by Josh Lieb
“Then we will die fighting,” said Brutilda, as she started to draw her broadsword. But Uncle Patrick put a hand on her arm, stopping her. “No,” he said, “I think I know a way out.”
“Impossible. How?”
Patrick smiled. “Let’s just say I have some friends.”
IN THE LIGHT OF the full moon, the rope leading up to Squirrelin’s lair looked like a thick vein, pulsing poison upward. But it wasn’t poison. It was rats. Long, scabby, scarred sewer rats covered the rope in waves moving up, up, up. Some of them carried little spears in their mouths, but most had no weapons except for their teeth and claws. Blue- and red-painted Berzerkers scrambled madly upward, clambering over the backs of their brethren, kicking some of them off the rope in their haste to reach the top. No one stopped for the fallen rats. No one offered any help.
A mangy gray brute was the first to reach the entrance hole, and he squeaked with triumph at having beaten the others. But his squeak turned to a squeal of confusion when a sleek black head with a cruel black beak and wild, panicked eyes poked its head out, quickly joined by another that looked even more frenzied. From inside the hole, behind the crows, voices yelled, “Ya! Go! Go!” With squawks of displeasure the crows leaped from the hole and spread their wings. Hanging on to the harness that stretched between their legs were four rats and a guinea pig.
“Go! GO!” shouted Joey, prodding the crow on the left with Ratscalibur.
“Ya! YA!” yelled Parsifur, prodding the crow on the right with his sword. Brutilda was between them, expertly knocking aside the crows’ beaks with her broadsword whenever they craned their necks to try to peck at the pesky rats. Uncle Patrick sat next to her, carrying Yislene on his back.
“Go! Go! Ya! YA!”
The tied-together birds lifted herky-jerkily into the air like a drunken bat and flew crazily out of the park. When Patrick had prodded the crows down the exit tunnel, as Brutilda held Aramis at bay with her sword, it had been anyone’s guess if they could fly with so many passengers riding on their harness. The answer appeared to be yes—but barely.
The wild rats clinging to the rope watched them go with disappointment. One Berzerker turned sadly to another and asked, “Well, who are we going to kill now?”
Up in the air, Joey thought he might end up getting killed, anyway. There was a little seat in the middle of the harness that must have been for Aramis to sit in when the crows were carrying just him. It probably would have been very comfortable for Aramis: one rat carried by two big crows. But now the crows were carrying five rodents. Two of the rodents were enormous. And two of the rodents were stabbing the crows in the butt with swords.
This was not a comfortable ride.
“I feel like a flea in a hurricane,” moaned Brutilda. The crows were trying with all their might to shake off their unruly passengers.
“C-can’t hold on much longer,” said Uncle Patrick, who was holding Yislene with one arm and holding on to the harness with the other. He was having the hardest time of any of them. But, of course, it had been his idea to borrow Sir Aramis’s friends.
“Just a little bit more,” said Parsifur. “Let us find a nice place to land.” It was impossible to steer the crows, but they had at least flown out of the park, and now the bright lights of the city jiggled beneath them. The flight was so bouncy and disjointed it was impossible to actually know where in the city they were, but they just needed to see the one right thing. . . .
“Now?” asked Joey, as a rooftop suddenly appeared, only a few feet beneath them.
“Now!” shouted Parsifur.
They each swung their swords and sliced through the strings tying the harness to the crows’ feet. Suddenly they were falling, but it was only a couple of feet down to the nice soft tar on an apartment building’s roof. The BlackClaws, suddenly free, cawed with relief and climbed into the night sky.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Joey. Everyone nodded. No one seemed to be suffering from anything worse than a few bumps and scratches. “And Yislene,” said Joey, “is she okay?”
He tilted the princess’s head to see if she was breathing. Yislene made an annoyed sound, said, “Five more minutes,” and started snoring again.
“So brave . . .” said Brutilda, with admiration.
