Melting snowdrifts with grassy knolls poking through made a patchwork of the far east lands as winter surrendered its icy grip of the earth to oncoming spring. Snowdrop, chickweed, and shepherd’s purse nodded gratefully beneath a bright mid-morning sun, which beamed through small islands of breeze-chased clouds. Carrying half-melted icicles along, a tinkling, chuckling stream bounded from rocky cliff ledges, meandering around fir and pine groves toward broad open plains. Already a few hardy wood ants and honeybees were abroad in the copse fringes. Clamoring and gaggling, a skein of barnacle geese in wavering formation winged their way overhead toward the coastline. All around, the land was wakening to springtime, and it promised to be a fair season.

It is often said that a madness takes possession of certain hares in spring, and anybeast watching the performance of one such creature would have had his worst fears confirmed. Tamello De Fformelo Tussock, to give this young hare his full title, was doing battle with imaginary enemies. Armed with stick and slingshot, he flung himself recklessly from a rock ledge, whirling the stone-loaded sling and thwacking left and right with his stick, yelling, “Eulaliaaaa! Have at you, villainous vermin, ’tis m’self, Captain Tammo of the Long Patrol! Take that, y’wicked weasel! Hah! Thought you’d sneak up behind a chap, eh? Well, have some o’ this, you ratten rot, beg pardon, rotten rat!”

Hurling himself down in the snow, he lashed out powerfully with his long back legs. “What ho! That’ll give you a bellyache to last out the season, m’laddo. Want some more? Hahah! Thought y’didn’t, go on, run f’your lives, you cowardly crew! It’d take more’n five hundred of you t’bring down Cap’n Tammo, by the left it would!”

Satisfied that he had given a justly deserved thrashing to half a thousand fictitious foebeasts, Tammo sat up in the snow, eating a few pawfuls to cool himself down.

“Just let ’em come back, I’ll show the blighters, wot! There ain’t a foebeast in the blinkin’ land can defeat me . . . Yaaagh, gerroff!” He felt himself hauled roughly upright by both ears. Lynum and Saithe, Tammo’s elder brother and sister, had sneaked up and grabbed him.

“Playing soldiers again?” Lynum’s firm grip indicated that there would be no chance of escape.

Tammo’s embarrassment at being caught at his game made him even more indignant. “Unhand me at once, m’laddo, if you know what’s good for you,” he said, struggling. “I can walk by myself.”

Saithe gave Tammo’s ear an extra tweak as she admonished him: “Colonel wants a word with you, wretch, about his battle-ax!”

Tammo finally struggled free and reluctantly marched off between the two hulking hares, muttering rebelliously to himself, “Huh! I can tell you what he’s goin’ t’say, same thing as usual.”

The young hare imitated his father perfectly, bowing his legs, sticking out his stomach, puffing both cheeks up, and pulling his lips down at the corners as he spoke: “Wot wot, stap me whiskers, if it ain’t the bold Tammo. Now then, laddie buck, what’ve y’got to say for y’self, eh? Speak up, sah!”

Lynum cuffed Tammo lightly to silence him. “Enough of that. Colonel’d have your tail if he saw you makin’ mock of him. Step lively now!”

Entering the largest of the conifer groves, they headed for a telltale spiral of smoke that denoted Camp Tussock. It was a rambling stockade, the outer walls fashioned from tree trunks with a big dwelling house built of rock, timber, moss, and mud chinking. This was known as the Barracks. Moles, squirrels, hedgehogs, and a few wood mice wandered in and out of the homely place, living there by kind permission of the Colonel and his wife, Mem Divinia. Some of them shook their heads and tuttutted at the sight of Tammo being led in to answer for his latest escapade.

