Two rats came up with the rope. I drew my dagger and readied to fire, but then had a vision of missing my target and sending my weapon tumbling off down the shaft. I flipped it over into a fighting grip instead, and balanced on the balls of my feet. The first rat jumped immediately to the curving side of the tubular tunnel, away from the perpetual puddle on the floor, and I was reminded that hydrophobia was a symptom of the disease. The rat came at me, in leaps and bounds, as if aiming for my face; I marked its progress as carefully as a cat, then swiped at it with my dagger.
I missed. My knuckles grazed the mangy fur, though, and deflected it from its course. It bounced off the wall and rolled downwards, scrabbling and hissing, and I didn’t wait for it to get back up again. Before it could make another attempt at my face, my other hand darted out and stabbed it, snapping the spine and killing it instantly.
Hah! I thought. Sting first!
The other rat went for Smart Mouth, who wasn’t at all creeped out by the thought of potential contamination, and pounced on it as neatly as a terrier. In one smooth motion his strong jaws snapped closed on the neck, neatly severing the head and swallowing it. The rest of the rat followed immediately.
“What are you doing?” I snapped at the goblin. “That was supposed to be bait!”
“Err, oops?” Smart Mouth looked guilty and slightly frantic. “Dragon Boss want rat back?” He stretched his neck out forward, gagged a few times, and regurgitated the prize (minus the head), which he then picked up and offered to me. “All hail Dragon Boss, slayer of rats!”
I gave Smart Mouth a suspicious look, trying not to gag myself. “Uhh, it’s fine.” I told him, waving the offering away. “Uhm, Dragon Boss is merciful, umm, you can keep it. Really.”
Smart Mouth reswallowed the rat, looking pleased with himself. He eyed the second rat hungrily, but did not dare to grab it off my dagger. I made him show me where in the tunnels we might find other goblins, over his objections that this wasn’t his territory and he didn’t know for sure where they were. Finally we retraced our steps back the way we had come, carefully past the rusted valve, and to an intersection which led slightly downwards and away. Holding the dead rat at arm’s length, I slit its throat and let the trickle of water carry the blood away, then left the body on the ground while Smart Mouth and I retreated around the corner to wait. I put the small flame back in my mouth, carefully sealed my lips against the light, drew my daggers, and settled into an easy crouch I could hold all day, if I had to.
Around us, the dark sewers dripped. Wet echoes rang down the stone passageways and sang haunting little songs in the shadows, never quite discernable, slightly out of reach. There were no glowing mushrooms in this section of the tunnel, which I guess was an argument that the goblins had been here before, but as my eyes adjusted I began to notice a kind of fuzzy red glow I could not quite place. I turned my head this way and that, but it was sort of omnipresent, so I figured it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, until Smart Mouth giggled.
“Hmm?” I demanded.
“Dragon Boss have glowing nostrils! Very fierce!” he whispered. “Make good bone shadows on squishy skin. Very very scary!” he continued approvingly.
“Shut up!” I told him. Orange light flickered briefly across the walls, and I snapped my mouth closed once more.
Smart Mouth was silent for a minute, then giggled again, and I was just about to kick him quiet when we both heard the click of goblin claws on stone. Smart Mouth went still and settled into the muck at our feet, as calm now as a crocodile, and I rose from my crouch into a leaping stance. The clicks came from the tunnel perpendicular to us, along with shrill reptilian voices.
“Lookit! Fresh rat!”
“My rat!”
“MY rat! I smelled it first!”
“Hey! Ow! Mine!”
“Mine!”
Voices devolved into hisses and screeches and splashing water as the fight broke out amongst the approaching horde. At this, Smart Mouth and I leapt out from around the corner, hissing and yelling, respectively, and were quite surprised to see the massive horde consisted of two goblins, making more noise than a pair of rival cats in an echo chamber.
The horde of two froze, the rat ripped in half between them, took one look at us and then wailed and bolted down the tunnel.
