The Long Patrol Read online

  Eyebright tapped his pace stick gently against the table edge. ‘Stap me, but I wish Lady Cregga hadn’t ordered me t’post that confounded list. Just look at ’em, burstin’ their britches to be Patrollers, all afire with the stories they’ve heard, an’ not a mother’s babe o’ them knows what they’re really in for, wot?’

  The Sergeant sipped his small beaker of mountain beer. ‘Aye, sir, ’taint the same as when we was young. You didn’t get t’be a Patroller then, ’til you ’ad t’duck yore ’ead to get through the doorway. I recall my ole pa sayin’ you had t’be long enough t’be picked for Long Patrol. I’d ’ave gived those young ’uns another season yet, two mebbe, ’tis a shame really, sir.’

  The Colonel turned his eyes upward to the direction of the forge. ‘Mark m’words, Sarge, ’tis all Rose Eyes’ doin’. I’ve never known or heard of a badger sufferin’ from the Bloodwrath so badly. I’ve had it from her own blinkin’ mouth that she’s bound to march off from here with half the garrison strength to destroy Tunn an’ his Rapscallions. Have y’ever heard the like? A Ruler of Salamandastron leavin’ our mountain t’do battle goodness knows how far off. She’d have had us all go if I hadn’t dug me paws in!’

  Clubrush finished his drink and rose stiffly. ’Beggin’ y’pardon, sir, I’d best get ’em organized afore supper. Oh buttons’n’brass, willyer lookit, there’s young Cheeva sobbin’ ’er ’eart out ’cos she wasn’t posted on the list.’

  Eyebright nodded sadly. ‘She was far too young, her pa an’ I decided we’d leave her a while yet. Better Cheeva cryin’ now than me an’ her father weepin’ when Cregga’s bloodlust brings back sad results. You go about y’business now, Sarge, I’ll see to her.’

  Drill Sergeant Clubrush marched smartly into the midst of the successful candidates, bellowing out orders.

  ‘Keep y’fur on now, young sirs an’ missies! Silence in the ranks there an’ lissen up please! Right, anybeast whose name’s bin posted up ’ere – in double file an’ foller me. We’re goin’ up to Lady Cregga’s forge room where I’ll h’issue you wid weapons I thinks best suited to gentlebeasts. No foolin’ about while yore up there . . . Are you lissenin’, Trowbaggs, I’ll ’ave my beady eye on you, laddie buck! Keep silence in the ranks, show proper respect to the Badger marm an’ mind yore manners. Tenshun! By the right . . . Wait for it, Trowbaggs . . . By the right quick march!’

  As they marched eagerly off, Colonel Eyebright went to sit next to the young hare Cheeva, who was sobbing uncontrollably in a corner. The kindly old officer passed her his own red-spotted kerchief.

  ‘Now, now, missie, this won’t do, you’ll flood the place out. Come on now, tell me all about it, wot?’

  Cheeva rocked back and forth, her face buried in the kerchief. ‘Waahahhh! M . . . m . . . my n . . . n . . . name wasn’t p . . . p . . . posted on th’ r . . . r . . . rotten ole li . . . li . . . list! Boohoohoo!’

  Eyebright straightened his shoulders, adopting a stern tone. ‘Well I should hope not! It was the unanimous verdict of the officers who made out that list that you be kept back. D’you know why?’

  “Co . . . co . . . cos I’m t . . . too yu . . . yu . . . young! Waaahahaaarr!’

  The Colonel’s trim moustache bristled. ‘Balderdash, m’gel, who told y’that? The reason is that we decided you were real officer material, needed sorely on this mountain doncha know! Suppose Searats or Corsairs launched an attack on us whilst that lot were off gallivantin’. Who d’you suppose we’d be lookin’ for to take up a trainee commandin’ position, eh, tell me that? Long Patrol isn’t the be all an’ end all of young hares like y’self who want t’make somethin’ of themselves. Ain’t that right, young Deodar?’

