“My companion and I want to ssspeak with you, ssstranger.” Again, the hissing words, closer now.

Companion, Fritti thought. There are two of them. His legs trembled, and he drew his tail up between the hindmost pair and waited. From out of the darkness loomed the blind head of the Toothguard. Its loose-skinned body tottered unsteadily. Fritti stared.

Where the huge nostrils had once flared in the Toothguard’s eyeless face, there was only a scarred ruin of tattered flesh.

Skinwretch came shakily to a halt not a jump and a half away from Tailchaser, and his damaged snout poked questingly to and fro.

“Are you here?” queried the Toothguard. Tailchaser’s heart leaped, and he gave an involuntary squeak of relief. The thing had been wounded! It could not sense him, or at least not well.

“Ahhh,” breathed Skinwretch. “There you are. I hear you now. Come, don’t desssert usss. My companion and I have lossst our way.” The blind thing moved closer, leaning an ear in Fritti’s direction. “What isss your name?”

Tailchaser weighed again the possibility of making a dash for freedom. He decided against it. Here, perhaps, was a situation that could be turned to his advantage. It would be dangerous, of course, but everything here below the earth would be.

“Um ... um ... Tunnelwalker!” he blurted after a moment’s hesitation.

“Ssssplendid. Your name soundsss asss if you will be aptly sssuited to aid usss. Are you of the Clawsss? Your voice sssoundsss very high.”

“I am but a youngling,” said Tailchaser quickly.

“Ahhh,” breathed Skinwretch, satisfied. “Of courssse. With the final preparations, even the young are presssed into ssservice. Come, you mussst guide usss. Asss you sssee, I am sssuffering from a temporary infirmity.” Mumbling, the maimed Toothguard turned and shuffled up the corridor. Fritti followed a short distance behind.

Final preparations? he wondered. What is happening?

“You mussst have come passst the Ssscalding Flume,” Skinwretch called over his shoulder. “I ssshould never have come ssso clossse. The russhing of the water disorients me, I fear. It iss quite incredible, is it not?”

“Yes, yes, it certainly is,” assented Tailchaser. “What brought you out to this lonely part of the mound?” He hurried forward to better hear the hairless creature’s reply.

Skinwretch was quiet, then answered: “I am afraid that I have had a bit of a ssetback, you sssee. A youngling like you may not know it, but there is a great deal of unfairnesss—unfairnesss to folk like mysself. You sssee, I do not want to criticizzze, oh no, but I wasss punished unfairly because a prissoner escaped. But I wasss not even there—oh no, I merely passsed along some information to my massster, Lord Hisssblood. When the essscape occurred, he wasss punished by the Lord of All. In turn, I wass made to sssuffer. Unfairnesss, sssuch unfairnesss ...” The Toothguard broke off with a little whimpering gurgle. Fritti realized with a thrill of fright—and pride—that it was his escape that Skinwretch spoke of.

After a moment, the Tooth broke off his keening and said: “My companion iss just ahead. I hope he hasss not left. He too hasss sssuffered injusticeness. Ah, I believe I can hear him!” Tailchaser had forgotten the companion, but now he too could hear the loud, sonorous breathing. As they turned a corner he saw a large, dark shape lying flat in the shaft. Skinwretch inched forward, testing before him with a great wrinkle-skinned paw. He pushed at the big, dark body.

“Get up, get up!” he shouted. “I’ve found young Tunnelwalker to help usss find our way back. Get up!” As the recumbent creature turned reluctantly over, Skinwretch said to Fritti: “Perhapsss you two know each other. My friend wasss an important figure in the—”

An all-too-familiar face, blocky and malformed, was revealed as the shape rolled over and cast baleful eyes on Fritti.

“Tailchaser!” howled Scratchnail, rising on his front paws. Before Fritti could move his stiffened body, Skinwretch had leaned over and flung a smacking paw at Scratchnail’s face. The impact knocked the Clawguard off balance. He rolled back down onto the ground again, moaning.

“Sssilence, you fool!” snarled the Toothguard, and bobbed his blind head toward Tailchaser, who stood by, shocked into rigidity.

“Don’t mind thiss one,” he assured Fritti. “He isss not right in the head, I fear. The Lord of All dealt harshly with him over the matter of thisss sssame prissoner. Now, he sssees thiss fellow in every ssshadow. It isss quite sssad, iss it not?” Indeed, Scratchnail was paying no attention to the actual Fritti beside him, but was rubbing his chin in the dirt, moaning Tailchaser’s name over and over. Finally he stopped, and looked up at the Toothguard.

“Why were you gone ... so long?” Scratchnail asked Skinwretch. Coming from that powerful body, the pleading tone seemed dreadfully unnatural. Fritti let out his long-held breath. The world underground, which had contracted into a stone-cold, heavy skin around him, expanded once more. Incredible! His luck was holding. To be this close to a Scratchnail who did not recognize him!

“Get up, you great lump!” Skinwretch snapped. The Clawguard’s frightened mewing struck the light-headed Tailchaser as almost comical. “I have found sssomeone to help usss find our way back to the main tunnelsss. We can find food there! Rissse.” Scratchnail pulled his bulk erect.

“He iss riot right in the head, asss I told you,” Skinwretch apologized as the threesome started up the corridor. “He would have died, dessspite all hisss ssstrength, but for me.” There was strange pride in the voice of the Toothguard.

Tailchaser now found himself in the unenviable position of being guide and companion to two creatures who wished him and his kind dead—leading them through tunnels with which he was completely unfamiliar, down to the secret center of the maze.

