The Wreck of the Annabelle Lee
By Musuko

As a captain in His Majesty’s Navy, his name had been spoken in the same hushed tones as Drake or Maynard, and the whispers predicted a future in Parliament. He was of the same cloth as the great heroes, they said. His ship, the HMS Restitution, a powerful and nimble a 36 gun fifth rate, was a legend to others, and to him it was his home, his tutor, and his mistress. He had served her as a seaman, climbed the greased ladder to midshipman, then lieutenant, and finally captain, becoming the bane of every French ship on the ocean.
	And when an ungrateful Admiralty decided to give command of her to one of their own favoured sons, recalling him and his ship, all he was to receive was the ship’s name, engraved on the watch bell, and a quiet desk in a quiet office in some dusty corner of the Admiralty. His decision turned the Restitution away from her home. Her name was scorched from the hull, and the captain in exile led his willing crew and beloved ship into a new life under a new flag and a new name, a flag of piracy.
Sir Wolf Redfang, mutineer and captain of the Annabelle Lee, formerly known as HMS Restitution, held his glass to his good eye and watched the distant ship as it crept over the horizon.
	“I believe it is her.”
	He offered the glass to the white mouse stood at his side. Lethias still wore the uniform of his former masters. His prim, clean attire and posture marked a sharp contrast against the roughness of his captain and their crew. He waved away the glass.
“I can smell them,” he said. “Rats. A whole stinking host of them. That’s her ship alright.”
Now Redfang could see the flag. A black star on red. He knew when it got closer that the star would resolve itself to be nine black rats, with bared teeth and burning eyes, their tails knotted together at the centre, the flag of the Rat King. She was a monstrous ship, fully a deck taller than the Annabelle Lee, an old galleon, half derelict and barely seaworthy, her former name long forgotten. But Redfang knew her to be a dangerous foe. A pirate ship did not survive as long as the Rat King had without being hideously deadly.
“Heave to and let her come to us. Make sure the men are at the guns.”
Lethias nodded and scampered away.
The Rat King sheathed her sails and drifted to a stop. A launch lowered into the water and slowly rowed over to the Annabelle Lee, whose crew dropped netting down her hull. Six black rats spread themselves in a semicircle on the deck, eyeing Redfang’s crew with obvious mistrust. The sentiment was returned just as strongly, and a wide expanse of empty deck lay between the assembled crew and the rats. Nobody spoke. Only the wind and creaking rigging dared break the silence. Redfang stood atop the aftercastle, next to a scowling Lethias, who visibly shuddered as one of the rats looked his way.
“Filthy things,” he hissed.
The rats parted. Their captain had climbed to the deck. A small figure, hidden within a black, hooded cloak. Her head lifted, and blue eyes gleamed deep in the shadow of the hood. She looked up at Redfang. Sharp, yellow teeth showed in a grin. Then her head lowered, and she strode across the deck towards the captain’s cabin, sending Redfang’s crew scattering to clear her wake. Fearful whispering rippled through the Annabelle Lee’s crew as the Rat King’s captain disappeared into the cabin. The six rats remained where they were, grinning malevolently.
“It seems you have a meeting with the good lady,” said Lethias.
“Hmm.” Redfang clumped down the steps to the quarterdeck. “To your stations, men!” he shouted to his crew, before ducking into his cabin.
She stood over his desk, a chart unrolled in front of her. She didn’t look up.
“Wolf.”
“Good to see you too, Ellius.” He strode over to the walnut drinks cabinet and poured whiskey into a fine crystal tumbler liberated from a French trader. “Would you like-”
“No. I’m here to talk, as I said in my message.”
He took a sip, savoured it, then set the glass down on his desk. He leaned over to look at the chart. Pointedly, she shifted it away from him.
“What are you here to talk about?”
“A prize.” She tapped the chart with a claw and looked up at him. At such close range her eyes were unsettling. Redfang knew why. It made him want to shiver. Those eyes never seemed to blink.
“What kind of prize?”
“A big one. Too big for just one ship to take. Do I have your interest?”
“That depends on what you’re offering.”
“Spanish treasure.”
Redfang started to laugh. “I did not take you as one for having delusions, my lady! Spanish treasure indeed!”
Ellius scowled. “Do you know Terik?”
Redfang’s laugh stopped cold. He narrowed his eyes. “I know Terik. We all know Terik.” Redfang slammed his fist on the table. Ellius didn’t flinch. He pointed at the scar across his eye. “I’m all too intimately familiar with Terik,” he spat.
“He found and looted the wreck of an old Spanish treasure galleon six months ago,” she continued, unfazed. “He’s been carrying the gold around with him in the Bastard ever since.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I have ways.”
They stared at each other. Finally, Redfang picked up his glass and swallowed the contents.
“The Bastard’s a ghost. You’ll never find her.”
“I have.”
“You know where she berths?”
“I do.”
“And you need me because?”
“I need the Annabelle Lee’s guns.”
Redfang looked down at the chart. Ellius’s claw was stuck into a small island. A mere speck on the ocean. Quickly, she slid her paw away to her side.
“I see,” he said. “And what’s to stop me just going after her myself?”
Ellius’s eyes, ever unblinking, were like ice. She stared him down. “Me,” she snarled.
“There’s no need for threats, my lady. There may be no honour among thieves, but there’s no sense in making enemies.” He carried the glass back over to the cabinet. “I’ll join you for this prize. Half the gold for my men, and I want the pleasure of killing Terik for myself.”
Ellius rolled up the chart. “Accepted.”
Redfang pulled open the cabin door and gestured. “After you, my lady.” He did not care to notice Ellius’s scowl as she pushed past him.
The rats rowed away, back to the hulk of the Rat King. Lethias joined Redfang in watching.
“We’re going after your brother,” said Redfang. Lethias visibly stiffened. “Does that trouble you?”
“He lost the right to be called my brother a long time ago.” He flexed his shoulders, and Redfang knew why. The long scars of the lash itched on Lethias’s back the most when he thought of the brother who put them there. “You plan to kill him.”
“I do.” Redfang watched as the rats’ boat reached the Rat King’s hull. The rats started to scurry up the hull without the aid of netting. “How are our stores of chain shot?”
“Full to brimming.”
“Tell the men to load it. Then get us underway.”
Great sheets of canvas unfurled from the Annabelle Lee’s masts to catch the wind. Ponderously she began to move, heaving through the water like a wooden whale. Redfang stood high on the afterdeck and watched as his ship swung slowly past the Rat King, whose sails were unfurling amongst the scurrying activity of what seemed like a thousand black rats. Below decks, the men waited, poised for the command.
