Chapter Ten
The searat guard towers were simple affairs, little more than roofed platforms raised two or three stories off the ground on stiltlike supports. The square observation decks had one support leg at each corner, with a long ladder in the middle that led up to an open hatchway in the center of each platform.
Squirrels, of course, could climb perfectly well without ladders.
Four Gawtrybe took each tower, shinnying ghostlike up each of the support timbers and flowing over the low walls in a stealthy assault that took the bored searat lookouts completely by surprise. Even the towers with as many as three rats in them were overwhelmed before any coherent cry of alarm could be announced. Blades flashed, daggers flew, and two dozen rat sentries thudded lifelessly to the floor planks of their watchtowers with slashed throats and pierced hearts.
More squirrels rushed forward and clambered up the ladders to deliver packed quivers to the quartet of snipers who now occupied each tower. Each team wanted to have at least one hundred arrows at the ready in case swarms of enraged searats flooded out of their ship and barracks and tried to retake the towers. There were nine of the structures, which meant that thirty-six Gawtrybe with over nine hundred shafts between them stood ready to rain swift death down upon the searat camp from every landward direction. It would be up to the shrews and otters to take care of the seaward side of things.
If all went according to plan, these tower-bound snipers would be merely a precaution, and might end up loosing very few of their shafts. But Urthblood's orders had been most explicit: not a single searat was to survive this engagement if it could be helped. Any who tried to escape over their own perimeter defenses would be cut down by Gawtrybe stationed in the very sentry posts meant to safeguard against such an attack.
With the watchtowers successfully captured, the remaining sixty-odd squirrels flooded under and past them into the compound. Most of the perimeter between the towers was fenced with sharp wooden spikes and strung with the even more treacherous knifewire, now invisible in the night. Matowick had decided against trying to cut their way through the wire; not only was this unnecessary with the towers in their control, but the intact defenses would impede fleeing rats who might, in the darkness and confusion of battle, very well end up impaled and entangled upon their own spikes and wire.
A number of the Gawtrybe had for the moment traded their longbows for casks of oil. Thanks to the aerial observations of Altidor and Saugus, they'd known even before leaving Salamandastron that most of the buildings here were partly or completely constructed of wood, and so they'd brought with them a score of small oil barrels. Now, with casks strapped to their backs and accompanied by escorts with blades and bows held at the ready, the oil-bearing squirrels proceeded to the buildings closest to the perimeter and scaled their wood walls up to the rooftops.
The clear skies meant a cold night, and this too worked in the attackers' favor, chasing most of the rats indoors to huddle against the winter chill. The only signs of outdoor activity were around the dockside tavern, and by the tower-like stone structure at the center of the compound. The squirrels were content to ignore those for now, since many more convenient targets were to be seen. These were barracks, mess hall, infirmary, storehouses, workshops, slave quarters and the main mill itself where the timber was cut and processed. This last building, at least twice the size of any of the others, the Gawtrybe also ignored, since it too was near the heart of the camp. As for the rest, the squirrels didn't know which were which. They knew only that these were buildings erected by searat claws, for the purpose of expanding and strengthening Tratton's empire. Urthblood had said to burn every structure on this site, and so they would burn.
Poised upon the various rooftops all around the compound, the squirrels poured their oil down the sides of the wood walls, then jumped back down to the ground even as their fellows rushed forward with shielded lamps to ignite the oil-soaked timber.
Within the space of heartbeats, the searat lumber mill sprang ablaze on all sides.
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Out at sea to the north, and farther along the shore to the south, many watching eyes saw the buildings come alight against the night, and took that as their signal to join the attack.
Captain Saybrook, standing out on the pebbly tideline with his heavy-duty crank awl in paw, declared, "Well, mateys, looks like Cap'n Matowick's got roast rat on th' menu! Time fer a cold night's swim. Every otter in th' water, an' follow my lead! We got us a boat t' sink!"
Browder hunkered on the beach above the tidal zone, paws clutched to his shoulders in defense against the fur-piercing breeze blowing in off the ocean as he watched the otters with their prybars and paw drills diving into the surf. "Um, er, good luck, wot?" he said in a voice that nobeast else could hear.
When the last otter's rudderlike tail had vanished beneath the water, Browder retreated to the cave once more. At least it was warmer in there.
Meanwhile, to the north, four dozen logboats full of shrews and otters began silently paddling toward the searat dreadnought Scorpiontail.
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The Gawtrybe team led by Sergeant Custis had just set fire to a large, windowless shack on the north side of the camp. He'd assumed it was some kind of storehouse, but within moments of the first flames licking up its side there came a frantic frenzy of pounding pawfists from within. This made no sense to Custis; if this was a barracks or workshop, why didn't the occupants merely run out the front door? It was only the rear of the building that was engulfed. Then the answer hit him.
