Adventure 2016

Chapter 15: lord ratzenberg.

"We're coming out," Jenny said quietly. "You can take us to Lord Ratzenberg."

She pulled the gate open and slowly edged out, back onto the walkway. James followed her and closed the gate.

"If you try anything like that again, I'll use this pike on each of you," the rat said.

He pushed Elf over to the other two.

"And I'll take that key, before you get us all killed."

James handed it over. The rat looked at it suspiciously and quickly locked the gate. Then he put his hand on the Squidducken around the lock and said some words quietly under his breath.

"Now march!"

He herded them along the walkways. He didn't have a torch, so the children used theirs. He wasn't interested in taking anything else from them, other than the key.

"Are you a Hollingbury raider?" James asked, after they had been walking for a while

"Me? A raider?" the rat laughed. "No, I'm just a mercenary, a rat for hire, looking to get paid. But some things aren't worth the trouble. Like dealing with birds. I'll drop you off, collect my coin, and be on my way."

"What will Lord Ratzenberg do with us?" Jenny asked.

"With you? I've got no idea, I've never met the rat. Make you slaves, or bake you in a pie. It's not my concern." The rat sounded more like he was talking about what to spread on his toast than the lives of the three children.

"I'm James," James said.

"And I'm Jenny," Jenny said.

Elf said nothing.

"Still upset with me for the thing with the pike?" the rat said. "That's fair enough. I'm Zen, not that it's of any use to you."

Zen was happy to chat to them as they walked along. He told them that most rats lived happily, either underground or just above ground. The sewers under Brighton were very old. Much older than the town itself. They were deeper here than the human sewers reached. When asked about the Squidducken he simply said that the symbol had always been around, it was older than the gates, and the gates were older than the sewer. If you went through a gate, he said, you were very unlikely to ever reach the surface again.

They reached a confluence of tunnels and the walls opened out. It was now thirty feet to the other side, and the water was deeper here too. Zen paused then pointed to a ladder ahead of them. It cut into the wall and stretched up through the top of the tunnel.

"We'll go up there," he said.

"How do you know the way, when you've never met Lord Ratzenberg?" James asked.

"Sewers are sewers wherever you go," Zen said. "Do you need a map to find the way to the end of a road, or to the top of a flight of stairs?"

They climbed up the ladder. James went first, then Elf then Jenny and Zen came up last. They went up for thirty rungs. And found themselves in a tunnel almost identical to the one they left. It was wide, and the water was like a lazy river. Downstream many more tunnels joined theirs, from both sides, and their walkway rose up to meet a wider one above the tributaries.

As they walked more and more tunnels joined and the far side of the river was shrouded in darkness, beyond the light of their torches. The walkway followed a curve to the left and round it was a jetty, like a pier, jutting out into the wide water. It was fifty yards ahead, and it was dimly lit with torches.

Then when they were closer, it was clear that it wasn't a jetty. It was a wooden wall with tiny windows with the glow of lanterns shining out. There were paraffin lamps on the walkway now, and the children put their torches away.