Chapter One
He'd seen the look on her face before, when they were children. She'd insisted she wasn't flushing, that it was the chap of wind and the rush of adrenalin-
-you're it! You're it! Cyrus!-
She was ill the next morning. And all the next week. Half the season she laid abed, and the long hours of his mother's workdays were miserable without her company and he found himself in far more trouble than he'd been in since ever moving to the Lord's Domain.
"We will stop near here."
A sudden chill breeze rustled his whiskers. She had an ear cocked toward him, listening, waiting. He'd spoke in the woodland tongue, hoping to familiarize her with the staccato pattern. Sighing, he cast about for a safe place.
"We'll take a rest nearby, Nova."
The burned out ruin of a church stood dismally to the side of the road half a league ahead. He barely made out the shape of it in the shadows of a late summer sunset. Cyrus readjusted his pack on his shoulders and touched his companion lightly.
"Will your footpaws make it?"
Nova nodded once, clutching the shawl about her ears when another sudden wind tried to tug the ends away.
The path was a little forsaken, with weeds tucking up here and there and a solid crust that had gone unbroken by other paws for some time. Regardless it was an old, old path, and had to lead somewhere. The mice traveled in silence. The ruin they found had been burned some ages ago, but creatures through the years had shored up earth and rubble to reform some sort of shelter against the elements.
Nova's footpaws had given out halfway. She sat heavily in the track and touched her brow to her knees. Cyrus had picked her up wordlessly, giving one small squeeze and hardly missing a step. She burned with fever. When they reached the church he laid her gently, half asleep, in a shelter made of a half-burnt pew and a pile of moldering stone. He struck up a fire, unwrapped his cloak and squatted upon it, and dug through his haversack. He was toasting a mushroom and half an apple when Nova's eyes snapped open across the fire. They were misty, and her breathing a little ragged, as though she was startled from some nightmare.
"Shouldn't be stayin' 'ere overnight," warned a voice from the roadside.
Cyrus watched the old hedgehog stamp into the firelight. The stranger had a broad scar across the center of his face and was missing a number of headspikes. He took the liberty of sitting on a broad stone near the fire but under the open sky and eyed the mouse's skewered dinner speculatively. Cyrus offered him a slice of mushroom and was rewarded a cold crust of bread in return. The males eyed one another warily as they bit into the shared morsels and, neither dying on the spot, Cyrus offered half his portion of bread to the silent mousemaid who had curled closely in his shadow. She reached with little grace and a heavy paw, and eventually let her shaking arm drop in the dirt.
"Strangers to Mossflo'er?"
"Aye."
Cyrus shielded the maiden from the hedgehog's wandering eye. He leaned close to her, fed her the crust of bread, and straightened to square his shoulders toward the gnarly beast.
"Well ye shouldn'a be stayin' 'ere tonight. 'Tis safer in the wood, under the trees. Out on the road, even." The hedgehog spat an apple seed into the flames.
"The lady is ill." Cyrus uncorked a flask and gulped greedily from it. The hedgehog eyed him as though asking for it, and was not rewarded.
"Spirits won't care."
There was a prickle of fear, and Cyrus held it in the pit of his stomach for a moment. The indigestion would dampen his appetite. The mouse offered the remainder of his meal to the female warming his side. She struggled to lift her head.
"May the spirits be damned."
The hedgehog stood then, spitting again in the fire and making a sign above his broken headspikes with his paw (Cyrus saw it too had been broken once, and healed poorly).
"'F that's 'ow you feel." The stranger turned to leave, having never offered a name or a purpose, and stopped when he was clear of the warmth of the blaze and half obscured in the night. "If the lady suffers too poorly… hmmph."
He hesitated in the flickering half-light.
"'Ere's a redstone abbey up the path, name of Redwall. Healer mice in there. Do not go unless you are desperate."
With that the hedgehog was lost to the night, leaving the mice to the wayward spirits of the fallen church.
Cyrus woke some hours later in a haze. The fire had banked, but a blue smoke twisted in tendrils about their sleeping places. He thought idly about the spirits their nameless visitor had warned them about. Digesting the fear, he stepped over Nova's body and through the rubble. The smoke entwined his footpaws, pulling him first toward what he assumed to be the ruin of the altar then luring him in the direction of the sacristy. He glanced briefly past the mouldering wall and into the still forest. Seeing fog coiling through the undergrowth settled his heart enough to press on.
He wasn't aware of shifting the piles of rubble until he dropped a stone on his footpaw. Cursing softly, Cyrus crouched to rub the sting out of his limb and survey the damage. Nothing serious, not even a scrape. A twist of new cord caught his attention and with no particular feeling of interest the mouse grabbed it, twined it about his paw, and returned to the fire.
"Come far."
