… A place of desolation and doom, a claustrophobic cavern surrounding him. Vitch gazed around in awe. He did not walk alone; there was another beside him, but whom that beast may be, it was impossible to see. But he could see rats, rats in black robes watching from dark corners, silent… and terrifying.
It all brought to mind some horrid nightmare. Perhaps it was a nightmare, the demented product of a deviant mind.
Vitch stopped and raised his head. Before him stood the figure of a monstrous white polecat.
"Who comes near Malkariss?" The dark sound of the voice drove the young rat to clamp his ears over his paws. Fear started to boil in the pit of his stomach. If only it were possible to escape, to hide somewhere…
"Who is the other one?" They were talking about him now. They wanted to present him as a thing, a pet; but even in that regard he was worthless.
"He is not born to the Host, our ways are not known to him. A rat that comes from the place of woodlands is of no use to us. Chain him with the slaves!"
Two black-robed rats appeared out from the darkness. Without warning, the world snapped into surprising detail, and Vitch saw the indifferent faces of the two rats clearly. He would not easily forget them, even among their millions of identical brothers.
When he fought against them, shouting in panic, they twisted his paws behind his back, gripping them tightly, and locked on shackles that dragged his paws down.
In despair, he cried out to the only beast that he knew. "Save me! Don't let them do this to me! I was loyal to you, I served you well; help me, Slagar!"
But there was a reason this fox was called the Cruel One.
Vitch screamed, catapaulting out of his dream. He wiped his face with a shaking paw, trying to clear away the last vestiges of the nightmare that still haunted him.
That done, he looked around. He was still on his stretcher; while he slept, the group had moved further away from the plateau. The terrain had changed a bit; the forest had given way to a grassy plain, with heaps of boulders strewn around at random.
The camp seemed oblivious to this natural beauty, as they had all gathered around some unseen point of interest, filling the air with exclamations and inquiries. Something had happened.
Vitch rose from his cot and approached the crowd as quietly as he could manage.
Because of his stature, or lack thereof, he couldn't see what was so exciting in the center of the crowd, so he settled for grabbing the nearest shrew by the shoulder and getting an explanation out of him. "What's going on here?"
"They caught a rat," the shrew answered. "One of the black-robed ones; he was spying on us. Eh, probably ran away from that dungeon with the rest; can't blame 'em, what with it collapsing and all." Vitch had stopped listening; he was trying to push his head through a crack between two of the beasts in the crowd.
The rat lay on the ground squirming. His small eyes defiantly glared out from under his hood. Matthias was pressing a sword to his throat.
Vitch gasped, putting his paw to his forehead. It was one of the two rats who chained him up! He couldn't be mistaken; he would recognize those faces to the last strand of fur.
"For the last time, where are your companions?" Matthias demanded. "How did you track us down? How long were you following us?"
The cloaked rat stayed silent, as if he hadn't heard the question.
"It's useless, Matthias," Basil stated. "Those fanatics never speak."
The warrior lowered his sword and left the prisoner to converse with the hare. "What to do, Basil?"
"We must remain vigilant, my friend," the retiree moved his ears. "If that one bally tracked us down, there will be others."
"Yes; we'll post more sentries, and Orlando and I will stay on the alert, until we return to Mossflower Woods. We'll leave this rat tied up until we go, and then we'll set him free."
"Set him free?"
"We can't kill him in cold blood; it's against the tenets of the Abbey. We will set him free to go back to wherever he came from, and Sir Harry the Muse will follow him to make sure that that he doesn't try to follow us again."
Basil sighed, but nodded agreement.
Everybeast returned to their business, and the Host rat was dragged off to the edge of the camp. As he was tied up, and the group was leaving soon anyway, nobeast bothered to guard him.
Vitch stood alone near a fire, the white-hot tongues of flame reflecting off his dark eyes. There were a lot of thoughts in his head, but a common theme bound them all: Vengeance!
Having decided, he carefully crossed the camp to the prisoner.
Having looked back over his shoulder, he was certain that nobeast was watching them; so, with a great deal of force, he kicked the restrained rat right under the ribs.
The rat bent forward as much as his bonds would allow and gave a cry, more from surprise than from pain, then stared defiantly at Vitch.
"So you do have a voice..." Vitch leaned in and grabbed the captive's collar with his less-than-intimidating paws. "Let's see if you can use it." With that, he struck once again, aiming his knuckles at the captive's neck. "Don't like being bound up, do ya? Not so much fun now, is it?"
Vitch stood up and pulled the rat forward into his raised knee, then brought his footpaw back down on his tail.
The captive displayed remarkable restraint in staying silent, still shooting Vitch a look of unabated hatred nonetheless.
"What's the matter, matey; rat got your tongue?" The young rat raised his eyebrows. "Oh yeah, that's right; you're a Host rat, Malkariss has your tongue! You can't speak up like a normal beast, can't say what's on your mind, because your stupid god demands it!" With that he raised a fist and brought it hammering down into the captive's eye, then dragged him back to eye contact with the collar of his cloak. "Take me for example; I'm just a normal rat from the woodlands! I've got all the freedom I could ask for! And then you and your precious Malka-piss went and took it from me!" Vitch shouted, his voice dripping hatred. He paused for a while, breathing heavily in an attempt to calm his heart rate a bit.
Then, his grimace morphed into a grin. "It's a good thing he's dead and buried now. Oh, did I forget to tell you that?"
The black-robed rat became nervous, searching the little bastard's muzzle for any sign of a lie.
"Yeah, dead as the rock he was hiding in." Vitch clapped paws. "The big badger and I destroyed that statue and the little maggot that was hiding inside. Or did you actually think that the statue spoke for itself?"
"Do not dare to speak of Malkariss so!"
"Oh, it speaks! I'll tell you again - Malkariss is dead; Orlando and I dealt with him ourselves! He is no more, and not even the tiniest shard of his statue remains!"
A sudden moment of wariness struck Vitch, and he worriedly checked over his shoulder. Nobeast was watching, but the longer he drew this out the more chance he had of getting caught. "You take care of yourself," he stated mockingly, then he turned and walked back to the rest of the camp as quickly as he could without looking conspicuous.
After a while the beasts began to turn camp, extinguishing fires and collecting food and weapons. Orlando and Matthias approached the captive to untie him. They were very surprised to find, in the place of the silently defiant rat they had left, a writhing, feral mockery of a creature, struggling against his bonds and hissing at the badger in maddened hatred.
"Has he gone mad, perhaps?" Orlando asked, letting the blade of his axe dip a bit.
"I don't know," Matthias replied. "He was quiet when we left him. Listen!" he said to the rat. "We're going to untie you now. You'll go to the South, where you came from. Come back, try to follow us, and we'll have to kill you." The robed rat paused his frantic movement, as if he had calmed down, and nodded consent.
But as soon as his paws had been untied, he lunged forward with a roar, snatched out a dagger from Matthias's belt, and charged straight at Orlando, dagger held high and poised to strike.
Orlando's reaction was instant – the blade of his axe glinted in the sunlight, and then…
CHOP!
The fanatic's head and dager-armed paw hung in the air for but a moment, before succumbing to gravity like the rest of his body. Immediately the camp was alive with motion, as everybeast surged forward to discern what had just happened. In all the commotion, nobeast noticed how little Vitch smiled and whispered:
"Revenge…"