We could never be quite certain whether the paggets in general roamed the countryside or stayed permanently in one district. But there were strong indications that many of them did the latter.
Thus at Saxham we weren’t dealing with paggets which had just come to the district and knew nothing about us. We even guessed that why Grantham was so particularly plagued with paggets, so completely dominated by them, was in compensation for the comparative helplessness of paggets against Saxham and Greetham.
The Knifers had no wall round their property. They didn’t seem to need it. Paggets didn’t dare show themselves around Greetham. There was a lot to be said for the Greetham type of community as a human island defended against the paggets. Unfortunately, the Knifers wouldn’t leave it at that. They not only fought the paggets, they fought everything and everybody, selfishly and brutally.
Information about them continued to come in by various routes. They were raiding every community within twenty miles or so, stealing, plundering, terrifying. Even allowing for exaggeration in the stories we heard, we felt less and less guilty about our murderous plans to deal with them as time went by.
Three men from Cottesmore, a village two miles further along the road to Oakham, came to beg our help against the Knifers. A hundred people at Cottesmore were managing to live from day to day, in terror of the Knifers. Things would have been difficult enough for the people of Cottesmore without a hostile group in the neighborhood. On top of the paggets, the raids of the Knifers were gradually bleeding the village white.
Grimblo’s policy seemed to be to take just a little less than would force the villagers to go somewhere else, to frighten them enough to subject them but not enough to make them flee or give up the struggle altogether.
A man called Blake led the group which came to beg for our help. “We can’t fight back, sir,” he told me, distracted, “because they could murder us all. The first time they came they tied up two men and two women, beat them unconscious, and left them. When the Morrisons shot one of the Knifers, they took Jim Morrison, his wife, and the two children away with them and the next day we found what was left of them tied to a fence, eaten by paggets.”
So the grim story went on. At Tontine, a farm three miles to the south, a resolute group had been trying to do, on a smaller scale, what we were doing at Saxham — keeping paggets out of their fields by a day and night vigil, and with enormous patience and labor managing to wrest a living from the soil, their poultry, and a few cattle. The Knifers had visited Tontine once a week with ever increasing demands — a few eggs, then some chickens, then a cow — until the farmers were forced to resist. Grimblo had crushed them, selected a fourteen-year-old girl from among the rebels, and staked her out in a field which was visible from the windows of the farm. Every living soul at the farm was forced to wait and watch what happened to her. The Knifers did nothing; they merely withdrew with the farmers to the house, shut all the doors, and waited for the parats to come.
They came.
It wasn’t senseless brutality either. Grimblo killed no more than he had to, to keep the whole region in subjection.
It was senseless in another way, however. One by one the people in the area were slipping away, certain that the situation anywhere else must be better than in a district dominated by a group like the Knifers. And the area, never populous, was gradually being left to the two strong groups left in it — the Knifers, and us.
We couldn’t reassure these distracted visitors, couldn’t tell them our plans, couldn’t ask them for help. A few we could, and did, recruit, and once they joined our group there was no more secrecy. The farmers from Tontine were among these acquisitions, largely because even though they had to abandon their fields their poultry and cattle were invaluable to us. We got our bull at last, not to mention a dozen extremely useful men and women.
But for the most part, we didn’t dare do anything that materially affected the situation, in case the Knifers changed their plans. Between the devil of Grimblo and the deep sea of the paggets, the poor wretches in the district were crazy with anger, terror, and misery. If we told them anything, it would get to the Knifers. They would blurt it out the next time Grimblo attacked them, or go insanely to Greetham to taunt the Knifers with it. We took in the Tontine group only because they hated the Knifers so much and because they realized we couldn’t save everybody, unlike the people from Cottesmore, who would have invaded us if they got the chance.
Everybody in the district would fight the Knifers, but that was no answer either. Not yet, at any rate.
• • •
For reasons best known to themselves, the parats, so completely routed the last time they had attacked us, tried it again, and by day, when we were ready for them.
Suddenly the grounds were alive with parats. They must have scouted and found a score of weak points in the outer wall, working patiently on them until each was an open gateway for them. We could never stop that. We could keep out dogs and cats, but until we had people to spare to parade up and down outside the walls as well as inside we couldn’t stop single rats digging dozens of ways through.
I don’t know how many thousands of them there were. There were shrieks and screams from the women in the grounds of Saxham — and some from the men — as we saw the ground come alive, rats milling and jostling like stampeding cattle.
The dogs snarled and darted among them as before. But this time the human beings realized more clearly how comparatively safe it was to run among the rats, to kick them, stamp on them, beat them with sticks, shovels, and rakes.
