All his hopes. His bitterness and revenge. None of his plans would come to fruition. His life would be an absurd lesson in futility, with no one left to learn it. He had spent so many seasons lost in his self-importance, the truth of his own insignificance came as a shock. The realization washed like ice water over his heart, his mind.
But oddly, it came as a relief too. He felt as though he had been carrying himself on his shoulders, and all he had ever wanted was to just let go.
The two other squads formed in the chamber behind them.
“Ready?” MarSihlu said. “Follow me. Double time.” He turned to HaRed. “Lead the way, soldier.”
Soldier? The word carried connotations of ordinariness that HaRed should have resented. Instead, a strange sense of pride filled him.
“Yes, sir.” It was the first time HaRed had ever used the word sir and really meant it.
He led them south toward the place where he had heard scratching a few moments before; the new borehole that was already spilling blood-frenzied rats into the poorest hovels of the Commons.
“You are only a kit,” King SoSheth said. “You cannot fight GoRec.”
The runt drew himself up to his full height. “Majesty, I am a member of your own kingsguard, trained by General LaRish himself.”
SoSheth pursed his lips.
“I fought at the battle of Dry Gully, Majesty.” The runt’s voice sounded oddly confident, as though death meant nothing to him. “I killed the snake in the Chamber of Wroth. This rat will be no different.”
SoSheth sighed deeply and began to pace again as JaRed waited in silence for an answer. Tira-Nor could not resist the siege much longer. Though they had food for several weeks, they lacked water. Even at halfrations, it was a matter of days, not weeks, before the females and kits began to die. Why didn’t ElShua send rain?
Something must be done, and soon. Perhaps the city should be evacuated, turned over to the rats in exchange for a promise of safe conduct. But could the rats be trusted?
No.
A late-night evacuation, then? Under cover of darkness, perhaps?
No.
So many females and kits in the Dark Forest would not survive. Even if they did, where would they go?
Curse all rats forever!
SoSheth was tired. So very tired. The weight of kingship hung heavily on his shoulders. Should they stay and die slowly, or leave and die quickly? Which was more merciful? Which more certain?
“Majesty.”
Though soft, the interruption irritated him. “What?”
Runt lowered his gaze. “ElShua is with me.”
SoSheth let out a long, slow breath. This was what SoSheth feared the most, that ElShua was with this tunnel-breaker, this serpent-killer, this JaRed son of ReDemec the Red.
Come to think of it, this was what had bothered the brother too. SoSheth had seen it in his eyes when he related TaMir’s prophecy.
TaMir. Who had once been a friend. Who had spoken of ElShua’s favor.
Well, where was ElShua now?
“It is my city,” SoSheth said through clenched teeth.
“My lord?”
SoSheth spat. “It is my kingdom. Not GoRec’s. Not yours. Not ElShua’s. Mine!”
The runt retreated two steps, toward the shadows, a look of unbelief stitched across his face. It was a look SoSheth would never forget.
But then he saw the answer. Not an easy answer. But not a difficult one either.
It was obvious, really. King SoSheth had nothing to lose.
He would allow ReDemec’s son to fight GoRec, and the runt would be killed. And while the Ur’Lugh cheered his death, King SoSheth would order the kingsguard to slide quietly out of the Royal, West, and Shade Gates and attack the rats in force. The kingsguard would have surprise on their side, if nothing else.
Perhaps, with much luck, they could collapse the rat center. And once that happened … GoRec’s army would turn to vapor without a strong leader.
Perhaps.
At least if Tira-Nor falls it will do so under me, not under this half-sized commoner.
SoSheth cleared his throat. “Are you certain?”
Runt looked up. “Yes, Majesty.”
SoSheth nodded. “All right. I will tell my armorer to make you ready by morning. Captain Blang will advise GoRec that Tira-Nor has accepted his challenge. You will be our champion, JaRed son of ReDemec.”
“Thank you, Majesty.”
Thank you?
