Afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen when Jukka stirred. She shook Ruro and Beddle. ‘Best make a move before eventide. Which way now?’
Ruro retrieved the parchment of bark scroll, which was hanging from Fleetscut’s tunic. ‘It says here: “Discover then a streamwolf’s ford, tug thrice upon the royal cord.” Where wouldst thou suppose that to be?’
Jukka judged by the sunshadows. ‘Nor’east has served us well thus far; we’ll continue that way. Beddle, get them up on their paws. A ford means fresh water, that’s good.’ None too gently she turned and roused the old hare with a few kicks of her footpaw. ‘Waken thyself, windbag, or we leave ye here!’
Fleetscut came awake, doubled up with agonising stomach cramps, which he let everybeast know about with long piteous wailing.
‘Owowowowowooooow! Ouf! Umh! I knew I’d die. We made these woodlands too late, you chaps! Owowowooch! Your old pal’s a goner. Bury me here, please, quick as y’can. Ooooooh! Anti-Trampin’ Plague, that’s what ’tis. Oooooh!’
Obligingly several squirrels began kicking leaf loam over the suffering hare. He sprang up, spitting out leaves. ‘Gerroff, you rotters. What d’ye think you’re up to?’
‘Thou asked us to bury thee. We would not deny thee that.’
‘Aye, longears, th’art green in the gills. Methinks th’art close to Dark Forest gates!’
Fleetscut picked wet brown leaves from between his ears. ‘Dark Forest gates indeed! Ouchouchooch! Oh, me poor belly!’
Ruro grinned and squeezed her friend’s shoulders pityingly. ‘Couldn’t have been anything that thou ate, of course?’
Fleetscut straightened up indignantly, then immediately folded over again, hugging his stomach. ‘Might have been a blighted worm in one of those apples!’
Beddle winked at Ruro. ‘Oh, pray tell, sir, which one? Thou great fodderbag, thee ate a whole treeful, every one of them sour. ‘Twould have slain any other beast!’
Jukka leaned on her broad-bladed spear impatiently. ‘Ruro, do something for the bladder-headed oaf, or methinks he’ll wail on until the crack o’ doom.’
Fleetscut sat back against a sycamore, holding his distended stomach with both paws. He shut his eyes and mouth firmly, but not before remarking pointedly, ‘Madam, I’m not eatin’ that mishmash. Are you tryin’ to hasten me flippin’ demise, wot?’
Each of the squirrels had gleefully contributed a trickle of their water. Ruro had a small fire going, over which she was boiling hound’s-tongue leaves, milkwort, green alkanet blossoms and two sulphur tuft mushrooms in an old iron war helmet. The smell this concoction produced when she mashed it was horrendous. Jukka nodded to Beddle and Grood as Ruro removed the helmet from the flames.
‘Take hold of the blockhead and grip him tight. Ruro, make him take it all!’
Beddle and Grood held Fleetscut’s head, while other squirrels piled on and sat on his limbs. Beddle pinched the old hare’s nostrils so that he could not breathe. The patient held out until he seemed fit to burst, then opened his mouth wide. ‘Assassins! Hare-murderers! Wharooop!’
Ruro poured the offensive mixture down Fleetscut’s throat like a ministering angel, whilst Jukka looked on in grim satisfaction. Fleetscut bucked and writhed to no avail. Ruro managed to get the last of it down his mouth, and sprang to one side as the hare began shuddering all over.
‘Let him go. Stand back, everybeast!’
Fleetscut leapt up like a startled fawn, scut twitching, ears erect, eyes popping wide, jaws quivering. He shot off among the trees like a shaft from a bow.
‘Foul toads! Pollywoggles! Great barrel-bummed poisoners! Wharrroooogggghhhh! Bluuuuuurgh!’
Moments later he lolloped back, rather unsteadily, with a wan smile pasted on his drooping features.
‘Never killed me, did you, smartytails, wot!’
A stem voice boomed from the edge of the camp. ‘Belaaay, put one paw near the rabbit an’ we’ll drop you all where y’stand!’
A single-bladed hatchet thudded into the ground between Fleetscut and Jukka. Instantly, the woodland was thick with hedgehogs. The squirrels were surrounded. The hog leader, a massive creature, made twice as big by the grass and leaves stuck to his quills as camouflage, strutted past Jukka and retrieved his hatchet. In the other paw he carried a shield of toughened beech bark, studded with shells. Staring fiercely at the squirrels, he puffed himself out, cheeks, stomach and chest.
‘Bushytailed mice, eh! Well lissen, bullies, I wouldn’t stand to see an ’og treated in that way, tortured an’ poisinged, nor a rabbit, neither . . .’
