The Warriors of Brin-Hask by Cerberus Jones Read Free Book Online

that?’ Charlie yelped. ‘Did the Brin-Hask do that?’
    Lady Naomi laughed in amazement. ‘I don’t know. The Brin-Hask don’t use bombs or
machinery of any kind, although they know how to manage them when they find them.’
    ‘The rats had rigged the whole floor to explode?’ said Amelia.
    ‘It looks like it,’ said Lady Naomi. ‘Probably supposed to be a last resort for mass
escape if they ever needed to flee the hotel. I doubt it offers them much advantage
in a fight like this.’
    ‘Then why did they set it off now?’ said Charlie.
    ‘They probably didn’t. I imagine the Brin-Hask decided to see what would happen if
they triggered it.’
    ‘What?’ Charlie gaped. ‘The Brin-Hask set off a bomb without knowing what it would
do? Are they crazy?’
    ‘A little bit,’ Lady Naomi smiled. ‘They can’t stand suspense but they love chaos
– setting off the bomb put the fight more on their terms.’
    ‘You mean …’ Amelia paused as she took in the new scene of battle. From under the
thick layer of wood dust that had fallen into the cavity, hundreds of small furry
bodies leapt up once more, shook themselves off, and threw themselves back into combat.
Now that she could see the entire arena of the war, she realised it was even worse
than it had sounded. The rats were far larger than the Brin-Hask – more heavily built,
and there were many, many times more of them. The sixty-odd little aliens were swamped.
    Here and there, Amelia saw two of the Brin-Hask stand back to back, holding off a
circle of ten or more attacking rats. One warrior was snatched up in a rat’s mouth,
and kept slashing at it with his sword even as it shook him like a doll. The rats
kept coming – up out of the ground, their eyes all shining red, and every now and
then she caught a flash of silver from their electronic implants. For all Amelia
knew, they could communicate with each other instantly – how could the Brin-Hask
compete with that?
    And yet somehow, she noticed, the number of dead rats was growing. Where there had
first been nothing but seething movement, now there were little islands of slumped
bodies.
    ‘You mean,’ Amelia said, wondering, ‘the Brin-Hask could actually win this?’
    ‘Without a doubt,’ said Lady Naomi.
    Charlie cheered as a great chunk of rat fur and whiskers flew into the air off a
Brin-Hask sword, and Amelia felt a tremor of excitement.
    Another explosion shook the kitchen, this one spraying out a stinging cloud of gravel.
Amelia coughed and wiped dust out of her eyes with her T-shirt.
    ‘How many bombs do they have?’ Charlie spluttered, half-fuming, half-admiring.
    Quite a few, it turned out. None as devastating as the first one that had disintegrated
the floor, but all of them nasty.
    ‘How can the Brin-Hask match this?’ Amelia asked Lady Naomi, but Lady Naomi just
nodded and said, ‘Watch.’
    As she watched, Amelia began to notice a pattern. A bomb went off every time an attack
by the rats failed. They would rally in their perfect lines, charge shoulder-to-shoulder
against the Brin-Hask, and try to overpower them with numbers, but the sheer fury
of the Brin-Hask swords drove them back every time. Each time the rats retreated,
they would make up for the loss by triggering another bomb.
    And the blasts were getting closer together. What had at first sounded like the thundering
superiority of the rat forces was actually proof that the Brin-Hask were gaining
ground.
    ‘They’re winning!’ Amelia cheered. ‘The Brin-Hask are going to win!’
    Another bomb blast splintered all the cupboard doors, and the workbench they were
all sitting on rocked alarmingly. This was followed almost immediately by another
cloud of gravel, and the rats seemed on the verge of panic. They weren’t holding
their formations any more, and were even scrambling over one another in their desperation
to get away from the Brin-Hask.
    ‘It’s over,’ said Lady Naomi. ‘King Hibble won’t fight them once their