  Without Cheeva seeing him, the Colonel winked broadly at Deodar, seated nearby. She had had no need to go to the forge room for a weapon; she was polishing her sabre blade with a rag. Deodar caught on to the officer’s little ruse right away.

  ‘Oh, right you are, sah, I’d have been rather chuffed if I was picked t’be a trainee officer at the garrison here.’

  Cheeva looked up, red-eyed and tear-stained. ‘Would you really?’

  Deodar snorted as if the question was totally ridiculous. ‘Hah! Would I ever? How’s about swappin’ places – I’ll stay here for officer trainin’ an’ you go bally well harin’ off with that other cracked bunch?’

  Colonel Eyebright shook his head sternly. ‘Sorry, miss, orders’ve been posted, you’ve got to go. Soon as I’ve got you lot out o’ my whiskers I’m goin’ to start Cheeva’s officer trainin’. First task, nip off an’ wash that face in cold water, miss. Can’t have the troops seein’ anybeast of officer material boohooin’ all over the place, can we, wot?’

  Cheeva gave back the kerchief and ran off half laughing and weeping. ‘Course not, Colonel sah, thank you very much!’

  Eyebright wrung out the spotted kerchief, smiling at Deodar. ‘Good form, gel, thanks for your help. And don’t polish that sabre away now, will ye!’

  After supper the new recruits laid their paws upon the table and began drumming loudly until the dining hall reverberated to the noise. This was the prelude to a bit of fun traditional to Long Patrol.

  Colonel Eyebright played his part well. Striding from the Officers’ Mess, he held up his pace stick for silence. When it was quiet he began the ritual with a short rhyme.

  ‘Who are these strange creatures pray,

  Say who are you all,

  Stirring up a din an’ clatter,

  In our dining hall?’

  Young Furgale rose in answer in time-honoured manner.

  ‘We are no strange creatures, sah,

  But perilous one an’ all,

  Tell Sergeant we’re the Long Patrol

  We’ve come to pay a call!’

  The Colonel bowed stiffly and marched back to the Mess where he could be heard announcing to the waiting Clubrush:

  ‘Wake up from your slumbers, Sergeant dear,

  I think your new recruits are here.’

  Wild cheering and unbridled laughter greeted the appearance of Clubrush. He dashed out of the Officers’ Mess roaring and glaring fiercely, like the Drill Sergeant of every recruit’s nightmares. On these occasions a Sergeant always wore certain things, and Clubrush had dressed accordingly. Round his waist he wore a belt with dried and faded dock leaves hanging from it – these were supposed to be the ears of recruits that he had collected. Round his footpaws he trailed soft white roots – recruits’ guts. Over one shoulder was a banderole of cotton thistles representing tails. All 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 terrifyingly 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 demeanour changed instantly as he patted backs and shook paws of the young hares crowding round him.

  ‘Welcome to the Patrol, buckoes, you’ll do us proud!’

  Cregga Rose Eyes had a handle for h
er axepike – a thick pole, taller than herself. The wood was dark, hard and seawashed, like that of Russa’s stick. Long summers gone, somebeast had found it among the flotsam of the tideline. 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!’

  * * *

  23

  TAMMO HAD BEEN gone too long for Russa Nodrey’s liking. She caught Perigord’s glance as she took up her stick. ‘Nobeast 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 sabre. ‘Tare, Turry, Rubbadub, guard the camp an’ supplies, the rest o’ you chaps, off y’hunkers an’ come with us!’

  Travelling swift and silent 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 from 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 travelled 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 treerats 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 Mono 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, alla gone now, soon dissa one cutcha up wirra you own knife. Den we eatcha! Hakkachook!’

  Tammo had heard Russa and the hares, and felt a mixture of anger and sadness when Perigord shouted retreat 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 pebbles 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 towards 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 travelled 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! Killa!’ Swooping upward, she disposed of two more rats with a quick side-to-side jab to their faces. Bulling into the leader of the Painted Ones, she laid him senseless with a single rap to his skull.

