Beasts of New York | Page 9

earth rather than concrete. But it was
in a corner between two concrete walls, towards the inside of the
mountain, that he saw the unmistakable scuttling motion of a rat.
Patch crept closer, staying behind human things as much as possible.
He reached a metal pipe that ran near the corner, and followed its
length until the pipe ran into the concrete wall, just a half-dozen
squirrel-lengths from the corner. He was still downwind, he thought,
although it was difficult to read the wind down here. Patch stood as tall
as he could and was just barely able to look over the pipe and see into
the corner of the pit.
In that corner Patch saw something very strange. He saw a dozen large
rats standing in a circle, all facing outwards, with all their tails knotted
together in a big tangled lump in the middle of their circle. Standing on
this lumpy knot of tails was Snout, the biggest rat of all. And next to
this bizarre clump of rats, Patch saw, to his great surprise, another
squirrel, small and with reddish fur.

"Patch son of Silver," the strange squirrel said, and Patch stiffened.
"I've heard of him. He's of the Treetops. He talks to birds and goes off
alone for days. I'm sure he doesn't know anything. He just came to the
mountains for the food."
"That's not good enough," Snout said. "We will give him to
Karmerruk."
"But --" the squirrel began.
"We will give him to Karmerruk."
The name meant nothing to Patch, but it seemed to frighten the squirrel.
"You said you would show me Jumper," the squirrel said hesitantly to
Snout.
Patch stiffened.
"Oh, yes, Jumper," Snout said, and smiled, revealing jagged yellow
teeth. Then, loudly, the rat commanded, "Bring him!"
There was a dark hole in the corner of the pit, near where the rats and
the other squirrel stood. Patch saw motion in that hole. He saw a
squirrel's head emerge. He watched, shocked, as Jumper, lord of the
Treetops tribe, crawled painfully out of that hole, his motions slow and
spastic, and fell clumsily to the ground. Jumper was bleeding in many
places, and he pulled himself along with his forelegs alone; both his
hind legs hung motionless from his body. Several rats followed Jumper
out of the hole.
"Lord Jumper won't be jumping any more," Snout said, and laughed.
Jumper pulled himself up on his forelegs. Patch could see he was in
great pain.
"Redeye," Jumper said in a ragged voice, to the squirrel who stood
among the rats. "How can you have you done this?"

The other squirrel looked uneasy, and didn't answer. Patch was glad to
have his name. It was Redeye he had smelled in Silver's drey.
"He did it for me," Snout said. "He has sworn to serve me, as I have
sworn to serve the King Beneath. The king in whose name you and all
your kind will die and be devoured."
Snout stepped away from the knot of rat-tails on which he stood. The
knot began to squirm like a nest of worms as the rats untied themselves
from one another. As they were released the rats formed into a tight
circle around Jumper. Snout joined the circle. So did Redeye. Patch
knew what would happen next. He didn't want to watch. But it was too
awful a thing to turn away from.
"No," Jumper begged them. "No, please. Not like this."
"Yes," Snout hissed. "Exactly like this."
And then they swarmed the crippled lord of the Treetops. Jumper
howled three times before he fell silent beneath the frenzied mass of
biting rats. Redeye seemed more rat than squirrel as he tore at Jumper's
body with his sharp fangs. In scarcely more time than it takes to tell it
there was nothing left of Jumper but scraps, bones, and a puddle of
blood. Even then the rats began to gnaw on Jumper's bones and lick his
blood. They would leave nothing of him at all.
Patch retreated silently to the wooden plank that led out of the pit. He
felt colder than he had on the worst day of the winter. The squirrel
Redeye had betrayed Jumper to rats, helped to kill him, helped to eat
him. And Redeye's scent had been in Silver's drey. Patch climbed
numbly into the sunlight, over the fence, back to the concrete, heedless
of the passing humans and the death machines. They held scarcely any
terror for him now; all he could think about was what he had seen in
the pit below.
"What did you see?" Toro called out, from a tree. "What was down
there?"

Patch said, "I have to go back to the Kingdom."

To The Meadow
Returning to the Center Kingdom was relatively easy, now that