With the birds plucked and butchered and our health back to full we pushed on along the docks. The next building had some partially completed nets on some tables and a machine that I couldn't see the point of. At one end there were these hooks on a cog contraption, another hook at the other end of a track, attached to a pulley which went up into the rafters, had a weight at the other end near the ground. Then there was this weird circle with holes cut out of it on a pole attached to the track. It took up space across the entire length of the forty meter deep warehouse, so it must have been important. Stretching something? But surely there are better ways to stretch something…

  “Rope making.” Sam said.

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  “It’s for making rope.” He confirmed. “String up some…well string, from here.” pointed to one of the hooks, “to there.” pointed to the lone hook, “repeat with the other two hooks, and then spin this handle and the hooks will spin, spinning the string, then after the splitter” he pointed at the circle of wood with holes cut out of it, “the lines spin around each other creating the rope. So much easier than trying to do it manually.”

  I eyed the contraption curiously…

  “Do we need any rope?” I asked, eyeing the rolls of twine stacked in the corner, curious to see it in action.

  We moved into the next building, its rafters creaking from the sea wind coming in from the wide open door and found a small pack of rats, eating the corpse of a boar. There were only four of them and they fell quickly to our ranged attacks. We continued our path around the docks, checking each building for anything we could use or a creature we needed to kill to clear the town.

  There were a couple more doors which refused our attempts to open them, both on buildings with large doors with tracks going down the biggest ramps into the water.

  After about forty minutes of exploring the first half of the dock area and moving ever closer to the sail loft, we crossed the half way point and started seeing more of the rats. The first time we saw one run away as soon as it became aware of us, it emboldened me. When a pack of 3 of them did it, I started getting suspicious. The buildings we checked were pretty much empty, one of them looked like it had been a dry food store, but they had been eaten, leaving only the gnawed sacks and broken boxes. We cleared three more of the buildings on the dock seeing only evidence rats had been there or seeing them scarper away from us.

  When we were about four buildings away from the sail loft, we entered a warehouse which had been repurposed as a spare parts storage, it stank of oil and grease. Eight aisles of racking were being used to store sails, lines, replacement pulleys, and a variety of other things nautical. Basically a huge selection of parts that a ship might need replacements for. Sadly Sam confirmed they were the wrong kind or unneeded for the Curiosity.

  Sat in the back corner of one side of the warehouse there was an office, it’s door lying almost smack in the middle of the warehouse space opposite and a corridor running down the middle of the warehouse splitting up the aisles. At a guess it was probably for handling the paperwork and tracking stores. In there we found 2 rats in the corner worrying at something I couldn’t see. It was the first time in half the docks where we had seen a rat and they didn’t run from us. Sam was about to move towards them as we had the previous ones, when something made me stop him. I eyed the rats, they were smaller than the ones we had even fought higher up the town, and, I was wrong, they weren’t worrying at something…they were shaking...scared?…they knew we were here, we hadn’t been trying to sneak…so not attacking and not running…bait? But that would imply intelligence…

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  “They aren’t acting right.” I whispered back. He turned to look at them and I turned to scan the warehouse looking for anything untoward.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look in that direction, one of the rows of storage racks near the back. Nothing. I heard a sound from the far corner of the warehouse, like something knocking something over.

  “We need to go. Now!” Sam growled. I turned to follow his gaze. It was on the entrance we had entered by, there were 4 of the largest rats we had seen yet, similar to a medium sized dog, sauntering in, the second from the left slightly ahead, in a delta formation. I looked across the office at the door on the far side. It should be a side access door. Most of those had been locked in the other buildings.

  “Hope the side door is unlocked?” I asked, aiming my staff at the one frontrunner, and started forming the in my mind.

  “I don’t like the idea of trapping ourselves in that room if it isn’t…”

  “It’s also what they want us to do…” I add. “Run for it?”

  “Risky…but…possibly the lesser risk…back the way we came or for the left stairs?”

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  “Back the way we came…more likely clear… on three?” I look back at the racks to see three more rats emerging from hiding and moving toward us.

  “No time! Go!” he said, but waited for me to start moving first.

  I started moving towards the main doors, casting at the leader and then charged after it. I hadn't realised before, but charging a spell while running is a lot harder than doing it while standing still or while focusing on dodging. I was almost at the second rat from the right before I managed to get my second spell in place. I had this cool vision in my head of hitting it and pole vaulting over with my battle staff. Instead of the end striking cleanly into the rat’s head, and me using the momentum to launch up over the creatures, it dodged to the side, my staff merely clipping it, which fortunately, was enough for the to be discharged into it. Sadly that wasn’t the decisive strike I had been hoping for…it was however enough, to clear some space as the rat dodged into another of their number temporarily taking them both out of the fight and leaving me with a clear path to run along. Hindsight, practice ideas like that before trying them out in combat.

