CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
While half the force of marauding gulls continued to harry and harass the Sparra, the other half disengaged from their smaller avian adversaries to swoop down upon the Long Patrol unit, opening a preliminary engagement with the long-eared runnerbeasts ahead of the main gull squadron's arrival. It was a miscalculation which would prove lethal for some of them.
Striking in scattershot fashion with no real coordination, the gulls attacked in staggered order, a mistake which allowed their hare foe to rally against them most effectively. The first gull zoomed down from the left, catching Fawkwell unaware and sending him tumbling to the ground. But even as the bird pressed its advantage, pouncing upon the fallen hare with stabbing beak, Peppertail whirled and reflexively launched his lance for all he was worth, taking the seabird through the breast and slaying it on the spot. As he and Pumphrey raced to the aid of the shaken but unharmed Fawkwell, Clewiston and his immediate companions Leftwick and Pledger spun to greet the second incoming gull with a rude welcome of flashing spears and blades. Their united front was enough to beat off the aggressor, even as Clewiston broke off to take on a third descending gull.
And behind it, yet more seagulls were dropping out of the sky to join the fray.
Fawkwell shook off his fleeting daze as Peppertail yanked his lance free of the slain gull, wiping it on the grass with a few deft and practiced swipes to render it pristine for its next target. Thus broken up into two more traditional patrol groups of three hares apiece, the double trio formed into a pair of shoulder-to-shoulder defensive knots, aimed outward to ward off incursions from any direction and leaving no unprotected blind spot.
"These winged nuisances aren't waitin' for the jolly main event, wot?" declared Leftwick.
"That they're not," answered Pledger. "An' this's only half th' blighters - other wretched half's still up skyward, keepin' our feathered Abbey friends too busy an' on the bally fly to spare us any aid. Divide an' conquer, looks like."
"'Cept they're divided too, chaps," Clewiston reminded the two younger hares as he smashed his spear across the bill of an encroaching gull. "An' they've taken casualties before we did, in case you missed the Sergeant's stellar throw. An' if they're intent on pressin' this, let's see if we can't make 'em take a few more, wot! Just imagine we're back on coastal patrol like in the good old days, when we hadta put these squawkin' bullies in their place ev'ry once in a while, an' remind 'em why the Long Patrol aren't to be trifled with!"
"Wish Mizzy an' Givvy were here with us now," Pledger lamented, laying open a menacing webbed talon with his blade. "Could sure use their bow an' sling right about now - mebbe knock some o' these pillowstuffers right outta the sky!"
"We've got a squirrel comin' up behind us whose bow is worth more'n Mizzy 'n' Givvy put together," Clewiston said, feinting with his spear and driving back another gull through sheer intimidation. "Once he gets here, an' the Guosim add their slings to this jolly dance too, we'll scatter these flippin' feathervermin clear back to Salamandastron!"
Leftwick spared a glance to the west, and the much larger force of gulls yet to reach them. "Yah, but they're not here yet, sah. An' it looks like our enemy's apt to be strengthenin' their numbers long 'fore our own reinforcements arrive."
"Then we'll just hafta stand fast an' show 'em wot hare mettle's all about, Lefty!"
Across at the other outward-facing trio, Peppertail lunged, piercing a gull through the throat in a lethal parry. As the seabird fell dead, Pumphrey congratulated his sergeant. "Nice work there, Sarge! That's two for bally two!"
"Well, gotta show these rude fiends who's boss, don'tcha know!"
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Cresting a small rise in the rolling Plains, Alex caught his first glimpse of the besieged hares.
"We've got trouble," he informed Sodexo and the Guosim as they attained the slight ridge. "Or rather, our Long Patrol friends do. Those gulls aren't just harassing our Sparra; it looks like they're rallying against the Colonel's team too."
"An' a lot more t' come," Log-a-Log worried, eyes on the approaching main squadron. "Our hares might be able t' hold off the pesks who've been shadowin' us all morn, but that big flock's another kettle o' stew. They'll be overwhelmed through sheer numbers, an' pecked to death. Fact, might be all we c'n do t' hold 'em off, all of us t'gether."
"Then let us hold them off together," declared Sodexo, Palter still astride his shoulders in Latura's dress. "If we keep to a half-run between here and there, we should be able to render timely aid."
