GoRec sneered. “Am I a mouse, that the king of Tira-Nor sends a flea to bite me? What is the meaning of this insult?”
JaRed looked from face to sneering face. Fear coursed through his limbs, and he wondered if they could see that he was shaking. He forced himself to stand straight anyway. “You want to know why I was chosen to fight you? Very well. Here is the meaning, rat. I am here to show you that might does not make right.”
There was a pause, followed by another, even louder round of laughter. Only GoRec didn’t join in.
JaRed stood just beyond GoRec’s reach. “Hear me, rats of GoRec,” he said, pretending a confidence he did not feel. “And remember my words when your master dies at my teeth. ElShua is lord of the mice, lord of the rats, lord even of the Great Owl. Lord Wroth is nothing. I spit on him.”
JaRed spat for emphasis, though nothing came out. His mouth felt dry as dust.
“Your teeth?” GoRec’s face twisted into a sneer. “Teeth on a flea?”
“Yes,” JaRed said so quietly that only GoRec could hear. The nail still felt cool in his paw, though GoRec had not seemed to notice it. “You are about to be killed by a mouse called Runt.”
GoRec leapt forward, hissing, one paw raised in a white blur of motion.
One instant the long, black claws were held up like curved daggers. The next instant they sliced wickedly at JaRed’s throat.
JaRed ducked, twisting sideways and backward to avoid the blow.
GoRec’s open jaws filled JaRed’s vision: the long, fox-like teeth, the black-spotted tongue, the rotting gums.
Then, before any time at all seemed to have passed, the jaws closed. The gums and tongue disappeared. Spittle flew in great glittering droplets that hung suspended in the air. The yellow canines slammed shut on JaRed’s outstretched arm.
But JaRed’s arm was no longer there. In the flashmotion timelessness of battle, he had slipped under GoRec’s chin and withdrawn into a defensive fighting stance.
GoRec’s body moved like a rope, looping around and through itself in effortless circles as he drove JaRed backward, sideways, down. He came with an unrelenting flurry of slashes, kicks, and bites. His movements were ghostlike: silent, fluid, untraceable. His lips curled back in a doglike growl as he spewed a torrent of foul breath and even fouler curses.
On and on he came, hurling himself at JaRed like a meteor.
Somehow JaRed evaded every blow, though only by a hair’s breadth. For a long time he barely managed to follow the endless stream of GoRec’s attack, concentrating solely on his own survival. He still gripped the nail, but he could not use it. He saw no opening in the rat’s defenses. The nail grew heavier as JaRed ducked, twisted, evaded.
Blow after blow thudded past. Strike after strike hammered the air. Bite after bite narrowly missed.
Eventually GoRec seemed to realize the mouse he fought was too fast to be killed the way he killed other mice and rats. He changed tactics. He made shorter strikes, tried to simply grab JaRed with an open paw.
GoRec was using his weight now, trying to force an opening so he could pin JaRed rather than pummel him. JaRed knew what would happen if the monster upended him. Claws to the belly.
A slow, agonizing death.
JaRed saw the opening briefly, but was so shocked he didn’t have time to take advantage of it. GoRec spread his front paws, struck downward with his teeth like a viper. He lashed out with his hind legs, struck the air with his coiling tail.
JaRed whirled, leapt, ducked.
Back and forth they moved across the earth, their breath coming in great heaves, sweat pouring from their flesh.
The Ur’Lugh stood like a line of statues, staring grim-faced in disbelief, their enthusiastic cheers now silent.
In a flash, JaRed recalled Blang’s warning. He usually strikes from the left. Right-left-right, then a left strike.
But this missed the point. JaRed remembered GoRec’s fight at the burn pile. It was not the angle that mattered, but the moment.
GoRec always struck after three feints.
To JaRed it seemed the fight expanded into a larger container, as though time had slowed to a crawl.
GoRec moved right, then left, then right again. When he lunged forward, JaRed heaved the rusting point of the nail in a silver-tipped arc, praying as he did so. The nail cut the air, whistling as it sliced toward GoRec’s throat.
JaRed felt the sudden, jarring impact as the point struck home.
