fool me anytime, shipmate,"
Mask tossed aside the false tail and ears. Spitting out the two false front
teeth, he readjusted his body. He was an otter again.
"Maybe I fooled you, maybe I didn't. But you're not fooling me, Skipper of
Camp Willow. What do you want me to do?"
Skipper sat back, folding his paws across his chest. "I have a proposition to
make to you, brother Mask. Sit still and hear me out."
Tsarmina glared through the cell aperture at Gingivere. The imprisoned wildcat
sat in the darkest part of the cell. His fur was tousled, damp from the walls
dewed his paws, his head dropped despairingly. Now and then his eyes would
flicker rapidly. The wildcat Queen brought her face close to the bars. "If you
know what's good for you, you'll tell me all about how those two hedgehogs
made their escape. Speak up. You must have heard or seen something—they were
in the cells either side of you."
Gingivere leaped up, his voice a cracked singsong shout. "Hahaha! You let them
escape so you can have their bread
> and water. I knew you wouldn't give me any. You're keeping it all for
yourself. Oh, I saw you, sneaking along the passage. You let them go so that
you could have all that bread and water for yourself. Heeheehee."
.',- Tsarmina turned to Cludd. "Listen to that. He's completely crazy."
She swept off down the passage. Cludd stayed a moment, looking through the
bars. He had never seen a completely
.crazy wildcat before, although he had seen his mistress dan-
-?gerously close to that condition once or twice.
\ "No bread, no water, she's keeping it for herself." Gin-
^givere continued his insane lament.
j; Cludd banged the door with his spear. "Quiet in there!"
JV "Atishoo!"
3 The sneeze came as Cludd was turning away. He whirled ck. "Who did that?"
155
Gingivere grabbed a pawful of straw and sneezed into it. "Atishoo, choo! Oh,
I'm sick and dying, sir. The cold and damp down here. Please get me extra
rations of bread and water or I'll die."
Cludd rapped the door with his spear again. "Enough of that! You get the
rations Lady Tsarmina allows. So stop moaning, or I'll give you something to
moan about."
As the weasel Captain lumbered off down the passage, another sneeze rang out.
"Atishoo!"
On the wall above the cell door, two food haversacks hung from a spike driven
into the rock. Ferdy and Coggs sat, one in each sack, their heads poking out
like two fledgling house-martins in their respective nests.
Coggs reached across, trying to stifle Ferdy's snout with his paw, but another
sneeze rang out.
"Atishoo!"
Ferdy blinked and rubbed his snout. "Sorry, sir. This bag has flour in it from
the scones, and it's tickling my sn . . . sn . . . Ashoo!"
Reaching up, Gingivere lifted his little cellmates down from their hiding
place. While there were no guards about, they could play and exercise.
Chibb flew to the window, dropping the latest supplies in. He caught the empty
sacks that Gingivere tossed up to him. In the shaft of light the wildcat was
looking strangely sane and healthy.
"What news, Chibb?"
"Ahemhem. The Corim have decided that you must soon be rescued, all three of
you. How they propose to do it, I don't know yet."
Gingivere nodded. "I hope they realize that the longer they wait, the more
dangerous it becomes for Ferdy and Coggs."
Chibb slung the empty sacks around his neck. "Ahem, I'm sure they do. At
present the message is, keep on the alert and keep up your courage. You are
not forgotten."
Chibb flew off swiftly. Gaining the woodlands, he paused to perch on a spruce
branch as he adjusted the bags about his neck for easier flight. Argulor
belched dozily and glanced at the robin perched
156
j|' beside him. Chibb gave a jump of surprise, but did not forget I his
manners.
*; "Ahem, beg pardon." The fat robin darted from the branch ":'. like a
flame-tipped arrow.
Argulor shifted his claws. Wearily he dropped his eyelids back into the
slumbering position.
Were the small birds getting faster, or was he getting slower? The eagle
dismissed the problem, reasoning that there were still plenty of soldiers in
Kotir who were a lot slower than a single robin redbreast. A lot tastier, too.
Dinny and Gonff sat quite still at the edge of the pond as Martin whispered to
them, "Now, very slowly, look to your left. Do you see the female swan over
there? She's sitting on her nest with her back to us. Right. Don't look, just
take my word for it, in the open water to the other side there's a big male
swan—it's her mate. He's not seen us yet, but he's headed this way and bound
to sight us if we stop here, so let's move away as silently as possible."
With great care Gonff let the fish slip back into the water. He cut his
fishing line. The three friends moved speedily, ducking behind the rushes with
not a second to spare.
The huge white swan glided by them serenely. He was like a ship in full sail,
an awesome spectacle, the snowy white body and half-folded wings complementing
perfectly the muscular serpentine neck column surmounted by a solid orange
bill and fierce black eyes.
Martin shuddered. He thought of how close they had been to death. The male
swan was warlike and fearless, absolute monarch of his pond. Any creature who
dared trespass upon these waters while his mate sat upon the three new-hatched
cygnets in their nest was fated never to see the sunset. The white colossus
swept by, continuing his patrol of the pond.
When he was past, the three friends slipped away. Gonff whispered a silent
goodbye to the silver fish in the shallows. "We were both lucky that time,
matey. Swim free."
A respectable distance from the water, Dinny untangled a streamer of duckweed
from his paw.
, "Boi okey, this'n's owd granfer near losed a dear liddle /: 157
mole back thurr. Oi never see'd a skwon afore, gurt feathery burdbag they be,
stan* on moi tunnel."
They lunched on apples and bread, supplemented with some cow parsley that
Dinny had discovered.
Blacktooth and Splitnose sighted the pond. They had been running ahead of
Scratch after a particularly nasty bout of name-calling. The stoat and ferret
had called Scratch a frog-walloper; this seemed to touch some hidden nerve in
the weasel, and he took strong objection to the insult. The pair ran off,
cackling gleefully as the weasel threw pebbles and earth clods after them.
"Come back here and say that, you cowardly custards. I'll give you frog
wallopers when I get you!"
Running wide, they approached the pond at a different angle from that of the
travelers. Blacktooth and Splitnose whooped with delight.
"Look, a river, a river! Truce, Scratch!"
Scratch joined them, the quarrel temporarily forgotten at the sight of the
watery expanse.
"That's not a river, it's a pond," he pointed out. "This is more like it, a
good fresh drink, a nice bath for our paws. Look, a swan sitting on a nest.
Swan eggs—what a tasty idea!"
Splitnose was not so sure. "Er, don't you think that bird looks a bit big,
Scratch?"
"So what?" the weasel snorted. "There's three of us and we've got spears. I
bet swan eggs are lovely."
"Have you ever eaten one?" Splitnose asked.
"No, I've never even seen one, but I bet they're very big and good to eat."
"Well, all right, we'll back you up. How do you get the eggs?"