"Think we'd need more like a full-tilt hare's run," the shrew chieftain assessed. "That's a big lead they opened up 'tween us an' them, even with the time they spent pokin' 'round that big lowland up ahead - which we hafta get through now too. That monster flock looks t' be closin' fast - really eatin' up the sky like they mean serious business. We'll hafta bust our stumps t' reach the Colonel's group while we've still got any hope o' makin' a diff'rence."
"Unless the Colonel disengages and retreats back toward us," Alex offered hopefully.
"Clewy an' his Patrols? Disengage 'n' retreat? Dunno what hares those are ye're talkin' 'bout, Alex, but they ain't th' ones I know!"
Alex conceded Log-a-Log's point. "Yes, I suppose you're right. Which leaves us with Lord Sodexo's recommendation. Who here's up for a brisk morning run?"
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Captain Scarbatta flapped at the leading edge of his massive attack squadron, over a hundred birds strong, positioned to direct and coordinate his forces from the opening moments of engagement. His prominence in the forward aerial lines made it easier for the messenger from the Mossflower gulls to find him.
"Captain, Captain! Redwallers attack, Redwallers fight! They kill our gulls!"
"Gulls dying? How many?"
"Two, maybe three. Others take wounds. Long Patrols fight hardfierce, crawk!"
"Why you attack so soon, not wait for us?"
"Hares get too close to Gawtrybe, almost catch up, we intercept. You take too long to get here, could not wait."
Scarbatta flew into a fury at this aspersion cast upon his timeliness, stabbing at the impertinent messenger bird with an ill-tempered barrage of pecks that sent the unfortunate target of his wrath into a momentary downward spiral of chagrined panic. The gull captain righted himself into a stable flight pattern once more, even as his inner gorge consumed him. His fighters, dying at the paws of ground creatures intent on interfering with Lord Urthblood's mission for his Gawtrybe? Such an affront was not to be tolerated. Not at all.
"Change plans, change plans!" Scarbatta shrieked out to all his fellow gulls around him. "No contact, no close combat! Drop chains, drop chains, craaawwk!"
And then they were upon the Long Patrol.
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"Here they come!" Clewiston called out. "Stand fast an' look sharp, chaps! This's about to get hairier than a hare at full springtime shed!"
A fewscore paces away, Peppertail barked similar enjoinders to his own companions, and within moments all hare blades and spears tightened in their bearers' grips to meet the oncoming storm.
An advance gull from Scarbatta's squadron broke away and swooped low over the dozen or so still engaging the Long Patrol. "Clear, clear!" it cried, warning his fellow birds of the spur-of-the-moment change of strategy by their captain.
Behind him, a dozen battle gulls bore down upon their landbound targets. But instead of aiming low to directly combat the hares, they maintained an altitude just a few body lengths above the terrain. From underneath each hurtling bird was cast an iron whip of swinging chain, each chain ending with a wicked war implement that now arced toward the hares like a pendulum of death.
Clewiston spotted these unexpectedly-unleashed weapons with mere moments to spare. "Down!" he yelled, not leaving matters to his voice alone as he reached out to grab Leftwick and Pledger by their tunics to force them to the ground. Even as all three fell flat, the airborne armaments swept over them, so close that the wind of their passage ruffled the hares' fur and twitched their ears.
The other knot of Long Patrol were not so lucky. Sergeant Peppertail, his view blocked by a harassing gull that waited until the last moment to clear the way for Scarbatta's attack, had all of a heartbeat to see the swinging spiked mace bearing down on him before it connected squarely with his skull, taking off half his head. Even as Pumphrey and Fawkwell twisted to avoid such fates for themselves, a heavy war hammer caught Fawkwell in the chest, splintering breastbone and ribs with a sickening crack and driving the battered hare to the ground amidst a spray of blood from his mouth.
Pumphrey escaped any serious harm - but only for that instant. The gulls, seeing him now alone with no companion to stand at his side, fell upon the solitary hare with a vengeance, a score and more, going at him in a mad frenzy of beak and talon that no single creature - not even a seasoned veteran of the Long Patrol - could hope to fend off for long.
