'The effect on insects was noted centuries ago, when Erithusme showed the Nilstone to my people,' said Bolutu, 'but nothing came of it - the vermin lived only a day or two. We know also that the Waking Spell was cast by one who held the Nilstone. Today I fear something horribly new is occurring: the fleas must have lived long enough to infect the rats with their mutation. And as they change, the rats are also exploding into consciousness - of a sort.'

'There is worse,' said Hercol. 'Master Mugstur is still alive. He fell back, even as his servants rushed me. I did not kill him with that first blow, and I never landed another. He appeared to heal, in fact, as he grew to monstrous size.'

'He's been awake for months - or maybe years,' said Thasha.

Rose glared at her, blood running freely from his mouth. 'And is it months that you've known about him? d.a.m.n you all! I know what you think of this mission - Pitfire, I even understand it! But a rat? What could possess you to keep quiet about a blary psychotic woken rat?'

Pazel saw a struggle playing out on Hercol's face. With an inward gasp he realised the man was tempted to answer Rose's question - tempted to say Because you would have killed the rats, and the ixchel with them Because you would have killed the rats, and the ixchel with them. Rose still knew nothing about the clan. What had happened to Hercol, to tempt him to betray Diadrelu's people?

The moment was shattered by a blast from Fiffengurt's whistle. They had left him behind near the scuttle; now he and eight or ten sailors came running and skidding up the pa.s.sage as if demons were at their heels.

'They're on the deck! They're right behind us! Run!'

Men stampeded for the ladderways. Fiffengurt shouted at Rose as they ran: 'They're leaping up from crates, sir, through the stern cargo hatch! They must be clearing ten feet!'

Rose glanced upward: the roof of the mercy deck, where they stood, was eight feet above the floor.

'You, and you!' Rose pulled two long-legged sailors from the crowd. 'Turachs to the orlop! Twenty men at the tonnage hatch, with bows. Another twenty at the stern hatch. And a dozen at each ladderway. Now Now, d'ye hear me? Run!' Run!'

The sailors rushed ahead. Seconds later a many-throated howl erupted from the stern. Men turned in horror. The rats were coming: huge, twisted, loping animals, fur patchy and spa.r.s.e, inflamed bites the size of walnuts on their skin. They ran shoulder to shoulder, screeching and jabbering about the Promised End. When they spotted Rose they gave another howl and redoubled their speed.

The remaining humans on the mercy deck leaped for the stair. Rose was last again, and the rats were on him as he climbed backwards, swearing and spitting blood at them, his broadsword flashing up and down like a metal wing. Hercol fought beside him, ruthless and wild. Ildraquin was scarlet to the hilt.

On the orlop there was no sign of the Turachs. Rose and Hercol and Thasha held the ladderway, as a squirming, drooling ma.s.s of the creatures tried to jam through together. The two men stood on the top steps, blocking the way with their bodies as much as with their swords. Thasha, wielding Ott's white knife (it felt good in her hand, disturbingly good) leaned over the stair from the opposite side and stabbed.

Neeps led Pazel a few yards away. 'Can you manage? I have to find out what's happened to Marila!'

'I can manage,' said Pazel, squeezing his arm in thanks. 'Go on, find her! Be careful!'

'Undrabust!' roared the captain over his shoulder. 'Send down Dr Chadfallow - or Rain, or even Fulbreech. Send the blary tailor if you see him first! Someone's got to st.i.tch up my tongue!'

The orlop deck had a unique defensive advantage: the four great ladderways, which ran from the topdeck straight through the upper part of the ship, ended abruptly here. To descend farther, one had to cross hundreds of feet of the dark orlop, to one of the two narrow ladderways that continued down to the mercy deck. It was a point of congestion, and intentionally so. Through the centuries, pirates and other enemy boarders had often chased the crew from the upper decks, only to become lost and divided here, and ultimately overwhelmed.

But the rats were not confused. While Hercol, Rose and Thasha held one of the two ladderways against the leaping, spitting ma.s.s, forty or fifty of the creatures broke and ran for the second stair. Fiffengurt heard them moving beneath him, like a herd of wild boars, and in a flash he understood. There was no one to hold the other stair.

