The Twyning (27 page)

I heard the pulsing of the dying and the wounded.

I heard the roar of the warriors as they gathered to attack.

I heard that roar fade, voice by voice, hero by hero.

There was nothing I could do. No revelation, no gift of hearing could help the kingdom now.

Where was Jeniel? And Swylar? At times like these, it is leaders whose revelations reach citizens before all else. No king or queen could save them in that terrible massacre, but all the same, the silence was strange. One group of warriors at least made a fight of it; I heard them reveal on that field of death.

— Gather!

— Gather!

— Gather!

In the twilight, I could just see the dogs circling what might have been a bear but was, I knew, a group of warriors.

— Wait!

— Hold firm!

— No breaking!

The dogs were confused, and the warriors sensed that moment of weakness. One, braver than the rest, began to approach.

— Attack!

At that single order, the seething mass of life advanced. As it came closer to the dogs, it seemed to move faster.

— Attack!

The dogs retreated just far enough for the group to press through.

The fence faced them. If they had been any other kind of citizen, it would have been the end for them. But they were warriors and had learned the art of flyting. In battle, few obstacles can contain a flyting warrior. One after the other, they took the jump in one mighty, soaring leap. Only a few failed and were quickly at the mercy of the dogs.

Slowly, the noise of barking faded. The humans moved into the space, collected their dogs, inspected the terrible work that had been done. Now and then there was a brief scuffle of activity as a dog or human found some poor citizen who had survived.

Lamps were lit. Men, women, and children roamed the place of carnage. They laughed and made merry as night fell.

I have never hated humans as much, before or since, as I did that night.

. . . because it is too dark to find the corpses. After the dogs have reached the field and have dispatched any surviving beasts, the doctor gathers the setters and their dogs at the bridge.

As he stands on the first step, a few of the folk begin to clap.

Dr. Ross-Gibbon raises both hands.

“Gentlemen,” he says, “this borough is a safer place tonight after what you and your brave dogs have done.”

“Good sport and all,” says Charlie Buckingham. I notice that he is standing near to Jem Dashwood. Suddenly, it seems, they are friends.

“When’s the next hunt, then?” a voice calls from the back.

“There will be other”— the doctor smiles — “extermination exercises. The brown rat is a cunning creature. It moves from one area to another. The next part of our campaign is to find more rats, and repeat the very efficient culling process you managed so well tonight.”

“What about the tails, Doctor?” Charlie Buckingham looks around for support.

“Tails?”

“The reward.” Jem Dashwood speaks up.

“Ah, yes, almost forgot.” The doctor reaches into his pocket and takes out the biggest roll of money I have ever seen. “It’s too dark for cutting tails tonight. I suggest that we ask Mr. Grubstaff and young Mr. Smith to look over the field and give us a rough sense of how many beasts have been eliminated today.” He holds up the money. “We shall divide the reward between you all at the agreed rate of one pound per fifty tails.”

Even in this light, Bill and I can see the dogs have done a good job. I hear Bill counting, but I know it is for the benefit of the men who are watching us. Even if he can get beyond ten, which I doubt, a careful count of those bodies would take hours, even in the daylight.

I catch a glimpse of his face. He will be earning good money tonight, but you would not know it from the way he looks.

“A lot of beasts,” he says to no one in particular. “A lot of beasts.”

By the time we return, we have decided on a figure.

Three thousand.

. . . by the time I descended from my hiding place. The enemy and the dogs had gone. All that remained of the terrible events of that day was the heavy smell of death in the air.

I walked around on the outside of the fence. In some places, the bodies were in tangled heaps where they had been trapped.

There was nothing I could do, but I needed to bear witness to what had happened.

The netting was easy to gnaw. After a few moments I squeezed through and was on the battlefield.

The smell of death never lies, nor does the silence within a hearer. Many citizens had died, and those who had escaped would be scattered and disorganized.

I walked around the bodies. Most had been torn apart, but I could see that even in death, the courts had largely remained together. In one part of the field were strewn the translators; in another, the spies. There was a sad little heap of historians not far from where they had emerged from the world below.

I looked for my court, and deep into the night, I found them in one corner of the field.

