Several toads leaned over the edge and prodded with their tridents, but they were driven back with a volley of mudballs from the pit below. Scraggle and Wikk bit furiously into the straining rope, spitting dried grass left and right as their sharp teeth worked on the fibers.

The rope parted with a loud snap!

On top the toads went staggering back and landed in a heap on Glagweb. He thrust at them cruelly with his trident.

“Krrrrekk! Off, fools. Get off the King!”

Mara, Pikkle and Nordo fell back into the pit in a splashing deluge of watery mud. Still clinging to the severed half of the rope, a pile of shrews fell in on top of them. Through the slime and sludge they laughed aloud at their victory.

“We won! We won! Hooray!”

“I say, good show, you chaps. That’ll teach old Glag guts, wot?”

An arrow came streaking down and pierced Scraggle’s paw. Glagweb appeared at the pit edge with several toad archers.

“Krrrg! Kill! Kill them all!”

Mara felt something hit her between the ears. She clapped a paw to her head and caught the object. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of a wren zooming overhead.

Holding up the acorn, she roared aloud, “Look, it’s the acorn! Eulaliaaaaa!”

*   *   *

Immediately, the battle cries of the Guosssom shrews reached their ears. Nordo dived into a wallcave, avoiding arrows as he threw slings and stones forward, lifting his head in an answering war shout to his father’s warriors who were pressing up from the riverbank.

“Logalogalogalogalog!”

An arrow zipped between Pikkle’s ears as he flung off a rounded stone from his sling. There was a satisfying thud as it caught a toad guard in the throat. Toads were everywhere, swinging their vicious flails and thrusting with tridents. Fierce-eyed Guosssom warriors, their heads bound in bright-colored cloths, leapt to the fray, parrying and riposting with their short fencing rapiers.

“Yahaa, ’sdeath to you, scumback!”

“On guard! One, two, slay!”

Mara and the rest whirled stones upward with as much speed and force as they could muster, dodging arrows and ducking long pike thrusts from the toads on top. King Glagweb turned back and forth, trying to divide his attention between the prisoners in the pit and the advancing Guosssom shrews. The element of surprise was working well. The shrews drove the toad masses backwards mercilessly, pushing them into the flames of their own cooking fires as they did. Log-a-log, the fierce-eyed leader of the shrews, fought like a mad beast, throwing himself onto several toads at a time, regardless of danger. Bleeding from a dozen trident and flail cuts, he fought wildly with tooth and rapier, all the time booming out in his gruff bass voice:

“I’m coming, Nordo my son. Logalogalogalogalog!”