ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Get moving!” Gerd risked his balance to give him a shove. Behind them, several people could be heard clambering over their barricade into the room. Within seconds a second crash announced the entry of the remaining pursuers. Marius began to shuffle along the tiny ledge, scouring his fingers across whatever miniscule purchase the worn stones accorded him.

  “Son of a bitch!” Marius looked back at Gerd. Beyond the young man, a head had emerged from the window, and the arm it guided was swinging a sword towards him. As Marius watched it struck the wall an inch or so from Gerd’s hip. Marius scuttled a few steps further, dragging Gerd with him.

  ‘Keep moving!”

  “They won’t follow us,” Marius replied. “They’d have to be insane!”

  As he spoke, a soldier levered himself out on to the ledge.

  “Wait a second!” Gerd turned towards the soldier and whistled. The young man looked up. Gerd backhanded him across the jaw. He slumped, and Gerd continued his swing, pushing him back into the arms of his colleagues. As they staggered under the unconscious soldier’s weight he leaned down and stared at them through the window.

  “Don’t be insane,” he shouted, then scooted back to Marius.

  “I just want you to know,” he yelled, enunciating carefully above the wind so that Marius caught every syllable, “in case this all goes wrong…”

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Right.” Marius nodded. “Thanks.”

  They shuffled on. Within a minute they turned the corner of the building. Three feet ahead of them, the ledge terminated against an abutment. It stuck far enough out that none of the three could have grasped its corner with outstretched arms. Scorbus leaned against it, arms folded, and regarded them as they approached.

  “Oh, hell,” Marius said

  “Oh, hell indeed.”

  “What do we do now?” Gerd turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes. Marius could see his fingers digging into the stone walls. Specks of dust coloured his fingertips. “There’s not even any way to get back in.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Scorbus replied. “You see, I’ve been thinking while I waited.”

  “Yes?” Marius braced his rear foot, ready to make whatever run, or shuffle, for it he could.

  “See down there?” Scorbus pointed past the edge of the abutment. A dozen feet away, and as many down, a rampart ran along the tops of the adjoining palace buildings, overlooking the cliff face. A clear line of sight ran from their current vantage point to the far edge of the palace building, a hundred yards distant, broken only by four doors built into the inner surface. Marius and Gerd stared at it.

  “No,” Marius said.

  “I don’t think we have much choice.”

  “We’ll never make it.”

  “We certainly shall.”

  Marius stared at the gap between the two spots. Only the city floor was visible. Nothing would break his fall.

  “We’ll be smooshed.”

  “Bend your legs.” Scorbus grabbed Marius’ wrist, and before he had time to protest, braced his back against the abutment wall and heaved. Marius was launched, flailing and screaming, into thin air. “Roll when you land!”

  Marius didn’t so much roll as flollop. The ground slapped him like an angry parent, smashing the air from his chest and delivering a dizzying blow to the back of his head as the inner wall of the battlement refused to get out of the way of his loose-limbed, clattering approach. He lay face up, scrunched against the base of the wall. Gerd landed a foot away, bent-legged, rolling forward and springing to his feet like he’d been practising. As Marius attempted to remember which limbs belongs at the top of his body and which at the bottom, Scorbus hunkered down against the wall, bounced experimentally, and launched himself across the gap. He landed perfectly, rolled next to Marius, and finished on one knee, hand held out to help Marius to his feet.

  “Nobody likes perfect people,’ Marius muttered. He creaked upwards and swayed as the dizziness hit him again. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Let’s hurry,” Scorbus led them down the rampart, towards the far end of the palace. “Logic dictates that the troops will come this way.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Scorbus jerked a phalange back at their perch. “They’ll know that was a dead end. They’ll send archers up here to pick us off.”

  “Oh.” Marius doubled his step. “Nice.”

  “It’s logical.”