“Wait!” I yelled after them. “You’re not supposed to run away! Cowards!”
I stopped, took aim, and took down one with a thrown dagger to the back of the neck. It tumbled into the water and lay still.
I let the other one go without risking my second dagger. I couldn’t guarantee taking it down with one hit, and if it didn’t stop, I didn’t fancy chasing the shrieking monster all over the sewers and back. Smart Mouth bounded ahead of me, throwing muck and insults at the fleeing goblin. I retrieved my dagger and picked up the dead goblin.
Or tired to pick it up, anyway. “Ooof! These suckers are heavy!”
I contemplated the problem in front of me while Smart Mouth munched on the fallen half of the dead rat.
[Hunting check: Success]
I took my dagger and slit the dead goblin’s throat, bleeding it dry and lightening the load a bit, then made Smart Mouth help me haul it back. He was disinclined to the effort, but finally cooperated when I promised him another rat back at the pit. It was slow, trudging work, even with the slick muck in the bottom of the tunnels helping to slide the goblin along. If I wasn’t careful, the muck slid under my feet just as easily as it did under my scaly burden, and I had to tread carefully each step of the way. Step, step, plant feet, heave, and the goblin slid another few feet. Step, step, plant feet, heave, slide. Step, step, plant feet, heave…
Stupid dumped strength.
…slide.
Step, step…
Stupid heavy goblins.
…plant feet…
This is the dumbest plan ever.
…heave…
…slide.
“No.” Step, step… “This one has to work.”
“Yes, boss.”
“You are too going to put it on.” I told Smart Mouth. “Look, it’s perfectly safe.”
“Mercy, Dragon Boss! Goblin taste bad! Other goblin, dead goblin, taste good! Yummy yummy dead goblin!”
“No one’s going to eat you, you wuss!”
Smart Mouth eyed the seething rat swarm below us, then my homemade rope harness, and then me, clearly doubting my sanity on all counts. I had one end of the rope tied around my waist, the length of it running up to the flickering edge of the light, where it rounded a short protrusion of pipe with a metal handle affixed to the side, probably controlling the flood gate I had crawled up on my first adventure here. Part way along the return rope, I had tied off some goblin sized tackle, which I was now trying to talk Smart Mouth into.
“No fishing with Smart Mouth! Smart Mouth useful goblin!” he wailed.
“Yes,” I agreed patiently, “you are. Which is why I’m the one going rat fishing, not you.” Not to mention the fact that I didn’t trust Smart Mouth to gather up the loot for me. “I just need you as a counterweight, so I can have my hands free to load up the dwarf and his stuff. Anyway, you’re reptilian, and you can’t even get rabies from a rat bite! You have nothing to worry about!”
“Not worried about sick.” Smart Mouth whimpered. “Worried about rats. One rat, goblin eats. Many rats, eat goblin!”
“You won’t even go down into the shaft at all. In fact, you’re going up, away from it. Once I have the load, I pull on the, err, pulley system,” which was a nice exaggeration of my jury rigged rope structure, “y
ou come back to exactly the height where you are now, and we get out of here.”
There was much more griping and whining from Smart Mouth along the lines of “yucky goblin” and “goblin hungry” and even “squishy rat bait”, but he was eventually tied in to my satisfaction. I paused for a moment on the edge of the pit, the rope system in my hands, one foot on the dead goblin, and the grumbling Smart Mouth behind me in what was surely the world’s first goblinoid rappelling harness.
dictated Voice, in the manner of someone quoting a well known script,
Yeah, me too. I let my breath out. “Here goes nothing.”
I kicked the dead goblin over the edge, grabbed Smart Mouth by the load bearing loop in the middle of his back, and swung out over the darkness.
“Eeeeee!” Smart Mouth wailed as we spun, suspended above the pit, my tiny cupped Light spell making mountainous projections of our shadows. After a moment, when we failed to plunge to our swarming, chewing death, Smart Mouth stopped wailing and began looking around, curiously. “Ooooo!”
