Undecided Allegience
Chapter One: Questionable Loyalties
(A/N- Yeah, so I decided to take a shot at a reformed vermin, but not a Mary-Sue, using Laburnum's advice. No, this is not a statement of anti-Sueism. This is a challenge for myself. If this story gets the least bit Sueish, let me know so that I can revise. This is a challenge, not a statement, keep that in mind. Also, there's a lot of tactical things in this chapter that have a lot to deal with Mossflowers geography. If I get some things wrong, please don't be upset. This should be one of the only chapters that is...so dry. The beginning is vital! You must make it through! I know its boring to you guys but its the foundation to the whole story! Please read it.)
Captain Marko, a once respected part of a vermin horde, knelt down before lord Maiken, master of the two-thousand members of the traveling settlement and army. This was not so much a show of respect as a cry for mercy.
Captain Marko was accused of a form of espionage while the horde was at war, and faced the possible penalty of death.
It was during the ides of a horribly frigid winter, while food, water, and supplies were scarce. Maiken's horde had found a neutral, outside source in which these things were shipped to them. There was a secret trail in which led far south of Mossflower, where the horde was placed at the time. Maiken had family ties with a clan of vermin there, where there was plenty of everything that his horde needed. Seeing as Maiken was fighting an offensive war, he could not lead his opponent away from where they stayed. It was like a tactic for them, the opposing vermin horde, to keep the unprepared Maiken in the cold. His army had come from the south, where it was warmer, therefore they had never experienced such a harsh winter.
Maiken had held a grudge against the opposing horde and the horde's leader, lord Nikita Krushchev (can you tell I'm into history?). Krushchev had colonies in the south in which Maiken had wanted to claim himself, and that's where he began waging war. After he had invaded all the colonies, to insure their stability, he decided that Krushchev had to be defeated or his loyalists in the colonies would give him too much trouble.
Marko was put in charge of these secret shipping arrangements. This was a very important matter, the difference between defeat and victory, and the captain was trusted with it. That's when everything went wrong.
One cold winter night, he was riding on a wagon through the snow. He knew that he could not transport the supplies without it. At a secret meeting place far from the opposing vermin's camp, the supplies were exchanged for various jewels and valuables. As the wagon tumbled back towards the camp, it was hijacked.
A score of Krushchev's troops had planned a raid that night, having received information of suspicious behavior from a spy. All armed, they outnumbered Marko's crew and easily took over. They stole the supplies and took the crew prisoner, interviewing and torturing each one of them to get every scrap of information that they could gather. The one that they focused on above all else was captain Marko. Eventually, he cracked and spilled to them everything that he knew. He and the others were released, but this was not all good.
After having found out what clan that was, Krushchev made a pact.
Because of the vulnerability of one small clan, it was decided that Krushchev would defend them from anybody as long as they supplied he and his soldiers with food, weapons, and whatever else they had needed. There was one more catch, the small clan could no longer trade with Maiken. If they were caught, Krushchev had promised a full scale invasion. This threat was also, secretly between the leaders, the basis of the small clan's agreement to the pact.
Maiken was furious at his captain's stupidity and the fact that thanks to him, Maiken had no supplies. They could not hold out until spring, and being the underdog after losing many to freezing and starvation, retreated back to the south where they were in the comfort of their climate and colonies.
There, Marko was tried and convicted of espionage, and in Maiken's words, giving vital information to the opponent. He and his crew were then convicted and sentenced to die.
Maiken was so upset by what Marko had done that he had chosen to kill him personally, in the auditorium, with a large crowd assembled to bear witness to his death. And because he was so cruel, Marko's family was placed in the front row, including his seven year old daughter, Naturi.
Naturi was clueless. She had no idea what was going on, even when her father was led on to the stage, bound and flanked by two guards. She had been told nothing of what was to happen. That was another one of Maiken's plans of suffering.
The guards forced Marko onto his knees before the great lord Maiken. Marko looked up into the pole cat's eyes and begged from him, mercy. Lord Maiken's answer to this was a swift blow to Marko's gut, winding him and sending him coughing and gasping on to the floor.