	“Fire!”
	The ship lurched as her twelve-pounders blasted along her flank. Heavy chains screamed through the air, slashing through the Rat King’s rigging, decapitating a rat, disemboweling three more. Ropes parted with sounds like cracking whips. Wood shattered, hurling splinters. The rat crew rushed about in a frenzy, and the Annabelle Lee’s crew whooped in triumph as, with a thunderous groan, the rotten wood of the Rat King’s main mast disintegrated, sending it crashing over her side and into the sea.
	At full sail now, the Annabelle Lee swept past the crippled galleon. From his vantage point, Redfang could see Captain Ellius, stood stock still amongst the scurrying mass of her crew. He could see her blue eyes staring across at him. He raised a paw and shouted.
	“No honour among thieves! Good day, my lady!”
	Soon the Annabelle Lee saw the Rat King pass away over the horizon. Ahead of her lay the prize, ripe for the taking.

The Bastard lay at anchor in the wide, serene bay of the island. An ugly thing she was, squat and drab and fundamentally unremarkable sloop, able to dress herself as a merchant vessel with the colours and papers of a convenient country and slip past even the most keen-eyed of blockades, then run down and capture any number of actual merchants, who tended to strike their colours at the first glimpse of Terik’s feared black flag.
	Redfang spied her through his glass. No figures moved on her deck, and he could see no men in her rigging. The flag of Portugal hung from her stern, and the name Mora hung on cleverly-disguised painted boards, but it was the Bastard alright.
	“I don’t like this,” said Lethias. “Where are they all? Why haven’t they reacted? Surely they’ve seen us by now.”
	“Fire a shot,” said Redfang. “One cannon.”
	“Across her bow?”
	“No.”
	Fire roared from the cannon’s muzzle. Scraps of burning wadding fell into the water and sizzled. The twelve pound ball of iron screamed through the air and smacked into the Bastard’s flank with a splintering thud, hitting the corner of a closed gunport, smashing its hinge and flinging it spinning into the sea. A cheer rose from the men on deck.
	“Quiet!” growled Redfang. He stared at the anchored ship. Nothing moved. “Bring us alongside. We’ll board, weapons ready. And make sure the gunners are alert. Fire on anything that moves!”
	The men were throwing grapples and laying planks even before the two hulls bumped together. Redfang led the charge, storming across a plank and jumping down onto the Bastard’s deck. His crew swarmed across the ship and pulled open the hatches, disappearing inside. Redfang strode towards the cabin at the stern and found it stripped bare. Drawers and cabinet doors were pulled open, their contents gone. Every chart and paper was missing. And on the mahogany desk a single dagger stood, its point buried an inch deep into the wood. On the handle was carved the figure of a rat. He yanked the blade free.
	“Captain!”
	He turned, back out onto the open deck. The crew had gathered, milling awkwardly. Some grumbled. Others pointed their muskets out into open sea and emptied their guns by firing into the sky.
 	Lethias stepped forward. “The ship’s empty. No crew, no cargo. Nothing. But…” He held out a ragged shirt, bloodstained and torn. “This was on the gun deck, and there are blood stains here and there.”
	Redfang wasted no time with indecision. “Back to the ship.”
	“What about the Bastard?”
	“We burn her.”
	“Captain! Just the ship alone is worth-”
	“We burn her,” growled Redfang. He flung the dagger down. It stabbed point first into the deck planks, its handle vibrating. All could see the rat carved into it. “And then we hunt down the Rat King.”
	Lethias snapped orders at the men, who trudged back across the planks. Most grumbled. Some shot glances.
	“The men aren’t happy,” he said.
	“I can see that.”
	“They’ll feel they’ve been robbed of plunder.”
	“No prey, no pay. They know that. They’ll get their chance with the Rat King” Redfang yanked the dagger back out of the deck. He turned it over in his paw. “Now why would she betray me like this, I wonder.”
	“To trap us, maybe?” Lethias looked out over the water, to the entrance of the bay and the quiet sea beyond. “To take us as well as the Bastard?”
	“If that was her intention, I don’t feel so bad about betraying her first.” Redfang laughed. He clambered up onto the plank and strode across back to his ship. Lethias followed, far more uneasy about negotiating the thin strip of wood. “And any plan she might have had went to pieces with her mast! But what the hell has she done with Terik? Out of my way.” He pushed past a crewman. Lethias hurried to keep up. “If she’s killed the bastard before I can get my paws on him, I’ll wring her neck!”
	“About the crew, Captain…”
	“I hadn’t forgotten.” Redfang climbed onto the aftercastle and stuck his fingers into his mouth. His whistle pierced the air and turned every head towards him. “Now listen! I know you buggers wanted to get your blades wet, but it’s not happening today! We’ve been betrayed by those festering, stinking rats!” Jeers went up across the ship. “So we’re going after the rats ourselves. We’ll take vengeance on our stolen prize by taking their ship, their plunder, and their lives!” Now it was cheers that erupted across the ship, but many voices lacked proper enthusiasm. Redfang cast an arm towards the Bastard, where even now a dozen crew were stacking powder barrels and laying fuse. “Some of you no doubt wanted that ship for yourselves. I tell you, we’re not building a fleet here! And if we were, we’re not doing it with that swine Terik’s ship! If we are to be hunted by the British, the French, the Portuguese, the whole damn stinking lot of them, let them hunt us, and not chase us on that ship thinking they’ll find some pathetic, snivelling mouse cowering inside. We do not sail in the guise of our enemies! We burn her! And you all get double rations tonight!”
	That brought the cheer in earnest. Redfang turned smiling to Lethias.
	“Pathetic and snivelling mouse?” said Lethias, an eyebrow raised above a smirk.
	“Not you of course.” Redfang put his arm across Lethias’s shoulder and turned him towards the captain’s cabin. “You’re just pathetic.”
	Lethias rolled his eyes, and Redfang laughed hard. The Annabelle Lee unfurled her sails and slowly turned towards the open sea. Behind her, the fuzes fizzed on the deck of the Bastard and then, in a sudden, garish flash, the powder exploded, sending flaming fragments screaming through her sails and blasting down through her hull, smashing planks apart and shattering her right to her keel. In mere moments the ship folded in two and disappeared beneath the bubbling, rushing water, in an undignified, tangled lump.
	“That was satisfying,” said Redfang. “I would have loved to have seen it happen with Terik inside her.”
	“Well, captain,” said Lethias. “Be happy knowing that you still have him to kill.”
