A HENRY STORY 1: Memories Of The Fallen Prince

XI. Rat

"Kill him!" — "Rip his head off!" — "Extinguish him!"

Hundreds of furious cries reverberated through the arena, mingling together into one meaning: for Henry to die.

He wanted to be furious with Thanatos; he wanted to blame the flier and his leaving for all this so badly that it almost hurt. But no matter how desperately he dug in himself for anger, there was none. Only empty despair and loneliness.

Henry was surrounded by hundreds of creatures but never before in his entire life had he felt more alone. And it hurt . . . everything did. His physical injuries flared with pain, and the ache in his heart grew to match it.

But I can't succumb, a voice in his head reminded him. I challenged myself to survive. Survivors did not succumb. Henry bit his lip until it drowned out all of his other pains. He was not dead, so he hadn't lost yet.

Henry forced his gaze up from the floor and his eyes found a group of gnawers who had assembled a little offside; they whispered with each other and occasionally pointed at him. Were they deciding his fate?

"Hey!" yelled Henry, but nobody paid him any mind. But to his relief, their sight and the way they spoke about him behind his back, as though they had any right to decide his fate, evoked anger—enough anger to overshadow his pain.

He gritted his teeth and forced his misty brain to think. Telling himself to survive was one thing, but the thought alone would not save him. He needed a plan. Anything that actually stood a chance at accomplishing this.

"I did not kill him!" he finally screamed the one thing that he had going for himself—the truth. "This is a misunderstanding. I did not kill Gorger; the fool killed himself!" And he nearly killed me, Henry almost added. But he thought it would be unwise to say this to what appeared to be a flock of his loyal followers.

"You are being rash!" he screamed and his voice cracked. Henry coughed and heaved but he could not stop speaking. He had to get this across somehow. That it was a misunderstanding. That they had no ground upon which to kill him.

"I—"

"Quiet!"

Henry winced and cried when one of the rats who still held him slapped the tip of his tail across his cheek. He twined and twisted, battling the fresh burning of the lash. His vision fragmented and his mouth fell shut.

This was not a trial; he managed to think somewhere at the back of his head. They did not actually care about the truth. All they wanted was a scapegoat, someone to blame for Gorger's death. And Henry was the only one they had.

He was . . . not getting out of this alive.

Every fiber of his wailed in protest at the realization that he had failed his challenge and that there was nothing he could do to still win. Not of his own accord. He was . . . what had he done wrong?

Tears rose in his eyes and he blinked them away angrily. He had not done anything wrong. He had battled here as he had been forced to, and he had won. It wasn't his fault that someone had recognized him.

He had wanted to make the world fight him for every ounce of life in his body. He had wanted to fight until he was physically unable to. But . . . had he any fight left? He was being restrained so that he could barely move. He was . . . alone, against a hundred gnawers. He could not fight.

Their screams assaulted him. They drove into his ears and eyes like nails and suddenly Henry felt like he was drowning. Not in water but in hatred. Their hatred wormed its way into him through every orifice and slowly filled him up from within. He could barely breathe.