Fleetscut tapped his quills politely. ‘Er, ’scuse me, old lad, but I’m a hare an’ they were—’
Rounding on him, the big hedgehog roared, ‘Who asked you, eh? Don’t dare interrupt when Baron Drucco Spikediggle has the floor, or you’ll get yourself chopped up into frogmeat, you will!’
Fleetscut pawed away the hatchet hovering under his nose. ‘Beg pardon, but don’t waggle that thing at me, I’m still feelin’ a bit frail, doncha know. I was merely explain—’
Baron Drucco went into a fury then, raising his hatchet and shouting in a voice which caused the leaves sticking round his mouth to blow away. ‘Belaaay that gab, rabbit! I won’t stand it from my ’ogs an’ I won’t take it from you. If I whack your ’ead off that’ll cure you of talkin’. Wot d’you think, Rabble?’
The other hedgehogs began banging their hatchets against their shields, each vying to shout louder than the rest.
‘Hohoh, that’s the stuff, baron!’
‘Chop that rabbit’s ’ead off!’
‘That’d stop ’is chatter, baron!’
‘Does yer ’onour want us t’chop these bushmice up too?’
A small wiry female hogwife pushed her way through. Grabbing the baron’s hatchet from his paw, she brandished it expertly, clipping the tip off one of his headspikes. Her voice was almost a shriek, high and shrill.
‘Yer blatherin’ big pincushion, pin yer ears back an’ lissen t’wot the rabbit’s tryin’ to tell yer.’
The baron deflated totally. Picking up the tip of his headspike, he chewed on it like a toothpick. ‘Mirklewort, yer showin’ me up in front of me own rabble.’ He ducked as she swung the hatchet again.
‘Show yer up? Every time you open that great trap o’ yourn you show yerself up, breezebarrel!’ Then, turning quickly aside, she whispered to Fleetscut, ‘You ’ave yer say now. Shout out loud, mind. That’s all this rabble pays ’eed to, beasts wot kin shout – even rabbits!’
Fleetscut yelled at the top of his voice, and to his surprise the hedgehog rabble went silent and listened.
‘I’m a hare, d’ye hear, a bally hare! These squirrels are my friends! They weren’t harmin’ me, just helpin’ me through a serious illness, that’s all! No need to go choppin’ anybeast up round here, chaps, wot! Wot wot!’
Determined to shout louder than Fleetscut, the baron hollered at a volume that hurt the hare’s ears, ‘Well why didn’t yer say so at first, instead o’ causin’ all this trouble an’ strife, eh?’
The baron’s wife, Mirklewort, swung the hatchet once more, clipping off another of his headspikes. ‘Because yer never gave ’im a wifflin’ chance to, antbrain!’
Sulkily the baron picked up the headspike tip and stuck it in his mouth, next to the first one. Mirklewort pulled them out and stamped on them.
‘Will yew stop that, Drucco? Y’ll ’ave eaten yerself up one day, carryin’ on like that! Ask these creatures if they’d like some blackcurrant an’ plum crumble. Go on, snitnose!’
Baron Drucco’s offer was readily accepted by Fleetscut and the squirrels. While the latter trooped after Drucco to the hogden the old hare, well aware of where the ruling power in the tribe lay, made a wobbly though elegant leg to Mirklewort, offering his paw.
‘Allow me to escort you, marm. A pretty hogwife should never jolly well walk alone, wot!’
She accepted. ‘Well well, ain’t this grand? That ’usband o’ mine wouldn??
?t give yer a push off a rock!’
Baron Drucco’s tribe were known as the Rabble. They lived in rabble conditions, even though their camp was nought but a temporary one. However, neither Jukka nor Fleetscut could pretend that Rabble blackcurrant and plum crumble was anything other than first class. The guests seated themselves on a rotten elm trunk and dug into sizeable bowls of the stuff, steaming hot and covered in sweet maple sauce.
‘Yew’ll ’ave ter forgive us,’ Mirklewort remarked casually. ‘The camp’s a bit untidy. Of course, it ain’t wot we’re used to, is it, Drucco?’
The baron licked white sauce from his snout and sniffed. ‘I should wifflin’ well ’ope not. Still, wot’s a liddle untidiness atwixt friends, eh, that’s wot I allus say.’
Jukka shifted to accommodate a beetle grubbing its way out of the rotten log they were seated on. ‘A little untidiness indeed,’ she murmured low to Fleetscut. ‘Methinks the place looks like a battlefield in the midst of a midden!’
