“Yeah, we’re our own bosses,” said Rat Catcher 2.

  And then the story went wrong.

  “And you, miss,” said Rat Catcher 1, turning to Malicia, “are too mouthy by half.”

  He swung his fist, lifting her off her feet and slamming her against the rat cages. The rats went mad, and the cages boiled with frantic activity as she slumped to the ground.

  The rat catcher turned to Keith.

  “You going to try anything, kid?” he said. “You going to try anything? She was a girl, so I was nice and kind, but you I’ll put in one of the cages—”

  “Yeah, and they ain’t been fed today!” said a delighted Rat Catcher 2.

  Go on, kid! Maurice thought. Do something! But Keith just stood there, staring at the man.

  Rat Catcher 1 looked him up and down, scornfully.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, boy? A pipe? Give it here!”

  The pipe was grabbed from Keith’s belt, and he was pushed onto the floor.

  “A pennywhistle? Think you’re the rat piper, do you?” Rat Catcher 1 snapped the pipe in two and tossed the bits aside. “Y’know, they say that over in Porkrhinz the rat piper led all the kids out of the town. Now there was a man with the right idea!”

  Keith looked up. His eyes narrowed. He got to his feet.

  Here it comes, thought Maurice. He’s going to leap forward with superhuman strength because he’s so angry and they’re going to wish they’d never been born. . . .

  Keith leaped forward with ordinary human strength, landed one punch on Rat Catcher 1, and was smacked to the floor again by a big, brutal, sledgehammer blow.

  All right, all right, he got knocked down, thought Maurice, as Keith struggled for breath, but he’s going to get up again.

  There was a shrill scream, and Maurice thought: Aha!

  But the scream hadn’t come from the wheezing Keith. A gray figure had launched itself from the top of the rat cages right at the rat catcher’s face. It landed teeth first, and blood spurted on the rat catcher’s nose.

  Aha! thought Maurice again. It’s Hamnpork to the rescue! What? Mrillp! I’m thinking like the girl! I keep thinking it’s a story!

  The rat catcher grabbed at the rat and held him out at arm’s length by his tail. Hamnpork twisted and turned, squealing with rage.

  His captor dabbed at his nose with his spare hand and stared at Hamnpork as he struggled.

  “He’s a bit of a fighter,” said Rat Catcher 2. “How’d he get out?”

  “Not one of ours,” said Rat Catcher 1. “He’s a red.”

  “Red? What’s red about him?”

  “A red rat’s a kind of gray rat, as you would very well know if you were an hexperienced Guild member like me,” said the rat catcher. “They ain’t local. You get ’em down on the plains. Funny to find one up here. Very funny. Greasy old devil, too. But game as anything.”

  “Your nose is all runny.”

  “Yeah. I know. I’ve had more rat bites than you’ve had hot dinners. Don’t feel ’em anymore,” said Rat Catcher 1, in a voice that suggested that the spinning, screeching Hamnpork was a lot more interesting than his colleague.

  “I only have cold sausage for dinner.”

  “There you are then. What a little fighter you are, to be sure. Real little devil, aren’t you . . . plucky as anything.”

  “Kind of you to say so.”

  “I was talking to the rat, mister.” The rat catcher prodded Keith with his boot. “Go and tie up these two somewhere, okay? We’ll put them in one of the other cellars for now. One with a proper door. And a proper lock. And no handy little trapdoors. And you give me the key.”

  “She’s the mayor’s daughter,” said Rat Catcher 2. “Mayors can get really upset about daughters.”

  “Then he’ll do what he’s told, right?”

  “You gonna give that rat a good squeezing?”

  “What, a fighter like this one? Are you joking? It’s thinking like that that’ll keep you a rat catcher’s assistant your whole life. I’ve got a much better idea. How many’s in the special cage?”

  Maurice watched Rat Catcher 2 go and examine one of the other cages on the far wall.

  “Only two rats left. They’ve eaten the other four,” he reported. “Just skin left. Very neat.”

  “Ah, so they’ll be full o’ vim and vinegar. Well, we’ll see what they do to him, shall we?”

  Maurice heard a little wire door open and shut.

