Crossing Barriers
Chapter 3
Brother Hubert had been in the middle of a text when there was a knocking on the gate. So engrossed in the text was he that he almost didn't hear it. But when knocking turns into heavy banging, even the thickest of rocks will have to respond. So Brother Hubert carefully set the text down, and head still spinning from the intriguing text, went to open the gate.
Consellariel stopped thudding the wooden gate with her paw when she suddenly found that it had gone slightly away from her. As Brother Hubert's head poked through, she barely concealed a smile, realising that he had probably been in the middle of an interesting text.
"Brother Hubert," she said gruffly, brows drawn together. "You took an awfully long time to open this gate. Why, my patrol and I must have had stood here for a longer time than we took marching here!"
So distracted was Brother Hubert by the disturbing thoughts of the text that he failed to realise that Lady Consellariel of Salamandastron, to give the badger her full title, was only joking.
"I'm sorry marm...I was too heavily absorbed in a text," Hubert spluttered.
Consellariel grinned. "I was only kidding, my friend. Now are you just going to let us in...?"
Barely a few minutes later, a gasp rang out in Cavern Hole, where the girls and the Abbots and Abbesses had stayed back after breakfast. Alethia buried her face in her hands.
"Damn," Clarenova said, very quietly, but still extremely vehemently. "Vatrisha's here."
Denea spun around. "What?!"
"Ooh, just LOOK at that smug look on her face!"
"I thought we managed to throw her off all those months ago?"
"Oh dear. Oh crap. Oh frell."
By this time, all the girls were either groaning, shaking their heads, or both. Clarenova was gently knocking her head on the table. Abbess Song gently asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Estel groaned, getting up to leave. "Guys, I think we better go. If you'll excuse us, Father Abbots, Mother Abbesses..."
The girls trooped out of Cavern Hole, avoiding Vatrisha like she was the plague. The Long Patrol took their places, and invited Vatrisha to sit with them.
"Well, it's good to see you again! We had heard that you were coming along, but we weren't sure that it would be this soon. So, where's Lady Consellariel? And who is this girl?"
Tare grinned. "This is Vatrisha. She says she knows the bally girls, wot! We met here on our way 'ere, so we brought her along for the journey. As for the Lady, well, she's waiting for her friend Alethia upstairs." He suddenly laughed. "You might want to break out the poultices and bandages by the time our Lady's done with Alethia, wot!"
As they sat there, Vatrisha slowly edged away. Now that she was at Redwall, there was no need to always stick to the Long Patrol. Besides, now would be the perfect time to approach the girls who had always tried to avoid her.
***
The girls trooped into their dormitory, shaking their heads in despair and muttering to themselves. Just then, a sixth sense told Alethia to look up. When she did, she suddenly started trying to wriggle her way back out of the dormitory.
"Er, 'scuse me, lemme out please..."
Consellariel got up from the chair in the corner.
"Why," she said pleasantly. "How nice to see you, girls. Especially you, Alethia."
Knowing that it was now impossible to get out, Alethia gave up and faced Consellariel, grinning weakly, Vatrisha forgotten.
"Uh, hi, Consellariel...nice weather, isn't it?"
The badger nodded in agreement.
"Oh yes, it is definitely much better than the last time you came. It was so misty that some of the water vapour got into the mountain. Do you know, it managed to rust the forge door shut? And there I was, thinking it was jammed." An evil gleam entered the Lady's eyes.
"Er, yeah..." Alethia fidgeted. In her mind's eye, she remembered personally jamming up the bolt and lock of the forge door before opening the portal so they could all return back to their own world.
The Lady leaned closer. "I don't suppose you might know how come I discovered a chunk of hardened molten iron in the lock and resin and pitch around the bolt and the hinges?"
Alethia looked sheepish. "Er heh heh heh...well, you DID purposely loosen the bolts of my swords just so I wouldn't go out to fight!"
Consellariel raised her eyebrows. "Well, that was for your own safety! Your shoulder was still stiff but yet you still insisted on going after Garven. I was merely concerned for you. Hmph!"
"Oh well. It is over. I'm sorry for jamming your forge door...but the temptation was too great to resist!"
They grinned at each other.
"I had better be going. If not, the Long Patrol might start taking apart the bricks of Redwall to sate their appetite."
