That night, Prince Hranu and the other young lords of Ratland that had adventured with him made camp by a small creek. The Barrier River was three days behind, for they had turned up one of its innumerable tributaries. They were now deep within the hostile territory of Kitania. About a cosy fire, snapping cheerfully, sate they upon the velvet moss warming their hands and feet, enjoying the deep night, crowned with the sumptuous diadem of the stars, but above all the good fellowship of each other that made the dangers hidden in the forest gloom seem trifling as child’s nightmare. A few worms tugged from the earth, fried up with a little fat, some tubers and some seasoning had feeded them well.  Now they cupped from a bladder of scoot. Lord Etiam smoked his clay pipe whilst he listened, or perhaps did not, as Lord Nahum strummed upon his four-stringed lute and Lords Astre and Esan took turns to sing. Goodly voiced they were, but more sweetly tuned than Esan’s voice no harp could be. Freshest of those young lords, his companions regarded him as but a few summers removed from a bairn-in-arms.
­  Only Prince Hranu–slender built but well-knit was he and deceiving strong, this agilest of sworders—was not in humour. He poked savagely the fire with a stick, provoking it to flare indignantly and scold him with a chatter of sparks.
  ‘Ow!’ cried Astre sharply, drawing in his legs. ‘Thou hast singed my hairs, thou divel’s imp!’
  As one sitting on an anthill up jumped the Prince and rebuked: ‘Mind thy rank, thy father’s bastard to a strumpet! Or take thee up thy blade that I might teach thee better manners!’
  Then with equal hotness up jumpeth Astre and sayeth: ‘T’would do no honour to my metal to skewer a runt like thee, but I will pummel thy mug black and blue as delighteth thee.’
  Then, Hranu, enraged: ‘Take thou the first swing, thou fairy-footed sister to thy half-brother!’
  And Astre, that was so brawny of them he looked able to squish the Prince by the mere sitting on him: ‘Misses first, my dear, and after I have laid thee on the ground I’ll beat a merry tune from thee with the flat of my blade upon thy arse!’
  With furious howl the Prince charged Astre, over-leaping the fire, but their fellows sprang up and tore them apart. By degrees they salved the adversaries’ indignation with soothing words, then did they chide the two when their hotness had abated, finally railed them mercilessly when they had got them back sitting on the ground.
  It was want of sport that nettled the restive Princeling. Sourly he glared into the fire. ‘Three days have we been in this land of cats and not the whisker of a cat have we seen. Did they all grow wings and fly away?’
  ‘Patience, Prince,’ counselled Nahum. ‘We may scare up other game worthy of our home altar. Coon, for example.’
  ‘Coon!’ cried Esan, voice squeaking between relish and fear. ‘Are they not bigger than cats?’
  ‘Bah!’ said Hranu and spat. ‘It’s cat I want. The foe of rodents since time immemorial. It’s cat I came for! What song be more pleasing to our God than their yowling while barbequed alive in the holy flames? Too long has it been since that music tickled our ears, or that savoury aroma sweetened the air of Ratona.’
  Etiam removed his pipe and knocked it on a rock. ‘Still, coon is the real trial of a warrior rat’s worth. Wild they are, not soft like so many of these house-broken pusses. They are not called hell cats lightly.’
  ‘Didst ever fight a coon, Lord Etiam?’ asked Esan eagerly. Etiam was twice in age, and to the Lord Esan the elder rat’s store of experience seemed exhaustless. On this occasion, however, Etiam shook his head. ‘Nay. Not I, ladling, but my father, he did. He earned a ragged scar for it, crooked as a forest path, down his side. Turned him inside out, the monster did, with one rake of his claws.’
  ‘A pass of one of their combs, sweet boy,’ cooed Astre, throwing a great forelimb about the young lord, ‘through thy silken hairs would filet thee into five ratlings.’ Then did he kiss affectionately the top of the lad’s head and playfully knock him over easily as a skittle.
  ‘ ‘Tis naught to make jest of,’ warned Etiam around the mouth-piece of his pipe, eyes burning through the veil of his smoke. ‘I’d sooner meet a she-bear in the wild than one of those demons, and ‘tis waterways like this where they are fond to lurk.’
  Esan’s hairs springing stiff with alarm, he grew aware of all the shadows and dark hollows round them that might be hiding racoons. In the dense crisscross of limbs above he imagined a score of black shapes a-slinking. But Astre, his mirth rumbling deeply at Esan’s quailing, said: ‘Shiver not, ladling, we be here to protect thy hide. Neither is thy savoury rodent meat what sharpens the divel’s appetite, but chiefly fish he prefers.’ This, and the continued plucking of Nahum calmly upon his lute did reassure the boy as he hunched nearer the fire.
  ‘Bah!’ was what Hranu repeated to all this, spitting disgustedly. ‘They be but dumb, savage brutes in the end, whenas cats be armed and arrowed and armoured and trained in war art. Such are worthier opponents and be fitter game for the table of our awful God.’
  Then the Lord Etiam laid down his pipe and said: ‘Hark, Prince, to my rede, if thou wilt hear it.’
  ‘Speak thy measure,’ quod the Prince Hranu.
  ‘This be it, that thou continue the following of this channel, but Nahum with his rats head up country east, by degrees bending his course back to the stream, whilst I fare west. In such wise we treble our chance of scaring some nest of felines. Meeting two days’ upstream, there will we concert our findings.’
  All regarding this counsel of the Lord Etiam well-seasoned, they did so proceed on the morrow, and the Lord Astre and his followers did join with Etiam, but Prince Hranu unto Esan quod: ‘Thou, cousin, shall fetch with me for safekeeping, for reason that thou’rt son to my Uncle Thiel, who would not have granted thee leave to adventure on this faring, but thou naughtily stealed away. Wherefore I would keep thee under mine eye.’
  To which Astre laughed heartily, saying: ‘Keep safe thy Lord Prince, ladling, and have care lest he catch his toe in a root and bash out the royal brains. Else to me thou’lt make answer!’ Lord Hranu answered with a lewd gesture, which made Astre only laugh the harder. ‘Now, Prince, what sayest thee to this wager, that losers play skivvies for a week for him who finds most success?’
  ‘It will pleasure me immeasurably to have thee, Fatty, filling my bath,’ returned the Prince Hranu. ‘Then ‘tis agreed,’ said the boisterous Astre, and raising his arm to salute, he bellowed, ‘Happy hunting, my warty lechers!’