‘You say you were retired from sewer duty? What exactly happened?’
Boris smiled, gripping the leather skullcap and pulling it from his head to reveal a gristly stump where his right ear should have been. ‘Big ’un took my ear off. Made a right bloody mess it did. Don’t worry though, I took the bugger’s own ear right back.’ With that he reached into his hide jerkin and pulled out a chain, on the end of which dangled what was clearly the ear of a cow.
Hugo began to wonder whether this was a good idea – Boris was plainly unhinged, but then he guessed most rat catchers were.
‘How come losing your ear meant you had to retire?’ he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.
‘Oh, it’s not because of this. Me ear wasn’t all the big ’un took.’ With that, Boris heaved himself out from behind the table, to reveal a chipped and weathered wooden leg, which he patted affectionately.
‘A rat took your leg?’ said Hugo in astonishment.
‘Like I said; it was a big ’un.’
Hugo could only smile, staring down in bewilderment. A rat took his ear and his leg? The man was clearly out of his gourd. Was this the kind of person he wanted running riot through his house – his beautiful home? Some nutter with delusions of monstrous rats that could tear you limb from limb?
The answer was obvious.
‘On second thoughts,’ Hugo said, trying to smile through his discomfort. ‘I’ve just remembered I may have double booked. Yes, that’s right, I have someone else on the job, so there’s really no need for you to trouble yourself. Anyway, must dash.’
With that he stumbled away from the booth, turning to push his way through the crowd, this time not caring who he nudged and shoved out of the way to escape the madhouse.
Once out in the street he breathed in the fetid air, sucking it into his lungs in relief.
The Ten-Tailed Cat indeed! What was Dergen thinking to recommend such a place, and such a man? Once this whole business was over, Hugo was sure he would be having stern words with his old friend regarding his recommendations, and with the sound of the bawdy house ringing in his ears he made his way back home.
That night, Hugo dreamed again.
He was running flat out, his tiny heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wing, his feet tapping against the hard ground in a staccato beat. The hunter was after him once more, pounding the earth in his wake, chasing him down, relentless and indomitable. Still Hugo dare not look back, dare not look upon the beast on his trail, so determined was he to avoid his fate.
But he could not.
No matter how fast or how far he ran it was still there, always there, breathing down his neck, slavering at the mouth in anticipation of the catch.
Hugo suddenly stumbled, losing his footing, falling, rolling. In an instant he was back on his feet, ready to move once more but that single mistake was enough for the hunter to gain on its prey.
Strong hands, iron hard and huge, grasped him tight, digging their fingers into his flesh, lifting him, raising him towards that infernal maw…
Hugo screamed himself awake, his eyes wide, staring into the blackness of his bedchamber. He panted in the dark, feeling every bit the helpless child. It was all he could do not to cry out for his mother. Once he realised he was alone, and there was no dark hellish beast after him, he let out a laboured sigh of relief. It was only then he realised he was sitting in a damp patch of his own urine.
With a low moan of resignation, Hugo donned his clothes, his boots and his greatcoat. It was a long walk back to the Ten-Tailed Cat, and he didn’t want to catch his death in the night chill.
When Boris knocked at the door of the mansion the next day, Hugo almost fell over himself in his eagerness to open it. The rat catcher stood there with a huge grin on his face, stinking of stale booze and pipe smoke.
‘Come in,’ said Hugo, stepping aside as Boris clunked forwards on his wooden leg. The sturdy appendage clacked against the polished wood floor of the entrance hall and Hugo winced at the prospect of having to call in the polishers to retouch and varnish it.
Boris gawped in astonishment at the interior of the opulent mansion, the grin never leaving his face. ‘Nice place you’ve got,’ he said.
Hugo didn’t reply, he was too busy staring at the paraphernalia Boris was carrying. Some of it was clearly designed for a purpose – two cages, a snare and various traps dangled from the thick belt at Boris’s waist – but there were other items that Hugo did not recognise.
‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing at the wooden barrel under the crook of Boris’s arm.
‘Rat poison,’ Boris replied. ‘Got to be careful though, it’s very potent.’
