floor.

  “You, and you!” Rose pulled two long-legged sailors from the crowd. “Turachs to the orlop! Twenty men at the tonnage hatch, with bows. Another twenty at the stern hatch. And a dozen at each ladderway. Now, d’ye hear me? Run!”

  The sailors rushed ahead. Seconds later a many-throated howl erupted from the stern. Men turned in horror. The rats were coming: huge, twisted, loping animals, fur patchy and sparse, inflamed bites the size of walnuts on their skin. They ran shoulder to shoulder, screeching and jabbering about the Promised End. When they spotted Rose they gave another howl and redoubled their speed.

  The remaining humans on the mercy deck leaped for the stair. Rose was last again, and the rats were on him as he climbed backward, swearing and spitting blood at them, his broadsword flashing up and down like a metal wing. Hercól fought beside him, ruthless and wild. Ildraquin was scarlet to the hilt.

  On the orlop there was no sign of the Turachs. Rose and Hercól and Thasha held the ladderway as a squirming, drooling mass of the creatures tried to jam through together. The two men stood on the top steps, blocking the way with their bodies as much as with their swords. Thasha, wielding Ott’s white knife (it felt good in her hand, disturbingly good), leaned over the stair from the opposite side and stabbed.

  Neeps led Pazel a few yards away. “Can you manage? I have to find out what’s happened to Marila!”

  “I can manage,” said Pazel, squeezing his arm in thanks. “Go on, find her! Be careful!”

  “Undrabust!” roared the captain over his shoulder. “Send down Dr. Chadfallow—or Rain, or even Fulbreech. Send the blary tailor if you see him first! Someone’s got to stitch up my tongue!”

  The orlop deck had a unique defensive advantage: the four great ladderways, which ran from the topdeck straight through the upper part of the ship, ended abruptly here. To descend farther, one had to cross hundreds of feet of the dark orlop, to one of the two narrow ladderways that continued down to the mercy deck. It was a point of congestion, and intentionally so. Through the centuries, pirates and other enemy boarders had often chased the crew from the upper decks, only to become lost and divided here, and ultimately overwhelmed.

  But the rats were not confused. While Hercól, Rose and Thasha held one of the two ladderways against the leaping, spitting mass, forty or fifty of the creatures broke and ran for the second stair. Fiffengurt heard them moving beneath him, like a herd of wild boars, and in a flash he understood. There was no one to hold the other stair.

  The quartermaster ran as he had not run in decades, to shut the compartment door. But the rats were faster. Before he was halfway to the door they were exploding up the ladderway, spinning about, and galloping back across the orlop to meet him.

  One rat was ahead of the pack, a huge yellow-toothed creature, screeching the Emperor’s name. Fiffengurt saw that it would beat him to the door. He stopped, waiting. Squinting at the beast with his one good eye. The rat was through the doorway, and then it was on him. Leaping for his face.

  With a cry of “Anni!” Fiffengurt jerked to one side, and brought his blackjack down with a crack. The beast fell senseless at his feet. He kicked shut the door and rammed the bolt home.

  Seconds later the rest of the creatures hurled themselves against it. The old oak shuddered, but held. Fiffengurt howled filth back at them, hoping to enrage them into thoughtlessness—for there were other ways into the compartment. “Screw yer Angel!” he shouted, waving desperately at the men behind him, and pointing at the other doors. “Screw the Emperor too! Magad’s a worm! Rin hates you! Mugstur’s a wart on the world’s backside!”

  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, Hercól, 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, 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 toward 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 damn 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 happ
ened,” 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 his behavior in the liquor 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 toward 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.

  In this at least Dastu had told the truth: 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!”