The skiff made contact with the barge, and at that moment Frey struck the hull of the ship with the tip of his sword; the weapon plunged deep and the dark hero used it to pull himself up until he reached a porthole.
"Very stealthy," Elysia commented sourly. "Why, while you're at it, don't you give a good shout of welcome?"
Another crushing blow carried Frey over the side. He stood there for a moment, and then lowered one of his hands down as he anchored himself using the sword like a baldhead.
"Hold on." he roared.
Elysia jumped, grabbing it with her right hand as she grabbed the lantern with the other. Frey lifted her up single-handed and seemingly effortlessly, despite Elysia's weight and the uncontrollable angle of hers. He swept his hand in an arc over the rail, and lifted Elysia up with it. The catgirl fell to the deck, amazed at the awesome strength the dark hero had just displayed using only one hand.
"It looks like they're waiting for us," Elysia commented, nodding toward the mass of ratfolk coming out onto the deck.
"Good," Frey said. "I need a little exercise."
♦ ♦ ♦
"What's that?" Skitch wondered. He had just heard a huge crash and the sound of splintering wood. Had those buffoons managed to run the barge on a sandbar again? He believed them capable of doing it. They had claimed that they were experienced sailors and that steering a human vessel would be no problem for them. So far, they had not shown it.
If they jeopardized the mission, Izak Grottle would rip them limb from limb and devour their entrails before their dying eyes. But such thoughts brought Skitch no comfort, for he knew that he himself would be the first course of the Beastmaster's punishing feast.
When he heard the alarmed shrieks of the crew, Skitch knew there was something worse going on than running aground. He had been discovered by a human patrol. He cursed his bad luck, which had allowed the humans to detect them. It had to be a one in a million chance. He wished he had brought some orc-rats with him, after all. He hadn't done it for fear that their roars and howls would give away the barge's position, but at the time it seemed to him that that would have been unimportant.
A part of him wanted to secrete the musk of fear, but he had a responsibility to care for his ward. He left his cabin and entered the hold, where he found himself surrounded by huge rats that were struggling inside their cages, desperate to gain freedom and eat. Seeing the wildly hungry look in his eyes, Skitch was glad he had smeared himself with swamp toad oil, for he knew his creations found the substance repellent.
Hearing the sounds of carnage on deck, Skitch began hastily opening the cages. Hungry rats ran up the ramps in search of living food.
♦ ♦ ♦
The cat girl swung the lantern, its flame fanning and brightening from the draft. The dazzled ratfolk in front of her leaped back, momentarily blinded, and Elysia took advantage of that moment of confusion to thrust a thrust through its throat.
The deck was already slippery with blood and scattered brains, for the dark hero had left a hideous path of destruction behind him. His sword had smashed a dozen ratfolk to ripped logs. The others backed away to flee or jumped over the side of the barge to avoid him. Elysia followed him and was busy killing those who sought to attack Frey from the flanks and end the suffering of the dying.
Her heart was pounding inside her chest and the hilt of her sword was damp from the sweat of her hand; but she was not afraid as she often was in mortal combat. Compared to some of the fights she'd been involved in, this one was relatively easy; Suspiciously easy, in fact, considering that there had to be some terrible Ratfolk weapon on this ship.
"And it's not like the relative ease of fighting makes much of a difference." she thought to herself as she leaped to the side to avoid a knife thrown by one of the ratfolk sailors, then flung herself forward to stab another of them through the heart. She only needed one lucky hit from the enemy, and she would end up as dead as if a rat-orc had torn her to pieces.
"Focus." she commanded herself, and then froze in horror as the tide of furry forms began to pour out of the hold.
♦ ♦ ♦
Skitch scuttled up the ladder and peered out warily at the scene of terrible violence. A monstrous giant warrior wielding a massive sword had killed half the crew and seemed intent on taking down the other half. He was aided in that by a tailed, black-furred non-human female who held a lantern in one hand and a powerful-looking sword in the other. Everywhere, the killer rats were nibbling at the bodies of the dead and dying ratfolk.
Skitch froze where he stood, secreting the musk of fear as he clutched the last cage full of rats in his claws, kicking frantically to get away from the oily stench of ratfolk fur.
Skitch had recognized the pair of warriors who had just boarded the barge and who had become almost a black legend among the wererats besieging Bergheim.
That was the terrifying duo that not even the Ninjas of the Furtim Clan had managed to kill. They had defeated the engineers of Clan Marchin, and it was said that The Black Magician Dhalthar feared meeting them again. They were formidable ratfolk killers, and they were right there on the barge!
Skitch was no warrior, and he knew he could be of no use to the ratfolk battling on deck. It was even possible that even the killer rats could not defeat this seemingly invincible pair. It was clear, then, that his duty was to escape with the last surviving rats in order to preserve them for the future, when perhaps they could be used again.
With that thought, he held the cage high above his head, and jumped into the dark waters of the river.
♦ ♦ ♦
Elysia watched as more and more huge rats came out of the cellar. There was a hunger and madness in her eyes that terrified her, and she wondered if these animals were the ratfolks' secret weapon. A huge, ferocious beast lunged at her, and she felt the hideous touch of her paws running up one leg and another of hers tearing at her tail. She launched a kick that sent the beast flying through the air, and then stomped and felt the spine of a second snap under the heel of her boot.
