Arc One: Awakening
Chapter Three: An organized Panic
The silence that erupted after Whiteheart spoke was profound, he didn't know why everybeast assembled for the meeting was bearing such unsure looks or harshly grimacing. He honestly wasn't sure what was prompting such looks, but clearly he'd missed something of great importance.
"Come now," he began. "I know the heat will be unbearable, but It can't be that bad."
Of course, he didn't exactly believe that at all, Whiteheart, like most beasts in Chilldeath's horde, had come from the Northlands—and, a select few, were from even further north, the Lands of Ice and Snow specifically—the heat was going to be terrible. That was a simple, indestructible fact and there was nothing anybeast could do about It. But surely they wouldn't let something small like that keep them from a possible safe haven.
A look of sudden understanding flickered across Chilldeath's face, so fast he would have missed It If he hadn't been looking.
"You don't know," Chilldeath breathed. "Of course you wouldn't, you weren't here."
"What couldn't I know?" Whiteheart asked.
"Two weeks ago," Chilldeath said, "You left camp."
"Yes," Whiteheart said, raising a brow, wondering where this was going. "I was leading a raiding party on that iron mine those shrews are running."
"Yes, and when you were gone, a party of our warrior-scouts ran across a small group of rats traveling north. According to them, they were from the South. They claimed that multiple petty kingdoms were being founding throughout the south, called City-states; one of them, the city-state of Southsward has been systematically hunting down and driving away, or killing, every rat, mustelid, or fox they came across in the South." Chilldeath said, his voice low and husky with anger.
"That, however is not the worst part." Mooncaller said, "According to these rats, the Squirrel-King of Southsward has fifteen thousand Woodlanders under arms, primarily otters and squirrels."
Whiteheart's breath caught in his throat, they were outnumbered fifteen to one. That was insane, Southsward apparently had an army akin to those legendary few that were present in Woodlander and Vermin myths and history.
The majority of Woodlander and Vermin armies had hundreds or thousands on both sides, never tens of thousands. Really, only the Mythical Blue Horde had such immense numbers—although most Vermin legends stated them to be much greater in number, more along the lines of a hundred thousand, although Whiteheart was skeptical of such numbers, to say the least.
Of course, the fact that a violently unfriendly army of over ten thousand Woodlanders was chasing all of their kin out of the south had thrown a rather spectacular tangle into his plan.
The shocking part of It wasn't so much just the size, there were more then enough beasts around to form multiple armies of that size, from each individual species. No, what was impressive was supplying such a large amount of beasts with food, armour and weapons—the barely armed and unarmoured armies of past seasons were no more—and keeping them together as a cohesive force are what keep armies from growing so large. It was primarily the first two that were prohibative of armies growing large.
Treerunner, clearly having enough of the silence spoke up. "Now you know why we're not exactly eager to march south to our death."
But Whiteheart was not so easily beaten. "That would happen should we march directly south, but if we hug the mountains to our west on our way south, after we cross the northern fork of the Great South Stream, we'll come across a smaller stream, trailing off the mountains, we cross that and then we are at the southern fork of the Great South Stream. Then we turn directly west and continue until we reach a long chain of hills. Toads claimed these hills a long time ago," There was a certainty in Whiteheart's gaze as he added, "They've been there as long as Redwall has been around, maybe even longer. These hills border the western coast for leagues, though once they draw even with Castle Floret to the east, the Great South Streams comes closer and closer to the coast, causing the hills to thin. After the Great South Stream crosses into the ocean, the land starts to grow more, barren. The amount of desert drastically increases as you go deeper into Southsward, the further south you go, the more sand you will find, especially as you go south-east, eventually south-east you'll find the Great Desert; but we're not going that far."
Treerunner asked the question burning in all their eyes, "How do you know?"
"I just do, It is as I've always been, I am that Is." He grumbled, while the beasts around him blinked in confusion. "Now, If anybeast else has a plan, they should speak up."
Chilldeath slowly shook his head, "It's clear, going south is one of the better choices for us, Southsward and whatever other City-states are down there clearly have more military forces then we do, but we know or can find out where these forces are garrisoned. The east, past Redwall is the only other place we could possibly go. But unlike with the south, we haven't a clue what we're walking into.
"It's decided then, Treerunner assemble the warrior-scouts and have them begin a mass foraging, we'll need every bit of extra food as we can get. Mooncaller, have the fighters go about disassembling the camp, in full armour with their weapons nearby, just In case. Betrillis, I want you to oversee the general packing and preparedness of the non-combatants. I want the rest of you to gather your belongings and have them packed away, this includes battlefield equipment, once that Is done leave It with Betrillis and spread out in all directions and watch for any Redwallers nearby." Rising from his chair, Chilldeath nodded and added. "Get to It My Claws, get It done as fast as you can, but no mistakes, not now."
The sun was nearing Its height by the time the self-titles Emperor of Corsairs, the wildcat known as Blackmane, left his palace and stepped out onto the isle of Sampetra proper. With a cloak of soft fabric around his shoulders, the black furred cat set out to look over his subjects current actions.
He believed quite solidly that his presence pushed them to perform their duties with a vigor and skill they would otherwise lack. Hellgates knew he'd seen enough of their 'best work' before, in circumstances in which he hadn't been watching them, and It did not stand up to Blackmane's quite high standards. If he got to see all the corsairs under his command sweat and squirm in fear while he was lurking over their shoulders watching them, judging them in their eyes, all the better.
A small, stone path lead from his palace to the beach side village the majority of his corsairs lived In. It wasn't exactly a pretty village—technically speaking nor was his palace—but It worked for them, Corsairs weren't professional carpenters, they had to repair both the village and Blackmane's palace with what they had on paw.
