Tsarmina waved her paw for the archers to cease fire. Some of them did not see her and kept shooting.

“Stop, that’s enough, fools,” she shrieked. “Can’t you see they’re not there!”

The arrows stopped. A fox called Bentbrush turned to his companion, a rat named Whegg.

“Bane would have thought of something to weed ’em out,” he said nostalgically.

“Like what, for instance?”

“Well, like, er. I don’t know. But he’d have thought of something.”

“If he was so smart, why is he so dead now? Look, the bushes are moving down there!”

Tsarmina was alongside the rat in a flash. “Where? Show me!” she demanded eagerly.

“Down there, right by where we were shooting.”

The fringe bushes at the wood’s edge were indeed shaking and rustling.

Tsarmina smiled with satisfaction. “So, we weren’t just wasting arrows; some of them are hit. Over here, you lot. Give those bushes a good raking with arrows. I don’t want anything left alive down there. Ready, fire!”

The shafts went through the bushes like a shower of rain.

* * *

Lady Amber climbed high in an elm until she glimpsed the back of the soldiers over the battlements. Notching an arrow to her bowstring, she murmured to the twelve stout squirrels who were following her example, “Three shots, quick as you like, then away from here.”

The shafts flew straight and true, striking the huddled group who were firing upon the bushes. Tsarmina was saved by the body of Bentbrush, who fell across her, two arrows protruding from his back. There was nowhere to run on the open roof, and a score of soldiers were struck by arrows.

Before they could recover and retaliate, the squirrels had gone.

* * *

Log-a-Log and Foremole sat some distance from the bushes. Well hidden, they tugged vigorously at lengths of rope that were attached to bush and branch.

“Yurr, ’ow long do us’ns keep a-tuggen ’ee ropes?”

“Take a rest now, Foremole. They’ve stopped firing.”

Lady Amber and her squirrels swung in from the high branches.

“Good decoy, Martin,” she congratulated him. “We gave them something they won’t forget in a hurry. Nearly got the cat, but a fox fell across her.”

“Yes, a clever strategy, but you must keep on trying to think one jump ahead of Tsarmina. She’ll come back at you with something else, if I know anything of warfare. That cat is as cunning as any sea rat, you’ll see,” Log-a-Log warned.

Martin pointed to Chibb descending from the blue. “Here comes my spy now.”

“Er, ahem, I overheard the cat giving orders.”

“What was she saying?”

“Well, harrumph, ahem. Most of it wasn’t fit for the ears of any decent creature, but she’s left a token force on the roof and is taking the rest downstairs.”

Martin unsheathed his sword. “That may mean she intends coming out to make an attack on us.”

Bella nodded. “Well, she can’t get through the gateway. I’ve locked and wedged that gate myself.”