	“Hmm, there is that.” Redfang lay the dagger on his desk and stared at it. “Perhaps...just perhaps...he is onboard the Rat King?”
	“That would suggest that Ellius and my brother are conspiring together.” The mouse shuddered.
	Redfang fingered the blade, staring into blood-filled imagination. “One can only hope.”
	“Sail!” The cry came from above. Redfang sprang to his feet.
	“It can’t be her, can it?”
	They rushed out into the sunlight. The ship’s bell clanged feverishly. The greasy smoke of the Bastard’s flaming death still stained the rearward horizon. From the west, carrying the wind behind her, came the unmistakable shape of the Rat King. Redfang stared at her through his glass.
	“That’s her!”
	Two sparks of fire lit up at the Rat King’s prow as her chaser guns fired. The shots fell harmlessly into the ocean far short of the Annabelle Lee, their momentum spent, but the intention was clear; we are bringing a fight to you.
	“Bring us as close to the wind as you dare,” shouted Redfang. “Bring us close! I want to see their faces before we blast them away!”
	The drums beat in Redfang’s head. His blood was up. He gripped the wood of the gunwale and sunk his claws in deep. This was what life was for. An open sea, a heaving ship bristling with cannon beneath your feet, and a clear enemy waiting for you to rip to shreds, with a belly full of gold to tear out and take for yourself. No ship could stand against the Annabelle Lee, especially not the Rat King. That ancient galleon carried half the number of guns, and those that she did have were as likely to explode as they were to fire. All the Rat King had was a swarm of crew, numbering perhaps five times the number that the Annabelle Lee contained. Not that it would help when the cannons fired and grape stripped her overloaded decks bare. The fight would be unequal, and it would be quick.
	The gap between the two ships closed fast, with most of the speed coming with the Rat King, her sails swelled with the wind. The Annabelle Lee cut at an angle across her bow. The helmsman pulled hard on the wheel and thrust the rudder over. The ship rolled as she turned through the dead zone, her sails flapping limp. The crew of both ships whooped and cursed at each other. Swords waved, glinting in the sun. Muskets crackled in the rigging, their bullets thumping into wood or whistling through canvas. A rat fell screaming from the rigging, blood misting around him. A sword clattered to the deck of the Annabelle Lee as a wolf clutched his chest, staggering backwards, blood bubbling between his fingers. The two ships lumbered alongside each other. Then rolling flames roared down the length of each ship as both fired their broadsides. Iron blasted through the choking clouds of powder smoke and smashed into the wooden hulls. Splintered wood sprayed. Metal screamed on metal as shot struck cannons and shattered them. Screams split the air. Blood splashed on boards.
	With the instincts of a born master of the sea, Redfang timed out the moment to give the order. He raised a paw, watching for the stern of the Rat King to pass, then fling his arm out. “Turn!” he cried.
	The Annabelle Lee drifted onwards, unresponsive. The crew pulled at the wheel, but it spun freely. Something was wrong. The Rat King wheeled around behind the Annabelle Lee’s stern. Her gun crews feverishly reloaded.
	“Turn damn it!” Redfang looked up into the sails. Pointed directly into the wind, they were useless. And if they didn’t turn soon, the ship would lose its momentum and the rudder would become useless. The ship would be stuck, locked in irons.
	“Why are we not turning?” Redfang stormed across the afterdeck. Musket shot thumped into the deck around him. He leaped over a dying crewman, laying in a moaning pile amongst scattered cannon balls. One of the stern lanterns was smashed to splinters. Lethias and three crew leaned down over the gunwale. The mouse flinched and ducked as muskets fired from the Rat King’s rigging, hitting the wood by his paw.
	“What’s happening?” growled Redfang.
	“The rudder!” Lethias pointed down into the water. The rats on the other ship were close enough for their curses and insults to be heard. Her sails were being furled and she was drifting to a stop, her nearly reloaded guns bared and ready to blast withering, raking fire directly into the Annabelle Lee’s exposed stern. “The ropes are cut!”
	“How the hell…”
	Lethias let out a cry and raised his musket. He fired. Through the smoke, Redfang could see the splash of white foam as the bullet hit the water, a foot to the left of a swimming rat. He saw a knife gleam in its teeth as it swum away from his rudder, back towards the Rat King.
	“Utter cheats,” muttered Lethias. “Can’t fight on even terms, so they do that.” He lifted his first and waved it in uncharacteristic anger. “We’d destroy you in an even fight! We have more cannon! We have-”
	He ducked as a bullet whistled past his ear, his indignation dying to a whimper.
	Redfang burned the air with his curse. “Back the sails! Turn us to-”
	“Captain, get down!”
	The Rat King fired. Cannon flame split the air. Glass shattered. Wood cracked to splinters. Men screamed as the cannon balls raced the length of the ship, mincing them to bloody fragments and smashing cannons from their carriages.
	“Get off me,” shouted Redfang, pushing Lethias off of him.
	“Some thanks!”
	Redfang pulled himself up standing. The other lantern was now smashed. Behind him, the sails were tattered and holed. And below his feet, his crew suffered and died. The Rat King circled around to the other side of the ship. Her crew had not yet reloaded her cannons, but the Annabelle Lee’s gun decks were awash with broken cannons and broken men. Only a half dozen fired into the enemy’s flank, bringing jeers from the mouths of the rats, who were slinging grapples across. The wolves snatched them up and threw them into the sea, or cut the ropes with their knives, but still more clattered across onto the deck, and musket fire ate away at the wolves, dropping them one by one.
	“She’s going to board us,” yelled Redfang. He pulled the pistol from his belt and checked the priming pan. “To arms men!”
	Lethias crawled along the deck and plucked a musket from a dead paw. He sat back against a pile of cannon balls and loaded it with shaking fingers. “I am not looking forward to this.”
	Redfang leered at the rats. They hauled at the ropes that now lashed the two ships together, bringing their hulls to bump together. A few muskets fired from the rigging, but Redfang stood defiant of them. He searched the deck opposite, hunting for the hooded rat amongst the swarming crew. He watched as one rat swung across from a rope hanging from the sails, caught a bullet in his gut, and went tumbling to crash with a sickening thud against the Annabelle Lee’s deck. He couldn’t see her. Hiding like a coward below deck?
	And there, stood beside the repaired and braced main mast, an upright figure amongst the hunched, scurrying rats, was a white mouse in a navy blue coat trimmed with gold. Redfang roared, wordless and enraged. He raised his pistol.
	“Terik!”