"Mercy? You want mercy? Thanks to you, I have lost! My colonies are vulnerable! You are an idiot, Marko, and you will die because of your daft ways!" Maiken cried as he snatched an axe from the paw of one of the guards and prepared to strike.
By this time, Naturi knew exactly what was happening. She stood, feeling her heart race and adrenaline rush through her veins, at a loss of what she should do. She screamed, and tears rushed through her eyes.
She wiped them away, and for just one moment, made eye contact with the cruel lord Maiken. She could see the selfishness of her lord through his eyes. The selfishness and cruelty, and realized that everything that was ever done in the horde was done in his benefit, and no one else's.
He raised the axe, and just as swiftly as it was raised, he brought it down upon the neck of Captain Marko, Naturi's father. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, expecting to feel her mother comfort her, rather hearing the cheers around her.
She curled up into a ball at the foot of the stage when she heard an ear shattering scream. She looked up to see a mob crowding around her mother, cheering and screaming in a most barbaric fashion. All she ever saw of her mother after that was a mess of blood and fur. She was destroyed because she was the wife of a traitor.
Naturi did not escape the cruelty of the horde, however. They planned on doing the exact same thing to her as they had done to her mother, but for once Maiken had done something that had benefited her.
"Stop!" he bellered. "The mate was stupid enough to marry the oaf, but this one has not chosen to be his. However, because she is the spawn of a traitor, she will be cast out of my horde and all of my colonies and sent north," he proclaimed, glaring down at her. "If she can survive the remaining of the winter, then her life is just."
A group of guards seized her, and a seer placed a damp cloth over her mouth. Soon enough, she had lost all consciousness.
When she awoke, she was bound lying in a small wooden box with a few holes in it. She was wrapped in a small piece of cloth. She heard no one else around her, but there was a cart. She could hear the wheels turning and the bump every so often. After a couple of days, she could feel it getting colder. In the meantime, she had survived off a sack of food and a few flasks of water that were thrown in. She figured that it was some sort of strange experiment that they were putting her through, to see how long she could survive off of a certain amount of supplies. She was wrong, after she felt the wagon being pushed over and the box being preyed open by a group of squirrels. She then realized that a few slaves were the ones pulling the cart and they had died at that spot. The squirrels had discovered them.
Before her, Naturi saw a red, stone building. It was beautiful, so she just stared.
The squirrels seemed stressed by finding her. What to do?
Redscratch, one of the squirrels, decided to see what was going on. She sat down next to Naturi, who seemed quite harmless, and asked her what had happened. Naturi explained the story to the best of her knowledge, crying all the while.
Redscratch pulled the others aside. "Well...what shall we do?"
Nestrum, an older squirrel shrugged. "Looks harmless enough. After all, it is a female, unarmed, young...we oughtta take her in for a couple days, poor thing, looks so malnutritioned..."
Redscratch glared. "Those things don't matter! I really don't know about this. Vermin are vermin, and that's the way it is."
Naturi heard this remark and responded. "What's that mean? Vermin are vermin? I was cast out! What should I do...die here? Fine," Naturi snapped and began walking away.
Redscratch and Nestrum looked at eachother with bafflement. Why would someone so young be cast out of a vermin horde?
"Wait!" Redscratch shouted.
Naturi turned around, teary eyed, scowling at the Redscratch. "I'm just a vermin! Vermin are vermin, leave me be! I guess all vermin are the same, aren't they? You should have seen what they did to ma' and pa', killed! I'm not even a vermin, not really! I'm kinda thirsty, but you know what? I'll just eat snow and maybe someday I'll die."
Redscratch sighed. She looked to Nestrum desperately. "What am I supposed to do? Be responsible for bringing vermin into the abbey?"
Nestrum shook his head. "'Tis a dreadful winter. Like I said, she's young, she's a she, she's unarmed, and she has no motive against us. By the sounds of what happened to her, this one would love a little kind company. I couldn't hold it on my conscience to let her die out here. Exposure is probably one of the worst ways to die. Let her spend the night and we'll take it day by day."
