"Ahoooy, Foremole Brull!"

"Halloooo, Nibbit Dillypin!"

"Anybeast out there? Oy! Oy! Oy!"

The combined Nevarrs made a decent racket all the way south to the ford before splitting ways with Boorab, and after the crossing they roved the woodlands with the Taggerung and called for Brull without a sign of tiring. The four otters had already fallen into a system, where each one of them would give a holler while the others caught their breath. The method might not have worked for soft-spoken abbeybeasts, but the deep, hard voices of the Nevarrs were strong enough to echo through Mossflower individually — even Tumbol's. Deyna didn't doubt that growing up in a massive family had taught them to have strong voices. And as for him, his childhood amongst the Juskarath had given him massive lungs and a commanding shout (which he had usually only used to frighten his enemies, rather than fighting with them).

"Brulla-Brulla-Brulla-Brull!"

"Hallooooo out there!"

"Foremole Br—"

Tumbol blanched as Deyna suddenly whipped a paw over her mouth, and her voice died immediately… more from mere surprise than from obedience, he had a feeling. But that didn't matter. The Taggerung stood rooted to the spot, both arms extended out as if to block his companions from stepping further, and the three of them had complied. They all stared at him intently, but his eyes never wavered from the ground up ahead: a bare patch of soil amongst the roots, which had been brushed into the faintest of ridges.

Deyna pointed at the trail and moved his claw to the side, up and down, following the indent that moved through the soil and had furrowed itself over patches of grass and fallen leaves. It was shallow, but wide as a tree trunk, and his blood ran cold at the sight of it. "A snake," he whispered to the sea otters. "And a big one, at that."

Ricky let out a soft exhale, as if he wanted to whistle but didn't dare. "Blimey. Get a lot o'those in Mossflowah, by any chance?"

The Redwall warrior shook his head grimly. "Not for an age." He edged closer to the tracks and knelt to sniff them, glancing at his companions as he did so. The three of them were stiff as he was, with their fur standing on end. "This is barely an hour old," Deyna murmured as he looked over the serpent's belly-marks. "And I'll bet you anything, it could hear us shouting just now."

Tumbol swallowed visibly. "So whaddo we do? The rest o' the groups bettah know about this."

"Oy," Ricky agreed. "But Oy ain't sendin' one of you off alone wiv' this thing out there. And even in pairs… our chances ain't good."

"And the last thing we want is to lead it towards our friends, and the abbey," Deyna growled in frustration. His eyes were darting to every shadow in the underbrush, searching for movement. His blood was starting to pound in his ears, and his hackles rose at every breath of wind.

Tikky twirled his hatchet uneasily and confirmed what they all were thinking. "So we go aftah it, then. Eithah stop it, or figure out we're up against."

"We can trap it," Ricky agreed, gesturing to himself and his brother. "We'll keep its attention while you sneak up wiv'vat toothpick o'yourn, Deyna."

"Shhh," the Taggerung hissed again. He crouched with his ears pricked and his eyes shut. Beside him, he heard the breathing of the Nevarrs go quiet; they were listening, too. He soaked in the vibrations from the paw that he kept planted firmly in the earth. Birds were singing their evening songs to the southwest… but their warbling in the east had fallen silent. And Deyna knew it was not from nightfall. He reached out and pointed a single claw in that direction. "It's not far now," he murmured. "Probably an adder, if I had to guess."

"We'll lead it on,' Tikky murmured. "You two get outta sight until it passes."

The Redwall warrior shook his head uneasily. "There's no telling where we should hide; it could be circling around, for all we know. We would have to know exactly where it's coming from."

"Just trust us, mite. Stick close to Tumbol; she'll find a good spot."

Deyna's ears flattened in apprehension; he expected Tumbol to protest at being ordered to retreat rather than fight. But the she-otter slung her quarterstaff over her shoulder and glanced at their surroundings with practiced readiness. In a matter of moments her gaze locked on a particularly gnarled old hawthorne tree, and she slipped towards it with barely more than a wave for Deyna to follow. He did so, albeit with uncertainty at what the strange foreigner was planning.

The two otters made their way to the trunk and hauled themselves up onto the thick branches with little trouble; they weren't as swift or silent as squirrels, but they made headway easily enough. It wasn't until they were nearly halfway up the tree that Deyna realized Tumbol wasn't stopping. He pawed at her ankle and whispered when she looked down. "We need to be close enough to come down quickly. If we take too long, the snake could hear us or get out of our range."

Tumbol nodded and mouthed a silent sentence to him, gesturing first to her eyes and then out to the east with a clear reply: she was going to try and spot the serpent from above. Deyna let her continue and eyed the forest floor below, watching her two brothers pace restlessly back and forth at the base of the hawthorne.

A faint summer breeze wafted through the Mossflower canopy and brushed against Deyna's nose: it tasted sour on his tongue. The rustling of the leaves all around was no longer mingled with birdsong anymore.

