The Queen's Command
Chapter 1
Abbot Raktus walked along the southern walltop of Redwall Abbey. The sun was slowly sinking below the western horizon, bathing Mossflower country in hues of gold and red. Redwall itself seemed to glow with an inner light, radiating peace, plenty, and benevolent auras. The Abbey's faded, sandstone walls stood as a sentinel of honorable creatures, a place of refuge for the tired, weary, and abused. It had stood for tens of hundreds of generations, and would stand for many more.
Abbot Raktus stopped at a crenelation on the western wall. The somewhat ancient otter never ceased to be amazed by the diverse land of Mossflower. Here, a starling trilling to the evening. A little ways off, the dust trails teeming with amiable hares on the trading route. There, a swampland overgrown with mallow and reptilian creatures. No matter where Raktus looked, variety was to be beheld.
Then, in an instant, a deathly silence came over the earth. Birds stopped singing, toads quit croaking, and the hares skidded to a halt. The air reverberated with the sudden quiet. Raktus looked around in concern. There was no reason as to why silence had descended.
A breeze blew over the walltop, and Raktus felt what the other beasts had sensed long before: an oncoming storm, one like never before seen. The otter hobbled down the steps and across the Abbey grounds, herding creatures young and old into the warmth and safety of Redwall. All the Abbey-dwellers rushed inside, and Raktus closed the main door behind him.
Sister Alyx, a young mouse, organized a group to bathe the Dibbuns and get warming food prepared for the old ones. The elders of Redwall accepted the food, soup as it turned out to be, gratefully. Seasons had worn away fur, and even at the most distant sign of a storm, the old ones got terrible shivers.
Abbot Raktus sat by a window with his good friend Keva, the Mother of Redwall. Together they looked out, and watched as rain began to fall from the sky in buckets, as if the heavens were intent on drowning to land. Every so often, the downpour would be accentuated with a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Keva and Raktus both agreed that they were fortunate to have such a sturdy home to dwell in. The rain continued to fall, pushed to greater power by driving winds, seeming to want to destroy the ever-firm Abbey, and tear it to the ground...
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Zeltawnis, Wildcat Queen of the Vulpes Felis, slept on her opulent throne. Outside her grand granite fortress, Castle Felis, rain thundered down from the sky. A burst of thunder woke Zeltawnis from her slumber. She stretched, and walked to the window, to watch her underlings work. Strong woodland creatures labored under the watchful eyes of Zeltawnis's guards, scraping stone and plowing fields. Unlike other leaders, she treated her servants with care. They would not rebel. They would fight their own parents if she ordered them to.
Zeltawnis grinned a feral, frightening grin. It had been too long since her last crusade. She spun around, grabbed a bow and an arrow, and fired at a map hanging on the wall. The arrow thudded into the map at Redwall Abbey.
"A grand place to show my might," Zeltawnis whispered. "The Abbey it is. We shall take it, and woe unto the creatures that attempt to stop us."
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A storm was already raging, but soon an even greater tempest would awaken, driven by the lust of a conqueror's heart.