  Hamnpork was seeing red. It filled his vision. He’d been angry for months, down inside, angry at humans, angry at the poisons and the traps, angry at the way younger rats weren’t showing respect, angry that the world was changing so fast, angry that he was growing old. . . . And now the smells of terror and hunger and violence met the anger coming the other way and they mingled and flowed through Hamnpork in a great red river of rage. He was a cornered rat. But he was a cornered rat who could think. He’d always been a vicious fighter, long before there was all this thinking, and he was still very strong. A couple of dumb, swanking young keekees with no tactics and no experience of down-and-dirty cellar fighting and no fancy footwork and no thoughts were simply not a contest. A tumble, a twist, and two bites were all it took. . . .

  The caged rats across the room leaped back from the netting. Even they could feel the fury.

  “Now there’s a clever boy,” said Rat Catcher 1 admiringly when it was all over. “I’ve got a use for you, my lad.”

  “Not the pit?” said Rat Catcher 2.

  “Yes, the pit.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, ’cos Fancy Arthur is putting in his Jacko on a bet to kill a hundred rats in less than a quarter of an hour.”

  “I bet he can, too. Jacko’s a good terrier. He did ninety a few months ago, and Fancy Arthur’s been training him up. Should be a good show.”

  “You’d bet on Jacko doing it, would you?” said Rat Catcher 1.

  “Sure. Everyone will be.”

  “Even with our little friend here among the rats?” said Rat Catcher 1. “Full of lovely spite and bite and boilin’ bile?”

  “Well, er . . .”

  “Yeah, right.” Rat Catcher 1 grinned.

  “I don’t like leaving those kids here, though.”

  “It’s ‘them kids,’ not ‘those kids.’ Get it right. How many times have I told you? Rule Twenty-seven of the Guild: Sound stupid. People get suspicious of rat catchers who talk too good.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Talk thick, be clever. That’s the way to do it,” said Rat Catcher 1.

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “You tend to do it the other way around.”

  “Sorry. Them kids. It’s cruel, tying people up. And they’re only kids, after all.”

  “So?”

  “So it’d be a lot easier to take ’em down the tunnel to the river and hit ’em on the head and throw ’em in. They’ll be miles downriver before anyone fishes ’em out, and they prob’ly won’t even be recognizable by the time the fish have finished with ’em.”

  Maurice heard a pause in the conversation. Then Rat Catcher 1 said: “I didn’t know you were such a kindhearted soul, Bill.”

  “Right, and, sorry, an’ I’ve got an idea about gettin’ rid of the rat piper when he comes, too—”

  The next voice came from everywhere. It sounded like a rushing wind and, in the heart of the wind, the groan of something in agony. It filled the air.

  NO! We can use the piper!

  “No, we can use the piper,” said Rat Catcher 1.

  “That’s right,” said Rat Catcher 2. “I was just thinking the same thing. Er . . . how can we use the piper?”

  Once again, Maurice heard a sound like wind blowing through a cave, but it seemed to be in his head rather than in the air.

  Isn’t it OBVIOUS?

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Rat Catcher 1.

  “Yeah, obvious,” muttered Rat Catcher 2. “Obviously it’s obvious. Er . . .”

  Maurice watched the rat catcher open several of the cages, grab rats, and drop them into a sack. He saw Hamnpork tipped into one, too.

  And then the rat catchers had gone, dragging the other humans with them, and Maurice wondered: Where, in this maze of cellars, is a Maurice-sized hole?

  Cats can’t see in the dark. What they can do is see by very little light.

  A tiny scrap of moonlight was filtering into the space behind him. It was coming through a tiny hole in the ceiling, barely big enough for a mouse and certainly not big enough for a Maurice even if he could reach it.

  It illuminated another cellar. By the looks of it the rat catchers used this one too; there were a few barrels stacked in one corner, and piles of broken rat cages.

  Maurice prowled around it, looking for another way out. There were doors, but they had handles, and even his mighty brain couldn’t figure out the mystery of doorknobs.

  There was another drain grating in a wall. He squeezed through it.

  Another cellar. And more boxes and sacks. At least it was dry, though.