  Sam was slightly more effective, shooting with his off hand, he managed to put a round in the left one as he got in range. He then followed up my with his rapier finishing off the lead rat, by raking his blade along the full length of body, and while finishing off the rat he shot, with another round from a second pistol at the same time.

  We came out of the warehouse, and it was clear to see we had made the right call. If we had waited just a little longer, then the swarm of dozens of rats coming out of the sail loft would have gotten to us and we would have had nowhere to go.

  They were loud, between the squeaks of the emerging rat swarm and the squeaks behind us as the creatures that had been hiding in the racks, emerged to chase after us. I could barely hear Sam’s shout to head for the stairs. There were a lot of them, like a brown and black carpet covering the stones of the docks behind us. We ran. Neither of us bothered trying to aim, just pointed our weapons backwards and let loose in the rough direction we had come from.

  As we came into sight of the middle flight of stairs up the town, we saw a disheartening vision, another wave of rats coming down. Sam made the call and we kept going for the next flight at the end of the docks. Another dozen merged into the tide already pursuing.

  The fastest of their number got close enough to nibble at our ankles, but we were able to keep them at bay with lucky blows from our melee weapons, a well timed kick, or a hastily aimed from me. Sam’s shooting slowed down as he switched to making a more considered shot every few seconds instead of just firing the moment it came off cool down.

  “Shit” I exclaimed, as a small group of rats came chasing out of a building ahead of us, trying to force us towards the water’s edge. I swung my battlestaff like a hockey stick and battered one of them out of my path and up into the wall of the building we were sprinting past. “How are there so many?” I exclaimed as Sam fired off one of his pistols, killing, but barely making a dent in the pursuing swarm.

  A minute later, my heart pounding, my breathing hard, we got to the end of the docks. My hopes were quashed. It was considerably smaller than what came down the middle stairs, and nowhere near what came from the sail loft, but it was enough. A third swarm of rats were coming down the stairs, they looked out of breath, like they themselves had sprinted to get there, but if we tried to fight our way past them, we would have been swarmed by those from behind, they were blocking our way.

  “Fuck!” we said in unison. Flight was no longer an option. It was time to fight. First death in the game it might be, but I was determined to take as many of them with me as I could.

  We veered right, following the curve of the docks away from the stairs, and onto the stone walkway leading to the harbour masters office at the end of the crescent shaped docks. The peer narrowed down, and once it fell to just over two-person width, we turned to fight. I used my staff to thrust and strike at the Rats. I considered using the big strike to sweep, but even the shorter ones were giving them time to dart in if I committed too hard, only my constant retreating steps gave me the space.

  I missed more often than I hit. They were just as quick to dart back out as they were to come in, which made me hesitant to commit fully to any attack. ‘Was I being baited?’ crossed my mind more than once

  I’m convinced something was controlling them. Something which was trying to not get them killed. If they had just come at us hard, we would have been completely overwhelmed in seconds, instead we were pushed back as the rats tried to do feints and attacks to make us dodge apart so they could separate us.

  We lost ground, but for every foot we were forced back at least one more rat died before us, a trail of corpses leading back and around the docks along the hasty path we had taken. My boots and gloves are a lot tougher than I gave them credit for, but attacks that got through mostly hit me there, and my health bar was slowly getting whittled down.

  I had stopped checking my mana pool at some point in the mad dash but the headache and growing tunnel vision warned me it was getting low. Confirmed with a quick check that was down to my last dregs. My stamina, barely touched in previous fights, was also getting perilously close to bottoming out. I glanced at Sam, his health was down, his stamina low.

  Something though was keeping me in the fight and motivated me to keep going. Not just my innate desire to not give in and to go down fighting, but also that despite every step we took backwards reducing the amount of real estate left to fight upon, the swarm was thinning.

  We were starting to win.

  And whatever was controlling them, knew it.

  As the numbers dwindled, the attacks slowed, became more considerate, less bestial. More of the attacks became feints. More controlled.

  Which just benefitted us. Gave us more time for our in combat regeneration to give us that bit more stamina, that bit more mana.

  When Sam gave a huge kick to one of the small dog sized rats, cartwheeling it back into the last ten rats, they turned tail and ran.

  I took one out with a final .