Rats

FORWARD

I jumped! It stopped still. The next moment it darted back inside the scroll. Blowing away the spiders’ webs in the dark and dusty basement of the Upton Library, I was examining books and scrolls by the flickering light of a candle lantern. A sudden movement alerted me to something behind a batch of ledgers so I moved the lantern and glimpsed an illuminated parchment, tied with a crimson ribbon.

It would reveal much, but at that moment it was the home of the biggest house spider I had ever seen. Carefully pulling out the scroll I cautiously gave it a tap and instantly its inhabitant ran out, disappearing into a crevasse in the wall, undoubtedly more scared than I was. Removing all the ledgers I discovered more scrolls, which I carefully gathered together and excitedly climbed the creaking wooden stairs to examine them in the library.

My name’s Rebicus Hargmond, they call me Reb, and back in 1428 I was fourteen and in my last year at school. Inspired by the goings on at the court of Draxfort, the great castle I could clearly see from my bedroom window, I had ambitions to be a writer and was dropping off articles to the Upton Chronicle, just around the corner from where I lived with my mother.

“What have you got there?” said Jakob Mercer, the old librarian, who greatly encouraged my research and writing.

“Well I’m really not sure,“ I said, unfurling the first scroll, “but it goes back well over a hundred years.” Holding the scrolls down with library weights, over the next month we enthusiastically examined the documents together.

“This is amazing,” said Jakob Mercer,“ it’s the early years of King Blodwyn the founder of the Draxfort Dynasty.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said, “but didn’t know he came from Saxony.”

“Incredible, well this is all new to me” said Jakob Mercer, “well done, I’m so pleased you take an interest in history, not many do. You know it looks like, if it hadn’t been for this strange rat-catcher fellow, there would probably have never been a Kingdom of Draxenland.”

“Or Castle Draxfort,” I said.

Unfortunately the document tells us nothing of the king’s birth other than Blodwyn Draxfort was born in 1268 across the sea in Hanover. As for the rest, I have done my best to piece the facts together and fill in the gaps as best I can.

Rebicus Hargmond