Seated close to the fire in his armchair, Colonel Cornspurrey De Fformelo Tussock was a formidable sight. He was immaculately attired in a buff-colored campaign jacket covered with rows of jangling medals, his heavy-jowled face shadowed by the peak of a brown-bark forage helmet. The Colonel had one eye permanently closed, while the other glared through a monocle of polished crystal with a silken cord dangling from it. His wattled throat wobbled pendulously as he jabbed his pace stick pointedly at the miscreant standing before him.

“Wot wot, stap me whiskers, if it ain’t the bold Tammo. Now then, laddie buck, what’ve y’got to say for y’self, eh? Speak up, sah!”

Tammo remained silent, staring at the floor as if to find inspiration there. Grunting laboriously, the Colonel leaned forward, lifting Tammo’s chin with the pace stick until they were eye to eye.

“’S matter, sah, frogs got y’tongue? C’mon now, speak y’piece, somethin’ about me battle-ax, wot wot?”

Tammo did what was expected of him and came smartly to attention. Chin up, chest out, he gazed fixedly at a point above his father’s head and barked out in true military fashion: “Colonel, sah! ’Pologies about y’battle-ax, only used it to play with. Promise upon me honor, won’t do it again. Sah!”

The old hare’s great head quivered with furious disbelief, and the monocle fell from his eye to dangle upon its string. He lifted the pace stick, and for a moment it looked as though he were about to strike his son. When the colonel could find it, his voice rose several octaves to shrill indignation.

“Playin’? You’ve got the brass nerve t’stand there an’ tell me you’ve been usin’ my battle-ax as a toy! Outrage, sir, outrage! Y’re a pollywoggle and a ripscutt! Hah, that’s it, a scruff-furred, lollop-eared, blather-pawed, doodle-tailed, jumped-up-never-t’come-down bogwhumper! What are yeh?”

Tammo’s mother, Mem Divinia, had been hovering in the background, tending a batch of barleyscones on the griddle. Wiping floury paws upon an apron corner, she bustled forward, placing herself firmly between husband and son.

“That’s quite enough o’ that, Corney Fformelo, I’ll not have language like that under my roof. Where d’you think y’are, in the middle of a battlefield? I won’t have you roaring at my Tammo in such a manner.”

Instead of calming the Colonel’s wrath, his wife’s remarks had the opposite effect. Suffused with blood, his ears went bright pink and stood up like spearpoints. He flung down the pace stick and stamped so hard upon it that he hurt his footpaw.

“Eulalia’n’blood’n’fur’n’vinegar, marm!”

Mem countered by drawing herself up regally as she grabbed Tammo’s head and buried it in the floury folds of her apron. “Keep y’voice down, sir, no sense in settin’ a bad example to your son an’ makin’ yourself ill over some battle-ax!”

The Colonel knew better than to ignore his wife. Rubbing ruefully at his footpaw, he retrieved the pace stick. Then, fixing his monocle straight, he sat upright, struggling to moderate his tone.

“Some battle-ax indeed, m’dear! I’m discussin’ one particular weapon. My battle-ax! This battle-ax! D’y’know, that young rip took a chip out o’ the blade, prob’ly hackin’ away at some boulder. A chip off my blade, marm! The same battle-ax that was the pride of the old Fifty-first Paw’n’fur Platoon of the Long Patrol. ’Twas a blade that separated Searats from their gizzards’n’ garters, flayed ferrets out o’ their fur, whacked weasels, an’ shortened stoats into stumps! An’ who was it chipped the blade? That layabout of a leveret, that’s who. Hmph!”

Tammo struggled free of Mem’s apron, his face thickened with white flour dust. He sneezed twice before speaking. “I ain’t a leveret any longer, sir. If y’let me join the jolly ol’ Long Patrol, then I wouldn’t have t’get up to all sorts o’ mischief, ’specially with your ax, sah.”