The badger lumbered out of the door. The new girls looked over, confused about what they had just seen. Alethia sighed.
"Evidently, the person whose goldpiece that allows entrance to the other universe also gets an extra, random alter ego. Mine's Consellariel, and we understand each other really well."
"I see. That would explain that interesting exchange, then," The girls whirled around, only to see a smirking Vatrisha leaning against the doorframe. Her pathetic and helpless air that had let her be taken in by the Long Patrol was gone, and in its place was a smug effervescence.
"Oh, yes. That reminds me. What are you doing here?" Denea asked coldly.
"I followed you in. Of course, your puny brains forgot to close the portal. How could I let all you people have all the post-exam fun without me?"
"Why don't you just shut up and go somewhere else already? Your very presence makes me rash, you wretched thing. Stop following us. We can send you home, and you know we can, and will," Alethia growled
"Ah, but I don't want to. I just want to have some fun. Why can't you just let me join you in the name of fun?" Vatrisha whined.
"Fun? Fun? FUN? Don't talk to us about fun, Vatrisha. The last few times you said that, you ended up getting us into trouble," Estel butted in.
"Exactly," JK sighed. "But since you're here, and we can't exactly force you to go back, I don't suppose we can do anything about your presence. Just stay out of our way, ok?"
"Sure!" Vatrisha said happily. The thoughts in her mind, however, were rather different.
Stay out of your way? Of course I wouldn't. Not after what you did to me last year, made me the ridicule of the class. I've managed to make your lives utter misery, and I'm not going to stop.
***
Later that night, a candle burned in the girls' room, covered with a special contraption of theirs, that they had dubbed 'candlecover'. It consisted of stiff wire, stiff cloth and rods of wood. Basically, it dimmed the light a little, so that the person reading or writing by the light would not affect the other girls' sleep. Denea, Gia and Alethia sat on the wide, cushioned window-ledge that served as a seat. Denea had her ever-present supply of pencils and her sketchbook out, while Alethia was polishing her dagger, which she had re-discovered in her drawer, albeit a bit dusty and very blunt. Gia was simply staring out of the window, lost in her thoughts. The rest of the girls were asleep, worn out, curled either in the three bunk beds or the makeshift pallets that the four new girls had to use until the new bunk beds were constructed. Unable to get rid of Vatrisha, she was also in the room.
Gia sighed, and Alethia and Denea looked up from their separate tasks.
"What's the matter?" Denea questioned.
Gia's brow creased. "Mortimer told me something disturbing. According to him, trouble might be springing up again."
"When was this?"
"I had gone down to pick up a stack of parchment from the gatehouse and he was on guardhouse duty. Curious, I asked him since when there had been guardhouse duty, and he replied that the guardhouse keepers and the Abbots and Abbesses suspected trouble was about, so they had decided to post a sentry every night."
The other two grew grave. Denea put her pencils down and Alethia's vigorous rubbing slowed down.
"Did he give any details?" Alethia asked.
"Mmhm. Scouts from the mountain have verified that all the enemies from the past are regrouping. This time, the wildcat Trunn has joined forces with Tsarmina, Badrang, Clogg and the Rapscallions."
"Any reason why?"
"Not really. But Brother Hubert suspects that this might have something to do with why the Redwallers from seasons gone are all returning, along with the various badgers and other inhabitants of Mossflower."
"Hm. That is rather intriguing...but back to the enemy - what is the status on them?" Denea asked in a low voice.
Gia shook her head. "Bad. Horribly so. Only those few are confirmed, because they have been seen flitting around the fringes of Mossflower nearer to Salamandastron. But there are a lot more that have not been identified.
"There will be a full-scale attack then," Alethia remarked, her voice flippant, but brow furrowed.
"Yes."
"Garn..." Denea cursed softly.
"We should help. We can always start by estimating how many there are on both sides..."
They got down to it, conversing quietly late into the night.
***
Morning found the trio asleep on the window ledge seat. Between them lay a scrap of parchment. On it, written in Denea's neat and tidy hand, with a quill she had scrounged from somewhere was a rough estimate of the enemy and all about them that Gia had gotten off Mortimer. Across a line drawn down the middle of the page were the figures for the defenders. Careful not to awaken them, Clarenova whisked away the parchment from under them. She swore colourfully as she sped-read the list.