GoRec hesitated, tottered. A scowl of confusion twisted his face. He gripped the shaft of the nail with one paw.
He smiled grimly. “What’s this?” GoRec pulled the point of the nail away from his throat, JaRed still gripping the other end. “A mouse fang?”
A trickle of blood ran from a point on GoRec’s neck just above his chest. Enough to make him angry, and no more. A mosquito bite, not a death strike.
GoRec ripped the nail out of JaRed’s grasp with an effortless twist and cast it away.
The Ur’Lugh cheered.
A cold chill swept through JaRed’s body, though sweat still poured down his face. Despair, heavier than any nail, settled on his shoulders. He clenched his teeth.
So, we are alone after all.
The world began to tilt, to slide away like some great table spilling its contents over the edge of the horizon.
“Hear me, mice of Tira-Nor,” GoRec said, his voice raised in triumph. “And know that GoRec is master of the universe!” The emptiness of his black and lifeless eyes filled with a consuming hatred.
“What did they do to you?” JaRed asked. He did not know where the words came from.
GoRec hesitated, though he did not relax. “They are mice,” he said, as though that were explanation enough.
JaRed shook his head. “Not the mice of Tira-Nor. I mean the mice of your past. The ones who used to torment you when you were small. Before you made your bargain with Lord Wroth.”
GoRec’s eyes opened wide.
“Those are the mice you hate. The Meatsies. The Dumpsters. The ones who knew you as Tweener. But why do you hate them? What did they do?”
GoRec seemed to shrink before him. Slowly, like water spilling from a drain, the hate emptied and the eyes glossed over. In that moment JaRed knew his vision had been true.
“Tweener,” GoRec muttered, as though remembering something long forgotten. “The mice of the city dump. The mice of the meat-packaging plant. Yes. I knew them once. They were—” He looked around, as though coming to himself.
Compassion settled on JaRed’s soul like a blanket. Hope erupted in his heart. Perhaps even GoRec was not beyond redemption. The thought shook him to the core, yet it brought an odd sensation of joy, of promise.
He stepped backward and looked over one shoulder at the sun-blasted earth that shrouded his city. Tira-Nor. City of Promise.
My city? Yes. My city and my people.
“They were what?” JaRed asked. “Cruel? Stupid? Thoughtless?”
“Yes.” GoRec’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze became malicious again. “They were cruel, stupid, thoughtless mice.”
Without warning, GoRec lunged forward, reaching with outstretched paws.
JaRed stepped back and twisted away, scrambling for time. He needed to recover find his battle-mind, which had been lost in the moment of his vision.
He felt a tug at his ankle. An awkward yank.
No. This isn’t supposed to—
The ground rose up like a wall and slammed into his face. Pain exploded behind his eyes. Fingers of light splintered his brain.
He did not see which of the Ur’Lugh had reached into the open arena to trip him. But he heard the resulting cheers.
He shoved against the earth, against the blinding pain and blackness. He raised himself to all fours and wobbled there unsteadily. He tasted blood in his mouth. Blood and dirt.
He blinked, trying to focus. The world shivered under a cloak of gray mist. The sun dimmed behind a thick, blood-red veil. The sky swayed heavily above him.
Who but the Owl could blot the sun so completely?
He reached out with both hands to steady himself, and his fingers brushed the head of the fallen nail. Then his back legs were circled in an iron grip and he was jerked backward. The world spun as his body was flipped over.
The back of his head struck the ground, felt as though it had burst open.
Agony. An ice-pick stabbing fire into the base of his skull.
He lay on his back, unable to breathe, blinking against the darkness and fear. He reached out with one arm and held the other aloft, as though to ward off the final descent of the Owl, who must even now be coming for him.
GoRec stood above him. One massive leg jammed into JaRed’s stomach, the claws digging into JaRed’s belly like razors. The rat held up his front paws and grinned, as if in demonstration that the fight had taken no effort at all.
“Yes,” GoRec snarled. “My tormentors were mice. What other reason do I need for killing them? Or for killing you?”
The roar of the Ur’Lugh was thunderous.
