Chip unlimbered the Solingen. It seemed an effort. Like bothering with perfectly scalloping that last potato of the hundreds… Like that, this had to be done. "Dig straight up, Pistol, or I'll shove this up your ass and ruin your sex life." He noticed that his outstretched arm was trembling.

It wasn't a long dig. Moments later the rat broke through. The Maggot-tunnel air was cool, sweet and fresh by comparison to the stuff in their hole. The one eyed rat took long whiffling-nosed sniffs of it. "So okay, Connolly, you damned dunghill cur. My head already feels better. Maybe I won't piss in your next beer. Even Maggot-air smells good compared to the stuff in here. But don't ever threaten me with that poniard of yours again."

That was one villainous old rat. There were times to back off, and this was one of them. "You can empty your bladder into the next beer I buy, if you like. It'll be yours. I owe it to you, I reckon. Lack of air was making me silly."

The one-eyed rat was mollified. In a manner of speaking. "I'm a whiskey drinker, you skinny blue-bottle rogue. And I like triples. And I never pee in my own drinks."

"Give a rat an inch…" Chip smiled.

"And he'll think you're shafting him," concluded Pistol, with a suitable gesture.

"Will you two be getting out of the way so that we can all have a breath of air?" Eamon grumbled.

Eric Flint

Rats, Bats amp; Vats

Chapter 3:

Behind enemy lines.

SLOWLY, THEY CONTINUED to dig a narrow passage, under the hardpan of what was plainly an ever-growing Maggotway. The rats were fine excavators, but the main problem was where to put the uncompacted material they were digging out. And a rat hole was going to be too small for Chip, although the bats could manage it.

A quiet council was held. "You guys had better dig out. We'd better block that air hole, too. Maggots will smell us out, otherwise. I'll break out and take my chances when you've been gone a while." Chip was nobody's hero-by definition-since he was still a live grunt. Heroes got dead. And the first thing a grunt learned was "don't volunteer." But there didn't seem much point in getting them all killed. They had a tiny chance. He didn't.