Author's Note: Please don't mind the terrible harespeech and if this chapter has gone down in quality then it might be contributed to the recent cold I've developed.

Chapter 5

They emerged from the mountain pass just as the sun was peaking on the horizon behind them. Red light striated the sky above them with orange and yellow hues intercrossing each other against the flat black background of the night sky. Adrin and McKaid viewed the expanse of scrub and sand that lay between them and the mountain with a grim expression.

Two days walking in the mountain pass had worn their once green robes into fraying cloths. A fine layer of dust disturbed by their paws and blown by the wind had settled on them, making them appear as if they had aged forty seaons. Despite their ragged condition both stared at the mountain with a fierce ambition burning in their eyes. It was the final leg of the journey.

"We best get going, Adrin," McKaid's voice broke into her thoughts as she stared at her objective which lie so close, "if we want to make it there before noontide."

She didn't respond, but showed her acknowledgement by stepping forward and down on the path that now wound like a snake through the jagged rocks of the hillside. McKaid followed, every once in a while glancing up at the dead volcano rearing over them even from this distance. Wreathed in fog in the still heavy night in the west, its ghostly figure and outwardly cold appearance sent a shiver down his spine, and then he tried to push the feeling out of his mind.

At the foot of the mountains on the other side the path had started out with one solid side and a sharp drop-off. Before the sun had gotten too low they'd stopped for fear of slipping over the edge into the rushing water. As they continued, though, the stream rushed under the mountain and the path bent into the other side of mountain so there was no longer a danger of falling.

As safe as the path had become, though, they realized that the stream running along side it was what had kept the path relatively cool and bearable to walk. Now, with two mountains on either side of them the heat had nowhere to go, and was absorbed into the rock, heating it to unbearable temperatures.

Sweating and barely able to breathe, they'd tortured themselves the entire way and finally ended up on the other side. But as the pair looked across the vast scrubland that separated the mountains from Salamandastron, McKaid couldn't see how different it was from the rocks.

Further proof was provided from their shoes as they stepped onto the baking sand; they'd traded their sandals in for thicker slippers, but since they had walked on hard rock for two straight days they had worn the soles almost smooth, and it provided little protection from the bare rock. Namely the heat soaked up through the fabric. Now, both hissed as they placed a paw onto the sand and felt the grains rub up against their calloused paws and burn their skin.

As noontime approached McKaid groaned when he realized he was wrong about reaching the mountain by lunch time. It seemed to not have gotten any closer and though the sun had been down at the time he could tell the light had played tricks on his eyes regardless. They had at least another half a days march ahead of them.

Adrin paid this no heed, though, as she continued marching with her head bent against the wind, which occasionally picked up and stirred sand into dust devils. Closing her eyes she continued onward in a zombie-like state, her feet only instinctively moved as she shuffled around bushes using some innate sense to guide where they went.

Noon came and passed before McKaid finally said, "Adrin? Adrin! We should stop and take a bite before we go any further. You look dead on your feet." The mousemaid made no reply to this and merely let her pack drop to the ground with a thunk! Dropping his backpack also he rummaged for a slightly stale scone and sipped the water still left in his second canteen. They would need to fill up somewhere soon.

Despite his apparent nonchalance McKaid could feel a sense of unease overtake him no matter how much he tried to fight it back. Just looking at her eat mechanically with her eyes glazed over in thought sent a pang of sadness into his stomach, and destroyed his appetite. Adrin nibbled conservatively on her own strawberry scone, seeming not to taste it at all and soon put it back into her pack.

She doesn't even know the situation and it's already eating her up, McKaid thought as she got up from the ground, brushing her forever dirty robes and hoisted her pack once more. His dear friend was all ready to get back onto their projected path.

"Wait, Adrin, sit down a little longer and rest," he wisely advised as she glanced down at him with hollowed eyes. He knew she hadn't been sleeping well from the tossing and turning he'd felt next to him at different times of the night with his paw on his sword.

"I'd rather not, McKaid. I want to get to Salamandastron as soon as I can," she replied with a sigh and cast a wistful glance in the direction of the towering shape, which shimmered as though it were just a tasteful illusion.

