At one point, when they were darting around a cave barely evading several sets of snapping teeth, Ares cried out, "Use your sword!"
"I don't have it! It broke and I left it back in the cave!" said Gregor. He hated dumping this whole escape thing on Ares, but what could he do?
Ares twisted sideways and made it into a tunnel with the rats hot on his tail.
The baby rat had given up crying "Ma-maa!!" and was now issuing a series of high-pitched alarm shrieks. "Eek! Eek! Eek!"
"Make it stop, Overlander. Its voice carries great distances. Every rat in the maze can hear that the pup is threatened!" shouted Ares.
Gregor remembered how far Boots's cry carried — through doors, down hallways, you could even hear her on the elevator when you were coming up. It was like nature had designed her baby cry so it would travel. Must be the same with rats.
At first he tried to calm the Bane with his voice. It wasn't enough. It might have helped if they were sitting somewhere quietly on the ground, but it was useless here in this nightmare of motion. He tried stroking its back and head, but that didn't work, either. Gregor's human voice and touch and smell were just more scary unknown things to the rat. Finally he managed to get a hand into his backpack and pull out one of the candy bars. He ripped it open, broke off a piece, and stuck it into the baby's wailing mouth.
There was an "Eek!" of surprise, then a smacking sound, and the Bane was consumed by its first wonderful taste of chocolate.
"More!" It was so weird to hear the rat baby talking, but it was. "More!" it said again, just like Boots would have.
Gregor popped another piece of chocolate into the little rat's mouth, and it was gobbled up. The Bane seemed to think better of him now that he had given it chocolate. It relaxed a little, back into his body, which made it easier to hold on to.
"You think we're almost out of here?" Gregor said as they swept out of a tunnel.
"See for yourself," said Ares.
Gregor shone the flashlight around the place they'd just entered. Lying on the floor were Goldshard, Snare, and the third rat. "No! What are we doing back here?" he gasped.
"Perhaps you should try navigating!" said Ares. What with him insisting on taking the Bane, having no sword, and being pretty worthless in general at the moment, Gregor could tell the bat had lost patience with him.
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," said Gregor.
"It is our scent, Overlander," said Ares. "They track us with such ease. I cannot lose them."
"Hey, I know!" said Gregor. "Maybe we can trick them!" He'd seen some movie once where a guy running from bloodhounds had fooled them. "We need to confuse their noses." But with what?
Gregor ripped the bandage from his arm. It was soaked with blood and pus and ointment. "Fly around the cone, Ares! I need to touch the top of every tunnel."
Ares followed his instructions, if not his plan. "Why do we do this?"
Gregor held out the bandage and swiped it along the inside of every tunnel entrance as they passed it. "I'm just trying to spread our scent around."
They completed the full circle, hitting each tunnel opening. Gregor tossed the bandage up the last one.
"They come!" warned Ares.
"Get out! Get out now!" said Gregor.
Ares dipped into a tunnel they had not yet tried. After about thirty seconds, they could hear the rats reaching the cone. And they were confused. Different rats were calling for them to chase down different tunnels. A big argument broke out, and then the sound of fighting.
It grew softer as they moved away, until Gregor could no longer hear it at all.
Ares zigzagged down a tunnel, and this one opened out over a nice, wide, shallow stream.
"I must stop for a moment...I must drink..." Ares landed on the edge of the stream, panting. He dunked his face in the water, gulping it down.
Gregor got down and scooped up handfuls of water for himself and the Bane. The stream was not too deep, but the current was fairly strong and he didn't want the baby being swept away.
Ares raised his wet face. "I have only just thought of something," said Ares. "This stream. Where do you suppose it goes?"
"I don't know. A bigger stream. Maybe a river eventually, or —" Gregor caught Ares's drift. On his very first night in Regalia, when he'd tried to escape, he'd followed the water out of the palace. It had led to a river that had led to the Waterway. "It's sure worth a try."
Gregor hauled the Bane onto Ares's back, and they took off again.
It was not too promising for a while. The main thing about the stream was that it was long and it had as many twists and turns as the tunnels in the maze. Gregor could feel Ares's wings slowing; he was going to have to have a real rest soon. But to stop in the maze was certain death. The rats would catch up to them. Gregor had no sword. The baby would begin to cry again, and then they would —
"A river," Ares puffed out. "A river is at hand."
In another minute, they followed the stream out of the tunnel and into a huge cavern. A river ran through it. They were out of the maze!
Ares flew up high above the water. There were stony cliffs along the sides.
"Any rats around?" asked Gregor.
"Just the one on my back," said Ares.
"You want to pull over and take a break?" said Gregor.
"In a short while. I want to put more distance between the gnawers and us. They will be coming, Overlander. We have the Bane," said Ares.
"Yeah, I bet they hate that," said Gregor. He petted the Bane's head. It was getting used to him now. It curled up against him and gave a big yawn. "You've had a pretty big day, huh, little guy?" It didn't take long for it to fall asleep.
They flew awhile in silence. Then Ares spoke in an odd voice. "Overlander, I think I know this place. I think we both do."
"What?" said Gregor. How could he possibly know where they were?
"Shine your light down," said Ares.
Gregor obeyed. There below them was the river, very wide now, and very strong. Hanging down from the high banks on either side of it were the remnants of a broken bridge.
"Oh," said Gregor. And the memory of that day flashed before his eyes. Running across the bridge, trying to go back for Boots, Ripred carrying him by his backpack as the bridge swung dizzyingly below, being smacked to the ground by Ripred's tail while the rat and Luxa and Henry and Gox had hacked away at the ropes that held the bridge and the pack of rats catching up to the cockroaches and his baby sister and — and —
It was the place where Tick had died.
"You're right," said Gregor. "How did we end up here, do you think?"
"The Tankard, the Labyrinth, and what remains of this bridge are all in the rats' domain," said Ares. "At least now we have some sense of where we are."
The bat coasted in and landed on the riverbank across from where the bridge had been hacked off. "It will be safer on this side. The rats would have great difficulty swimming the river, which is, as we know, filled with flesh-eating fish."
Gregor climbed off Ares's back holding the Bane, who was snoring softly. They were at the mouth of a tunnel. He ran his flashlight beam over the surrounding rocks, remembering how they'd been filled with waiting rats on their first visit. Now the rocks were empty. "Anything in the tunnel?" he asked Ares.
The bat shook his head. "Not as far as I can tell. I believe we are safe for the moment. Overlander, I must rest."
He could see Ares's weary eyes starting to shut.
"You go ahead and sleep. I'll keep watch," he said. "And, Ares? You were amazing back there."
"I was not bad," Ares agreed, and promptly fell asleep, his back to the tunnel wall.