The Ringing Bell was a pretty standard adventurer's tavern, as such things went. It sat in that odd range that adventurers tended to like, where it wasn't fancy enough to be high class, but it was far too well kept to be low class. It was easy to find and in a fairly good part of the city, only a few blocks away from the adventurer's guild. Some cities, the child had heard, actually had a tavern built into the local branch of the guild, but that tended to be for cities that had a larger population of adventurer's available. Artembale had once had a nearby dungeon that drew in adventurers, situated in the caverns that the child's teacher now called home. The dungeon had been cleared faster than most, and while the monsterkin had largely been cleared, slimes and giant rats still occupied the city's sewers, so there was still work for an adventurer willing to get their hands dirty. Still, were it not for the stone quarry and logging within a few miles of the city, the loss of the dungeon might have caused the city's economy to collapse, as had sometimes been the case with cities located near dungeons. Instead, the monsterkin was simply considered an annoyance that the populace would be glad to finally be rid of, once and for all.
The child knocked on the door of the tavern and was promptly rewarded with its opening. She handed the scroll her teacher had given her over to the tavernkeeper and waited for him to read it. After a moment, he motioned her in and closed the door behind them. He gestured for her to follow him to the bar. Once they'd sat down, she set the heavy sack she was carrying on the counter and waited, as the tavernkeeper pulled down a bottle and two mugs.
"Iron Isles cider," he explained, pouring them both a mug. "You can down twenty bottles of the stuff, and not feel tipsy. I thought you might like something to wet your whistle before going to work. It's the only thing I can lay my hands on right now, with the rats down there."
The tavernkeeper was a middle-aged, bland-looking man. He seemed to have a face that could blend in with a crowd, even if he was all on his own. Brown hair, brown eyes, and no distinguishing features. Her teacher had warned her about men like that: Appearances deceive, and sometimes, people with that kind of face can hide a great many secrets.
The child took the mug and sipped at it. Truth was, she wasn't thirsty, but it would be rude to turn it down. It wasn't bad, a little on the sweet side. After a moment, she asked, "How many rats are down there?"
The tavernkeeper took a moment to think, before saying, "My brother said that he'd seen at least half a dozen of them, maybe more. They ambushed him, so he didn't get a chance to take count." He paused, then looked the child over before asking, "Are you sure you'll be alright down there? I mean, I was told you were up to the job, but you're a good deal smaller than I thought you'd be."
She opened up the sack and pulled out a large slab of raw meat. She then pulled out a small pouch and emptied its contents onto the counter, a set of small strips of whale baleen folded and held in place with sinew. "I don't plan on being down there for long." At his odd look, she explained, "It's an old hunter's trick for killing wolves." She cut off a cube of meat from the slab, then made a small cut and stuffed the wolfkiller into the cube. "The rats eat it, then digest the sinew holding this tight." She picked up one, and with her dagger cut the sinew thread. The baleen sprang outward, flattening out to its full length. "The baleen cuts them up from the inside. It'll take them three days to die, but die they will."
"I'm surprised you don't use poison," the tavernkeeper said, watching her work on assembling her deadly bait.
"Rats can smell poison," came her prompt response. "Or at least, some of them can. And if one of them eats this and falls over, they'll ignore the meat, knowing its bad. This doesn't have a smell to it, and takes long enough to work that even if one tests it first, they'll find nothing wrong with it." She paused, and added, "Since you're closed for the week, it seemed better to do this the safe way, rather than the risky way. Once they're all dead, I'll look for whatever hole they used to get into your cellar, toss some poison down it to ward off any other rats, and then plug it up. You'll want a professional to fix the hole afterwards, but it'll keep long enough for someone to do the job."
The tavernkeeper nodded, and said, "That's fair. I can't run the tavern without my brother here, anyways: Him, his wife, and their two daughters do much of the work here, and they're not leaving his side until he recovers. All I care about is that the rats are dead before they come back. I'm considering any food stored down there as lost and will be having more delivered at the end of the week to replace it. You do what you need to do, just make sure that the rats are dead and gone before then." He paused, then added, "If you're needing a room to stay in, I'm afraid I don't have any to offer with the tavern closed and the staff away, but my cousin runs The Golden Tree, and if you tell him you're doing work for me, he should let you stay there for cheap."
