A mess of bird bones and feathers mixed with squashed half-eaten fruit and vegetables littered the Flitchaye camp. Around the fire undersized weasels squabbled and fought tooth and claw over any morsel of food roasting in the flames. One, larger than the rest, his face daubed blue beneath a helmet of ivy and bugloss, grabbed a half-burnt wren carcass from a smaller Flitchaye. Snarling, the owner tried to retrieve his food from the big weasel, who booted him backward into the fire contemptuously. It was an act of wanton cruelty that caused great hilarity among the other vermin, who sniggered evilly as their scorched companion scrambled shrieking from the blaze and rolled about, trying to extinguish his smoldering fur.
The young squirrel, who was little more than a Dibbun, was trying to shake off the effects of the drugged smoke. He shrank back fearfully against the post he was bound to. Flitchayes with sharp sticks prodded him and licked their lips meaningfully. One weasel took out a blade and was about to start cutting the squirrel’s bonds when the big Flitchaye spotted him and knocked him senseless with a well-aimed rock. He stood over the fallen weasel, baring his stained fangs at the rest and speaking in his high-pitched growl. “Norra yet! Feed de swiggle, fatty ’im uppa plenny!” He thrust the remains of the dead bird at the helpless youngster, snarling into the squirrel’s terrified face: “You eat. Commona, eaty allup!”
Martin strode nonchalantly into the camp, as if he was quite used to this sort of thing. A puzzled silence settled over the Flitchaye at the sight of the bold, unarmed stranger in their midst. Pushing them out of his way he went across to the two earthenware pots, still wreathing smoke from the drugged herbs which smoldered inside them. Leaning over, Martin appeared to sniff them both and gave a hard, scornful laugh.
“Hah! Don’t think much o’ yore cookin’, ragbags!”
A gasp of surprise rose from the vermin. The stranger had suffered no ill effects from the fearful fumes! Still shouldering weasels aside, Martin pushed his way forcefully over to the little prisoner. Picking up the knife from the fallen weasel, he made as if to cut the squirrel free.
“Stoppima mousebeast!”
At the shout from their leader, the Flitchaye surrounded Martin, hemming in on all sides. Swaggering forward, the big weasel thrust his ugly face close to that of Martin and sneered, “We d’Flitchaye, Flitchaye, Flitchaye!”
The crowd took up the chant, moving around the Warrior in a shuffling, stamping dance. Martin waited patiently awhile, an expression of bored indifference on his face. Then he pointed a paw at his own chest and shouted, “I Martin the Warrior!”
Quiet fell over the vermin, and they stood still. The leader pointed a stoneheaded ax at the lone mouse, repeating Martin’s words as best he could. “Ma’tarn de Horrya!” He spat challengingly at the floor in front of the Warrior. Martin coolly returned the gesture, looking the weasel up and down insultingly as he spoke.
“Fish eye, you d’Fish eye?”
The Warrior had anticipated the Flitchaye leader’s next move, and he took a pace smartly backward as the weasel swung his ax. The blow was delivered with such force that the Flitchaye could not stop it. He struck himself hard on the shin, cracking his bone audibly. Martin stretched both paws wide. Keeping his eyes on a double-topped oak at the camp’s edge, he roared, “Redwaaaaaalllll!”
Hidden by the foliage, Gonff held the sword like a spear and cast it accurately. To the Flitchaye it was magic! Seemingly zipping down out of the sky, the great blade thudded point first into the ground at Martin’s side.
Wrenching it from the earth, the Warrior swung it skillfully, chopping a nearby vermin’s bunch of throwing spears in half with a single swipe. It had the desired effect. Flitchaye scattered to get out of Martin’s sword range, leaving him alone by the prisoner. Turning his back on the enemy, Martin gave the little squirrel a quick reassuring smile and whispered, “Don’t move ’til I say, matey. Soon have y’out of here.” The captive blinked with fright as Martin’s sword hissed within a whisker of him, severing the ropes.
Whirring bright in the late afternoon sunlight, the sword weaved a deadly pattern as its owner wielded it. Martin narrowed his eyes to a fierce intensity, glaring slowly this way and that at the vermin.
“I Martin the Warrior, we go now!”
Gently lifting the dazed little squirrel on his shoulders, he turned and began walking from the camp. The leader, his face a mask of agony, limped forward, shouting, “Stoppa mousebeast, sto—”
His cry was cut short when a slingstone smashed his jaw and laid him flat. A female, obviously the leader’s mate, dashed forward, but she, too, was felled by a slingstone which whacked her between the eyes. She fell like a log.
Martin muttered out the side of his mouth to the little one, “Good old Dinny, never known him to miss yet!” Then he turned sternly to the cowering Flitchaye. “I go, you stay, Fish eye, hah!”