The voice startled him from sleep. The fire was burning cheerily again. The figure by the fire- he once thought it a mole, and then a shrew, but it changed shapes with the flicker of flames and absorbed their light like a cloak of black velvet- twisted toward him. Cyrus reached out sightlessly for his companion and found her chilled now and stiff, but breathing readily enough. The mouse was armed, and to a living creature he'd consider himself a match, but the writhing darkness across his fire commanded his submission.
"Come far," the voice repeated. It wasn't threatening, or particularly deep, or even ghoulish. It seemed so absent of character entirely that Cyrus wondered if he was hearing it at all.
"Aye."
The spirit flickered. It reappeared before his face, and still he recognized no shape of it and no quality but the darkness and the dank smell of something truly ancient.
"Brave."
Cyrus only grunted. The fear tightening in his throat prevented anything more, and the smell of damp earth, wet ash, and death itself was burning his nose. The spirit seemed to look past him, to Nova, but here Cyrus found the strength to stand before it.
"Return to your realm."
The mouse spat the words in his native tongue, unable to manage the sharp consonants of the common one in his terror. He didn't move to draw his weapon, but shielded the maiden with his body and stared into the oily depths of the wraith. It slid backward, diminutive now in stature.
"Not strong," it insisted. "Not foe."
"The dead can be the enemy of nobeast," Cyrus replied evenly.
If the spirit had a head it would have cocked it at him, and if it had any whiff of a personality it might have chuckled, and Cyrus knew these things because it reached out suddenly and prodded his heart and vanished, leaving images in its wake.
A sword.
A mouse.
A rose.
The cord, still wrapped about his wrist, tightened once like a snake and loosened. The mouse sank slowly into a crouch. Then plopped onto his cloak. Nova gave a shuddering sigh beside him but did not stir. The images burned his eyelids, and the ghost of the paw that had caressed his heart chilled him to the core.
Waking the next morning brought an ache to his body he hadn't felt since the earliest of the war years. He remembered the images. He remembered the spirit. The cord was still entwined about his wrist and he untangled it silently and tugged at the material. A sling. A child's weapon. Figuring it an item of some import, he stowed it away in his haversack to be forgotten about until it became useful. The mouse stretched luxuriously, cracking in several places, and squinted in the early light at the ring of ashes that had been their campfire.
A cold dread told him not to look for Nova. She was an early riser. Would have gotten the fire rekindled. He should have woke to the smell of breakfast and not the lingering scent of spirit-presence.
"Nova. Now we must leave." He spoke simply in the woodland tongue, knowing she hated it. "Wake up."
The creature was pretty as a painting in the half-light of morning, with only the irregular hitching of her breath to assure him she was still among the living. The gold of her earrings caught the pale sunlight and flicked it playfully at him, and Cyrus thought with an ill temper that he'd have to take them off wherever they went if he didn't want them snatched from her shell-like ears.
He removed her jewelry, and her boots. They wouldn't do much good to her now, not that the ragged things had done much good to her before. With the temperature of the day bound to rise, he likewise delicately untangled her from her cloak and left her in layers of red and warm yellow. Her belongings went into his haversack. The contents of her haversack he sorted through with silent deliberation.
The sewing kit. The herbs. Tinctures, carefully labeled in the old script. A whetstone, some fish hooks, a stone idol. A book of psalms carefully inscribed from the sacred text of the land they left, and a tattered mass of papers he knew were of great importance but which curled his gut when he touched them.
His gut was still churning when he found the small blankets and with blurring vision he left them, along with the half-pillaged haversack, near the burned-out fire. His own pack now straining from the additions, he lifted the limp mousemaiden whose fever scorched him, and set off down the ill-used path to Redwall Abbey.
Cyrus felt as though the spirit might appear to walk alongside him, but only the trill of birdsong accompanied him on the road. For a short while, he'd followed the limping pawprints of the hedgehog who'd visited their fire the night before, but not far from the church his trail disappeared on a narrow path into the wood. Not far, the hedgehog had told him, though the bite to his tone left much to be desired.
Bone weary, ragged from fright, and wrought with nerves, Cyrus dropped his friend entirely when she came swiftly alive with a scream. It took ten minutes to ease her thrashing, another five to trickle water down her raw throat, and another ten afterward before she settled back into the restless sleep of the sick. This episode repeated itself at odd intervals, and Nova seemed to grow heavier in his arms each time, and all in all the journey that should have taken a couple hours lasted the length of the day.
Starving now, but with anxious nausea twisting his insides around, Cyrus shivered in the shadow of the redstone abbey. He'd never considered himself a coward, but after the hedgehog's warning and the visitation of the spirit, the silent structure seemed more a tomb than a place of healing. The rising of the moon washed its stones silver-grey, and not a whisper of sound drifted from over the towering walltops. He thought about Nova's stone idol, wrapped with care in oilcloth, and tugged it free of his haversack to whisper a prayer into its delicately carved ear.