Something fell on Elysia from above, and she felt claws digging through her hair and razor-sharp teeth biting into her ear, while a foul animal stench filled her nostrils. She dropped the flashlight to raise her hands and felt muscles rippling under her fur as she pushed the rat off of her. Some of her fangs bit his finger as she threw the animal overboard into the river.
The rats kept falling from above and jumping from the deck. She felt like she was in the middle of a tornado of hair.
Frey stomped, slashed, and kicked, but she was in the same situation as his partner. The rats were too numerous and too ferocious for them to defeat. If they stayed there, they would die a gruesome death after thousands of bites.
"Not a death fit for a hero, I'd say!" Elysia yelled.
"Burn this damned floating rat nest on fire!"
"What?"
"Set them on fire and let's get out of here!"
Elysia looked around her and took in the flashlight. She caught her and hurled her with all her might against the deck, where the oil spilled and she began to burn. She had often heard how dangerous fire was on board ships. After all, they were made of wood and sealed with tar, a highly flammable substance; however, she never thought that she would be grateful for that fact, although she was certainly grateful for it at that moment. The flames began to waver and dance around her.
The smell of burning meat and hair reached her nostrils. The rats began to run and squeal everywhere with burning fur, in an attempt to escape the flames. Some jumped overboard, hurling into the water like little living meteors. Others continued the attack with redoubled fury, as if intent on taking someone else to the realm of death.
Elysia decided that this was the signal for her departure.
"It's time to go!" she yelled. A wave of heat washed over her, singeing her hair and the tip of her tail.
"Yes, cat girl, I think you're right."
Elysia sheathed her sword, turned, jumped over the side and plunged into the water; rats fell all around her. After the heat of the burning barge, she was almost relieved to feel the chill of the waters closing in over her head. She kicked up and up until her head broke the surface.
She saw that near them there were boats everywhere; They had come to see the fire. She began to paddle toward the nearest boat, struggling to overcome the weight of the sword in its scabbard.
♦ ♦ ♦
Drenched, Elysia sat grimly on the dock, her eyes wide open, but for the moment there was no sign of the dark hero.
She hadn't seen Frey since he dove into the river, and she wondered if she knew how to swim. And even if she did know, wasn't it possible that she had drowned due to the weight of the hulking sword and plate armor she was equipped with? It would not have been exactly the glorious death she longed for.
Her clothes were soaked and her teeth were beginning to chatter, but she continued to sit and think that she wished she had some of the rum that Frey had been drinking before her.
She wondered about the ratfolk weapon that must have been aboard the Black Boat. She knew that she would never find out what it was about, since the barge was a burned-out hulk that then rested at the bottom of the river. The ferryman who had picked him up held his position in midstream as the boat consumed before accepting a handful of silver pieces as payment for bringing Elysia to shore.
There was a splashing sound near Elysia, and the Garo girl looked to her left.
"Looks like one of the huge, hungry rats has made it out of the barge." She thought her. The animal climbed up the side of the ladder that led up from the lower landing, shook its hair like a dog, and walked away from her along the dock as Elysia watched.
For a brief moment, Elysia thought about going to find the boatman again and scour the waters in search of the dark hero, but she knew that it would be a futile attempt; The river was very wide and the current was too strong.
If Frey had drowned, no doubt they would eventually find the body and display it on the old bridge, waiting for someone to come and claim it, like everyone else pulled from the river. The next day, she could go check it out.
She got up from the mooring where he was sitting and prepared for the long walk to her residence. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure taunting an equally familiar boatman and pole-driving the boat toward the jetty. Elysia waved a hand in greeting.
"When I sank, the current carried me downstream" Frey yelled as he climbed onto the pier. "I ran into this old friend of ours. It took me most of the night to get back."
"Against the current." the exhausted boatman clarified, looking more tired than any man Elysia had ever seen in her entire life, and deeply scared as well. Elysia could imagine the nature of the threats Frey had made to motivate him.
"Well," said the catgirl. "Let's go back to The Stinky Pig for a beer. I think we've earned it."
"Forgive me for not accompanying you." said the boatman. "And…, and there's the little matter of my fees."
♦ ♦ ♦
Cold, wet and dirty, Skitch finally reached the Underground Paths. It had been a truly dreadful night. He had swum through the icy waters with the last cage of rats; then he had walked along the riverbank until he found a manhole, and then he had spent the rest of the night wandering the tunnels until he found the scent of the ratfolks, whose trail, dodging human patrols, had finally led him to over there.
He was proud of himself, for he had completed a long and difficult journey. He had lost his glasses and could barely see, but he had arrived and managed to preserve a cage full of his precious specimens.
Even better, there were several pregnant females in the cage, so he could easily start over. Furthermore, the rats were healthy; even then they were agitated, and Skitch realized it was because they could smell food. He was near the storage chambers, where the provisions of the large invasion forces were kept.
"Now." he thought he. "All I need is a pretext to explain to the sentinels why I am here. Very easy; I'll just say I'm bringing food for Izak Grottle." Anyone who knew the Beastmaster would believe him.
The thought made him chuckle. He was still laughing when his short sight didn't allow him to see the stone that he had before his feet. As she stumbled against the cage he slipped out of her grasp and the battered lock snapped open. The killer rats jumped out and ran off in the direction of the ratfolk warehouses.
Skitch groaned, for he knew what the consequences would be. Before long, it wouldn't just be Izak Grottle who was hungry.