  They trotted on. Marius took a moment to glance over the edge. The cliff began to fall away at this point of the Radican, becoming a high slope rather than the sheer face that it was further up. Even so, they were still dizzyingly high. A dozen feet ahead of him, a sluice opened up at the bottom of a building. A wave of effluent spewed out to land in a midden that covered the face of the hill, emptying into a small gully at the bottom of the cliff wall. As Marius watched, small figures emerged from the brush at the edges of the gully to pick amongst the new outpouring of castle waste. He frowned. He knew that place. It had a name, and a story behind it. It was important, too, a significant part of the castle’s history. He shook his head. He couldn’t quite remember, couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the salient facts…

  Then Gerd called out to him, and his reverie was broken. He’d fallen behind the other two, and Gerd was gesturing at him to catch up.

  An arrow skittered across the ground next to him, and Marius realised that Gerd wasn’t waving at him. He glanced over his shoulder. Troops were pouring from the uppermost exit.

  “Run!”

  Marius followed instructions. The three fugitives bolted towards the lower end of the rampart. They were twenty yards away when the bottom-most door opened, and soldiers emerged, blocking their escape.

  “Back, back.” They turned again, saw the first group closing in.

  “What do we do?”

  Marius turned between the closing troops, mind working furiously. Then he remembered the name of the midden, and what it meant to the castle.

  “Quick!” He ran two dozen steps back towards the first group of pursuers, head craned over the side of the battlement. “Here! Quick!”

  Scorbus and Gerd joined him. “What are you doing?”

  “Here. Right here.”

  “What are you on about?”

  Marius glanced at the advancing soldiers, then back over the edge of the building.

  “This is the spot.”

  “Spot? What spot?”

  Marius pointed downwards. They stood above the great sluice, and its vomitous trail of garbage.

  “The spot to jump.”

  “What?”

  “Jump.”

  “Are you mad?” Gerd waved at the piles of rotting refuse forty feet below.

  “What, are you afraid you’ll be killed?”

  “No, I’m afraid I’ll spend all eternity with legs the consistency of warm lard.”

  Marius pointed back along the rampart. The King’s Men were racing out of the towers. “You’ll spend all of eternity in little bits and probably cooked to perfection to boot if they get hold of us.” He gave Gerd a sharp shove in the chest. Gerd tottered backwards, waving his arms in circles to remain upright. His heels slipped over the edge. “Now jump.”

  He pushed again. Gerd had time to shout “You basta…” before he and his insult disappeared. Marius spared him one glance, then looked briefly at the skeleton next to him.

  “Ready for this?”

  Scorbus tilted his head towards him in a way that, had he borne any flesh at all, would have treated Marius to a blood-soaked manic smile. He nodded, and turned his gaze away.

  “Oh, wait a minute.” He reached out, and adjusted the band of gold around Scorbus’ brow so that it sat straight. “You’re going to want to make the right impression when we land, Your Majesty.”

  He bowed, and Scorbus returned the gesture, before briefly laying a hand on Marius’ shoulder.

  “Excelsior!” he cried, turned a
nd leaped, leaving Marius alone to face the approaching guards. They were almost upon him. The air was thick with their roar. He could smell them, sense their sweat and fear and exhilaration. They would descend upon him like hungry dogs, tear him apart and feast upon his tattered flesh. He could see the blood in their eyes. He smiled.

  This moment needed something special, a bon mot his pursuers would remember their whole lives, would talk about in bars and at family events forevermore. This was the moment when he entered the folklore of Scorby. He stepped forward, and raised both hands as if pushing against a wall.

  “Stop!”

  To his immense surprise, they did. He saw them, frozen in time: seventy-two soldiers surrounding one small, frail, dead human. Swords drawn, bloodlust in their veins, armour gleaming in the scorching sun.

  “You idiots,” he said, and jumped.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A hundred feet is a long way to fall, long enough for a man to regret his decision to jump. Marius scanned the rapidly approaching ground for any sign of Gerd or Scorbus, and seeing none, closed his eyes. He probably wouldn’t be killed by the fall. Probably. After all, could a dead man be killed? But even if he wasn’t, he could break every bone in his body, and the idea of an eternity spent dragging around a fleshy sack of powdered bones was the least inviting thought he could come up with right at that moment. Not for the first time, he had cause to regret his facility for making plans after he put them into action. Then the ground rushed up and collided with his face.