At a nod from him, slingstones poured in from Gonff, Dinny and Trimp, causing confusion among the stunned Flitchaye.
*
Back among the shelter of some big trees, Martin passed his sword to Gonff.
“Good work, mates, but if I know Flitchaye, they won’t stay still for long. We’ve got to get out of here, fast!”
Trimp just had time to spit and blow, ridding herself of the hated ramsons, then she was running, paw in paw with Dinny, Martin leading and Gonff behind her, guarding the rear. Trees and bushes sped by in a green blur as the rescuers hurtled through the woodlands, with the first streaks of evening marking the sky. Breathless and quivering, they paused at a wide shallow stream. Trimp stooped and sucked up mouthfuls gratefully. Gonff struck her on the back, causing her to cough out the water.
“Don’t drink now, matey, ’twill slow you up. Martin, listen!”
“Flitchayeeeeeeeee! Flitchayeeeeeeeee!”
The blood-curdling shouts of vermin crying for revenge rang out through the trees. Tapping the back of Martin’s head, the little squirrel, who now seemed completely recovered from the evil smoke, spoke for the first time.
“Chugger not wanna get eated, quick, run!”
And run they did. Martin chose the streambed, to make tracking difficult, though it slowed their pace slightly. Pebbles clacked underpaw, water splashed noisily around the runners, and sometimes trailing crowfoot weeds tried to tangle them up. Gonff turned at the sound of rapidly advancing vermin, as the Flitchaye dashed screaming into the waters upstream.
“Flitchayeeeeee! Flitchayeeeeee!”
The Mousethief held a stone ready in his sling. “They’ve seen us, mates. I’ll say this for the rascals: they’re good fast runners. Should we make for the bank and head into the woods, Martin?”
Martin pressed on doggedly with Chugger clinging to his back. “No good, mate, they’d track wet pawprints easily. This water’s getting deeper and they can only travel the same speed as us in a stream. Keep going!”
Farther downstream the watercourse took a bend, getting deeper. It was now well above waist height and flowing fast. Dinny grunted to Trimp, “Oi doan’t loik water, oi’m gurtly afeared of ee wet!”
The Flitchaye, who were still in the shallower water, seemed to be gaining apace on their quarry. Gonff turned and brought one of the front runners down with a well-placed slingstone and reloaded his sling immediately.
“They’re too close for comfort now, mates. I reckon we’ll have t’stand an’ fight it out!”
“Gurr, no uz won’t. Lookit, we’m be saved!”
In the curve of the streambend a big old crack willow, which had collapsed into the water from the crumbling bank, lay half in, half out of the flow, swaying gently.
Tripping and stumbling wildly, Dinny and Trimp waded through the eddying swirls, coughing and gasping, the foodpacks they were carrying hampering them greatly. However, they made it over to the tree and hauled themselves on to its bushy top. Their added weight did the trick. There was a tearing of the last few roots as the willow upended and slid off into the stream.
Martin and Gonff were both slinging stones now, dodging the long thin throwing spears which the Flitchaye flung at them. The little squirrel Chugger clung to Martin’s back, yelling hoarsely, “Fro’ lotsa stones, don’t lerra Fish eyes eat Chugga!”
The Warrior looked to Gonff for his sword. It was evident that before long they would be battling paw to paw with the vermin in a life or death struggle.
“Hurr, ’urry an’ jump on ee boat naow, mates!”
Dinny and Trimp had paddled the tree close up behind them, using long leafy branches they had broken from the willow. Martin pushed Gonff onto the makeshift vessel and was about to pull himself aboard when a snarling Flitchaye grabbed his paw. For a moment the Warrior was helpless, clinging with one paw to the tree while being held by the vermin. Chugger scrambled up onto Martin’s shoulder. Leaning over, he bit deep into the vermin’s paw. An agonized scream ripped from the weasel’s mouth as he let go of Martin’s paw. Without a backward glance, Martin heaved both himself and Chugger onto the willow trunk.
“Trimp, look after the little ’un. Gonff, you and I’ll paddle. Dinny, get your sling and give those scum what for!”
Trimp felt the current pull strongly at the tree, then they were whipped away downstream, with Martin and Gonff paddling nonstop. Wedging little Chugger in the sprouting branches up front, she went to assist Dinny. The mole was roaring gruffly as he whirled his sling and flung rocks with deadly accuracy.
“Goo burr, oi’ll give ee billoh, you’m choild-eatin’ villyuns. Yurr be a gurt supper o’ stones for ee!”
So fierce were the volleys of rock and round pebble with which Dinny and Trimp peppered the Flitchaye that the vermin waded for the banks, unable to keep balance and throw their spears in the deepening water. Martin chanced a backward glance at their molefriend, and winked at Gonff.