The child nodded and said, "Thanks. I'll be checking back here daily to make sure things are working as planned."
The tavernkeeper nodded, and said, "I appreciate it. I'll let you..." he paused, seeming to change his mind about what he was about to say, then added, "I should warn you: The ratcatchers guild has been stirring up trouble of late, trying to bully folks into using them for giant rat problems instead of adventurers. The catchers charge ridiculously high rates for giant rats compared to adventurers, so no one is using them, but I've heard tell that they have a bad habit of catching rookie adventurers in dark alleys and laying into them. Sometimes the catchers get a surprise, of course: A group of thugs with clubs trying to ambush an armed and armored adventurer doesn't always go the way they'd expect it to. Nobody has been seriously hurt or killed yet, but I thought I ought to warn you, just in case you get into trouble."
The child gave another nod and said, "My thanks. I'll watch my back."
The tavernkeeper smiled, then said, "I'll let you get to work, then. I'm here from sunrise to noon while the tavern is closed, so if you need to come in to check on things, that's the best time to come over." He bowed slightly, then walked over to the further side of the counter, pulling out a book. "I'll be going over the ledgers if there's anything you need or any questions you may have."
The child nodded, then continued her work. A half dozen to a dozen rats would require a fair amount of bait, and a fair amount of ratkillers. She'd brought plenty of both.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Within half an hour, everything was ready. She placed the cubes of meat into the sack, then said, "I'm going down. If I'm not back in five minutes, I'm probably dead."
The tavernkeeper nodded, and said, "Good luck."
She carefully opened the door, taking a moment to wait and see if there might be an amush waiting for her. When nothing cam, she went through the cellardoor and made her way quietly down the stairs. This was undeniably the most dangerous part of the job. The rats down here should be well-fed, given that there was a supply of food down here, but they'd also likely gotten a taste for blood after attacking the tavernkeeper's brother. She'd half-expected to be swarmed as soon as she opened the door, but thankfully, the rats were still satisfied with whatever might be down here. She took care to stay in the light that filtered through the door at the top of the stairs: Rats, even giant ones, prefer the dark.
Once she reached the bottom of the stairs, she reached inside the sack and started spreading the cubes of meat around. She didn't want to pile it all in one place, or else one particularly gluttonous rat might decide to eat the whole lot in one go. While that might result in one very dead rat, it wouldn't get all of them... and by the gods, she wanted all of them dead.
She heard a sound upstairs, sounded by angry shouts. The words "Ratcatchers", "pay", and "guild rates" came filtering down. The catchers had caught word that the tavernkeeper had hired an adventurer to clear up the rat problem. They did not sound pleased by that.
Soft scuttling to her right was all the warning the child had before a giant rat came leaping for her. Instincts honed by training had her stepping out of its path before she was fully aware of it, and her hand shot forward, grabbing and holding the beast in an iron grip by the scruff of its neck. She considered just killing it now, then thought better of it. Her master had once told her that while it was good to do things the safer and easier way, sometimes it was more important to send a message than it was to make a quick, clean kill. He'd been speaking about killing men at the time, but in this case, the same logic applied. She paused, making sure no other rats were coming, then slowly went up the stairs, careful not to turn her back on the darkness of the cellar until she was more than halfway up.
----------------------------------------
The tavernkeeper was not pleased that three assholes from the Ratcatchers Guild had come in through his front door with the intent of making trouble. He was making sure they understood that, with a crossbow in one hand pointed at the leader and his shortsword from his days in the military in his other hand. The tavernkeeper was glad to have kept up his training regimen from the old days, but he desperately wished he'd had his armor on. He was confident that he could take down at least two of the three if it came to violence, but that wouldn't mean much to a dead man.