JaRed’s tone told SoSheth that he knew his king was sending him to die, yet he did not draw back. The runt did not seem to carry the heaviness of a death sentence on his shoulders.
Odd. And what if he somehow survives? What then?
SoSheth clenched his teeth.
Then I will kill JaRed son of ReDemec the Red myself.
HaRed took a stunning blow to the side of his head as he rounded the corner into the perimeter tunnel. The rat’s claws dug into the side of his face, gouging four long lines into his cheek. The impact knocked him sideways into the far wall. He landed awkwardly on one shoulder, virtually upside down, his head spinning.
The tunnel narrowed, turned. He felt dizzy, and thought for a moment he would faint. He heard screams. In the distance, perhaps fifteen lengths away, the borehole opened in the tunnel ceiling. Rats poured through in a steady stream, jamming the tunnel near the hole as their eyes adjusted to the darkness.
MarSihlu leapt into the closest rat and went down in a blur of motion. Behind him, two of the five mice in his squad ran squealing from the fight.
Cowards.
The other three mice stepped nervously into the intersection to block the passage into the heart of Tira-Nor.
FalKirq, the one who snored, went down under the weight of a rat who came seemingly from nowhere.
HaRed tried to stand, but the world exploded as a brown wall of fur drove him headfirst into the tunnel floor. Pain seared his spine. He felt the hot breath of the rat on his skin just before it bit into his neck.
HaRed squirmed and twisted over onto his back. The rat kicked at HaRed’s rump with his hind legs, but succeeded only in gouging his own tail.
White-hot rage consumed him in an instant and the pain dissipated. HaRed lunged upward and sank his own teeth into the rat’s throat.
He wanted nothing more at that moment than to kill this horrible invader. And kill it he would. For his teeth were already drawing out the rat’s lifeblood. It squirmed and writhed and struggled, but HaRed held on.
The other rats did not intervene in the fight. They flowed around him west and north along both tunnels.
MarSihlu died bravely, amid a torrent of blows from three rats who teamed up to kill the obvious leader of the squad. The two remaining militia-mice kept their heads. They backed slowly into the intersecting tunnel and made their stand side by side. They dispatched two rats and wounded a third before succumbing to the rats’ superior size and skill.
Their stand did not last long, but it was long enough. Behind them, the second and third quickresponse squads piled into the tunnel and began pushing the rats back towards the perimeter.
HaRed saw his chance. He never had been brave. Only clever. Ironically, at that moment, bravery found him.
He saw the temporary retreat of the rats from the intersecting tunnel and realized what would happen next.
Rats still poured in from the borehole. The perimeter tunnel stood packed with two or three dozen invaders. The pressure of the rats pushing both directions down the tunnel prevented those at the intersection from retreating toward the borehole. Instead, the overflow of sweating, cursing invaders flowed the other direction. The rats were running west along the perimeter. Already at least six or seven had gone that way. Eventually they would find the next intersecting tunnel, and the invasion would be that much harder to contain.
The next intersection was not far. The rats may have found it already.
HaRed picked himself up and ran.
Ahead, he heard the
sneering, cursing, and laughing of rats as they nosed the walls, the floor. Behind him, he heard more rats.
They all ran in darkness now. There were no glowstones within fifty lengths, and those were concealed by turns and double-backs.
They had come to the perimeter defenses of the Wind Gate. The double-backs, maze hatches, fools’ errands, and wall stones on which King SoSheth was apparently depending. HaRed remembered what Mar-Sihlu had said. The rats don’t know the tunnels of the Commons the way we do. We’re going to use that against them.
Indeed.
There were two holes in Tira-Nor’s defenses: two tunnels by which the rats were stumbling into the city. If he could plug at least one of them, the kingsguard would stand a chance. He would cut off the westward flow of rats down the perimeter.
HaRed pressed himself against one wall, feeling his way forward. He had picked an opportune time to follow. Between the rats up ahead and the rats some distance behind he found a gap of silent emptiness that meant safety.