“Look at old Din there, slinging away like a good ’un!”
Watching admiringly, the Mousethief saw one of Dinny’s rocks take a Flitchaye squarely between both ears, toppling him from the bank into the water.
“Aye, matey, that mole’s enjoyin’ himself all right!”
*
Dusk fell while the travelers made their way downstream, still harassed by Flitchaye foes running along both sides of the bank. Martin peered ahead into the darkness and bit his lip grimly at what he saw.
“Bad luck for us ahead. The stream is dammed right across!”
Trimp gave a cry of dismay. “Look, some Flitchaye must’ve run ahead. I can see the shapes of ’em, waiting on the dam top for us!”
Sure enough, there were several creatures moving about on the dam, shrouded by the enclosing gloom. Dinny groaned.
“Hurr, us’n’s be en real trouble naow!”
A hearty voice, quite unlike the Flitchaye, rang out from the dam as shadowy shapes dashed back and forth.
“Whupperyhoooo, cullies, I see Flitchayes. Whupperyhooooo!”
Gonff began jumping up and down with joy. Cupping both paws around his mouth, he yelled to the creatures on the dam.
“Garraway Bullow, ye ole dogswamper, ’tis me, the Mousethief!”
A figure hurled itself from the damtop, cut the water neatly and came swimming at them with the speed of an attacking pike. Chugger nearly fell from his perch with surprise as a large, powerful otter bounded onto the willow as if she had been propelled from the water on a giant spring. Gonff threw himself upon the otter and wrestled her the length of the trunk, both of them laughing and shouting.
“Well frazzle a frog, you ole Majesty, good to see yer!”
“Haharr, Gonffo me ole tatercake, you got a belly on ye like a poisoned plant louse! What brings ye to my neck o’ the country, cullie?”
“Yah, we didn’t wanna come, ’cept that there’s more’n twoscore Flitchaye tryin’ to slay an’ eat us, mate!”
Garraway Bullow tossed Gonff aside like a leaf and stood up. She looked Martin up and down, shaking his paw firmly.
“’Strewth, I wager you’d account for a few vermin before they brought ye down, with a sword like that. No matter, cullie, you leave the filthy Flitchaye to my fighters!” Placing a paw to her mouth, she gave a loud ear-piercing whistle, then called to the otters on the dam.
“Whupperyhoooo! ’Tis Flitchayes all right. Go an’ get ’em afore they run off. Nought like a Flitchaye hide t’make cloaks for our liddle ’uns, an’ winter’s on’y two seasons off!”
Otters materialized from everywhere, big warlike beasts, tattooed from ear to tail and armed with double-tipped javelins. Whooping and bellowing, they took off after the weasels, who turned and fled in terror. The tree nosed gently into the dam as Gonff was making introductions.
“That there’s Dinny Foremole, the pretty hogmaid’s called Trimp, an’ the serious-lookin’ sword carrier, who ain’t nearly so pretty as me, is Martin the Warrior, my matey. Friends, I want ye to meet Garraway Bullow, Queen of all the Nort—the Northern Otter River Tribes!”
Garraway helped them on to the dam, then she hauled the willow in sideways and lashed it to the timber and mud structure, remarking, “No sense in wastin’ good wood—’twill strengthen our dam. Come on, Gonffo, an’ bring yore mateys, too. Seein’ as you ain’t been ate by Flitchayes, you must be ’ungry, right?”
Gonff laughed impudently at the Otterqueen. “D’ye ever recall a day when I wasn’t hungry? I could eat a boiled otter right now, but I ain’t got the time to cook ye, burly Bullow, so lead us t’the vittles!”
“Hoi, worra you fink, I’m a likkle flower growin’ on dis tree? Worrabout Chugger?”
Trimp rescued the tiny squirrel from the branches, where he had been taking a short nap. He waved at Garraway Bullow.
“’Lo, my name be Chugger, I ’ungry too!”
The Otterqueen swung him up onto her brawny shoulder. “Haharrharr, you ain’t back’ard in comin’ forward, are ye, master Chugg? Well, I reckon you don’t eat much, so we’ll find a smidgen o’ vittles for ye. Though I don’t know rightly where yore from, or if’n our vittles’d suit ye, matey. How’d you get caught by the Flitchaye?”
The little fellow shrugged. “I live inna woods wiv Granny. One day she go ’sleep. Chugger shake’n’shake Granny, but she not wake up. So I on me own, ’til Fish eyes catcher me. But Martin, Trimp’n’Gonffo be’s Chugger’s friends now. You be my friend, too?”
Garraway Bullow wiped something from her eye with the back of a paw. “I’d like t’meet the beast who says I ain’t yore friend, Chugger mate!”