	The mouse turned his head. His red eyes gleamed like embers. Redfang levelled the pistol, lining the mouse’s loathsome head in the sights. He fired. The powder flashed in the pan and the muzzle kicked back with a spray of fire. The mouse flinched and cupped the side of his head. For a moment Redfang felt elation, expecting to see Terik tumble to the deck, a broken doll, stone dead. But then the mouse lifted his paw away to expose only a bloodied ear, freshly pierced by the bullet. Redfang had been robbed of satisfaction by mere inches. He threw down his pistol and reached for his belt, but the second pistol was gone. He growled and looked back along the deck to where Lethias had thrown him down, but if the pistol was there it was lost amongst the smoke and chaos on deck. He cursed, unsheathed his sword, and readied the curved blade against the first invaders who charged and swung across onto his ship, screaming with fury to meet the roars of his canine crew.
	“Skin them alive,” he yelled, raising the sword above his head. “Charge!”
	The wolves needed no encouragement. They stormed across the planks that the rats had laid, crashing into the rats coming the other way. Swords swung and stabbed. One rat took a sword to the gut, thrusting hard enough to pierce his back and send blood spraying in gouts onto the board behind. He screeched, in rage more than pain, and sunk his claws into the wolf who stabbed him. Together they tumbled off the plank, hit the curve of the Annabelle Lee’s hull with a crack of bone, and plunged into the sea. Redfang faced a hissing black rat, dressed in salt-crusted rags of leather and canvas. He lifted his sword and the rat lifted a battered matchlock pistol and pulled the trigger. The powder flashed, and Redfang braced himself for the impact. But the bullet jammed and the pistol’s corroded barrel blew itself apart. The rat hissed and threw it away, reaching for a dagger in his belt.
	“Give it up!” growled Redfang. But the rat lunged, slashing the blade at Redfang’s arm. He knocked it away with his sword and brought the blade cutting across the rat’s neck. The dagger clattered onto the plank and bounced into the water. The rat’s eyes stared through Redfang, uncomprehending, while blood gushed down his chest. Redfang shoved him aside to tumble into the sea and jumped down onto the enemy deck. Four rats surrounded him, baring yellow teeth and rusting blades.
	“Who wants to go first?” snarked Redfang.
	All four raised their blades and lunged. Redfang parried the first, clashing steel on steel. He brought his elbow back into the face of the rat to his side and was rewarded by the crack of shattering teeth. A dagger stabbed into his side. It caught in the fold of his jacket, but the point sunk two inches into his flesh. He howled, enraged, and slashed his sword across the face of his attacker. And then everything was a blur. Wild, raging, animal instinct took over. Blood misted in the air as his blade cut and stabbed.
	“Wolf, you disgusting stink streak of a mutt!”
	He knew the voice. Of course he did. Terik’s sneering, whining voice, cutting across the chaos and the screams. He turned away from the crumpled bodies of the four dying rats, looking up at the mouse who stood at the hatch to the Rat King’s captain’s cabin. Redfang kicked away a body. A rat jumped into his path, snarling. One of his wolves leapt from the gunwale and tackled him, tumbling together onto the deck and colliding with the carriage of a cannon. Redfang heard the dying squeak of the rat as the wolf snapped his neck. He fixed his eyes on the mouse and strode towards him, his blade point dripping with blood, ready to taste blood again. This time it would be from the gut of a snivelling little mouse!
	Terik had the audacity to grin as he approached. His punctured ear dripped blood onto his shoulder. The mouse seemed to ignore it. His paw rested on the hilt of a slender cavalry sabre hanging in a scabbard at his side. A bullet smashed a pane of the hatch window behind him. The mouse ignored it, even as shards bounced off his arm. Those red eyes stayed fixed on Redfang, and he stared back, baring his teeth.
	“Come to me, little doggy! Come to me and I’ll add another scar! I’ll give you a matching pair!”
	Redfang lunged. The mouse stepped nimbly to the side. The blade stabbed into the wood of the hatch and knocked it open with a clatter. Redfang wrenched it free and spun to face Terik, expecting to have to parry away his blade. But the mouse still stood with his sword sheathed. He still wore that careless grin.
	“Here doggy! Come on now, you can do better than that!”
	Cannon fire crashed beneath them. Whether it came from his ship or the rat ship, Redfang couldn’t tell. The ship rocked under his boots. Smoke rolled across the deck. He couldn’t see the far end of the ship, but fighting raged for as far as he could see. Rats and wolves died, snarling and screeching. He lunged for Terik again, and the mouse stepped to the side. He lifted his boot and kicked Redfang as he stumbled past. His haughty laughter burned in his ears.
	“Your ship is mine, mutt!” The mouse finally unsheathed his sword. “You shouldn’t have betrayed the rat! She took my ship and my plunder and I made her a wager for my life. Make you an offer, I said, and my life will hinge on what you choose to do. If you would stay faithful to the bargain, then my throat would be slit and you would have both my ship and yours. But betray the rat and your life would be mine, as would your fine ship! It will look good with my flag hanging from her!” He waved his paw, grinning. “The Bastard II, spelled out across her stern.” He raised his sword, bringing the point towards Redfang’s neck. The wolf knocked it away with his own sword and snarled.
	“You’re a worm, Terik! A slimy, cowardly worm!”
	“And you’re a traitor, mutt. To your country and to your peers. You shouldn’t have betrayed the rat! But, of course, you couldn’t help yourself. Your obsession with seeing me dead has slit your own throat and given me your ship!” He whipped his sword through the air and Redfang stepped away. “I knew you would fail! I knew you wouldn’t trust her! I knew you’d be a stupid mutt and doom yourself! And now you’re mine, Redfang! Mine to slit from the guts upwards!”
	“You’ve got to put the blade in my first, Terik!”
	“I shall have no problem doing that!”
The mouse darted forwards, jabbing the sword. Redfang knocked it aside with a clash of steel. He lunged his free paw forwards, aiming for the mouse’s scrawny neck, but he swiped at empty air as the mouse ducked away. The wound in his side burned, but he ignored it. The fire of anger was far stronger. He just needed to get his claws or his blade into that damn mouse.
“Hold still and fight like a man!”
“Hush doggy! Woof woof!”
Terik’s eyes focused beyond Redfang’s shoulder. He ducked, but raised his sword up just in time to knock away Redfang’s swinging attack. A musket cracked and a fresh bullet hole appeared in the wood above Terik’s head. Slowly, the bullet fell out and clattered to the deck. Redfang turned to look. Lethias stood five paces behind him, a musket held up to his shoulder.
