“Gee.” Jon-Tom kept his voice carefully neutral as he
replied. “That’s nice.”
Mudge emerged from the woods, buttoning his shorts.
“Gee, I always thought you were cute, too, mate.”
“How’d you like your whiskers shoved up your ass?”
Jon-Tom asked him softly.
“Calm down, mate.” Somehow Mudge stifled his laugh-
ter. “Best we get goin’ westward. We’ve given ’em the
slip for the nonce, but sooner o’ later the absence o’ tracks
o’ mention of us south o’ ‘ere will hit ‘im as distinctly
peculiar and they’ll start ‘untin’ for us elsewhere.”
Jon-Tom slung the duar over his shoulder and hefted his
staff. “Lead on.”
Mudge bowed, his voice rich with mock servility. “As
thy exalted cuteness decrees.”
* Jon-Tom tried to bash him with the staff, but the otter
was much too fast for him.
v
It took several days for them to reach the outskirts of the
Moors, a vast and, as far as anyone knew, uninhabited
land which formed the western border of the Bellwoods
and reached south all the way to the northern coast of the
GHttergeist Sea. After a day’s march into the Moors’
depths, Mudge felt safe enough to angle southward for the
first time since fleeing the city.
Transportation across the ocean was going to present a
problem. No ports existed where the ocean met the south-
ern edge of the Moors, and Jon-Tom agreed with the otter
that it would be a bad idea to follow the shoreline back
eastward toward the mouth of the Tailaroam. Chenelska
would be sure to be looking for them in ports like Yarrowl.
As for the Moors themselves, they looked bleak but