Nova had, in a fashion, modeled herself after this deity in his palm. The mouse imagined her voice giving its blessing to him in the weak light. He cast a look to where she lay curled in their cloaks, just within the shadow of the nearest tree, and wished her voice would give him strength now.
"Hallo the walltop!" He had chosen to avoid the main gate. Seeing the scars of many seasons' war strengthened this decision as they had skirted the foot of the wall and around to a smaller gate on the south side. "Mice of Redwall!"
He had a strong voice that carried far, but the minutes stretched by with only his echo tittering plaintively back down to him.
"Give us sanctuary!"
Hours later, still begging the stoic stones, his voice hoarse and body shaking, Cyrus gave into his exhaustion. He crept through dew-damp brambles, dragging Nova deeper into the wood and out of sight from passing travelers. He hardly had the strength to hold her. Though feverish, she was trembling beneath the skin. Giving one final forlorn look up at the empty battlements, Cyrus wrapped the length of his body around the lady's, and let sleep take him.
He dreamt of being strangled by rambling roses.
An hour after the dawning saw the little south wallgate creak open, and a pair of mousemaidens scurried out onto the path garbed in green habits and carrying covered baskets. They seemed to be arguing, glaring at one another and hissing in hushed tones, but their faces brightened considerably when they spied young Cyrus and his ailing friend.
"Young mice, there!" Cyrus called, tugging himself free from cloak and limp body. "Please, I beg sanctuary."
They met him halfway. Lovely twin sisters by name of Bonnie and Deydre, they chittered and cooed over Nova's still form in thick accents, speaking too swiftly for him to translate in his anxiety.
"Tut tut, dear one," Deydre seemed to notice his predicament, and spoke slowly and clearly to him, looking him straight in the face. Cyrus fought her gaze, and lost. "Let her come now into the Abbey. The infirmary sisters will care for her there."
Cyrus made to lift Nova and carry her in the still-ajar gate, and was barred by Bonnie.
"You ill too then lad?" She demanded, a little scornfully, tapping a footpaw as though this delay in their herb gathering would be the death of the king's court.
"She cannot walk for herself."
"Sister Eofie and I'll be out in two shakes," Deydre chimed, leaving her basket by the roadside.
"No males in the abbey," Bonnie was still glaring at him.
A stout-built mouse matron of some years appeared in the doorway with an affirming noise, and went about gathering one half of Nova's body, while Deydre attempted to take the footpaws.
"I'll not leave her."
The three females ceased their bustling. They didn't speak, but the challenge was evident. Sister Eofie spoke sharply to the younger mice and gave him a cold but sympathizing look.
"'Tis true," she had the rough rustic accent the hedgehog had had, and he found it more comforting than the polished tones of her companions. "No male folk in 'ee Abbey, 'less they need tendin' to. You come to this gate tomorra' noon an' I'll tell yer how the sweet lassie's lookin' on. Ta now."
Bumping the younger mice aside with a wide hip she lifted Nova up in her own two arms and scuttled through the gate, trusting Deydre and Bonnie to bar his path behind her. The young lasses seemed at a loss for what to say to him now, and he to them. They picked up their baskets, continued their argument where they left off, and trundled off into the wood without another word to him.
Cyrus was left feeling cold and not a little furious. He paced outside the gate for a time. He left a long furrow in the sand of the path, and turned his fury to a nearby sycamore. He left wide, weeping gashes cut into the bark and stormed back down the path to the ruined church. His stomach moaned. The late summer sun hissed down upon his ears, and there was a faint drone from the grassland to the west where a few grasshoppers had risen early. A magpie lighted in his path. It cocked its bill at him and croaked.
"And what prophet's blood have you?" Cyrus spat, drawing a small-bladed knife from his boot and flinging it with such speed that the creature's wing was clipped painfully before it could flush.
Cyrus made no haste in pursuing the bird. It winged away, lacking grace, trailing splats of blood on the dry earth and cawing uproariously. The mouse retrieved his knife from the dirt and sat heavily in the middle of the path. He had fallen behind a low rise, and turned his head so all he could see of the redstone fortress was the hulking belltower and the spires of the abbey building.
"See ye've left 'er."
The hedgehog appeared like a wisp. Cyrus flashed the knife at him irritably and said nothing. Despite his rudeness the mouse was offered a small loaf of bread, still warm, a fresh canteen of water, a bite of cheese, and a russet apple. His visitor dropped these things in his lap without making a move to sit down.
"What do they call you?"
"Few beasts 'round to call me anythin'."
