The badger did not stop running until it was broad daylight, cold and crystal clear. He halted in a small clearing at the forest edge. Skarlath fluttered to one side as the hefty young badger threw himself down in the snow and lay panting, tongue lolling, as steam rose from his thick coat. After a while he sat up, cramming pawfuls of the cooling snow into his mouth and gulping them down.
Skarlath hopped about, testing his wings with short swoops, noting gratefully that his pinions were undamaged. Glad to be alive, he shook his plumage and spread his wings. “Heeeeh! Rest, friend, then we go far away!” he cried.
The badger stood and picked up his club. “You go where you want. When I’ve rested and found something to eat, I’m going back there to slay that vermin Swartt Sixclaw!”
The young kestrel took flight and wheeled round the badger’s head, his wings brushing his friend’s gold-striped muzzle. “Heekeeer!” he cried. “Then you are a deadbeast, my friend. Swartt has too many vermin; you will surely be slain!”
The badger clenched his jaws as his body trembled with rage. “For many seasons that ferret held me slave, dragging me around, hobbled and muzzled, starving, beating, making fun of me. Scumtripe, that was his name for me—Scumtripe! I’ll make him repeat my name tenscore times before I slay him with this club. But what is my name?”
Whirling his club, the badger charged a dead elm stump and struck the rotting wood a mighty blow . . . Whumpff! A hole appeared in the elm stump as Skarlath shrieked out, “Kreeee! Look, food!”
Hazelnuts, chestnuts, and acorns poured out onto the snow, the forgotten cache of some careless squirrel. Anger was momentarily forgotten as the two friends laughed aloud at their good fortune and fell upon the life-giving treasure. Sitting on the stump, the badger cracked shells in his strong teeth and placed the nuts before his friend. Soon they were both crunching and munching.
The kestrel spoke around a beakful of chestnut: “I am Skarlath; I was alone, but you saved my life; now I am with you. Where come you from, friend?”
Scratching his golden stripe, the badger chewed thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. I think I had a mother, Bella or Bellen or something, it’s hard to remember. I must have been very young. Boar the Fighter, that’s a name I recall, maybe he was my father, or my grandsire, I’m not certain. Sometimes I dream about home, or maybe it’s my imagination, but it feels nice. Then there’s the mountain, was that my home? It is all very mixed up. But Swartt Sixclaw, I won’t forget him. . . .” The young badger looked quizzically at his friend the kestrel. “Maybe Swartt was right, perhaps my name is Scumtripe. He gave me that name. What do you think my name should be, friend Skarlath?”
The kestrel felt fierce pity for the young badger well up in him. He hopped up onto the strong, dark, furred shoulder and cried, “Kreeeee! Your name I don’t know. But I know you are a great warrior, slay five and injure many, like a lightning bolt! There is none so quick or strong with a mace as you!”
The badger picked up his hornbeam limb and hefted it. “So this is a mace, is it? I never knew a mace looked like this!”
Skarlath looked at the hulking young beast with his tree limb. “If you call it a mace, methinks nobeast would argue the point. Warriors like you can be anything they want to be. You are unsure of your true name. I will give you a good name. The mark of the sun is on your face, your speed is that of lightning, you have your own special weapon . . . You are Sunflash the Mace!”
The badger laughed happily and, standing at his full height, he spun the formidable hornbeam in his paws and roared, “I have a name! It is a good name! I know who I am! Sunflash the Mace! Eeulaliaaaaaaa!”
Skarlath took wing and circled high, calling wildly, “Kreeeeeeee! Sunflash the Mace! Kreeeeeeeee!”
When the kestrel flew to earth again, Sunflash was away, already backtracking swiftly through the forest. Skarlath winged between the trees after him. “Sunflash, where do you go?” he called.
The warrior blood was rising in the badger’s eyes as he brushed past Skarlath. “Out of my way,” he growled. “I am going to settle accounts with the ferret!”
“So, you go to your death!” said Skarlath, as he found his perch on the big shoulder and clung doggedly. “I have told you, Swartt has too many vermin, even for you. No matter, I have sworn to stay by your side. I go with you, and we will both be slain!”
Sunflash halted. “But what else can I do?” he said, a bewildered look on his young face. “Sixclaw is my enemy!”
Skarlath was wise for a young kestrel. He rapped his beak lightly against the skull of Sunflash, saying, “We can think! You are brave, but headstrong. Why risk your life against the odds when, if we take our time, we can be certain victors one day.”
Sunflash sat down in the snow, leaning his chin on the mace as he gazed at his companion. “Tell me how we will do this. I will listen and learn.”
