Florian strutted triumphantly down the wallsteps, bowing to all around in the most outrageous manner. “Jolly well told you chaps, didn’t I? Fightin’s over, wot!”

Janglur sat on the northwest wallcorner with his friends, Rusvul and Skipper. They watched the cheering creatures pouring over toward the Abbey, eager to begin the preparations for the celebratory feast. Janglur’s hooded eyes swept Mossflower woodlands north of the ramparts. “Let ’em enjoy theirselves. I think I’ll just linger round ’ere for a few days yet. No point in takin’ chances, mates.”

Skipper tested a longbow that he had been restringing. “Good idea. We’re with you!”

*

Vannan’s was the strongest personality of the three remaining Marlfoxes. She had ordered a retreat into the depths of south Mossflower. The vixen sat watching the water rats tend their injuries and cook food over an open fire, remarking noncommittally, as Ascrod came to sit beside her, “We’re fortunate there’s no shortage of vittles hereabouts. Let ’em rest awhile. We need to use brains more than weapons now.”

Ascrod snorted scornfully. He snatched a roasted thrush from a passing water rat and sank his teeth into it. “We need reinforcements more than anythin’, sister. We’ve barely got a hundred an’ twenty countin’ me, you an’ Predak.”

Vannan stood up, brushing her cloak off. “Then we’ll just have to use the ferrets, won’t we?”

Ascrod spat a bone into the fire, wrinkling his face in disgust. “What? You mean that scurvy bunch we rousted out of here last night? Raventail and his ragged crowd? They looked as though they’d seen enough fighting to last them many a long day. Anyway, ferrets have never served those of Marlfox blood. Surely you cannot be serious?”

Vannan adjusted the ax in her belt so it was ready to paw. “I’m perfectly serious, brother. We can’t be too choosy in times like these, and we need more soldiers. Those ferrets will join us, aye, they’ll fight and die for us too, when I’ve put a bit of discipline into their backbones. You can come with me. Bring an escort of twoscore, well armed—Allag’s patrol will do.”

Ascrod tossed the roast bird aside, wiping paws upon his cloak. “But we chased them off. They’ll be long gone by now.”

Vannan pointed to the telltale wisps rising above the treetops to the south. “They’re still hanging about over that way. I’ve been marking the smoke of their campfire since early morning. Are you coming?”

Ascrod signaled Allag’s patrol and hurried to join his sister. “But there was no more than a score of them. What use is twenty ferrets to us?”

Vannan strode confidently onward. “A score is all we counted, but I’ll wager they can raise three times that number. Sixty extra soldiers is not something to be sneezed at. Let’s go and talk to this Chieftain Raventail!”