Redscratch nodded slowly. "Day by day is right. If she does on thing wrong, you realize, it's because of us. One thing, and she's gone. We can't risk unleashing a beast in the abbey."
Nestrum nodded in agreement.
Redscratch looked nervously to the young ferret and hollered to her. "Come here, Naturi!"
Naturi turned around, weeping, and made her way towards the squirrel. "I hate him..." she murmured. "I hate Maiken..."
Redscratch and Nestrum looked at eachother again with perplexity. "Who's Maiken?" Nestrum asked kindly.
Naturi sat down next to him. "He's the lord, he killed pa'..."
Nestrum sighed. "Would you like to come inside the abbey, where it's warm?" he inquired kindly, feeling a bit better hearing that she had hated her warlord, therefore, had lessened her loyalties to such a thing.
~Ten Years Later~
"Day by day I feel myself drifting away from this place, this place that saved me from what I am inevitably becoming. Selfish, brutal, and careless. No one knows about what's taking place in my mind, about how I am becoming everything I've ever hated, and no one can even tell. It's like an abandoned addiction being taken up again," Naturi finished writing. She read it and threw it across the room, quill and all. There, the mess of papers fell to the ground in a pitiful heap.
Naturi buried her face in her paws, appalled at what she had written. That could not be true, the Redwallers had always treated her so much better than Maiken had, she had no reason for this longing that she felt. For what she was, and she knew what she was, she had been treated well enough. Most the time she stayed quiet, out of the way. This place, to her, was just for basic survival. She did not bond with anybody there, once she found she was able to leave, she would. One thing that she knew, however, was that she could not live alone.
Naturi jumped, hearing a knock at the door. "What is it?" she asked nicely as she began gathering the papers on the floor and hiding them in a desk drawer.
"Um, do you think you could help with dinner?" a small voice squeaked.
Naturi's heart raced. She was paranoid, to put things lightly. She slammed the desk drawer shut in which held the papers that she had written her hidden thoughts upon.
"I'll be in the kitchen in a second," she replied faintly, her voice quivering severely.
There was a moment's silence, then the voice spoke again. "You okay, Beth?" Naturi took in a deep breath and rose promptly. "Fine...I'm fine..."
She could hear whoever it was walk down the hall, and she felt relief flood over her. She looked at her paw, which she noticed was trembling. It was strange what a mere knock at the door could do to her.
She left the room hastily and walked swiftly down the hall, greeting no one on the way to the kitchen. She entered the room and everyone took a glance at her.
She walked up to Friar Budson and stood at his side a moment while he put some rolls in the ovens.
"What should I do?" she inquired, her voice still slightly shaky.
Friar Budson smiled, bearing his half rotten teeth. "Calm down, missy. You're too tense. Just watch the ovens here, make sure the rolls don't burn."
She nodded and watched as Friar Budson walked off, probably to begin cooking something else. She sat down upon a small kitchen chair next to the oven and tapped her footpaw, as she had always done. She couldn't seem to sit still without fidgeting.
Minutes and minutes passed, and she finally opened the oven and checked the rolls. Sure enough, they had burned. Naturi did not know the first thing about cooking, having always been given the simple sort of jobs.
"Um..." she said tensely, looking to the cooks around her for assistance, though non of them seemed to notice her dilemma. She quickly put on a pot holder glove and grabbed the pan in which the rolls were in. A young mouse was walking by and barely brushed Naturi's shoulder, and having a lack of balance in the first place, trying to keep the pan's weight divided, the pan dropped to the ground and the rolls fell upon the floor.
All eyes were on her as she knelt next to the mess she had created. She stood again, changing her mind, deciding not to clean up, but to retreat. "I...don't think I should help in the kitchen anymore..." she said and ran to her room.
She was incredibly embarrassed. She locked the door and withdrew a flask full of wine from a stash she had created in one of the drawers in her desk. She took a deep swig and sighed. She held up her paw again. Still not steady.
"This is not for me," she thought to herself. She was vermin, that was the way it was. Redscratch was right after all.