Seeing their comrade in such dire straits, the Colonel's group sprang up to rush to Pumphrey's aid - only to drop flat again as a second wave of gull-borne chain arms swept over them. This time the attacking birds, having seen the hares' drop-and-duck strategy from the first pass, knew to drop lower themselves, so that their blades and hammers and maces might catch a creature pressed to the ground. A few went too low, sticking in the earth or dragging against the grass - but even these could prove effective as they were pulled forward by the gulls' momentum, as proven by one irregular club that bounced along the terrain before slamming into Leftwick's arm with enough bone-crunching impact to do damage.
"Dah! There goes that elbow!" Leftwick grunted, striving to downplay his injury in best Long Patrol fashion. "Good thing it's not my pitching arm, so I can still stay in this fight once these birdbrained blighters let us up again!"
As Clewiston felt a barbed mace slash through his right ear, shredding the top half of that extremity, Urthblood's dire warning from seven seasons earlier echoed in his memory:
"If the Long Patrols should ever face me on the field of battle again, I will not allow a single hare of you to leave the contest alive."
Clewiston gritted his teeth in defiance, ignoring the pain flaring in his ear. "Not like this!" he bit off. "Not on our blinkin' bellies, or even on our knees! We're the badger-be-damned Long Patrol!"
"Eh, wot?" Pledger ventured. "Oh, I say, sah, your ear's a sorry mess ... "
"Just cosmetic, no real damage done. Now up on your stompers, Pledge, an' sword at th' ready! Time t' show these flyin' barbarians how real Patrols bob 'n' weave! Let's see how they do against moving targets!"
"Aye, sir!' Pledger sprang upright along with his commander.
"Hey, you two aren't leaving me out of this!" Leftwick declared, climbing to his own footpaws even as he favored his bad arm.
"Now, Lefty, are y' really sure - " Clewiston broke off from what he was saying to dodge a flying guillotine blade swinging straight at him; twirling in a complete circle, he swung his spear straight-on into the chain supporting the blade, causing the links to whip up and wrap around the haft. When the chain went taut, Clewiston hauled back on it savagely with both paws, causing the gull manacled to it to nosedive hard into the ground, where it lay still in a pile of unruly plumage, either killed by the crushing impact or stunned senseless.
" - sure you're up to evadin' these flying' nightmares?" he finished asking Leftwick.
"It's my arm that's danglin', sah, not my leg. I can still bob 'n' weave with the best of 'em!"
"As you wish." Clewiston and Pledger ducked two more swinging deathtraps aimed their way; now that they knew what to expect and had a sense of the pattern and rhythm of the undulating attacks, avoiding them became a good deal easier. "Stick together then, an' guard each other's flanks as best we can. Come on, chaps - sharps eyes an' light steps! Let's see if we can do anything for the others!"
As they sprinted and stopped cold and veered and ducked and dodged, the beleaguered Long Patrol trio discovered a weakness in the gulls' strategy ripe for exploiting: Due to their own wingspans, the birds could not attack with their swinging weaponry clustered too closely together and, by the same token, they could not attack from multiple directions at once, lest they risk battering, slicing and impaling their fellow gulls, or tangle the chains with potentially disastrous results. Thus, the assault could come from only one direction at a time, with arms-spread gaps between the swinging chains. And with the hares' natural sharpness of eye and athletic coordination to match, bolstered by their Long Patrol fighters' training, they ably held off further harm by bobbing and weaving around the chained weapons and battering any other gull who dared ventured too close.
The fewscore paces separating them from Sergeant Peppertail's trio felt like a season's campaign to battle through, but at last they reached the mass of rampaging gulls swarming around and over the fallen hares. Battering and bashing and slashing and stabbing and resorting to judicious body blows as well, they finally scattered enough of the mad flock to expose their downed comrades. One glance at Peppertail and Fawkwell was all it took to see that neither would ever rise again, so they concentrated on Pumphrey, a cowering and huddled form down on his knees with arms up over his head and ears pecked to shreds. To their immense relief, those arms lowered and Pumphrey's head lifted at this sudden cessation of the punishing avian assault. He looked up at his rescuers through his one good eye with, if not exactly joy, then at least surprised gratitude.
"Wot kept you?" he joked, rising to unsteady legs; his head, paws, arms and torso all bore bloody spots where the thrusting beaks had done their damage. Clearly, he would not have lasted much longer.