I had given plenty of thought to how I was going to climb back up, but for some reason I hadn’t figured on my weight and the goblin’s balancing each other so nicely. Right now, I had to get down. And I had to do it soon; the rats were making quick work of our bait.
“Alright.” I told Smart Mouth. “You just stay put. I’m going to, uh, I’m going to…”
I grabbed the piece of rope I was hanging by, pulled myself up a bit, and then let go, coming down heavily on my own loop. It worked; the rope tugged over, I descended a few inches, and Smart Mouth rose accordingly. I started bouncing frantically, making my way down the shaft, playing out the remainder of the rope in my hands that was still attached to Smart Mouth on one end and to my own belt on the other, so that it formed a continuous loop that I could not drop. On the far side of the pit, the rats had already torn the dead goblin open and were working on the innards.
I splashed down into the few inches of water at the bottom. I stood up, and the slack in the rope pulled taut against my bruised ribs, pulling me back onto the tips of my toes. The rats were half done with the goblin already.
I made a parody of a pirouette on one outstretched toe and saw there were a dozen small drainage pipes radiating out of the bottom of the shaft. Which would explain how the water trickling down here made its exit, but it wasn’t what was exiting the pit that concerned me, it was the squeaking flow of yet more rats climbing back up and through. For a moment I just stared, hypnotized by the mangy black flow, and the moving, seething mass completely obscuring the goblin’s body.
Against every screaming instinct, I turned my back on the writhing mass and my attention to the dwarf skeleton. I swung my pack over my shoulder and began grabbing everything that looked valuable and stuffing it into the knapsack’s opening, guided by Voice’s enthusiastic commentary. I got the heavy silver chain first.
Next to the bones was a masterfully worked hand axe cast of a single piece of metal and inscribed with elaborate inlay. Into the pack it went. My hands found a pile of coins in the water, mostly gold, and I stuffed those into the pack as well, trying to mentally count them as I did. It was not another two hundred gold worth. I reached back down for a second handful when I felt the light weight and pinprick claws of a rat land on my leg. Suppressing a shriek, I reached down, grabbed it , and flung it quickly after its fellows in the pile. It, or possibly several more like it, had decided that the fresh halfling hanging off a rope was a better deal than the overpopulated goblin.
I swung to face them, kicking my legs up and back in my best freefall position. The rodents leapt after me, trying to avoid the water, and I swung my daggers in a whirling dance in front of me, spinning and tumbling in place as I did so.
Slice! Slice! And then another, Sting first!
The dead rats splashed down and became food for their friends. I pivoted myself vertical and turned back to the dwarf, now scooping up handfuls of coins and gems and small bones and who knew what else from the disintegrated leather that had once been a pouch.
I swung back around, just in time for the next wave of rats, the first of which was a large, athletic grey that landed right on my face. I snapped my head sideways, which didn’t dislodge it, so I stashed my dagger in the first available hold, which happened to be the skull’s eye socket, and then reached up and tore the rat away. It twisted in my hand sunk its incisors into my finger. I flung it away, swallowing against the rising bile in the back of my throat and the rising panic in the back of my head.
[-1 Hit Point: Piercing damage]
[Hit Points: 14/15]
I didn’t have much time to think about it as the grey hit the wall and rebounded at me. I leaned backwards, kicking my feet into the air, retrieved my dagger with an overhand reach, and came back up in time to slice the grey rat out of the air.
And after that I had no time to think at all. The wave of rats came at me as I swung and spun and spiraled, dizzy, my only orientation the nearest maddened rodent. They landed on me, chewed at me, and I fought them off with a maddened frenzy of my own. My daggers were a blurred silver shield around my body, my only conscious thought the steady incoming litany from Voice, listing off the current most urgent threat in the flat, inflectionless tone of someone whose own attention has nothing to spare.
