“Never trust vermin. I should have known—treacherous toads. I’ll show them! Where’s my spear, Oxeye?”

The hare scrabbled desperately, clutching Urthstripe in an attempt to stop him escaping. “You’re in no shape to fight, sah! Wounds ’n’ injuries an’ so on. Come inside an’ rest now, there’s a good feller.”

Urthstripe sat up on the bottom ledge of the fissure, swaying as he glared groggily at his friend. “Don’t talk rubbish, Ox! Day I can’t attend a battle I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” As he crashed over unconscious, Oxeye had the presence of mind to tip Urthstripe inside. He fell backwards over the ledge with a bump, landing in the ground-level corridor. Willing paws gathered round to carry the badger Lord up to his bed, a rush-strewn rock slab in the forge room.

*   *   *

Pennybright stood side by side with Bart Thistledown and Starbob, firing arrows at the advancing horde. She was clearly worried.

“Oh, Barty, what’ll we do? Most of the rocks blocking this space were pushed outside—we just levered them out to get Lord Urthstripe inside. It’d take simply ages to reblock this crevice.”

Bart Thistledown notched a shaft to his bowstring and dropped a charging rat with unerring accuracy. “Nothing much we can do, Pen. Hold the gap and wait further orders from Oxeye. Hi, Starbob, bring your bows an’ lend a paw over here!”

Outside on the shore, Ferahgo’s blue eyes gleamed triumphantly as he was swept along toward Salamandastron at the center of his horde of Corpsemakers. Now nothing could stop them.

*   *   *

“Yurr, be this’n anuther o’ those gurt lakes?”

“No, it’s the jolly old sea, Arula. We’ve reached the sea!” Pikkle waved his paddle in the air.

The logboats bumped out across a gurgling stream that spanned a short pebbly beach. Mara turned to her right and pointed at the distant flat-topped peak.

“Look, Salamandastron!”

Framed against a reddening evening sky, the badger mountain stood separate from the ranges to the east. Loambudd placed a paw on Urthwyte’s shoulder.

“Look at it, grandson. That’s where your brother Urthstripe rules.”

A tear gathered in the corner of the white badger’s honest eye. “Urthstripe, the brother I never knew!”

The logboats bounced as they hit the white-crested waves. Log-a-log shouted orders as they backed water and turned the noses of the vessels into the tide, beginning the wide semicircular tack which would eventually bring them to land on the beach in front of the mountain. As darkness fell they paddled side by side in convoy.

“What’s that floatin’ up ahead?” Alfoh called across in a gruff whisper.

Log-a-log peered into the darkness as he called to his paddlers, “Take a tack to starboard, watch out for that driftwood ahead!”

A voice rang out from the floating debris of branches. “If yore vermin, I warns yer Hi’ll fight fer me life!”