The quartermaster ran as he had not run in decades, to shut the compartment door. But the rats were faster. Before he was halfway to the door they were exploding up the ladderway, spinning about, and galloping back across the orlop to meet him.

One rat was ahead of the pack, a huge yellow-toothed creature, screeching the emperor's name. Fiffengurt saw that it would beat him to the door. He stopped, waiting. Squinting at the beast with his one good eye. The rat was through the doorway, and then it was on him. Leaping for his face.

With a cry of 'Anni!' Fiffengurt jerked to one side, and brought his blackjack down with a crack crack. The beast fell senseless at his feet. He kicked shut the door and rammed the bolt home.

Seconds later the rest of the creatures hurled themselves against it. The old oak shuddered, but held. Fiffengurt howled filth back at them, hoping to enrage them into thoughtlessness - for there were other ways into the compartment. 'Screw yer Angel!' he shouted, waving desperately at the men behind him, and pointing at the other doors. 'Screw the Emperor too! Magad's a worm! Rin hates you! Mugstur's a wart on the world's backside!'

Big Skip saw his gestures and understood. He flew to the other doors, slamming them one after another. Pazel and Druffle chased after him. 'We're not out of the saucepot yet,' said the freebooter, wild-eyed.

Pazel knew he was right. They had closed the doors, but the deck's central pa.s.sage, which was also the widest, had no doors to shut.

'Come on, we'll block it with crates!' he said.

'Forget that - they're all bolted down,' said Big Skip. 'And who's going to hold them in place, once there's fifty rats pushing from the other side?'

Druffle looked over his shoulder, counting heads. 'Thirteen of us. And that third door looks as flimsy as the blary floorboards in the liquor vault. We're going to lose this deck, my hearts.'

Right again, Pazel thought. Armed, Hercol, Thasha and Rose were barely managing to hold a narrow staircase. The rest of them didn't have a single weapon, except for Fiffengurt's blackjack, and a crowbar Druffle had picked up somewhere. Weapons Weapons, he thought, we have to put our hands on some weapons. we have to put our hands on some weapons.

He stared into the open pa.s.sage, thinking furiously. The surgery lay behind them - would a doctor's blade or a bone saw be any use against such monsters? There were shepherd's hooks in racks outside the cable tiers, for guiding the great ropes into coils. Useless, useless. They wanted to kill the rats, not herd them.

Suddenly a woman's voice echoed up the pa.s.sage: 'What's happening? Let us out, let us out!' And Pazel remembered: the steerage pa.s.sengers were still locked in their miserable compartment, dead ahead, in the zone that any minute would be overrun by rats. And Pazel remembered: the steerage pa.s.sengers were still locked in their miserable compartment, dead ahead, in the zone that any minute would be overrun by rats.

Big Skip turned white as sailcloth. 'There's more than forty people in that room. And if the rats break through their their door--' door--'

Other voices joined the woman's. Hands thumped urgently at a wall or door.

'They'll draw the rats right to them!' said Pazel. 'And blast it, Marila's still got our master key!'

'Stay here,' said Big Skip. 'I'll see if Rose has a key.'

He dashed towards the melee at the stair. Druffle fidgeted and snarled. 'They're just about ready to blary hang hang us, and here we are fighting alongside 'em again! There's not a stale crumb of justice in this world. And I still say Arunis is behind it all.' us, and here we are fighting alongside 'em again! There's not a stale crumb of justice in this world. And I still say Arunis is behind it all.'

'Not likely,' said Pazel. 'The rats can't sail the ship for him. And he doesn't want men dying until he gets the Nilstone out of the s.h.a.ggat's hand. No, it's got to be the Stone itself.'

'Then why don't he come out of his d.a.m.ned cabin and do something useful for once?' Druffle fumed. 'Why don't he call up more demons from the Pits, to fight these carbuncular b.a.s.t.a.r.ds? Or was all that talk back in Simja a barrel of hogwash?'

'It happened,' said Pazel, remembering Dri's account of the summoning.