  Marius had expected an impact somewhat akin to a mountain dropping onto his chest. Instead, it was as if warm arms had reached out to grab him. His momentum slowed, gently at first, then with increasing pressure until he drifted lazily downwards through a warm sea of close-pressed dirt, tiny particles scratching against his cheeks with the intimacy of a kitten’s paws. For three minutes he hung, suspended in the earthen solution, his thoughts growing still as a sensation of peace stole over him. Then the dirt receded. His eyes snapped open. He fell a dozen feet through open air to land face-first upon the hardened dirt of a well-trodden floor.

  “Ow.”

  He sat up after a few moments and stared at the vaulted ceiling above him, stretching his jaw to remove the ache of his landing. No sign of his passage disturbed the ceiling’s surface. He smiled, and stood. It appeared that he had landed in an underground cathedral, a tunnelled compatriot to the giant building above. Fully thirty feet round, and almost as high at its apex, it was impressive not for the sheer size and industry of its manufacture, unlike its above-ground cousin, but for the sheer fact of its existence. Whereas the halls of the dead Marius had experienced previously were rough-hewn things, reminiscent of man-sized mole burrows, this space spoke of care and purpose. The walls were smooth, the ceiling unbroken by root or fissure, and someone had even begun the first rudiments of decoration. Formless carvings ran away in both directions at waist height. Marius followed their path, trying in vain to discern some method or pattern, then stopped, shaking his head. He wasn’t sure, after all, that he wished to understand just what it was the dead might worship. A few feet away, Gerd and Scorbus were hauling themselves to their feet, heads turning to take in their surroundings. As Gerd looked over to him, Marius sketched a bow.

  “How in the hell did you do that?” Gerd pointed towards the ceiling. Marius smiled.

  “History.”

  “What?”

  “History. Well, folklore, really. A little nickname I discovered over the years.” He stretched, feeling bones pop. “I’m rather glad it turned out to be true.”

  “What are you on about?” Gerd scowled at him in exasperation. Marius indicated the King behind him, standing at ease as if nothing about his situation was unexpected.

  “The biggun there. That midden we just jumped into, a lot of the locals have a name for it. Scorbus’ graveyard.” Marius spied an opening at the far end of the space, and made towards it. “This way.”

  Gerd and Scorbus followed.

  “Well?” Gerd asked as they entered the tunnel.

  “Well,” Marius replied. “Rumour has it that our friend Scorbus had a habit of disposing of those who he deemed, shall we say, irritating, Your Majesty?” Scorbus tilted his head in what Marius was sure was an attitude of amused acquiescence. “There are halls below the mountain, old places where political prisoners, or just people the King disliked, were done away with in private. Rumour has it that such people were thrown into the midden like so many cabbages, whether they were dead or not quite so dead. Of course, it was a long time ago, and you know how an historical figure’s deeds are exaggerated. Pains me to say it, but I’m rather glad the rumour was true.”

  “But why?”

  “Why throw them in the midden, or why was I hoping it was true?”

  “Well… both.”

  “For the first, you’ll have to ask him.” Marius jerked a thumb at Scorbus, who stared back at it from his impassive skull. “As to the second, haven’t you noticed the routes the dead use to climb back and forth into the real world? They’re always gravesites, or a place where a dead body has lain.” He smiled at Gerd’s look of surprise. “Told you I pay attention. Anyway, I figured if the rumour was true, at least, in the quantities he’s supposed to have gone through, the whole midden was likely one vast entrance. They don’t call him Scorbus the Bloody for nothing, eh?”

  “Actually,” the King’s voice seemed to emanate from somewhere slightly in front of him, as if his presence preceded his bones by half a step. Marius failed to control an involuntary jump, then grimaced. He had forgotten that Scorbus was real, not just an animated collection of bones. “I suffered nose bleeds a great deal, growing up. We just used the nickname to, hmm, embellish the truth somewhat. It was rather a difficult time to be King.” A bony hand clapped Marius on the shoulder. “A bloodthirsty reputation helped when dealing with the barbarous Tallians.”

