Page 60 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

Wistala felt a pull at her saa as she saw a trio of rats leap down from the ledge above—she lashed out instinctively with her saa and swished with her tail.

Two rats landed on her back, one on her head. It went for the eyes, and she panicked, whipping her head and rolling. Yari-Tab squealed as her body weight rolled over the cat.

She felt a bite in the naked flesh under her sii-pit. She whipped her head down, pulled the rat up by her teeth as she might a tick, crushed it, and flung it back into the channel water. Something bit at her hindquarters again, and she kicked—

Then they were gone as quickly as they’d come. She smelled blood and rats thick all around.

Yari-Tab had one pinned, both claws digging into its shoulders as it kicked out. The feline opened her teeth—

“Wait!” Wistala said.

“Whyever? The foul beasts bit my—”

“I want him to show us to the coin.”

The rat squeaked in fright.

“Ask it,” Wistala urged. “Ask it where the shiny metal is.”

Yari-Tab squeaked out something, and the rat chattered back.

“He says he knows just what you mean and that there’s lots. Don’t believe a word, though. Rats will say anything once you’ve got your claws in them.”

“I’ll take the chance. Tell him to show us.”

“He’ll bolt down the first hole or dive—”

Wistala bent down and took the rat in her mouth. She held her jaws just open enough for the rat to see the tunnel through her rows of teeth.

Yari-Tab purred. “That’ll keep him in line.” She squeaked up at the rat.

“He begs you not to swallow.”

Wistala tried to form words but couldn’t. She tilted her head and rapped a claw on the stepstones.

“Oh. Of course.” She squeaked out again. “He says straight ahead for a while.”

To any rats, or perhaps cave toads or bats lurking in the tunnels, they must have made a strange procession. Wistala walking with her head aloft, jaw set in its grimace, a rat nose protruding from between prominent fore-fangs. An orange-striped cat walking beneath, hopping over mud and rat droppings, occasionally rising up on its hind legs to squeak into the hatchling’s mouth, in and out of mottled moss-light.

Eventually they climbed up a pile of fallen brickwork and into a chamber roofed by the remaining masonry and tree roots. The tree roots ran down the sides of columns, rose out of statues of human figures like bizarre hair braids, explored crumbles and cracks and dark ends of holes.

Rats filled the chamber, not in a smooth sea but rather in little puddles of brown fur, constantly shifting according to whim. Wistala had found some piles of bat droppings in the home cave that smelled worse—but not by much. Light came down from above in a pair of shafts, large and small, through some kind of half-clogged well in the roof.

The rats retreated from their entrance, disappearing into innumerable holes and cracks in a flurry of naked tails. The stouter-hearted bared fangs at the cat from beneath piles of fallen brick.

Wistala spat out the rat. It scampered away, shaking saliva from its hind feet.

“Better hop up on my head,” Wistala suggested as a braver group of rats gathered on a pile of rags and bones at the center of the room.

It wasn’t easy to hold the weight of the cat at the end of her neck, especially with the taste of rat in her mouth—the hairy beast had fouled her tongue in its terror—but she did her best to raise Yari-Tab up.

“Tell them we come to make a bargain, if there’s any such word the rodents use.”

Yari-Tab yeeked out something.

That set up a storm of chittering like crickets.

More questions and answers passed back and forth. Wistala hoped Yari-Tab wasn’t committing her to driving the men away in exchange for the coin or anything mad like that.

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