“Missed.” The mouse cursed and tossed the weapon down, drawing a pistol from his belt. He froze, sudden fear in his eyes. “Look out captain!”
Redfang swung back to see Terik’s sword arcing towards his head. He flung his sword up, clashing a parrying blow. But the force of the mouse’s swing brought Redfang’s sword down with it, and the metal screeched as the mouse’s blade skittered down the length of Redfang’s sword and slipped off the tip, catching a glancing blow against the wolf’s shoulder.
“You’re no gentleman, Terik!” Redfang clutched at his shoulder, where blood started to seep into the fabric of his jacket. A minor wound, more pain than harm. He lifted his bloodied paw away and clutched the hilt of his sword in both paws. “No gentleman at all, attacking a man with his back turned!”
“No less gentlemanly than firing a broadside on a so-called ally!”
“I don’t act like a gentleman,” growled Redfang, “because I don’t claim to be one. I don’t drape myself in fancy clothes like some squeaking mouse dandy!” He spat and lunged towards Terik, the attack easily parried. “No offence intended, Lethias!”
“None taken captain! Duck!”
Redfang dropped down. But Terik did the same, and the pistol’s shot smashed harmlessly through another pane in the hatch’s window. Cannon fire once again shook the deck, and Redfang knew this time that it wasn’t his cannons at work; he heard the cheers of rats. He risked another glance. Black smoke was billowing from the hatches in the deck of the Annabelle Lee. His men were rushing back across the planks, intent on saving the ship. All apart from those who lay dead in heaps on the Rat King. There were piles of dead rats, more than four or five for each wolf. But there were just as many live ones remaining, a distressingly large army still to fight. They charged to follow the wolves across, but the planks were kicked away and some of the wolves regrouped on the Annabelle Lee, holding a defensive line of bayonet-tipped muskets and swords. The rats scrambled about the deck, searching for their own discarded muskets, or looting ones from dead wolves. And beneath his feet, Redfang knew the rats would be reloading. Could his ship withstand another close range broadside? If that fire spread to the powder stores, all would be lost. He only knew it hadn’t because the Annabelle Lee thus far wasn’t a fiery wreck.
Some of the rats on deck turned their attention to him. There wasn’t much time.
“Lethias! Leave me! Get back to the ship!”
“Not a chance, captain!”
The mouse rushed forwards, dropping the pistol and unsheathing his sword. Terik had the audacity to laugh.
“My brave brother!”
Redfang thrust the point of his sword towards Terik’s throat, but the mouse jumped backwards and disappeared into the shadows within the captain’s cabin. Redfang ducked to follow him in, but Lethias’s paw gripped his arm.
“No, captain! It’s a trap! Can’t you see?”
“Let go!” He wrenched his arm away. He risked another glance back. The smoke from the Annabelle Lee was dying away, and the wolves were pushing back across the planks the rats were already laying back across between the ships. The tide was turning back again. The rats that had been rushing towards them had now turned again to fight the invading wolves. Redfang and Lethias were once again safely ignored. “Just follow me, damn you!”
Lethias hissed, baring his teeth. “If you get us killed I’ll never forgive you, captain.”
Redfang burst in first. The darkness of the shadowed cabin was like a blindfold for the crucial first seconds. Lethias pushed in behind him, sword point raised, a wordless war cry bursting from his small lungs. There was a bang, louder than the crack of thunder in such a confined space, and the flash of burning powder and the awful stink of rotting eggs. Redfang flinched, but felt nothing. The cloud of smoke drifted, and Terik stepped towards him, lowering the pistol and raising his sword.
“Oh now that is unfortunate,” he said.
Redfang heard a soft moan behind him, then the clatter of steel as Lethias’s sword fell to the deck. He turned in time to see the mouse crumple to his knees, clutching his stomach, blood streaming through his fingers.
“You bastard!” Redfang charged Terik. The mouse stabbed his sword forwards, but Redfang didn’t parry it. He let the blade’s point sink into his flank and carried his own sword forwards to punch right into the mouse’s chest. He felt the sternum crack and shatter. He felt the organs within rip apart as his sword cut through lung and heart. He saw the mouse’s red eyes open wide. He saw his mouth gape. He saw the disbelief in his face as the mouse looked down at his own sword, where it pierced the wolf’s side. Then he looked back up to Redfang’s murderous expression.
“How…” he gurgled.
Redfang yanked his sword back, but the mouse’s body was stuck. He growled, raised a boot, and slammed it into Terik’s thigh. His limp body fell away, trailing droplets of blood, and pulling the sword from Redfang’s side. He howled in pain and clutched the wound. Terik fell heavily to the deck, gasped weakly, then lay still, his eyes staring open at the ceiling. Redfang turned, nearly falling himself, and found himself too late. Lethias too was gone. He leaned against the hatch’s frame, gasping for breath, feeling light-headed. Terik was gone. He had killed him. But at that moment he didn’t feel the pleasure he had hoped for.	
He heard a click from behind him. He groaned and closed his eyes.
“Who’s there?” he said.
“Hello Redfang.” It was Ellius. He felt his gut twist. “You’ve made a mess of my cabin.”
“And your ship.” He turned to face her and found the muzzle of a pistol pointed right between his eyes. Ellius stood poised, her body half turned, a dagger in her other paw, raised and ready, no doubt there to discourage him from attempting to grab at the pistol.
“And my ship, yes.” She gestured with the pistol. “Step aside, please. And drop your sword.”
Redfang growled, but Ellius bared her teeth. Sharp, yellow incisors, jagged and scored, weapons all their own. She pressed the pistol closer against his forehead. With a defiant glare, he threw the blade to the floor and stepped to the side. She moved with him, circling towards the hatch. She shouted something through it in a language Redfang couldn’t understand, and heard distant replies. Whatever was said, it pleased her. She turned her smile towards him.
“We have your ship, Redfang.”
He spat. “You’re a liar. My men would have blown her before they let you take her. And I heard no explosion.”
“Hmm. Clever boy.” She stepped back as four rats scurried in through the hatch. Momentarily, Ellius’s pistol was blocked. But two of the rats pointed their own at him, and the other two advanced to grab his arms. He hissed in pain as the two wounds in his sides reminded him of their presence.
“Take him to his ship,” she said.