[Hit Points: 10/15]
The last of the wave of rats was crawling up my back and up the rope. I swung forward, planted both feet against the far wall of the pit, and used the Talarian Sandals to launch myself backwards. I hit the stones back-first, and cracked my head against the wall in the process.
[-3 Hit Points: Bludgeoning damage]
[Hit Points: 7/15]
It killed the rats, though, which fell squashed into the water.
It was true. For every rat I slew, another replaced it, and endless swarm of dull fur and dripping jaws. A drop of gore hit the top of my head, and I looked up. Half a dozen rats were climbing the rope towards the dangling Smart Mouth.
“Watch out!” I called, and plucked at the rope like a giant guitar string. Four of the rats fell back my way, perforce also landing on my head. I slashed at them, getting two and giving myself a haircut, and the third latched onto my ear.
[-1 Hit Point: Piercing damage]
[Hit Points: 6/15]
I wrung the neck of number four, yelled in pain at the one making lacework of my ear, and sliced it open with a flicking motion of my dagger.
“Rats!” cried Smart Mouth in delight. “Yummy yummy rats!”
The swarm had finished the dead goblin. Several of them went for their fallen fellows, but I was now as covered in gore as any disemboweled rodent. I looked back in despair at the dwarf skeleton. I had wanted to get him out of here. Even if he was too far gone for resurrection, he could at least be given a proper funeral…
Above me, Smart Mouth was swinging in his harness, trying to cajole the rabid rats into jumping into his mouth; if the ropes hadn’t been swaying so much, they probably would have.
“Here, ratty, ratty, ratties!”
I turned away from the dwarf.
The swarm of rats was massing for the third, and largest, wave. I grabbed the rope dangling from Smart Mouth’s harness and began hauling myself back up, bringing Smart Mouth temporarily out of sync with the tasty rats.
“What loot? I’m out of time!” Actually, I was out of time like three minutes ago, but nevermind that. Then I saw it, the bundle of something next to the pile of gems and coins. I flipped over onto my back, reached out one arm and snagged the pile of rags with the tips of my fingers, tucked it into my wraps, and swung back up just as the swarm started leaping for me in earnest. Two landed on my legs and bit down, hard.
[-2 Hit Points: Piercing damage]
[Hit Points: 4/15]
There was nothing I could do about them. I hoisted myself desperately up my makeshift pulley system, when from above me I heard Smart Mouth cry in triumph.
“Yummy yummy rats!” he said, and snapped at one, terrier like. His slicing teeth encased the rodent almost whole, neatly severing its tail, along with the rope holding me up.
I hung, weightless, for one horrifying moment, the scene freezing itself into my brain: Smart Mouth, grin fading from smug to perplexed, his limbs splayed as he began to fall. The rope, writhing like a live snake as it unwound from around the pipe and flung itself after me into the pit. The glistening, rushing water on the walls of the shaft, rising up, darkness above and darkness below.
I landed on my feet but slipped in the muck, going down to one knee. The hissing rope coiled and splashed as it fell around me, the wave of rats squeaked and chittered, and Smart Mouth crashed down through the remaining beams overlaying the pit, landing on the swarm in a rain of punky splinters and slick moss. With a scrape of timber on stone, several big pieces of lumber collapsed and wedged themselves diagonally in the pit as well.
“Aaaaiieeee!” cried Smart Mouth, leaping to his feet with a twist of his hips. “Bad rats, bad! Yucky goblin!”
Half the rats were trying to chase Smart Mouth, and the other half were running away, minus a few from either party that were trying to eat me instead. Since the walls of the shaft were circular, it was impossible to tell which group was which. The goblin leaped and shrieked and went around and around, the rats hissed and squeaked and went around and around, and I stood in the middle and swiped at stray rats and spun around and around, trying not to get tangled up in the guide rope still connecting Smart Mouth and I.
A Fist Full of Sand: A Book of Cerulea (Sam's Song 1) Page 24
