The three mice scrambled to the top of a battlement. Cornflower jumped up and down, and Constance had to catch her apron strings to keep her from falling.

“It’s dust! Somebeast is coming up the path, I know it!” Cornflower shouted.

John Churchmouse quickly donned his glasses. “There must be a great many to send up a dust cloud like that so early on an autumn morning. They’ll be round the bend soon. Listen, can you hear voices?”

Constance leaned forward, straining her ears. Faintly she could catch the strains of voices chanting the familiar warriors’ cries of Redwall and Mossflower.

Round the bend of the path they came, the paws of the horde raising a cloud of brown dust.

Cornflower could see the leaders as they began to march in double time at the sight of Redwall Abbey.

“It’s Matthias and Mattimeo, they’ve returned!” she shouted.

John Churchmouse and his wife yelled aloud, “Look, there’s our Tess and Tim. . . . Hooray!”

Constance leaned out across the battlements. “There’s Basil, and Jess and Sam. See, they’ve got young Cynthia with them!”

“I can see two badgers!”

“There’s an owl. Look, an owl!”

“Hedgehogs, shrews, woodlanders! By the fur and claw, there’s a great army of woodlanders coming this way!”

“Turn out the Abbey, tell the Father Abbot. Sound the bells!”

*   *   *

Matthias marched shoulder to shoulder with his friends, while the horde packed in behind them gazed up in awe at the red sandstone Abbey which reared above the trees ahead.

Mattimeo began laughing. Tim, Tess and Cynthia pounded him on the back as they shouted and cheered wildly:

“Good old Redwall, tell Ambrose to get the barrels open!”

“Who’s that on the walls? It’s your mum. Look, there’s ours too. Mum, Mum! D’you think they can hear us?”

*   *   *

The Methuselah and the Matthias bells began pealing and clanging out across the clear morning air.

Bong! Clang! Boom! Bong! Clang! Boom!

Basil halted the army. “Right markers, get fell in. Come on, you sloppy lot, we’re coming home like a proper army, not a ragamuffin crowd. Ranks of six, chins in, chests out, shoulders back. Step lively there, you at the back, catch up. Come on, come on, laddie buck, you’re not on a daisy-chain ramble now, y’know. Quick march!”

“Never gives up, does he?” Jess muttered to Sam from the side of her mouth. “You watch, he’ll be the first to break ranks and charge if anybeast throws a pie over that wall.”

*   *   *

The hot morning sunlight shafted down on the brown dust rising between the green and gold leaves of Mossflower as the main doors of the old red sandstone Abbey burst open.

The Abbot walked out at the head of the Abbey dwellers. They lined the path facing Matthias at the head of his army.

There was complete silence as they stood looking at each other.