He could hear his own thoughts, but they were like a little chirp of insects against the thunderstorm of his senses. Bits of memory danced in front of his eyes. Cages. Panic. The white rat. Hamnpork. That was his own name. Odd. Never used to have names. Just used to smell other rats. Darkness. Darkness inside, behind the eyes. That bit was Hamnpork. Everything outside was everything else.
Hamnpork. Me. Leader.
The red-hot rage still boiled inside him but now it had a kind of shape, like the shape a canyon gives to a river in flood, narrowing it, forcing it to flow faster, giving it direction.
Now he could hear voices.
“… just slip him in, no-one'll notice…”
“… OK, I'll shake it up a bit first to get him angry…”
The sack was jerked around. It didn't make Hamnpork any more angry than he was already. There wasn't any room for more anger.
The sack swung as it was carried. The roar of humans grew louder, the smells grew stronger. There was a moment of silence, the sack was upturned, and Hamnpork slid out into a roar of noise and a pile of struggling rats.
He snapped and clawed his way to the top as the rats scattered, and saw a growling dog being lowered into the pit. It snatched up a rat, shook it vigorously, and sent the limp body flying.
The rats stampeded.
“Idiots!” screamed Hamnpork. “Work together! You could strip this fleabag to the bone!”
The crowd stopped shouting.
The dog stared down its nose at Hamnpork. It was trying to think. The rat had spoken. Only humans spoke. And it didn't smell right. Rats stank of panic. This one didn't.
The silence rang like a bell.
Then Jacko grabbed the rat, shook him, not too hard, and tossed him down. He'd decided to do a sort of test; rats shouldn't be able to talk like humans, but this rat looked like a rat—and killing rats was OK—but talked like a human—and biting humans got you a serious thrashing. He had to find out for sure. If he got a wallop, this rat was a human.
Hamnpork rolled, and managed to get upright, but there was a deep tooth wound in his side.
The other rats were still in a boiling huddle as far away from the dog as possible, every rat trying to be the one at the bottom.
Hamnpork spat blood. “All right, then,” he snarled, advancing on the puzzled dog. “Now you find out how a real rat dies!”
“Hamnpork!”
He looked up.
String uncoiled behind Sardines as he fell through the smoky air towards the frantic circle. He was right above Hamnpork, getting bigger and bigger…
… and slower and slower…
He came to a stop between the dog and the rat. For a moment he hung there. He raised his hat, politely, and said, “Good evening!” Then he wrapped all four legs around Hamnpork.
And now the rope of elastic bands, stretched to twanging point, finally sprang back. Too late, too late, Jacko snapped at empty air. The rats were accelerated upwards, out of the pit—and stopped, bouncing in mid air, just out of reach.
The dog was still looking up when Darktan leapt off the other side of the beam. As the crowd stared in astonishment, he plummeted down towards the terrier.
Jacko's eyes narrowed. Rats disappearing into the air was one thing, but rats dropping right towards his mouth was something else. It was rat on a plate, it was rat on a stick.
Darktan looked back as he fell. Up above, Nourishing was doing some frantic knotting and biting. Now Darktan was on the other end of Sardines' string. But Sardines had explained things very carefully. Darktan's weight alone wasn't heavy enough to pull the weight of two other rats back up to the beam…
So, when Darktan saw Sardines and his struggling passenger had disappeared safely into the gloom of the roof—
–he let go of the big old candle lamp he'd been holding for the extra weight and bit through the rope.
The lamp landed heavily on Jacko and Darktan landed on the lamp, rolling down onto the floor.
The crowd was silent. They'd been silent since Hamnpork had been propelled out of the pit. Around the top of the wall which, yes, was far too high for a rat to jump, Darktan saw faces. They were mostly red. The mouths were mostly open. The silence was the silence of red faces drawing breath ready to start shouting at any moment.
Around Darktan the surviving rats were scrambling aimlessly for a foothold on the wall. Fools, he thought. Four or five of you together could make any dog wish you'd never been born. But you scrabble and panic and you get picked off one at a time…
The slightly-stunned Jacko blinked and stared down at Darktan, a growl rising in his throat.
“Right, you kkrrkk,” said Darktan, loud enough for the watchers to hear. “Now I'm going to show you how a rat can live.”
He attacked.
Jacko was not a bad dog, according to the way of dogs. He was a terrier and liked killing rats in any case, and killing lots of rats in the pit meant that he got well fed and called a good boy and wasn't kicked very often. Some rats did fight back and that wasn't much of a problem, because they were smaller than Jacko and he had a lot more teeth. Jacko wasn't that smart, but he was a lot smarter than a rat and, in any case, his nose and mouth did most of the thinking.
And he was surprised, therefore, when his jaws snapped shut on this new rat and it wasn't there.
Darktan didn't run like a rat should. He ducked like a fighter. He nipped Jacko under the chin and vanished. Jacko spun around. The rat still wasn't there. Jacko had spent his show business career biting rats that tried to run away. Rats that stayed really close were unfair!
There was a roar from the watchers. Someone shouted, “Ten dollars on the rat!” and someone else punched him in the ear. Another man started to climb into the pit. Someone smashed a beer bottle on that man's head.
Dancing back and forth under the spinning, yapping Jacko, Darktan waited for his moment…
… and saw it, and lunged, and bit hard.
Jacko's eyes crossed. A piece of Jacko that was very private and of interest only to Jacko and any lady dogs he might happen to meet was suddenly a little ball of pain.
He yelped. He snapped at the air. And then, in the uproar, he tried to climb out of the pit. His claws scraped desperately as he reared up against the greasy, smooth planking.
Darktan jumped onto his tail, ran up his back, scampered to the tip of Jacko's nose, and leapt over the wall.
He landed among legs. Men tried to stamp on him, but that meant other men would have to give them room. By the time they'd elbowed one another out of the way and stamped heavily on one another's boots, Darktan was gone.
But there were other dogs. They were half-mad with excitement in any case, and now they pulled away from ropes and chains and set off after a running rat. They knew about chasing rats.
Darktan knew about running. He sped across the floor like a comet, with a tail of snarling, barking dogs, headed for the shadows, spied a hole in the planking and dived through into the nice, safe, darkness—
Click went the trap.
CHAPTER 9
Farmer Fred opened his door and saw all the animals of Furry Bottom waiting for him. ‘We can't find Mr. Bunnsy or Ratty Rupert!’ they cried.
“At last!” said Malicia, shaking the ropes off. “Somehow I thought rats would gnaw quicker.”
“They used a knife,” said Keith. “And you could say thank you, couldn't you?”
“Yes, yes, tell them I'm very grateful,” said Malicia, pushing herself upright.
“Tell them yourself!”
“I'm sorry, I find it so embarrassing to… talk to rats.”
“I suppose that's understandable,” said Keith. “If you've been brought up to hate them because they—”
“Oh, it's not that,” said Malicia, walking over to the door and looking at the keyhole. “It's just that it's so… childish. So… tinkly-winkly. So… Mr. Bunnsy.”