ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Ah.”

  “They will expect a strong man to join them. One who accepts his lot.”

  “I see. And how is it you are here to tell me these things?”

  “I have been liberated. I am to take up a new place, among the free dead. You will be laid to rest with your peers.”

  “I see.” A long pause. “And my wife, my children. What news of them?”

  “They grieve, Majesty.” Gerd broke in. “Bravely, but they grieve.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A dead man,” Gerd replied. “And your servant.”

  “Listen to me, Tanspar.” Scorbus spoke before the young monarch could contemplate the idea of his family living on without him. “I will return. I make that promise to you, as I have the others. I will free you. But for now, face your peers with grace. You are King of Scorby, and always will be. Death does not end that.”

  “But this blindness… this deafness… how is it I can hear you? Where are my senses?”

  “Majesty, we have to go.” Marius leaned into Scorbus’ line of vision. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but we really have to go.”

  “I will return,” Scorbus said. “I promise you.” He turned away.

  “Wait. Please. Wait!”

  “Be strong, Tanspar. Await my return.”

  “Wait! Don’t go! Please!”

  Scorbus strode away, Marius and Gerd in his wake. Tanspar’s voice accompanied them across the hall.

  “Where now?” Scorbus demanded. Marius pointed to the far exit.

  “That’ll take us to the far side of the cathedral, away from the main square. We can follow the line of the building to the front, then cross to the shadow of the palace. After that, we either climb down the face of the Radican or try to steal some clothes from a ground floor room and take side streets to the northern gate. Then we find the nearest cemetery.”

  “Cemetery?”

  Marius nodded, remembering the grave in the forest, and the dead men coming towards him out of the gloom in Sangk’s cellar. “Gateway to the underworld.” He smiled wryly. “You’ll love it.”

  “I see. Well, let’s not waste time.”

  The trio made their way towards the exit. Partway there, Marius called a halt, and bent to pick up two halberds lying where Yerniq and Ghaf had dropped them on their way in to help with Scorbus’ rescue.

  “We might need these,” he said, handing one to Gerd. “Have you ever used one before?”

  “No. Have you?”

  Marius had, once, while training in the Caliphate of Orm’s army. In half an hour he had smashed three helmets, gouged out a sergeant’s eye, and turned the regimental mascot into Sunday dinner. He leaned the pole against a wall. “On second thought, let’s rely on speed. Come on.”

  They made the exit without incident. Marius poked his head out of the open door.

  “All clear,” he waved them outside.

  “What now?” Gerd asked as he ran across the square towards the great avenue.

  “Soon as we’re across we head for the alleyway we saw on the way up, remember?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why that one?”

  “There’s a closed-up business at the far end. At the very least it’ll give us a place to hide Scorbus while we find some clothes for him. Once he’s covered up we get down into the city as quickly as possible. I know a few places we can hole up, wait for night, then we can get through the northern… uh oh.”

  “The what?”

  Marius skidded to a stop, and pointed towards the boulevard. “Trouble.”

  From footpaths at either side of the street, figures approached. They caught sight of the three escapees, and paused. The dead men stared back. For a moment, nobody moved. Then the figures on the paths raised their arms. Marius had time to sight the long, steel weapons they held, before a cry rang out and the boulevard boiled over with running figures.

  “Marius?”

  “Run.”

  “Where?”

  “Run!”

  He took off, back the way they had came. Scorbus and Gerd tailed him. The mob, seeing them flee, let out a roar and took off in pursuit.

  “What happened?” Gerd asked as they ran.

  “They rallied, obviously.” Marius risked a glance back over his shoulder. At the front of the surging crowd he saw two familiar figures; Yerniq and Ghaf, torches held aloft, their faces contorted with rage as they yelled encouragement to the lynch mob. “I’m guessing they had something to do with it.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Back to the cathedral. No, wait.” He veered away, towards the front wall of the Royal Apartments. “This way.”

  They stopped halfway along.

  “No doors.”