JaRed reached back still farther, unable to see, but knowing it must be there, grasping desperately, his fingers clawing dirt, grass, empty air.
GoRec was toying with him, swaying above him like a pendulum. The face of death coming closer with each pass.
Noise and thunder. A deafening roar of Ur’Lugh voices. Cheering. Screaming. Laughing.
Death wears the face of a rat. He shuddered.
His fingers closed around the cool shaft of the nail, the ridges near the flat surface at the end.
The darkness split with a blinding light as the sun appeared behind GoRec’s leering face. Then darkness again. Followed by light. The monster wavered. Right. Left. Right.
Now!
JaRed heaved on the shaft and raised the nail Its iron point stabbed upward like a pike its head braced against the earth to absorb the impact of GoRec’s lightning attack.
He was too late.
He had underestimated the great brute’s speed.
GoRec’s weight crashed onto him. Death gave a great sigh and closed its teeth around JaRed’s shoulder.
Far above them, unseen by anyone but JaRed, the Great Owl swooped.
Captain Blang watched the battle silently from his perch high above the skirmish. To the south, Lieutenant KoVeek’s detachment had deployed in a narrow V aimed at the heart of the Ur’Lugh. As yet none of the rat officers seemed to notice Tira-Nor’s kingsguard sliding out of both west-facing gates.
JaRed had drawn the rat in. Made himself seem vulnerable and small. Yet his speed was precise. His movements effortless. His limbs always just beyond reach, yet close enough to strike.
A young LaRish, Blang thought. Faster even than SoSheth used to be, when the king was in his prime.
There had been a moment during the fight when it seemed JaRed had accomplished the impossible. But his hidden skill had not been enough, for the nail had not pierced the rat’s neck.
Instead, GoRec had pinned him. From this angle, Blang could not see how the killing was done. But he saw the side-to-side motion. The strike. The death blow had come. The fight was over.
JaRed had died bravely.
And now it was time. Captain Blang gave the signal, then leapt down the slope and into the line of the Ur’Lugh, followed closely by forty of his most skilled fighters.
He would avenge JaRed’s death. LaRish’s death. The death of his father, who died without a whimper.
Once the battle had begun, there was no time for memories. Only raking claws and slicing teeth. Evasion and attack. The terrible, heart-pounding beauty of his assault.
This was a blessing, for at last Captain Blang could release the pent-up rage he had hidden for so long. At last he could exact vengeance for the shame and suffering of childhood, of life.
In battle he could lose the awareness of what he was. A mouse. A rat-hater.
A Dumpster.
JaRed struggled to raise the heavy, sweat-drenched rat off his chest. The nail bore some of the monster’s weight, or JaRed would never have managed it.
The nail had entered GoRec’s chest between two ribs, driven deep by his own size and speed as he struck downward to kill JaRed. The rat’s mouth had opened reflexively, and his teeth had scraped the fur around JaRed’s wounded shoulder.
JaRed twisted and shoved against the massive bulk, pulling his legs free as GoRec’s body rolled sideways. He emerged just as Captain Blang and his warriors hit the Ur’Lugh line from the West Gate.
JaRed drew the nail from GoRec’s chest and held it skyward, its shaft bloody and gleaming in the morning sun.
The mice of Tira-Nor believe what happened next was the fault of the rats themselves. GoRec’s followers had placed so much hope in him they didn’t know what to do when he was gone. Their stories about him, though preposterous, were nonetheless believed, and this made his death all the more impossible. GoRec, after all, was Lord Wroth’s own stepchild. GoRec would live forever. He would lead the rats to victory over the mice of Tira-Nor, over the mice of the whole world. GoRec could not be defeated by mortal flesh. Anything that killed GoRec would have to be a ghost, or a demon, or a wraith from the blackest pits of the earth.
One could hardly blame the rats for their fear. From the moment JaRed appeared victorious on the battlefield, an aura surrounded him, a mystique of invulnerability. As he shoved GoRec’s body aside and held up the nail, he seemed—to some of the rats—to have passed ghost-like all the way through GoRec’s body.
