Frey jumped into the back of the plague cart, where corpses slid under his feet and the stench was awful. He would have preferred to put his feet up somewhere else, but that was the only way he had of attracting the attention of the crowd.
"Citizens of Bergheim!" he bellowed in a speaker's voice that he had never used and didn't even know he had "Listen to me!"
A few heads turned to him, but most of the others were too busy slashing at ratfolk corpses or shouting gleefully at their neighbors.
"Citizens of Bergheim! Rat killers!" he yelled, and a few more people turned to look at him and began tugging at their neighbors' sleeves pointing at her. Slowly but inexorably, Frey felt the crowd's attention focus on him. Little by little, the people fell silent. Those people had seen him and Elysia slay the rat-orcs, and they had also seen them lead the charge into battle. They lacked leaders and needed direction, and Frey believed that he could provide them with both.
"Citizens of Bergheim! The ratfolks have attacked your great city, they have burned your houses, they have murdered your loved ones, they have brought madness and plague to your streets.
At that moment, Frey saw that they were with him. All eyes were staring at him, and he could sense the anger, hate, and fear in the crowd; he understood that he had just provided them with a target. He experienced a sudden thrill at the power he held at that moment. He licked his lips and continued speaking, for he knew he must incline them toward the course of action he desired, or he would lose them.
"We have slain many ratfolk, and you have seen their monsters fall. You have seen their vile weapons fall. Victory is within our reach. Are you willing to kill more ratfolks?"
"Yes!" a few of the crowd yelled, but many still seemed undecided. Most of them were not warriors, but ordinary people who suddenly found themselves trapped in this situation that they did not quite understand.
"Are you willing to expel the ratfolks from your city? Because if you don't, they'll come back and take you away as slaves!"
Frey had no idea if that was true or not, but they had done it in the past and the statement seemed good, to say the least frightening.
"Yes!" shouted more voices.
"Are you willing to mercilessly kill those monsters? Because if you don't, you can be sure that they will kill you."
"Yes!" roared the entire crowd, seized with a frenzy of anger and fear.
"In that case, follow me! To the palace, where at this very moment the head of this repulsive race is threatening the lives of your rightful rulers!"
Frey jumped off the cart and landed on the cobbled street. Hands reached out from the crowd to pat him on the back, and the voices of others shouted words of support. He saw Heinz and the surviving mercenaries give him a thumbs up, and when he glanced at Elysia he saw that even the catgirl seemed pleased.
"Come on," said the dark hero, and they all broke into a run. Those words began the legend of the powerful dark hero, known in Bergland under the title of Rats Slayer.
As one man, the crowd followed them through the streets of the burning city.
♦ ♦ ♦
Chang pulled his black hood over his face and advanced, sword in hand. He kept to the shadows and walked silently on the balls of his feet, ready to strike anywhere at the slightest provocation.
From far away the sounds of fighting still reached him, and before him he could hear the strange rasping noise that humans called music. He stepped onto a balcony and blinked, momentarily dazzled.
He stopped and looked into a gigantic room below, its high vaulted ceiling decorated with huge paintings of human gods who looked benevolently down into the hall.
Huge chandeliers, each holding hundreds of lit candles, provided dazzling illumination. In the hall, he was playing an orchestra, and many females dressed in beautiful costumes and some males also luxuriously dressed were standing in the room, drinking and eating, happily.
The smell of food made Chang's nose twitch, and his attention was drawn to the tables creaking under the weight of roast pigs and poultry. There were trays of cheeses and bread, and all kinds of canapés.
"So the city is starving!" thought the master ninja, but then he realized that maybe ordinary people did die, even though the rulers had reserved those delicacies for themselves. "In this, then, humans are not much different from ratfolk," he decided, and then was startled by the sound of footsteps echoing behind him on the balcony where he stood.
Two humans, a male and a female, had come out onto the balcony. His clothes were messed up, and that seemed strange even to humans. The man was dressed like a shepherd with a kind of tunic, he was wearing a Pan flute and a golden mask that had two small horns like a ram covered his face. The woman also wore a mask, but she was dressed in some kind of ballroom costume, with tight-fitting diamond-patterned breeches, a tricorne hat, and a mask like a domino.
They stared at him with fixed eyes and, to his surprise, made that strange wheezing sound humans called laughter. They reeked of alcohol.
Chang was so surprised that he parried the killing blow halfway. He had intended to kill them both and retreat into the shadowy corridors.
"Wow, what a fantastic costume!" said the male.
Chang had no idea what they were saying, could not understand a word of that strange booming language, but he was beginning to understand that these people were wearing some kind of disguise, like high-ranking ratfolks when performing a religious rite, and they seemed to have done so. confused with one of them.
Was it possible that these people were so drunk and stupid that he didn't realize there was a Ratfolk invasion out there? To his astonishment, Chang realized that it had to be this way.
Worse yet, he realized that all the eyes of those in the room below were fixed on them. He considered throwing these two off the balcony and hiding in the shadows, but that meant returning to the corridors filled with fighting ratfolk warriors, where the angry Dhalthar also stood. He came up with another plan. Nodding politely to the pair, he sheathed his sword and descended the stairs to blend in with the crowd of masked and costumed humans.
He helped himself to a canapé from a tray carried by a waiter who passed him, picked up a glass of wine, and paced around the room, nodding left and right in greeting. Perhaps if he could find the breeding female Emilia, he could still redeem himself in the eyes of the Black Magician Dhalthar. Although of course, he would enjoy the good and abundant food and drink for a while longer first.
♦ ♦ ♦
Felbroth looked up in utter astonishment at the horde of humans he was charging. Where had they all come from? How had they gathered such a large force so suddenly? Had the Black Magician Dhalthar underestimated the number? Certainly it was possible, and if so, it was yet another example of the Black Magician's incompetence. Not that it mattered then, if he couldn't get out of the way of those humans.
Ever since the invasion forces had emerged from the sewers, he had spent the night wandering, lost among the alleys and twisting streets of that maze, killing every human he had encountered and trying to locate Izak Grottle and the others. He cursed the initial blind rush that had separated them all. He had been left before the human hordes without any kind of personal guard.
Looking up, however, he realized that he knew the leaders of the charge, and what was worse, the leaders recognized him! They were the armored warrior and the deadly female who had interrupted their ritual and destroyed the Cauldron of a Thousand Plagues. For a moment, a tremendous and legitimate anger invaded Caldovil. Almost without thinking, he called upon his powers and a mysterious green light came to life around his head and paws. He muttered the prayer that he would rally the destructive spirits of disease to strike at his enemies.
The humans didn't even slow down his rush, and Feldville realized they couldn't because those behind were pushing those in front. If the bosses slowed down, they would be trampled. He continued to chant the incantation, desperate to summon the powers that would protect him, knowing it was probably too late. He already had the humans on him.
The last thing Caldovil saw was a great sword descending towards his head.