“Oh wow, man,” said one of the group, a graying man with his hair pulled back into a pony tail, “like rustic.”
“Hell, I’ve worked in worse,” one of the programmers said as he looked around. “I used to be at Boeing.”
The room was good-sized, but as cold as every other place in the City of Night. A mullioned window, its tracery in ruins, let in the sharp outside air. Piles of sodden trash and pieces of broken furniture lay here and there. On one wall stood a tall black cabinet, tilting on a broken leg but its doors still shut.
Wiz came into the room eagerly. Maybe there was something in the closed cabinet he could use.
Cold and hunger dulled his caution and he was halfway across the room before a skittering sound behind him told him he had made a mistake.
Wiz whirled at the sound, but it was too late. There, blocking the only way out, was a giant black rat. It was perhaps five feet long in the body and its shoulder reached to Wiz’s waist. Its beady eyes glared at Wiz. It lifted its muzzle to sniff the human, showing long yellow teeth. Wiz stepped back again and the rat sniffed once more, whiskers quivering.
Wiz licked his lips and took a firmer grip on the broken halberd shaft. The rat eyed him hungrily and moved all the way into the room, its naked tail still trailing out into the corridor.
Wiz stepped to one side, hoping the rat would follow and leave him room for a dash to the door. But the rat wasn’t fooled. It lowered its head and squealed like a piglet caught in a fence. Then it charged.
In spite of his disinclination to exercise, Wiz had naturally fast reflexes. Moreover, his two years in the World had hardened his muscles and increased his wind. He was far from being the self-described “pencil-necked geek” he had been when he had arrived here, but he was even further from being a warrior.
The monster closed in squealing. Wiz swung wildly with his rusty axe. The giant rat ducked under the blade and leaped for his throat.
Against a halfway competent swordsman the tactic would have worked. But Wiz wasn’t even halfway competent. He had swung blindly and he brought his weapon back equally blindly, backhand along the same path.
The spike on the back of the axe caught the rat just below the ear. Any guardsman on the drill field would have winced at such a puny blow, but the spike concentrated the force on a single spot. Wiz felt a “crunch” as the spike penetrated bone. The rat squealed, jerked convulsively and fell in a twitching heap at Wiz’s feet.
Wiz’s first instinct was to turn and run. But he checked himself. Think he told himself sternly, you’ve got to think. Running wouldn’t solve anything. There was nowhere to run to and running burned calories he could ill-afford to lose. Panic wouldn’t get him the food he so desperately needed.
Well, he thought, looking down at the gray-furred corpse, maybe I can use one problem to solve another.
Kneeling over the body, he set to work with his halberd.
Wiz emerged from the room a while later wiping his mouth on a bit of more or less clean rag.
Rat sashimi, Wiz decided, wasn’t half bad—if you used lots of wasabe. He didn’t have any wasabe, but it still wasn’t half bad.
While the rest of the team broke for lunch, Jerry, Karl and Moira went back to the apartment to start sorting through Wiz’s papers.
“A barn!” Moira said angrily. “I cannot believe they would do that to you.”
“Hey, it’s dry and it looks like it can be made fairly comfortable,” Karl said. “Besides, it’s already divided up into cubicles.”
“Well, I can assure you, My Lords . . .” Moira began as she started to open the door.
There was a low moan and the sound of scuffling from the apartment.
Moira threw open the door.
“Danny!” Jerry yelled.
The young programmer was rocking back and forth, his body slamming first forward almost to the desk and then back so forcefully the chair teetered.