The charge carried them helter-skelter down the tunnel, straight into the crabs. Trobee and Stiffener bulled aside as many as they could, striking about with a couple of javelins. It was an almost impossible task; hares and crabs were so tightly packed in the narrow tunnel confines that it was difficult to make way. Powerful claws tore the javelins from their paws, spiny shells bumped them painfully, pointed legs scratched at them in the wild scramble. Some crabs were toppled over backward and the hares ran over their hard-shelled undersides, avoiding kicking legs and snapping pincers. However, it could not last. The tunnel was far too narrow, and soon became completely jammed with a jumbled melee of hares and crabs.
Stiffener looked up. A gigantic specimen was bearing down upon him with both claws ready for action.
"Trobee, throw me the torch, quick!"
The boxing hare scorched his paws as he caught the torch and thrust it savagely into the big crab's mouth. It gurgled and hissed, latching both claws onto the torch. It was a scene of complete chaos, with trapped hares shouting amid the forest of clacking pincers.
"Aagh, get this thing off me!"
"Owouch, me ear!"
"Leggo, you rotter, gerroff!"
"Hold Bramwil up, don't let him fall!"
"Eeek, there'th one god me nothe!"
Then the wave came.
Peak of high tide sent a monstrous roller crashing up the tunnel entrance with all the awesome power of the stormy sea. Boiling white, blue and green, it shot up the bore of the rocky passage and hit the mass of hares and crabs like a mighty sledgehammer, shooting them hard uphill. Then it sucked them back in a whirling vacuum of seawater. Stiffener spun like a top, jolting against rocks and crabshells, his nose, mouth, eyes and ears choked by the salt water. The entire world became white and filled with roaring noise as he went ears over scut. Stomach down he was hurled flat, his mouth gaping wide as he skidded along until it was full of sand.
A moment later he was upright in the night air, waist deep, with waves bashing him. Coughing up grit and brine, he wiped the stinging seawater from his eyes. A familiar figure waded toward him. Blench.
"Watch out, Stiff, 'ere comes Willip!"
A wave sent Willip crashing into the boxing hare's back. He staggered up and joined paws with her and the cook. "Keep tight 'old, marms. Let's find the others. Where's ole Bramwil got to, anybeast seen 'im?"
"Hi there, young feller, over here, wot!"
Only then did Stiffener realize that it was raining hard. Bramwil was sitting on the shore in the downpour, waving a piece of driftwood, several others with him.
Trobee came swimming along, his head popping up alongside Stiffener. He saluted, sank and resurfaced, spitting a jet of seawater into the air. "Phwah! All present an' correct, I thinkthere's Purlow floppin' about upcoast. Ahoy there, Purlow, how d'ye do!"
"Fine, old chap. How're you? Lots of weather we're havin' for the time o' season, wot wot?"
"Keep yore voices down, mates," Stiffener called out in the loudest whisper he could muster, "there might be vermin patrols around. Bramwil, we'll meet ye in the lee o' those rocks."
It was a cold, windy, wet and moonless night as they huddled together on the north side of a ragged rockspur. Bramwil could just make out the shape of Salaman-dastron's dark bulk to the south of where they sat.
"This chunk o' rock is part of our mountain, a great spur, buried beneath the sand an' stickin' up again here by the sea."
Willip crouched down and scuttled toward the end of the rock protruding into the sea. "Bramwil's right," she reported when she came back. "I saw the mouth of the tunnel we came out of, though 'tis so thickly overgrown with seaweed a body would never know 'twas there, wot."
Bramwil shivered, shaking his saturated fur. "Well, we made it, chaps, we're alive an' free. But with no weapons or food. What next, young Stiff, eh?"
Stiffener blinked rain from his eyes. "Can't stay 'ere, that's fer sure, mates. We'd best move while the goin's good. There's some rock ledges an' dunes east of 'ereI picked blackberries there last autumn. Let's take a look over that way, eh?"
In the hour before dawn they topped a rise in the sandhills. Some white limestone cliff ridges loomed up on their left. The rain was becoming heavier, whipped sideways by the wind. With both ears plastered flat to his head and his fur thoroughly sandgritted and wet, Stiffener looked back in the direction of Salamandastron.
"See, lord, I kept me vow so far, an' don't you fret now. I'll be goin' back to our mountain, an' if there be a single hare alive there I'll rescue 'em. I promise!"
Chapter 20
Dotti had never in her life seen anything like the court of King Bucko, nor had any of her traveling companions. It was situated in a broad, beautiful woodland glade, backed by a steep rocky hill, with a stream bordering one side, fringed with crack willow, guelder rose and osier. But any resemblance to a peaceful sylvan setting ended there. It was packed to bursting with teeming life. Lord Brocktree's party wandered about, relatively unnoticed. There were moles, otters, voles, hedgehogs, mice, squirrels and shrews everywhere, but hares formed the main presence. Hares, big, strong, young and bold. Fleetscut nodded at them. He had to raise his voice so that Dotti could hear him above the din as they pushed and jostled their way through.
"Well stap me ears, we've got a right bunch o' corkers here, miss. There's a lot o' mountain haresone can tell by the remains of their white winter patches, wot. As for the rest, there's a few gypsies, but a chap can recognize the offspring of Salamandastron hares. D'y'know, I can pick out the ears an' faces of mostlook just like their mothers an' fathers they do. Dearie me, it makes me feel jolly old, I can tell ye. Some o' these great lumps o' fur'n'bone, huh, I bounced 'em on me knee when they were tiny leverets!"
Dotti giggled at the thought it conjured up. "Heehee, you'd get a blinkin' broken knee if you tried bouncin' any o' those big hulkin' boyos now, wot?"
A carnival atmosphere reigned over the court. Groups of hedgehogs competed with oak clubs on hollow logs, trying to outdrum one another; squirrels were performing acrobatic feats, flying over the heads of the crowd. A mob of young otters lounged against a stack of barrels, with foaming tankards in their paws, roaring out bawdy songs with no pretense whatsoever to harmony or tune, volume seeming to take precedence over all else. Shrews and voles wrestled in packs, one team against another. Mice and moles were cooking over a huge open fire, laughing as they exchanged friendly insults about the results of each other's culinary efforts. A motley orchestra had set itself up on the lower hill slopes. All manner of creatures scraped on fiddles, rattled tambourines, shrilled on flutes and whistles, battered away at bodhransflat single-headed drums with double-ended striking sticksand twanged a variety of odd stringed instruments. Some mountain hares even droned away on sets of bagpipes.
Lord Brocktree was the only badger present at the massive gathering, standing out head and shoulders above other beasts. His backslung battle sword received many admiring glances, and not many creatures tried to bump or jostle himin fact, not any.
The Badger Lord winced, clapping paws over both his ears. "By my stripes, how any creature could put up with this infernal din is beyond me! Let's find somewhere less noisy!"
They took refuge on the streambank beneath a couple of crack willows, which afforded generous shade. Log a Log Grenn signaled two of her Guosim. "Kubba, Rukoo, find your way back t'the ford an' see if you can find a sidestream to bring our boats up here."