The two rats yanked his arms hard behind his back, and he growled a curse at them. One of the two with the pistols cracked the butt against his head. His legs weakened, and he groaned woozily. Between the four of them they bundled him out of the cabin. Serenely, holding her pistol down at her side, Ellius followed. She tutted as she stepped over Lethias’s body. Out on deck her rat crew waited. Redfang could see their malevolent faces, grinning in triumph, as he was marched out in front of them. Bodies lay everywhere. And the Annabelle Lee, no-longer smoking, was swarming with them also. If any of his crew lived, he could not see them. The rats cheered at the sight of their captain, and Ellius raised her paws to them. She spoke again in the strange, incomprehensible language, but then turned a smirk towards Redfang. She gestured at the nearest wolf corpse and continued to address the crew whilst switching to words that Redfang could understand.
“And stack those mangy nonnies in the hold. We’ll give them a burial fitting for their kind. We’ll leave them for the birds on the next island we see.”
Redfang snarled and lunged forwards, but one of the rats holding him rammed a knee into the small of his back. Agony lanced through him and he coughed. “You stinking rat…”
“Burial at sea is too good for them,” she said, calmly gesturing for the rats to lead Redfang across to the captured deck of his own ship. “I must thank you, Redfang. I was bound by my word to give your ship to Terik if he won our wager. But now you’ve killed him, you’ve saved me the chore of killing him myself. One less nonnie to waste a bullet on.” She seemed to shudder. “Having a mouse on my ship sickened me.”
“Mice, rats…” Redfang stumbled as the rats kicked him down onto his deck. More muskets and blades aimed at him, from all around. “You’re all the same to me.”
“Even dear Lethias? You seemed fond of him.”
Redfang growled and said nothing. The rats shoved him towards the main mast, now pockmarked and scared by musket shot. The rats spun him and shoved his back against the wood, then dragged his arms behind him. He bit down on a yelp of pain and forced it to become a growl. He felt his wrists being lashed together, strung with rope around the thick trunk of the mast. His ankles were pulled apart, and he felt rope lashed around them too.
“My crew-” He hissed as a thick rope swung around from behind, looping across his neck. It pulled tight, cinching hard, nearly choking the air out of him.
“You were right, Redfang.” Ellius strolled the deck in front of him. The rats spread apart to give her space. “We haven’t taken your ship fully. Not quite yet. Some of your crew have barricaded themselves in the hold.”
“They’re brave. Wolves! Not like you scum!”
Redfang barely saw her nod, but he felt the crack of the musket’s butt against his cheek. He felt the bone shatter. He turned his head and bit his lip.
“You’re right,” she said. “They are brave. But stupid. They’ve got powder down there, I suspect? Flint and steel ready to blow themselves and the ship to pieces if we try to get in there? So very stupid.”
She stepped close in front of him. He could rip her throat out with his teeth, if it weren’t for the rope holding his neck back. He snarled, but she did not flinch. She seemed almost uncaring as she stared at him. Then, slowly, she raised a paw, a single finger outstretched, and drove her claw hard against the blood-soaked patch on his side, driving it against the raw wound of the stab wound left by the rat. He howled now, shaking against the mast, making the ropes that held him creak with his fight.
“You can save them,” she said. “Convince them to lay down their weapons and come out.” She lifted her finger away, frowning at the blood on her claw, then wiped it clean on his jacket.
“Go to hell!”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. She extended her finger again and this time she pressed it against the wound on his other side, where Terik’s sword had sunk deep. He clenched his eyes shut and smacked the back of his head against the mast. The assembled rats cheered.
“Silence!” she cried. Her finger stayed in place, twisting. “There’s loot down there too, isn’t there? Even a worthless nonnie like you must have stripped a merchant or two.” He claw turned into the wound, pressing the ragged, filthy fabric into the blood. He growled through clenched teeth, his eyes fixed on hers. Rage...such rage in his eyes.
“More than you’ve ever plundered,” he growled.
“Hmm.” She pulled her finger free and held her paw out to her side, snapping her fingers. Her eyes never left him as a rat rushed up to her side and wiped a rag over her paw, then laid a small leather bag in her palm. “I am being very pleasant about this, I hope you realise. There are so many things that I could do, things that even a pathetic little stain like you wouldn’t deserve.” She smiled, but it sent a chill through him. The wicked glint in her eye came from animal ancestry. This was the fierce, tenacious evil of the scurrying, biting rat. She looked over her shoulder at her assembled crew. “Remember the governor we gave to the boats?” A murmur of laughter passed through the crew, and all of their evil eyes stared at Redfang.
“You’d like the boats,” she continued. “You have to get some native boats, of course, so that they’re small enough. Then you trap the poor wretch inside two of them. Like an ugly little smear of slime inside a clam shell. You make sure his head is sticking out from between the two, and you keep him well-fed with milk and honey.” Her eyes went distant and her toothy grin spread wider. “We only had sour milk that time. Oh how he heaved and gagged. But we forced him to swallow it. And inside the boats he would expel his foul, stinking mess. The insects love it. You have to do it on land, of course. And the creepy crawlies you get on the islands around here are frightening. They bite. They sting…”
Redfang trembled. He kept his eyes rigid, staring at her. But his cheek twitched.
She laughed. “One time we did it with rats. Low rats, I mean. The poor soul didn’t last very long.” She closed her eyes, lost in the memory. “Oh how he screamed.”
“You’re sick,” he hissed.
Her eyes opened, pearls of blue fire, and he flinched. “So understand,” she said, unlacing the leather bag and opening up the neck, “that I am being very generous with how I am treating you. Will you tell your crew to stand down and let them live?”
He spat. His mouth was dry, but he still managed to produce the insult. She darted her head to the side to avoid it. The rats around them surged forwards, weapons up. She raised a finger and they fell back.
“Are you sure?” She thrust her paw and the bag against his sword wound. He saw the white powder spill out, falling in thin trails to the deck below. But most of it ground into his raw flesh. A bag full of salt. It was like fire. Her paw rubbed from side to side, grinding more of the burning grit deep into him. His head threw back and he roared in agony and rage. He strained against the ropes holding him. He could feel the coarse twists cutting into his flesh. His breath choked to nothing as he pushed his throat against the rope around his neck. He felt the rope give, just a little. But then his strength collapsed away from him and he fell limp, gasping, his body still trembling with the raging furnace of pain radiating from his side.
The foul rat dropped her bag and dusted off her paws. While he screamed and thrashed and sweated and panted, she stood like some aloof empress, untouched and unfazed by the agony she could inflict with just the touch of a paw.
“You need to think of your crew, captain,” she said, the final word carrying nothing like the level of respect it should. Her smile stayed, toothy and mocking. “You would let them die pointlessly for your pride?”
