“Struck dumb with admiration of my sleepy curry, eh?”
Meanwhile the Mouser found he could move his fingers. No one had bothered to disarm him, but Cat’s Claw was unfortunately fixed far too high on his left side for either hand to touch, let alone get out of its scabbard. He felt the hem of his tunic until he touched, through the cloth, a rather small flat round object thinner along one edge than the other. Gripping it by the thick edge through the cloth, he began to scrape with the thin edge at the fabric confining it.
The sailors crowded aft as Slinoor emerged from the cabin with his officers and began to issue low-voiced orders. The Mouser caught, “Slay Hisvet or her maid on sight. They’re not women but were-rats or worse,” and then the last of Slinoor’s orders: “Poise your parties below the hatch or trap by which you enter. When you hear the bosun’s whistle, move!”
The effect of this “Move!” was rather spoiled by a tiny twing and the arms-master clapping his hand to his eye and screaming. There was a flurry of movement among the sailors. Cutlasses struck at a pale form that scurried along the deck. For an instant a rat with a crossbow in his fore-paws was silhouetted on the starboard rail against the moon-pale mist. Then the starsman’s crossbow twanged and the dart winging with exceptional accuracy or luck knocked the rat off the rail into the sea.
“That was a whitey, lads!” Slinoor cried. “A good omen!” Thereafter there was some confusion, but it was quickly settled, especially when it was discovered that the arms-master had not been stuck in the eye but only near it, and the beweaponed parties moved off, one into the cabin, two forward past the mainmast, leaving on deck a skeleton crew of four.
The fabric the Mouser had been scraping parted and he most carefully eased out of the shredded hem an iron tik (the Lankhmar coin of least value) with half its edge honed to razor sharpness and began to slice with it in tiny strokes at the nearest loop of the line binding him. He looked hopefully toward Fafhrd, but the latter’s head still hung at a senseless angle.
A whistle sounded faintly, followed some ten breaths later by a louder one from another part of the hold, it seemed. Then muffled shouts began to come in flurries, there were two screams, something thumped the deck from below, and a sailor swinging a rat squeaking in a net dashed past the Mouser.
The Mouser’s fingers told him he was almost through the first loop. Leaving it joined by a few threads, he began to slice at the next loop, bending his wrist acutely to do it.
An explosion shook the deck, stinging the Mouser’s feet. He could not conjecture its nature and sawed furiously with his sharpened coin. The skeleton crew cried out and one of the helmsmen fled forward but the other stuck by the tiller. Somehow the gong clanged once, though no one was by it.
Then Squid’s sailors began to pour up out of the hold, half of them without weapons and frantic with fear. They milled about. The Mouser could hear sailors dragging Squid’s boats, which were forward of the mainmast, to the ship’s side. The Mouser gathered that the sailors had fared most evilly below, assaulted by battalions of black rats, confused by false whistles, slashed and jabbed from dark corners, stung by darts, two struck in the eye and blinded. What had completed their rout was that, coming to a hold of unsacked grain, they’d found the air above it choked with grain dust from the recent churnings and scatterings of a horde of rats, and Frix had thrown in fire from beyond, exploding the stuff and knocking them off their feet though not setting fire to the ship.
At the same time as the panic-stricken sailors, there also came on deck another group, noted only by the Mouser; a most quiet and orderly file of black rats that went climbing around him up the mainmast. The Mouser weighed crying an alarm, although he wouldn’t have wagered a tik on his chances of survival with hysterical be-cutlassed sailors rat-slashing all around him.
In any case his decision was made for him in the negative by Skwee, who climbed on his left shoulder just then. Holding on by a lock of the Mouser’s hair, Skwee leaned out in front of him, staring into the Mouser’s left eye with his own two wally blue ones under his black-plumed silver helmet. Skwee touched pale paw to his buck-toothed lips, enjoining silence, then patted the little sword at his side and jerked his rat-thumb across his rat-throat to indicate the penalty for silence broken. Thereafter he retired into the shadows by the Mouser’s ear, presumably to watch the routed sailors and wave on and command his own company—and keep close to the Mouser’s jugular vein. The Mouser kept sawing with his coin.
The starsman came aft followed by three sailors with two white lanterns apiece. Skwee crowded back closer between the Mouser and the mast, but touched the cold flat of his sword to the Mouser’s neck, just under the ear, as a reminder. The Mouser remembered Hisvet’s kiss. With a frown at the Mouser the starsman avoided the mainmast and had the sailors hang their lanterns to the aftermast and the crane fittings and the forward range of the afterdeck, fussing about the exact positions. He asserted in a high babble that light was the perfect military defense and counter-weapon, and talked wildly of light-entrenchments and light palisades, and was just about to set the sailors hunting more lamps, when Slinoor limped out of the cabin bloody-foreheaded and looked around.
“Courage, lads,” Slinoor shouted hoarsely. “On deck we’re still masters. Let down the boats orderly, lads, we’ll need ‘em to fetch the marines. Run up the red lamp! You there, gong the alarm!”
Someone responded, “The gong’s gone overboard. The ropes that hung it—gnawed!”
At the same time thickening waves of fog came out of the east, shrouding Squid in deadly moonlit silver. A sailor moaned. It was a strange fog that seemed to increase rather than diminish the amount of light cast by the moon and the starsman’s lantern. Colors stood out, yet soon there were only white walls beyond the Squid’s rails.
Slinoor ordered, “Get up the spare gong! Cook, let’s have your biggest kettles, lids and pots—anything to beat an alarm!”
There were two splashing thumps as Squid’s boats hit the water.
Someone screamed agonizingly in the cabin.
Then two things happened together. The mainsail parted from the mast, falling to starboard like a cathedral ceiling in a gale, its lines and ties to the mast gnawed loose or sawed by tiny swords. It floated darkly on the water, dragging the boom wide. Squid lurched to starboard.
At the same time a horde of black rats spewed out of the cabin door and came pouring over the taffrail, the latter presumably by way of the stern lights. They rushed at the humans in waves, springing with equal force and resolution whether they landed on pike points or tooth-clinging to noses and throats.
The sailors broke and made for the rafts, rats landing on their backs and nipping at their heels. The officers fled too. Slinoor was carried along, crying for a last stand. Skwee out with his sword on the Mouser’s shoulder and bravely waved on his suicidal soldiery, chittering high, then leaped down to follow in their rear. Four white rats armed with crossbows knelt on the crane fittings and began to crank, load and fire with great efficiency.
Splashings began, first two and three, then what sounded like a half dozen together, mixed with screams. The Mouser twisted his head around and from the corner of his eye saw the last two of Squid’s sailors leap over the side. Straining a little further around yet, he saw Slinoor clutch to his chest two rats that worried him, and follow the sailors. The four white-furred arbalesters leaped down from the crane fittings and raced toward a new firing position on the prow. Hoarse human cries came up from the water and faded off. Silence fell on Squid like the fog, broken only by the inevitable chitterings—and those few now.
When the Mouser turned his head aft again, Hisvet was standing before him. She was dressed in close-fitting black leather from neck to elbows and knees, looking most like a slim boy, and she wore a black leather helmet fitting down over her temples and cheeks like Skwee’s silver one, her white hair streaming down in a tail behind making her plume. A slim dagger was scabbarded on her left hip.
“Dear, dear Dirksman,” she said softly, smiling with her little mouth, “you at least do not desert me,” and she reached out and almost brushed his cheek with her fingers. Then, “Bound!” she said, seeming to see the rope for the first time and drawing back her hand “We must remedy that, Dirksman.”