"Can't keep a good hare down, wot!" Clewiston said as he glanced toward Peppertail and Fawkwell, confirming his previous assessment that both lay bereft of life. "Right ho, chaps, let's form up around Pums here, defensive group with blade and spear out, an' fend off these frighters while we give Pums a little breather, wot!"
Now that the Long Patrol were tied down to one spot again in defense of their rescued brother, the gulls renewed their assault with the chain-tethered weaponry. But the hares had seen enough of this tactic by now to have their own counter-strategy ready. With the attacks coming from only one direction at a time, and the wingspan-spacing required between birds, the three able-footed Patrollers easily ducked, dodged and sidestepped the swinging arms, not only sparing themselves further harm but even diverting the weapons away from Pumphrey as well. Even when the gulls shifted tactics again literally on the fly, coming at the hares from different angles in a rapidly-changing criss-cross pattern, Clewiston and his companions adapted, allowing not a single blow to land. When it became obvious the gulls would cause no further casualties by these methods, they momentarily broke off hostilities, although they continued to flock and wheel around the trapped hares like a screeching, white-breasted whirlwind.
"Shall we try 'n' make a break, sah, an' run for it?" Leftwick yelled over the unnerving cacophony.
"Run which way?" Pledger asked. "Forward, or back? Not keen on beatin' a blinkin' retreat from these featherfaces, but if we try 'n' press onward, they'll be on us ev'ry blasted step of th' way."
"Not sure they'd let us live either way," Clewiston shouted back. "We've slain some o' their own, an' to savages like this, that's a blood feud. But the point's moot anyway, since I doubt Pums is in much shape t' run very far, an' we Long Patrol don't leave any of our own behind. No, this is where we make our stand - stand or fall."
And so stand they did, even after the maddened gulls swept in closer and threatened to overwhelm them through sheer numbers. Tied down as they were to defend Pumphrey (as well as the remains of their slain comrades), they nevertheless enjoyed some freedom of movement, if only a few steps in any direction. But this was all the adroit Long Patrol needed to bob and weave around the molestations of individual gulls, or even two at a time. Three more gulls fell to the hares' expert thrusts and slashes and high kicks, while the ground beasts themselves endured only additional minor scratches and bruises from their foe.
Three gulls came in at Leftwick at once, sensing the limp-armed hare's vulnerability. Clewiston and Pledger leapt to his defense and helped hold off the aggressors, but not before Leftwick had been knocked off his footpaws and suffered further pecks to his head and wounded elbow ... and then all three hares had to spring to Pumphrey's aid again to keep the gulls away from their grievously wounded comrade. And still the birds pressed the attack from all sides.
It was a stand of legendary proportions, a valiant effort no group of a mere three defenders should ever have been able to put forth for so long against such insurmountable odds, and the spectacle captured the full attention of Scarbatta's gulls. The few warning cries from the seabirds circling higher above went unheeded, until the volley of slingstones smashed into the eastward flank of gulls, and one tumbled to the ground transfixed by a feathered shaft. No shout or battle cry heralded this blindside, no invocation of Abbey valor or shrew pugnacity or badger wrath. And events had allowed the larger force to draw within striking range uncontested.
Alexander stood with footpaws widely planted as he lined up a second shot on another gull, while the Guosim loaded and twirled their slings for a follow-up barrage. Sodexo stood back for now, awaiting the moment when the hare-centered seagull formation would shatter and veer their way to take on the newcomers ... when the hulking badger would be in his element, and woe to any foebird that came within reach of his seeking quarterstaff.
And turn the gulls did, breaking off from the Long Patrol to throw themselves at these new challengers - but not before a second tumbled from the sky pierced by another shaft launched straight and true from the squirrel's bowstring, and many more sustained wounds of varying severity from the shrews' flung stones.
The initial engagement played out like a repeat of the assault on the hares: a flurry of gulls, their numbers now decidedly diminished, diving in against the line of woodlanders, only to discover that a swung longbow at close range could cripple, while the flashing and thrusting shortswords and thwacking loaded slings of the rallying Guosim could take the lives of winged warriors as surely as any Long Patrol spear. And as for Sodexo, one brief demonstration of what he could do with his staff was all anybird needed to see to know to stay clear of him.
With a dozen more gulls lying slain or stunned, balanced against just two additional shrew casualties, once again a gull herald skimmed just above the carnage with the call of "Clear! Clear!" And, once again, the close-quarters warbirds dispersed and scattered, while their incoming brethren swooped forward to hit the expedition from Redwall with their most lethal weaponry.
