LEGACY OF SHADOWS
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CHAPTER SIX: TRAVELLING
Some time had passed since Fencher's death. The wildcat and the vixen were taking their time, moving slowly north towards the far distant mountains, and had passed the infamous Redwall Abbey on their travels, taking care to give it a wide berth. The woodlanders hadn't bothered about two lone vermin, even if one of them was a wildcat, although the pair had been observed until they had moved on far enough to pose no threat.
They had met a few other roving vermin, but since Kayto was almost an adult now and a very imposing figure nearly as large as a full-grown male badger they hadn't encountered any attempts at resistance. Unfortunately, neither had they found any more information. 'North' wasn't much help really – it covered a lot of land.
The few woodlanders they met on the road fled and hid at first sight of the wildcat. Kayto didn't seem to notice; he had been sinking into himself lately and had become very withdrawn. Black Tip had been watching her foster son carefully and was beginning to worry about him, but her attempts to talk to him about it had been met with silence.
It all came to a head a while after they had left the last Redwall scout behind. The two vermin were marching in silence when Kayto said suddenly, "I'm scared."
The vixen looked at him. "Of what?" she asked quietly.
He stared straight ahead of him. "That I'm going to lose, and then I'm going to die. How can I beat someone like Lisk? He's larger, stronger and more experienced than I am."
She watched him silently for a while as he strode onwards, staring fixedly into the distance, fully realising for the first time how much pressure she had put on him to do this. Finally she speeded up and put a paw on his shoulder. "Lisk is getting older, and he has not faced a serious challenger in many long seasons. He will be complacent and will not expect a threat. Besides, he does not know you are alive; surprise counts for a lot."
He looked at her as she continued, "I won't lie to you. It won't be easy to beat him. As you say, he is more experienced, but with skill and care and luck you can win."
Slightly reassured, Kayto nodded briefly, but he knew just how slim his chances were. It never crossed his mind to turn back; he had been raised knowing he would have to fight someone eventually, and after everything he had heard he knew Lisk needed to be stopped. No, he would fight, but whether he would live was another matter.
So they travelled onwards, always moving north. Every evening Kayto trained, knowing his life could depend on it. A brief and ugly battle with a stoat who had caught them by surprise meant that at last the young wildcat had a sword, and he spent a long time attempting to master the new weapon – the one art Black Tip could not teach him, for she had never learned.
Little of note happened during the long trek, save that winter came upon them in earnest; attempting to cross a flat plain towards the distant mountains resulted in a blizzard sweeping across them. Huddled together for warmth beneath a hasty shelter of cloaks propped on sticks, the two watched the swirling white and shivered and tried to stay alive.
Kayto, shivering in the dark space beneath their crude and ineffectual shelter, glanced sideways at the older vixen. Black Tip's eyes were closed, and she wasn't shivering despite being icy cold to the touch. Softly, then with growing anxiety, he called her name until he was rewarded with a gleam from under heavy lids as she opened one eye.
"What's wrong?" he asked worriedly.
"C'ld…" she muttered, eyes drifting closed again. Kayto looked out at the swirling blizzard and shivered, knowing he had no choice but to go out into the storm. They needed better shelter than this, somewhere out of the wind and snow to light a fire, or the old vixen wasn't going to last the night. She couldn't move; he would have to go alone, and hope he made it back in time.
Realising there was no point in waiting, he slithered reluctantly out into the blizzard. Standing shivering in the snow, he pulled off his cloak and shed anything he didn't need, keeping only his thick dark green tunic; piling his possessions around the semi-conscious fox to try and keep her warm, he turned, stared into the whirling whiteness for a moment, shrugged, picked a direction at random and set out.
Before ten minutes had passed he was so cold he couldn't feel his paws or tail. The wind stripped all the warmth from his body, even with his thick striped fur fluffed out. Snowflakes settled in his fur and he could barely see. All in all, Kayto was not a happy cat as he struggled through the snow. Still, there was some sort of dark shape up ahead, indistinctly looming through the storm. Jumping forward awkwardly, the wildcat gave up and went to all four paws, bounding forward towards the shadowy mass.
It turned out to be a huge and inexplicable piece of drystone wall. Kayto stared at it for a while. There didn't seem to be a reason for it, or a beginning, or an end. Just a length of masonry that formed a rough corner. Shrugging, he remembered the urgency of this expedition and turned around, leaping back along his trail as fast as he could run in belly-deep snow before his pawprints filled and vanished.
By sheer luck he made it back to where their crude shelter was all but buried in the snow. Shivering, fangs chattering uncontrollably and so cold it hurt, Kayto clawed frantically at the snow until he uncovered Black Tip. To his relief, she was still breathing, albeit barely. Carefully folding his cloak about their few possessions, he clenched his teeth about the crude bundle thus formed and stood up, picking up the vixen in his paws and holding her against his chest. He was momentarily surprised in a distant way just how easy it was to lift her, but he was too cold to give it much thought now as he turned and plodded back into the teeth of the blizzard.
The trail left by his body forcing through the snow had formed a shallow ditch of sorts, so he didn't get lost, and soon reached the pointless wall again. Moving into the rough corner formed by the damp stone, he dug away some of the snow to create a hollow and erected his cloak across it for a roof, holding it in place by pinning the edges down with his daggers. Wrapping Black Tip in the blanket she had used for a cloak, he laid her beneath the shelter out of the wind and stared out into the whiteness again. It wasn't over. They needed a fire. That meant he had to find wood, and then something dry enough to burn. Sighing, he trudged back into the blistering cold wind that howled more fiercely than ever, and scrabbled under the burning cold snow with searching paws.