Lord Stonepaw and his officers had escaped from the mountain by means of a secret tunnel. They were running down the beach when some of Ungatt Trunn's soldiers saw them.

"Run for the hills! Go!" Lord Stonepaw shouted.

"But what about you, sah?" Stiffener Meddick asked.

The Badger Lord's voice was like thunder. "Never mind about me. I've given an order, and I expect it to be obeyed!" He turned his back on Stiffener and charged at the Blue Hordes, bellowing the war cry of Salamandastron.

"Eulalia!"

Lord Stonepaw killed Captain Roag, a weasel commander in the Blue Hordes. The badger struck her with his sword upon the arm, and lopped her strong paw from off it. The bloody paw fell to the ground, and the shades of death, with fate that no beast can withstand, came over the weasel's eyes.

Stonepaw saw another vermin named Swinch coming at him. The badger aimed a spear, and hit him as he came striding on. His cuirass of bronze did not protect him, and the spear stuck in his belly, so that he fell heavily to the ground. With this Stonepaw began dragging him by the foot through the thick of the fight, but another Blue Hordebeast came up to protect the body. He was longing to strike down Lord Stonepaw, but could not do so for Stonepaw thrashed him with his spear in the throat under the chin, and the bronze point went clean through it. He fell as an oak, or poplar, or pine, which shipwrights have felled for ship's timber upon the mountains with whetted axes- even thus did he lay full length on the shore, gritting his teeth and clutching at the bloodstained body of the one he was trying to defend.

"To all those that want to fight me, beware," Lord Stonepaw said. "Soon a greater Badger Lord is coming and he will kill your evil leader Ungatt Trunn."

And Stonepaw died a martyr's death. Many satanic vermin soldiers were upon him. Yet he had accomplished what he intended. He had enabled his hares to escape to safety.