The two rats in question saluted. Mokkan went and sat next to Gelltor, who was changing the dressing on his shoulder. “How goes it with your wound now, brother?”

Gelltor bit his lip as he peeled off a dockleaf that had stuck to the fur around his injury. “None the better for your asking!”

Mokkan lay back and closed his eyes, the sunlight making him almost invisible as it dappled leaf patterns down upon his body. “Don’t worry, you’ll have your revenge tonight on the Redwallers, a much quicker vengeance than your idea of all-out war.”

10

10

Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop had decided that the best thing for creatures going into action was to inspire them with a stirring ballad. Accordingly he kitted himself out in a heroic toga, brandished a floppy sword and glared at his audience ferociously through a monocle with no glass in it. The Redwallers sat about in a semicircle by the Abbey pond, while Florian pranced about on the water’s edge and treated them to a rendition of “The Battle for the Final Crumpet.” Roop, the mole, accompanied him on a small accordion and Runktipp sang the refrain. Florian scowled savagely at a few tittering Dibbuns as he launched into the opening lines of the song.

“Oh ’twas on the umpty-ninth of spring,

When a duck blew on a trumpet,

I led me army from behind,

To the battle of the final crumpet.

Some wore boots an’ some wore clogs,

An’ some wore big long faces,

An’ two fat moles fell down with colds,

Before we’d marched ten paces.

At the battle of the final crumpet,

I very near lost me life,

When I got punched upon the nose,

By a big bad hedgehog’s wife.

Then all broke out in mutiny,

When a mouse with a mustache said,

‘Lie down me lads afore they charge,

So they’ll all think we’re dead!’

Well there we sat while all around,

The spears an’ shafts were thuddin’,

A-drinkin’ goosegog cordial wine,

An’ eatin’ cabbage puddin’.

We finally defeated them,

When the duck tripped on his trumpet,

An’ I got a feather in me cap,

’Cos I ate the final crumpet!”

Florian sang the final two lines while waving his sword and dancing energetically backward for effect. He stumbled on one of his outsized boots and fell into the pond, to riotous applause. Skipper shook tears of helpless mirth from his eyes. “Sink me rudder, mates, we’re in fer a lively time if’n that ’un’s defendin’ the Abbey tonight!”

On the walltop there was great hilarity. Song, Dann and Dippler chuckled aloud, watching the two moles, Roop and Muggle, trying to haul the ungainly hare from the pond. Friar Butty tapped the tattered volume with his quill. “Can we get back to our work, please?”