Druffle looked at him sharply. 'Hogwash! That's it! Ain't there pitchforks with the live animals, just round the corner?'

'Yes!' said Pazel, starting. 'There's two pitchforks, in a cabinet across from the cattle pens! They'd be blary useful, Mr Druffle!'

'I'll fetch 'em right now!' Druffle thrust the crowbar into Pazel's hands. 'Keep your eye on that pa.s.sage, lad.'

He was gone - so quickly that Pazel couldn't help feeling suspicious. Did he really mean to come back, or were the pitchforks just a handy excuse to run away? Druffle had shown intense, almost ludicrous bravery in the past, when under Arunis' mind-control spell. But after Druffle's behaviour in the liquour vault, Pazel had begun to think Marila was right.

And yet the one who had betrayed him was Dastu. The one n.o.body thought twice about, the one they all adored. Pazel's feelings remained almost too painful to face. Ramachni Ramachni, he thought, how could you tell us to trust? how could you tell us to trust?

The voices from the darkness pleaded, wailed. Pazel looked back towards the ladderway: Big Skip was still trying to get Rose's attention. No time, no time: No time, no time: surely the rats were just seconds away. There were old folks back there, and children. Whole families who'd paid dearly for the pa.s.sage, believing that by now they'd be almost to Etherhorde, a great city at the start of a Great Peace, a new life for them all. surely the rats were just seconds away. There were old folks back there, and children. Whole families who'd paid dearly for the pa.s.sage, believing that by now they'd be almost to Etherhorde, a great city at the start of a Great Peace, a new life for them all.

And to think Ott had wanted them aboard just to keep up appearances. They were about to die, for appearances. Pazel swore, and dashed headlong down the corridor.

Forty feet, past the abandoned third-cla.s.s berths, the delousing chamber, the empty nursery. On his left, down a side pa.s.sage, he heard the screams, howls, prayers of the rats, still crashing against Fiffengurt's door.

A ghastly smell of human waste: he was running between racks of tight-lidded chamber pots, which no one had emptied in days. Then he was at the steerage door. The men and women were thumping, screaming. 'Villains! a.s.sa.s.sins! You can't leave us here to die!'

'Quiet!' said Pazel, as loudly as he dared. 'Listen to me! I can't open the door--'

'Can't, or won't?' they shot back. 'What in the Nine Pits is going on out there? Who's killing who?'

'Shut up and listen,' snapped Pazel, 'or you will will be killed, and there won't be a blary thing I can do about it.' be killed, and there won't be a blary thing I can do about it.'

Some of the prisoners tried to silence the rest. Pazel didn't dare tell them about the rats; it would start a panic no one could restrain. Instead he told them they had to break through the ceiling, and escape into the berth deck above. 'I don't know how,' he said, 'but you've got to do it, and fast. Believe me, n.o.body's going to punish you for destroying Company property! I'll try to get men to help you from up there.'

There were sounds of shoving and pushing, contending cries of 'Liar !' and 'Do as he says!' Then a fist smashed hard against the door, and a man bellowed at the top of his lungs, 'Let us out! Let us out!'

Others took up the chant; the calmer voices were lost in the din. Pazel whirled around - just in time to see a gigantic, blood-smeared rat scurry into the corridor from the side pa.s.sage. It spotted him, and screeched, and from behind it came an answering howl.

Terror and ecstasy: Pazel saw the rat charge, felt the solid weight of the crowbar in his hand, felt above all the slowing of time that Hercol said came to many before combat was joined. In that instant so much of what the swordsman or Thasha achieved in battle-dance no longer seemed unthinkable. He could not do it, maybe, but he saw that it could be done. He had time to gauge the rat's strength and its madness, the momentum of its charge. Time to consider twenty steps and stances. Time to imagine it tearing him apart.