  A voice behind him said, What kind of thing are you?

  He spun around. All he could make out were boxes and sacks. The air still stank of rats, and there was a continuous rustling and the occasional faint squeak, but the place was a little piece of heaven compared to the hell of the cage room.

  The voice had come from behind him, hadn’t it? He must have heard it, mustn’t he? Because it seemed to him that he just had something like the memory of hearing a voice, something that had arrived in his head without bothering to go through his ragged ears. It had been the same with the rat catchers. They’d talked as if they’d heard a voice and thought it was their own thoughts. The voice hadn’t really been there, had it?

  I can’t see you, said the memory. I don’t know what you are.

  It was not a good voice for a memory to have. It was all hisses, and it slid into the mind like a knife.

  Come closer.

  Maurice’s paws twitched. The muscles in his legs started to push him forward. He extended his claws and got control of himself.

  Someone was hiding amongst the boxes, he thought. And it would probably not be a good idea to say anything. People could get funny about talking cats. You couldn’t rely on everyone being as mad as the storytelling girl.

  Come CLOSER.

  The voice seemed to pull at him. He’d have to say something.

  “I’m happy where I am, thank you,” said Maurice.

  Then will you share our PAIN?

  The last word hurt. But it did not, and this was surprising, hurt a lot. The voice had sounded sharp and loud and dramatic, as if the owner was keen to see Maurice rolling in agony. Instead, it gave him a very brief headache.

  When the voice arrived again, it sounded very suspicious.

  What kind of creature are you? Your mind is WRONG.

  “I prefer amazing,” said Maurice. “Anyway, who are you, asking me questions in the dark?”

  All he could smell was rat.

  He heard a faint sound off to his left and just made out the shape of a very large rat, creeping toward him.

  Another sound made him turn. Another rat was coming from the other direction. He could only just see it in the gloom.

  A rustle ahead of him suggested that there was a rat right in front, slipping quietly through the dark.

  Here come my eyes . . . WHAT? CAT! CAT! KILL!

  CHAPTER 8

  Mr. Bunnsy realized that he was a fat rabbit in the Dark Wood and wished he wasn’t a rabbit or, at least, not a fat one. But Ratty Rupert was on the way. Little did he know what was waiting for him.

  —From Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure

  When the three rats leaped, they were already too late. There was just a Maurice-shaped hole in the air. Maurice was across the room and scrambling up some boxes.

  There was squeaking below him. He jumped onto another box and saw a place in the wall where some of the rotten bricks had fallen out. He aimed for it, scrabbled on thin air as bricks moved under him, and pushed himself into the unknown.

  It was another cellar. And it was full of water. In fact, what it was full of was not exactly water. It was what water eventually becomes when rat cages drain into it, and gutters up above drain into it, and it has had a chance to sit and bubble gently to itself for a year or so. To call it “mud” would be an insult to perfectly respectable swamps all over the world.

  Maurice landed in it. It went gloop.

  He cat-paddled furiously through the thick stuff, trying not to breathe, and dragged himself out on what felt like a pile of rubble on the other side of the room. A fallen rafter, slimy with mold, led up to more tangled, fire-blackened wood in the ceiling.

  He could still hear the dreadful voice in his head, but it was muffled. It was trying to give him orders. Trying to give a cat orders? It was easier to nail jelly to a wall. What did it think he was, a dog?

  Stinking mud oozed off him. Even his ears were full of mud. He went to lick himself clean, and then stopped. It was a perfectly normal cat reaction, licking yourself clean. But licking this off would probably kill him—

  There was a movement in the dark. He could just make out some big rat shapes pouring through the hole. There were a couple of splashes. Some of the shapes were creeping along the walls.

  Ah, said the voice. You see them? Watch them come for you, CAT!

  Maurice stopped himself from running. This was no time to listen to his inner cat. His inner cat had got him out of the room, but his inner cat was stupid. It wanted him to attack things small enough and run away from everything else. But no cat could tackle a bunch of rats this size.

  He froze and tried to keep an eye on the advancing rats. They were heading directly for him.

  Hold on . . . hold on . . .

