The Corpse-Rat King

They shuffled on. Within a minute they turned the corner of the building. Three feet ahead of them, the ledge terminated against an abutment. It stuck far enough out that none of the three could have grasped its corner with outstretched arms. Scorbus leaned against it, arms folded, and regarded them as they approached.

“Oh, hell,” Marius said

“Oh, hell indeed.”

“What do we do now?” Gerd turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes. Marius could see his fingers digging into the stone walls. Specks of dust coloured his fingertips. “There’s not even any way to get back in.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Scorbus replied. “You see, I’ve been thinking while I waited.”

“Yes?” Marius braced his rear foot, ready to make whatever run, or shuffle, for it he could.

“See down there?” Scorbus pointed past the edge of the abutment. A dozen feet away, and as many down, a rampart ran along the tops of the adjoining palace buildings, overlooking the cliff face. A clear line of sight ran from their current vantage point to the far edge of the palace building, a hundred yards distant, broken only by four doors built into the inner surface. Marius and Gerd stared at it.

“No,” Marius said.

“I don’t think we have much choice.”

“We’ll never make it.”

“We certainly shall.”

Marius stared at the gap between the two spots. Only the city floor was visible. Nothing would break his fall.

“We’ll be smooshed.”

“Bend your legs.” Scorbus grabbed Marius’ wrist, and before he had time to protest, braced his back against the abutment wall and heaved. Marius was launched, flailing and screaming, into thin air. “Roll when you land!”

Marius didn’t so much roll as flollop. The ground slapped him like an angry parent, smashing the air from his chest and delivering a dizzying blow to the back of his head as the inner wall of the battlement refused to get out of the way of his loose-limbed, clattering approach. He lay face up, scrunched against the base of the wall. Gerd landed a foot away, bent-legged, rolling forward and springing to his feet like he’d been practising. As Marius attempted to remember which limbs belongs at the top of his body and which at the bottom, Scorbus hunkered down against the wall, bounced experimentally, and launched himself across the gap. He landed perfectly, rolled next to Marius, and finished on one knee, hand held out to help Marius to his feet.

“Nobody likes perfect people,’ Marius muttered. He creaked upwards and swayed as the dizziness hit him again. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Let’s hurry,” Scorbus led them down the rampart, towards the far end of the palace. “Logic dictates that the troops will come this way.”

“How do you know that?”

Scorbus jerked a phalange back at their perch. “They’ll know that was a dead end. They’ll send archers up here to pick us off.”

“Oh.” Marius doubled his step. “Nice.”

“It’s logical.”

They trotted on. Marius took a moment to glance over the edge. The cliff began to fall away at this point of the Radican, becoming a high slope rather than the sheer face that it was further up. Even so, they were still dizzyingly high. A dozen feet ahead of him, a sluice opened up at the bottom of a building. A wave of effluent spewed out to land in a midden that covered the face of the hill, emptying into a small gully at the bottom of the cliff wall. As Marius watched, small figures emerged from the brush at the edges of the gully to pick amongst the new outpouring of castle waste. He frowned. He knew that place. It had a name, and a story behind it. It was important, too, a significant part of the castle’s history. He shook his head. He couldn’t quite remember, couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the salient facts…

Then Gerd called out to him, and his reverie was broken. He’d fallen behind the other two, and Gerd was gesturing at him to catch up.

An arrow skittered across the ground next to him, and Marius realised that Gerd wasn’t waving at him. He glanced over his shoulder. Troops were pouring from the uppermost exit.

“Run!”

Marius followed instructions. The three fugitives bolted towards the lower end of the rampart. They were twenty yards away when the bottom-most door opened, and soldiers emerged, blocking their escape.

“Back, back.” They turned again, saw the first group closing in.

“What do we do?”

Marius turned between the closing troops, mind working furiously. Then he remembered the name of the midden, and what it meant to the castle.

“Quick!” He ran two dozen steps back towards the first group of pursuers, head craned over the side of the battlement. “Here! Quick!”

Scorbus and Gerd joined him. “What are you doing?”

“Here. Right here.”

“What are you on about?”

Marius glanced at the advancing soldiers, then back over the edge of the building.

“This is the spot.”

“Spot? What spot?”

Marius pointed downwards. They stood above the great sluice, and its vomitous trail of garbage.

“The spot to jump.”

“What?”

“Jump.”

“Are you mad?” Gerd waved at the piles of rotting refuse forty feet below.

“What, are you afraid you’ll be killed?”

“No, I’m afraid I’ll spend all eternity with legs the consistency of warm lard.”

Marius pointed back along the rampart. The King’s Men were racing out of the towers. “You’ll spend all of eternity in little bits and probably cooked to perfection to boot if they get hold of us.” He gave Gerd a sharp shove in the chest. Gerd tottered backwards, waving his arms in circles to remain upright. His heels slipped over the edge. “Now jump.”

He pushed again. Gerd had time to shout “You basta…” before he and his insult disappeared. Marius spared him one glance, then looked briefly at the skeleton next to him.

“Ready for this?”

Scorbus tilted his head towards him in a way that, had he borne any flesh at all, would have treated Marius to a blood-soaked manic smile. He nodded, and turned his gaze away.

“Oh, wait a minute.” He reached out, and adjusted the band of gold around Scorbus’ brow so that it sat straight. “You’re going to want to make the right impression when we land, Your Majesty.”

He bowed, and Scorbus returned the gesture, before briefly laying a hand on Marius’ shoulder.

“Excelsior!” he cried, turned and leaped, leaving Marius alone to face the approaching guards. They were almost upon him. The air was thick with their roar. He could smell them, sense their sweat and fear and exhilaration. They would descend upon him like hungry dogs, tear him apart and feast upon his tattered flesh. He could see the blood in their eyes. He smiled.

This moment needed something special, a bon mot his pursuers would remember their whole lives, would talk about in bars and at family events forevermore. This was the moment when he entered the folklore of Scorby. He stepped forward, and raised both hands as if pushing against a wall.

“Stop!”

To his immense surprise, they did. He saw them, frozen in time: seventy-two soldiers surrounding one small, frail, dead human. Swords drawn, bloodlust in their veins, armour gleaming in the scorching sun.

“You idiots,” he said, and jumped.

TWENTY-SEVEN