I Smell a Rat!

Campogrotta, Winter 2404-5

The last few years had been bad – the last few months the worst of all. When Wizard Lord Nicolo and Razger Boulderguts’ brutes had ruled the city, there were none who thought things could get worse. And indeed, they believed themselves tobe correct when General Bruno Mazallini of the Compagnia del Sole, contracted to the dwarven king Jaldeog, was made governor of the city. His may have been a military dictatorship, attained by right of conquest and in the service of a foreign power, but compared to the brute ogres, the people’s lives life were much closer to the old normality. Those who survived these two tyrannies (the greater and the lesser), to then become enslaved by the ratmen, learned the hard way that they had been wrong. Things could indeed get much worse.

Those still alive now, less than a third of the populace that had dwelt in the realm before the wizard lord’s return, were left reeling, each in their own way, from their experiences at the ratmen’s hands. Some had been made tough by their long sufferance – becoming grim and silent types. Others had been wounded, in either their bodies, minds, or both. Those who survived the whippings and beatings, wore scarred flesh. Those who had almost starved to death, had sunken cheeks and darkly shadowed eyes. Those who had been cruelly toyed with, suffering the ogres’ mocking and threats, or the ratmen’s tortures, or had witnessed deadly harm done to those they loved, bore battered minds, which made them strange to others – becoming either shadows of their past selves, or gibbering, frantic fools.

Yet there were some who emerged from the recurring nightmares glad to be alive – indeed, almost giddy about the chance to begin afresh. Their saviours, the mysterious ‘Brotherhood of Shadows’, the Arrabbiati (Angry Ones) could have been the servants of the worst tyrant prince ever to have ruled a city state in Tilea, and they would have been an improvement on the ogres and rats. They could have reinstated the same sort of rule that the dwarf king had foist upon the city, with a condottieri governor failing to understand their simplest needs, and the people would have been glad. Instead, however, and against all expectations (except for those who knew the old stories and the truths contained in them) the mounted brigands were like paladins of the poor! They seemed only to want the peoples’ freedom from oppression, and indeed encouraged the Campogrottans to make their own government, a ‘Republic Commune’ like those of old, before the nobility bound the whole of Tilea into their service, demanding obeisance and taxes.

Three survivors, inspired by the new hope, had happily volunteered to assist in one of the first, if very unpleasant, tasks required for Campogrotta’s rebirth. It was a task which required spades.

“Someone must’ve helped the riders into the city,” said Amilcare, as they strolled easily down the Via Sarpi. “More than one, I reckon, ‘cos they came in through two, maybe three of the gates. That’s how they appeared in so many streets so quickly.”

His head was hooded, the better the fend off the winter’s cold, and he carried his spade upon his shoulder, as if it were a pike. He served in the militia in his youth, and had been tempted to leave the city with those ogres sent to join the arch-lector Calictus’s Holy Army in the war against the vampires. But for the sake of friends and family, he had stayed. It was a decision he had secretly regretted many a time since.

“Probably died doing so,” he continued. “Because no-one claimed has claimed to honour, nor does anyone know who did it.”

“I don’t think you’re right, Ami,” said Celso. “Who could have done it? The rats sniffed out everyone – had us all chained or watched. There were none left free in the city at all. It must’ve been some of the Arrabbiati, sneaking over the walls in the dark. They are masters of the shadows.”

Gilda, who had volunteered for the digging first, thereby shaming the two men into doing the same, sniffed, as she often did when about to speak her own mind.

“I know one of the riders grew up here,” she said. “My neighbour’s nephew, he is, who fled when accused of stealing a piglet. He would know where to climb, which gate to open, and how. Him, and any others who once lived here.”

“Aye. You’ll be right,” agreed Celso. “Plenty left when the wizard lord came with his ogres. Reckon a good few of them crept into the wilderness to join the Brotherhood, maybe even went to join their brothers or friends already outlawed.”

“You saw them, didn’t you Gilda?” asked Amilcare. “You saw the riders fighting?”

“I did that, out near the western gate. We had been shifting barrels from the Archer’s Rest, with two rats guarding us. All of a sudden, a bunch of rats came pelting down the street, shouting at the two with us, who scurried after them. Then came the riders, making no sound but that of their mounts’ hooves on the dirt, with a banner at their front.

“The rats stopped and turned near the wall, and a couple came running out of the tower onto the battlement above.

