With his back against the mast, Sunflash faced the searats six at a time. Daggers stabbed, blades slashed, but nought could stand before him. The mace swung and fell, whirling in arcs, sweeping like a scythe, smashing like a sledgehammer. The searats fought back with desperation, but their swords snapped like twigs as the Badger Warrior wielded his mace so fast that it was hard for the eye to follow. His speed and strength were unmatched.

Onshore, the shrews covered their babes’ eyes and ears as they looked away from the swaying vessel. The oar slaves, however, stood watching, grim satisfaction stamped on their thin faces. The vermin of the waves were being paid back in full for every lash mark, every chain scar, every day of near-starvation, every night they had separated the oar slaves from their loved ones. An old squirrel raised a clenched paw and shook it at the hated Gutprow, crying, “Let them reap the whirlwind they have brought upon their own evil heads!”

*   *   *

Not one searat or wave vermin left the ship alive. When his terrible task was at an end, Sunflash let slip the mace from his paws and fell down in a stupor by the mast. Folrig, Ruddle, and Skarlath had long since herded the shrews back behind the rocks at the shore’s edge, where they ate and stayed resting until sunset’s scarlet fires began lighting the horizon. Then the kestrel flew out over the silent ship.

Sunflash was awakened by the lonely cry of seabirds. Lowering himself over the ship’s side, he washed all traces of battle from his body and cleaned off his mace in the cold water. The badger’s eyes were normal now, back to their usual mild, dark-brown hue.

Skarlath landed nearby and watched as Sunflash took his mace and smashed two gaping holes in the Gutprow, one each side, amidships, just above the waterline. Placing his mace to one side, he waded into the broadstream and, bending his back and grunting with exertion, he loosened the two boulders from the streambed and rolled them ashore. The water had been building up behind the vessel, and now that it was free of the restraining boulders, the ship sprang clear. Night winds caught the sail, billowing it out; the Gutprow was off on its last voyage.

Sunflash sat down on the sand beside Skarlath, his shoulders bowed wearily, saying, “She will sail out into deep waters until the waves find those holes; then she will go to the bottom.”

A great fire was lit on the beach; shrews sat round it with their backs to the rocks, and a cauldron of soup made from watershrimp, herbs, and leeks bubbled away merrily. Bread and cheese was shared, shrewbeer was poured, with blackberry cordial for the little ones.

Sunflash sat alone, apart from the festivities. Log a Log brought him food and said, “Lord Sunflash, we of the Guosim thank you. Words do not come easily to show our gratitude for what you have done for us, but our hearts are full for you. The name Sunflash will live for ever with the Guosim.”

The badger echoed the curious word: “Guosim”?

Log a Log explained. “Guerrilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower, first letter of each word. We are warriors, we honor you!”

Sunflash nodded his thanks, but still he sat alone, knowing the first real feelings of being a Badger Lord, fearing his own bloodwrath, shuddering at the sight he had been granted of his own dark side.

Skarlath sat perched by the fire, watching Sunflash from a distance. The shrewbabes were too excited to sleep; they played and danced, laughed and sang with boundless energy. The kestrel knew how little ones affected his friend, so he called them over. “Poor old Mr. Sunflash, doesn’t he look sad,” he said. “Why don’t you go and say thank you to him for saving you from the searats? Go on, maybe he’d like to play with you!”

When the little shrews had run off to Sunflash and there was peace around the fire, two shrewmaids began singing. One of them played a small stringed instrument not unlike a mandolin. It had a sweet, tinkling tone, and to it they sang a ballad that they had written that very day, a song that would become a great favorite around shrew campfires for countless seasons to come.

Folrig raised his beaker in admiration. “Here’s to a great ballad sung well by pretty maids!”

Ruddle and Log a Log were chuckling. The shrew pointed and said, “Aye, look, here comes a big babe playing with little babes.”

There were six shrewbabes riding on Sunflash’s back as he ambled up and shook them off, then collapsed on the sand, begging, “Enough, enough! I’d sooner do battle with ten shiploads of villains than fight you lot off!”

Another group arrived panting, dragging the mace along the sand by its corded handle. A plump, serious-faced infant held up a pebble in one paw and addressed Log a Log. “See dis peggle, I make it get stucked inna star, watch!”

Smiling broadly, Sunflash picked up his mace and held it like a bat, calling to the infant, “One, two, three. Now!”

The little shrew flung the pebble and Sunflash struck it with his mace, sending it straight up into the night. He crouched and held out one paw, and the infant stood solemnly on it and was lifted high.

“Where has that pebble gone?” the badger asked him.

A little paw pointed straight at the sky. “Way up der, it stuck inna star now!”

Yelling and laughing, the big badger dashed off across the beach with a horde of little ones clinging to him.

“Cummon, let’s go’n paggle inna water!”

Skarlath looked up from a bowl of soup and shook his head. “Shame on him, he’s worse than the babes!”

*   *   *

The Guosim slept on the shore that soft autumnal night, and never had they felt more safe. The presence of Sunflash drove away all fear of trouble. Next morning, Log a Log stood on the rocks that skirted the broadstream. Cupping his paws around his mouth, he warbled a long ululating call upstream.

