Hamnpork stared at her. He looked at the waiting rats, with their packs and bundles, and then around at the ancient cellar, and then back to the still-crouching Peaches. ‘Just… get organized,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t bother me with details! I am the leader.’ And he stalked off into the shadows.
When he’d gone, Peaches and Dangerous Beans looked around the cellar, which was filled with trembling shadows created by the candlelight. A trickle of water ran down one crusted wall. Here and there stones had fallen out, leaving inviting holes. Earth covered the floor, and there were no human footprints in it.
‘An ideal base,’ said Dangerous Beans. ‘It smells secret and safe. A perfect place for rats.’
‘Right,’ said a voice. ‘And you know what’s worrying me about that?’
The rat called Darktan stepped into the candlelight, and hitched up one of his belts of tools. A lot of the watching rats suddenly paid attention. People listened to Hamnpork because he was the leader, but they listened to Darktan because he was often telling you things that you really, really needed to know if you wanted to go on living. He was big, and lean, and tough, and spent most of his time taking traps apart to see how they worked.
‘What is worrying you, Darktan?’ asked Dangerous Beans.
‘There aren’t any rats here. Except us. Rat tunnels, yes. But we’ve seen no rats. No rats at all. A town like this should be full of them.’
‘Oh, they’re probably scared of us,’ said Peaches.
Darktan tapped the side of his scarred muzzle. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But things don’t smell right. Thinking is a great invention, but we were given noses and it pays to listen to them. Be extra careful.’ He turned to the assembled rats and raised his voice. ‘OK, people! You know the drill!’ he shouted. ‘In front of me, in your platoons, now!’
It didn’t take long for the rats to form three groups. They’d had plenty of practice.
‘Very nice,’ said Darktan, as the last few shuffled into position. ‘Right! This is tricky territory, troops, so we’re going to be careful…’
Darktan was unusual among the rats because he wore things.
When the rats had discovered books – and the whole idea of books was still a difficult one for most of the older ones – they found, in the bookshop they invaded every night, the Book.
This book was amazing.
Even before Peaches and Donut Enter had learned how to read human words, they’d been amazed by the
pictures.
There were animals in there wearing clothes. There was a rabbit who walked on its hind legs and wore a blue suit. There was a rat in a hat, and he wore a sword and a big red waistcoat, complete with a watch on a chain.
Even the snake had a collar and tie. And all of them talked and none of them ate any of the others and – and this was the unbelievable part – they all talked to humans, who treated them like, well, smaller humans. There were no traps, no poisons. Admittedly (according to Peaches, who was painstakingly working her way through the book, and sometimes read out parts) Oily the Snake was a bit of a rascal, but nothing truly bad happened. Even when the rabbit got lost in the Dark Wood he just had a bit of a scare.
Yes, Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure was the cause of much discussion amongst the Changelings. What was it for? Was it, as Dangerous Beans believed, a vision of some bright future? Had it been made by humans? The shop had been for humans, true, but surely even humans wouldn’t make a book about Ratty Rupert the rat, who wore a hat, and poison rats under the floorboards at the same time. Would they? How mad would anything have to be to think like that?
Some of the younger rats had suggested that perhaps clothes were more important than everyone thought.
They’d tried wearing waistcoats, but it had been very difficult to bite out the pattern, they couldn’t make the buttons work and, frankly, the things got caught on every splinter and were very hard to run in. Hats just fell off.
Darktan just thought that humans were mad, as well as bad. But the pictures in the book had given him an idea. What he wore was not so much a waistcoat as a network of wide belts, easy to wriggle in and out of. On them he’d sewn pockets – and that had been a good idea, like giving yourself extra paws – to hold all the things he needed, like metal rods and bits of wire. Some of the rest of the squad had taken up the idea, too. You never knew what you were going to need next, on the Trap Disposal Squad. It was a tough, ratty life.
The rods and wires jangled as Darktan walked up and down in front of his teams. He stopped in front of one large group of younger rats. ‘All right, Number Three platoon, you’re on widdling duty,’ he said. ‘Go and have a good drink.’
‘Oooh, we’re always on widdling,’ a rat complained.
Darktan pounced on it and faced it nose to nose, until it backed away. ‘That’s ‘cos you’re good at it, my lad!
Your mother raised you to be a widdler, so off you go and do what comes naturally! Nothing puts humans off like seeing that rats have been there before, if you catch my meaning! And if you get the opportunity, do some gnawing as well. And run around under the floorboards and squeak! And remember, no-one is to move in until they get the all-clear from the trap squad. To the water, now, at the double! Hup! Hup! Hup! One two, one two, one two!’
The platoon headed off, at speed.
Darktan turned to Number Two platoon. They were some of the older rats, scarred and bitten and ragged, some of them with stubs of tails or no tails at all, some of them missing a paw or an ear or an eye. In fact although there were about twenty of them, they had between them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats.
But because they were old they were cunning, because a rat who isn’t cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn’t become an old rat. They’d all been grown up when the intelligence came. They were more set in their old ways. Hamnpork always said he liked them that way. They still had a lot of basic rattiness, the kind of raw cunning that would get you out of the traps that over-excited intelligence got you into. They thought with their noses. And you didn’t have to tell them where to widdle.
‘All right, people, you know the drill,’ said Darktan. ‘I want to see lots of cheeky stuff. Stealing the food out of cats’ bowls, pies from under the cooks’ noses—’
‘- false teeth from out of old men’s mouths—’ said a small rat, who seemed to be dancing on the spot while he stood there. His feet moved all the time, tippity-tapping on the cellar floor. He wore a hat, too, a battered, home-made thing out of straw. He was the only rat who could make a hat work, by wedging his ears through it. He said to get ahead, you had to get a hat.
‘That was a fluke, Sardines. I bet you can’t do it again,’ said Darktan, grinning. ‘And don’t keep on telling the kids how you went for a swim in someone’s bathtub. Yeah, I know you did, but I don’t want to lose anyone who can’t scramble out of a slippery tub. Anyway… if I don’t hear ladies screaming and running out of their kitchens within ten minutes I’ll know you’re not the rats I think you are. Well? Why are you all standing around? Get on with it! And… Sardines?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Easy on the tap-dancing this time, all right?’
‘I just got these dancing feet, boss!’
‘And do you have to keep wearing that stupid hat?’ Darktan continued, grinning again.
‘Yes, boss!’ Sardines was one of the older rats, but most of the time you wouldn’t know it. He danced and joked and never got into fights. He’d lived in a theatre and once ate a whole box of greasepaint. It seemed to have got into his blood.
‘And no going on ahead of the trap squad!’ said Darktan.
Sardines grinned. ‘Aw, boss, can’t I have any fun?’ He danced after the rest of them, towards the holes in the walls.
Darktan moved on, to Number One platoon. It was the smallest. You had to be a certain kind of rat to last a long time in the Trap Disposal Squad. You had to be slow, and patient, and thorough. You had to have a good memory. You had to be careful. You could join the squad if you were fast and slapdash and hasty. You just didn’t last very long.