The caged rats across the room leapt back from the netting. Even they could feel the fury.
“Now there's a clever boy,” said Rat-catcher 1 admiringly, when it was all over. “I've got a use for you, my lad.”
“Not the pit?” said Rat-catcher 2.
“Yes, the pit.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, 'cos Fancy Arthur is putting in his Jacko on a bet to kill a hundred rats in less than a quarter of an hour.”
“I bet he can, too. Jacko's a good terrier. He did ninety a few months ago and Fancy Arthur been training him up. Should be a good show.”
“You'd bet on Jacko doing it, would you?” said Ratcatcher 1.
“Sure. Everyone will be.”
“Even with our little friend here among the rats?” said Rat-catcher 1. “Full of lovely spite and bite and boilin' bile?”
“Well, er…”
“Yeah, right.” Rat-catcher 1 grinned.
“I don't like leaving those kids here, though.”
“It's ‘them kids’, not ‘those kids’. Get it right. How many times have I told you? Rule 27 of the Guild: sound stupid. People get suspicious of rat-catchers that talk too good.”
“Sorry.”
“Talk thick, be clever. That's the way to do it,” said Ratcatcher 1.
“Sorry, I forgot.”
“You tend to do it the other way around.”
“Sorry. Them kids. It's cruel, tying people up. And they're only kids, after all.”
“So?”
“So it'd be a lot easier to take 'em down the tunnel to the river and hit 'em on the head and throw 'em in. They'll be miles down river before anyone fishes 'em out, and they prob'ly won't even be recognizable by the time the fish have finished with 'em.”
Maurice heard a pause in the conversation. Then Ratcatcher 1 said, “I didn't know that you were such a kind-hearted soul, Bill.”
“Right, and, sorry, an' I've got an idea about gettin' rid of this piper, too—”
The next voice came from everywhere. It sounded like a rushing wind and, in the heart of the wind, the groan of something in agony. It filled the air.
NO! We can use the piper!
“No, we can use the piper,” said Rat-catcher 1.
“That's right,” said Rat-catcher 2. “I was just thinking the same thing. Er… how can we use the piper?”
Once again, Maurice heard a sound in his head like wind blowing through a cave.
Isn't it OBVIOUS?
“Isn't it obvious?” said Rat-catcher 1.
“Yeah, obvious,” muttered Rat-catcher 2. “Obviously it's obvious. Er…”
Maurice watched the rat-catchers open several of the cages, grab rats and drop them into a sack. He saw Hamnpork tipped into one, too. And then the ratcatchers had gone, dragging the other humans with them, and Maurice wondered: where, in this maze of cellars, is a Maurice-sized hole?
Cats can't see in the dark. What they can do is see by very little light. A tiny scrap of moonlight was filtering into the space behind him. It was coming through a tiny hole in the ceiling, barely big enough for a mouse and certainly not big enough for a Maurice even if he could reach it.
It illuminated another cellar. By the looks of it, the ratcatchers used this one too; there were a few barrels stacked in one corner, and piles of broken rat cages. Maurice prowled around it, looking for another way out. There were doors, but they had handles, and even his mighty brain couldn't figure out the mystery of doorknobs. There was another drain grating in a wall, though. He squeezed through it.
Another cellar. And more boxes and sacks. At least it was dry, though.
A voice behind him said, What kind of thing are you?
He spun around. All he could make out were boxes sacks. The air still stank of rats, and there was a continuous rustling, and the occasional faint squeak, but the place was a little piece of heaven compared to the hell of the cage room.
The voice had come from behind him, hadn't it? He must have heard it, mustn't he? Because it seemed to him that he just had something like the memory of hearing a voice, something that had arrived in his head without bothering to go through his ragged ears. It had been the same with the rat-catchers. They'd talked as if they'd heard a voice and thought it was their own thoughts. The voice hadn't really been there, had it?
I can't see you, said the memory, I don't know what you are.
It was not a good voice for a memory to have. It was all hisses, and it slid into the mind like a knife.
Come closer.
Maurice's paws twitched. The muscles in his legs started to push him forward. He extended his claws, and got control of himself. Someone was hiding amongst the boxes, he thought. And it would probably not be a good idea to say anything. People could get funny about talking cats. You couldn't rely on everyone being as mad as the story-telling girl.
Come CLOSER.
The voice seemed to pull at him. He'd have to say something.
“I'm happy where I am, thank you,” said Maurice.
Then will you share our PAIN?
The last word hurt. But it did not, and this was surprising, hurt a lot. The voice had sounded sharp and and dramatic, as if the owner was keen to see Maurice rolling in agony. Instead, it gave him a very brief headache.
When the voice arrived again, it sounded very suspicious.
What kind of creature are you? Your mind is WRONG.
“I prefer amazing,” said Maurice. “Anyway, who are you, asking me questions in the dark?”
All he could smell was rat. He heard a faint sound off to his left, and just made out the shape of a very large rat, creeping towards him.
Another sound made him turn. Another rat was coming from the other direction. He could only just make it out in the gloom.