“She’s not brave,” said Uncle Patrick. “She’s in a coma.” Brutilda glared at him.
Parsifur was making plans already. “Our first order of business must be to get home and warn the kingdom. I highly doubt that Aramis will give up his dreams of conquest now.”
“I know where we are,” said Joey, staring off the roof.
“Eh?” said Parsifur. “Where we are is unimportant. All we need to do is sniff, and that will tell us where we need to go.”
“Where we are is important to me,” said Joey. He turned to face the others. “And if I’m a hero, then this must be fate.” He pointed to the building across the street. “That’s where I live with my mother.”
MOM SAT ON the couch. On the table next to her were the apartment’s landline, her cell phone, and a cold cup of coffee.
Her eyes were red from crying. Streaks of gray hair had appeared in her red curls overnight. She looked like she had lost ten pounds in the two days Joey and Patrick had been gone.
Two days? Was it really only two days?
The police had come by earlier, but they were only being polite. They had no clues at all. Patrick hadn’t been to his apartment or used his credit cards. No one in the city had reported seeing a big man or a little boy with a gray streak in his hair.
And she couldn’t bring herself to tell them about the message in the dust. The one that was written in Patrick’s handwriting. She must be going insane.
“We’re still hopeful,” the police had said, but she could tell they really weren’t. It was like they were telling her, without actually saying it, This is a big city. People go missing all the time.
Could they really be gone? Forever?
Mom didn’t know what she’d do. How could she go on living without her family? How could she go on without even knowing what had happened to them?
All she could do now was sit. And wait. And wait.
They had to come back. They had to come back.
JOEY AND PATRICK stood on top of the garbage can outside Mom’s window, peering in. They didn’t say anything for a long time.
Finally, Uncle Patrick cleared his throat and said, “She’s always been so strong.”
Joey knew what he meant. It just seemed impossible to believe that Mom could be so sad. “Do you think I made the right choice?” he asked. “When Squirrelin said he would change us?”
“I think you made the only choice you could.”
Joey wished he could believe that was true.
“We must go,” said Brutilda, who was standing guard over Yislene on the sidewalk next to the garbage can.
“Do try to be a bit less abrupt, O spherical one,” said Sir Parsifur, who was standing next to her. Then, apologetically, he said, “But she’s right. We have to hasten back to Uther’s court, and we have no cats to carry us. The princess will slow us down, as well.” They’d tried to wake her up, but it was hopeless.
Patrick called down to them, “One more minute.”
“One more,” replied Parsifur.
Joey was still staring at Mom. “Maybe I could try to go in . . . and talk to her? Maybe she could help us?”
Patrick sighed. “She’d just think she was going crazy. You don’t want to put that on her, too, do you?”
Joey shook his head.
“Look,” said Uncle Patrick. “Maybe if we live through all of this, we can find another -agician—like, a Dogician, a Crocodile-ician, a nuclear fission, whatever—who can change us back.”
Joey nodded.
“At the very least, we can write her a letter. Make up some
excuse about where we’ve gone. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so bad, then.”
“What would we say?”
Uncle Patrick shrugged. “We’ll think of something. Let’s just . . . worry about staying alive first.”
“That’s a more immediate worry than you might think,” said Parsifur softly.
Joey looked down at Parsifur, who was staring up at the sky. Joey suddenly realized that the wind had picked up recently. He could hear it blowing softly in the distance: whoosh whoosh whoosh. And Ratscalibur was warming up against his hip.
He looked up and saw what Parsifur was looking at. “How did they find us?” asked Joey.
Parsifur giggled. “They have noses, don’t they?”
The moon hung huge and white in the sky, like a paper lantern at a carnival. Silhouetted against it were hundreds and hundreds of crows. They were tiny now, but they were getting bigger as they flew closer and closer and closer.
And each of them was carrying something long and lean in its claws.
A rat.
RIGHT BEFORE the attack, there was absolute silence. It seemed like the volume had been turned down on the entire universe.
