Brian Jacques

Mara felt something hit her between the ears. She clapped a paw to her head and caught the object. From the comer of her eye she caught sight of a wren zooming overhead. 134 Brian Jacques Holding up the acorn, she roared aloud, "Look, it's the acorn! Eulaliaaaaa!" Immediately, the battle cries of the Guosssom shrews reached their ears. Nordo dived into a wallcave, avoiding arrows as he threw slings and stones forward, lifting his head in an answering war shout to his father's warriors who were pressing up from the riverbank. "Logalogalogalogalog!'' An arrow zipped between Pikkle's ears as he flung off a rounded stone from his sling. There was a satisfying thud as it caught a toad guard in the throat. Toads were everywhere, swinging their vicious flails and thrusting with tridents. Fierce-eyed Guosssom warriors, their heads bound in bright-colored cloths, leapt to the fray, parrying and riposting with their short fencing rapiers. "Yahaa, 'sdeath to you, scumback!" "On guard! One, two, slay!" Mara and the rest whirled stones upward with as much speed and force as they could muster, dodging arrows and ducking long pike thrusts from the toads on top. King Glag-web turned back and forth, trying to divide his attention between the prisoners in the pit and the advancing Guosssom shrews. The element of surprise was working well. The shrews drove the toad masses backwards mercilessly, pushing them into the flames of their own cooking fires as they did. Log-a-log, the fierce-eyed leader of the shrews, fought like a mad beast, throwing himself onto several toads at a time, regardless of danger. Bleeding from a dozen trident and flail cuts, he fought wildly with tooth and rapier, all the time booming out in his gruff bass voice: "I'm coming, Nordo my son. Logalogalogalogalog!" Several shrews had been slain by the toads, but the losses on King Glagweb's side were far heavier. The toads were beginning to lose heart. They still fought on, but they were pushed into retreat by the ferocity of the Guosssom attack.