  “But…”

  “Seems we struck lucky. Bold gambit, dear fellow, bold gambit.” Scorbus laughed, and Marius felt the blood in his face freeze. “Bold gambit indeed.”

  “But…”

  “Still, perhaps those who followed me perpetuated the myth, hmm? Vellus, Miglaine, Erejan and the like? I know ‘Thernik the Bone Collector' is no exaggeration. Perhaps they were the bloody ones, living up to my myth with their actions? Perhaps you should instead be thanking them for their murderous ways?” Scorbus straightened and walked on in silence, while Marius gaped at him.

  “How… how did you come up with that?” he eventually asked. Scorbus tilted his head as if surprised by the stupidity of the question.

  “They told me, of course. Seven hundred years trapped in a box, you have to talk about something.”

  “Yes. Of course. How dim of me.” He turned away, and shook his head. There was no way, he thought, even if it took him seven hundred years, that he would become used to the ways of the dead. What else would you do but sit in a box for the better part of a millennium, chatting amiably to your neighbours about bloodshed and murder? “Of course they did.”

  “Waste of perfectly good subjects.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “All that murder and torture. I tried to tell them – subjects bring you closer to God. How can they do that when they’re lying underneath a rubbish pile with their throats cut? Take away his subjects, and a King is no better than a merchant.” Scorbus shuddered, his bones rattling in the dark. “No.”

  “I had a friend who thought the way you do,” Marius said, pointing at the crown perched haphazardly on Scorbus’ skull. “That was his. Of course, he turned himself into a horse.”

  “Really? I once knew a man who gave birth to a two-headed chicken, or so he claimed. I’d like to meet this friend of yours.”

  “Bit hard. He got blown apart by a shark.”

  Scorbus stared at Marius for long moments, his empty orbs staring into Marius’ eyes until the latter blinked and glanced away. “What a curious fellow you are, young man,” he said.
“Curious indeed.”

  “Oh yeah,” Marius answered sadly, “I’m just a bundle of surprises.”

  Gerd had strayed a couple of feet ahead of the conversing couple. Now he stopped, and raised a hand.

  “Shh,” he said. “There’s someone ahead.”

  “This way.” Marius grabbed Scorbus’ upper arm and tried to pull him back down the corridor. The King planted his feet and pulled, and Marius stumbled. “Your Majesty–”

  “No.” Scorbus straightened, and just for a moment Marius had a vision of the man around the skeleton, the King as he must have been in his pomp: tall, massive in his strength, with a bearing that simply demanded obedience. Scorbus tilted his head backwards, and viewed his companions down the line of a long-missing nose. “Behind me, if you please.”

  Marius meekly obeyed, and found Gerd already there. They glanced at each other in mute embarrassment, then stood behind the King and waited silently for the first of his subjects to arrive.

  It was all rather simple, in the end. After all, the throne was waiting, and the subjects were willing, and honestly, nobody could even look at Scorbus and not recognise him as Lord and master of something. And somehow, in amongst the bowing and cheering, and the praising of the Lord and the promises of brave new worlds and the procession towards the royal hall and the new King proclaiming himself to his adoring subjects, Marius and Gerd found themselves slowly filtered through the crowd until they stood at the very periphery. Nothing stood between them and freedom but an unwatched corridor leading away into the darkness. Marius didn’t even have to motion. They might even have managed to sneak away unnoticed, if not for a familiar, grinning face, and hands as heavy as gravestones falling upon their shoulders.

  “Now where,” the dead soldier asked as he lifted them from the ground and turned them towards the suddenly silent multitudes, “do you think you’re going?”

  Marius searched desperately through a mind suddenly bereft of witty rejoinders, and settled for mute acceptance of his fate. He allowed himself to be dragged to the small space at the feet of the King and deposited in an untidy heap. He sat still, staring up at the ceiling, until a crowned skull leaned into his vision and tilted in polite enquiry.