"10 - The Long Patrol UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacques Brian)

BOOK ONE

The Runaway Recruit

Melting snowdrifts with grassy knolls poking through made a patchwork of the far east lands as winter surrendered its icy grip of the earth to oncoming spring. Snowdrop, chickweed, and shepherd's purse nodded gratefully beneath a bright mid-morning sun, which beamed through small islands of breeze-chased clouds. Carrying half-melted icicles along, a tinkling, chuckling stream bounded from rocky cliff ledges, meandering around fir and pine groves toward broad open plains. Already a few hardy wood ants and honeybees were abroad in the copse fringes. Clamoring and gaggling, a skein of barnacle geese in wavering formation winged their way overhead toward the coastline. All around, the land was wakening to springtime, and it promised to be a fair season.

It is often said that a madness takes possession of certain hares in spring, and anybeast watching the performance of one such creature would have had his worst fears confirmed. Ta-mello De Fformelo Tussock, to give this young hare his full title, was doing battle with imaginary enemies. Armed with stick and slingshot, he flung himself recklessly from a rock ledge, whirling the stone-loaded sling and thwacking left and

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right with his stick, yelling, "Eulaliaaaa! Have at you, villainous vermin, 'tis m'self, Captain Tammo of the Long Patrol! Take that, y'wicked weasel! Hah! Thought you'd sneak up behind a chap, eh? Well, have some o' this, you ratten rot, beg pardon, rotten rat!"

Hurling himself down in the snow, he lashed out powerfully with his long back legs. "What ho! That'll give you a bellyache to last out the season, m'laddo. Want some more? Hahah! Thought y'didn't, go on, run f'your lives, you cowardly crew! It'd take more'n five hundred of you t'bring down Cap'n Tammo, by the left it would!"

Satisfied that he had given a justly deserved thrashing to half a thousand fictitious foebeasts, Tammo sat up in the snow, eating a few pawfuls to cool himself down.

"Just let 'em come back, I'll show the blighters, wot! There ain't a foebeast in the blinkin' land can defeat me ... Yaaagh, gerroff!" He felt himself hauled roughly upright by both ears. Lynum and Saithe, Tammo's elder brother and sister, had sneaked up and grabbed him.

"Playing soldiers again?" Lynum's firm grip indicated that there would be no chance of escape.

Tammo's embarrassment at being caught at his game made him even more indignant. "Unhand me at once, m'laddo, if you know what's good for you," he said, struggling. "I can walk by myself."

Saithe gave Tammo's ear an extra tweak as she admonished him: "Colonel wants a word with you, wretch, about his battle-ax!"

Tammo finally struggled free and reluctantly marched off between the two hulking hares, muttering rebelliously to himself, "Huh! I can tell you what he's goin' t'say, same thing as usual."

The young hare imitated his father perfectly, bowing his legs, sticking out his stomach, puffing both cheeks up, and pulling his lips down at the corners as he spoke: "Wot wot, stap me whiskers, if it ain't the bold Tammo. Now then, laddie buck, what've y'got to say for y'self, eh? Speak up, sah!"

Lynum cuffed Tammo lightly to silence him. "Enough of that. Colonel'd have your tail if he saw you makin' mock of him. Step lively now!"

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Entering the largest of the conifer groves, they headed for a telltale spiral of smoke that denoted Camp Tussock. It was a rambling stockade, the outer walls fashioned from tree trunks with a big dwelling house built of rock, timber, moss, and mud chinking. This was known as the Barracks. Motes, squirrels, hedgehogs, and a few wood mice wandered in and out of the homely place, living there by kind permission of the Colonel and his wife, Mem Divinia. Some of them shook their heads and tuttutted at the sight of Tammo being led in to answer for his latest escapade.

Seated close to the fire in his armchair, Colonel Cornspurrey De Fformelo Tussock was a formidable sight. He was immaculately attired in a buff-colored campaign jacket covered with rows of jangling medals, his heavy-jowled face shadowed by the peak of a brown-bark forage helmet. The Colonel had one eye permanently closed, while the other glared through a monocle of polished crystal with a silken cord dangling from it. His wattled throat wobbled pendulously as he jabbed his pace stick pointedly at the miscreant standing before him.

"Wot wot, stap me whiskers, if it ain't the bold Tammo. Now then, laddie buck, what've y'got to say for y'self, eh? Speak up, sah!"

Tammo remained silent, staring at the floor as if to find inspiration there. Grunting laboriously, the Colonel leaned forward, lifting Tammo's chin with the pace stick until they were eye to eye.

*' 'S matter, sah, frogs got y'tongue? C'mon now, speak y'piece, somethin' about me battle-ax, wot wot?"

Tammo did what was expected of him and came smartly to attention. Chin up, chest out, he gazed fixedly at a point above his father's head and barked out in true military fashion: "Colonel, sah! 'Pologies about y'baltle-ax, only used it to play with. Promise upon me honor, won't do it again. Sah!"

The old hare's great head quivered with furious disbelief, and the monocle fell from his eye to dangle upon its string. He lifted the pace stick, and for a moment it looked as though he were about to strike his son. When the colonel could find it, his voice rose several octaves to shrill indignation.

"Playin1? You've got the brass nerve t'stand there an' tell me you've been usin' my battle-ax as a toy\ Outrage, sir,

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