The leader of the trio of ratcatchers was a tall, bulky man with a noticeable paunch that stretched out his leather armor, but his bare arms had enough muscle to show that he had the strength to go with his size. A crossbow bolt in the gut should punch through his armor and kill him in a few days, but the more immediate problem would be that he'd likely wring the tavernkeeper's neck between now and then if the brute didn't just use the heavy club in his hand. The other two were noticeably smaller and less well-muscled, and while they looked less immediately dangerous, they both had clubs and daggers at their belts that could make them a threat if it came to blows.
"I told you," the tavernkeeper said, angrily, "I ain't paying your rates for ratkilling. I've already hired an adventurer, and they're in the cellar taking care of the problem right now."
The big brute opened his mouth to retort but was stopped by the sound of angry screeching coming from the entrance to the cellar. A moment later, the young adventurer emerged, a giant rat the size of a full-grown spaniel held in front of them by the scruff of its neck. The beast was not happy about this treatment, trying to twist free, but it seemed unable to twist from the adventurer's grip.
"I heard you were offering to kill giant rats," the child stated bluntly in their monotone voice. "I have one here. Please demonstrate the proper method of doing so."
The two smaller catchers immediately scrambled back, shocked at the enraged, screeching beast in front of them. The big brute's face went pale at the sight of the rat as well. The tavernkeeper felt a bit uncomfortable himself: Like most people, he'd assumed that "Giant Rats" were just bigger than normal rats, up until he'd caught a glimpse of them the other day when pulling his injured brother from the cellar. It turns out, you don't call something a giant just because it was bigger than average. You called something a giant because it was fucking gigantic compared to the norm. Giant rats easily towered over even the largest normal rat. Odds are, the ratcatchers were still operating under the same incorrect assumptions about giant rats, and this was the first time any of these three had ever seen one.
None of the ratcatchers stepped forward to try and deal with the snarling rat. The big one looked ready to vomit at the sight of the filthy, mangy beast, if not the smell of it. The tavernkeeper had encountered rotten corpses back during the war that smelled better than this creature did, implying that it had likely originated from the city sewers. The young adventurer waited a few seconds for any of the ratcatchers to say or do anything, then said in that dead, emotionless voice of theirs, "Fine. I'll show you how it's done." With no more than that, they pulled out a poniard from their belt with their free hand, then stabbed the beast in the head twice, once to kill it and a second time to make sure it was dead. They then dropped the dead beast on the floor, then said, "Now leave. If you don't have the balls to kill one, there's no way you could manage to kill the dozen in the cellar."
The three quickly fled, proverbial tails between their legs. Outside, he heard the sound of violent heaving and a splash as the leader of the little group lost his lunch on the paving-stones outside.
The tavernkeeper looked the young adventurer over again: They looked to be twelve years old, and lanky for that age. There was no way of telling if they were a boy or a girl, between the leather armor they were wearing, their face likewise as androgenous as one can be for that age. That face never changed expression, and their voice kept a flat monotone at all times. The voice also betrayed nothing: They could be a girl or just a boy whose voice hadn't changed yet. Either way, it hardly mattered: Someone who could hold a mad, screeching beast like that at arm's length without so much as a tremor and then kill it so professionally had bigger balls than all three of those thugs combined, regardless of whether they were a boy or girl.
"Sorry about the mess," the adventurer apologized. They took a moment to close the door to the cellar, then set to work removing the rat's tail so they could take it in for the bounty.
Putting the shortsword and the crossbow away carefully, the tavernkeeper admitted, "I'm just glad you came up here. That could have gotten very ugly if you hadn't come up when you did. I can clean that up later: It's not the first time I've had to deal with blood on the floorboards, and it likely won't be the last. Just be sure to take the corpse out with you when you're done. I don't need it stinking up the place."
The adventurer nodded, then said, "Understood. I've distributed the bait. I'll be back tomorrow morning to check on things, and see if they took it. I'll distribute more over the next day or two, just in case there wasn't enough."
The tavernkeeper nodded, then said, "Thank you for your hard work. I'll be sure to let my friends in the tapster's guild know that you're handling things here, and what you did for me just now. But watch your back out there: I doubt this will be the last you see of the ratcatchers, especially now that you've embarrassed them like that."
The adventurer shrugged non-commitally, then said, "Thank you for the warning. I can manage."