The Tajmanian Devil looked at the strips of wood and cocked a quizzical eyebrow.
“This is a spell one of the wizards wrote. Only there’s something wrong with it and it doesn’t work. It’s pretty harmless stuff, it just brightens and dims the lights, but it will give you some practice with the tool kit and the language.”
“Sounds good. Where shall I work?”
“You can use Wiz’s desk. Tomorrow I’ll get you in on his system. When you’ve got that problem spotted, I’ve got a couple of other things around here. But don’t try to do anything tonight on your own. Remember, this stuffs dangerous.”
It was June who heard it first. They were picking their way down a straight section of tunnel when Danny’s wife hissed and suddenly her knife was in her hand.
“What?” Wiz asked over his shoulder.
“Shut up!” Danny commanded. Everyone froze. “I hear something down that way.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Shut up and let me listen, will you?”
Instinctively the group had arrayed itself facing the side tunnel. There was a faint scrape as Malkin’s rapier cleared its scabbard. Glandurg strode to the front, hand on the hilt of Blind Fury.
“Light exe!” Wiz commanded and a globe of blue light sprang from his fingertips. He gestured and the witch fight began to float down the side tunnel toward the source of the sound.
At first there was nothing to see. The tunnel was empty as far as the globe’s light reached. But no, there was something…
For an instant Wiz thought the tunnel was carpeted in brown-and-gray fur. Then he realized the carpet was writhing as if alive. As the mass moved out into the light he saw that it was an army of rats, packed shoulder to shoulder and climbing over each other in their eagerness to get at the humans.
“Rats! Danny yelled and he and Wiz raised their staffs simultaneously.
“lightning rapidfire exe!”
Lightning bolts flashed and scythed through the charging mass, slaying hundreds, but the rats closed ranks and came on. Their eyes glowed feral red in the magic light.
Wiz gestured to the floor and the earth shook, bringing dust and clods of dirt down on the party. A chasm opened before the oncoming army. The rats took no notice and kept coming. Row after row of them disappeared into the crack in the earth, but others leapt across, some of them pushing off from the backs of their fellows as they tumbled into the pit.
With a flash of steel that nearly took Wiz’s nose off, Glandurg drew Blind Fury and waded into the survivors. The blade’s curse kept him from hitting the rats he aimed at, but it didn’t matter. No matter where he struck there were rats aplenty.
Malkin stepped forward and lashed out with her rapier, skewering rat after rat. When she had three or four writhing on her blade she flicked it back toward the mass of rats, sending her victims twisting through the air and back into the horde.
Still the rats came on. Now a dozen or more of them were scrabbling up Glandurg as if he were a ladder, seeking chinks in his armor. Danny and June were laying about, he with his staff and she with her knife. But for every rat they struck down three more charged in.
Glandurg and Malkin were in front so Wiz couldn’t get a clear shot. He danced back and forth, trying to find an opening for a lightning bolt. Then suddenly he had a better idea. He raised his staff and began to chant.
The oncoming wave of rats convulsed, stopped and then turned tail and ran squealing. As quickly as the tunnel had filled with rats it was empty, save for the corpses and a few survivors locked in combat with the humans.
Three or four rats were still clinging to Glandurg, including one with its teeth buried in his cheek. Without wincing the dwarf reached up and jerked the rat free. Then he held the squealing creature up before his face and glared at it. With a single quick motion Glandurg bit the rat who had bitten him back, taking off the animal’s head with a single chomp. He spat the head out and tossed the corpse away.