“I’ll say it isn’t,” Brogg agreed. “Keep the troops on their mettle while I inspect the larder, eh?”

“Righto, Captain Brogg. I’ll go up and turn them all out for an arms inspection and chuck a few in the guardhouse for having dirty spears. You keep checking round here.”

“Heeheehee. That’s it, Captain Ratflank. You make ’em jump.”

When his companion had gone, Brogg rooted about under some sacks. He came up with a stone jar half-full of strawberry jam. Upending it on his snout, he smacked the bottom with his paw to free the sticky sweet. Some of it actually went down his mouth; the rest stuck to his nose and whiskers, and he gave a jammy giggle.

“Heehee, hmmmm, mmmmm. Too good for the troops, this stuff!”

* * *

Squint dashed heedlessly through the woods, pushing aside bushes, cracking twigs and branches as he followed the trail.

Tsarmina was not aware that Brogg had ordered her to be followed. Stealthily she slipped behind an outcrop of furze, fitting the arrow to the bow as she followed her pursuer’s noisy progress.

“Come to me, Gingivere,” Tsarmina crooned softly under her breath. “Run quickly! Your sister awaits you.”

Squint ploughed headlong past the furze bush. The string twanged mercilessly.

He lay facedown with the arrow protruding from the back of his neck. Tsarmina stood over the fallen stoat, her mad eyes seeing only what they wanted to.

“There’s an end to it, brother. You’ll never trick me again!”

The gourds of water had been lashed to both ends of a stave; any other food that could be packed was carried along. The four travelers had a new spring to their step, now they were free from hunger and the mountain was much nearer.

Since early morning they had been on the move, glad to be away from the hut and the memory of its dead occupant. The going was easier and lighter; the weather stayed fine. Late afternoon found them seated by a shallow rock pool.

Log-a-Log munched a biscuit, keeping a weather eye on a crab lodged beneath a rock.

“I don’t like those things. You never know when one’s going to do a quick scuttle at you.”

Gonff wiggled his paws in the sun-warmed shallows. “Oh, I don’t know. I quite fancy another dancing lesson, if our friend there is in the mood.”

They laughed at the thought of their last encounter with a crab.

Martin glanced up at Salamandastron. “Look, you can just see the light faintly. Whatever it is must burn continuously. D’you suppose it is a fire lizard, Din?”

“Hurr oi doant be a-knowen of such creat’res. Burr, foir dargons, indeed. Wot moi owd granfer’d say of ’em oi doant know.”

“Nor do I, but one thing I do know,” Log-a-Log said, nodding toward the mountain. “That place is all that stands between sea rats and the land. They fear it and hate it.”