“Thank you, Mr. Gingivere. Are you a wildcat?”

“Yes I am, but no need to worry. I won’t harm you. Hush now, little one, let me get on with my work.”

Ferdy stayed silent, peering through the hole at Gingivere, who was hacking stolidly at the opposite wall. It took a long time. Gingivere’s paws were sore from grappling with the stone, chipping the mortar, and pulling this way and that until the rock finally gave and shifted. With Gingivere pulling from one side and Coggs pushing from the other, the wallstone plopped out onto the floor.

“Hello, Mr. Gingivere. I’m Coggs. Is Ferdy there?”

The wildcat shook the paw which protruded from the hole. “Yes, Coggs. If you look you’ll see him through the hole from his cell.”

The two little hedgehogs looked through at each other.

“Hi, Coggs.”

“Hi, Ferdy.”

“The guards will be coming shortly with bread and water for me,” Gingivere interrupted. “I’ll share it with you. Go back into your cells now and stay quiet. When Chibb arrives tomorrow I’ll let him know you two are here.”

Gingivere replaced the stones without much difficulty. He sat awaiting the guards with his daily ration of bread and water, realizing for the first time in a long and unhappy period that he was able to smile again.

A questing-o the friends did go,
Companions brave and bold,
O’er forest, field and flowing stream,
Cross mountains high and old.
These brave young creatures journeying
Along the road together,
While birds did sing throughout the spring,
Into the summer weather.

“Gonff, will you stop prancing about and caterwauling while we’re trying to solve this chart? Dinny, chuck something at that fat little nuisance, will you, please?”

Martin scratched his head as he and Bella turned back to the scroll. Young Dinny obliged by hurling an armchair cushion that knocked the mousethief flat upon his bottom.

“Thurr, thad’ll keep ’ee soilent apiece, zurr Gonffen. You’m a roight liddle noisebag, stan’ on moi tunnel, you’m arr.”

Gonff lay on the floor, resting his head upon the cushion; he hummed snatches of further new verses he was planning. Martin and Bella pored over the writing on the scroll, gleaning the information and writing it upon a chart with a quill pen. The wording was in ancient badger script that only Bella could translate.

Young Dinny called out from Bella’s armchair, where he was ensconced, “Wot we gotten so furr, Marthen?”

Martin read aloud:

Given to Lady Sable Brock by Olav Skyfurrow the wildgoose, after she found him injured in Mossflower and tended his hurts. The beacon that my skein find its way to the sea by is called the strange mountain of fire lizard.

Here Martin had marked a star with the word thus: *Salamandastron.

We of the free sky do wing our way there. But if you be an earth walker, it will be a long hard journey. Here is the way I will tell you to go. I begin as I fly over Brockhall: