The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rod - Terry Pratchett [14]
The platoon headed off, at speed.
Darktan turned to Number Two platoon. They were some of the older rats, scarred and bitten and ragged, some of them with stubs of tails or no tails at all, some of them missing a paw or an ear or an eye. In fact although there were about twenty of them, they had between them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats.
But because they were old they were cunning, because a rat who isn't cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn't become an old rat. They'd all been grown up when the intelligence came. They were more set in their old ways. Hamnpork always said he liked them that way. They still had a lot of basic rattiness, the kind of raw cunning that would get you out of the traps that over-excited intelligence got you into. They thought with their noses. And you didn't have to tell them where to widdle.
'All right, people, you know the drill,' said Darktan. 'I want to see lots of cheeky stuff. Stealing the food out of cats' bowls, pies from under the cooks' noses-'
'- false teeth from out of old men's mouths-' said a small rat, who seemed to be dancing on the spot while he stood there. His feet moved all the time, tippity-tapping on the cellar floor. He wore a hat, too, a battered, home-made thing out of straw. He was the only rat who could make a hat work, by wedging his ears through it. He said to get ahead, you had to get a hat.
'That was a fluke, Sardines. I bet you can't do it again,' said Darktan, grinning. 'And don't keep on telling the kids how you went for a swim in someone's bathtub. Yeah, I know you did, but I don't want to lose anyone who can't scramble out of a slippery tub. Anyway… if I don't hear ladies screaming and running out of their kitchens within ten minutes I'll know you're not the rats I think you are. Well? Why are you all standing around? Get on with it! And… Sardines?'
'Yes, boss?'
'Easy on the tap-dancing this time, all right?'
'I just got these dancing feet, boss!'
'And do you have to keep wearing that stupid hat?' Darktan continued, grinning again.
'Yes, boss!' Sardines was one of the older rats, but most of the time you wouldn't know it. He danced and joked and never got into fights. He'd lived in a theatre and once ate a whole box of greasepaint. It seemed to have got into his blood.
'And no going on ahead of the trap squad!' said Darktan.
Sardines grinned. 'Aw, boss, can't I have any fun?' He danced after the rest of them, towards the holes in the walls.
Darktan moved on, to Number One platoon. It was the smallest. You had to be a certain kind of rat to last a long time in the Trap Disposal Squad. You had to be slow, and patient, and thorough. You had to have a good memory. You had to be careful. You could join the squad if you were fast and slapdash and hasty. You just didn't last very long.
He looked them up and down, and smiled. He was proud of these rats. 'OK, people, you know it all by now,' he said. 'You don't need a long lecture from me. Just remember that this is a new town so we don't know what we're going to find. There're bound to be plenty of new types of traps, but we learn fast, don't we? Poisons, too. They might be using stuff we've never run across before, so be careful. Never rush, never run. We don't want to be like the first mouse, eh?'
'No, Darktan,' the rats chorused dutifully.
'I said, what mouse don't we want to be like?' Darktan demanded.
'We don't want to be like the first mouse!' shouted the rats.
'Right! What mouse do we want to be like?'
'The second mouse, Darktan!' said the rats, who'd had this lesson dinned into them many times.
'Right! And why do we want to be like the second