‘And that?’ Hugo pointed at the huge steel-headed maul strapped to the rat catcher’s back.
‘Oh, that’s for the big ’uns I mentioned before. You can never be too careful in this game. Anyway, shall we get to it?’ Without invitation Boris moved into the mansion, placing his cages down, securing his snares and traps, all the while sniffing the air and muttering to himself about ‘infestations’ and ‘soon having this all sewn up’.
Hugo could only look on with trepidation as the gigantic rat catcher stomped through his beautiful house, exuding his unique aroma and making a mess of his floorboards.
‘Right, all done,’ Boris said finally. ‘Just got to lay the poison and we’re all finished. Of course, you might want to wait outside while I put it down, it doesn’t half hum.’
‘Are you sure this is strictly necessary?’ Hugo said, looking around his home with growing concern.
‘Course I am. Poison’s the best way to flush ’em out. Then the fun starts.’ Boris patted the head of his maul affectionately.
Hugo nodded uncertainly and made to leave, but he paused at the doorway, a portentous feeling of dread filling the pit of his stomach like corked wine. With one last glance around his magnificent entrance hall, he retreated to the safety of the garden.
Boris appeared some time later, trailing the contents of his barrel over the threshold of the doorway and out into the garden. Hugo could only look on in confusion. With the poison laid, Boris place the barrel down on the lawn and turned, a self-satisfied smile on his broad features.
‘Now the fun starts,’ he said. ‘Once we’ve flushed ’em out of course.’
The burly rat catcher took something from his pocket, and knelt down at the end of the trail of poison. Hugo heard a clinking sound as Boris ministered to the trail of powder on the ground.
The trail of black powder.
Hugo was suddenly gripped with a panic. He dashed forwards, about to ask what in the hells Boris was doing, when a flaring sound and the stink of phosphor suddenly struck the air.
‘No!’ was all he could manage to scream as Boris lit the powder trail with a strike of his flint. It ignited, sending a blazing spark along the garden path towards the house. Hugo chased it, vainly trying to catch the burning trail before it ran rampant through his house and set light to the floorboards, but he was not fast enough. Once in the hallway he saw that the powder trail ran of in several different directions – up the stairs, into the parlour, down into the cellar – setting the floor alight in a flickering trail as it went. Flames began to spread throughout the house, and Hugo ran forwards, stamping vainly at the blackening floorboards in an attempt to rescue his home.
Boris walked in after him, and Hugo glared up with unrestrained hatred. ‘What have you done, you imbecile? You told me it was rat poison!’
‘It is,’ replied Boris, a hurt expression on his face. ‘Rats can’t stand it – they likes it even less when you set fire to it. It’s the best thing for flushing them out – look!’
With that he pointed towards the cellar entrance as a horde of rats suddenly scurried out of the dank pit to safety.
Boris grinned, unslinging the maul from his back and rushing forwards with an expression of pure glee on his dumb features. The maul came down with an audible swipe, smashing one of the rats to sludge and knoc
king a huge hole in the floorboards.
‘I told you it would work,’ he yelled as he went about decimating the rat swarm, crushing them to a bloody pulp, along with the polished floor of the entrance hall.
More rats began to flood from various parts of the house, rushing down the stairs in a squeaking, scurrying mass in their eagerness to escape the flames. Boris was waiting, the delight he derived from his work seeming to increase with every sweeping blow of his maul.
Hugo couldn’t just stand by and watch as his house was demolished. In a panic, he ran to the cupboard under the stairs, ignoring the swarm of rats that billowed from it, and grabbed a bucket. He rushed out into the garden, filling the bucket with pond water and a few unlucky fish, then rushed back inside to quench the flames that were threatening to set fire to his embroidered Bretonnian drapery.
The mansion’s systematic destruction went on for almost an hour, with Boris stomping along the best he could on his wooden leg, swinging his maul with abandon at the fleeing rats, as Hugo gradually emptied his stagnant pond onto the spreading flames. In the end he managed to put out the fires before his house was completely gutted, but meanwhile Boris had managed to lay waste to almost every room. Smashed furniture and squashed rats littered every floor, and as Hugo surveyed the carnage a tear rolled down one cheek. Boris stood in the entrance hall, or what remained of it, gasping for air, a satisfied grin on his face.