“Logalogalogalogaloooooog!”

It was answered so faintly that at first Sunflash thought it was an echo, but the shrew Chieftain set him right.

“That is our elders coming downstream with the logboats. We of the Guosim don’t care to do too much traveling by paw.”

In a short while the boats appeared. They were long logboats carved from pine trunks, punted skillfully by old shrews.

Log a Log took Sunflash’s paw. “You’ll like our settlement; we’ll lay on a feast for you that’ll make your fur curl, matey.”

The big badger shook Log a Log’s paw firmly. “No, thank you, friend. I have my own path to follow.”

Folrig and Ruddle nodded in agreement. “Aye, matey, we’re bound a long ways from here.”

Sunflash grabbed the two otters and, tucking one beneath each elbow, he walked to the broadstream and dropped them into the nearest logboat.

“You two ugly mugs are going back with Log a Log,” he said. “This part of my journey I must make alone. I can feel it in my bones; the mountain of Salamandastron is not far away now.”

By the look on Sunflash’s face, the otters knew there would be no room for argument, so they slipped back into their old insulting ways.

Ruddle stretched out in the stern and waved. “G’bye, ole frog frightener, hope yore mountain doesn’t crack down the middle when y’look at it, what d’you say, nastynose?”

Folrig flicked streamwater at the badger. “Right, me ole bulgebelly, at least I won’t have t’wake up an’ think I’m havin’ nightmares when I see yore great big badgerbutterbonce starin’ at me. Take care of yoreself, ’cos nobeast else will, yore not pretty enough!”

Skarlath and Sunflash stood on the shore, waving as the logboats loaded with Guosim disappeared around the broadstream bend with the shrews paddling and chanting:

The sounds died off into the far shady reaches of the broadstream.

Sunflash turned to Skarlath as he set off, saying, “Straight south to the end of autumn, I dreamed it last night. But what of you, my hawk, have you no affairs of your own to fly off to and attend?”

The kestrel circled his companion’s head. “I’ll stay with you for a score and a half days, until you reach your dream mountain, then I will fly off and see to my own business.”

Sunflash tried to focus on Skarlath as he swooped and wheeled. “How do you know it is a score and a half days away?”

Dipping low, the kestrel brushed the gold-striped head with his wings and flew off high, calling, “Because I have flown south until I saw it rearing to the sky. Go now, see for yourself, Badger Lord of Salamandastron!”

*   *   *

The autumn was, if anything, as warm as the summer. Sunflash traveled the shores moving south. He saw little of Skarlath during this time, but he knew his friend was not far off, watching, ever watching. Misty mornings dissolved into golden noontides and crimson sunsets, and the big badger found peace, walking alone, making solitary camp at night, thinking, and reflecting on both the past and the future. Often he was visited in dreams by his mother, father and grandsires; they imparted much wisdom to him, as if preparing him for the role he was to play.

The last day of autumn was hot and bright as midsummer. Still as a millpond, the sea reflected a cloudless blue sky. Seabirds wheeled and called, soaring lazily on the warm thermals above the sun-baked sands of the shore.

Sunflash stood for a moment, his breath taken away by the majesty of the great mountain that lay ahead of him.

Two hares stood shaded by a cave entrance, watching a fully grown male badger plough his way wearily across the beach toward them. He was big and dangerous looking; the fierce light in his eyes glinted off the metal tip of an immense war club that he carried easily in one paw.

When the two hares stepped out from the shadows, Sunflash could see that both were of a very great age.

“What do they call this place?” he asked.

The older of the hares, a male, answered him: “Salamandastron, the place of the fire lizard.”

The badger gave a huge sigh. Leaning against the rock, he rested his club on the sand.

“I feel as if I’ve been here before,” he said strangely.

The female hare produced victuals from within the cave entrance. “Rest awhile. Eat and drink. I am called Breeze, and this is my brother Starbuck. What do they call you?”

The badger smiled. He touched one of his headstripes, which was yellow rather than white.

“Some call me Sunflash the Mace. I am the son of Bella and Barkstripe. I’m a traveller.”

Starbuck nodded in satisfaction. “Your traveling is at an end, Sunflash. You are the grandson of Boar the Fighter and great grandson of Old Lord Brocktree. It is written on the walls of our mountain that you would come here someday.”

Sunflash straightened up. He stared hard at the hares. “Written, you say. By whom?”

Breeze shrugged. “By whoever wrote that other hares will follow after us. That is the way it has always been and always will be.”

Both hares stood in the cave entrance. They bowed to the badger.

“Welcome to your mountain, Sunflash the Mace, Lord of Salamandastron.”

The high sun above watched as the badger and the hares went together into the mountain on the shores below.

Skarlath the kestrel had watched all from the crater peak of the mountain fortress. Fierce pride welled in his breast for the badger who had given him back his life all those long seasons ago in a winter forest. Then, without a backward glance, he soared off into the blue, winging northeast to seek out Swartt Sixclaw.