"Brian Jacques - Redwall 10 - The Long Patrol" - 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

4 Brian Jacques

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."