It was a storehouse, all right - a storehouse for living creatures.
Rallying his small team, Custis ran around to the front of the structure. There they found two rats guarding the only door, which was barred from the outside. The guards were staring straight ahead at two other buildings across the site that had also caught fire; apparently it hadn't occurred to them that their own might be in a similar state. Thus preoccupied, they didn't even notice the squirrels rounding the corner until moments before expertly aimed shafts laid them low forever.
Custis threw up the lock bar and wrenched the door open. A mouse, an otter, two more mice and a hedgehog practically spilled out onto the ground amidst a billow of smoke. There were even more woodlanders lined up behind them, coughing and choking and pawing at their eyes.
The Sergeant and one of his companions set to helping the fallen to their feet and ushering the others out of the burning building while the rest of his team covered them with drawn bowstrings.
"Are there any other slaves anywhere else in this compound?" Custis demanded.
"Might be some workin' in th' mill," the otter said.
"Are you here to free us?" a female mouse asked with haunted and hopeful eyes.
"We're here to slay every bilgerat in this camp," Custis declared, "an' we're not goin' anywhere until that's done."
As if to underscore his point, his squirrels cut down two more rat guards who came running at them with drawn swords. The otter stared with wide eyes at the buildings that came ablaze, one after another, even as he watched. "Yah, I believe that ... "
"But, there're too many!" a cowering male mouse wailed. "Why, that big ship alone's got over two hundred fighting rats in it, plus its regular crew, plus the crew of the mill, plus ... plus ... "
"Plus nothing!" Custis spat. "They're about to meet a hundred of the finest archerbeasts who've ever lived ... plus an army of shrews and otters who mean to sink those two boats out there."
Many of the faces reflected in the firelight, which blossomed brighter with each passing moment, showed hope and relief and determination, while others registered only disbelief, confusion, or the lingering fear of continued slavery.
"Sounds good t' me!" the otter burst out. "Need a paw? 'Cos I bet you got a few willin' ones here!"
Custis grinned. "Won't be an easy fight, but if you're up for it ... welcome aboard, matey!"
While most of the slaves were escorted toward the comparative safety of the perimeter guard towers, the otter, hedgehog, a squirrel and a mouse relieved the fallen rats of their weapons.
Urthblood's forces had just gained four new fighters.
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Across the way in another part of the site, Captain Matowick had discovered the main rat barracks.
Matowick and more than a dozen of his fellow squirrels formed themselves into a shooting line twoscore paces from the building's door, from where they mowed down the frantic searats as fast as the rodents could flee the burning structure. Dozens of rat corpses quickly fell to litter the cold ground for many paces around the doorway in every direction.
Now, realizing that venturing forth into the night meant instant death, the remaining rats milled and jostled just inside the doorway, debating what to do next. If they stayed inside the barracks, they would burn to death; if they set foot outside, the lethal and accurate shafts of the Gawtrybe would claim them.
They quickly opted for a third alternative. Unlike the slaves' quarters, the searat barracks was well supplied with windows on all sides, and on both floors. The trapped rats didn't hesitate to smash the panes with whatever furniture was at paw and launch themselves through the jagged window frames, even if it meant a potentially ankle-twisting drop from the second story.
Even using these alternative routes, many were still taken by Gawtrybe arrows. One rat, who was a fairly skilled archerbeast himself, had the presence of mind through the thickening smoke to grab up his bow and quiver and position himself at one of the second floor windows above the front door. He was able to kill one squirrel with his first shot, but when he popped up a second time with arrow drawn back upon his bowstring, a pair of Gawtrybe shafts found him before he could loose his arrow.
Those who made it out the side windows and avoided immediate death by arrow could see by the light of the many burning buildings that their foes were swarming all throughout the encampment. Some rats ran toward the shore, hoping to dodge the life-seeking arrows long enough to reach the imagined safety of the tavern (still not yet in flames) or to rouse the main fighting force of Lutar's aboard the Scorpiontail. Others abandoned all hope of resistance and, thinking only of their own lives, sprinted for the perimeter to flee the fighting. They hadn't counted on the Gawtrybe archers waiting for them in their own watchtowers.
Some of the rats who'd chosen the seaward path made it to the tavern or the docks with their lives. But none who had chosen the perimeter route made it out of the camp alive.
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Captain Lutar had been about to take his leave of Ostrok and Drecksage and rejoin his crew aboard the Scorpiontail when the attack began.
The three commanding rats watched in growing disbelief from Ostrok's third-floor office as one wooden structure after another burst into flames. One fire might have been a perfectly reasonable accident or mishap, and two might have been an uncanny coincidence, but to see nearly a dozen buildings come ablaze at once could mean only one thing.
