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But the next time something came streaking toward his boots, the gnome screamed, and Archie was ready for it.
Something thumped into his sack.
Something small but strong and desperate to get out. What if it ripped open the sack?
Archie quickly fell on top of the sack, hearing a slight crunch underneath his chest.
Another thing Archie was good at—falling like a boulder and weighing half a ton.
“That’s right! Squish him with your giant rump!” the gnome yelled, but he stayed behind Archie as Leo skidded to a stop right in front of them, his head cocked.
“Well?” the gnome pressed, pointing at Leo accusingly. “Aren’t you going to squish that one too? It’s full of dark and twisted magic, I swear.”
“No.” Archie straightened up, trying to regather himself. He already had one unknown creature in his sack, and that was more than enough for him. Just because he could squish creatures smaller than himself, didn’t mean he wanted to. He wasn’t an ogre. “That ‘monster’ is on my side.” Or at least, Archie sincerely hoped Leo was on his side, even if he was going a little off-script. “But I won’t send him after you if you make a bargain with me.”
The gnome frowned. “What kind of bargain?”
“No more stealing radishes. Leave the cellar and never come back.”
“That’s it?”
Archie tried to look firm. He was a huntsman. A giant huntsman. And that was all the gnome had to know. “That’s it.”
The gnome waved both his hands in an eager dismissal. “Fine. The radishes here aren’t worth all the blighted trouble. And I like you, giant. Come to the forest if you want to bargain with me again.” And just like that, the gnome scurried into the shadows.
That would have to be enough.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Archie said to Leo, no longer feeling like a proper huntsman. “I know we were supposed to kill him, but he could talk, and I . . . Do you think it’s dead?” Not being able to contain his curiosity for even a second longer, Archie cinched up the sack and peered inside.
A smell like rotten apples reached his nose, and even in the poor light, he could mark its enlarged and rancid fangs, dripping with a deadly lime-green venom he knew too well.
He dropped the sack.
The gnome was right. It was a monster—a deadly one at that.
A plague rat.
Chapter 12
To Skin a Cat
Archie held out the sack while the castle gamemaster looked inside, confirming their catch. “You found this in a cellar hunting gnomes?” Sir Orrick asked.
“Yes. It is a plague rat, isn’t it?” The very words made Archie want to shudder.
They were only five years out from the start of the plague, four from when it reached its peak, and three from when it finally seemed to wane. And there had been so much fear. It seemed like people were being struck down with shakes and fevers out of nowhere. The victims sweated and vomited out buckets of water, which left their corpses wrung out and withered like a husk. His mother had hardly been recognizable when her time came.
Then, slowly—much too slowly—the bites were discovered.
The rats were killed.
But not until after Archie’s mother and so many other precious souls had already been lost. The yellow-eyed and rancid-fanged rodents had fueled the worst of his nightmares.
It couldn’t be happening again.
Sir Orrick closed the sack. His expression settled into a controlled and thoughtful frown. “Yes . . . but the thing about rats is that they’re never really gone. They breed too fast and can hide themselves too well. It used to be the corpses of infected men and beasts would pile up higher than the snow in winter, but at least now we know to kill these sorts of rats on sight, and more people have become immune to their special kind of poison. We still get an outbreak here or there, but not enough to trouble the general populous with. Not enough to raise a panic, you understand? We’ll certainly send some more men to check that cellar over, but a single rat is not a plague.”
He might be right. It wasn’t like Archie wanted to believe that the rats were back in earnest. “I’ll bring you the corpse of any other rat I see, but I won’t tell anyone.”