Chapter One: Questionable Loyalties
(A/N- Yeah, so I decided to take a shot at a reformed vermin, but not a Mary-Sue, using Laburnum's advice. No, this is not a statement of anti-Sueism. This is a challenge for myself. If this story gets the least bit Sueish, let me know so that I can revise. This is a challenge, not a statement, keep that in mind. Also, there's a lot of tactical things in this chapter that have a lot to deal with Mossflowers geography. If I get some things wrong, please don't be upset. This should be one of the only chapters that is...so dry. The beginning is vital! You must make it through! I know its boring to you guys but its the foundation to the whole story! Please read it.)
Captain Marko, a once respected part of a vermin horde, knelt down before lord Maiken, master of the two-thousand members of the traveling settlement and army. This was not so much a show of respect as a cry for mercy.
Captain Marko was accused of a form of espionage while the horde was at war, and faced the possible penalty of death.
It was during the ides of a horribly frigid winter, while food, water, and supplies were scarce. Maiken's horde had found a neutral, outside source in which these things were shipped to them. There was a secret trail in which led far south of Mossflower, where the horde was placed at the time. Maiken had family ties with a clan of vermin there, where there was plenty of everything that his horde needed. Seeing as Maiken was fighting an offensive war, he could not lead his opponent away from where they stayed. It was like a tactic for them, the opposing vermin horde, to keep the unprepared Maiken in the cold. His army had come from the south, where it was warmer, therefore they had never experienced such a harsh winter.
Maiken had held a grudge against the opposing horde and the horde's leader, lord Nikita Krushchev (can you tell I'm into history?). Krushchev had colonies in the south in which Maiken had wanted to claim himself, and that's where he began waging war. After he had invaded all the colonies, to insure their stability, he decided that Krushchev had to be defeated or his loyalists in the colonies would give him too much trouble.
Marko was put in charge of these secret shipping arrangements. This was a very important matter, the difference between defeat and victory, and the captain was trusted with it. That's when everything went wrong.
One cold winter night, he was riding on a wagon through the snow. He knew that he could not transport the supplies without it. At a secret meeting place far from the opposing vermin's camp, the supplies were exchanged for various jewels and valuables. As the wagon tumbled back towards the camp, it was hijacked.
A score of Krushchev's troops had planned a raid that night, having received information of suspicious behavior from a spy. All armed, they outnumbered Marko's crew and easily took over. They stole the supplies and took the crew prisoner, interviewing and torturing each one of them to get every scrap of information that they could gather. The one that they focused on above all else was captain Marko. Eventually, he cracked and spilled to them everything that he knew. He and the others were released, but this was not all good.
After having found out what clan that was, Krushchev made a pact.
Because of the vulnerability of one small clan, it was decided that Krushchev would defend them from anybody as long as they supplied he and his soldiers with food, weapons, and whatever else they had needed. There was one more catch, the small clan could no longer trade with Maiken. If they were caught, Krushchev had promised a full scale invasion. This threat was also, secretly between the leaders, the basis of the small clan's agreement to the pact.
Maiken was furious at his captain's stupidity and the fact that thanks to him, Maiken had no supplies. They could not hold out until spring, and being the underdog after losing many to freezing and starvation, retreated back to the south where they were in the comfort of their climate and colonies.
There, Marko was tried and convicted of espionage, and in Maiken's words, giving vital information to the opponent. He and his crew were then convicted and sentenced to die.
Maiken was so upset by what Marko had done that he had chosen to kill him personally, in the auditorium, with a large crowd assembled to bear witness to his death. And because he was so cruel, Marko's family was placed in the front row, including his seven year old daughter, Naturi.
Naturi was clueless. She had no idea what was going on, even when her father was led on to the stage, bound and flanked by two guards. She had been told nothing of what was to happen. That was another one of Maiken's plans of suffering.
The guards forced Marko onto his knees before the great lord Maiken. Marko looked up into the pole cat's eyes and begged from him, mercy. Lord Maiken's answer to this was a swift blow to Marko's gut, winding him and sending him coughing and gasping on to the floor.
