Revision 1.2
A/N: Two years have now passed since I first started this fic. Two years of improvement made me want to cringe at the sheer lack of quality, thus the rewrite. Things to know about this A/U:
1) Hares have no accents. See other
hare-fics to figure out why.
2) 2 seasons = 1 year
3) 1 season = 6 months
4) Rapieratce is pronounced RAPIER-aatch,
but 'Atce is pronounced AAT-CHAY. (the ending inflection rhymes with "day")
-
Captain Daleria and the rest of Major Clandestine's patrol were in the forge room with Lady Consellariel. The atmosphere was slightly tense. The badger lady evidently wanted to send them on a mission back to Redwall, but after certain events that had previously come to pass, none of the patrol held fond memories of the place. Consellariel sighed and shook her head wearily.
'I know the reason for your tension. The last mission there may not have gone as planned, but this one is routine simplicity. There is a small band of vermin, a score strong, who have been sighted around the area. There are too many for the usual Scouts or Runners to deal with, therefore I see the need to send a full patrol. You should know what to do from here.'
There was a succinct reply of "yes marm", and the patrol allowed some of the heaviness in the air to fade. Consellariel nodded in her usual severe manner, then turned her back on them and waved the patrol away.
'Fine. All but Captain Daleria and Major Clandestine are dismissed.'
A fleeting look of curiosity flew between the two officers as they moved to let the rest of their patrol salute and shuffle out of the forge.
Not a few seasons had passed since they first came together. That was clearly obvious from the fact that Daleria was now a Captain, full and proper, medals and training and everything else. The younger of the two had clearly grown and matured since the events that changed her so dramatically seasons before. Still arrogant to an extent, Daleria had none-the-less become much more approachable and manageable, and her temper had improved greatly under the influence of her more experienced and adapted friends.
Clandestine remained as Clandestine was; still the wry and witty major that was dearly loved by those under her. Time had served to make her judgement swifter and surer, which complemented her stability of character nicely. A trusted officer on the mountain, she handled her duties well and without complaint, and that seemed to help mould the still under experienced Daleria into a bearing more fitting for a Salamandastron hare.
The two had become close friends ever since the end of the escapade with Vaxial and what had followed after. Constantly seen together, they were now known throughout the mountain as a close and effective fighting team with skills that rivalled those of Glamoren and Rapieratce. It was a constant joke that the four of them never sparred together out of fear that one group should lose to the other, thereby ruining perfect reputations. As a unit, Clandestine and Daleria worked seamlessly together, becoming fast friends and thus integrating the newer officer quickly into both the ranks and the close friendship that existed between the colonel, Glamoren, Remora, Longrunn and Clandestine herself.
Shrugging, they turned back to Consellariel and resumed the at attention stance. The badger lady heaved another sigh, highly atypical of her behaviour, and turned fully around.
'At ease.'
Her brown eyes looked distant as Consellariel sat on the window ledge, as if she were not too sure how to approach the situation. 'I felt it best,' she began slowly, forming her words carefully. 'That this was kept from the two of you until this point in time. I feel that you,' there she inclined her head at the captain, 'have settled down now as well as anybeast can, and so I feel it prudent that this be brought to light.
Immediately, Daleria's eyebrows shot up. With all the folly of youth and the lacking of the refined training that her peers had received, she spoke.
'Marm?'
The badger lady said nothing about her lapse in conduct, but Clandestine inclined her head slightly, reining her headstrong junior in. Consellariel stood wordlessly, still staring out of the window. A moment of poignant silence passed, then she seemed to resolve her inner thoughts and faced her officers properly. 'This could be seen as an awkward situation,' she started, rather unnecessarily. 'But I believe that you are both in possession of a form of jewellery, a necklace each?'
Daleria positively jolted forward a full step, causing Clandestine to hiss at her conduct.
'My lady? How did you know?'
Consellariel shrugged. 'I am and have been the badger lady of Salamandastron for a very long time, Daleria.'