‘Well,’ he said cheerily. ‘This was a good start, don’t you think?’
At first Hugo couldn’t speak, so griefstricken was he over the destruction of his home and the precious contents within it. Artworks he had collected over decades had been smashed to shards and the fine décor was blackened by smoke and flame. As he looked at Boris with that idiot’s grin on his face, his grief suddenly turned to anger.
‘A good start?’ he growled. ‘A good bloody start? Are you insane, you brainless oaf? Look what you’ve done to my house! Get out! Get out now and take that thing with you!’ Hugo pointed accusatorially at the huge maul in Boris’s hand that had wreaked so much destruction in the house.
Boris could only look back with a hurt expression. ‘I was only trying to help,’ he said dejectedly, before turning and limping off into the evening air.
Hugo watched him go, making sure he was well off the boundary of his property before he slumped down on what remained of his grand staircase and wept.
The next day, Hugo Kressler found himself in Kreiger’s Gunsmiths of Wehrmunch Strasse. He had at first intended to purchase a pistol, one of the finely crafted matchlocks that Herr Krieger was so famous for, but after browsing for several moments he espied something much more suitable. Hugo had never fired a blunderbuss before, nor a matchlock pistol for that matter, but he guessed the wide spread of its shot would make it much a more suitable firearm for a novice such as himself.
Once back home, he loaded the weapon, dressed himself in his finest regalia, or at least what he could salvage from his partially singed armoire, and sat on the edge of his bed.
At the time of purchasing it, Hugo hadn’t quite decided whether he would use the weapon to defend himself from the remaining rats in his house, or if it was to blow his own head from his shoulders. Now it came down to it, he still couldn’t make up his mind. He sat for almost an hour, glaring at the blunderbuss, cocked and ready for action by his side.
But Hugo knew deep down in his tiny withered heart that he couldn’t do it. It would take a braver man than he to take his own life; he simply didn’t have the courage for it. And so, saying a little prayer to thank Shallya for her mercy and guidance, he placed the blunderbuss by his bed, laid down still fully clothed, and cried himself to sleep.
An explosion rocked Hugo’s mansion to its very foundations and at first, as he awoke bleary-eyed and terrified, he thought his newly acquired blunderbuss had suddenly gone off of its own accord. He quickly realised something far more sinister was afoot, as the sound of falling masonry echoed from beyond the door of his bedchamber.
Hugo rose from his bed, having the wherewithal to grab the loaded blunderbuss before venturing out to investigate the calamity. He did not have to move very far along the corridor before he saw what the source of the noise was. A huge crater had suddenly appeared in the middle of the mansion. Two floors had collapsed into a deep hole which, from the look of the passages that led off from it, was some kind of mine shaft.
Possible causes for this started to swirl around Hugo’s head. Had this been here all the time? Was it part of the ancient sewer system? Were dwarf prospectors digging beneath his house? Before he could begin to think of the litigious consequences for the guilty parties involved, something moved along the shadows of the corridor. As he stared, dumbfounded, a stooped and filthy figure slowly emerged from the dark and Hugo realised that those responsible for the crater were not dwarfs.
It was four feet tall with clawed hands and feet. Filthy robes covered it from the neck down and they stank of putrescence and muddy earth. But it was the face that most filled Hugo with terror – a rat’s face, with red, baleful eyes and monstrous incisors that clacked together hungrily.
He didn’t even think, raising the blunderbuss in his numb hands, and as the creature rushed towards him he pulled the trigger. The blunderbuss roared, bucking in his hands and knocking him flat on his backside. A spray of white-hot buckshot blasted from the barrel, destroying the creature’s bestial face in a splatter of crimson gore.
Gingerly, Hugo pulled himself back to his feet, staring down at the filthy animal’s corpse.
‘Ha!’ he bellowed. ‘Not so clever now are you!’