A rustle ahead of him suggested that there was a rat right in front, slipping quietly through the dark.
Here come my eyes… WHAT? CAT! CAT! KILL!
CHAPTER 8
Mr. Bunnsy realized that he was a fat rabbit in the Dark Wood and wished he wasn't a rabbit or, at least, not a fat one. But Ratty Rupert was on the way. Little did he know what was waiting for him.
—From “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”
The three rats leapt they were already too late. There was just a Maurice-shaped hole in the air. Maurice was across the room and scrambling up some boxes.
There was squeaking below him. He jumped onto another box and saw a place in the wall where some of the rotten bricks had fallen out. He aimed for it, scrabbled on thin air as more bricks moved under him, and pushed himself into the unknown.
It was another cellar. And it was full of water. In fact, what it was full of was not exactly water. It was what water eventually becomes when rat cages drain into it, and gutters up above drain into it, and it has had a chance to sit and bubble gently to itself for a year or so. To call it “mud” would be an insult to perfectly respectable swamps all over the world.
Maurice landed in it. It went “gloop”.
He cat-paddled furiously through the thick stuff, trying not to breathe, and dragged himself out on a pile of rubble on the other side of the room. A fallen rafter, slimy with mould, led up to more tangled, fire-blackened wood in the ceiling.
He could still hear the dreadful voice in his head, but it was muffled. It was trying to give him orders. Trying to give a cat orders? It was easier to nail jelly to a wall. What did it think he was, a dog?
Stinking mud oozed off him. Even his ears were full of mud. He went to lick himself clean, and then stopped. It was a perfectly normal cat reaction, licking yourself clean. But licking this off would probably kill him—
There was a movement in the dark. He could just make out some big rat shapes pouring through the hole. There were a couple of splashes. Some of the shapes were creeping along the walls.
Ah, said the voice. You see them? Watch them come for you, CAT!
Maurice stopped himself from running. This was no time to listen to his
inner cat. His inner cat had got him out of the room, but his inner cat was stupid. It wanted him to attack things small enough and run away from everything else. But no cat could tackle a bunch of rats this size. He froze, and tried to keep an eye on the advancing rats. They were heading directly for him.
Hold on… hold on…
The voice had said: You can see them…
How did it know?
Maurice tried to think loudly: Can… You… Read… My… Mind?
Nothing happened.
Maurice had a burst of inspiration. He shut his eyes.
Open them! came the immediate command, and his eyelids trembled.
Shan't, thought Maurice. You can't hear my thoughts! he thought. You only use my eyes and ears! You're just guessing what I'm thinking.
There was no reply. Maurice didn't wait. He leapt. The sloping beam was where he remembered it. He clawed his way up, and hung on. At least all they could do was follow him up. With any luck, he could use his claws…
The rats got closer. Now they were sniffing for him down below, and he imagined quivering noses in the darkness.
One started to climb the beam, still sniffing. It must have been within inches of Maurice's tail when it turned around and went back down again.
He heard them reach the top of the rubble. There was more bewildered sniffing and then, in the dark, the sound of the rats paddling through the mud.
Maurice wrinkled his mud-caked forehead in amazement. Rats who couldn't smell a cat? And then he realized. He didn't smell of cat—he stank of mud, he felt like mud, in a room full of stinking mud.
He sat, still as stone, until through muddy-caked ears he heard claws heading back to the hole in the wall. Then, without opening his eyes, he crept carefully back down to the rubble and found that it had piled up against a rotten wooden door. What must have been a piece of plank, soggy as a sponge, fell out as he touched it.
A feeling of openness suggested that there was another cellar beyond. It stank of rot and burned wood.
Would the… voice know where he was if he opened his eyes now? Didn't one cellar look like another?
Perhaps this room was full of rats, too.
His eyes sprang open. There were no rats, but there was another rusted drain cover which opened into a tunnel just big enough for him to walk through. He could see a faint light.
So this is the rat world, he thought, as he tried to scrape the mud off himself. Dark and muddy and stinky and full of weird voices. I'm a cat. Sunlight and fresh air, that's my style. All I need now is a hole into the outside world and they won't see me for dust, or at least for bits of dried mud.
A voice in his head, which wasn't the mysterious voice but a voice just like his own, said: But what about the stupid-looking kid and the rest of them? You ought to help them! And Maurice thought: Where did you come from? I'll tell you what, you help them and I'll go somewhere warm, how about that?
The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. It still wasn't anything like daylight, or even moonlight, but anything was better than this gloom.
At least, nearly anything.
He pushed his head out of the pipe into a much larger one, made of bricks that were slimy with strange underground nastiness, and into the circle of candlelight.
“It's… Maurice?” said Peaches, staring at the mud dripping off his matted fur.
“Smells better than he usually does, then,” said Darktan, grinning in what Maurice considered was an unfriendly way.
“Oh ha, ha,” said Maurice, weakly. He wasn't in the mood for repartee.
“Ah, I knew you wouldn't let us down, old friend,” said Dangerous Beans. “I have always said that we can depend on Maurice, at least.” He sighed deeply.
