"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts"

-Winston Churchill

It took only another three hours before Marcus registered flaring lights at the end of the ratmen's tunnel path.

And when they finally emerged into Knifegut fortress, Marcus was forced to admit that he shouldn't have been surprised.

"By the Unclean…" Deekius whispered.

A general shout went up in the ranks of the rats that remained.

The fortress was a crumbling ruin.

The fort was built into the far wall of a great cavernous expanse that should have provided an ample defensive position. Marcus spied at least three other tunnels that led out of the cavern in full view of the fort, giving it a Panopticon-like command of the local area. Yet, Its stone walls were pocketed with holes the size of an elephant's foot, and its simple moat was filled with the floating bodies of ratmen and kobolds that stared up at the new arrivals with blank, soulless eyes. The once stout Martello towers that rose on either side of the gatehouse were at this point openly exposed – their insides having been decimated by what looked like siege weaponry. In their skeletal state, even a simple force of ten could enter them from the outside. The banners of the red-eye that hung loose from the tops of the walls were tattered and rotten from exposure to what Marcus assumed must have been constant assaults.

Piled up around the fortress perimeter were more bodies – perhaps one rat for every fifteen kobolds – being trundled away in wheelbarrows by downtrodden ratmen. Again, the stench of death hit Marcus first – the thing the textbooks couldn't have ever prepared him for.

They had given the kobolds a fair battering, but anyone could see that this place wouldn't hold out much longer.

"You there, kinsman!" Skeever called out to one of the dejected rats trundling his barrow of dead. "Be taking us to Talon-Commander Gatskeek!"

The rat looked up with red-rimmed eyes under his filth-ridden hood and barely squeaked in acknowledgement.

"Be following."

Through the cavern the column of Skeever-Steelclaw's forces marched, their Shai-Alud at their head. Most of the rats on corpse-collection duty barely paid them any heed, and Marcus found himself seeking solace in his notebook scribblings to keep from looking into their sad eyes.

"How do you treat your dead?" he asked Deekius.

"We are not being wasteful," the rat-priest replied. "Most are being taken back to the towns to be fed to the Queens. The remains are being given to soldiers first, then scraps thrown into street. Even defeat in battle can bring happy bellies."

Marcus nodded slowly, imagining the chaos of the ratmen's city streets. He imagined dirt-caked children scampering around with flies in their eyes, waiting for a morsel of their own kind. But he could not help but see a certain logic to the practice which might have its root in the creatures' strange anatomy. Cannibalism had died out as a practice in human history because of its dangers – disease, primarily - particularly that which is caused by improperly folded Prion proteins. This exact problem was what devastated the native tribes of New Guinea. From what Marcus gathered of the ratmen, however, it seemed that they had a far higher toleration of the effects of disease than the average human. It made sense, in this context, for their religious faith to be one that praised an almighty pox-bringer.

Marcus' contention had always been that religion served an acute social function, first and foremest – and was even formed in response to the evolutionary traits of a people. It was a point he had wanted to make in his book…a book which he'd all but forgotten about.

After all, he was writing a new book now. A book that would be far more interesting to the scholar and layman alike.

"Be opening the gate!"

The shout of the archer-rats manning the ruined Martello towers snapped Marcus back to reality, and he watched the ratmen's drawbridge open to afford him a vision of Knifegut proper. It was a basic fort with only a few communal stone huts that served the usual functions Marcus would expect: there was a troops barracks, an armory containing mounds of various rusted weaponry practically sprawling across the floor, a stout chapel built into the cavern wall adorned with two rotten, maggot-encrusted Kobold skulls and the walls of the fort themselves which stretched out from the cavern's far wall. Littering the fort's grounds were also copious crates and barrels from which foul-smelling odors wafted. Marcus suspected that they could only be the ratmen's supply crates.

By far the most impressive structure was the massive wrought-iron gate that sealed the exit to the fort. It was currently manned by a line of six bored-looking ratguard.

As Skeever's men inspected their surroundings, seeing nothing but decrepit soldiers greet them with sniffs of their great, wriggling snouts, the commander of the fortress shambled down the steps of the gatehouse to meet them.

He was an old rat. Grey of fur and short of tail, with a festering, puss-filled wound adorning his left leg. Though he limped towards them, Marcus could tell there was strength still in his old bones, and that the scimitar that was sheathed just under his black cloak was probably still sharp enough to pierce Kobold skin.

"Skeever," he said, grabbing his comrade and giving him a hearty pat. "Be welcome in Knifegut."

Skeever nodded but wasted no time on pleasantries. "The fort is being broken, Gatskeek! What is happening here?"

