The bear nodded. “It is a gamble, but we have little choice. If only my brother and the Princess have done their work, then we might have some hope yet.”
Jarr turned and shouted for the chieftains of the other tribes. Quickly, they gathered around him, and he gave each tribe a task. Brumbles took Aaron and Bethany aside. “You have your sky stones?”
Bethany produced hers at once. Aaron had taken to wearing his in a leather pouch hung around his neck, beneath his shirt. He patted his chest and nodded.
“You may need them. I feel a stirring. Something is happening. The great spirits of my ancestors are near. Now, stay with me. Where is your smelly friend? We may have need of her.”
Within fifteen minutes, the army was on the move. The black-furred badgers of the Midnight Clan stayed behind to guard the wagons and hold the hill. They numbered only twenty-five badgers, but they would provide a stiff test for whatever force Youd was bringing up to their rear. Surely they could pin down Half-Paw’s forces until the bears arrived.
Almost at once, the thirty badgers of the Red Clay Clan stomped down the road from Honey Hill, veering left toward the trench. That left the Moon Clan, the Sacred Pool Clan, and Jarr the Stout’s own White Stone Clan to march straight at the gates of the city, bringing three wagons of war supplies. With them came Brumbles, the Merley kids, Skunk, the two weasels, and an assortment of raccoons, rabbits, opossums, and other small creatures. This main force numbered more than a hundred.
The city walls were about a mile distant down across the meadow. Weasels were scrambling about on the walls, and shouting back and forth from the towers guarding either side of the gate. Meanwhile, the Red Clay badgers, moving at a trot, were almost on top of the weasels’ trench on the west side of the meadow. Bears dropped their shovels and tried to scramble out of the trench. Weasels lashed them with whips. They took up their tools again, and stood against the approaching force.
“Looks like we’ll have a few of our own to fight,” Brumbles said grimly, watching the action over there. “Come on, you bears,” he added to himself in a grumble. “Stand up for yourselves. Throw down those weasels.” He let out a helpless roar when he saw that they wouldn’t.
The gates opened and a score of weasels slipped out. They ran toward the trench to reinforce its position. Aaron did a quick calculation. Half a dozen weasels already at the trench. Add another twenty, and they’d easily be able to keep the dozen or so enslaved bears fighting. That would make them a larger, better fortified force than the Red Clay Clan approaching. The first battle would go to the weasels.
Jarr realized the same thing. Already, he was shouting orders. The Moon Clan dropped their wagon and scrambled across the meadow to intercept this new force. Jarr’s remaining force picked up the wagon and kept marching toward the gates. It was drawing near now, no more than half a mile distant.
The Moon Clan met the band of weasel reinforcements at almost precisely the same moment that the Red Clay Clan overran the trench. Shouts. Clash of weapons. Teeth bared. Claws. The battles swirled in a chaotic, bloody dance that was both terrifying and utterly enthralling to watch.
A knot of fear rose in Aaron’s gut and he felt his hands trembling. He grabbed for his dagger to assure himself that it was still there. This was real. Worse, he could feel it coming. He’d felt it coming for days. Those earlier skirmishes had just been there, suddenly. No time to fear or anticipate. But this, he’d known it was coming, and just how desperate their situation remained. The fear was like a knife twisting in his gut.
Many of the badgers were looking back anxiously to Jarr. “Chieftain!” one of them said.
“No!” Jarr ordered. “They must fend for themselves. We march on the city! Now. Faster.”
There was a shout to the rear. A band of wolverines came rushing from the trees into the forces of the Moon and Sacred Pool Clans still defending Honey Hill. Behind the wolverines, came larger numbers of weasels. Fires sprang up among the wagons on the hill. What had been calm only minutes before was now composed of three raging battles. And in front, the gates of the city were opening. Weasels, mink, ferret, and wolverines poured through the gates. The enemy must have liked what it saw from the other three. Now it would make four.
“Aaron!” Bethany cried. “They’re coming. I’m scared!”