"It's an attack!" Lutar hissed; as the only one of their trio with in-depth battle experience, he was the first to recognize the unfolding incident for what it was. He turned to Ostrok and snarled, "Put out that lamp, quick! We must see what's goin' on out there!" Even as he spoke, Lutar was on his way across the room to extinguish the two wall lamps.
From the darkened office, they had a clear view of the slaughter taking place in front of the burning barracks. The speed with which the dead mounted was appalling.
"My rats!" Ostrok cried. "Those are all my rats!"
"Now we know why Crute's team never returned," Lutar forced out through clenched fangs. "They must've been ambushed!"
Ostrok's head spun in confusion. "I don't unnerstan' ... where'd they come from? We cleared th' forest o' woodlanders ... "
"Those ain't woodlanders," Lutar grimaced, appraising the situation with a trained tactical eye. "They're warriors, an' good ones too, to've staged such a coordinated assault." He turned and started for the stairs.
"Where're y' goin'?" Ostrok asked, panic and fear plain in his voice.
"To th' Scorpiontail. Th' fightin' hasn't reached th' dock an' tavern yet, an' I aim t' be back on board my ship afore it does!"
"Yes!" Ostrok said with rising hope. "Yes, Cap'n, rally yer fightin' troops! Unleash 'em on the enemy! Save th' mill!"
Lutar paused at the top of the stairs, glancing over his shoulder. "This mill's already lost," he sneered at Ostrok, "an' King Tratton would have yer head fer it, except I reckon those squirrels out there'll beat him to it. Ain't but one beast alive who'd dare a move this bold, an' that big red badger's troops don't take prisoners. Now, excuse me, I gotta go save my ship." The captain pounded down the stairs, his pawsteps rapidly receding.
"Um ... um ... guess I'd best be gettin' back to th' Wavehauler m'self," Drecksage muttered, and followed ponderously in Lutar's wake, leaving Ostrok alone to watch his miniature empire burn.
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The mill factory often operated well after dark, and sometimes straight through the night. And since it was a largely windowless structure, it was some time before the rats and slaves toiling within realized that the rest of the site was burning down around them.
Kurdyla was an otter working in the mill that fateful night, and Kurdyla was playing a game with himself. Eleven days before, he'd seen his mouse friend Jurs sawed in half at the waist as punishment for having accidentally spilled a pan of sawdust into some of the machine works. Normally a brave and composed creature, Jurs had begun to bawl like a baby upon realizing what he'd done, and what fate probably awaited him at the claws of the sadistic Crute and Crute's equally sadistic chief assistant Thresher. The rats had shown no mercy to Jurs as they'd held the screaming mouse down while Kurdyla and the other slaves were forced at swordpoint to crank the handles that, through a system of gears and pulleys, made the big circular blade of the table saw spin fast enough to chew through hardwood. His friend's futile pleas for leniency and all-too-quickly silenced howls of pain had haunted Kurdyla in his sleep every night since.
The game Kurdyla played in his mind was a simple one. For every day that passed since Jurs' death, the otter envisioned himself slaying one rat in retribution. It was just a daydream, he knew, a grim fantasy that would help get him through each day. He knew it would never actually happen.
For one thing, Kurdyla was a "problem" slave who'd given his rat masters trouble ever since they'd taken him from his mostly-slaughtered holt three seasons before. But his strength and endurance made him too valuable to put under the blade, so they'd manacled him at wrist and ankle so that he could do no more than shuffle, and could not spread his forepaws any farther apart than the width of his own skull. They also kept him in line by threatening the more helpless slaves with harm if he should misbehave. So, Kurdyla would swallow his pride, quell his rage, bow his head and do as he was told.
Not that that had helped Jurs any.
But there were still many other slaves who could be victimized, and so Kurdyla sought no revenge, killing only in his mind. For his own life he cared nothing - death would have been preferable to life as a slave, and if he could take several of his tormentors with him, he would consider it a fair trade - but he knew that if he tried to slay any of these searats, the surviving slaves would pay a terrible price. Crute and Ostrok might even keep him alive long enough to watch them torture his fellow slaves. That was how these searats did things around here, and they made sure everybeast knew it.
And thus it was that Kurdyla found himself at his usual station, cranking the handles to spin the blade to saw the wood to make the timber to build Tratton's ships and garrisons, utterly unaware of the mayhem breaking out all around him.
"Hey, I smell smoke," one of the rat workers sniffed.
"Yeah," a guard concurred. In truth, all the rats and slaves in the mill had smelled it by this time. "I better go make sure it ain't nothin' serious."
"You do that," sneered Thresher, the assistant Timbermaster. With Crute away in the woods, Thresher was in charge of the factory. "An' tell us quick if there's aught we oughtta know."
"Right, sir," the guard said, ignoring the degrading tone in his superior's voice, and rushed away to comply. Even before he'd reached the door and opened it to step outside, the smoke odor grew noticeably more pungent. And when the door opened, shouts and screams could be heard in the distance.
