Marcus counted them, having nothing else to say, as they resumed their slow, solemn march towards Fleapit, leaving the city of Dwarven ruins behind.
The atmosphere was more solemn than it ever had been. Even looking into the eyes of the rats, Marcus could tell that their spirits had taken more punishment than they'd ever endured beneath their black, cavernous skies. Normally, the dead would be consumed by the survivors of a battle. This time, however, Marcus issued a different command.
"Throw them in the back of the supply carts," he ordered. "Take them back to their home."
The rats had balked at this. Redwhiskers in particular had stepped forward to throw spittle in the face of the command, shouting that they would honor the dead by imbibing their warrior souls within their bellies – that this was the way of the ratmen. He was stilled, however, by the words of his kin-commander.
"Be doing as the Sha-Alud says," Skeever warned him, his red eyes flashing with barely restrained anger while he dragged Gatskeek's inert body behind him with his only remaining arm. "If I am seeing you take a single bite of the dead, I will be bloodying my spear with your insides. I am not needing two arms to kill you."
Grateful as he was for Skeever's support, Marcus could not watch him as he trundled Gatskeek's body behind his feet and threw him into the cart bound for the capital. Something about those eyes – the still-open eyes the old rat flashed at him as he died, was just far too human.
But he was doing what the old rat said. He was taking them home – all of them.
Before they left for the final stretch of their journey, Marcus spared a look at the bloody pulp that was the dwarf at the foot of the ancient city spire.
He barely heard Deekius shuffle up beside him as the other rats completed their corpse collection.
"Why," was all he said, looking down at the Dwarf's eviscerated face, unsure he even wanted a reply. "Why did he do it?"
The rat-priest sniffed the stagnant air. Then he looked nonchalantly at the corpse.
"The mind of a dwarf is being like stone," he said. "It can not be understood by us, Sire. Be not thinking of the dead. Especially not fat dwarf dead."
Deekius shuffled away again almost as soon as he had come – administering some strange crunched-up herbs to each loaded corpse in their death-cart. Marcus watched him go, wondering at his words, and then took a final look at the dead Dwarf.
Are they really so hard to understand, Deekius? You hate them, don't you? Could it not be safely assumed that they hate you, too?
He walked away as the thought entered his mind. The rat had said one true thing: he didn't have to care about the internal strife and mad desire to kill each other that plagued the residents of this underground kingdom.
So, why was he starting to?
…
At the very edge of the cavern, Skeever gave the command to make camp one final time. Here, they were as safe as they could be. Only a few Gutmulcher attacks had come their way, and the Kobolds had helped them make short work of the beasts.
A narrow bridge stretched from the edge of their position down into an abyssal expanse below, but if he strained his eyes, Marcus could make out the tips of brown spires and domes poking out from the dark below. The rats joined him in looking over the lip of the chasm and beat the rusted steel of their chests in victory.
It could only be Fleapit. Which meant one thing: their journey was finally coming to an end.
And that meant Marcus's time in this world was coming to an end.
He sat alone from the rest of the army, feeding on some putrid, half-cooked salamander Deekius told him had some nutritional value, and avoided the stares of most of the resting rats.
They seemed to be sleeping soundlessly next to their bonfires, their minds unperturbed by what had transpired. Though their noses must have been picking up the scents of the desiccated corpses they'd trundled all the way here with far more intensity than Marcus, their faces betrayed no horror or sorrow.
We have come to the lip of Fleapit, Marcus wrote in his parchment pages – pages which were slowly turning into more of a personal diary than historian's book draft. Deekius has encouraged us to stop so he might perform the proper rituals and prepare the group to re-enter the city. The rats don't seem to complain. All of them seem more secure than they've ever been with the tips of their capital city beneath them. They sleep soundly, while I can't close a single eyelid.
Gatskeek's death was my fault. The deaths of all those rats back there were my fault. This is not the admission of a wartime hero worthy of his exploits being recorded through film or the written word – this is, pure and simple, an idiot admitting where his failings are. Though the historian in me is calmly explaining that these casualties are just the reality of war, to see the corpses that littered those streets, to remember the faces of the Kobolds we've slain, and to see the broken, battered body of Gatskeek on that table – its more than simply just facing reality. It might be showing me a part of myself that I never even knew existed.
Even as I continue on, with nothing but the thought of home as my guide, you cannot blame me for being somewhat reflective – sentimental even – about those I've stood beside while they shed their blood in my name. 'Shai-Alud' they call me. Savior. Deliverance from suffering. An empire builder. Could I be those things? Maybe. I could rise to the heights of Ghengis Khan himself leading these rats in a slaughter across this sunken realm. I could stand above mountains of corpses while they worshipped me. It is what Deekius wants. It would be more than I ever could be back on earth.