Alex, seeing what was hurtling toward them, managed to elude the swinging club aimed his way, but the Guosim, packed into a tight battle formation still nearly a score strong, presented a much bigger and less mobile target, as did the broad and burly badger. But if Sodexo succeeded in shrugging off the glancing blow from the mace he very nearly avoided, the shrews fared far worse. Three of Log-a-Log's ranks fell dead to this onslaught, while two others incurred injuries grave enough to remove them from this day's fight.
Away in the near distance, reaching some ears over the screams and moans of the injured, the screeches of the gulls and the rushing, adrenaline-charged blood roar, came the voice of Colonel Clewiston, shouting out a warning even while still warding off a few gulls of his own.
"That's their bally tactic: Thin th' ranks, then move in for th' kill!"
Sodexo strode over to the Abbey squirrel. "Alexander of Redwall, take up your bow and shoot as you have never shot before, until your every shaft is spent. Our survival may depend on it."
Alex still gripped his bow like a club, as he'd seen Mina do once against a Long Patrol hare at Salamandastron. "They won't leave me alone long enough to nock my arrows and line up my shots!"
The badger twirled his staff. "Leave that to me. You worry about shooting straight and true, and I will guard your approaches."
With a nod, Alex returned his bow to a traditional archer's grip, and fished into his quiver for another arrow while Sodexo batted away two gulls who, seeing what was about to happen, decided to risk getting into the path of the swinging weapons to swoop in and personally harass the Redwaller. Sodexo saw to it that their efforts were in vain, then spun to ward off another flying mace aimed their way.
With the badger running interference for him, Alex fell into an automatic, reflexive rhythm of nocking, aiming and shooting, lining up each new shot even as the previous loosed shaft found its mark. The Guosim, meanwhile, scattered from their former tight ranks and followed much the same winning strategy as the Long Patrol, breaking off into groups of two or three, small enough to more easily avoid the chain-delivered weapons without leaving any single shrew alone and exposed to lethal gull predations.
Feeling no more arrows in his quiver, Alex flipped his bow back around to brandish it as a cudgel again. "I'm out!"
Spying two more gulls coming at them with chains trailing from their legs, Sodexo pressed his staff into Alexander's surprised paws. "Here, take this, and use it well."
"But, Lord! You'll be without a weapon!"
"Not for long, I think."
Placing himself halfway between the two oncoming gulls, Sodexo waited for the flying armaments - this time a studded club and a disembodied axe head without a handle - to reach him. He barely had to sway to avoid first the axe and then the club ... but, lunging and grabbing out at the passing chains, he seized each in one massive paw and gripped them as tightly as he could, bringing the two weapon-bearers down with crashing impacts, just as Clewiston had done earlier with his own gull.
But Sodexo was just getting started.
Maintaining his grip on the two chains, and not even paying any heed to the axe and club attached to them, he charged toward the seagulls harassing the Guosim. Before anybeast or anybird knew what was happening, he was swinging the two captive gulls about him by their chains, lifting them clear off the ground and propelling them through the air. Into their fellow gulls they smashed, one after another, rendered into living weapons against their own kind by the indignant badger - although they would not be living for long, at the rate and ferocity with which they were unwittingly bludgeoning and being bludgeoned.
One of Sodexo's chains became entangled in that of an attacking gull, bringing it down. Discarding that chain and the now-dead bird still manacled to it, he continued to lay about him with the one remaining gull in his possession, smacking and scattering the seabirds as effectively as he could have with any forge-wrought weapon.
This proved the final display to achieve what no other by the woodlanders had so far: the gulls dispersed and fled, not just for a few moments to regroup and attack again, but for a prolonged, confused, enraged retreat. Never before had they faced an adversary like Sodexo, nor had they even imagined such a creature might exist, one who could absorb their aggressions seemingly without effect while meting out untold punishment to their ranks.
They might have known to expect such, had they ever witnessed their own badger master in full fighting frenzy.
Clewiston's company took advantage of this lull without hesitation, bearing the wounded Pumphrey across the distance separating the hares from the rest of the expedition from Redwall with the best speed they could muster. Their entire party now reunited again, the woodlanders wasted no time in considering their next move.
