Into the Dark Pt. 02

"Burn them!" she screamed. "Burn them all!"

Flaming torches rained in to the common room and the inn patrons scattered. I was stuck to the spot, not knowing what to do. To my right a man was climbing out of a window, trying to get away from the flames. I was about to join him but I froze, recoiling in shock as something sharp and bloodied emerged from the back of his neck. His gurgling scream sounded like a pig being butchered.

I could feel the heat of a burning torch by my leg so I reached down and threw it out the window the man had tried to climb through. Some of the patrons were putting out the flames. Others were throwing the torches back towards the wall of armed attackers guarding the entrance. Still others were trying to climb out of windows, only to be ambushed by attackers outside.

I won't lie. I wanted to run. I didn't understand any of this. I wasn't afraid as such. What I felt wasn't exactly fear, or at least it didn't feel like fear. It was just a sort of primal awareness of my own body - every pore of it - and a keen awareness of the fact that I was trapped: that there was no way out of this burning building.

Ridiculously, my own life started flashing before my eyes. It was the first time I'd been able to remember anything. The memories, though, were no more than a jumble of images, apparently of my childhood, and they didn't mean much to me.

I forced myself forward, step by step, towards the laughing, mocking attackers. Then I leaned down and picked up a torch and I threw it in their faces. That was followed by the desperate slashing of my blade. I looked on in horror as my blade slid in through an attacker's eyeball, covering me in blood. His unearthly death-screech made me sick to my stomach.

Next to me others were joining in the fight; attacking our adversaries with stools or even throwing entire tables at them. Despite the fury with which I was attacking, my hands were shaking so much that I was afraid my weapon would slip out of my grasp. I'd reached a fever-pitch of desperation. I only wanted one thing in this world - to get out of this damned inn before I was burned alive.

When the fight finally ended and the last of the attackers fled into the underbrush, I sank down to my knees in the grass outside the inn, gasping for air and dripping with sweat. Those around me turned instantly to trying to put out the fires: shouting and bringing pails of water from the well and the water troughs. Within a few minutes the fires were under control. The girl - whoever she was - was nowhere to be seen.

From inside the inn came angry shouting and after a couple of moments I realized that it was the inn keeper. "Get out! Get out of my inn before I call the reeves! And you can take your friend out there with you! If I see you within sight of my inn I'll have you arrested!"

I turned to see the giant rat emerge from the inn, looking somewhat nonplussed. When I say giant, he was about six foot tall, and stood easily on two small back legs. As he stood there, a leather bag and a small red blanket were thrown after him. In his hand was a still-bloodied shiv and his body was garment-less, besides a thick coat of fur that covered everything. He wandered over to the bag and blanket and picked them up, examining them for a few moments before he looked over towards me.

"Apparently you're a friend of mine.." he said in a voice that managed to sound both squeaky and placid at the same time. He regarded me a moment and then said, "Maybe you can tell me what this is all about... "

I broke out in a sudden wry smile, amused at our situation. But before I could respond, he started heading over towards me, "You're injured... " he said.

I looked down at the mix of sweat and blood on my clothes, "I think I am, but its not serious. I have no idea what all this is about.' I took a deep breath and sighed, "I don't know who I am, or where we are." He nodded as he lifted my shirt up to take a closer look at the cuts on my torso.

As we spoke, I saw that the innkeeper and the patrons had started to pull the corpses out of the inn and stack them up in a pile of lolling heads, sightless eyes and limbs twisted in unnatural directions. Despite the ugliness of death, their fair skin and the occasional red mane shone in the moonlight in a way that was almost beautiful. I told the rat what the innkeeper had told me. He simply nodded again.

"Whoever you are," he mused, "You're one hell of a fighter..."

Apparently he hadn't noticed my shaking hands, or was too polite to mention it. He got back to his feet and turned towards the smoking inn.

"I'll see if there's anything in here we can use to stop the bleeding."