But some of the invaders had already gone down the western passage, and after he blocked the tunnel, they would still be inside Tira-Nor’s defenseless Commons. While he was blocking the passage, where would these attackers go?
HaRed knew, and the knowledge congealed into a lump of despair so real that for a moment he stood frozen by indecision.
Whose home lay closest to the Wind Gate? Whose home boasted of the southernmost chambers of Tira-Nor?
Father’s. The home of ReDemec the Red, where Mother lay asleep even now, unaware of the danger sniffing and gnawing its way toward her.
He couldn’t leave her alone. Could he?
But if the passage weren’t blocked, there would soon be so many rats inside Tira-Nor that nothing could protect any of the mice. All of them would die, including Mother.
He made his decision, and for the first time in many seasons felt the hot sting of tears streaming down his cheek. The tears burned as they hit the long gashes left there by a rat’s claws.
He sprang forward, his paws padding the earth in the darkness until he came to the almost imperceptible dip in the ground.
HaRed stopped and turned to his right. He stood on his hind legs, feeling for the opening. The world spun, and he was forced to rest. He had lost too much blood. The blow to his head had done more damage than he realized. Yet Tira-Nor could not afford for him to lose consciousness.
The rats that had followed him drew closer, their voices now distinct in the darkness.
“Whole place stinks of mice,” one of them said.
“Reeks,” said another.
He shook his head to clear it and reached up again in the blackness. He found the high, hidden ledge and leapt upward, scrabbling in the darkness, his paws kicking against the packed dirt of the tunnel wall. His body shook and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
I’m going to die here.
“What’s that?” a rat snarled. “Up ahead there. You hear something?”
“I didn’t hear nothin’.”
HaRed pushed into the black emptiness of the cave-like alcove, one paw on the smooth stone that was perched just above the tunnel. The trap was meant to seal off the Wind Gate, in case it ever fell into the hands of invaders. But it would just as effectively block anyone from coming the other direction into the gate complex … and from there into Tira-Nor.
He felt along the dirt wall until he found the thick shaft of wood that was jammed into retaining stones on either side of a long lever. He had only to slide the shaft out from under one retainer. The lever would snap upward and the wall stone would drop into the mouth of the tunnel.
The engineers called these devices snake eggs because the stones—which were actually larger than the tunnel itself—were supposed to fit like an egg in a snake’s belly.
For just a moment he hesitated. Then he reached forward and shoved.
The lever didn’t budge.
He pushed again.
Impossible!
How many days had he contemplated tripping the lever out of pure spite? How many times had he rested a paw against the same shaft of wood, certain a simple nudge would bring the world crashing down on the tunnel? And now that there was a cause, it wouldn’t move!
HaRed glared into the darkness. He licked his lips and pushed again, even harder.
The lever was stuck fast, and HaRed had no strength left. His body had betrayed him. It had betrayed all of Tira-Nor.
He closed his eyes to keep the world from spinning, then braced his rear legs against the dirt wall behind him. He stretched out both front paws to grasp the lever, knowing the effort was beyond him now.
Without thinking about what he was doing, he whispered, “Please. Help me.”
He shoved a third time, and fireworks exploded behind his eyes. Something cracked, and the lever slipped forward. His arms slipped down the shaft and he landed face first on the floor.
Above, the stone groaned softly, then thudded downward in its groves.
Several rats were approaching in the tunnel below. The noise and thunder of the falling stone must have awakened their blackest fears. They seemed to think all the Earth was collapsing around them. They turned and fled, screaming murder and death and the end of the world.
HaRed closed his eyes and waited for death to come.
When HaRed awoke he could not tell how long he had been unconscious. His neck ached and his throat burned with thirst. The blood on his cheek had caked into four long scabs. He marveled that he was still alive.
He stood on wobbly legs and slid gingerly back down into the tunnel. He could not take the western route home to find out what had happened to Mother, Merry, and Berry. He stood now on the wrong side of the stone. He would have to go the long way, through the mass of rats. If they were still there.