Scratchnail, although up and moving, still showed no signs of recognizing Fritti. His behavior veered from simpleminded to unexpectedly lunatic and vicious. At one point he turned suddenly on Tailchaser, howling, “Black winds, black winds!” and tried to rend him with powerful claws. At a sharp word from Skinwretch, he was again cringing and crying.

“Not right, not right,” lisped Skinwretch, shaking his scarred head. “He wasss once a mosst important chief, you know.”

“How are the ‘final preparations’ going, eh? I’m afraid I’ve been involved in some ... er, rather important things up ... up aboveground.”

“Nobody tellsss poor old Ssskinwretch much,” complained the Toothguard, “but I hear many thingsss. Great movementsss, a great uneasinesss ... I heard two of my brother guardss whisspering not long ago that sssoon the sssurface will be breached!”

The surface ... breached? Fritti did not like the sound of that. Some terrible, incomprehensible thing was about to happen, and apparently he and a scatter of stuttering Rikchikchik were the only creatures who could do anything about it.

No, thought Tailchaser, correcting himself, I can do nothing but find my friends, and probably die with them.

With the mobilization of Vastnir, escape would be unlikely for one, let alone three or four. No, further hope—and a tenuous one, at that—rested on the leaping backs of squirrels, and a jaded, unconcerned Court.

“Star-face! Creeping, skulking star-face! I’ll have his heart out!” Yowling, Scratchnail had stopped in his tracks, whipping his black muzzle from side to side. Fritti realized with a start that although Scratchnail was mad and Skinwretch blind, he did have a white star on his forehead; he would be easily recognized by any of the mound’s more discerning occupants below. As Skinwretch soothed the raging Clawguard, Fritti dipped his head down and rubbed his brow in the dust. Blinking the dirt from around his eyes, he straightened up.

The hairless one had coaxed Scratchnail into a walk again, and though the Claw made strange, whining noises, he did not disrupt their course again for some time.

Tailchaser’s directional sense seemed to be working. He began to see signs of increasing traffic in the shafts they were following—stronger and more recent scents came from the side passages. Fritti began to think about finding his captive friends. He knew that he could travel quickly and safely only in these outer, mostly unused byways; once he was into the active heart of the mound his deception would be of no use.

The sound of harsh voices came suddenly from around the curve of their path. Scratchnail—as if in some kind of anticipation—chose this moment to lie down, spreading his large, dapple-bellied body across the tunnel floor. Tailchaser looked wildly about, and after a long moment spotted a tiny tunnel in the wall they had just passed. Grating, sneezing laughter echoed up the shaft as he leaped back and squeezed himself into the small space, which turned out to be a crevice—and a cramped one. He heard the laughing voices stop, and the heavy pad of approaching paws. Then they spoke, in the unmistakable snarling idiom of the Clawguard.

“What’s this? What’s this great load of unburied me‘mre doing in the way?” There was a sharp bark of amusement, then another, equally unpleasant voice said: “It’s obvious somebody needs skinning around here, by the Great One! Who’s responsible?”

Skinwretch spoke up in an aggrieved tone. “Pleassse now, massterss. Do no injury! Asss you can sssee, I am in the company of two very important membersss of your brotherhood! Tell them, Tunnelwalker!”

“Two!” laughed the first Claw. “I see but one— and a great, boneless wreckage he looks to be, too! What do you see, Riptalon?”

“Exactly that. A useless hulk and a little, squirming blind mole. Unless I miss my count, Shredfang, that makes but two. The little Squeaker’s lying to us!” Skinwretch gave a whimper of fear, and Fritti heard the two Clawguard move closer.

“Lying to Guards on the Lord’s business. I think we’ll make him jump for that, don’t you?”

“Tunnelwalker! Sssave me! Sssave us!” The Toothguard’s voice rose hysterically, and Fritti, crouched in his shallow niche, held his breath.

A muffled groan rose up, and then Scratchnail’s droning voice: “Tailchaser! Star-face did it! No, Lord Huh ... Lord Heart ... Hearteater, not the burning! My ka ... no! Ahhhhhhh!” His voice rose into a keening wail. The two Clawguard made sounds of surprise.

“By the Blood-light!” grunted Shredfang. “It is a Claw!”

“It’s Scratchnail!” Riptalon gasped nervously. “He is proscribed! The Lord of All punished him. We should not touch him!”

“Pfauggh! You’re right. This place stinks of the unclean! The shame of it! And that mewling blind worm ... come, let’s be off.” The disgust in Shredfang’s voice did not disguise the fear that whimpered beneath. Swift, padding footfalls passed by Tailchaser’s crevice and faded down the corridor.

Fritti waited for what seemed like a very long time, then stepped gingerly back out into the tunnel. Skinwretch’s furless shape was huddled over the supine black form of Scratchnail ... and for a moment Fritti was oddly touched. Then the Toothguard swiveled his ruined muzzle around, and the sensation vanished in a cascade of revulsion.

“Who‘sss there?” Skinwretch called.

Tailchaser made a hesitant noise in his throat, then said: “Why, Tunnelwalker, of course. I have been off exploring some spur tunnels. I just passed a couple of my fellows. Did you meet them?”

“They threatened usss!” panted Skinwretch. “They were going to kill usss! Why did you leave?”

“I told you!” said Fritti, feigning anger. “Now, get up—and get him up too. I have important things to do, and I am only helping you because you are so pathetic and incapable. Now, are we going to get padding or not?”

“Oh, yesss, Tunnelwalker! Come, Ssscratchnail, get up now.”

With Tailchaser leading, and Scratchnail trailing reluctantly, the mismatched threesome moved on into the heart of gathering forces.