  “No windows.”

  “What now?”

  “Gentlemen.” Scorbus had remained quiet during the pursuit. Now, with the crowd closing in, he stepped back from the wall and indicated a balcony several feet above them, jutting out over the square. “The Royal Box, I imagine.”

  Marius joined him. “Yes,” he replied, quickly glancing over his shoulder at the crowd. “But can we…?”

  Scorbus tilted his head down towards him, and Marius imagined he saw a feral grin flitting across the empty skull. The King backed up a few steps, ran forward and leaped, swinging himself over the railings and onto the balcony with ease. Marius and Gerd stared at each other.

  “Right,” Marius said. “Just like that, then.”

  Together, they backed up. The crowd surged towards them. Someone threw a metal pipe. It clanged off the stones no more than a foot from the dead pair. The lynch mob roared. Marius and Gerd swapped glances.

  ‘Ready?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Go!”

  Together they ran, and leaped. And missed.

  “Oh my Gods.” Marius swung towards the wall, crashed against it, then swayed back out, to hang gently in the grip of a massive, bone hand. He glanced down at the cobblestones several feet below, then across at Gerd, dangling from the King’s other hand. Something ricocheted off the wall behind them, then something else. Marius peeked upwards. The King’s skull poked out between the railings, where he had lain down to effect his capture.

  “Would you be so kind, Your Majesty?” Marius asked in his most polite voice.

  “Of course.” The skull retreated. Marius and Gerd rose gracefully as the King pulled them up through the hail of missiles flung by the crowd below. Within moments they were gripping the edges of the railing and pulling themselves over.

  “Agh, damn it!” Something pierced Marius’ calf, and sent him tumbling to the floor. He rolled to the base of the wall, and stared down at the shaft of a dart sticking out of his flesh. Blood ran from the hole. “Gods damn it, that hurts!” He pulled the dart out and flicked it over the edge of the balcony. He looked at the blood trickling along his pink flesh, then at Gerd’s equally pink and flushed face.

  “Never felt so alive, huh?” he asked. Gerd grinned in reply. From below them a command for ladders rang out. Missiles continued to rain down. A brick smashed through the glass door at their backs, and shards tinkled down upon them.

  “Time to leave, I think.” Scorbus said. Marius nodded in reply.

  “I couldn’t agree more.” He sat with his back against the middle of the wide double doors, and reached through the hole left by the brick. “I can’t reach the handle.”

  “Allow me.” Scorbus stood up, ignoring the renewed efforts from below that his appearance engendered. He raised one foot and kicked the door. It smashed open, and Scorbus indicated the room beyond. “As you please, gentlemen.”

  Gerd and Marius bundled themselves into the room beyond. A stray brick followed them, smashing a vase by Gerd’s head and showering him with china. Marius viewed him from the shelter of a 12th Dynasty armoire.

  “That’s a genuine Bentel III,” he sighed, mentally calculating the selling price he could have commanded if he’d rescued it. “You could have bought your entire village
a hundred times over if you’d caught that brick.”

  Gerd shook slivers out of his hair. “Because escaping would be so much easier if I was carrying a big pot around.”

  “Big pot? You bloody ingrate, do you have any idea…”

  “Gentleman,” Scorbus stood above them both and helped them to their feet. “We have more important considerations.”

  “Yes, but… it was a Bentel III.”

  “Never heard of the man.” Scorbus matched Marius’ stare for several seconds, before the smaller man turned away.

  “Yes, well, no. I don’t suppose you have.”

  A door stood opposite. Marius crossed to it, and laid an ear against the wood panelling.

  “I can’t hear anything,” he said eventually. “You’d have thought that ruckus would have bought people running if there was anyone here, wouldn’t you?”

  The others didn’t answer. He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  He grasped the handle, and swung the door open. An empty corridor stretched fifteen feet away to a blank wall. A single oil painting stared back at them from the far end.

