over the Sergeant’s uniform were pinned bits and pieces of herb and fauna, supposedly the gruesome bits he had
collected from sloppy recruits. Scowling savagely, he paced the tables, singing in a terri-fyingly gruff voice as he
went:
“You ’orrible lollopy sloppy lot, You idle scruffy bunch! I’ll ’ave yore tails off like a shot An’ boil ’em for me
lunch!
You lazy loafin’ layabouts, ’Ere’s wot I’ll do fer starters If you don’t lissen when I shouts, I’ll ’ave yore guts fer
garters!
O mamma’s darlin’s, don’t you cry, Yore dear ole Sergeant’s ’ere, Those foebeasts, why, they’re just small fry,
’Tis me you’ll learn to fear!
I’ll ’ave yore ears’n’elbows,
You sweepin’s o’ the floors,
An’ long before the dawn shows,
You’ll ’ave marched ten leagues outdoors.
O dreadful ’alf-baked dozy crowd, I’ll stake me oath ’tis true. Long Patrol Warriors, tall’n’proud, Is wot I’ll make
of you!”
Sergeant Clubrush’s fierce demeanor changed instantly as he patted backs and shook paws of the young hares
crowding ’round him.
“Welcome to me Patrol, buckoes, you’ll do us proud!”
Cregga Rose Eyes had a handle for her axpike—a thick pole, taller than herself. The wood was dark, hard, and sea-
washed, like that of Russa’s stick. Long summers gone, somebeast had found it among the flotsam of the tide line.
Now the Badger Lady rediscovered it, lying with a pile of other timber at the back of her forge. She worked furiously,
far into the night, shaping, binding, fixing the awesome steel headpiece to its haft, speaking aloud her thoughts as she
bored holes through wood and metal for three heavy copper rivets.
“Sleep well, Gormad Tunn, sleep on, Damug, Byral, and all your Rapscallion scum! I am coming, death is on the
wind! On the day when you see my face, you and all of your evil followers will sleep the sleep from which there is no
awakening!”
Tammo had been gone too long for Russa Nodrey’s liking. She caught Perigord’s glance as she took up her stick.
“No-beast takes this long t’gather a few pawfuls of ’cress, Major. Somethin’s wrong—I’m goin’ to take a look!”
Perigord buckled on his saber. “Tare, Turry, Rubbadub, guard the camp an’ supplies, the rest o’ you chaps, off
y’hunkers an’ come with us!”
Traveling swiftly and silently they spread out, covering trees, riverbank, and shallows carefully. It was not long
before they picked up Tammo’s trail. Captain Twayblade found the rock where she too had noted watercress growing
underwater.
Pasque waved wordlessly from a short distance up the bank. Keeping voices to a barely audible murmur, they
gathered ’round her. “A bundle o’ watercress. He was here—see, ’tis tied up with his shoulder belt.”
Midge Manycoats inspected the trunk of a nearby sycamore. “There’s a knifepoint mark here. Looks like Tammo
stuck his blade in this tree!”
A pebble struck Rockjaw Grang on the side of his neck. “Owch! ’Ey up, somebeast’s chuckin’ stones!”
Out of the darkness above, a volley of small stones peppered Perigord’s troop, followed by rustling in the high
foliage, sniggering laughs, and reedy voices calling, “Tammo! Tammo! Choohakka choohak! Where poor Tammo?”
Russa shouted aloud at Perigord, “Let’s get out o’ here!”
The Major shot her a puzzled look. “Wot, you mean retreat, run away?”
Shielding herself from the stones with an upraised paw, the squirrel winked several times at him. “Aye, let’s run
fer it afore we’re battered t’death!”
Perigord suddenly caught on; he cut and ran into the shallows. “Retreat, troop, everybeast out o’ here, quick as
y’like. Retreat!”
The Long Patrol were not used to running from anything, but they obeyed the command. Pounding upstream
through the shallows, they halted out of range of the rain of pebbles.
Then Twayblade turned on Perigord, her long rapier flicking angrily at the air. “Retreat from a few stones’ n’
pebbles, what are we, pray—a flight of startled swallows?”
Perigord laid the blame firmly at Russa’s paws. “Ask her!”
The squirrel looked from one to the other. “Well, if y’stop lookin’ all noble an’ outraged for a tick I’ll tell ye.
Really ’twas my fault. I’ve traveled this riverbank afore, an’ if n I’d been thinkin’ clear I’d have stopped you pitchin’
camp where the Painted Ones roam.”
Twayblade ceased twitching her rapier. “Painted Ones?”
Russa’s bushy tail stood up angrily. “Aye, Painted Ones. Tribes o’ little tree rats is all they are, though they paints
their fur black’n’green an’ lives in the boughs an’ leaves ’igh up. Huh! Some o’ the villains even attaches bushtails to
themselves an’ masquerades as squirrels, the liddle blackguards, not fit t’lick a decent squirrel’s paws! But they’re
savage an’ dangerous, almost invisible when they’re among the treetops. Young Tammo’s in a bad fix if y’ask me!”
The saturnine Lieutenant Morio nodded his agreement. “But no doubt you’ve got a plan, marm?”
Russa had. She explained her strategy then slid off among the trees, leaving the hares to carry out their part of the
scheme.
Sheathing his blade, Perigord began gathering flat heavy pebbles. “Slings out, chaps, load up an’ give ’em stones
for supper!”
Meanwhile, Tammo lay bound and gagged. The leader of the Painted Ones was digging teasingly at him with the
point of his captured dirk, giggling wickedly each time his prisoner flinched.
“Ch’hakka hak! ’Ear you friends, alia gone now, soon dissa one cutcha up wirra you own knife. Den we eatcha!
Hakka-chook!”
Tammo had heard Russa and the hares and felt a mixture of anger and sadness when Perigord shouted retrc?.t and
they ran off. Now he felt alone and deserted, certain too that something horrible was about to be inflicted upon him by
the sadistic little tree creatures, who seemed very confident and contemptuous of landbeasts.
Then Tammo’s heart leapt as he heard the night air ring with a familiar war cry:
“Eulalia! ’Tis death on the wind! Eulalia! Charge!”
Whacking, cracking, whizzing all around him, a veritable load of slingstones tore upward into the foliage. One rock
big as a miniature boulder whipped by him, snapping off branches in its path. Good old Rockjaw Grang!
Turning his head to one side, Tammo peered into the gloom and saw small black and green figures retaliating,
loosing peb-, bles from their own slings at the bold enemy below.
Russa had reached the far side of the trees. She skipped nimbly up into a stately elm and turned toward the distant
din of battle. Thrusting the hardwood stick into her mouth she bit down on it and took off like a fish skimming through
water, building up her speed as she raced through the treetops. Bright eyes cut through the darkness as she traveled
even faster, the limbs and leaves passing in a blur, knowing that swiftness was the key to her mission. Sighting the
back of the first Painted One, Russa grabbed her stick in one paw, still hurtling through the top terraces of foliage at a
breakneck pace. She cracked the hardwood stick down between the rat’s ears, then, changing her angle at the same
time and shooting in a downward curve, she battered mercilessly at anybeast in her path.
The hardwood stick was like a living thing in her paws, whacking heads and paws and cracking limbs. Overhead
Russa spotted a glint of steel as a stream of orders was shouted down through the treetops. “Chakkachook! Killa!