Yet surprisingly, Aaron no longer felt that knot of fear. Moments earlier, he’d been on the verge of collapsing as if his wobbly legs were about to give way. He looked at his hands, and was surprised to see that he held his dagger in one hand and his fragment of sky stone in the other. Without even noticing it, he’d taken it from the pouch around his neck and now it was clenched in his fist. And it was whispering to him. Strengthening his courage.
“Take hold of your sky stone,” he told her. “Hold it in your hand.”
The badgers stiffened into a line. Pikes and spears lowered. Beasts lifted whatever weapon they had to brace for the onslaught. And then the line, that immovable line of tooth and claw and snarled, determined shouts, buckled under the attack of the enemy.
It was here. The battle had finally come. The war was upon them.
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Rage of Battle
Youd the Half-Paw stood atop the south guard tower, together with a pair of mink bodyguards. The top of the tower was filled with heaps of stones and in the center was a kettle of bubbling oil over a pile of coals. Their vantage point was both smelly and sweltering hot from the coals. But they would need the stones and the oil if the enemy reached the gates.
Shouts and screams filled the air. The battlefield had become suddenly chaotic. He needed to pick things out, and quickly, or control of events would slip away from him.
An arrow whistled past his ear and he flinched, drawing a chuckle from the mink. A pair of badgers were shooting arrows up at him. They calmly notched new arrows to their bows and took aim. He ducked as the arrows flew, drawing another laugh from his bodyguards.
“You think that’s funny?” he snarled. So he flinched. He, at least, was up here at the battle. Where was Garmley? “Take care of them.”
Another arrow zipped by, this one almost catching one of the mink. All of a sudden, the pair were deadly serious. They picked up stones and hurled them down at the badgers. Now it was the badgers’ turn to duck out of the way. The badgers resumed firing, but now that they were under attack, their shots were hurried and less accurate.
Meanwhile, Youd surveyed the battlefield.
The fight at the trench was going well. It was just a diversion, really. He had little hope that the bears would stand and fight for long by themselves, but so far they hadn’t thrown down their weapons and fled, or worse, joined the enemy. Many of the reinforcements he’d sent to the trench had never made it, but enough had to keep that battle in play.
The battle on Honey Hill was not going as well. He’d sent more than enough weasels and wolverines to wipe out the small army of badgers guarding the provisions. But the badgers had dug in and were mounting a terrific defense. So far only one wagon was on fire. Given enough time, Youd thought his forces would finish off the badgers, or drive them away, But he didn’t have much more time.
Unfortunately, the enemy had reinforcements on the way. He’d heard the horn calling in the distance and knew what it meant. But how many? It was hard to say. Maybe only a handful of bears, the missing Greencloaks. They wouldn’t be enough to keep him from victory on the hill, let alone down in the meadows in front of the gate. But what if it were another badger clan? Late arrivals. Another twenty or thirty badgers and he’d never be able to take the hill.
He shook his head and turned to the action here in front of him. That was where the war would be won or lost. Right now, the fighting was a stalemate. He’d sent sixty weasels and a dozen wolverines to meet the enemy attack. Many would die; they weren’t strong enough by themselves to win the battle. But Youd had other weapons to work with.
He looked back into the city. There, crouched behind the gates were another fort
y weasels and wolverines. As soon as the badgers began to tire, he would release them. Half-Paw smiled as he imagined the dismay on the enemy’s faces as they saw his fresh forces. They would be forced to retreat. And when they did, he would unleash the wolves. Retreat would turn into rout, into a slaughter.
Another arrow zipped past. But first, those worthless bodyguards of his had better take care of those badger archers or he’d hurl the mink off the tower himself.
#
Whatever Aaron had expected of battle, this was not it. He had pictured it a hundred times in his mind. He had imagined every possible scenario from triumphant march into the city to horrible, hope-crushing defeat. In every case it had unfolded like a movie in his head, directors ordering beasts in this direction or that. When someone was killed they would crumple with a cry and that would be the end of them.