  The voice had said: You can see them. . . .

  How did it know?

  Maurice tried to think loudly: Can . . . You . . . Read . . . My . . . Mind?

  Nothing happened.

  Maurice had a burst of inspiration. He shut his eyes.

  Open them! came the immediate command, and his eyelids trembled.

  Shan’t, thought Maurice. You can’t hear my thoughts! he thought. You only use my eyes and ears! You’re just guessing what I’m thinking.

  There was no reply. Maurice didn’t wait. He leaped. The sloping beam was where he remembered it. He clawed his way up and hung on. At least all they could do was follow him up. With any luck he could use his claws. . . .

  The rats got closer. Now they were sniffing for him down below, and he imagined quivering noses in the darkness.

  One started to climb the beam, still sniffing. It must have been within inches of Maurice’s tail when it turned around and went back down again.

  He heard them reach the top of the rubble. There was more bewildered sniffing and then, in the dark, the sound of the rats paddling through the mud.

  Maurice wrinkled his mud-caked forehead in amazement. Rats who couldn’t smell a cat? And then he realized. He didn’t smell of cat, he stank of mud, he felt like mud, in a room full of stinking mud.

  He sat, still as stone, until through mud-caked ears he heard claws head back to the hole in the wall.

  Then, without opening his eyes, and with his heart beating hard, he crept carefully back down to the rubble and found that it had piled up against a rotten wooden door. What must have been a piece of plank, soggy as a sponge, fell out as he touched it.

  A feeling of openness suggested that there was another cellar beyond. It stank of rot and burned wood.

  Would the . . . voice know where he was if he opened his eyes now? Didn’t one cellar look like another?

  Perhaps this room was full of rats, too.

  His eyes sprang open. There were no rats, but there was another rusted drain cover that opened into a tunnel just big enough for him to walk through. He could see a faint light.

  So this is the rat world, he thought, as he tried to scrape the mud off himself. Dark and muddy and stinky and full of weird voices. I’m a cat. Sunlight and fresh air, that’s my style. All I need now is a hole into the outside world and they won’t see me for dust, or at least for bits of dried mud.

  A voice in his head, which wasn’t the mysterious voice but a voice just like his own, said: But what about the stupid-looking kid and the rest of them? You ought to help them!

  And Maurice thought: Where did you come from? I’ll tell you what, you help them and I’ll go somewhere warm, how about that?

  The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. It still wasn’t anything like daylight, or even moonlight, but anything was better than this gloom.

  At least, nearly anything.

  He pushed his head out of the pipe into a much larger one, made of bricks that were slimy with strange underground nastiness, and into the circle of candlelight.

  “It’s . . . Maurice?” said Peaches, staring at the mud dripping off his matted fur.

  “Smells better than he usually does, then,” said Darktan, grinning in what Maurice considered an unfriendly way.

  “Oh, ha ha,” said Maurice, weakly. He wasn’t in the mood for repartee.

  “Ah, I knew you wouldn’t let us down, old friend,” said Dangerous Beans. “I have always said that we can depend on Maurice, at least.” He sighed deeply.

  “Yes,” said Darktan, giving Maurice a much more knowing look. “Depend on him to do what, though?”

  “Oh,” said Maurice. “Er. Good. I’ve found you all, then.”

  “Yes,” said Darktan, in what Maurice thought was a nasty tone of voice. “Amazing, isn’t it. I expect you’ve been looking for a long time, too. I saw you rush off to look for us.”

  “Can you help us?” said Dangerous Beans. “We need a plan.”

  “Ah, right,” said Maurice. “I suggest we go upward at every opportun—”

  “To rescue Hamnpork,” said Darktan. “We don’t leave our people behind.”

  “We don’t?” said Maurice.

  “We don’t,” said Darktan.

  “And then there’s the kid,” said Peaches. “Sardines says he’s tied up with the female kid in one of the cellars.”

  “Oh, well, you know, humans,” said Maurice, wrinkling his face. “Humans and humans, you know, it’s a human kind of thing. I don’t think we should meddle, could be misunderstood. I know about humans, they’ll sort it out—”