Ratastrophe Catastrophe by David Lee Stone Read Free Book Online

bottomless.”
    Tambor raised his eyebrows as a crash erupted from deep within the palace. A glass ornament toppled from the duke’s grand mantelpiece and shattered. Evidently dinner was being served, or else the rats had reached the palace. Either way, it was time for him to leave.
    It was late afternoon in Dullitch and the crowds were beginning to ebb away. This was due in no small part to the two mercenaries striding down Palace Street. An air of impending doom surrounded them, but that wasn’t unusual in Dullitch; anyone who didn’t have that air was quickly arrested and executed (occasionally the other way around).
    “Look at this: they’re everywhere!”
    Groan and Gordo were kicking rats out of the way with every second step. They had been told to head for the palace, where they would be “received with true Dullitch hospitality.” Gordo hoped that this wouldn’t be the case. He knew that “Dullitch hospitality” generally involved a three-hour wait in a dingy cell before some antique jailer arrived to spit a pardon all over them.
    “I was thinking about that fight we had in Phlegm,” he said to Groan, trying to take his mind off the palace. “I reckon we’d have won that and no mistake.”
    “Reckon you’re right,” said Groan. Groan had been in good spirits since he’d stolen a helmet from a quivering youth on guard at the Market Gate. He offered Gordo a gaping grin.
    “Half an apple?” said a voice behind them.
    “Anyway,” Groan continued, ignoring the interruption. “I don’t reckon that baron was up to much. We’d ’ave ’ad to kill ’im.”
    “Granted,” said Gordo. “There’s plenty of those border lords that owe us a few bob. Take the fat earl from down Shade Way; we was more than fair with him, considering.”
    Gordo looked up at his companion. “You still got his head?” he asked.
    Groan massaged his jaw and shrugged. “Dunno.”
    “Half an apple?” someone interjected.
    The two companions parted, allowing a rogue wearing a rapidly expiring tunic and grinning like a stowaway cat on a fishing trawler. He gave them a two-fingered salute.
    “Half an apple?” he repeated persistently.
    “No thanks,” said Groan.
    “I’m not offering.” The stranger frowned. “I’m asking. Have you got half an apple I could borrow?”
    “Why half?” said Gordo, intrigued.
    “Well, I didn’t want to ask for too much.”
    “Why borra?” said Groan, indefinitely.
    “Well, when I said borrow ,” the beggar continued. “I was speaking figuratively, like.”
    “So you want half an apple to keep ?” asked Gordo, suspiciously.
    “Yep, if it’s not too much trouble. Now that you mention it, I could let you have it back in a few days, but I don’t suppose you’d want it.”
    “What would you do with the uvver arf?” said Groan, still loitering at the beginning of the conversation.
    “He wouldn’t have two halves, would he?” Gordo reasoned. “He’d only have the one half we gave him.”
    The beggar looked wretched. “Well?” he said eventually.
    “Well what?”
    “Can I have half an apple or not?”
    “We haven’t got one!” Gordo snapped.
    The beggar was silent for a moment. Then he offered them an alternative salute and disappeared down a side alley.
    Groan and Gordo arrived at a corner where a few of the outlying market stalls were packing away for the evening. The dwarf looked back over his shoulder and scowled as three cloaked figures shrank back into the shadows. He’d always had a distinct loathing for Dullitch, and this visit was proving no exception.

SEVEN
    D ULLITCH WAS SEETHING WITH rats.
    There were rats on the street, rats running along the window ledges, rats in the gutters. Diek couldn’t believe his eyes: the legendary capital city had fallen to a new kind of enemy. No one could have predicted it.
    You can remove them. Diek hadn’t heard The Voice since he’d left Little Irksome. Now it spoke in a reduced, raspy tone; it was almost