The area was littered with chopped off headspikes, broken bowls, fruit and vegetable skins and other debris, far too dreadful to mention. Fleetscut coughed politely and made conversation, lest anybeast had heard Jukka’s remarks.
‘Ahem, I take it that you don’t live hereabouts then, marm?’
Mirklewort wiped spilled crumble from her lap with a withered dock leaf, which she then devoured. ‘Ho graciousness no, we’re only up ’ere lookin’ for our babe, liddle Skittles. The wifflin’ wanderin’ wogglespike – er, haha, I mean the darlin’ h’infant ’og – went an’ got ’isself losted. We’ve seen neither nose nor spike of ’im for a frog’s age. Oh, I do ’ope ’e ain’t been consoled by vermins.’
Baron Drucco looked up in the midst of stealing a dozing compatriot’s bowl of crumble. ‘Don’t yew mean consorted?’
Fleetscut chipped in, making sure his tone was loud enough. ‘I think the word you’re lookin’ for is consumed, chaps. Actually, we met up with two hedgehog types, Grassum and Reedum they called themselves, couple o’ days back. They found your babe an’ adopted him, but the little tyke escaped from them and wandered off again, wot. We’re keepin’ a weather eye out for your Skittles, though. Some goodbeast should find him sooner or later. Don’t you jolly well fret, folks.’
Baron Drucco succeeded in filching the bowl of crumble from his rabblemate, placing his empty bowl in the hedgehog’s paws and digging into the fresh one. ‘Aye, long as ’e don’t get consecuted by vermins, wifflin’ liddle nuisance. Oh, did I tell ye, one o’ the reasons I wanted to come up this way was to enter the contest. Hah, I ’spect that’s why yore wanderin’ this neck o’ country too, eh?’
The old hare put aside his bowl. It was grabbed by a rabblehog who began licking the inside of it thoroughly.
‘Contest, what contest, baron? First I’ve heard of it.’
Baron Drucco cuffed the sleeping hedgehog alongside him into wakefulness. ‘Wot, eh, wossamarrer?’ the rabblehog spluttered. ‘Oi, somebeast’s etted me pudden!’
The baron cuffed him another few buffets. ‘It’s etten, not etted, swillbrain! Never mind that. Gimme that contest thing you found.’
The hedgehog searched his spikes, ruminating aloud, ‘Where’d I putten it? Sorry – putted it. Aha, ’ere ’tis!’
An extremely grimy birchbark strip was thrust into the hare’s paw. He opened it gingerly. Wiping off remnants of bygone meals and a few unidentified smears, Fleetscut read aloud:
‘Come mother, father, daughter, son,
My challenge stands to anybeast!
I’ll take on all, or just the one,
Whether at the fight or feast!
Aye, try to beat me an’ defeat me,
Set ’em up, I’ll knock ’em down!
Just try to outbrag me, you’ll see,
King Bucko Bigbones wears the crown!’
Jukka the Sling raised her eyebrows at the old hare. ‘Methinks Bigbones has a fine opinion of himself, an’ that’s the hare thou art going up against. Well, good luck to thee. Yon fellow must have the might to back up his challenge.’
Mirklewort poked a grimy paw at Fleetscut. ‘Hah, so y’are goin’ to take up the challenge, eh! Don’t yer think yore a bit long in tooth an’ seasons?’
Fleetscut patted the top of his grey head and then his chest. ‘Marm, there may be winter on the mountain, but there’s spring at its heart. I must accept the challenge if I’m to raise an army to take Salamandastron, for we need this Buckowotsit and his followers on our side. So I’ll search old Bigchops out an’ throw down the bally gauntlet, wot!’
Drucco raised his dripping spikes from the pudding bowl. ‘Aye, me too. I’ll take a wiffle at it!’
‘But you can’t, sah,’ Fleetscut objected. ‘You’re a blinkin’ baron of hogs. How can y’be a king of hares, wot?’
Drucco shrugged and collared another bowlful from a smaller rabblehog. ‘Huh, ’ares or ’ogs, all the same t’me. I knows ’ow t’be boss an’ put me paw down firm. ‘Ard but fair, that’s me!’ He emphasised the point by draining the tankard belonging to the hedgehog on his left, rubbing his stomach and belching aloud. ‘Ah, that’s betterer! Wot d’yer say we join forces an’ seek this King Bucko out together, eh? We ain’t got a clue where t’find ’im. Wot about you, cully?’
Without consulting Jukka, Fleetscut drew out the poem he was carrying. ‘Right y’are, baron, we’ll go together. Safety in numbers, wot. Listen t’these directions. “Discover then a streamwolf’s ford, tug thrice upon the royal cord, then my honour guard will bring, loyal subjects to their king!” Does that make any sense to you, old chap?’