Chastised, the captain fell silent, then slowly lifted her paw to her collar and from beneath it loosened a chain of silver. Wordlessly, Clandestine echoed her actions and removed a similar one.
The chains were clearly of a fine make, rippling and untarnished. Attached to each was a silver pendant, each encasing an exact half of a dark blue sapphire. Though beautiful and stunning in set and sparkle, neither was of any rich significance or extreme value. Daleria let her paw close over hers, protective and tentative, some shadow of doubt suddenly entering her eyes. She knew the implications of such a thing, she knew what it implied.
Clandestine, on the other hand, was utterly lost. She hid it well, merely appearing blank and interesting at the turn of events, but Daleria could see that she was confused.
The captain finally ventured a tentative statement after she realized that Consellariel did not seem inclined to speak.
'Marm... Surely not? They were all with me that night. Even though I do not remember well who they were or what they looked like, I know that they were all there. They did it in front of me, and I saw them die. All of them.'
Daleria's voice was cold, a tone entirely inappropriate for addressing a badger lady, but not even Clandestine faulted her for it. Daleria's memory was still hazy from what Taremin, the mountain's medic, described as trauma. After watching her family die, Taremin explained, Daleria's mind had been forced to erase certain portions of her memory to cope with the sudden stress, thus resulting in partial amnesia that caused the captain to forget almost everything but the bare essentials of what her family had been like. Daleria, she said, might regain her memories, but with nobeast to jog them and what with her being so far away from the Western Plains, it seemed unlikely that it be so, especially now that years had passed since that time.
Clandestine understood that, and knew the underlying connotations of her subordinate officer's tone, but it still left her in the dark.
'What does this have to do with Daleria or Daleria's family, my lady?'
The badger lady sighed openly for the third time that day. The major's brow furrowed.
'Clandestine, as a babe, you were sent to Salamandastron.'
Consellariel left the sentence hanging. As realization dawned upon Clandestine, she opened, then shut her mouth in quiet amazement.
'So my parents were never Salamandastron hares, as I was led to believe?'
'No,' Consellariel reiterated her point, 'they were not. As you can undoubtedly deduce, the hare who sent you here was Daleria's own mother, an... old acquaintance of mine. She came begging the boon that you be taken in a reared without any knowledge of your past. Why, I will never know, but from what I believe, your mother had some gift in the art of Seeing.'
Seeing. A controversial topic in most societies, but one taken very seriously in a community where leaders were dictated by pictures on a wall and fate alone. The badger rulers of Salamandastron were all Seers in their own extent, some better than others, but all granted with the ability none-the-less. It was rare for hares to be gifted with such a skill, with a few exceptions being Breeze and Starbuck of Outcast fame. They said that Seers had the ability to commune with dreams, but nothing was confirmed and all was held in the light of great scepticism.
Clandestine looked slightly lost at the sudden rearrangement of her entire family history, to say the least. Seasons of training led her to keeping her head in place, but her mind was reeling quietly, unable to really come to terms with everything so quickly. Daleria was slightly better off, but she, too, looked confused, and showed it more openly than the major.
'So Dale is my sister,' Clandestine began slowly, looking from her commanding lady to her subordinate officer. Consellariel nodded wordlessly, her face still slightly troubled.
'I know now what designs your mother had in mind when she sent you here, but she clearly knew something. That is what disturbs me the most, especially with the vermin uprising that is evident throughout Mossflower Country at this point in time.'
Daleria nodded her silent agreement to that, suddenly wondering how a band of vermin could escape the usual patrols and get so near to Redwall. She realized abruptly that a problem was obviously developing, some stirring of a greater thing. Consellariel evidently thought so as well, if her closed expression was any gauge.
Another moment of silence, somewhat awkwardly tense, descended upon the three members of the conversation, then Consellariel shook her head in aggravation and addressed her two quiet officers.
'I suppose you will want some time to mull over this, this being both the vermin situation and this revelation. Major, you have two days, then your patrol is to move out. That will be all.'