In this pile of corpses, I knew their names. Phillus. Gjarg. Bravar. Spyke. I pulled them from the mass of bodies and laid them side by side.

Alpa was the last I found. She was beneath the bodies of the tasters who had fought to defend her.

With the taste of blood in my mouth, I moved away from the river. There was no returning to the world below tonight. As far as I knew, there was no world below.

I would return to the mountain, to Malaika and her human, and plan my next move.

I made my way down the fencing. It was at the point where the warrior rats had used the gift of flyting to leap to freedom that the last of so many terrible sights awaited me.

There, hunched in death against a large stone, was a shape I thought I knew. Its head was crushed beyond recognition, but when I pulled the body into the open, all doubts disappeared.

Three legs. A warrior with three legs could never leap to escape.

Even a warrior who had once saved the life of a friend.

Even a warrior called Fang.

. . . and, if Caz were waiting for me, I would be returning to the tip with pies in my hand and stories to tell her. But there is no Caz, and without her, there is no life. The tip can be burned to the ground, with me in it, for all I care.

Her rat, Malaika, is waiting. She is hungry. I give her a slice of bread and fill her water bowl.

I am deadly tired, but when I close my eyes to sleep, I can still see the dogs — their lolling tongues, their sharp white teeth, their red eyes.

Now they are hunting through the streets of the city, sniffing the gutters and scrabbling at doors.

I am there, and so is the doctor, and Bill, and the dog men and setters.

Somehow I realize in my heart that the baying hounds and the eager men who are following them are not searching for rats at all.

I know these streets. I have been there. As I follow the hunt, a feeling of dread is heavy within me.

We turn a corner. The barking of the dogs echoes around the dark street. There is a door in the wall. I know that door. The pack of dogs hurl themselves at it. They have found their prey.

No, not there. I try to scream a warning, but the words are trapped in my throat.

It is Rose’s house, the place I visited. I know what they are going to find there.

The rats are not there! Please, they are not there! I scream, but all I can hear is a silent roar where my voice should be.

The doctor looks at me, and laughs.

“Thank you, Dogboy,” he says. “I don’t know what we would do without you.”

I am sick with a feeling of guilt.

He pushes through the dogs and opens the door for them.

There is a terrible snarling from the darkness within.

I fight my way through the crowd into the darkness of that room.

Rose is there and the lady with the pale face and black lips. They are looking down as the dogs attack their prey, tearing its flesh.

Seeing me, Rose looks up and gives a sort of sorrowful shrug, as if to say, “What could I have done? What could any of us have done to save her?”

Now I scream. Again and again.

I awake with a start, shivering, my body wet with sweat, although it is cold in the tip.

I hear my own despairing voice in the nightmare. It echoes in the darkness around me.

Caz.

It’s Caz.

. . . that night. I had seen too many humans, and what they do, to want to be close to one.

There was a clod-cave under a hedge where I rested.

It was from there at the darkest hour that I revealed to Malaika, calling her to me.

At first, there was no answer. I was afraid that, on this night of death, something might have happened to her, too.

Then, as I crouched low in the hedgerow, I heard her.

— I am here, Efren. I am safe.

— Come out to me. I have news.

There was no reply. After some time, I tried again.

— Malaika? Are you there?

Her revelation, when it came, was more powerful than I expected. It was as if it was not a fragile revealing at all, but a rat born to be a citizen of the kingdom.

— Tonight I stay here. He needs me here.

— He?

— Caz’s human. I am staying.

— Malaika, I need you here. Terrible things have happened.

But there was no more revelation. I knew Malaika well enough to understand that when she had decided something, there was no moving her.

Although it was still dark, I slept.

It was light and a bird was singing in a branch above my head when I opened my eyes.

But it was not a song that awoke me. It was a revelation.

— Malaika!

My body tensed. I was hearing. It was a revelation from far away.

— Help me, Malaika.

It took me a moment to understand why this kind of hearing was different and strange.

Then I understood.

What I was hearing was the revelation of a human, far from this place. I knew the person who was calling out. I replied.

— Caz?

— Oh, Efren.

The revelation was faint, and fading.

— Help me.

— Caz, where are you?

There was no reply for a long time. Then, a distant whisper in my brain, I heard her.

— Little dancer . . . little dancer . . . little . . . dancer.