The logboats had traveled without stopping. Under the twin Captaincies of Log-a-log and Alfoh, they pressed onward. Creatures ate, slept and paddled in shifts, and sometime before dawn they had left the Great Lake behind, steering into a long winding arm of the Great South Stream that traveled downhill to the open sea. The paddles chunked steadily as high canyon walls swept by the five logboats, and shrews in the bows watched out for rocks and warded off the tall banks with their paddles and long branches. Bowley the cook and Ashnin passed out food from the goodly supply they had brought from the island, while Nordo made his way skillfully between the vessels with a compound of china clay and slippery elm bark for blistered paddle paws. To any creature on land that saw them passing it would have made a curious sight: five logboats stem to stern, hurtling downstream, laden with three badgers, two squirrels, a mole and a crowd of shrews, roaring out a bass war shanty.

“The Guosssom shrews are off to war,

With our rapiers close to paw.

Woe to him who will not go

To fight the vermin foe.

Logalog Logalog Log-a-log!

Guosssom shrews must live or die

Free beneath the open sky.

Battle on while we have breath,

With no fear of death.

Logalog Logalog Log-a-log!”

38

Ferahgo whirled the mace and chain. The spiked iron ball whistled and hummed as he closed in on Urthstripe’s left side. Klitch sneaked in on the right and threw his spear at the badger’s head. Urthstripe whirled with a roar, knocking the spear aside with his own weapon as he spun in a circle, catching the mace around the haft of his own spear and heaving Ferahgo bodily onto the sand. Behind the rocks an armed band of treacherous vermin waited until such time as Urthstripe was forced to turn and present his back to them. Scrabbling through the sand to get away, Ferahgo cowered in the shadow of the badger Lord. Urthstripe kicked the mace and chain toward the blue-eyed Assassin.

“Pick it up, weasel!”

Klitch dashed in and slashed at Urthstripe’s shoulder. The short sword caught the badger on an open place between shoulder plate and back armor. With a roar Urthstripe wheeled on him, thrusting at the stabbing sword with his mighty battlespear. Ferahgo was still down on the sand as he grabbed the mace and chain. Flinging it, he trapped the badger’s footpaws, and Urthstripe toppled and fell with a crash of armor. Klitch ran in with his sword held high, but Urthstripe pulled himself into a sitting position and lashed out. The metal-clad paw caught Klitch in the chest, sending him thudding into the rocks. The young weasel sobbed for breath as he looked down at his own blood, oozing from the deep bruising scratches the armored paw had inflicted.