Clandestine bowed distractedly, with Daleria copying her, and the two fled the forge and made for Daleria's dorm room, which was closest. For the short walk there, neither said a word, both too caught up in their personal contemplation and attempts at being rational in the face of such a dramatic revelation. For Daleria, acknowledging that she still had family left caused her no small amount of surprise, and some foreign emotion she could not place danced about her senses. Clandestine was just trying to cope with major changes to her conception of her life and her own "family". As with any great change, there was a stillness in the air, a sense of one waiting for the other to acknowledge the truth.
'Well,' Daleria said, uselessly, twirling the necklace around, 'Well.'
'This is an interesting turn of events,' the major muttered to her fingers, still trying to rearrange the pieces of her life. Daleria nodded absently. The two of them looked up at each other. Daleria turned her head to one side as she smirked, and Clandestine disguised a giggle as a cough.
'Ahem,' Daleria said to her hand, 'I don't really know what to, stop that, it's distracting!'
Clandestine tried, unsuccessfully, to muffle her laughter, waving a paw in the air, 'Go on.' Daleria glared, but after a moment of silence, they broke out laughing. Gasping, Clandestine attempted not to choke on her mirth. 'Is this supposed to be expected?' Her younger sister, sister, shrugged.
'I don't know.'
Another moment of wordless agreement passed, and then they both broke down into mirthful bouts of laughter.
Half an hour later, the two siblings managed to make their way down to the mess hall without any loss of composure, and the rest of the patrol was waiting impatiently at their table for the news. Longrunn sat back, a curious look on his face, but said nothing and let the younger members of the patrol ask the questions.
'What happened?'
Daleria and Clandestine sniggered, each trying very hard not to laugh at the sheer incredulity of the situation, but somehow managed to get the point across to their somewhat shell-shocked patrol.
'Sister?' someone coughed out. 'She's your sister?'
'We're doomed,' another harped good-naturedly, and the entire table degenerated into chuckles and congratulations. Another couple of minutes passed, then the major shook her head and turned back to face her patrol proper.
'We move out of the Mountain in two days, so I suppose you lot better enjoy yourselves while you're here.'
Sobering up a little, the patrol finished up their food and went back up to their respective dormitories. As with any patrol out to Redwall, this one was more heavily regarded than most average scouts, seeing how heavily the peaceful creatures depended on their protection. Clandestine waved to Daleria as she made her move first, and the captain waved back but made no move. Longrunn patted her on the back as he left, then she was alone.
'Hm,' she muttered to herself, not sure what to make of the situation. Her family was something that had caused Daleria no small grief, and to have such a unusual situation pop up after a number of bloody years spent avenging what she thought the last of her kin was not something she could take lightly. By then, some of the initial disbelief had faded off, but the fact had yet to fully set in. Sister. What did Clandestine mean to her, three seasons on from the first war? Daleria had made no few enemies, lost no few friends. Her family history was unclear; she had suffered from amnesiac trauma and could now remember close to nothing about who her parents really were. She knew that they were dangerous creatures, highly skilled, in constant contact with Salamandastron, but beyond that, there was nothing. How she had managed to stir up an entire small army of foxes to come after her, she did not know, but Daleria figured it had something to do with who she or her parents were.
Frustrated, she shook her head to clear her thoughts. 'I'm too young for this,' she murmured to herself, suddenly very weary of her twenty three years. Abruptly noticing the emptiness of the mess, she stood and made her way up to her dorm. En route, she bumped into the colonel. Since the previous colonel, Galde, had died in the war, captain Rapieratce, or 'Atce as he was known to his friends, had taken over. By far one of the youngest and most talented colonels the Mountain had seen, 'Atce was widely regarded as a reliable and surprisingly efficient officer, and had earned the respect of even the more traditional veterans. He had also become fast friends with Daleria, considering that he kept his company with Clandestine, Glamoren, Longrunn and Remora to begin with. Coming mockingly to attention, she saluted him, which earned her a condescendingly laughing grin and an annoyed swat of the hand.
'I heard the news. I'm not sure whether to congratulate you or to cower in fear.'