It was nothing like that.
It was more like a dance. It wasn’t one of those slow waltzes with everything scripted out ahead of time. It was like those mad, Irish dances, with everyone flying this way and that. But there was no music except the cries of pain and anger and the scrape and slapping of weapons and bodies. There was no joy in any faces, just grim determination, sprinkled here and there with rage or terror. The battle had spilled off the road. The beautiful meadow had become a muddy, grass strewn plain.
Someone slammed into him, and he slashed out with his dagger, not even knowing who he was attacking. He found himself grappling with a weasel, who snapped at his neck with his teeth, even though he held a knife in his hand. And then someone else came into the battle, a gray and black blur, and the weasel was swept away into a new fight. All around him, the dance of war continued.
And everywhere, the wounded. A badger crawled past with his hand on his gut, begging for water. A weasel lay on the ground nearby, his back bent at a funny angle, crying for someone named Esmerline. Nobody paid them any attention. Aaron wanted to help the wounded, both friend and enemy alike. But he was caught up in the deadly jig.
Bethany cried out some distance away, “Aaron!”
He thought at first that she was crying for help. But she was protected by a band of badgers. Brumbles was there, too. It was Aaron who had strayed into dangerous territory. There were badgers nearby, but they were outnumbered three to one by weasel-kind. He fought his way back to the main clump of badgers and his sister.
“The sky stones!” she shouted, to be heard over the noise of battle. “Should we try to use them.”
“Do we even know how?”
“They are burning hot. Can’t you feel them? They want to be used.”
His stone was still in his hand. He’d forgotten it was there. And yes, it was hot. Should they use them already? Could they?
Aaron took advantage of his sheltered position to look around. He had no time to consider the fighting on Honey Hill–their escape route–or at the trench, but only at the battle here in front of the city gates. Only a few minutes had passed since the gates had first opened and the enemy had come boiling out, yet already the battle was changing form. The weasels had thrown their weight against the badger lines. The lines had buckled, but they had held. Now, slowly, but surely, they were forcing the weasels back toward the gates. A grim confidence swept through the badger forces. The weasels were no longer fighting for victory, but merely to secure their escape back into the city. He thought he saw the beginning of fear in their eyes.
“No,” he told Bethany. His voice came in a pant, breathless. “Don’t use your stone.”
With a rising hope, he realized that they were winning this first, most important battle. But what then? The war would not be over until they took River’s Edge itself and scattered, captured, or killed the weasels. They might need the stones for that final battle inside the city, when the enemy grew truly desperate.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re winning already!”
But Aaron soon realized that he was wrong about that.
With a crank of chains, the gates of the city swung open once more. He thought at first that it was opening to allow the weasels to retreat. But the weasel forces parted, and someone else came surging through the gates. A second wave of Garmley’s forces poured through.
Three rows of tightly packed weasels came forward at a charge. At the front of this force was a group of several wolverines like the sharpened point of a spear. They were dressed in leather armor with flails in hand, heavy whip-like weapons with spiked iron balls. They were a fearsome sight.
Someone in front shouted, “Brace yourselves!”
This time, the line did not hold. It buckled under the force, and then the fresh band of weasels split the badgers in two like a wedge. The force of weasels kept surging forward, driving badgers off the road. Into the gap left by their charge, poured the initial force of weasels who had fallen back only momentarily.
The badger army, so disciplined just moments earlier, looked on the verge of collapse. A handful broke toward the trench, and the battle still raging there. Lines had changed, with a handful of bears now fighting on the side of the Red Clay Clan, who had almost taken control of the trench and driven the weasels out. Perhaps the fleeing badgers hoped to make their stand there, where the terrain was more favorable. But it weakened the left side of Jarr’s line.
The badger chief was only a few yards away from where Aaron and Bethany were struggling against a pair of white mink. “Hold your positions!” he shouted. His badger lips curled back in a snarl and he bashed one enemy on the head with his skull. “Hold them!”