As if in answer, something pulled itself from the pit in the centre of Hugo’s mansion – something huge and hairy. Its muscles were thick, its flesh covered in a thick, shaggy down, its hands like clawed shovels, built for tunnelling through solid earth. It too bore the face of a rat, but this was no diminutive drone like the last; this was a beast, nine feet tall and monstrous to behold.
It glared at Hugo, anger burning in its tiny eyes, and as it approached Hugo noticed that one of its huge ears was missing. Despite the necessity for flight in this situation, Hugo found his feet simply would not move, and all he could do was stare as the creature approached, its foetid breath washing over him, inducing the need for him to vomit. He could only close his eyes, and await his inevitable fate.
‘Oi!’
The deep cry echoed through the cavern that now made up most of Hugo’s home. The massive rat creature craned its neck to see who dared to disturb its feasting. Hugo, too, glanced towards the entrance of the mansion to see a burly figure framed in the doorway.
‘I told you there’d be big ’uns,’ shouted Boris hefting his maul. ‘Remember me?’ he said cheerily. Then a sudden dark intent fell across his visage as he limped forwards on his wooden leg.
The monstrous fiend roared, and Hugo was all but forgotten as it leapt down from the balcony to land in front of the rat catcher. It swept its shovel-like hand toward Boris, but despite his peg leg he was nimble enough to avoid it, slamming his maul down on the creature’s clawed foot. It roared in pain, hopping back as Boris advanced.
‘I’ve been after you for ages,’ he said, slamming the maul forwards again. There was an audible crack as the maul struck the creature’s knee and it fell forwards, foundering in what remained of the entrance hall. Hugo could only watch agog as Boris set about the creature with gusto, smashing it with the hammer as it tried its best to avoid the solid blows that rained down, cracking its bones and smashing its limbs.
In the end it teetered at the edge of the huge crater, beaten and bloody, and with a final mighty swing Boris smashed it back into the black pit from whence it came.
Hugo’s knees knocked together, his body wracked by a convulsive spasm, but he still managed to descend from the first floor, avoiding the crater that had opened in the middle of his house, to fall at the rat catcher’s knees.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ was all he manage
d to say as he clung to Boris’s wooden leg.
‘All right fella,’ Boris replied, clearly embarrassed. ‘No need to make a scene.’
When Boris finally managed to extricate himself from Hugo’s unrestrained display of gratitude he glanced down into the pit and frowned.
‘Ah,’ he said, pointing into the crater. ‘There’s your problem. Weirdstone!’
Hugo looked down, and running along the side of the shaft beneath his house was a seam of glittering black ore.
‘That’s most likely what they were after,’ Boris continued. ‘It draws ’em like flies to sh… well, you know what I mean? If you’re planning on staying here, make sure you get that removed.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll do that,’ Hugo replied, still trying to take in what had just happened.
‘Anyway, must be off. Lads’ll never believe me down the Cat when I tell ’em what I’ve just done.’
With one last grin, Boris swung the maul over his shoulder, and sauntered out of the mansion, his wooden leg clicking against the ground as he went.
Hugo watched as he left, standing amidst the ruin of his house. ‘Thank you,’ was all he could think to say.
He was running, always running, in perpetual motion, legs pumping, breath coming in quick rasps. On it came in pursuit, on his heels, keeping pace, smelling his scent, dogging his trail.
This time he was slower, or was his pursuer just faster? Either way it caught him quickly, those iron hands grasping him in a solid embrace, squeezing the air from his lungs, raising him high.
He turned, looking at the hunter for the first time, seeing it glaring down at him with hate in its beady eyes, and he recognised that face, those bedraggled features. It was the face of Hugo Kressler.
In terror he squeaked, squirming for freedom, lashing his pink tail, twitching his whiskers…
Hugo’s eyes blinked open and he panted for breath. He was wrapped up in a tangle of sheets that held his arms and legs tight. With some difficulty he unravelled himself from the stark white bedding and sat up, breathing a sigh of relief.
Hammer and Bolter - Issue 2 Page 10