"Mercy? You want mercy? Thanks to you, I have lost! My colonies are vulnerable! You are an idiot, Marko, and you will die because of your daft ways!" Maiken cried as he snatched an axe from the paw of one of the guards and prepared to strike.
By this time, Naturi knew exactly what was happening. She stood, feeling her heart race and adrenaline rush through her veins, at a loss of what she should do. She screamed, and tears rushed through her eyes.
She wiped them away, and for just one moment, made eye contact with the cruel lord Maiken. She could see the selfishness of her lord through his eyes. The selfishness and cruelty, and realized that everything that was ever done in the horde was done in his benefit, and no one else's.
He raised the axe, and just as swiftly as it was raised, he brought it down upon the neck of Captain Marko, Naturi's father. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, expecting to feel her mother comfort her, rather hearing the cheers around her.
She curled up into a ball at the foot of the stage when she heard an ear shattering scream. She looked up to see a mob crowding around her mother, cheering and screaming in a most barbaric fashion. All she ever saw of her mother after that was a mess of blood and fur. She was destroyed because she was the wife of a traitor.
Naturi did not escape the cruelty of the horde, however. They planned on doing the exact same thing to her as they had done to her mother, but for once Maiken had done something that had benefited her.
"Stop!" he bellered. "The mate was stupid enough to marry the oaf, but this one has not chosen to be his. However, because she is the spawn of a traitor, she will be cast out of my horde and all of my colonies and sent north," he proclaimed, glaring down at her. "If she can survive the remaining of the winter, then her life is just."
A group of guards seized her, and a seer placed a damp cloth over her mouth. Soon enough, she had lost all consciousness.
When she awoke, she was bound lying in a small wooden box with a few holes in it. She was wrapped in a small piece of cloth. She heard no one else around her, but there was a cart. She could hear the wheels turning and the bump every so often. After a couple of days, she could feel it getting colder. In the meantime, she had survived off a sack of food and a few flasks of water that were thrown in. She figured that it was some sort of strange experiment that they were putting her through, to see how long she could survive off of a certain amount of supplies. She was wrong, after she felt the wagon being pushed over and the box being preyed open by a group of squirrels. She then realized that a few slaves were the ones pulling the cart and they had died at that spot. The squirrels had discovered them.
Before her, Naturi saw a red, stone building. It was beautiful, so she just stared.
The squirrels seemed stressed by finding her. What to do?
Redscratch, one of the squirrels, decided to see what was going on. She sat down next to Naturi, who seemed quite harmless, and asked her what had happened. Naturi explained the story to the best of her knowledge, crying all the while.
Redscratch pulled the others aside. "Well...what shall we do?"
Nestrum, an older squirrel shrugged. "Looks harmless enough. After all, it is a female, unarmed, young...we oughtta take her in for a couple days, poor thing, looks so malnutritioned..."
Redscratch glared. "Those things don't matter! I really don't know about this. Vermin are vermin, and that's the way it is."
Naturi heard this remark and responded. "What's that mean? Vermin are vermin? I was cast out! What should I do...die here? Fine," Naturi snapped and began walking away.
Redscratch and Nestrum looked at eachother with bafflement. Why would someone so young be cast out of a vermin horde?
"Wait!" Redscratch shouted.
Naturi turned around, teary eyed, scowling at the Redscratch. "I'm just a vermin! Vermin are vermin, leave me be! I guess all vermin are the same, aren't they? You should have seen what they did to ma' and pa', killed! I'm not even a vermin, not really! I'm kinda thirsty, but you know what? I'll just eat snow and maybe someday I'll die."
Redscratch sighed. She looked to Nestrum desperately. "What am I supposed to do? Be responsible for bringing vermin into the abbey?"
Nestrum shook his head. "'Tis a dreadful winter. Like I said, she's young, she's a she, she's unarmed, and she has no motive against us. By the sounds of what happened to her, this one would love a little kind company. I couldn't hold it on my conscience to let her die out here. Exposure is probably one of the worst ways to die. Let her spend the night and we'll take it day by day."
