Slowly the sewer guards, sick with undertow, descended on the ledge. One by one, they descended the ladders that had been inserted through the entrances. Rudi, who was then serving as sergeant, switched on the dark lantern and illuminated the tunnel.
The stench hit Elysia like a hammer as she stepped from the ladder onto the ledge. It was the most difficult part of the operation, since there was barely a foot of space between the last rung and the edge of the ledge. One misstep had dragged more than one still drunk guard into the depths of the stew.
"You were lost last night, young Elysia." Heff commented.
"We gave the sergeant a nice farewell," Araña added.
"Frey emptied seven mugs of beer, one after another, and didn't even get dizzy. We spend the wages they pay us in a week in the first round."
"I'm so happy for you," Elysia replied.
Frey didn't seem to be affected by his exploits. Of all the men, he was the only one apparently not suffering from a hangover. The others presented a ghastly, pale appearance, and shuffled along like old men.
"Oh! there's nothing like the smell of stew to clear your head in the morning," Hef commented. Then he stuck his head out of the ledge and began to vomit in violent spasms.
"I think it clears it up for you" added Rudi, without the slightest trace of irony in his voice.
"I see," Elysia commented.
"We are going to comb the entire area where the sergeant fell," Rudi explained. "We decided last night. We want to see if we can find the scumbag that makes deals with the ratfolks, and if we can't find him, maybe we'll run into some of his pink-tailed friends."
"What if they have more gas pumps like the one from yesterday?" Elysia asked.
"There is nothing to worry about. Frey has knowledge about those gadgets, and he has explained to us what to do in that case."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes. We soak our handkerchiefs with piss and breathe through them. That doesn't let the gas through."
"I knew it would be something like that," Elysia said as she glared at the dark hero and wondered if the others had really been convinced by Frey's statements or if they were just playing along. Yet one glance at their wild, determined faces convinced her that it was the former.
"It's true, Elysia. I have a friend who knows how to make that kind of gadget, he's an Artifice, he always devises a countermeasure to nullify his own weapons, even though it's somewhat rudimentary, these gas masks should work well enough."
"If you say so…" Elysia replied. She realized that this was going to be a very long day. As she looked at her companions, she noticed something curious, Frey had his 'Gas Mask' nowhere to be found.
"Why don't you have the fabulous countermeasure?"
"I don't need it" Frey said as he hit his head. "My helmet is designed to nullify those kinds of attacks."
♦ ♦ ♦
They followed the same route as the day before, toward the area below the Old Town.
One thing that worried him was the prospect that they might meet ratfolk again; the last time he faced them he barely survived. He didn't relish facing such vicious enemies on his own ground. He fought with all his might to remember what he knew about the wererats, hoping to find something that would give him some advantage should he have to fight them.
He knew that it was a humanoid race of beastmen. It was rumored that they were divided into clans, and each one had its specific function: the practice of sorcery, warfare, raising monsters, and so on; except the Scritt Clan, which possesses qualities of different clans, but is also the only one she knows are relatively civilized, having distanced themselves from her brothers long ago.
Ratfolks were lighter than a man, faster and more wicked, possessing a savage intelligence that made them deadly foes.
Elysia had seen some evidence of the ratfolk's work in the fortress-city of the Five Peaks and in the deep caverns below Riverheim. The thought of the polluted water wells and the huge mutated troll made her shudder even after all the time she had been through. She hoped she would never have to deal with any more of these beings' monstrous creations in her life. Looking at the others, she realized that they did not share the same hope.
Until yesterday, Elysia had never given a second thought to the number of rats that inhabited the sewers, but now she understood that they were everywhere. They scurried out of the light as the guards approached, and she could hear the soft footsteps behind her as they passed. Her eyes reflected the light from the deaf lantern and sparkled like tiny stars, far away, in the dark depths of the city.
She then found herself wondering if there was any relationship between rats and ratfolks. She began to imagine the little ones as spies for her bigger siblings. It was a wild thought, she knew, something out of fantasy stories; but the more she thought about it, the more terrifying the prospect became. Rats were everywhere in the human cities; they lived among the rubbish and rubbish of civilization. They could see many things, hear many things, and pass by, if not unnoticed, at least without arousing suspicion.
She began to feel the cold eyes of the rats fixing malevolently on her as they advanced. The sewer walls began to close in around her in a menacing fashion, and she imagined herself trapped inside a huge rabbit hutch. Thinking of the ratfolks out there, it suddenly seemed plausible that she was in a vast burrow, that she and the others had shrunk to the size of mice, and that the ratfolks were ordinary rats, walking in an awkward position. erect and dressed in a way that imitated that of men.
Her fantasy became so vivid and compelling that she began to wonder if the fumes from her stew were going to her head, or if the odor-deadening narcotics prescribed by the city's alchemists had hallucinogenic side effects.