Thus began the education of Sunflash the Mace. Skarlath outlined his plan, which was simple and should be effective. “Why run after Swartt? He will be coming after us. The ferret will lose face in front of his vermin if he lets you live. Let Sixclaw wear himself out chasing us, while we leave this cold land and find warm country, where it is green and there is plenty of food. There we can rest and grow strong.
“I will be your eyes and ears, flying high, watching for Swartt, listening for information. When the time is ripe, then we strike cleverly, my friend, like wasps we worry the ferret and his band. In and out, sting and disappear, slay one or two at a time, strike like sunflash, vanish like smoke. Then Swartt will come to fear us; he will realize that you will not disappear—that one day he will turn round and you will be there, waiting. This will trouble his mind, haunt his sleep. That is my plan. What do you think?”
A broad smile spread across Sunflash’s face. “It is a great plan, Skarlath. I will learn to think like the kestrel. Lead on!”
That day the two friends began traveling south and west on a journey that would last many seasons. Sunflash strode over hill, valley, and plain, while Skarlath soared and circled overhead, scouting out the land. Winter passed into spring as the two friends journeyed onward, growing up together, getting wiser, seeing, and learning as they went. Sunflash could not stand injustice, and wherever he saw creatures being oppressed or enslaved, the big badger, remembering his own enslavement by Swartt, meted out terrible retribution to their tormentors.
His name and fame began spreading. Songs and poems sprang up in the lands he and Skarlath traveled through. Most were heroic, and some, like this one, were humorous:
I met with six weasels one warm summer night,
And I feared for my life I’d be beaten and slain,
But their faces were fearful, all ashen with fright,
They jibbered and whimpered like they were insane.
“O save us, preserve us, O hide us from him,
The one with the mark of the sun on his face,
In one paw he carries a great hornbeam limb,
He’s the Warrior Lord they call Sunflash the Mace!”
Of a sudden the earth seemed to tremble and shake,
And the verminous weasels passed out in a swoon,
As he came like the wind, with a hawk in his wake,
There he stood strong and tall ’neath the moon.
I’ll never forget what he told me that night,
While he looked at the weasels, stretched out where they fell.
“You’re a very brave beast to down six in one fight,
For a small baby dormouse you’ve done very well!”
But as more seasons passed and time went on, things did not quite turn out as Skarlath had said they would. Swartt Sixclaw had tracked them as predicted, and Sunflash and his friend worried them, striking at them many times. Each attack was successful, and the ferret lost quite a few of his vermin to the lightning strikes of Sunflash. But Swartt was no fool. The realization of the badger’s guerrilla tactics came home to him one sunny morning in low hill country to the north of Mossflower Woods. Two vermin whom he valued highly, Spurhakk the stoat and Bulfie, a ferret like himself, both hardened and skillful warriors, had vanished overnight. Swartt sat hunched over a small fire, massaging his damaged paw. From shoulder to elbow the limb was as strong as ever, but the six-clawed paw was rigid and unmoving. It ached every morning, reminding him of the winter night when the young badger smashed it with a piece of hornbeam. Nightshade approached with three others who had been out searching for the missing warriors. Swartt quickly pulled a gauntlet onto his dead paw. It was a heavy affair, meshed brass mail, with two weighty copper fasteners, and it made a very formidable weapon. He glanced up at the vixen and snarled, “Well, didyer find ’em?”
Nightshade squatted down on the other side of the fire. “Aye, both sitting up against a sycamore in a copse over yonder, stone dead, each holding one of these.” She tossed over two long-stemmed water plants.
Swartt picked them up and inspected them. “Bulrushes?” he said.
Nightshade was a healer, and she knew every plant by name. “That’s right, bulrushes. They are also called reed mace, or just mace in some parts of the country.”
Swartt Sixclaw flung them on the fire and watched them smolder. “Mace! It doesn’t take a genius to work out who did this.”
The vixen narrowed her eyes against the smoke of the fire, saying, “You should have caught him and slain him the night he escaped.”
Swartt leapt up. Drawing his sword, he scattered the fire and shouted, “Should have! Might have! Would have! That’s in the past! Get those idlers up off their tails, we travel east!”
The vixen sprang aside to avoid the burning embers. “East? But my scouts tell me Sunflash still travels south by west. What is there in the east?”
“Bowfleg!”
Nightshade raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Bowfleg the Warlord?”
Swartt thrust the sword back through his belt, sneering, “Bowfleg the Warlord, hah! You mean Bowfleg the Old, Bowfleg the Fat, Bowfleg the Glutton!”
Nightshade shrugged. “Still, he leads a great horde.”
Swartt chuckled evilly as he marched off. “Not for long!”