The Colonel sighed and shook his head, the monocle falling to one side as he settled back wearily into his armchair. “I’ve told you a hundred times, m’laddo, you’re far too young, too wild’n’wayward, not got the seasons under y’belt yet. You speak to him, Mem, m’dear, the rogue’s got me worn out. Join the Long Patrol indeed. Hmph! No self-respectin’ Badger Lord would tolerate a green b’hind the ears little pestilence like you, laddie buck. Run along an’ play now, you’ve given me enough gray fur, go an’ bother some otherbeast. Be off, you’re dismissed, sah. Matter closed!”

Tammo saluted smartly and hurried off, blinking back unshed tears at his father’s brusque command. Mem took the pace stick from her husband’s lap and slapped it down hard into his paw.

“Shame on you, Cornspurrey,” she cried, “you’re nought but a heartless old bodger. How could y’talk to your own son like that?”

The Colonel replaced his monocle and squinted challengingly. “Bodger y’self, marm! I’d give me permission for Lynum or Saithe t’join up with the Long Patrol, they’re both of a right age. Stap me, though, neither of ’em’s interested, both want t’be bally soil-pawed farmbeasts, I think.” He smiled slightly and stroked his curled mustache. “Young Tammo, now, there’s a wild ’un, full of fire’n’vinegar like I was in me green seasons. Hah! He’ll grow t’be a dangerous an’ perilous beast one day, mark m’words, Mem!”

Mem Divinia spoke up on Tammo’s behalf: “Then why not let him join up? You know ’tis all he’s wanted since he was a babe listenin’ to your tales around the fire. Poor Tammo, he lives, eats, an’ breathes Long Patrol. Let him go, Corney, give him his chance.”

But the Colonel was resolute; he never went back on a decision. “Tammo’s far too young by half. Said all I’m goin’ t’say, m’dear. Matter closed!”

Popping out his monocle with a wink, Cornspurrey De Fformelo Tussock settled back into the armchair and closed his good eye, indicating that this was his prelunch naptime. Mem Divinia knew further talk was pointless. She sighed wearily and went back to her friend Osmunda the molewife, who was assisting with the cooking.

Osmunda shook her head knowingly, muttering away in the curious molespeech, “Burr aye, you’m roight, Mem, ee be nought but an ole bodger. Oi wuddent be surproised if’n maister Tamm up’n runned aways one morn. Hurr hurr, ee faither can’t stop Tamm furrever.”

Mem added sprigs of young mint to the golden crust of a carrot, mushroom, and onion hotpot she had taken from the oven. “That’s true, Osmunda, Tammo will run away, same as his father did at his age. He was a wayward one too, y’know. His father never forgave him for running away, called him a deserter and never spoke his name again—but I think he was secretly very proud of Cornspurrey and the reputation he gained as a fighting hare with the Long Patrol. He died long before his son retired from service and brought me back here to Camp Tussock. I was always very sorry that they were never reconciled. I hope the Colonel isn’t as stubborn as his father, for Tammo’s sake.”

Osmunda was spooning honey into the scooped-out tops of the hot barley scones. She blinked curiously at Mem. “Whoi do ee say that?”

Mem Divinia began mixing a batter of greensap milk, hazelnut, and almond flour to make pancakes. She kept her eyes on the mix as she explained: “Because I’m going to help Tammo to run away and join the Long Patrol. If I don’t he’ll only hang around here gettin’ into trouble an’ arguin’ with his father until they become enemies. Now don’t mention what I’ve just said to anybeast, Osmunda.”

The faithful molewife’s friendly face crinkled into a deep grin. “Moi snout be sealed, Mem! Ee be a doin’ the roight thing, oi knows et, even tho’ ee Colonel won’t ’ave ’is temper improved boi et an’ you’ll miss maister Tamm gurtly.”

A tear fell into the pancake mix. Tammo’s mother wiped her eyes hastily on her apron hem. “Oh, I’ll miss the rascal, all right, never you fear, Osmunda. But Tammo will do well away from here. He’s got a good heart, he’s not short of courage, and, like the Colonel said, he’ll grow to be a wild an’ perilous beast. What more could any creature say of a hare? One day my son will make us proud of him!”