We fought like madmen — men, women, children, and dogs. I saw Laurie, Mil’s six-year-old son, beating the ground with a stick. The rats were cut into little islands, found their retreat cut off, darted this way, then that. No one stayed still long enough for them to harm us, beyond the usual bites, scratches and tears.
I saw Bert leaping with giant steps through a sea of parats, crushing half a dozen with every step. Little Laurie kept doggedly flailing with his stick, with Mil calling encouragement to him. Dave was smashing his shovel flat down on any group he could reach. Ginette had a piece of board three feet square which she was lifting and dropping on every mass of rats which reached her, and even at that moment I saw that though she was working grimly and efficiently, her stomach was turning over and it was only with a tremendous effort that she was preventing herself from being sick. She would rather have fought dogs five times as dangerous than these rats.
When at last the attack was beaten off, hundreds of sickening, crushed rats lay everywhere, many of them still writhing in agony. The yeomen and some of the men from Tontine were still going round finishing off any that still showed signs of life, whether from humanitarian motives or in case any of them might not be mortally injured, I didn’t know.
We wiped the sweat from our faces and the dogs licked their wounds. This time one of the dogs was badly bitten, and George, who loved dogs, carried him away, crooning softly to him. We all smarted from bites and scratches — rats’ teeth and claws are unbelievably sharp — and considerable damage had been done to the crops and vegetables, the one serious consequence of the attack.
Nevertheless, we were jubilant. For the rats had attacked boldly, bravely, and we had reduced them to the same indecision and terror which they had shown on their previous attack.
“They won’t do that again,” said Mil decisively. “That’s the one good thing about paggets — they know when they’re beaten.”
There seemed some reason for her confidence. Every parat in the district must have been involved in the attack. They had lost perhaps a quarter of their force. To ordinary rats, unthinking creatures, that would have been nothing. But to paggets, carefully and intelligently calculating their own chances, that must mean that Saxham was a place to keep away from.
“You did pretty well for a girl who’s scared of rats, Ginette,” said Mil in a tone that was blunt but not unfriendly.
She should have known better. Ginette turned away crossly, furious that Mil should have seen she was terrified of the rats.
It was unfortunate for her that there was a further demonstration of this difference between her and Mil only twenty minutes later. Mil and Ginette respected each other, but there was between them the kind of rivalry that made either of them hate to show up badly before the other.
And while we were discussing the raid in one of the downstairs rooms — Dave, Mil, Ginette, Mona, Eva, and I, with Laurie and Loretta, Mil’s two children, playing quietly in a corner, already having forgotten all about the parats — a rat which must have been in hiding since the attack ran across the floor.
Every one of us, even Eva, had been fighting thousands of rats with determination and courage. It was ludicrous to see the effect of a single parat on Mona, Ginette, and Eva. They all jumped, screaming, onto chairs. The defense outside had been life and death; this was frightening, unexpected, the last straw after a grueling experience that had failed to break them.
It didn’t matter much that Mona and Eva showed their terror. They weren’t humbling a touchy, independent pride in doing so. When they were frightened, they screamed, and thought little or nothing of it. But Ginette hated rats far more for the weakness they made her display than for the actual discomfort she felt in their presence. It was almost shocking to see Ginette, of all people, jumping on a chair and screaming — though a score of savage looters couldn’t have made her do that, a single rat could.
Seeing the effect it had had on Eva, Mona, and Ginette, the parat foolhardily tried to terrify Mil, too. It ran up her leg.
The shrieking of the other three redoubled as the rat disappeared beneath Mil’s skirt. Mil didn’t move until she was quite ready. Then with a sudden two-handed clutch she caught the parat through her dress and squashed it hard against her thigh. It was most unladylike.
Ginette stopped screaming, turned away suddenly, and retched violently. She managed, however, not to bring anything up. Mil looked up, startled, and laughed. She withdrew the mangled remains of the pagget from below her skirt, put it down, and with complete unconcern about the presence of Dave and myself pulled up her skirt to see what damage her clothes had suffered.
“Not a mark,” she announced with relief. “I must have crushed it without breaking its skin. Cheer up, Ginette — the beast’s dead.”
The three girls climbed down shamefacedly, Ginette feeling it most of all, naturally. Tactfully, we didn’t look at her.
“Wonder why we get so many rats, and so few mice, cats, and dogs?” Mil pondered.
I hadn’t noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, I realized that in other parts of the country pagget activity had involved the other three species much more than around Saxham.
“Probably the different species achieve supremacy by district,” I said. “In France pacats caused most of the trouble, but since I came to England I’ve hardly seen them, certainly never had any trouble with them. In London mice were supposed to do most of the damage. And in the South of England it was dogs that seemed — ”
“Take that away,” begged Mona, who was staring in horrified fascination at the dead parat, apparently afraid to take her eyes off it in case it should come to life again. “Let’s leave the discussion till later.”