"Calm down, Elysia," she heard Frey say to her. "You are very pale."
"I was just thinking about the rats."
"In the tunnels, the mind creates its own enemies. It's the first thing a tunnel warrior learns to protect himself from."
"So, have you done this kind of thing before?" Elysia asked, with some sarcasm.
"Yes, Elysia, where I come from, has many tunnels similar to these in its catacombs and underground caves."
Frey was unusually frank, as he sometimes was before moments of great danger. Risk made him talkative, as if he wanted to communicate with others only when he realized that he might not get another chance to do so. Or maybe it was just that he was still drunk from what he had drunk the night before.
Elysia realized that she would never be able to unravel the riddle that lay behind Frey, for penetrating the strange mind of the dark hero was as beyond her grasp as understanding a ratfolk.
"Stay calm, Elysia. You will live longer if your mind is calm."
"Easy for you to say," Elysia murmured as the burly Frey brushed past her to come forward. Despite everything, Frey's presence reassured her.
With some trepidation, they approached the spot where Gant had been killed the day before. Mist was rising from the surface of the stew, and in places a slow current could be seen. The scene of the fight looked the same as Elysia remembered, except that the corpse was no longer there. The area where her body had lain had been removed.
There was a trail in the slime that stopped suddenly at the edge of the ledge, as if the corpse had been dragged a short way and then plunged. She knew they should have moved it the day before, when they had the chance, but they were too shocked, upset, and upset by what had happened to do so. No one wanted to transport the mangy ratman's body, and so it was gone.
"Someone has taken it," Hef said.
"I wonder who," Spider added.
Frey inspected the ledge where the corpse had been, leaning down to take a closer look at the trail.
"It wasn't a human, in any case. That is sure."
"In the sewers there are all kinds of scavengers," Rudi said, expressing the general belief of all the guards. "Things live in the stew that you wouldn't even believe existed."
"I don't think it was any scavenger," Frey assured him.
"A Ratfolk," Elysia chimed in, voicing the thought of all of them out loud.
"Too big; one of them, at least. The other tracks could be from ratfolks."
Elysia's eyes probed the darkness, which suddenly seemed even more threatening.
"How big?" She cursed herself for adopting the same laconic way of speaking as the others. "How big exactly was that creature you're referring to, Frey?"
"Maybe taller than you, Elysia. Maybe heavier than Rudi."
"Could it be one of the monsters you say the ratfolks breed? Some kind of hybrid like me?
"Yes."
"But how can it be that all those traces are interrupted like this, suddenly? It's impossible that all of them have thrown themselves into the stew, right?"
"Magic," Hef said.
"The blackest," added Araña.
Frey lowered her eyes to the ledge. Elysia's tail bristled as she caught a glimpse of insane violence flashing in Frey's eyes.
"They can't just disappear," she said. "It's very difficult to do it."
"Could they have left by boat?" asked Elysia, who had just gotten the idea. The others looked at her in disbelief.
"By boat?" Heff inquired.
"For the stew?" Spider added.
"Don't be stupid," Rudi snapped, and Elysia blushed.
"I am not stupid. Note that the tracks end here. It would be very easy for anyone to move from the ledge to a small skiff."
"That's the biggest nonsense I've ever heard in my life," Rudi insisted. "You have a lot of imagination, young Elysia. Who could come up with the idea of using a boat down here?
"There are a lot of things that you would never think of," Elysia snapped at him. "But thinking isn't your strong point, is it?" She looked at the other guards and shook her head. "You're right… That thing about the boat is nonsense. It's much better to believe that they were vanished by teleportation magic used only by legendary wizards or perhaps a cloud of flying goblins came in and took them up into the air."
"That's right, a cloud of flying goblins. It is the most likely reason." Rudi stated.
"He's speaking sarcastically, Rudi," Araña explained.
"You are a very sarcastic woman, Elysia," Hef added.
"Though he's probably right." Frey chimed in. "It shouldn't be too hard to get a boat. The sewers flow into the river, right? It's easy to steal a small boat."
"However the mouths of the river are all barred," said Rudi, "to keep out the bums."
"And what is our job but to hunt down those very bums when they manage to slip between the bars?" Elysia asked. It seemed that the idea was even beginning to seep through Rudi's thick skull.
"But why, Elysia? Why use a boat? Elysia was delighted, as it was not often that Frey admitted that she might know more than he did. She considered the question quickly.
"Well, because it doesn't leave a trace to begin with, and it could be related to a robbery operation. Suppose, for example, someone brought a manastone down the river. Apparently, our noble marauder from yesterday paid the ratfolk with it."
"Boats make me dizzy. The only thing I hate more than boats are cowards," Frey declared as they set off again.
They searched for the rest of the day and found no sign of the ratfolk, although they did discover that someone had removed the bars at one of the mouths of the sewers to the river.