He turned sideways, giving himself room to swing. The rat was shouting Heretic! Heretic! Looking him in the eye, and in its own gaze was hate and torment and an intelligence unhinged. But it was not all mad: as Pazel swung it saw the danger, and spun away, so that the blow that would have cracked its skull connected instead with its shoulder - wounding instead of killing. The rat whirled completely around and came at him again. Pazel's backswing barely kept its teeth from his face. He lashed out hard with his left foot, and struck the creature full in the flank. But the rat twisted with astonishing flexibility, and sank its shovel-like teeth into his thigh. Screaming with pain, Pazel brought down the crowbar again. Looking him in the eye, and in its own gaze was hate and torment and an intelligence unhinged. But it was not all mad: as Pazel swung it saw the danger, and spun away, so that the blow that would have cracked its skull connected instead with its shoulder - wounding instead of killing. The rat whirled completely around and came at him again. Pazel's backswing barely kept its teeth from his face. He lashed out hard with his left foot, and struck the creature full in the flank. But the rat twisted with astonishing flexibility, and sank its shovel-like teeth into his thigh. Screaming with pain, Pazel brought down the crowbar again.

Crack. The rat shuddered, but did not let go. Pazel struck again, roaring. Again. Again. On the fifth blow the rat's jaw loosened; on the sixth it fell to the floor.

Pazel turned and sprinted for the main compartment. As he raced by a second rat entered from the side pa.s.sage. He swung the crowbar, never slowing, and knocked the creature from his path. But from the corner of his eye he saw scores of the beasts flooding around the corner. Another few seconds and he'd have been trapped.

'Here they come!' he shouted, racing back into the main compartment.

For the first time in his life Pazel was overjoyed by the sight of Turachs. Eight archers stood in a gauntlet, with Haddismal beside them, looking as though he was at last in his element. 'Drop, Muketch!' he commanded. Pazel saw eight longbows levelled at him, bending, and threw himself flat on the deck.

The bows sang. Yards behind him, the rats gurgled and screamed, and the deck shook as bodies crashed to the ground. Pazel dragged himself aside, not daring to raise his head. The bows tw.a.n.ged again, and the sounds of agony redoubled. At last Pazel realised he was out of range, and turned over just in time to see the remaining rats fleeing back down the corridor. Ten or twelve lay dying.

Haddismal beckoned to his men. 'Advance! Advance with me! Viper stance, blades and bows! Onward, in Magad's name!'

In tight formation, the soldiers ran into the darkness. Pazel hurried back towards the stair. But halfway across the main compartment he saw Hercol, no longer needed at the ladderway, cutting across his path at a run, Ildraquin still naked in his hand. Thasha ran close behind him. She gave Pazel a look of grim apprehension, a look that begged him to follow. Hercol's face was darker than ever.

Pazel rushed to catch up with them, and even before he did so, he realised where they must be bound: the surgery. It was just a few yards off the main compartment. But why were they running in such a panic? Had Hercol taken some new injury? He wasn't bleeding, except a bit around his bandaged fingers. Someone else, then Someone else, then, Pazel thought, someone wounded before he came down to the hold. someone wounded before he came down to the hold.

He and Thasha caught up with Hercol just as he reached the surgery door. There, for one breath, Hercol paused; and squeezed his eyes shut. Then he flung the door wide.

Wreckage, everywhere: the floor was strewn with broken gla.s.s, scattered surgical tools. Fluids dripped from the screwed-down tables. The single patient, Old Gangrune the purser, was squatting atop Chadfallow's desk in the corner. His forehead was bandaged; his lips trembled in fear. Then Pazel's eyes swept right, to the far end of the chamber, and he gasped.

Ignus Chadfallow stood backed against a cabinet. With his left hand he gripped a jagged staff, part of a broomhandle, maybe. With his right, he held a small, b.l.o.o.d.y bundle to his chest.

Ranged before him on the tables stood some fifty ixchel. All were tensed for battle. About a dozen had their backs to Chadfallow, in a protective semicircle; the rest surrounded this smaller group, menacing it with all manner of arms.

When the door flew open the ixchel scattered, like chess pieces swept from a board. At the same time Old Gangrune scrambled off the desk and bolted for the door. 'Crawlies! Crawlies!' he howled, barrelling past them into the corridor.

The ixchel, to Pazel's amazement, simply let him go. After their first startled movements, they snapped back into positions that were almost unchanged. The larger group merely angled to one side, keeping the newcomers in view.