  “Processional corridor,” Marius guessed. “Changing rooms on either side, probably, opening out onto a cross corridor, one for men and one for women.”

  “How do you know?”

  Marius thought back to the sight of Nandus upon the balcony, commanding his assembled armies to go forth and conquer the invading crab armies of the Sea Kings. His adult logic filled in the gaps his childhood images presented. “The balcony is only used by the Royal family, for official occasions, when they’re all kitted up in their regalia. That stuff is heavy. You don’t think they wear it around the house, do you?” He snickered. “Last time I saw a princess up close, she wasn’t wearing thirty pounds of ermine cape, I can tell you that.” The last time he’d seen a princess she’d been wearing nothing more than a velvet mask and a pair of thigh-high sealskin boots, but that was a memory he’d dwell on when he had time to savour the image. He inhaled, then nodded down the corridor.

  “Let’s get a wriggle on, eh?”

  As one they scurried down the hallway. At the junction, Marius stopped against the wall and ducked his head around the corner.

  “Nothing either way,” he announced. “I say we move towards the front of the building, see if we can find a side entrance or something we can get out of without attracting attention.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Gerd replied.

  “Right.” They moved left down the cross hall. They’d gone a dozen steps before they realised they were missing something. Marius turned around. Scorbus stood in front of the portrait, staring up at it.

  “Your Majesty?” Marius and Gerd exchanged glances. “Scorbus?”

  The King made no move to acknowledge him. Marius edged back towards him and coughed gently.

  “Your Majesty? We really do need to…” He glanced up at the portrait, then stopped, and looked at it properly.

  “You?”

  “That is me,” Scorbus replied, his voice low and heavy. Black eyes stared fiercely down at them from beneath heavy brows. Marius swallowed, taking in the long mane of grey hair, the heavy jaw half-hidden underneath a beard of truly impressive dimensions. Robes of bear fur sat heavy upon wide shoulder and the matching hat looked as if it had been completed from an entire cub. The picture was dark, completed in heavy swipes of black and russet: threatening, imposing; an image of a thunderous old monster. Scorbus reached one hand slowly up and laid his bones open upon the face.

  “Scorbus,” Marius’ voice was gentle, awed.

  “This is how they saw me,” Scorbus said to nobody in particular. “This is how you remember me?”

  “I…” Marius thought back to his tutor’s lessons, to the bloodthirsty stories his parents didn’t know he was being told. Scorbus and the conquest of the coastal lands, the establishment of Scorby: a creation myth baked in blood and mayhem. He glanced at the portrait, and the empty skeleton reaching mournfully towards it.

  “Look where they hung it,” he said, placing a hand upon the King’s shoulder and turning him so that they gazed back down the way they had came. “The last image any King sees before going out to greet his people. A reminder of what a King represents.” He looked up at the massive skull and realised, with a sudden burst of clarity, that what he was saying was the truth. “You are the mark they all have to aim for. The first and greatest King. That is not a product of fear, Majesty. It’s worship.”

  “Do you…” Scorbus stared down the corridor at the broken doors. “Do you suppose…”

  “Marius!” Gerd had wandered down to the far corner as the two talked. Now he ran towards them.

  “What?”

  “Time to go,” he said, racing past them towards the rear of the building. Behind him, a soldier ran out into the corridor, saw Marius and Scorbus staring at him, and flung himself back around the corner. The dead men shared a look, then took off after Gerd.

  “How many?” Marius asked as they reached the far corner and checked to see if the approach was empty.

  “Lots.”

  The corridor was empty. They raced towards a door at the far end. “Lots and lots.” They reached the door. It was locked. “What do we do?”

  “What else?” Marius kicked at the handle. It smashed under his assault. The door swung open and the three fugitives piled into the room beyond.