He groaned, but raised his head to glare at her. “They will never surrender themselves to a rat,” he sneered. “Even if I commanded them to. It is their pride, not mine, that keeps them fighting against you.” He managed a smile, his teeth pearly white. Some blood trickled red from his broken gum from the smash of the butt that had broken his cheekbone. “They’ll storm out from below and retake the ship. And then I’ll tie you to this very mast and make you scream for mercy!”
“You have such an imagination.” She stepped away, over to another rat. He seemed more cleanly dressed than some of the others. He held a small satchel out. She reached in and lifted out a knife. It was the one he had found on the Bastard, which her rats had now looted from his cabin. He winced, thinking of these creatures running loose on his ship. He tried to imagine his crew, sealed up in the hold, waiting for their moment to burst free and slaughter them all. How many of his wolves were left, he wondered? How many rats were there to kill?
“You were not meant to take this,” she said, waving the blade. “It was meant to stay, as my marker. The rats were here, others beware. Why did you take it?”
“So I could sink it into your gut!”
“Like this?” She lunged forwards, and he flinched. But she stopped the point of the blade just short of his belly. She laughed, and the rest of the rats joined her in the mocking sound. Redfang growled.
 “Oh I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to trick you like that.”
“Trickery is all you rats have,” he growled.
“Not true. We bite pretty hard too.” She dangled the dagger from two fingers as she strolled around behind him. “How many crew do you have hiding below us, do you think? Ten?”
He heard the thunk of the dagger’s blade entering the wood. Then a moment later came the pain. It stung, like the searing of a hot coal against raw, sunburned skin. It blossomed up his arm, his nerves screaming in a frenzy of confused alarm. He shook against the ropes and bit down a howl, turning it into a rumble of threatening rage. She stepped back into view. His vision was foggy. He could feel his heart pounding in his head. His lips peeled back from his teeth and he snapped a bite at her, straining and choking on the rope around his neck.
She held one of his fingertips, from the claw down to the first knuckle. Her dagger dripped with his blood. She treated the digit like it was something she had fished out of a latrine. She held it by the claw with her fingertips and stared at the blood dripping from it, an amused smile on her face.
“Nine, perhaps?”
He couldn’t find words. Only a growl, primal and threatening.
“Anyone hungry?” she said, turning to her crew and presenting the finger. They laughed and jeered. She tossed it over their heads, over the side of the ship, into the sea below.
“You need only agree to order you men to lay down their weapons,” she said, “and they can survive. Your ship can survive. Your reputation can survive.”
“You’ll still kill me,” he growled.
“Of course I’ll still kill you.” She touched a claw to the tip of her dagger, idly spinning the blade. “But I’d do it quickly, which is more than you deserve.”
Redfang growled a curse. She only raised an eyebrow.
“So, how many?” she said. She flipped the dagger over and held the handle between two fingers, letting it dangle point down. “Maybe there are twenty? Or nineteen?” She wrapped each finger slowly around the handle, steadying the blade. She looked down at his boots. She licked her lip. “Ready to give them up?”
“Go to-”
She sprung downwards, slicing the dagger through the air and stabbing the point into the toe of his boot. It sliced cleanly through the stiff leather, through the flesh and bone of his big toe, through the sturdy sole, to embed in the planking of the deck below. Blood instantly bubbled out of the top of the boot and poured from the gash in the sole. He could feel still more spreading through the inside of the boot, a sickening heat that made him feel woozy. It felt different now; a deep, aching pain. His body felt mortal now, and the pain was bringing along its eternal companion; fear. He growled again, forcing himself to turn the fear into rage. He stared at her grinning, malevolent face, contentrating on the wonderful fantasy of wrapping his paws around that neck and pounding that head to bloody pulp against the deck.
“Eighteen, perhaps?” she said cheerfully, wrenching the blade free. She wiped it on his jacket, smearing his own blood into the wool.
“They won’t surrender and you know it,” he hissed. “Just end this.” He spat. A tooth felt loose. The iron tang of blood was on his tongue. His muzzle felt like it was unhinged, cracked and broken from the strike earlier. The blood was draining from him, he knew, from wounds too large and numerous to stem. Still he fought to hold on, closing his mind in around the rage, focusing it to a steely point. “Put that dagger through my throat or let me loose to fight you properly.”
“You already had your fight, wolf, and you lost.” She swept her arm around her, taking in the captured ship. “Everything that was yours is now mine. It is the way the world works. The rats will inherit all.”
The crew cheered around her. A couple of pistols cracked, fired into the sky.
“Not everything.” He spat again, and this time a tooth came with it. It hit the deck and rattled away. “Sooner or later my men will blow the ship from under us. You’ll take nothing from me!”
“I’ll still have taken it from you,” she said mildly. “Whether I get to keep it is no care of mine. I will sail away with the satisfaction that you’re nothing but a scrap of foam in the tide.”
“Go ahead and take another finger then,” he growled. “If it’ll shut you up!”
She stepped closer. If it weren’t for the rope around his neck, he could lean forward and tear her throat out right there. She held the dagger up and tapped the point against his chin. “You have a lot of teeth, mutt. So, how many crew do you think are down there?”
He clenched his mouth shut, but she forced the point of the blade between his lips. He wrenched his head to the side, but she was quicker. The blade slid between two teeth, gashing the gum, and then a twist of her wrist forced a sickening crunch and a broken tooth flung from his mouth in a spray of blood.
She tutted, wiping at her arm. “You are a mess.”
He coughed, spitting blood. A second tooth fragmented and tumbled from his mouth. “At least I’m not a rat.”
“Still too many teeth. Too much will. I’ve got the cure right here.” She stepped in with the dagger again. But as the point reached his lips, the deck heaved beneath her feet, knocking her forwards. She fell against his side, knocking his agonised wound, and dodged away as he snapped his teeth, missing her hood by inches.
Fire erupted through every porthole on the ship and up through the hatches. Rats screamed where they were caught in the inferno and flaming figures danced and rushed to throw themselves into the water. The masts swayed, shuddering right up to their tips. Slowly, with the screams of metal and ripping wood, the ship fell back down into the churning sea. Black smoke boiled around them, laced with sparks, and flames licked through the growing gaps in the disintegrating decks.
“They did it,” coughed Redfang, spitting blood. He laughed, throwing his head back. “They blew the powder,” he shouted. “They did it!”
The rats streamed away across the planks. Where they had fallen, the rats leaped across the gap, catching against the gunwales to be hauled up by their fellows. Some tumbled into the ocean, where they sank or swam. Others cut frantically at the ropes that lashed the Rat King to the burning Annabelle Lee, to free her from the same fate. The rats scurried sometimes on all fours, clambering over each other, shouting orders in their language, frenzied with activity.