Old Gatskeek nodded gravely and nodded to Deekius. His eyes then lighted on Marcus for the first time.

"So this…" he began. "This is the Shai-Alud."

As he spoke the word a whisper of disbelief rippled through the ratmen assemblage. Marcus felt their stares on his back, some of them looking at him with hungry eyes.

"Are you being sure?" he asked Deekius. "He is not looking like much."

Before Marcus could utter a word in protest, the rat-priest was already up in arms to defend him: "Sire Marcus' abilities are not in question. Under his leadership he saw us slaughter a pack of fifty Kobolds to the man!"

"Almost to the man," Marcus corrected, glancing back at the Kobold prisoners who were uncomfortably shifting against the stares of the fort-rats.

"Hm," Gatskeek grunted. "A human. And one that is barely having a hair on his chest."

Marcus unconsciously tightened his robe around him.

"Skeever," he grunted again. "Is this one the reason you are bringing those things into our fort?"

His eyes darted towards the Kobold slingers, who dropped to their knees, each one pulling down the other by their elbow to show their supplication.

"We are serving Shai-Shai now, good rat-Sire, yes. We are loyal only to-"

"I didn't ask your opinion, filth," the old rat spat. "I am talking to my kinsman."

Skeever looked from Gatskeek to Marcus before he replied.

"It is being the command of the Shai-Alud," he said without further hesitation. "These ones are saving us as we journey back through the North tunnels. They are having weapons that tame the Gutmulchers."

Gatskeek spat a globule of grimy saliva at his feet. "And what if they are simply tricking you, hm? You know Kobold are good for nothing but schemes and backstabbing. Their brains are being as fiendish as their devil hands."

"Are you questioning the will of the Shai-Alud, kinsman?" Deekius interrupted, raising his staff menacingly so that even the fort rats cowered back in fear. "Know that in doing this, you are questioning He-Who-Festers himself."

The old rat stepped up to look into the dark eyes of the priest, holding his gaze and keeping one paw on his scimitar's hilt.

"You will not be frightening me, Gloomraava," he said with revulsion. "We are praying to the Unclean One for weeks, after we are burying our dead, after we are licking our wounds, after we are fighting night after night. He does not listen."

Marcus sensed the tension in the air. It seemed old Deekius' reliance on religion as a tool of fear wasn't quite up to scratch when it came to those who had suffered under the yolk of real warfare. Yet, Marcus could observe the reticence in the ratmen that surrounded them. He could see there were a few who looked upon him as their messianic figure, and a few who's minds weren't quite as made up yet. How they dealt with this old skeptic – the commander of a set of obviously demoralized troops – this would be crucial. If he was ever going to reach the capital of this forsaken underground pit and finally be in with a chance of getting home, then he would wield belief like a weapon and cleave through all these petty squabbles.

So, as much as it pained him to play along with this little game of Gods and prophets, he sucked up his Agnosticism and faced down the commander.

"You are…being…right, Talon-Commander Gatskeek," Marcus said, taking care to match the intonation of the ratmen he had managed to pick up so far. "Your fights so far are being a test from He-Who-Festers. He has sat in silence so that you might show your dedication to him even when he turns his furry ears away from you. Now, your deliverance has come."

He indicated the troops surrounding them. Well-armored, still disciplined rats who stood to attention as he swept his hand over their column.

"We," Marcus said. "Are here to show you that the Unclean One still listens. He has sent…is sending us…to help you go home."

After this little speech the grey rat said nothing for a time. He looked Marcus up and down, and then returned his gaze to Skeever with a licking of his ragged snout.

"You vouch for this man?" he asked.

Skeever nodded without any hesitation this time. "On my life, kinsman. I, too, thought that we had been forgotten. But it is not being so. We will be going down in history."

Gatskeek merely chuckled at this, then eventually threw his head back and belched out a laugh that seemed to infect the troops that were still here with him – those watching from their doomed positions on the walls and those nosing the floor of the barracks for scraps before the new bodies came in.

"Skeever-Steelclaw is finding the Shai-Alud – hah!" Gatskeek shouted. "King Shrykul always did say our clan would be favored one day."

The old rat now looked to Marcus with a glint of humor in his withered, aged eyes. Eyes that had seen, perhaps, too much horror to care anymore.

"Well, Shai-Alud," he said. "Your words are being good. But we are not going anywhere."

He nodded at Marcus, Skeever, and Deekius to follow him.

"Why is that?" Marcus asked.

"Because, Shai-Alud," the old rat replied. "We are being fucked."

***

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