Estel clamped her large hand over Clarenova's dirty mouth before she and the others dragged her (and the parchment) out by the braid. Once safely down in the orchard, they gathered round to read:
Trunn - Blue Hordes - 10 000
Warfang - Rapscallions - 1000
Tsarmina - Kotir soldiers - 500
Badrang -Marshank soldiers - 500
Clogg - searats - about 50 ships, 2 score half each; 2500
Marlfoxes - 12
Water rats under Marlfoxes - 150
Redwall - Redwallers: approximating 100 per book, 14 000
Salamandastron: -
Badgers - saying 1 Lady/Lord per 30 seasons, approximately 25, probably less
Hares - saying 160 under each Lord/Lady, at least 4000
TRC - 9 girls. [insert by Alethia: fast learners and very dangerous when roused, though. :D]
The six gathered at the orchard stared at the paper in horror. JK said, very quietly, "This is going to be extreme." Estel did not even try to stop Clarenova this time as she let out another stream of creative language.
***
The three in the bedroom heard Clarenova's clarion voice showing off the less desirable parts of her vocabulary, and they got up groggily.
"Gosh, what's got her going again? Waking up to a whole list of swear words isn't very nice unless I'm absolutely certain they're not directed at me..." Alethia's voice trailed off as she stared at the empty spot where the parchment had been. The other two caught on soon.
"Well," Gia said conversationally. "Are we going to cut off their heads, or just, you know, throttle them to death?"
"Oh, I think we'll just permanently lame them." Denea replied breezily.
"Cut it out, guys," Alethia sighed. "At least we're spared the pain of having to tell them."
The other two sobered. They had wondered the previous night and the early morning as to how they were going to break the news to them. JK, Estel and Clarenova dearly loved Redwall, and Raen, Jenn and Sapphi had adored what they had read. After a bit, they trooped down to the orchard to confront the rest.
A/N: I AM BACK!!! I'm so sorry guys...the last time I updated was... er... very long ago. Around half a year, as my friends would kindly remind me.
Next up! I don't know either.
Chapter 3
Brother Hubert had been in the middle of a text when there was a knocking on the gate. So engrossed in the text was he that he almost didn't hear it. But when knocking turns into heavy banging, even the thickest of rocks will have to respond. So Brother Hubert carefully set the text down, and head still spinning from the intriguing text, went to open the gate.
Consellariel stopped thudding the wooden gate with her paw when she suddenly found that it had gone slightly away from her. As Brother Hubert's head poked through, she barely concealed a smile, realising that he had probably been in the middle of an interesting text.
"Brother Hubert," she said gruffly, brows drawn together. "You took an awfully long time to open this gate. Why, my patrol and I must have had stood here for a longer time than we took marching here!"
So distracted was Brother Hubert by the disturbing thoughts of the text that he failed to realise that Lady Consellariel of Salamandastron, to give the badger her full title, was only joking.
"I'm sorry marm...I was too heavily absorbed in a text," Hubert spluttered.
Consellariel grinned. "I was only kidding, my friend. Now are you just going to let us in...?"
Barely a few minutes later, a gasp rang out in Cavern Hole, where the girls and the Abbots and Abbesses had stayed back after breakfast. Alethia buried her face in her hands.
"Damn," Clarenova said, very quietly, but still extremely vehemently. "Vatrisha's here."
Denea spun around. "What?!"
"Ooh, just LOOK at that smug look on her face!"
"I thought we managed to throw her off all those months ago?"
"Oh dear. Oh crap. Oh frell."
By this time, all the girls were either groaning, shaking their heads, or both. Clarenova was gently knocking her head on the table. Abbess Song gently asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Estel groaned, getting up to leave. "Guys, I think we better go. If you'll excuse us, Father Abbots, Mother Abbesses..."
The girls trooped out of Cavern Hole, avoiding Vatrisha like she was the plague. The Long Patrol took their places, and invited Vatrisha to sit with them.
"Well, it's good to see you again! We had heard that you were coming along, but we weren't sure that it would be this soon. So, where's Lady Consellariel? And who is this girl?"