In the eye of the storm stood Ellius, coldly staring at him. She said nothing. She lifted her arm and wiped the blade of her dagger clean on her sleeve, then tossed it down at his feet. The point stuck fast into the deck between Redfang’s boots. He howled with laughter, even as the black smoke burned at his eyes and choked his lungs. The red glow showed between the gaps in the deck boards, and the plumes of flames rushing from the hatches grew stronger. The sea throthed as it poured in through the shattered hull. Slowly, the Annabelle Lee was collapsing into the waves.
“You haven’t defeated me,” yelled Redfang. Behind him, the foremast fell away, with the tortured groan of splintering wood and the whip crack snap of parting ropes. “I will die, but you haven’t defeated me, rat!”
Still she said nothing. Just her firm, fixed stare. Then, as calmly as she might stroll her own deck, she walked over to the planks and climbed up. She didn’t look back as she walked over to her own ship, nor when the planks were lifted away and the Rat King, rushing to unfurl her sails to catch the wind, drifted away from the burning wreck.
Redfang watched her sail away. He could not see her amongst the crowd of rats on the deck, but he did not care. She was there, somewhere, and he knew she steamed in the heat of humiliated defeat. He had won. His ship burned, his crew were dead, and soon he would join them, but he had won. His plunder and his pride would slip beneath the surface of the sea and fall down into the cold, black deep, to settle on the sea bed where none will ever find it. But she would never get her claws into his gold, and she would never paint her name on the stern of his ship, and she could never say that she bested Wolf Redfang. He died by the actions of his own crew, a last fiery act of defiance against the world.
A blast shook the ship, and she rolled heavily towards starboard, and for a moment Redfang expected her to roll right over. But, slowly, she rolled back upright.
“Good girl,” he coughed. That would have been a powder store. Not the main magazine. The whole ship would have gone if it were. It wouldn’t be long now. He closed his eyes, embracing the inevitable, awaiting the flames.
Something bumped against his boot, and he opened his eyes. Ellius’s dagger had fallen and rolled towards him. Now, suddenly, fate hinted at another ending. He lifted his boot and pressed down on the blade, holding it in position. He bent his knees and tugged himself downwards. His arms moved easily, dragging the rope with them, but his neck snagged against the stubborn rope around it. He gritted his teeth and pulled harder, choking himself. Through his tear-rimmed eyes he could see the Rat King’s sails. The ship was far off, out of range of hearing. He let out a furious scream and pulled, hard. And then, a sound like a chorus of angels; the sound of the neck rope parting and snapping. He fell forward, then was free to crouch down and twist around, with the pain in his sides lancing through him, to reach blindly for the dagger and scoop it up into his paws.
 	Fire began now to flicker through the broken deck. It burned at his fingers, and he shouted again. It was a scream now, of pain rather than fury. The rats could not hear. His crew could not hear. As the fire began to lap against his legs, scorching his clothes and his fur, searing against his flesh, he let loose his own mental restraints, screaming as loud as his rasping throat would manage. He gripped the dagger hard in his unwounded paw, sawing the blade against the rope that bound his wrists. His unthinking mind saw nothing but the chance to break himself free from the burning, sinking ship. It thought nothing of the second death that would follow, adrift in the unfriendly ocean, no ship beneath him, drained of blood and strength. He felt the rope begin to part.
	A loud crack, like the sound of a musket being fired close to his ear, marked the death throes of some structural beam deep in the ship’s heart. The deck began to buckle, right beneath his feet, the ship splitting in two around the main mast. The prow fell away in front of him. The sea rushed to fill the ragged, wooden wound, but it was too slow. The flames were faster, and they roared up into the open air, rushing like a wave over Redfang’s body. He screamed as every inch of his body burned. He clenched his eyes shut, but he felt his tears boil. He sucked on burning air, feeling the pain stab in his lungs. He fumbled, dropping the knife, but the rope parted, snapping, burning. He fell forwards, for a moment out of the scorching furnace, his clothes smouldering, his face burned and blackened, stripped of fur. The temptation to lie still and accept the end was immeasurable. But, slowly, screaming hoarsely as his skin cracked and bled, he reached down to tug at the ropes holding his ankles. In the hazy fog of his dying mind, he thought to rip at the laces, pulling his feet free from the boots, freeing himself.
	The ship lurched again, rolling to starboard. The main mast, as if now freed of his burden, twisted and snapped its rigging, tumbling away towards the sea, unrooted as the ship itself broke apart around it. The dagger rattled across the slanting deck, and he snatched for it, catching it in his wounded paw and gripping it tight around the blade, scoring his palm. He hauled himself up onto all fours, pulled himself across the burning deck, caring not when his fingers reached through roaring streams of flame, and threw himself with his last strength towards the disintegrating gunwale. His arms weakened, finally collapsing completely. His face hit the blood-stained deck and he groaned, unable to move. But the ship lurched, rocked by the thunderous crash of dismounted guns rolling down the slanting gun deck, and the Annabelle Lee, as her last action, threw her captain over the side to safety, tumbling down into the sea below, and into the cool, black water of oblivion.

The island was little more than a spit of sand, pocked by a small clump of listless jungle. The charred, groaning figure clawed its way up the beach, to collapse into the wide, tropical leaves beneath a leaning palm. He closed his eyes. He had moved through a dream, unthinking and unknowing, guided only by tenacious instinct. Only when he woke, countless hours later, did lucidity return. And with it, the pain.
	He lay screaming and whimpering in the sun as the seawater dried to a salt crust that burned in his wounds. But, as the day wheeled past around him, the pain ebbed. It didn’t die away entirely. Perhaps it didn’t lessen at all. Perhaps his shattered mind ceased fighting it and, instead, embraced it, harnessing the fire and turning it into a tool, a weapon, something to cling to. Slowly, staggering, he fought to stand up, leaning against the trunk of the palm. He dared not look at his own body. He could barely see through his crusted eyelids. Death could still come, he knew. But now he saw something that required him to live, just at least a little while longer.
	The Rat King lay at anchor just off the island. Two launches were rowing between her and the shore, ferrying bodies to stack on the bleak sand. Already birds were circling above, awaiting their feast.
	He looked down, uncurling his fingers from the dagger in his paw. He flipped it over and gripped the handle. He felt like a corpse, broken and smashed, ready to collapse at any moment. But inner fire drove him on. For there on the shore, watching the bodies stack up, was a small hooded rate, with blue eyes and yellow teeth. And he had a dagger for her. Slowly, with shuffled steps, he started to walk, and he smiled.