The sudden scratching of movement woke the Taggerung from his trance, and he barely had time to look up before Tumbol had scrabbled back down to his side, where she curled up into a ball between his belt and the thick tree trunk. Her face had gone pale as a sheet. "It's there, alright," she breathed once she got her voice back. Both her brothers looked up at her soft voice, and she pointed to them in the direction where she had spotted their foe. "Northeast, closin' in."

"Good gell. Stay there, an—"

"It's a Kobarra."

The Nevarr brothers fell silent for a moment. Tikky ran a paw across his head.

"Shiverin' seasons alive," he hissed. "You sure?"

"No mistakin' it."

"What's a Kobarra?" Denya echoed, awed by the gravitas in his fellow otter's voice.

"Big snake, mite."

"Well, obviously it's a big snake—"

"Naw, you don't know big 'til you seen one o'them," Tumbol hissed back in a fury. "Full grown, they can take down a badgah. Poison teeth. Only the Naagat-Yara can move fast enough to take down a Kobarra."

"Well I'm faster than you think," Deyna growled, deciding not to bother with asking what the Naagat-Yara were. He was growing tired of all the different terms the siblings would throw at one another like secret code. Besides, he was sure that he could best the creature in speed, because he had yet to come up slow against anybeast he'd ever faced.

"Don't mattah now," Ricky murmured. "Stay outta sight. Strike fast, Deyna. An' if you miss, don't turn… just run."

The Redwall warrior saw death in his friend's eyes as he said it, but already he could hear the faintest rustle of scales on dead leaves coming for them. He pressed himself deeper into the foliage beside Tumbol and waited. Down below, the two Nevarr brothers backed away towards the west, still muttering to one another. "Don't look it inn'e eye, whatevah you do," Tikky hissed. "Watch the ground beneath it."

But Ricky didn't answer. Through the trees just a stone's throw from where the sea otters stood, a mottled silhouette appeared amongst the lengthening shadows of Mossflower Wood. Thick and long as a tree trunk, with scales mixing pale and dark brown hues, the figure slithered forward with predatory grace. At first, Deyna couldn't see how this creature could merit the speed that the Nevarrs had given it credit for… but he had the uneasy feeling that he would find out soon enough. As Tumbol's brothers backed steadily away, the serpent advanced toward them.

Then the Kobarra did something that Deyna didn't expect: as it got just a few meters from the two otters, it began to raise its head up to strike… higher, higher, higher than he had ever seen a snake go before. Soon its nose was nearly level with where Tumbol and the Taggerung crouched in the treetops, holding their breath. Two flaps flared out from either side of its throat, exposing not only its creamy underside but also a pair of marks that resembled mottled, haunting eyes. If he hadn't been so busy trying to anticipate when it would strike, Deyna would have been awed by its sheer appearance.

Ricky and Tikky backed away quickly as the snake rose up, and it was a good thing they did. Deyna didn't see the creature lash out — he just saw its head vanish from the spot where it had been hovering, and suddenly its fangs snapped shut inches from the Nevarr brothers as they sprang backwards into the trees. The Taggerung's instincts kicked in then, and he leapt from the branch that held him, flying out over the monster's exposed neck with the sword of Martin the Warrior clasped in his paws.

But the Kobarra must have heard him coming, because it whipped its head back just before his blade came down where it had been an instant before. In Deyna's mind, Ricky's voice came back to him as clear as day: "If you miss, don't turn… just run."

The Taggerung rolled when he hit the forest floor and dove after the Nevarrs, not bothering to glance back but hearing the furious hiss and snap of the serpent's jaws trying to catch him as he dove out of its reach. He and the two Nevarrs were free of it for now, but now they were racing for their lives with the Kobarra in pursuit, and his stomach churned in worry. They had lost the element of surprise, and the serpent had seen every member of their team that possessed any sort of blade. The only one of them who remained hidden and could possibly distract it was…

"Oy!"

Deyna turned in surprise, just in time to see a bright ball of scruffy fur hurtling through the air. It was Tumbol, passing dangerously close to the Kobarra's striking range. She looked more furious and more frightened in that moment than Deyna had ever seen her. To his utter horror (as well as relief), the diversion worked, and the serpent took off after her into the brush towards the south.

Deyna raced along behind them all, doing his best to keep Tumbol in his sight. Tough as she talked when she was around her brothers, he remembered how shaky she had been when she first saw the Kobarra, and how easily he himself had overpowered her when they first met. She was flying through the trees on all fours like lightening now, but he didn't trust her to keep up that pace for long. He could already hear her breath turn from a light pant to a wheezing. More than once he thought she was about to slow down to a fatal pace… but then the sound of the reptile raking along behind her would send new energy into her limbs. As Deyna kept up, he started to think that perhaps she would be able to keep the snake distracted long enough for their plan to work after all.