Tare grinned. "This is Vatrisha. She says she knows the bally girls, wot! We met here on our way 'ere, so we brought her along for the journey. As for the Lady, well, she's waiting for her friend Alethia upstairs." He suddenly laughed. "You might want to break out the poultices and bandages by the time our Lady's done with Alethia, wot!"
As they sat there, Vatrisha slowly edged away. Now that she was at Redwall, there was no need to always stick to the Long Patrol. Besides, now would be the perfect time to approach the girls who had always tried to avoid her.
***
The girls trooped into their dormitory, shaking their heads in despair and muttering to themselves. Just then, a sixth sense told Alethia to look up. When she did, she suddenly started trying to wriggle her way back out of the dormitory.
"Er, 'scuse me, lemme out please..."
Consellariel got up from the chair in the corner.
"Why," she said pleasantly. "How nice to see you, girls. Especially you, Alethia."
Knowing that it was now impossible to get out, Alethia gave up and faced Consellariel, grinning weakly, Vatrisha forgotten.
"Uh, hi, Consellariel...nice weather, isn't it?"
The badger nodded in agreement.
"Oh yes, it is definitely much better than the last time you came. It was so misty that some of the water vapour got into the mountain. Do you know, it managed to rust the forge door shut? And there I was, thinking it was jammed." An evil gleam entered the Lady's eyes.
"Er, yeah..." Alethia fidgeted. In her mind's eye, she remembered personally jamming up the bolt and lock of the forge door before opening the portal so they could all return back to their own world.
The Lady leaned closer. "I don't suppose you might know how come I discovered a chunk of hardened molten iron in the lock and resin and pitch around the bolt and the hinges?"
Alethia looked sheepish. "Er heh heh heh...well, you DID purposely loosen the bolts of my swords just so I wouldn't go out to fight!"
Consellariel raised her eyebrows. "Well, that was for your own safety! Your shoulder was still stiff but yet you still insisted on going after Garven. I was merely concerned for you. Hmph!"
"Oh well. It is over. I'm sorry for jamming your forge door...but the temptation was too great to resist!"
They grinned at each other.
"I had better be going. If not, the Long Patrol might start taking apart the bricks of Redwall to sate their appetite."
The badger lumbered out of the door. The new girls looked over, confused about what they had just seen. Alethia sighed.
"Evidently, the person whose goldpiece that allows entrance to the other universe also gets an extra, random alter ego. Mine's Consellariel, and we understand each other really well."
"I see. That would explain that interesting exchange, then," The girls whirled around, only to see a smirking Vatrisha leaning against the doorframe. Her pathetic and helpless air that had let her be taken in by the Long Patrol was gone, and in its place was a smug effervescence.
"Oh, yes. That reminds me. What are you doing here?" Denea asked coldly.
"I followed you in. Of course, your puny brains forgot to close the portal. How could I let all you people have all the post-exam fun without me?"
"Why don't you just shut up and go somewhere else already? Your very presence makes me rash, you wretched thing. Stop following us. We can send you home, and you know we can, and will," Alethia growled
"Ah, but I don't want to. I just want to have some fun. Why can't you just let me join you in the name of fun?" Vatrisha whined.
"Fun? Fun? FUN? Don't talk to us about fun, Vatrisha. The last few times you said that, you ended up getting us into trouble," Estel butted in.
"Exactly," JK sighed. "But since you're here, and we can't exactly force you to go back, I don't suppose we can do anything about your presence. Just stay out of our way, ok?"
"Sure!" Vatrisha said happily. The thoughts in her mind, however, were rather different.
Stay out of your way? Of course I wouldn't. Not after what you did to me last year, made me the ridicule of the class. I've managed to make your lives utter misery, and I'm not going to stop.
***
Later that night, a candle burned in the girls' room, covered with a special contraption of theirs, that they had dubbed 'candlecover'. It consisted of stiff wire, stiff cloth and rods of wood. Basically, it dimmed the light a little, so that the person reading or writing by the light would not affect the other girls' sleep. Denea, Gia and Alethia sat on the wide, cushioned window-ledge that served as a seat. Denea had her ever-present supply of pencils and her sketchbook out, while Alethia was polishing her dagger, which she had re-discovered in her drawer, albeit a bit dusty and very blunt. Gia was simply staring out of the window, lost in her thoughts. The rest of the girls were asleep, worn out, curled either in the three bunk beds or the makeshift pallets that the four new girls had to use until the new bunk beds were constructed. Unable to get rid of Vatrisha, she was also in the room.