Cyrus eyed the hedgehog's stiff paw, his twisted leg. The scar across his face had festered and tendrils of it spread like the sickness that ought to have killed him.
"You're pitiful."
The hedgehog cuffed him none too gently, but said nothing.
"How long will they keep her?"
At this the stranger fixed his sights on the belltower- it occurred to Cyrus that he'd never heard the bells toll- he rubbed at his knotty paw and turned to return to his home in the wood.
"If she e'en lives to see tomorra's dawnin', ye'll still ne'er see her again."
Cyrus didn't try and follow. He tore at his bread and cheese savagely. He spoke a fair tongue, for a foreigner, but couldn't find the words to interrogate the gruff creature. Worry gnawed at him too sharply. His thoughts jumbled between his mother's tongue and the Old language, quoting, to his dismay, the dirges of the goddess Ione- stolen away to her end by the Nameless One, who drowned her in the inky river of time.
The mouse rose, pinning his ears, and managed a jog southward down the wide path. His irregular step jumbled the beat of the dirge, and he picked up instead a marching song he'd sung on campaign- and another he'd heard in the taverns of Southsward, first arriving in this new land. On stumbling into the ruin of the church he immediately tossed down his haversack and dug through it for the idol of Ione.
He placed it on a flat stone, shaved tinder from a handy branch, and struck a single ember at the deity's footpaws. Ione was a goddess of storytelling, of prophecy, and of sacrifice in battle. She was customarily garbed in red silk veils, with a dagger pressed against her wrist and her mouth open in song. But Cyrus wasn't much of a stonemason, and the crude figure he now prayed to was dimly recognizable. He burnt an end of bread and touched it to the stone's lips, muttering in the old language with his eyes half-lidded.
He prayed for strength. He prayed for mercy. He prayed for the great main gates of the abbey to swing open and for Nova to stride out to meet him. He prayed for a hundred other things that the little stone goddess hadn't the power to grant him.
There was a presence at his elbow. He hadn't thought the spirit would reappear- not while he spoke to the goddess- and so, despite whatever heresy might become of it he ended his worship with a ring of steel.
"Easy does it lad."
There was a lightness to the voice despite the scowl on the strange mouse's face. Cyrus didn't waver, but kept his swordpoint at dangerous proximity to the creature's gut. The image of the mouse seemed to waver in the dusk, and Cyrus wondered if it wasn't the spirit after all. The moon was fuller tonight, perhaps the apparition had more strength.
"Where's yore lady friend then?"
"I haven't one," Cyrus lied.
"Saw you, last night, takin' shelter here at St. Ninian's."
"She's in the Abbey."
The mouse shook his head sadly.
"Does nobeast in the whole of Mossflower have a name?"
The stranger eyed the stone idol with suspicion. He didn't sign himself, as the hedgehog had done, but the look of wariness wasn't lost on Cyrus. These creatures of Mossflower practiced varied religions, few of which knew living gods, fewer of which practiced any form of idolatry.
"Folks 'ese days are leery of passing strangers, mind."
Night was falling heavily on the pair. The single smoking ember at Cyrus's makeshift altar had smothered. He felt a single twinge of fear, like a brief spurt of nausea, and allowed the feeling to deepen his scowl.
"Ought to do about yore sweet lassie."
If these strange beasts continued poking their snouts in his business, Cyrus thought darkly, he was bound to thrash one of them.
"Unless you're brave."
There was a cold prickle in his heart, not unfamiliar to him.
"'Tis a shame, what's 'appened to old Redwall."
The cold was spreading, like the sorrow on the spirit's face. It was close to him now, closer than before? He couldn't quite remember. Cyrus strode through it abruptly, shattering it in cold mist, and gathered Nova's idol in his paws. He called over his shoulder as he left the haunted ruin,
"Keep your wicked claws away from me." And tried to settle his heart.
A/N: Welcome all! Few short notes: I've got lots of references to Cyrus's native religion and culture- if it's too much or too confusing please let me know. I hope it was easy to catch on to the italic text being his native language, which he speaks of course to Nova as well as when he is stressed or scared.
This fic is pretty dark in my head. I haven't written in awhile so we'll see how it translates. I can tell you now the final climactic scene is based on a number of metal Disney-covers by Jonathon Young: including Hellfire, The Plagues, Playing with the Big Boys Now, and Friends on the Other Side. In case you really want a feel for how this is gonna turn out in the end.
As far as length goes, I don't really know. I might? be almost a third of the way through the story already. I've got Ch1-4 written (though what you just read is my original 1 and 2 combined for length purposes), and work on this story in my leisure time at work. I can tell you now if this story isn't complete by the end of May, it may go on a long hiatus. BUT I have faith and trust and pixie dust.
Don't be afraid to leave a review!