  It was obviously an office of some sort, Marius decided as he looked around. Bookcases dominated, lining each wall from floor to ceiling, leather spines standing erect along every shelf. Two small writing desks sat in alcoves, their backs to drape-less windows that stared out over the city a hundred metres or so below. From his vantage point, Marius could only see the docks, small and blue in the distance, betraying nothing of the squalor and violence visible at ground level. From this height, it looked like a painter’s impression, or a king’s ideal. A massive wood desk squatted in front of the window. Three maids sat around it, a deck of cards spread out before them. They stared at the little group, their expressions a mixture of fear, resignation, and sullen insolence.

  “It’s our break,” one of them uttered, before the manner of the group’s entrance sank in. Scorbus completed the tableau by standing up and revealing himself to the women. One fainted immediately. The other two abandoned their chairs and threw themselves behind the desk, where they took up wailing and asking a multitude of Gods for salvation. Gerd ran to a door on the opposite wall and pulled it open.

  “Nope,” he said, and quickly shut it again. ‘Lots more, coming this way.” He returned to the door through which they had come. “And here come the first lot.” He turned to Marius. “Trapped.”

  “Right.” Marius thought for a moment. “Help me with that writing desk.” He indicated the one nearest the door. Together they pulled it over and blocked up the broken door with its bulk. “Now the other one.” They moved that against the other entrance. “That should hold them for a minute or two, at least.”

  “So now we’re trapped, and we’re even more trapped.”

  “Ah, yes.” Marius scanned the room. “Nothing. Nothing we can use.” His gaze fell upon the window. “Oh,” he said slowly. “Oh, no.”

  Gerd saw his gaze. “You must be kidding.”

  “Oh, I wish I was. I really wish I was.”

  “I told you I was afraid–”

  “Yep. Remember that.”

  “And this is your–”

  “Yep.”

  Marius looked out. Below the window a thin ledge, perhaps six inches wide, ran the length of the wall to a corner a dozen feet away. Below that, a sheer drop of a hundred feet led to broken alleyways and a line of rooftops. He undid the latch and swung the window open. A breeze grabbed it from him and slammed it back against the wall.

  “See,” he said, turning to his companions. “Our escape route. Easy.”

  Scorbus and Gerd joined him.

  “Yes,” Scorbus said, in a voice so polite it promised painful
torture before death, “this should round off the rescue nicely.”

  “I’m open to ideas.”

  “I imagine you are.” The King levered himself up and edged out of the window.

  “Go that way,” Marius pointed back the way they had come, towards the square and the far edge of the cathedral, just visible around the corner of the palace. “The crowd should have moved further down the hill by now. They’ll be expecting us to go that way.”

  Scorbus glanced down at him, then very deliberately and with great purpose, began to move in the opposite direction.

  “What is he… all right, out you go.” He pointed Gerd out the window.

  “Like hell.”

  “What? Look, we don’t have time…”

  A crash behind them caught their attention. One of the writing desks had shifted several inches away from its door. As they watched, another impact knocked it further away.

  “I’m not going,” Gerd said as a third impact shook the door.

  “But…”

  “Nope.” He stepped away from the window. Another collision struck the door. This time it opened far enough that a leather-clad arm was able to slip through the gap and scrabble around for purchase. Marius stared at Gerd.

  “Scorbus is just about gone by now,” Gerd said. “It’s not me that has to be sure he gets down.”

  “Oh, you bastard.” Marius turned towards the window. From the corner of his eye, he spied the two conscious maids curled up in the corner. They were staring up at him with eyes full of terror. He winked.

  “Marius Helles, ladies. If I had more time…” He blew them a quick kiss, closed his eyes, and thrust himself out of the window.

  The wind clawed at him as he straightened and shuffled gingerly a few steps along the wall. A moment later, Gerd clambered out, swaying as he clumsily gathered his legs beneath him and stood. Marius reached out a hand and helped to steady his young companion.

  “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “Changed my mind.” As Gerd spoke, something whizzed past his shoulder. The two companions watched it fall towards the distant street.

  “See?” Marius said to nobody in particular. You don’t get workmanship like that if you work for just any old King, you know. That is a perfectly balanced knife, that is–”