Dave grinned, wrapped the dead parat in a piece of paper, and went out with it.
Mil couldn’t help rubbing it in. “It must be terrible to be afraid of rats when there are so many thousands of them,” she said. “You can’t go out without meeting — ”
“Shut up, damn you!” Ginette snapped.
Mil didn’t take offense. She grinned, which so incensed Ginette that she charged out of the room, slamming the door.
• • •
At first the impending assault by the Knifers had seemed a long way off. This lasted for nearly a week. Then, abruptly, it seemed almost upon us.
We now had a force of forty-one people, including nine children. Thirty-five who could fight, nineteen who could shoot. That was four more than we needed, for we had only fifteen guns, including the air pistols.
The Knifers numbered about seventy, but less than fifty could be expected to leave the village. We could prepare for an attacking force of about forty-five.
I said we had nineteen people who could shoot and fifteen guns. I armed not the best shots, but the most ruthless people among us. Those fifteen weapons had to be used, not flourished.
The night of the attack found us surprised, but not unprepared. It was dark, as Grimblo had known it would be; what he hadn’t known was that it would be a warm night, clear and still and dry. That favored us rather than the attackers. We were in for a long, attentive wait at our posts, and the waiting was much less uncomfortable than we had expected. The stillness meant that we’d hear any noise the attackers made, while we, the defenders, could be at our posts and didn’t need to make any noise, not until we sprang the trap, at any rate.
We had heard no more from Jake — “I won’t communicate with you again unless plans are changed,” he had said. A hundred things could have happened to put off the raid; apparently none of them had. No time had been mentioned, no details. That meant that from sunset, which fortunately was pretty late — we were into the summer now — we had to be ready. Reasons could be advanced for attacking at any hour of the night. Just after dusk, before we were in bed, before an attack would be suspected. At midnight, when we’d be sleeping most soundly. At two o’clock, the real middle of the night. At four o’clock, when we’d have decided (without Jake’s warning) that no hostile move could be intended that night. At six o’clock, when we’d be even more certain.
So we were all prepared, all rested, for an all-night vigil. If the Knifers had known to make a raid the previous afternoon, they’d have found us least prepared — everyone who could was taking a nap in preparation for action later.
Mil, Bert, and Tom, who was one of the farmers from Tontine, had been unlucky enough to draw the guard duty for that night, with Ginette, Steve, and Jack to replace them at three A.M. if nothing had happened by then, which we all thought unlikely. The guards were unlucky in that they were out in the open, unprotected, liable to be overwhelmed in the Knifers’ first sally. They could not, like the rest of us, conceal themselves until the attackers had declared themselves. The Knifers had to think we were unprepared, and paradoxically there had to be three guards patrolling the grounds before they could think that. Probably if we hid our guards too well, the Knifers would have the sense to sheer off — and there would be no battle, no trap.
What worried us most of all was the matter of the dogs. The Knifers knew all about our dogs. We couldn’t afford to lock them up for the night, for the same reasons that made us place our three guards as usual. On the other hand we didn’t want them giving the alarm, we wanted the Knifers to think they had the advantage of surprise.
All we could do was hope the Knifers had some plan to deal with the dogs, which was probable, and that we’d be able to counter it. We didn’t want the dogs around at all if we could help it. But we couldn’t help it. They’d have to be out, as usual. Except Nat — we’d have to take the precaution of locking him up for the night.
All through history, when defense has been a matter of life and death, of survival or annihilation, women have taken the part in it that necessity dictated, not polite custom. With us it was no different. We had thirty-two adults at Saxham, and which were men and which were women was an almost irrelevant consideration when we were defending ourselves against attack.
Against the paggets, we had seen long ago, it was a completely irrelevant consideration. For women to say or even think that as women they should be protected by the menfolk amounted to suicide. Such an attitude was a warning to the menfolk concerned that these women considered the paggets weren’t their business, and the only sensible thing for a man to do with a woman like that was abandon her.
Yes, I know Gloria was a woman like that. And though I didn’t abandon her, it was nevertheless the only sensible thing to do. And her attitude, in the end, did amount to suicide.
Defense against the paggets had prepared us, possibly, for the same kind of defense against the Knifers. Knowing so little about them personally was a good thing. We weren’t going to kill flesh-and-blood people whom we knew and liked or hated — we were merely trying to knock down so many figures like those at the back of a shooting gallery, like the puppets the hero shoots down in a Western movie, not human beings but targets for well-aimed shots. I encouraged that attitude all I could. I was glad myself that I knew nothing in the Knifers’ favor, and so many reasons why I should put out of action as many of them as I could.