Drucco scratched his stubby headspikes reflectively. ‘Aye, it’s poetry, ain’t it, all those funny words put t’gether like a song, but y’speak ’em, ’stead o’ singin’. That’s the answer, it’s poetry!’
He sat back, looking quite pleased with himself, until his wiry little wife gave him a shove, which sent him sprawling on his backspikes.
‘Pay no ’eed t’that nincompoke,’ Mirklewort snorted. ‘A stone’s got more brains than ’im. I think I might know where ’tis. Round ’ere they calls all the pikefishes streamwolf. Two of our scouts found a place coupla days back. A shallow crossin’ just afore the stream breaks inter the river. That’s a ford, ain’t it?’
Jukka picked up her short spear. ‘Canst thou take us there, hogwife?’
Ignoring her husband’s struggles to get up off his back, Mirklewort bawled at the rabblehogs, ‘Belaaaay! Break camp, ’ogs. Barleyburr, Shunko, take us t’that place you scouted out, if’n yer can unmember where it was. Stir yer spikes or we’ll leave yer behind, Drucco!’
The combined forces cut into a winding path, which took them into what seemed a dim maze of thick ancient trees. Apart from the odd sunshaft breaking through the foliage, it was silent, still, and clothed in a soft green radiance. Jukka and Fleetscut marched together at the rear. The squirrel was highly displeased with the old hare’s tactics and told him so in no uncertain manner.
‘’Twould have been fitting had thou asked me about joining my tribe up with these spiked, ill-mannered vagabonds. Rabble they be named and rabble they are – I like them not. An’ who gave thee authority to decide whither we go, eh? Thou art no better than them, longears, treating us in such fashion, after we came all this way with thee!’
Fleetscut’s dislike of Jukka still persisted. Moreover, he was feeling better now, full of crumble and ready for an argument.
‘Well pish tush, me old bushtail, y’know what we always say at Salamandastron? If you don’t like it then y’can jolly well lump it. So there! Come all this way with me, indeed! I never asked you to, marm. You an’ your squirrels can go sling your hooks, wot! Aye, go on, back t’your safe little pine grove. Though it’ll probably be swarmin’ with all kinds o’ bottle-nosed blue-bottomed vermin by now. Huh, I could say I wish you good luck, but I blinkin’ well don’t!’
The squirrel leader bared her teeth viciously. ‘I don’t need thy good luck wishes, old ’u
n. Ye branded me coward – I’ll show ye I’m not, nor my warriors. We’re with thee to the last step o’ this journey, end where it may!’
Fleetscut curled his lip in contempt. ‘Oh aye, you’re with me all the way. For vengeance, no! For honour, hah, what would you know about honour? Jukka the famous Sling. Tchah! To see what weapons an’ plunder y’can get your paws on, that’s why you’re with me, lady. An’ you call these hedgehogs ill-mannered vagabonds? Let me tell you, treewalloper, you’re no better’n them. Matter o’ fact they’re more honest about it than you, wot!’
Glaring and snorting at one another, the two continued without further words.
16
LORD STONEPAW HAD been watching the passage outside the cavern for sight or sound of foebeasts. Both he and Stiffener were taking turns on sentry, but there had been little to report in the last several hours. The Badger Lord arrived back in the cavern to find his hares grouped round old Bramwil, urging him to recall something.
‘C’mon, old chap, you say it’s called Littlebob hare, eh?’
‘Now think carefully, how did it go?’
Bramwil was very old and confused. He looked pleadingly at the faces around him. ‘Eh, wot, surely y’can recall it yourselves?’
This announcement was followed by snorts of impatience.
“Twas before our time. Nurse Willoway was long gone then!’
Stonepaw joined them. Placing a paw around Bramwil’s skinny old shoulders, he silenced the rest. ‘Calm down now, friends. What’s going on here?’
‘Bramwil thinks he knows a way out, sah!’
‘But the old buffer’s gone an’ forgotten the bally thing!’
Stonepaw raised his eyebrows reprovingly at the speaker. ‘A hare can forget lots of things when he reaches the winter seasons, you should know that. Look at us – we’re no bunch of spring chicks any more. I’m older than you all. Don’t pick on Bramwil. He can’t help it, can you, old lad?’
Bramwil pounded a feeble paw against his grey head. ‘’Tis in there, sire, the old skiprope rhyme that Nurse Willoway used to teach young leverets. But alas, it was so long ago I can’t remember it. Though I’m sure it was called Littlebob hare, or somethin’ like that . . . hmmm!’