  Grabbing the dirk, she slashed through Tammo’s bonds. ‘Quick, get behind me an’ lock y’paws round my waist!’

  With a swift kick she sent the Painted Ones’ leader from the bough they were standing on. As soon as he started to fall Russa leapt after him, with Tammo holding grimly on to her and shouting, ‘We’re comin’ doooooooown!’

  Leaves, twigs, branches, limbs tore madly by in a rushing kaleidoscope of brown, black and green. Tammo’s heart seemed to fly up into his mouth as all three plummeted earthward, Russa’s footpaws practically resting on the back of the rat as his body smashed a path down to the ground for them. They landed with a thrashing crashing sound, flattening an osier bush as the three bodies hit it.

  Major Perigord whirled a slingstone upward, remarking as he let the pebble fly, ‘Just dropped in to join the jolly old scrap, wot? Bravo!’

  Letting go of Russa, Tammo flopped awkwardly on to the ground. Apart from various scratches he was surprised to find himself unharmed. Russa yanked the battered and unconscious treerat leader upright, and pushed him into Rockjaw’s open paws.

  ‘Make light, get me a lantern, somebeast, ’urry!’ she cried.

  Tinder and flint hastily fired a lantern Riffle had brought. Bidding Riffle hold the light close to their captive, Russa grabbed the leader by one ear, hauling his head upright. Then she pressed the dirkpoint under his chin, and called upward, imitating the treerats’ speech, ‘Chakkachook! Dis beast a dead’n, we cuttim ’ead off, you chukka more rocks. Dissa beast tellya true, chahakachah!’

  The slingstones stopped and a mass wail went up from the foliage.
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  ‘Yaaahaaaagg! Norra kill Shavvakamalla! Yaaahaaaagg!’

  Rockjaw Grang slung the senseless leader over his shoulder. ‘Shavvakawot? Sithee, ’tis a big name for a lickle rat!’

  Sergeant Torgoch smiled at his friend’s broad accent. ‘Take ’im back t’camp. We’ll get a good night’s sleep with their Chief as ’ostage, wot d’ye say, sah?’

  Drawing his sabre, Perigord began backing his troop out of the area. ‘Capital idea! But we’d best keep up the threats, just t’make sure they know we mean business. I say, are you hurt, old lad?’

  Tammo was limping on his right footpaw. ‘Little sprain, sah, I’ll be right as rain in a bit.’

  The hares backed off, shouting horrible threats into the trees. ‘I say, you rips up there, leave us alone or we’ll scoff your jolly old leader. I’m quite serious, y’know. Chop chop, yumyum, eatim alla up, as you blighters say, savvy?’

  ‘Yaaaaahaaaag! No eata Shavvakamalla! Yaaahaaahaaagghh!’

  ‘Hah! Y’don’t like that, do you? Well keep your bally distance or it’s fricassee of treerat for brekkers!’

  ‘Aye, an’ we’ll use the leftovers t’make treerat turnover fer lunch, it’ll go nice with a bit o’ salad!’

  ‘Actually I’d rather fancy a slice of treerat tart. D’you think there’d be enough of him left t’make one, eh, Rockjaw?’

  ‘By ’eck, goo an’ get thy own treerat, Cap’n. I’m doin’ all the carryin’, so this ’un’s mine. Bah goom, ’e’ll make a grand treerat ’otpot with a crust o’er ’is ’ead!’

  ‘Yaaaahaggaaaah! Nono treerats ’otpot, yerra no eatim!’

  Major Perigord called a halt to the teasing. ‘Quite enough now, pack it in, chaps – those rotters’ve got the message, I think. I say, Rockjaw, I hope you were jokin’ about treerat hotpot. We’re not really goin’ to eat the blighter, y’know.’