Hercol made straight for the doctor and his unexpected guard. 'Chadfallow, have they--'

'Stay where you are, monster!' shouted a familiar voice. It was Taliktrum.

The young lord stood among his shaved-headed guard. His swallow-suit draped on his shoulders like a holy raiment. Steldak stood just behind him, whispering something. A slim, catlike girl clutched at his arm.

Hercol took another step. Taliktrum shouted something, and ten archers fitted arrows to bows.

'We will drop you with the same poison you used on Lady Thasha,' said Taliktrum.

'I will kill half of you before I fall,' said Hercol.

'G.o.ds below, man!' shouted Chadfallow suddenly. 'Are you out of your head? Why did you have me guard this body? What is her importance to you? I have seen them, that's enough. Rose will know what to do.'

'Hear the giant!' cried the ixchel with loathing.

'Who are you talking about? It's Dri, isn't it?' Thasha pushed past Hercol, as if daring Taliktrum to make good on his threat. Hercol gripped her shoulder.

'If I shoot you with pure blane blane this time, you'll never wake up, stupid girl,' said Taliktrum. 'Not without the antidote. And I can promise you none will provide it.' He turned to the dozen ixchel between him and the doctor. 'Ensyl, stand aside. You know the rites must be observed.' this time, you'll never wake up, stupid girl,' said Taliktrum. 'Not without the antidote. And I can promise you none will provide it.' He turned to the dozen ixchel between him and the doctor. 'Ensyl, stand aside. You know the rites must be observed.'

'I know what my mistress believes in,' said a young ixchel woman at the head of the group, 'and how you betrayed her.'

'You will quit this room, my lord,' said Hercol softly, 'or by the infernal fires, I'll end your reign here and now.'

Steldak looked up with fear at Ildraquin. 'My lord,' he said in ixchel-speech, 'this man felled Ott in seconds, alone. Do not fight him. We can come back later, when they sleep.'

Despite himself, Pazel laughed aloud. 'Sleep! When's that going to be, you mad dog? Have you seen what's going on out there? Do you know know what's happened to your friends the rats?' what's happened to your friends the rats?'

Taliktrum frowned sharply. 'Friends?' he said. 'Steldak, you know what I think of those vermin. Have you been consorting with them again?'

Steldak looked suddenly exposed, and frightened. 'My lord, the boy speaks rubbish. Like any of us, I b.u.mp into rats, they can hardly be avoided--'

'Especially,' said Pazel, 'when you're squeezed into a s.p.a.ce the size of a s...o...b..x with one of them, waiting to attack the captain.'

Taliktrum's face tightened. His lips curled back from his teeth in a grimace of fury. 'Again. You dare defy us again again - defy my father's last order, when your first breaking of it put him in the jaws of that cat.' - defy my father's last order, when your first breaking of it put him in the jaws of that cat.'

'Don't take his word--'

'Should I take yours, rather? No: it is your head I should take. Get out of my sight before I do so.'

Steldak backed away, sputtering with indignation. From outside the room, Pazel heard screeches and cries. The rats were getting closer.

Hercol flexed his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers on Ildraquin. His face astonished Pazel. This was what he used to be, he thought. A man without kindness, a man of use to Sandor Ott and his order. A man capable of anything.

'Quit this chamber, Lord Taliktrum. Now.'

The young leader's nerves were clearly frayed. All the same he bristled at Hercol.

'What I do matters little. Steldak is right in one thing: we can come back when we please. You've lost more than her, you know. Wait a bit longer, and--'

'Now!' Hercol exploded. Hercol exploded.

Taliktrum fled the table, and his people fled with him, leaping, whirling, so many copper leaves in a gale. But with that uncanny ixchel coordination, they came together again a heartbeat later, schooling, sprinting as one body out the surgery door. The dozen ixchel standing guard in front of Chadfallow did not move.

Thasha rushed towards the doctor. Pazel followed, although a part of him wanted to run the other way, close his eyes, stop his ears. Anything rather than see what he was about to see.

The young ixchel woman brandished her sword at them. 'You are not to touch her, either,' she said.