Redscratch nodded slowly. "Day by day is right. If she does on thing wrong, you realize, it's because of us. One thing, and she's gone. We can't risk unleashing a beast in the abbey."
Nestrum nodded in agreement.
Redscratch looked nervously to the young ferret and hollered to her. "Come here, Naturi!"
Naturi turned around, weeping, and made her way towards the squirrel. "I hate him..." she murmured. "I hate Maiken..."
Redscratch and Nestrum looked at eachother again with perplexity. "Who's Maiken?" Nestrum asked kindly.
Naturi sat down next to him. "He's the lord, he killed pa'..."
Nestrum sighed. "Would you like to come inside the abbey, where it's warm?" he inquired kindly, feeling a bit better hearing that she had hated her warlord, therefore, had lessened her loyalties to such a thing.
~Ten Years Later~
"Day by day I feel myself drifting away from this place, this place that saved me from what I am inevitably becoming. Selfish, brutal, and careless. No one knows about what's taking place in my mind, about how I am becoming everything I've ever hated, and no one can even tell. It's like an abandoned addiction being taken up again," Naturi finished writing. She read it and threw it across the room, quill and all. There, the mess of papers fell to the ground in a pitiful heap.
Naturi buried her face in her paws, appalled at what she had written. That could not be true, the Redwallers had always treated her so much better than Maiken had, she had no reason for this longing that she felt. For what she was, and she knew what she was, she had been treated well enough. Most the time she stayed quiet, out of the way. This place, to her, was just for basic survival. She did not bond with anybody there, once she found she was able to leave, she would. One thing that she knew, however, was that she could not live alone.
Naturi jumped, hearing a knock at the door. "What is it?" she asked nicely as she began gathering the papers on the floor and hiding them in a desk drawer.
"Um, do you think you could help with dinner?" a small voice squeaked.
Naturi's heart raced. She was paranoid, to put things lightly. She slammed the desk drawer shut in which held the papers that she had written her hidden thoughts upon.
"I'll be in the kitchen in a second," she replied faintly, her voice quivering severely.
There was a moment's silence, then the voice spoke again. "You okay, Beth?" Naturi took in a deep breath and rose promptly. "Fine...I'm fine..."
She could hear whoever it was walk down the hall, and she felt relief flood over her. She looked at her paw, which she noticed was trembling. It was strange what a mere knock at the door could do to her.
She left the room hastily and walked swiftly down the hall, greeting no one on the way to the kitchen. She entered the room and everyone took a glance at her.
She walked up to Friar Budson and stood at his side a moment while he put some rolls in the ovens.
"What should I do?" she inquired, her voice still slightly shaky.
Friar Budson smiled, bearing his half rotten teeth. "Calm down, missy. You're too tense. Just watch the ovens here, make sure the rolls don't burn."
She nodded and watched as Friar Budson walked off, probably to begin cooking something else. She sat down upon a small kitchen chair next to the oven and tapped her footpaw, as she had always done. She couldn't seem to sit still without fidgeting.
Minutes and minutes passed, and she finally opened the oven and checked the rolls. Sure enough, they had burned. Naturi did not know the first thing about cooking, having always been given the simple sort of jobs.
"Um..." she said tensely, looking to the cooks around her for assistance, though non of them seemed to notice her dilemma. She quickly put on a pot holder glove and grabbed the pan in which the rolls were in. A young mouse was walking by and barely brushed Naturi's shoulder, and having a lack of balance in the first place, trying to keep the pan's weight divided, the pan dropped to the ground and the rolls fell upon the floor.
All eyes were on her as she knelt next to the mess she had created. She stood again, changing her mind, deciding not to clean up, but to retreat. "I...don't think I should help in the kitchen anymore..." she said and ran to her room.
She was incredibly embarrassed. She locked the door and withdrew a flask full of wine from a stash she had created in one of the drawers in her desk. She took a deep swig and sighed. She held up her paw again. Still not steady.
"This is not for me," she thought to herself. She was vermin, that was the way it was. Redscratch was right after all.