But the line was crumbling. There were too many enemies. Their lines were too weak. They must soon retreat to Honey Hill or the trench or die. Bethany was swept away in a skirmish to his right, while Aaron found himself almost surrounded by weasels. Two badgers were trying to hold them back, while a wolverine saw him, snarled and came for him. At the last minute, Jarr and a pair of dark-furred badgers from the Midnight Clan came to drive the beast back. Just as quickly, the weasels forced them back again. Jarr shouted again for the lines to hold. Holding or not, they were almost completely surrounded. Already, the road behind them was blocked, and in a moment they would be cut off from the trench, as well.
Just when Aaron thought the badgers would stubbornly resist a retreat until it was too late, he heard the blast of a horn to his rear. He looked over his shoulder and saw the most glorious sight imaginable. He couldn’t help but cry out with relief and joy.
Princess Sylvia and Dermot Strongpaw were coming down the road from the hill. At their side were more than a dozen bears, together with the gray badgers of the Ash Clan. With them also came the Moon and the Sacred Pool clans who had been guarding the wagons. They were no longer needed on the hill now that the attacking weasels had been driven off.
A second friendly force came out of the trees that flanked the road. They were smaller in number, but their sight was a welcome one to Aaron’s eyes. They numbered eight bears in green cloaks, armed with clubs and maces. The lead bear of this second force was a sturdy looking beast with brownish fur, and a long, darker colored snout. Lieutenant Blacksnout and the last of the Greencloaks.
Shouts came from the newly freed bears at the trenches. “The Greencloaks! The Greencloaks have come!”
There was a pause in the battle. Both sides lowered their weapons, and for just an instant, all eyes turned to the bears. And then the fighting resumed, all the more ferocious. Weasels tried to hold their advantage. Badgers fought to reform for a new attack. The bears swept into their midst with a fury. The weasels and their kin were helpless to stop them.
“The Kingdom of the Bears!” Brumbles roared with his front paws raised high.
His brother answered from a short distance away, separated by a band of terrified weasels. “For the Kingdom! For King Greatclaw!”
Wherever they stood, bears and badgers alike took up the call. “The Kingdom of the Bears!”
Within moments, the battle had turned. Weasels were scattering this way and
that, or would have, had there been any place to run. The same features that would have trapped the badger army were now conspiring against the weasels. The gates blocked their retreat, the trench was held by badgers and freed bear slaves. The road in front was blocked by badgers and bears and Honey Hill blocked as well.
The gates of the River’s Edge opened one more time. Out walked a weasel, flanked by two mink bodyguards. The one in the middle was no taller than any other weasel, no better armed. Yet there was a swagger to his step and a confidence to his bearing that marked him as no ordinary weasel.
The weasel lord’s own captain. Youd the Half-Paw.
“Weasels, to me! Mink, ferret, wolverine! Fall back to the gates.”
His confidence, his commanding voice brought the weasels flowing to his side. Wherever they were, his men stopped fighting, just turned and ran toward the gates. The Greencloaks broke to meet him, but Youd was surrounded by twenty weasels by the time they reached him. It soon became thirty, then fifty. Still the number grew, and so did their confidence. Youd was whispering something to them and they became an army not defeated, but on the verge of victory. Their very confidence made the badgers and bears hesitate. And then their ranks parted, and a new foe entered the battle.
Wolves.
Some twenty in all, they exploded into the ranks of the badgers and bears with a fury. Weasels and wolverines surged behind them. Once more, the badgers and bears were forced back. The enemy drove them from the road. Lieutenant Blacksnout went down with three wolves tearing at his throat and neck. Dermot and Princess Sylvia tried to reach his side, but they soon found themselves in their own fight for their lives.
Aaron and Bethany found themselves unexpectedly among the last of the friendly forces still on the road. They were supported mostly by the little creatures of the army: three raccoons, a family opossums, an otter, Skunk and two of her cousins, and a fox. With them also were the two weasels and the two bears who’d joined the army on the march north.
The Kingdom of the Bears Page 18