'Very funny, 'Atce,'
The colonel smiled and waved her off. 'I'm starving, and I'll presume you just finished, so I'll be off.'
Nodding respectfully to him, Daleria let him passed, then dismissed any heavy thoughts from her mind and went to immerse herself in mindless things.
Two days later
The Major's patrol was surprisingly quiet for such a large group. They padded silently through Mossflower, their only light being the moon that hung overhead. Longrunn had spotted the vermin an hour past; they appeared to be a group of travelling foxes. Though foxes were sometimes given passage as gypsies or mystic healers, this group, the sergeant had reported, did not look like your generic friendly bunch. Armed, he had said, and armed with the air of fighting beasts who knew what they wanted.
Clandestine in the lead, the group stalked the foxes, attempting to find a good spot to ambush them and take them by surprise. Finally, they came to what seemed to be a tapering woodland clearing, one that allowed them to force the foxes into a tight corner and attack from there. Holding up a warning paw, the major signalled for the company to pause and ready themselves. Paws were put on hilts, but nobeast drew their weapons, taking the smallest caution not to be heard. Then, with a deft flick of the wrist, they set off, calling "Eulalia" to the wind, trying to stun their opponents.
It was moments later that the major realized that they had horribly misjudged their move. 'Sword foxes,' she ground out, wincing as her blade clashed horribly with an opponents. Talented though her patrol might be, these were dangerous creatures to pick a fight with. Sword foxes trained for life, and were cunningly good at what they did. Clandestine herself, more accustomed to using a lance than a blade, was not sure whether she could hold up against creatures that used blades so comfortably.
Chancing a look to the side, she saw Daleria managing herself well enough. Her sister, she knew, was a talented individual when it came to fighting. Her pride was perhaps her greatest downfall, and her adamant standings led to her constant overconfidence. That put aside, Clandestine knew that Daleria would be able to handle the threat around her well enough, but feared for her anyway.
It seemed that one chance was one chance too many.
Clandestine grimaced as a thin blade slipped up her ribs, but blackness came quickly enough.
A few metres away, Daleria paled, then let loose a growl, fighting her way to the dying major's side.
Very soon, it was over. Daleria had gone completely berserk, and in a display that Longrunn had hoped she had put behind her, massacred two foxes and snapped out at any that came close to her, friend or foe. The foxes had been a small band to begin with, and with six down and two by a single beast's blade, they knew it was their time to pull out and flee. The sergeant signalled for the two most experienced to trail them, then turned with the rest of the patrol to face their fallen leader.
Daleria clung viciously to the body of her sister, shooting him a look that was better off seen on a creature gone wild with madness.
'Daleria,' he said quietly, reaching out to put a paw on her shoulder.
'Get back,' she snapped, brushing the offer away roughly, and shot him a venomous look. Longrunn, acknowledging defeat, backed away slowly.
It was a tragedy, really. He, along with the rest of the patrol, watched with pitying eyes as Daleria tried her best not to cry over the death of the last of her family.
For the longest time, nobeast could get Daleria to move away. Instead, the patrol worked to dig a deep grave, allowing the captain some time to grieve. There were quiet words between them, murmurs that Daleria wasn't fit for Salamandastronian life, that she had come into it too late to live with the consequences. True, they were all upset over the loss of the much loved major, but death was very much a part of life in Salamandastron, and to them, there was no more noble a way to die than the way in which Clandestine had.
It was coming into the dawn when Daleria finally got up and gingerly sent her sister to sleep.
They camped there until noon, taking their rest, but even then, Daleria had barely spoken a word.
Fleetpaw, one of the youngest members of the patrol, eyed his superior with confused eyes. 'What's wrong with Dale, sah?' he asked Longrunn as the captain slept fitfully. Longrunn shrugged in his usual quiet way and turned aside.
'She had a sad childhood. Her family was murdered, which led her to the Mountain. She's been traumatized, and with this...'
Fleetpaw blinked. 'Oh. D'you think she'll stop crying?'
'I don't know,' Longrunn muttered, 'I don't know.'