The Corpse-Rat King

Some things never fail, Marius thought. The old teach the young all the mistakes they’ve spent years perfecting, the strong never stop to look closely at the weak, and the prepared always vanquish the stupid.

“Got?” he replied, cheerily. “Oh, lads, I haven’t got a blessed thing.”

“Oh, dear,” the older guard said. “Oh, dear, oh dear. You hear that Jeltho? Not a thing, he says.”

“Yeah, Ej, not a thing.” The younger fellow laughed, a thick, hopeful sound.

“I find that hard to believe, don’t you, Jeltho?”

“Yeah, Ej, yeah.”

Big Ej stepped forward, looming over Marius. “I wonder if you’re not trying to hold out on us, old man. I wonder if I’d not be better off searching you for contraband, and see just what you’re hiding.”

“Is Sergeant Olling still patrol master of these gates?” Marius asked softly. Ej stopped, and glanced at his young offsider. “Only, I remember him being patrol master when I was in the guard.”

Ej leaned back, and narrowed his gaze. “What about it?”

Marius waved his hand airily. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. It’s just, I can’t believe old Olling would be in charge and tolerate any, well, tithing, shall we say?”

The two soldiers shared another glance, and Marius pressed harder into the silence. “Does he know about the Maria Hole yet?”

“What?”

“Oh, you know, the Maria Hole. Down the wall there, twenty feet or so? Base of the wall, hole like the shape of old Maria Fellaini’s front entrance? I don’t suppose you remember old Maria. Too young, you are. But oh, when she danced the peekaboo, a strong man would have to see the doctor, get a salve to help with the bruises, you know what I mean, hey?” Marius chuckled. “But I can’t believe old Olling’s in charge, and one of you isn’t down there having a kip, out of sight, in the warm. Must be someone else, now.”

The silence between the two men deepened. Marius waited, head tilted, watching their uncertainty with a smile. Slowly, without talking, the guards reached the right decision, as he knew they would.

“You served?” Ej asked.

“Oh, yes. Was here for the Whores Uprising. That was a weekend, let me tell you.”

Ej nodded. “What’s your name, brother?”

It was all Marius could do not to cackle. “Ebbel. Ebbel Samming. Sorry I don’t have anything to offer a former brother in arms. Should have known better. You have a good night, lads.” He turned his back to the gate, began to take a shuffling step away.

“Wait on, now.”

“Sorry?”

There was a hurried exchange of whispers. When Marius turned back, young Jeltho was absent, but the sound of rapidly moving footsteps could be heard, heading off down the outside of the wall.

“No charge for a brother in arms,’” Ej said. “You go on in. You’ve earned the right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course,” Ej said. “Only… if you do catch up with the patrol master….”

“When did he last stand at a gate, hey?” Marius shuffled forward, leaned into Ej so that they stood, shoulder pressed to shoulder. He patted the bigger man on the arm. “I’m not one to rat out a brother guardsman, my friend. You have a good night.”

“You too, Ebbel.” They parted and Marius limped through the gateway. When he was ten feet or so past the gate, Ej called out.

“Oh, Ebbel.”

Marius froze. He turned slowly, every muscle in his body preparing for flight. “Yes?”

“Try the Mandrake Root. Tell Dettsie I sent you. They’ll have a room for you.”

Marius waved the knobkerrie in salutation. “Thank you, friend. Thank you.”

He shuffled away as fast as his charade would allow. As soon as he rounded the first corner he dispensed with the knobkerrie and the limp, and began to stride down through a maze of interconnecting alleyways away from the gate. He had spent a time in the Borgho City guard, or at least, as their prisoner. And there was a hole down the wall from the southern gate, but it neither resembled nor smelled like anyone’s front entrance. It was, however, the reason he wasn’t still under the guard’s stewardship. It had taken him three months to become trustee of the gaolers’ toilets, and another week to tunnel through the accumulated shit of the city’s sump holes. There wasn’t a bath strong enough to help those two guards tonight.

And, he thought, patting his breeches pocket, Gods help ‘brother’ Ej if he mentioned to anyone that he’d just been speaking to his old companion Ebbel Samming. At least, God help him if he mentioned it to anyone who knew how to curse in Feltish. There are worse insults, but it takes one man to mouth them and another to mime the actions.

An open doorway beckoned, and Marius ducked into it, taking a moment to transfer Ej’s coin purse from his breeches to a hidden pocket sewn into the lining of his jerkin. At least three Riner in ‘tolls’, judging by the weight. Enough to start the evening.

Out in the street again, Marius took a moment to get his bearings, before choosing a side lane and setting off at a quick clip. The Mandrake’s Root was a soldier’s haunt, a sturdy old building in the backstreets of the merchant’s quarter: close enough to the food stalls and the prostitutes to be convenient but far enough from the foot traffic for a bit of peace and quiet, so that no casual passerby would interrupt the soldiers in their drinking, and no local would make the detour because they knew better. It was the perfect place for a former soldier to rest, have a tankard or two, and catch up on the gossip and rumours that made up the majority of a serviceman’s conversational skill set. From where he was, Marius estimated it to be no more than a dozen streets to the east. He set his back towards it and headed towards the docks.

Despite the hour, the streets were packed. Like all harbor cities, Borgho never really closed down. Come the night, it merely swapped one set of merchants for another, one form of trade for the next, one class of clientele for the lower. There may be less velvet in the clothing, and the manners may be easier to understand, but the transactions were no less urgent than those conducted in daylight, and the streets no less vibrant with the movements of a big city at work. The streets themselves changed character. Where Marius had entered, they were reasonably broad – enough room to turn a cart, at least – and the buildings that flanked them were white-painted and open-fronted, a hearty “hello” to the travellers who entered. But turn left and start moving down the hill towards the docks and the true nature of the city exerted itself. The streets became narrower, more winding; the buildings leaned in more, cutting the sunlight off before it could illuminate the dirt and graffiti that made up the city’s natural colouring. Signs were smaller, the writing upon them more crabbed, the spelling simpler and more often incorrect. Even the language changed. Up high, the Scorban was clear cut and elegant, and words of as many as four syllables could be heard through poured-glass windows by anyone who crouched outside them at night. Down here, though, all languages intertwined in a dance of commerce and aggression, a patois that welcomed all comers and gave each one the opportunity to be dunned in the pidgin of their choice. The world was a darker, dirtier, more openly dishonest place. Marius felt perfectly at home.

He moved along the cobbles with the grace of one who had been born to the streets. In truth, he had spent so long plying his trade among the night crawlers of cities from the Bone Coast to the Western Spires that it was part of his nature now. It was the daylight hours where he needed to remind himself of the mores and rituals. Only during the day could he not afford the luxury of relaxing as he walked, and merely taking in the sights, the smells and the sounds of the city. Here, surrounded by the filth of window-emptied chamber pots, with darkened faces peering out of equally dark alleyways, and with the press of unwashed bodies nudging him and hustling him off his natural stride, he was as relaxed as he had been since before the Jezel Valley had called to him, and Marius Helles had become Marius the Dead. At the thought of his current predicament he shook his head, and lengthened his stride. He had things to do. There would be time for sightseeing later.

It was no more than fifteen minutes’ walk, to someone who knew the back streets and cut-throughs as intimately as Marius, between the Southern Gate and the Hauled Keel, nestled between a dozen identical taverns at the drinking end of the Borgho docks. Sailors resemble guardsmen in any number of ways, except that they don’t give a damn who else drinks in their pubs, and their gossip has less to do with who’s rumpling whose bed sheets and more to do with who has the run of the waves, and who went out and never came