And what if Tira-Nor had already fallen?
Well, he would kill one or two more rats before the day was over. Come and get me.
There were no sounds of fighting from the intersection up ahead, but he could see by the blue-misted haze of light from the nearest glowstone that many bodies lay in the tunnel.
The battle had ended, but only recently. He must not have been unconscious very long.
The mice of the quick-response squads were all dead. He recognized their faces, the faces of the soldiers who had followed him.
Soldiers. That word did not sound ordinary now. It would never sound ordinary again.
They had saved Tira-Nor, at least for a few hours. They had plugged the dam just long enough for the kingsguard to arrive from their posts at the Wind and Forest garrisons. Kingsguard warriors moved in the distance.
HaRed passed body after body. More than thirty mice, and almost as many rats, lay unmoving in the tunnel. The wounded groaned quietly, their backs propped against the wall. Many of them would die before the night was over. For these he felt genuine pity.
When he came to the intersection, HaRed saw the borehole was now clear of rats. A tight circle of kingsguard warriors crowded around the pale ribbon of moonlight that stabbed the darkness from the hole.
“Engineers,” Lieutenant KoVeek snapped. “I want engineers here in twenty heartbeats. I want this entire section of tunnel collapsed!”
One of the kingsguard saluted. “I’ll see to it.”
KoVeek saw HaRed and his eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is HaRed son of ReDemec the Red. I was part of the militia that responded to the rat’s attack. I tripped the wall stone.”
KoVeek nodded. “Well done.”
“Please. There were other rats on the far side of the stone. I must find out about my family.”
“ReDemec the Red, you say?” KoVeek glanced sideways toward one of his sergeants, who whispered something in his ear.
“Yes. Very well. Sergeant PoTeesh will go with you. He has just come from there.”
The sergeant saluted Lieutenant KoVeek and approached HaRed, limping from a gash in his right hind leg. “HaRed,” th
e sergeant said as they walked, “I hate to tell you this, but there is a reason the lieutenant sent me with you. My squad ran into eight rats who were looting in the southwest quadrant of the Wind section.”
The lump in HaRed’s throat tightened. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“You have some nasty wounds, HaRed. You should walk, not run.”
HaRed had already broken into a steady trot, the fastest pace he could manage. And the injured sergeant could not keep up with him.
From behind him the sergeant called out, “It’s too late for them, HaRed!”
King SoSheth’s armorer led JaRed into the private armory of the king just before dawn.
“You have your choice of oils,” the armorer said. His voice lacked confidence, and his eyes revealed a pity JaRed resented.
JaRed shook his head. “I’m not used to being oiled. It would only hinder me.”
The armorer shrugged. “I was ordered to give you anything you asked for.”
“Good. In that case, I need you to go back to the barracks where I keep my things …”
HaRed saw the rats first. Their deaths had been swift and efficient. The work of the kingsguard.
Then he saw Merry and Berry.
They lay dead outside the entrance to the family chambers. He placed one paw aside each neck. No pulse, though the skin was still warm.
Inside, in the darkness of the entrance, he called, “Mother?”
“HaRed?” Her voice came faintly, with a gasp.
“Mother?” In the darkness it took him a moment to find her. She lay on the floor. He cradled her head in his paws.
Blue-green light flooded the room. Sergeant PoTeesh stood in the entry, holding a glowstone. “I thought you might want—” When he saw HaRed’s mother he stopped mid-sentence.
“HaRed,” Mother said, “you’re safe. Where are Merry and Berry?”
“They’re … safe too,” HaRed whispered. “Don’t talk.”
“You fought them, didn’t you?” Mother said.
HaRed glanced down, saw her wounds, and gulped. Fresh tears spilled down his cheek. “Don’t talk, Mother.”
Runt the Brave: Bravery in the Midst of a Bully Society (Legends of Tira-Nor) Page 12