Gia sighed, and Alethia and Denea looked up from their separate tasks.
"What's the matter?" Denea questioned.
Gia's brow creased. "Mortimer told me something disturbing. According to him, trouble might be springing up again."
"When was this?"
"I had gone down to pick up a stack of parchment from the gatehouse and he was on guardhouse duty. Curious, I asked him since when there had been guardhouse duty, and he replied that the guardhouse keepers and the Abbots and Abbesses suspected trouble was about, so they had decided to post a sentry every night."
The other two grew grave. Denea put her pencils down and Alethia's vigorous rubbing slowed down.
"Did he give any details?" Alethia asked.
"Mmhm. Scouts from the mountain have verified that all the enemies from the past are regrouping. This time, the wildcat Trunn has joined forces with Tsarmina, Badrang, Clogg and the Rapscallions."
"Any reason why?"
"Not really. But Brother Hubert suspects that this might have something to do with why the Redwallers from seasons gone are all returning, along with the various badgers and other inhabitants of Mossflower."
"Hm. That is rather intriguing...but back to the enemy - what is the status on them?" Denea asked in a low voice.
Gia shook her head. "Bad. Horribly so. Only those few are confirmed, because they have been seen flitting around the fringes of Mossflower nearer to Salamandastron. But there are a lot more that have not been identified.
"There will be a full-scale attack then," Alethia remarked, her voice flippant, but brow furrowed.
"Yes."
"Garn..." Denea cursed softly.
"We should help. We can always start by estimating how many there are on both sides..."
They got down to it, conversing quietly late into the night.
***
Morning found the trio asleep on the window ledge seat. Between them lay a scrap of parchment. On it, written in Denea's neat and tidy hand, with a quill she had scrounged from somewhere was a rough estimate of the enemy and all about them that Gia had gotten off Mortimer. Across a line drawn down the middle of the page were the figures for the defenders. Careful not to awaken them, Clarenova whisked away the parchment from under them. She swore colourfully as she sped-read the list.
Estel clamped her large hand over Clarenova's dirty mouth before she and the others dragged her (and the parchment) out by the braid. Once safely down in the orchard, they gathered round to read:
Trunn - Blue Hordes - 10 000
Warfang - Rapscallions - 1000
Tsarmina - Kotir soldiers - 500
Badrang -Marshank soldiers - 500
Clogg - searats - about 50 ships, 2 score half each; 2500
Marlfoxes - 12
Water rats under Marlfoxes - 150
Redwall - Redwallers: approximating 100 per book, 14 000
Salamandastron: -
Badgers - saying 1 Lady/Lord per 30 seasons, approximately 25, probably less
Hares - saying 160 under each Lord/Lady, at least 4000
TRC - 9 girls. [insert by Alethia: fast learners and very dangerous when roused, though. :D]
The six gathered at the orchard stared at the paper in horror. JK said, very quietly, "This is going to be extreme." Estel did not even try to stop Clarenova this time as she let out another stream of creative language.
***
The three in the bedroom heard Clarenova's clarion voice showing off the less desirable parts of her vocabulary, and they got up groggily.
"Gosh, what's got her going again? Waking up to a whole list of swear words isn't very nice unless I'm absolutely certain they're not directed at me..." Alethia's voice trailed off as she stared at the empty spot where the parchment had been. The other two caught on soon.
"Well," Gia said conversationally. "Are we going to cut off their heads, or just, you know, throttle them to death?"
"Oh, I think we'll just permanently lame them." Denea replied breezily.
"Cut it out, guys," Alethia sighed. "At least we're spared the pain of having to tell them."
The other two sobered. They had wondered the previous night and the early morning as to how they were going to break the news to them. JK, Estel and Clarenova dearly loved Redwall, and Raen, Jenn and Sapphi had adored what they had read. After a bit, they trooped down to the orchard to confront the rest.
A/N: I AM BACK!!! I'm so sorry guys...the last time I updated was... er... very long ago. Around half a year, as my friends would kindly remind me.
Next up! I don't know either.