Kurdyla the otter happened to be looking that way when the guard opened the door, and he caught a glimpse of the dark of night beyond. It was easy to lose track of time inside the mostly windowless mill, since the slavemasters often worked their charges until the work of the day was finished, or until the slaves collapsed from exhaustion. But it was unusual for Crute not to have returned by nightfall ... and, on second glance, there was something odd about the darkness that Kurdyla glimpsed through that momentarily open door - the hint of a dancing glow that should not have been there.
Kurdyla straightened, removing his paws from the crank handle. With his strength subtracted from the task, his fellow slaves weren't able to keep the circular sawblade spinning fast enough, and the log that some of the other slaves were pushing along the tabletop caught and snagged on the teeth of the slowed blade, which quickly ground to a standstill.
"Hey!" Thresher instantly rounded on the delinquent otter. "Hey, you! Whaddya think ye're doin'?"
Kurdyla stared wordlessly past Thresher at the door.
The guard reappeared a heartbeat later. "Fire!" he shouted. "Buildings on fire!"
Thresher turned to the guard, while every other rat and every slave held its breath. In a timber mill, surrounded by wood and sawdust on all sides, fire was not something to be treated lightly.
"Whaddya mean? Which building?"
"All of 'em! It's an attack! We're under - "
The guard's words were cut off as an arrowhead sprouted from his throat, and he toppled down the steps onto the floor of the mill and lay still.
Time seemed to stand still for Kurdyla. In a frozen moment, everything clicked into place in his mind. Crute had not returned by nightfall, as he almost always did, and somebeasts were attacking the compound ... were outside right now, killing searats and setting fire to their buildings. This could mean only one thing.
Before the guard had even hit the floor, Kurdyla muttered, "Crute is dead." The words were like the taste of freedom on his tongue.
"Huh? What?" Thresher stared uncomprehending at the otter. The other rats were hastening to take up positions at all the entrances into the mill, but the assistant Timbermaster stood rooted to one spot.
"Crute is dead," the otter repeated, clearly directing the liberating words into Thresher's face.
"Bah! Y' don't know that fer sure, fishbreath!" The rat raised the whipping wand that he always carried and lashed it across Kurdyla's face. It left a cut from ear to jawline, but the otter didn't flinch or blink from the blow.
"Crute is dead ... an' so are you."
Looking into Kurdyla's hate-filled eyes, Thresher realized too late he'd made a fatal mistake in approaching the otter so closely. He tried to duck away, but Kurdyla had his paws over and down around the rat's neck by then, the short chain of his manacles cutting into Thresher's throat.
Thresher was a big bully of a rat, as strong as he was cruel and as formidable as he was ugly. But he was no match for Kurdyla, a burly otter in his prime who'd only been made more muscular by three seasons of forced labor. Thresher strove to draw his short cutlass, so that he could drive it back into the otter's belly, but the fight was over before he had the chance. Kurdyla wrenched back his paws with maniacal strength, and there was a satisfying crack as his chains crushed the struggling rat's windpipe. But not satisfying enough for Kurdyla, who continued to pull on the manacle chains until they cut deep into the flesh, and Thresher's head hung half-severed from his body. Only then did Kurdyla release his grip, letting the lifeless body crumple to the floor.
The other rats, looking on in horror, didn't know whether to rush Kurdyla or stay by the doors. The otter suffered no such hesitation, snatching up a spare blade for one of the mill's band saws - machines that sawed from side-to-side on yet another system of gears and pulleys. The blade was long and heavy and wickedly toothed along one edge. And in the paws of Kurdyla, few things would have been deadlier.
Two rats guards rushed him. The saw blade snapped their swords right out of their grasps, leaving them helpless before the otter's wrath. Kurdyla took one across the side of the neck, hacking halfway through, then brought the heavy sawblade straight down upon the other's skull.
Two more rats fell as Sergeant Custis and his squirrels burst through an unprotected door and began unleashing arrows.
"Don't hit any of the slaves!" Custis shouted to his team, then yelled out, "Slaves, rally to me! Slaves, rally to me!"
"JURS!" Kurdyla had taken up his murdered mouse friend's name as his battle cry, and now led his fellow slaves across the factory floor. A few of them grabbed up the weapons of the fallen rats and whatever other lethal implements they could lay paws upon. It was woe to any rat who got between them and the door where the Gawtrybe awaited.
The rats at the other doors had all escaped into the battle-tossed night, except for a few of the slower ones who now lay with Gawtrybe shafts in them. Those down on the main mill floor scurried this way and that, striving to get away from the rebelling, retribution-minded slaves.
Custis lowered his bow, as did his comrades. "Stay ready," he advised, "although it doesn't look like they need much help from us at the moment."
"JURS!"
Urthblood's army had picked up another gaggle of supporters ... and one vengeance-starved berserker.