Читать книгу One Beastly Beast: Two aliens, three inventors, four fantastic tales - Гарт Никс, Garth Nix - Страница 12

Chapter Eight

“But what about my DVDs! And the Ratinci orrery!” exclaimed Peter. “We have to get them back!”

“I’m sorry, Peter,” said the captain, and a tear glistened in his eye. “We dare not risk Blackbread’s anger, not even for the orrery… or your DVDs. Helmsrat, hard aport!”

The crew cheered as the Tumblewheel turned aside. Then they groaned as the Nasty Cupboard turned as well and continued sailing towards them.

“The hunter becomes the hunted,” said the doctor, peering through his monocle at the pirate ship. “We’ll have to fight Blackbread after all.”

“What would happen if Blackbread lost his loaf?” asked Peter, who’d been thinking very hard about the situation. It seemed to him that the navy rats had given up too easily.

“Why, he’d be nothing,” said Captain Rattus. “Just another bad rat to be taken in for justice. But he carries the loaf by night and day. It’s impossible! We’re all going to be taken as prisoners and sold as slaves!”

“I was thinking that if you carried something sort of soft and sticky as a shield, Blackbread might get his loaf stuck in it,” said Peter. “Then you could wrestle with him and take the loaf away.”

“Wrestle with him?” squeaked the captain. “He’s the biggest rat around! And we haven’t got a soft and sticky shield.”

“The boy’s right!” exclaimed the doctor, hopping up and down with excitement. “Why didn’t we think of it before? Our champion can use the ship’s cheese to trap the loaf. Bread and cheese go together like… like rats and whiskers. The loaf will throw itself at the cheese, whether Blackbread wants it to or not.”

“But that cheese weighs a ton. We had to get it aboard with a crane,” said the captain, pointing to a huge round of cheese that was lashed to the deck for safety and easy nibbling. “The legendary Ratercules could lift it and maybe wrestle with Blackbread, but no one here is big enough, or strong enough, or brave enough.”

“Maybe not right this second,” said Peter. “Doctor Norvegicus – when you put the spell on me, you said I’d rise like dough when words were said. Can you say just one or two of the words to make me grow bigger, but not so big that I can’t fit through the hole to Topside?”

“There’s seven magic words to say for you to regain your proper height,” mused the doctor. “I think three of them would make you a giant here, yet not so big you couldn’t get back home. I’m not entirely sure. But even if I make you big enough and strong enough, are you brave enough?”

“Considering,” the captain interrupted, “that if you don’t fight Blackbread we’ll all be taken prisoner and sold as slaves, to work in the Barbary video shops, shining discs until our paws are rubbed to stumps.”

Peter gulped and rubbed his stomach, trying to get rid of the sick feeling in his middle. What if his plan failed and he was cut to pieces by the loaf? Patrick had said he wouldn’t die, but it would hurt worse that anything, and even when he got better he’d be a slave. But if he didn’t try, there wasn’t any chance at all.

“I’ll do it,” he said.