But then Tumbol glanced over her shoulder. It was a harmless gesture: one meant to gauge the distance she was keeping twixt herself and the snake as she neared the crest of a hill. One of her front paws snagged on a stray tree root, and all at once she was sent tumbling away into an old rowan trunk. Deyna felt his heart fly into his mouth at the sight.

The serpent sank low to the ground when Tumbol crashed into the tree. She scrambled to her feet to flee in the hopes that it was still a safe distance behind her, but in her momentary glance the two of them made eye contact. Tumbol's gaze was immediately locked onto that of her predator, and she seemed to forget that her legs were supposed to be moving. Deyna heard the Nevarr brothers shout to her, and the terror that was in their voices made the hair down the length of his spine stand on end. He had learned from a young age that some snakes could hypnotize their prey, but it was making him sick to actually witness it in person. Two plans immediately thundered into his mind as he ran along towards the snake and towards Tumbol: distract the Kobarra… or distract Tumbol. He would only have time to perform one of those tasks.

However, in the end it was the Nevarr brothers who made Deyna's choice a little easier. The two of them had been running a few lengths to his left, and were just a few seconds closer to her and the snake than he was. As soon as they'd realized their little sister had faltered, they shot towards the Kobarra, yodeling war cries and waving their weapons in the hopes of drawing its attention. The serpent didn't seem to care at first… at least not until they barreled right past it and even had the audacity to jump across its scaly flanks and nick its scales on the way.

With the snake distracted, Deyna knew he had only one other option. The Kobarra had whirled about and was facing the twins at least briefly, but if he were to hurtle out into the open, he would appear immediately in its peripheral vision. So, as silent as a shadow and in true Taggerung fashion, Deyna shot around behind the serpent and slammed into Tumbol. He was hoping to both knock her down the hill and knock her out of the hypnotic trance. He did the first successfully, but when he leapt to his feet at the bottom of the knoll, Tumbol was still on her back: swaying about in an uneasy daze.

Deyna had no doubts that the Kobarra would be after them with a vengeance this time, and the sputtering hiss from the top of the hill confirmed it. So, with no time to wait for Tumbol to recover her senses of her own accord, he dove over to her and sank his fangs deep into the tip of her tail.

Tumbol gave a yowl that would echo in Deyna's nightmares for weeks to come, and she nearly gave him a black eye with an instinctive, well-aimed kick… but Deyna was the Taggerung. In an instant, he was crouching on the other side of her, and he leapt forward to grab her arm and drive her onwards into the forest. It only took her a few steps to find her footing, and then she was racing westward alongside him, adrenaline blazing through her veins thanks to Deyna's bite. He could see her eyes and whiskers twitching as her mind recovered and she realized what had passed. Terror was written into her features now.

For a moment behind them, the sounds of the whooping brothers and the hissing snake almost vanished… but then the shouts grew loud once more. Ricky and Tikky appeared just a stone's throw to the left: hurtling through the underbrush on all fours, their chests heaving with exertion. Their entire band was headed in the same direction now.

Deyna eyed the three Nevarr siblings. For a brief moment the question entered his thoughts as to which of them was most likely to survive this— but he pushed all those fears to the back of his mind and refused to answer them. He was already forming a plan to bring down the serpent, for his ears had just picked up the sound of a deep rumbling waterfall not a half-mile ahead of them. He tightened his grip on the sword of Martin the Warrior and prayed for a miracle.

Sure enough, in less than ten seconds the trees thinned out and the dying sunlight revealed a huge canyon before them. The river was tumbling into it, misting and roaring and sending glittering rainbows out in multiple directions. For the Nevarr siblings, it never even crossed their minds that it might be dangerous to jump the cliffs without knowing the depths of the waters below: not one of them so much as broke a stride and the three of them dove over the edge. But Deyna dug his hind claws into the earth and slid around to a stop, facing the Kobarra with the tip of his tail just dangling over the start of the precipice.

The great serpent slowed as it realized he meant to fight it, and it flared out the flaps in its neck to reveal two grotesque scaly marks like eyes in its flesh. Deyna breathed in its sickening scent and readied his blade… but when would it strike? And where would it aim? He suddenly felt a ripple of fear. He had always been trained to read the answers in his enemies' eyes.

The Kobarra swayed back and forth readily. Deyna considered taking a step back to fall into the river… but for all he knew, it could strike swifter than that. And how long was it going to wait before it did?

Deyna's eyes flicked upward. It was only for a moment, just as Tumbol had only glanced back for a moment… but suddenly the snake's gaze was filling his mind. His body froze, giving up the idea that he might be able to best this serpent in speed. He could read into its soul that it really was faster… was stronger… would defeat him. The distant voices of the Nevarrs were screaming for him to run, run! But they were drowned out by the sound of the waterfall.

You're mine, the Kobarra's eyes seemed to speak to his heart, and he believed it.

Then the world went black.

Here ends Book I of Naagat-Yara. Book II will begin in January of 2016.