“The riders loosed arrows, killing one of the two who had been with us, before he even got to the others, and another on the wall.

“Then they kept on a-riding, off down the street, not slowing at all, like it were a race, while more and more came up behind to loose their arrows. The rats just cowered there, shields up, looking at their dead, and flinching as the riders galloped by.”

“Cowards, every one of them. Like all bullies,” said Celso. “I saw the fighting too. I got loose when the alarm was first raised. The rats guarding us were so panicked at the sound of it, that they didn’t even chase us. I ran towards the sound of the bell, thinking to help whatever or whoever it was causing trouble, whether it be flames or escaped prisoners. Didn’t expect to see riders, but I turned a corner and there they were!

“Like Gilda saw, they had cornered a bunch of rats, who had nary a pistol nor bow among them. The riders were laughing as one of the vermin ran ragged towards the others.

“I think they’d already struck him with a blade, for he made hard work of the journey, and his squeals filled the square with ugly echoes. One rider had an arrow knocked but another was shouting ‘Wait!’ Which the archer did …

… so that he could put the arrow in the running rat just as he stepped close to the others. After that, the other riders all started shooting, and the squealing got considerable louder!”

“I saw none of it,” said Amilcare. “And if Marianna hadn’t brought some riders down to smash through the lock of the door, I’d still be down in that cellar now I reckon.”

“I told you she had an eye for you,” said Gilda.

Amilcare was not sure if she was joking cruelly, or just had not thought about the words she used. Marianna had only one eye, ever since a rat gouged the other out with a clawed finger when she made the mistake of looking at him the wrong way. Amilcare said nothing, however, for there was no hint of mischief on Gilda’s face.

Suddenly they found their first corpse, lying in the street smeared in blood, presumably its own. If it were not for the winter’s cold, they would likely have smelled it before that saw it.

“Right,” said Celso. “Here’s the first. Where are we gonna put it?”

“I know that one. He was nasty,” said Amilcare.

Gilda laughed. “Doesn’t narrow it down much, considering they were all nasty.”

“He was one of their captains,” continued Amilcare. “And he always found a way to make any task more unpleasant. I saw him cut a man’s finger off before we started labouring on some stones, just so he could nibble on it while the work was done.”

“You want to cut off its finger?” asked Gilda.

“Aye, that and more, for what he did. But only if he were alive. No point to it now.”

“Still gotta decide what to do with the creature,” said Celso.

Gilda prodded the corpse tentatively with her shovel’s blade. “Can’t we bury it here, so we don’t have to drag it around?”

“In the street? That ain’t right,” declared Amilcare.

“We don’t have to give the likes of them proper burials,” said Gilda. “Doubt they’d do it for each other. Its own kin would have eaten it and talked only of how chewy the flesh was. They’re all no better than sewer rats.”

“No,” said Amilcare. “It ain’t that. I don’t care about him at all, but those who will live here after. Who wants his kind buried before their door?”

“Or his ghost a’screeching when both moons are full?” said Celso.

“So, we move him. Where to?””

“Maybe burn him?” suggested Amilcare.

“And hope the smoke doesn’t come your way as he burns?” said Gilda, regretting the smell she had stirred when she prodded the corpse. “I say stick it under a midden heap, so the smell hides the stench as it rots.”

“Did the riders not say what to do with them? Is there a pit for them all to go in? Like a plague pit?” asked Celso.

“They said nothing, other than we might want to clean the streets of them.”

“Not helpful,” Celso complained.

“Well, we’re in charge, see?” said Gilda. “The riders saved us, but they’re not conquerors. It’s up to us to decide the this and that’s.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Amilcare, although inwardly he liked the sound of the people being in charge of things. He just wished it was deciding something other than what to do with a dead rat!

“Well,” he said, “I’ve no wish to promote myself to head gravedigger in our new republic, but I say we choose a spot, dig a big pit, and drag all the rats we find to that same pit. Throw ‘em in, shovel a layer of lime atop them and then we’re done. That way we only have to dig one hole. Easier that way.”

“Easier aye!” agreed Celso. “But it’ll have to be a big hole. So, we need more volunteers, and please, let’s get barrows and carts for the shifting, eh?”

“Very good suggestions,” said Amilcare. “I should make you chief assistant to the head gravedigger.”

Gilda grinned. “Then I shall become Overseer of the Graveyards and give orders to the both of you!”