'Here,' he said, offering Ash the squirming bag. Ash squinted at it. He gestured to Baracha, and the man offered the bag to the Alhazii instead.
Baracha was even less keen. 'The boy can take it,' he decided.
And so Aleas was burdened with yet another item to carry: this time a sack containing a struggling rat.
'He is a king amongst rats,' explained the man to Aleas. 'They will come for him, when he calls them.'
'And when will that be?'
'Right now.'
Aleas looked about him. He could see nothing, certainly no rats.
'Our thanks,' said Ash gruffly, and handed the man a purse of coins.
The man bowed again, less pronouncedly this time. He tapped the top of his hat after he had replaced it upon his head. 'I would wish you good luck, but that seems a rare commodity these days. Anyway, it's hardly worth squandering on fools. Goodbye, then, Ash. May your end be a glorious one.'
With this final blessing he hobbled away.
*
'When I said we required an army,' muttered Baracha, as they crossed the street and approached the bridge, 'I was talking in a literal sense. Men and such. Men with weapons. Armour. Discipline.'
From the edges of their vision they could see shapes emerging and scattering in the fog. The rats were coming out.
'These are better,' said Ash.
The Rshun stopped before the squat sentry post that barred their way on to the bridge. A masked Acolyte stepped out, hand resting on his sword hilt. He began to speak, but stopped abruptly when Ash thrust a knife into him, twisting it up into his lung.
Ash withdrew the blade, air whistling from the gaping wound. The man toppled on to his side, gasping like a fish out of water behind his mask.
Baracha stepped over him. A brief scuffle sounded from within the sentry post. He emerged grim-faced. They stepped on to the bridge.
Aleas still carried the bag in his hand, limp now. The king rat had stopped squirming. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw a shapeless mass following behind them. The tower loomed overhead, hidden eyes watching their approach. Loopholes ringed the lower reaches of the temple, jutting out from its sheer sides so that archers could fire straight down. Aleas tried to walk normally in his robes and with his heavy burden.
They halted at the base of the tower itself, in front of the massive iron gate. A grate slid open, at waist level, revealing only blackness beyond.
Aleas moved as instructed. He pulled open the neck of the bag, easily snapping the hair which bound it, and emptied the animal through the hole.
Almost immediately its fellow rats emerged from the fog and rushed for the gate. The three Rshun swung away to either side, batting the swarming creatures from their legs. Against the gate, the rats piled upwards like a drift of leaves until they were able to squirm through the open grate.
'Smoke,' demanded Ash, flapping his open hand. Aleas fumbled beneath his robe for one of the small bags filled with jupe bark and barris seed, and tossed it to him.
Shouts sounded from within. An alarm went up, a bell clanging fiercely.
The farlander bent and lit the bag's fuse with a match. He tossed it to the ground, where it began to spew clouds of white smoke that helped to augment the natural cover of fog. A bolt shattered at Aleas's feet and without even thinking he raised his double crossbow to aim at a loophole some twenty feet above his head, and snapped off a shot. From a different loophole a rifle spurted a blast of smoke and a hurtling lead shot, which couldn't be seen save for its bloody and instantaneous progress through Baracha's left ear.
'Aleas!' bawled the Alhazii. Aleas twisted and fired again.
While he was at this business of returning fire, Ash and Baracha were working to free one of the two small casks of blackpowder that hung beneath his robe. Baracha ignored the ruin of his ear, which hung in tatters, dripping blood. 'You tie knots just like my mother,' the Alhazii grumbled to Ash, both of them struggling to get the cask loose. More shots crashed down. The noise was deafening, shards of wood flying up around their feet. The cask finally came loose. Aleas reloaded his crossbow and huddled by the side of the gate, knowing they would be shot through in no time like this, smoke or no smoke. But he could hear shouts from the loopholes now, and guards yelling in panic. The rats had reached them.
His master's gruff voice could be heard above the gunfire: 'We need to use more,' he was shouting. 'We need to use both casks.'
Ash wasn't listening, though. He laid the wooden cask by the gate, soaked its fuse with water, scurried away.
'Clear away!' hollered Baracha, and all three jumped down from either side of the bridge on to the concrete foundations beneath it.
The fuse was a short one, though it seemed an eternity as they waited for it to soak through. The blackpowder cask was constructed from a single piece of wood, with a finger-wide hole at its top filled with thick, semi-hardened tar. The fuse poked through this, and when it sucked the water to the contents within, it would ignite from the sudden contact with moisture.
It exploded suddenly. An ear-jarring rush of air crashed overhead, followed by reeking black smoke and portions of wood and rat that splashed into the water of the moat in a brief shower of debris. Coughing, they poked their heads back up. The gate was still intact.
Baracha yelled as he jumped back on to the bridge. He waved his arms at the gate. A shot raced past his head, though he didn't flinch. Instead he straightened and looked up with a scowl.
Ash leaped up, too, and helped Aleas back on to the remnants of the bridge. Aleas's ears were still ringing from the explosion. No time to think, though. Through the smoke he could see that planks of the bridge had blown away to leave only the concrete foundation, exposed and blackened; the gates too were blackened, badly buckled, but seemingly intact. Before them Ash stood stroking the scabbard of his sword. He exchanged a glance with Aleas, his eyebrow raised. Aleas bent to reload his crossbow. More shots crashed out. One took the skin from Baracha's shoulder, before it skipped off the concrete, sailing past Aleas's right knee.
'By all that is holy!' Baracha bellowed up in rage. 'Will you aim at someone else, just this once!' He snatched the crossbow from Aleas and aimed at a loophole still boasting a cloud of drifting smoke. He fired twice. A shout of pain rang out. He tossed the piece back to his apprentice.
'Now what?' he demanded, rounding on Ash. 'I told you we needed to use both casks.'
Ash held a finger to his lips, attempting to hush the big man. He stepped through the clearing smoke and placed a palm against the smaller door set into the gate, which was now warped and partly ajar. He tilted himself forwards, pressing hard.
The door fell inwards. It clanged to the ground without any hint of a bounce. Within lay only smoke and darkness.
The pair of them swept through. Behind, Aleas hobbled under his load. An Acolyte lay writhing on the ground, smothered in a carpet of rats. They trod a path around him, not looking.
A wide entranceway lined with murder holes. Another gate at its end. But it lay open.
Beyond was a large, starkly gas-lit chamber, where several riding zels stood with their reins tied to posts, and next to them a few empty carts. Troughs of water lined two walls and a stable was close at hand, if the smell was anything to go by. Passages led off from the open space. The Rshun chose the one directly ahead, Ash going in front, Aleas taking the rear.
This passage led into the lower sanctum of the Temple of Whispers, the largest open area to be found within the tower. The walls of the space were the same colour as exposed flesh; a sacrificial altar, of pure white stone, stood at its far end in a pool of gaslight turned low. Columns of pink marble ran in two rows the entire length of the sanctum, rising into the dimness of a ceiling arching high overhead, which was covered entirely in friezes of Mann – images that reflected much of the chaos to be found on the floor below.