Frankly, considering the absolutely poor condition then entire Isle had been in when Blackmane had first found It, he felt they'd done rather well. Actually, he thought, I'm certain It's even better then It was before. His mother always told him he had an 'ego' problem, whatever that meant. He called It confidence.
His internal musings were broken by the sight of one of his corsairs sprinting toward him.
"What Is it?" He hissed, annoyed at the rat who dared interrupt his thoughts.
"Unknown ships, yer majesty, four o' them."
"Really," Blackmane purred, "How were they sighted?"
"The watchtower, yer majesty." The rat said, pointing at the—in Blackmane's mind—excessively tall and very rickety, watchtower. At the top of which he could just make out a figure. "They'll be here soon if Ol' Toothrot is right about their current heading and position. Course, 'e might not be right, 'e was drunk on grog last I checked," Shrugging the rat added. "It'll be close enough."
I'm surrounded by Idiots, Blackmane despaired, "Send for the captains of the Goretide, Swordwave, Fleetrush, Fangheart, Pikeheart, Slavemaster, Bloodriver, and Darktide; Tell them to gather their crews and slaves and go deal with whoever is fool enough to approach us."
"Do yer want the captains to capture or sink them?"
"Sink them, we have no need for more ships."
And that was quite true, with a little over twenty ships moored at Sampetra and under his command, they had quite the little fleet, honestly, Blackmane was certain he had naval superiority over the western sea. Very few beasts actually put ships to sea, only really Vermin sea-raiders or corsairs did with any regularity, and most of them only had half a dozen at most and the occasional Woodlander sea-goers would only have a ship or maybe they'd have two.
The exception to that of course, was a tribe of northern sea otters that had a decent collection of longboats under their command, but they didn't exactly use them often nor were they exactly a good counter to Blackmane's galleys, which were all armed with a heavy crossbow at the fore and aft, strong enough to put a bolt through a ship's hull at close range or and their galley's heavy catapult in the midships section of his galleys, which could throw a heavy stone and shatter through the wood of a foe's ship. Only the Searats could compete with this level of naval dominance. They actually had far more ships then Blackmane did, but they were also completely unorganized, their greatest enemy was actually themselves.
The Searat Captains were completely incapable of trusting each other. Leading to constant conflict and strife between them.
The rat he'd been speaking to completely interrupted Blackmane's thoughts again, this time with spinning around and proceeding to rush off.
Turning is back toward the beach side village, Blackmane returned to his palace, wondering the entire way who had been foolish enough to attack him.
In the distance, four great ships flying flags of brilliant suns and roses approached.
It was with a great screaming that the survivors of Sandholm's weasel army ran, further south-west back toward their pathetic City-State. The squirrels and otters of Southsward gave immediate chase, casting javelins and sling-stones, while the longbow-squirrels loosed shaft after shaft into their fleeing mass. The less well armoured of weasels fell, possibly slain, if not, the chasing infantry would make them that way. The only force not taking part in chasing down the fleeing Vermin army was the Kings Company—the hundred strong personal guard of King Swiftarrow, the descendants of the old Southsward Otter and Squirrelguards—and the army's trebuchets, whose projectiles were a bit dangerous to fling after the Vermin with friendly forces closing In on them.
Across the field there lay thirty eight hundred dead weasels, over half of Sandholm's sixty five hundred weasel strong military had died on the battlefield. They hadn't a chance to resist Southsward's great military might.
Of course, just about everybeast in the South knew they didn't stand a chance against Southsward head on, which made them avoid meeting Southsward on the field of battle; unless they thought they had the advantage. Such as stumbling across a detachment from the army doing something else, which is what Swiftarrow had led the Weasels to think was going on at the battle's start.
Ten thousand of his beasts had sheltered, hidden from site in the nearby forest, which if followed north would lead to Castle Floret and the rest of the City-state of Southsward, as he and five thousand of his beasts went about digging, knowing the Sandholm Weasels were nearby.
Having swept in like a plague from the South-west, burning and killing as they swept north-east. Swiftarrow wasn't about to sit around and let them destroy his Kingdom, so he'd set a trap.
Gazing out at the sea of weasel corpses he couldn't help but smile at what he saw.
They had fallen for It completely, walking right into a kill zone. His army had surged out of the forest, surrounding and striking at the Weasels hard.
His forces, bettered armed and armoured had suffered minimal casualties. From counting the bodies he could see, he'd lost maybe a hundred beasts.
All in all, perfectly acceptable as far as Swiftarrow was concerned.
Though recruiting a new hundred or so beasts would certainly be annoying, It would mainly be expensive, for a military force that was already exceedingly expensive. Swiftarrow could already see his wealth tumbling away.
It was Southsward that had helped introduce coinage into the South, about two generations back, and they'd always maintained a position of wealth; mostly because of their position and size.
When one referred to the 'South' generally speaking they were speaking of the lands south of the southern fork of the Great South Stream. And of these lands only the very north of the 'South' was verdant and filled with life to a great degree. As you went south, It became more barren, at the very southern edge of the South, the coast that aligned with the Southern Sea, It was near inhospitable. Of course south and south-east could lead to the Great Desert. What was past there was unknown.
Southswards wealth came from Its verdant farmlands and the mountains Castle Floret sat upon, and the mines weaving throughout those mountains. Those mountains and the mountains to the east of Salamandastron were two of the continent's largest sources of Iron, Two others were the Mountains of the North and the Old caves along the western coast far to the north.
They obviously weren't remotely the only sources, but they were among the greatest. Particularly to Swiftarrow since all four were owned by Woodlanders of goodly persuasion.
Casting one last glance toward the distant fleeing forms of the Weasels of Sandholm, Swiftarrow announced. "Sound the horns, call back the army, they've chased them far enough. It's time to go home."
