“Siege! No mad charges, paw-to-paw battles or out-and-out fighting—a siege is the thing that will conquer the mountain. Sooner or later the badger and his hares will run out of arrows, spears, javelins and boulders. I have him bottled up inside his mountain; he cannot leave. We have superior numbers and time on our side. Nobeast is coming to his rescue. All we have to do is snipe from safety and wait him out. Now, there is one question, can anybeast guess what it is?”

“Food and water!” Klitch answered.

Ferahgo chuckled at his son’s quickness. “Right. Someday you may turn out half as clever as your father. Food and drink—how much have they got and how long will it last them, that’s the question!”

Crabeyes was an ex-searat. His eyes shifted constantly, never staying still. He held up a paw. “Master, they might ’ave vittles enough ter last them fer seasons to come. Admitted they can’t get out while we’ve got ’em surrounded, but if they ’ave enough food ’n’ drink they could stay snug in there forever.”

Badtooth, a large fat stoat, agreed with him. “Crabeyes is right, Master. If they ’ave enough supplies we could die of old age waitin’ out ’ere on this shore.”

Ferahgo pawed at the gold medal on his neck. His blue eyes shone happily as he unfolded his master stroke. “But we won’t die of old age. Neither will Urthstripe and his fighters. They will die pretty soon now of something else.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Klitch and the four Captains as the shadow of Farran fell across them. Hurriedly they moved aside to make room for him, each one shivering with fear as he passed them. Farran chose his own place, directly in front of the Assassin.

Blue eyes met amber ones as they faced each other.

Ferahgo smiled ingratiatingly. “Well well, the Poisoner meets the Assassin—what a combination. But we have worked together in the past, Farran, and I have always rewarded you well, have I not?”

The black fox merely nodded once in acknowledgment.

Ferahgo averted his eyes, knowing the danger in Farran’s constant stare. He took out his skinning knife and whetted it slowly against a rock, speaking as he did.

“Friend Farran, if I were to launch a nighttime attack on the mountain, could you slip through the lines and find a way in?”

Farran nodded once. That was enough for Ferahgo.

“Good! Once you were inside it would be up to you to find the food and drinking water. I imagine that the mountain will be a honeycomb of passages and side-cuts, but you could find the larders no matter how many chambers and corridors you had to explore, eh, Farran? When you do, I want everything eatable or drinkable to be poisoned with your most deadly fluids. No creature is to be left alive in Salamandastron.”