“Yes,” said Darktan, giving Maurice a much more knowing look. “Depend on him to do what, though?”
“Oh,” said Maurice. “Er. Good. I've found you all, then.”
“Yes,” said Darktan, in what Maurice thought was a nasty tone of voice. “Amazing, isn't it. I expect you've been looking for a long time, too. I saw you rush off to look for us.”
“Can you help us?” said Dangerous Beans. “We need a plan.”
“Ah, right,” said Maurice. “I suggest we go upwards at every opportun—”
“To rescue Hamnpork,” said Darktan. “We don't leave our people behind.”
“We don't?” said Maurice.
“We don't,” said Darktan.
“And then there's the kid,” said Peaches. “Sardines says he's tied up with the female kid in one of the cellars.”
“Oh, well, you know, humans,” said Maurice, wrinkling his face. “Humans and humans, you know, it's a human kind of thing, I don't think we should meddle, could be misunderstood, I know about humans, they'll sort it out”
“I don't care a ferret's shrlt for humans!” snapped Darktan. “But those rat-catchers took Hamnpork off in a sack! You saw that room, cat! You saw the rats crammed in cages! It's the rat-catchers who are stealing the food! Sardines says there's sacks and sacks of food! And there's something else…”
“A voice,” said Maurice, before he could stop himself.
Darktan looked up, wild-eyed. “You heard it?” he said. “I thought it was just us!”
“The rat-catchers can hear it too,” said Maurice. “Only they think it's their own thoughts.”
“It frightened the others,” mumbled Dangerous Beans. “They just… stopped thinking…” He looked absolutely dejected. Open beside him, grubby with dirt and paw marks, was “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”. “Even Toxie ran off,” he went on. “And he knows how to write! How can that happen?”
“It seemed to affect some of us more than others,” said Darktan, in a more matter-of-fact voice. “I've sent some of the more sensible ones out to try and round up the rest, but it's going to be a long job. They were just running blindly. We've got to get Hamnpork. He's the leader. We're rats, after all. A clan. Rats will follow the leader.”
“But he's a bit old, and you're the tough one, and he's not exactly the brains of the outfit—” Maurice began.
“They took him away!” said Darktan. “They're ratcatchers! He's one of us! Are you going to help or not?”
Maurice thought he heard a scrabbling noise at the other end of his pipe. He couldn't turn around to check, and he suddenly felt very exposed. “Yeah, help you, yeah, yeah,” he said hurriedly.
“Ahem. Do you really mean that, Maurice?” said Peaches.
“Yeah, yeah, right,” said Maurice. He crawled out of the pipe and looked back along it. There was no sign of any rats.
“Sardines is following the rat-catchers,” said Darktan, “so we'll find out where they're taking him”
“I've got a bad feeling that I already know,” said Maurice.
“How?” snapped Peaches.
“I'm a cat, right?” said Maurice. “Cats hang around places. We see things. A lot of places don't mind cats wandering, right, because we keep down the vermi—we keep the, er—”
“All right, all right, we know you don't eat anyone who can talk, you keep telling us,” said Peaches. “Get on with it!”
“I was in a place once, it was a barn, I was up in the hayloft, where you can always find a, er—”
Peaches rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, go on!”
“Well, anyway, all these men came in and I couldn't get away because they had lots of dogs and they shut the barn doors and, er, they put up this kind of, kind of big round wooden wall in the middle of the floor, and there were some men with boxes of rats and they tipped rats into the ring and then, and then they put some dogs in, too. Terriers,” he added, trying to avoid their expressions.
“The rats fought the dogs?” said Darktan.
“Well, I suppose they could have done,” said Maurice. “They mostly ran around and around. It's called rat-coursing. The rat-catchers bring the rats along, of course. Alive.”
“Rat-coursing…” said Darktan. “How is it we've never heard of this?”
Maurice blinked at him. For clever creatures, the rats could be amazingly stupid at times. “Why would you hear about it?” he said.
“Surely one of the rats who—?”
“You don't seem to understand,” said Maurice. “The rats that go into the pit don't come out. At least, not breathing.”
There was silence.
“Can't they jump out?” asked Peaches in a little voice.
“Too high,” said Maurice.
“Why don't they fight the dogs?” said Darktan.
Really, really stupid, Maurice thought.
“Because they're rats, Darktan,” said Maurice. “Lots of rats. All stinking of one another's fear and panic. You know how it happens.”
“I bit a dog on the nose once!” said Darktan.
“Right, right,” said Maurice soothingly. “One rat can think and be brave, right. But a bunch of rats is a mob. A bunch of rats is just a big animal with lots of legs and no brain.”
“That's not true!” said Peaches. “Together we are strong!”
“Exactly how high?” said Darktan, who was staring at the candlelight as if seeing pictures in it.
“What?” asked Peaches and Maurice together.
“The wall… how high, exactly?”
“Huh? I don't know! High! Humans were leaning their elbows on it! Does it matter? It's far too high for a rat to jump, I know that.”
“Everything we've done we've done because we've stuck together—” Peaches began.
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