Log-a-Log regarded his decimated shrew line with disgust; seven of his own lay either slain or too badly wounded to join in any further fighting. "Gah! A third of my Guosim, taken out by those winged terrors! Who'da thought Urthblood would go an' throw sumpthin' like this at us?!"
"We knew how badly he wants Latura," Alex said in a more reasonable tone, although he himself stood shaken by the violence of this clash. "We should have anticipated he'd use considerable force to try and stop us." Glancing skyward, he added, "The question now is, have we beaten them off for good, or will they come at us for another go?"
"An', more to th' bally point, do we press on either way? Pums here's in bad shape, an' really needs the full attention of an infirmary, quick as he can get it. Leftwick's arm should be tended as well, by expertise he can't get out here."
"Hey, I can still fight!" the limp-armed hare protested, although the numerous other pecks and scratches he bore undermined his assertion of combat readiness. "I've still got my battlin' paw! Just fix my other one up in a sling t' hold me over, an' I'll be fit to see my way through any kerfuffle and bruhaha!"
"Hmm."
"Some o' my shrews should prob'ly head back t' Redwall fer some minis'trin' too," Log-a-Log conceded. "An' then there's our dead. Do we take th' time to bury 'em here, an' fall even farther behind th' Gawtrybe an' Lattie, or see to that grim duty on th' way back?"
"That's assuming we continue."
All eyes looked to the squirrel. "Do you genuinely believe we should not, Alexander?" Sodexo inquired as he unpinned his remaining chain from the dead gull's leg for possible further use as a weapon.
"Fawkwell an' the Sergeant are gettin' proper Redwall burials," Clewiston declared obstinately. "We're not layin' them to their eternal rest out here in th' bloomin' blinkin' middle o' nowhere."
Alex nodded. "Which means somebeast has got to carry them back to the Abbey ... and it won't be any of the injured, who by all rights ought to be escorted by at least one or two able-bodied companions to help them along and see to their needs. And that right there pretty much splits our company in half."
"I am neither injured nor intimidated," said Sodexo. "Were it up to me alone, I would elect to continue the pursuit."
Clewiston chewed this over. "Never let it be said that any fit 'n' capable Long Patrol stood by and allowed an honorable Badger Lord to venture into harm's way alone. If you keep on, you'll have this hare at your side."
"An' this one too!" Pledger pledged.
"An' me as well!" Leftwick affirmed.
"Not you, Lefty," the Colonel reprimanded. "Sorry, ol' bean, but you've seen your full measure of fightin' in this fight. Acquitted yourself well an' honorably, prob'ly earned yourself a bally promotion once we get to the Abbey, from Traveller if I don't make it back m'self, an' you can tell 'im I said so if I'm not on paw to pin your medal to your chest. But you're outta this now, an' that's an order."
Pumphrey, wavering in and out of wakefulness as he crouched feebly upon the ground, flashed a sorry grin Leftwick's way. "Looks like y're joinin' me on th' invalid's list, Lefty ... " Then he coughed, and it didn't sound good.
"Well, you're lookin' ragged an' worn yourself, sah, if you don't mind my sayin'," Leftwick observed. "It'll take half a season of stitching t' mend those ears ... "
"A little flayed flesh on a nonvital extremity's a battle trophy, not cause for the sickbay. Not in the same bally league as a busted arm or leg, an' you know it."
Log-a-Log entered the conversation. "I'm not about t' let you hares an' this badger forge on alone. Half my force may be outta this one way or the other, but that still leaves a good ten Guosim shrews, an' that ain't nuthin' t' sneeze at!"
"You'll need my bow too, if we're to do this," Alex added.
"Then we are decided," Sodexo said. "Even though we may move on as half the number that left Redwall, we'll still see if we can carry out what we set out to do."
"Our numbers may be only half, Lord," the shrew chieftain told the badger, "but ye're worth about as much in a fight as all th' rest of us put t'gether. Wouldn't be surprised if you could hold yer own against those villains even if you struck out alone."
"I'll admit it was easier without a rat riding on my shoulders. It proved a wise idea to leave him behind in the round valley, even if his companion there was less than thrilled to be stuck with him. As to your theory of me being a single-pawed match for all the remaining gulls, it is one I hope not to test." Sodexo glanced westward. "It appears, however, that our test here may not be done yet. Here comes our enemy again."
