‘Hur, hur, hur,’ said Rat-catcher 2. He’d probably studied to get a thug laugh like that, Maurice thought.
‘And we don’t have a boss,’ said Rat-catcher 1.
‘Yeah, we’re our own bosses,’ said Rat-catcher 2.
And then the story went wrong.
‘And you, miss,’ said Rat-catcher 1, turning to Malicia, ‘are too lippy by half.’ He swung his fist, lifting her off her feet and slamming her against the rat cages. The rats went mad and the cages boiled with frantic activity as she slumped to the ground.
The rat-catcher turned to Keith. ‘You going to try anything, kid?’ he said. ‘You going to try anything? She was a girl so I was nice and kind but you I’ll put in one of the cages—’
‘Yeah, and they ain’t been fed today!’ said a delighted Rat-catcher 2.
Go on, kid! Maurice thought. Do something! But Keith just stood there, staring at the man.
Rat-catcher 1 looked him up and down, scornfully. ‘What’s that you’ve got there, boy? A pipe? Give it here!’
The pipe was grabbed from Keith’s belt and he was pushed onto the floor. ‘A penny whistle? Think you’re the rat piper, do you?’ Rat-catcher 1 snapped the pipe in two and tossed the bits inside the cages. ‘Y’know, they say that over in Porkscratchenz the Rat Piper led all the kids out of the town. Now there was a man with the right idea!’
Keith looked up. His eyes narrowed. He got to his feet.
Here it comes, thought Maurice. He’s going to leap forward with superhuman strength because he’s so angry and they’re going to wish he’d never been born…
Keith leapt forward with ordinary human strength, landed one punch on Rat-catcher 1 and was smacked to the floor again by a big, brutal, sledgehammer blow.
All right, all right, he got knocked down, thought Maurice as Keith struggled for breath, but he’s going to get up again.
There was a shrill scream, and Maurice thought: aha!
But the scream hadn’t come from the wheezing Keith. A grey figure had launched itself from the top of the rat cages right at the rat-catcher’s face. It landed teeth first, and blood spurted on the rat-catcher’s nose.
Aha! thought Maurice again, it’s Hamnpork to the rescue! What? Mrillp! I’m thinking like the girl! I keep thinking it’s a story!
The rat-catcher grabbed at the rat and held him out at arm’s length by his tail. Hamnpork twisted and turned, squealing with rage. His captor dabbed at his nose with his spare hand, and stared at Hamnpork as he struggled.
‘He’s a bit of a fighter,’ said Rat-catcher 2. ‘How’d he get out?’
‘Not one of ours,’ said Rat-catcher 1. ‘He’s a red.’
‘Red? What’s red about him?’
‘A red rat’s a kind of grey rat, as you would very well know if you’d were an hexperienced Guild member like me,’ said the rat-catcher. ‘They ain’t local. You get ’em down on the plains. Funny to find one up here. Very funny. Greasy old devil, too. But game as anything.’
‘Your nose is all runny.’
‘Yeah. I know. I’ve had more rat bites than you’ve had hot dinners. Don’t feel ’em any more,’ said Rat-catcher 1, in a voice that suggested that the spinning, screeching Hamnpork was a lot more interesting than his colleague.
‘I only have cold sausage for dinner.’
‘There you are then. What a little fighter you are, to be sure. Real little devil, aren’t you. Plucky as anything.’
‘Kind of you to say so.’
‘I was talking to the rat, mister.’ He prodded Keith with his boot. ‘Go and tie up these two somewhere, OK?
We’ll put them in one of the other cellars for now. One with a proper door. And a proper lock. And no handy little trapdoors. And you give me the key.’
‘She’s the mayor’s daughter,’ said Rat-catcher 2. ‘Mayors can get really upset about daughters.’
‘Then he’ll do what he’s told, right?’
‘You gonna give that rat a good squeezing?’
‘What, a fighter like this one? Are you joking? It’s thinking like that that’ll keep you a rat-catcher’s assistant your whole life. I’ve got a much better idea. How many’s in the special cage?’
Maurice watched Rat-catcher 2 go and examine one of the other cages on the far wall.
‘Only two rats left. They’ve eaten the other four,’ he reported. ‘Just skin left. Very neat.’
‘Ah, so they’ll be full o’ vim and vinegar. Well, we’ll see what they do to him, shall we?’
Maurice heard a little wire door open and shut.
Hamnpork was seeing red. It filled his vision. He’d been angry for months, down inside, angry at humans, angry at the poisons and the traps, angry at the way younger rats weren’t showing respect, angry that the world was changing so fast, angry that he was growing old… And now the smells of terror and hunger and violence met the anger coming the other way and they mingled and flowed through Hamnpork in a great red river of rage. He was a cornered rat. But he was a cornered rat who could think. He’d always been a vicious fighter, long before there was all this thinking, and he was still very strong. A couple of dumb, swanking young keekees with no tactics and no experience of down-and-dirty cellar fighting and no fancy footwork and no thoughts were simply not a contest. A tumble, a twist and two bites were all it took…
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.