Belle and the Code of Claw

Part One: The Code; Chapter 1

Of the Code of Claw.

Time is turning back.

Turning back.

Turning back.

When the monster's blood is spilled,

When the female warrior has been killed,

You must not ignore the rapping,

Or the tapping, tapping, tapping.

If the gnawers find you napping,

You will rot while they are mapping

Out the law of those who gnaw

In the Code of Claw.

The ticking stopped with the words.

Belle closed her eyes as that one phrase hammered into her brain: When the female warrior has been killed.

That was it, clearly. The part that nobody had wanted to tell her. When the female warrior has been killed.

Not even Ripred--and you had to figure that the rat was used to breaking bad news to people after all those years of fighting and war.

When the female warrior has been killed.

Not even Luxa--who was only twelve, but seemed so much older. Not even Vikus, who Belle knew was always on her side.

When the female warrior has been killed.

Belle knew that Luxa wouldn't hold it against her if she left. Packed up her seven-year-old son, Hazard, got Ares and Bastet, and flew away to some remote place. A cave, perhaps. Gregor, of course, would have to know. Belle tried to imagine the parting. Well, Gregor, it has been lovely. We are running away now. I know by leaving that I am completely dooming to annihilation everyone who has helped me here, not to mention you and your family. But I must say, I am not really up for this war thing anymore. So, fly you high and I hope you get home all right in the end?

As if that would ever happen.

When the female warrior has been killed.

It just didn't feel real. None of it. Maybe it was because she was just so tired. Belle hadn't slept in days. Not since before she had seen the rats murder hundreds of mice in a pit at the base of a volcano in the Firelands. She had fallen unconscious for a while due to the poisonous fumes the volcano had been emitting when it erupted. Did that count as sleep? Perhaps. But it had only been a short while before she had come to and waded through deep ash in search of her friends. Before she could even experience the joy of finding them, she had learned that Thalia, the sweet young bat who had mistakenly been caught up in the ill-fated trip, had suffocated as she tried to escape the volcano. Hazard, Ares and Belle's adoptive son who had planned to bond with Thalia, had been so distraught that they had had to sedate him. Later, Belle had drifted into a kind of stupor as Gregor kept watch. Maybe it was sleep, but somehow she didn't think so. On the flight home, packed on Bastet's back with Hazard and a heavily drugged mouse, Cartesian, she had been unable to sleep. Now she was numb.

When the female warrior has been killed.

She was unable to muster any real emotional response to the prophecy. What is the matter with me? thought Belle. Should I not be upset? She should be. Of course she should be. Only after all that had happened, she just didn't have it in her anymore. It will come to me later, I suppose. Perhaps in a few days. If I even live that long.