The heresy of that final sentence struck Marcus with the intensity of a hot iron searing the soft flesh of his brain. Had he really just penned that thought? Had he really just expressed something so heinous, so unnatural - admitting that his exploits here might earn him a mark on this world?
To be a part of history, rather than simply its scribe…
Don't you owe that to the people you've killed?
He was about to angrily scrub that final line from his notes when Skeever plopped down beside him, his lame arm hanging limply from its socket.
"Sire Marcus," he said. "You are being deep in thought."
His tone was so low, barely a hushed whisper, so that Marcus completely abandoned his notes and met his cold eyes – eyes that looked out at the abyss that stretched beneath them. Eyes that were trained on nothing but the Ratman's home.
"I am thinking you will like Fleapit," he said. "Maybe you will be hating the smell at first, but it will be something you could get used to."
Marcus shifted awkwardly beside the battle-scarred warrior. "Well, I've certainly been learning to live with a lot of things, recently."
A moment of strained silence passed between them both, as each one understood the meaning behind the others' statement.
"You are not meaning to stay with us," Skeever said quietly.
Marcus suppressed the gulp in his throat, eyeing the scimitar in Skeever's hip. Gatskeek's weapon.
"No, Skeever," he replied. "I am not."
The rat merely sniffed by way of response, his eyes falling to his wound.
"I am understanding," he finally said. "A warrior's first thoughts are always being home."
"I am no warrior."
Skeever scoffed at this, seemingly amused by the notion. "You are thinking you do not fight with us, and so this is not making you a warrior. But you are making sure we all get here, Sire Marcus. You are helping us get home. It is only fair we are doing the same for you."
Marcus sighed into his arms. "You don't owe me anything, Skeever. If anything, I owe all your people an apo-"
"Do not be saying 'sorry'," Skeever interrupted, seizing Marcus with his sudden determination. "This word is meaning nothing to us. You are thinking you have killed Gatskeek. You are thinking you have killed my men. But you are not understanding that all of my kin are signing away their lives before we began our mission. We are knowing it is suicide. The fact any of us are remaining is miracle."
"And Gatskeek?" Marcus questioned, unsatisfied. "Did he sign away his life, too?"
Skeever wasn't to be put off. If anything, all his rage at his old kinsman's face seemed to have abated in the last few hours.
"I tell you of Gatskeek," he said, hunkering down with an uncharacteristic, almost jovial smile. "Gatskeek is taking post at Knifegut not because King Shrykul wishes it of him, but because he is volunteering. He is doing this because he reaches his twenty-fifth year. Soon, he will no longer be able to fight."
Marcus's curiosity took over. "Why?"
Skeever shrugged. "Strength is what Ratkin value. Old can not fight well. We are not living long lives, Marcus. We are hoping one of two things: to be dying in battle or from disease given by He-Who-Festers. I am preferring battle. Gatskeek is thinking the same."
Marcus was struck by the idea, as well as the candor in the Ratman's voice. He was explaining something that was so simple that Marcus had overlooked it entirely. Here was a whole society practically geared towards war. A society completely accustomed to death. It had become merely second nature to them – so much so that an old warrior like Gatskeek had died with a smile on his face, even knowing he would not see his home again.
It was this notion, and this alone, that prompted Macus to ask his next question – something that, if he thought about it, meant nothing if he was leaving this place tomorrow:
"Do your people believe in an afterlife? A place where you go after you die?"
Skeever looked at him. "The Dwarves are believing in this. They are believing in things like souls returning to stone they were born from. We are not like them. We know there is only darkness here. Our short lives are having meaning in making clan stronger. That is all."
Marcus caught himself smirking. The irony of him landing on the laps of these rats – of all people – and them having the most realistic perception of death he'd ever known, was suddenly all too evident to him.
"You're like Vikings," Marcus said. "The Norsemen of the Middle Ages. Only slightly more rational, and slightly more smelly."
Skeever shook his furry head. "I am not understanding you."
And Marcus, shifting to lay down and finally rest, chuckled back at him.
"That's alright," he said. "Most people never do. But, for what it's worth, thank you."
He looked over his shoulder after the rat said nothing more.
"Is that another phrase your people frown upon?"
The Ratman had similarly laid down to rest for the night - Marcus didn't expect him to reply anytime soon. So, when he did, Marcus admitted he still had more to learn about these rats than he thought.
"You are being welcome, Marcus."
###
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