And then, suddenly, a screaming came across the sky. The BlackClaws dropped the rats in waves, like a squadron of paratroopers. The wild Under-Realmers fell to the ground yelling and howling with rage and delight.
Joey and his friends huddled behind a makeshift fort: two garbage-can lids, leaning up against the wall. They all knew the fort wouldn’t hold for long. The Under-Realmers were pounding on the lids and sticking their long snouts in the cracks between them. Joey and Parsifur were busy spearing them with their swords, keeping them back.
Above the din of the raging rats, they could hear one sensible voice, yelling over and over again, “Not the girl! Do not harm the princess!”
So Aramis was leading them himself.
“Parsifur? What should we do?” asked Joey, as he stabbed at the invaders.
“I don’t know,” answered the white rat. “You’re the hero.”
Joey opened his mouth to tell Parsifur to stop joking around . . . when the reality of the situation finally hit him. Here he was, fighting to the death. Against an army of bad guys. With a magic sword. To save a princess.
He really was the hero.
He thought that was funny. So he giggled. Hee-hee-hee.
The others stared at him for a second, with their mouths hanging open. Brutilda said, “That’s a bad habit. Don’t start.”
Joey said, “I don’t think I’m going to have enough time to pick up any bad habits.” Then he said to Parsifur, “If this is how it ends, I don’t want to die behind a wall. Let’s get out there and take the fight to them.”
Parsifur nodded and said, “I agree completely, my liege.”
“I can’t leave the princess,” said Brutilda.
“I understand,” said Joey.
“I’ll stay with Brutilda,” said Uncle Patrick.
“Five more minutes,” said Yislene.
Then everybody laughed a little. Joey looked around at the group. “I’m a little too busy here to hug anyone . . . but I want you to know, I love all of you.”
“We love you, too, honcho,” said Uncle Patrick, like there was something in his throat.
“Well. Sir Parsifur . . . shall we?”
“After you, Sir Joey.”
And with that, the two knights pushed aside the garbage lids and dashed out into the invading army.
THIS IS LIKE SWIMMING, thought Joey. Swimming in rats.
The two friends were completely surrounded. They fought with their backs pressed against each other so no one could attack them from behind.
They were outnumbered, hundreds to one. The only thing keeping them alive was the fact that all the sewer rats couldn’t attack them at once. The six or eight Under-Realmers they were fighting at any given time acted as an accidental wall, getting between them and the other rats outside the circle. And the BlackClaws couldn’t get through the rats.
Once again, Joey felt like he had only to think of where Ratscalibur needed to be, and the sword was there. He was cutting through the Under-Realmers like butter. But they kept coming and coming and coming. . . . “Ow!” said Joey, as a Berzerker’s claw tore through his right ear.
“The game wouldn’t be any fun if it didn’t come with a little pain,” shouted Parsifur. He had to shout. The noise on the street was enormous. No amount of -agic could hide the sight of hundreds of rats and crows from human eyes. The air was full of the sound of people screaming and horns honking and car alarms shrieking. The passing cars seemed to have chased off most of the crows, too, so that was in their favor. But it was pretty much the only thing in their favor.
So Joey fought and fought and fought, unaware that a few feet above his head, his mom was looking out the window, watching what to her seemed to be pure chaos—a sea of crows and rats, swarming mindlessly.
“Have you ever been in a fight like this before?” yelled Joey.
“Only in my nightmares,” shouted Parsifur. “Or is it my dreams? Hee-he—”
Parsifur’s giggle ended abruptly, with a gasp. Joey felt his friend slump against his back, then fall down to the ground at his feet. He looked over: a sewer rat had just taken an enormous bite out of Parsifur’s side. Blood was flowing freely on the ground.
This is it, thought Joey. The last stand.