The woodlanders tensed and brandished their weapons, but to their surprised relief the gulls alighted on the Plains before them, halfway between them and where Peppertail and Fawkwell lay. At the very center of the bird ranks settled Scarbatta, exuding an air of defiant, belligerent arrogance.
Clewiston snorted. "Looks like they wanted to be part of our bally deliberations too, wot?"
"Turn back, or die!" the gull captain shrieked with rampant bad temper.
"That's a right sorry apology for the decent an' honorable beasts they've slain," Pledger muttered.
"Are you the commander of these gulls?" Sodexo inquired of Scarbatta.
"Captain, captain, creeeaawk! Go back, or perish!"
"We will not. These Plains are free for us or anybeast of good will to travel as we please. And we will fight to the death any blackhearted creature who seeks to deny us."
"Fight to death then, to your death, craawk!"
"I thought you might say that." Sodexo still stood holding the chain he'd unmanacled from his second gull. Now, with no warning to either friend or foe, he reared back and flung it straight at Scarbatta with all his strength, sending it whipping end-to-end through the air too fast for the surprised bird to duck. The chain wrapped itself about the gull captain's body and legs with stunning force that sent Scarbatta stumbling to the ground, dazed and entangled.
The other birds flew into a frenzy at this assault upon their commander, a frenzy which only intensified when they realized the badger was striding unarmed straight into their midst. They rallied to protect their stricken captain, but Sodexo bashed and smashed at them with massive balled fists and swiping open paws, slaying more than one and scattering the rest. At last he was upon Scarbatta, reaching down and fastening those deadly paws around the gull's neck.
And then he started to squeeze.
"This is what I think of a Badger Lord who sends out his minions to threaten innocent Redwall-bound travellers for asking honest questions. This is what I think of a beast who places that venerable Abbey under siege for daring to disagree with him. This is what I think of a creature who seeks dominion over free lands that are not his own. And this is what I think of those who would unquestioningly carry out his bidding, to the point of slaying innocent goodbeasts."
Sodexo released his grip and stood back as the chain-wrapped gull captain fell limp upon the meadowgrass, throat crushed and all life gone from him.
Capitalizing on the shock this turn of events caused the gulls, the able-bodied Guosim launched off a new volley of slingstones to either side of Sodexo, further ravaging the seabirds' lines and sending them away in a flurry of frantically flapping wings and maddened, confused cries.
Alex regarded Sodexo warily as the badger rejoined them. "I say, Lord, that was a bit ... much. I hope you haven't just brought us a lot more trouble by doing that."
"Bah! Pish 'n tosh!" Clewiston spat. "They mean t' slay us down to th' last blinkin' beast if they can. No worse trouble than that."
"I felt I had to make my feelings clear," Sodexo said unapologetically. "And the Colonel is correct, I fear; we can bring no worse trouble down upon ourselves through our own actions than our foe was already prepared and willing to visit upon us. To the contrary, this might gain us some leeway. These birds conduct themselves as barbarians - trained barbarians, perhaps, but barbarians nevertheless - and when you deprive savages of their leader, this often casts them into such confusion that they lose the will and ability to fight on."
"I hope you're right about that." Alex surveyed the landscape about them; in addition to the bodies of the two hares and half a dozen or so Guosim, many gull corpses littered the Plains, claimed by squirrel arrow, shrew blade and sling, Long Patrol heroism and badger brute force. "It looks like we've slain well over a score of them, and maybe closer to twice that number. These are the gulls Urthblood needs to guard Salamandastron and the coastlands against Tratton. He may not want to risk losing any more of them to further fighting."
"Unless they've already served their villainous purpose," Clewiston ventured, "and slowed us down all they needed to, t' make sure we never catch up with Lattie. One thing's for sure: Now that we've seen the tactics used by these winged rampagers, we'll not have any hares out in front blazin' the bally way - too exposed an' vulnerable. We'll all jolly well be stickin' together from this point on."
"So, I guess it's decided then?" asked Alex. "We're moving ahead?"
They all looked at each other, then at the retreating gulls. "Don't see no reason why not," Log-a-Log grunted.
"Okay, then." Alex set off toward some of the slain gulls.
"Where're you off to, chappie?" Clewiston inquired.
"To retrieve my arrows," the squirrel replied grimly.