
together they bayed their defiance at the blue spring sky. Roaring and
screeching, the gray rat horde thronged decks and rigging to cheer their
leaders. It was a curious sight: three big, battered ships, swarming with
thin, wild-eyed creatures, tattered sails flapping above creaking decks as
they rode the ingoing swell toward shore. And so it was that Urgan Nagru came
to the far south!
The land lay like a dream out of time under the spell of early spring.
Southsward! A soft, peaceful region of plenty that had never felt the cruel
breath of war. Stowing the three ships up a heavily wooded creek, Nagru waded
ashore with Silvamord and their ragged, murderous followers. Lean from hunger
and privation, eager for loot and conquest, they pressed hurriedly inland. The
time of the Foxwolf had come to Southsward!
The BeUmaker
From his vantage point on a wooded hilltop, Rab Stream-battle gazed across the
valley to Castle Floret. The otter had watched and planned almost every day as
spring passed into summer. Castle Floret stood atop a high flat plateau, its
north side abutting the sheer cliff face. The castle's other three sides were
surrounded by a crescent-shaped moat. A mighty drawbridge commanded almost a
third of the front south side, and at this edge the plateau had a long flight
of broad steps carved into the living rock from top to valley floor.
Rab stared sadly at his old home. It resembled a beautiful forgotten cake left
standing on the green-clothed tableland. Against a sky of dusty blue,
cream-colored towers shimmered beneath quaint, circular red-tiled roof-caps.
Dark green ivy and golden saxifrage flourished amid the crenellations. Campion
and climbing roses burgeoned carelessly over windowsills and framed doors. The
hot afternoon did not contribute the slightest breeze to ruffle the variegated
pennants draped idly around tall flagpoles.
Rab dismissed the dreamlike qualities of his old home, riveting his worried
brown eyes on the window alongside the drawbridge top. Had something gone
wrong? Did Nagru know of the escape that had been planned? His friends, Gael
Squirrelking, Queen Serena, and little Truf-fen, had they received the message
from Relph the blackbird? The otter clutched his bow tightly, staring at the
window, awaiting the signal as thoughts raced through his troubled mind.
Why, oh why, had Gael not listened to him? Rab recalled the day he had first
argued with his friend. The quarrel had become furious and bitter and had
ended with
IO
BRIAN JACQUES
Gael ordering his old friend either to curb his tongue or leave the castle.
Stone-faced, Rab stalked angrily out of Floret, taking the entire otter castle
guard with him—not because he feared Nagru, but because he could see the evil
that Gael was blind to.
Rab hated and loathed the cunning Foxwolf with an intensity that banished all
fear. Now his friend the Squir-relking and his family were prisoners in their
own home. The wickedness of Nagru was a specter that would soon blight the
whole of Southsward. Gael should have heeded the warnings Rab had issued, but
instead he chose to play the king and offer the Foxwolf hospitality.
Suddenly, Rab's eye caught a flutter of iridescent blue-black wings carrying a
scrap of red cloth to the window by the drawbridge.