He stood over Sir Parsifur and turned in circles, warding the filthy rats away. “Back! Back!” he yelled. “Stay back!” The Under-Realmers were laughing now, and they were suddenly in much less of a hurry. They knew they had won. It was just a matter of time now. It’s all so unfair, thought Joey. They hadn’t been beaten. They’d been cheated—tricked!—by their so-called friends. . . . It made him furious. And he found himself shouting, “Where is your king?!” as he turned in his circles. The rats just laughed louder.
So Joey shouted louder. “Where is your king?” He waved Ratscalibur around, to emphasize his point. “Where is the one who says he should be king, but needs an ARMY to defeat a little kid? WHERE IS YOUR KING?!”
A quiet, calm voice cut through the noise: “Here I am.”
Joey turned. Aramis was standing there, leaning on his sword. “Here I am,” he repeated. “What do you want of me?”
The sewer rats suddenly hushed.
“Sir Aramis.” Joey smiled. He was shaking to bits on the inside, but outwardly he smiled. “I challenge you to a duel.”
Aramis threw back his head and laughed. “I admire your bravado. Certainly. I’ll grant your request. It seems to me that you’ve earned the right to die with some honor.” Aramis raised his sword.
“That’s generous of you,” said Joey, and he raised Ratscalibur.
Aramis leaped at him instantly, like a snake. Joey dodged the vizier and batted his sword away, just in the nick of time. Soon he and Aramis were circling each other, their swords clashing with a strangely cheerful sound: clink clank clink. This wasn’t like fighting sewer rats. Aramis was tricky, and fast. Every stab he made felt like the first move of ten more stabs he had planned. Joey was exhausting himself, both physically and mentally, like he was playing soccer and chess at the same time.
It was kind of fun . . . if he didn’t think about how it would end.
Clack! The tip of Aramis’s sword nearly stabbed through Joey’s heart, but Ratscalibur knocked it away at the last second. Aramis backed away and paused. He had a serious look on his face. “Who taught you that?” he asked.
“Taught me what?” asked Joey.
“When you blocked my thrust,” said Aramis. “That was a Moustoffsky Cross.” Aramis could tell by Joey’s face that the words didn’t mean anything to him. That seemed to annoy him, and he continued, “I had to go to Prince Egbar’s duchy to learn that move. And I was taught by Moustoffsky himse
lf.”
“I just . . . did it,” said Joey.
“Less talking, more killing!” yelled a sewer rat.
“Yaaaaargh!!!” yelled a Berzerker.
“As you wish,” said Sir Aramis, and he launched himself at Joey again. This attack was even more furious than before. It seemed like Aramis was determined to end this quickly. Joey found himself backing up under the assault . . . and backing up more . . . until Aramis made a mistake. Joey saw a gap in the older rat’s defenses—he was leaving the left side of his stomach unguarded. Like a flash, Joey jabbed Ratscalibur at the gap. . . .
. . . and Aramis calmly flicked the sword out of Joey’s hand. Ratscalibur clattered away, landing by the fallen body of poor Parsifur.
Joey stood there, empty-handed, looking at Sir Aramis, who was regarding him coolly. “Remarkable,” said Sir Aramis. “You execute a perfect Moustoffsky Cross, yet you fall for a simple Ratbane Gambit.”
“I guess I still have a lot to learn,” said Joey.
“Yes,” said Sir Aramis. “It’s a pity you’ll never have a chance to learn it.” He raised up his sword to strike the killing blow, but Joey dropped to the ground and scrambled on all fours over to Ratscalibur. If he was going to die, he was going to die with his sword in his hand.
As he reached for his blade, he came face-to-face with Sir Parsifur, whose little eyes were shiny and open and unblinking.
Joey heard Sir Aramis’s footsteps bearing down on him, knew the villainous knight was standing over him, about to stab him in the back. And at that moment he decided he would not die now. Not on his knees. With his eyes locked on Parsifur’s, he reached out, felt Ratscalibur in his grasp, then turned and leaped up into the jaws of death.