Then, too, the rats, being clever only in evil, could not comprehend the simplicity of the killing. It seemed to them JaRed had grown a fang from his paw. No doubt this was why some of them believed the mouse fiend who killed their master was able to change himself into a giant snake.
Leaderless, the rats found themselves at the mercy of the very thing that had driven them to attack Tira-Nor. Fear. With GoRec gone, the Ur’Lugh did not stand and fight. And if the Ur’Lugh would not fight, why should the rest of the army?
The rats turned and fled.
As Captain Blang’s elite unit shredded the Ur’Lugh, the other kingsguard units rushed into battle from the Shade, Open, and Royal gates, converging on the rat center.
Many of the Ur’Lugh were killed. Most fled. The kingsguard then split the rat army down the middle. KoVeek pursued the smaller part westward, toward the now barren cornfield. Captain Blang and his troops drove the larger part of the rat army south through the Dark Forest to the cliffs above the river. There they killed rats for almost an hour as black clouds gathered in the west. Hundreds of rats—shocked at the fury of the kingsguard—threw themselves off the cliffs and were swept away by the river.
“Stop!”
Captain Blang turned and saw JaRed standing in the open space between the trees and the cliff. A few dozen rats huddled near the edge, looking back and forth between the sheer drop to the river and the menacing and revenge-minded kingsguard.
JaRed held up the bloody nail, and the sight of it brought a shudder to rat and mouse alike. “Enough,” he said simply.
“But they are getting what they deserve,” Captain Blang said. “If we let them live, who knows what will happen?”
“Perhaps,” JaRed said. “But if we all get what we deserve, no one will ever be happy.” He sighed heavily, and it seemed to Captain Blang that JaRed had grown immensely taller and decades older.
“Is there no room for mercy in your heart, Captain Blang?”
The presence JaRed had felt twice before washed over him again. Peace, as tangible as the moisture in the air, rippled across the battlefield.
Captain Blang opened his mouth to speak. Then his shoulders slumped, and he nodded slowly. “All right. Let them go.” He turned and walked wearily into the trees, toward home. His face revealed nothing but a mask of hidden sadness. He seemed lost, wounded. He returned no salute, answered no questions, offered no victory cheer.
JaRed ordered the remaining rats be taken captive, and he told
KoVeek to treat them with dignity.
The sun had disappeared. Storm clouds roiled overhead in churning waves of black and gray, and the sight of them brought a smile to his face.
JaRed was tired. Bone weary. Next to a long drink of cold water, he wanted nothing so much as to curl up in his own fur-cozy sleeping chambers and sleep for weeks.
But all danger had not passed.
He had seen something shocking in King SoSheth’s eyes just before the fight with GoRec. The king was jealous of him. Jealous … and afraid.
The king wants me dead.
What a strange realization that was. JaRed looked heavenward as rain began to spatter in huge droplets all around him.
How ironic, he thought. The king of Tira-Nor, the most powerful mouse in the land, is afraid of me … Runt!
Chapter Twelve
Horrid
It took weeks to bury the dead, clean out the tunnels, and rebuild the city’s damaged defenses. The rain that came at the end of what the mice later called “The Battle of JaRed’s Fang” lingered for days. The city was forced to live on the food they had saved for the siege. But no one complained.
Eventually the mice of Tira-Nor got around to celebrating. A feast was held in the Great Hall. The best of the reserved berries and nuts and dried crickets were taken out of reserve, and the social barriers of the past were, for one evening at least, removed.
The king arrived with a train of supporters and nose-dabbers. YuLooq the merchant waddled in and staked out a corner near a pile of juicy raisins. Kingsguard warriors mingled among the militia. Even TaMir was there.
Only a few members of the Families snubbed the event, preferring instead to attend a private affair in the home of SingleBerry the Nose. “After all,” Single-Berry sniffed to a handful of glum-looking aristocracy, “a celebratory feast ought to be held in a place with more dignity, don’t you agree? The Commons, no offense to the rabble, is, well, rather pedestrian, what?”
Runt the Brave: Bravery in the Midst of a Bully Society (Legends of Tira-Nor) Page 14