"No, Adrin, you can't do this to yourself," the aspiring young warrior suddenly said. As a youngster grouping up alongside Adrin, he'd been compared to her as much more outgoing and less sensible, but suddenly it was as if he'd grown into the age he was. Narrowing his eyes slightly, he held his stance against her, "You have to stop thinking about what you're going to do. I know you will do the right thing when you get there. Don't ever doubt that! And though I know it's good to go in with a plan you're overdoing it. Knock it out of your head and get sleep, you can afford an hour's nap with the way we've been pushing ourselves."

Adrin hesitated, her stubborn nature arising as she opened her mouth to argue his statements, but then he reached up, and with strength born of frustration, he pulled her down next to him. It took her a moment to regain her surroundings then she smiled at McKaid. "Thanks," she said, admitting defeat, "Wake me up in about an hour's time then." With that she flopped back into the sand without even removing her sleeping roll and closed her eyes. It took only a few minutes for him to believe she really had dropped into a natural sleep with her breath rising evenly in her chest.

He sighed as he watched her sleep, wishing he could do the same, and instead studied her face. It was thinner from the strong pace they'd set at the beginning and persisted through even as they baked under the sun. Her stubbornness and determination were a few qualities he admired in her that he didn't see in any of the other females at Redwall, or at least not as strongly as he saw in her. He knew that no matter the setbacks or obstacles set before her, Adrin would persist and prevail, as strongly as perhaps Martin the Warrior would've.

Martin. The name sent a shiver differ down his spine as he took the sword off his back and studied the long blade still hidden by its sheath, hiding its deadly beauty. He'd read enough of the old stories and heard enough about them to wonder what the Abbot was referring to when he gave the sword to him. Every single adventure that had happened with one Redwaller carrying the sword had had a fight in it somewhere, and now that Adrin and him had largely been left alone he wondered if somehow there was a showdown still to come.

And McKaid was sure that no matter her weaponless status Adrin would still be inclined to fight. For which side, he wasn't entirely sure as it all depended who was on her side, and they'd yet to find out what the Salamandastron hares and badger lord were thinking.

McKaid suddenly sat bolt upright, staring around in alarm as he levered himself up on his arms. He'd fallen asleep in the middle of his musings and as he looked up at the sun he could tell a good two hours had passed since Adrin had fallen asleep. Oh no, we should've been back on the road an hour ago, the aspiring warrior thought and mentally cursed his inability to stay awake. What kind of a warrior am I if I can't awake during watch?

He then reached over next to him to wake Adrin and was surprised to see she'd somehow snuggled up right next to him in his sleep without even knowing. McKaid paused with his paw hovering over her shoulder as he contemplated awaking her once again as she smiled peacefully at him in her sleep. Finally he managed to place the paw on her shoulder and gently shook her, crooning gently, "Wake up, Adrin. We need to be going."

Adrin's eyes snapped open just as quickly as his head, but she got up with considerably more grace, pawing the sleep from her eyes as she too glanced up at the sun. She frowned when she noticed it way past its noon zenith then raised her eyebrows at McKaid as though she waited for an explanation.

McKaid grinned back sheepishly, "I accidentally fell asleep myself."

"Ah, that's alright I guess. I was hoping you didn't just let me sleep because you thought I needed it. Thanks for suggesting it, though, it was refreshing," Adrin said more sweetly than she had been since they met Sanbar and shook her head of the last vestiges of sleep. Then she energetically hopped to her paws and snatched her pack and said, "Well, come on. The day's a-wasting."

Adrin started off before McKaid had even gotten to his footpaws and he ended up staggering after her, struggling to get his pack on, match her fast pace, and suppress the chuckles threatening to erupt from him. "Glad to see you're back to your old self, Adrin," he called after her back as he finally got his backpack onto his shoulders and skipped up to catch her. "I was a little worried before I made you get to sleep."

She turned back to him to smile brightly and said, "Yes, your advice to sleep was good. Ah, I feel great. And what you said about forgetting my objective… That's helped a lot, too. Thanks."

"I'm glad my words could be of some service to you," he replied and shook his head in amazement as she continued to take long sweeping strides. Nothing ever seemed to deter her for long.

As the sun slowly sunk into the western sky McKaid began to grow increasingly edgy and even Adrin glanced nervously up at the sky. It had been completely devoid of anything the entire day, but as they took closer and closer steps toward the mountain and the rising tide seagulls suddenly materialized out of nowhere and began circling the vast reaches above them, cawing loudly. At first they'd been unnoticeable, silent, but then their wide shadows had drifted across Adrin and McKaid's field of vision, startling them to look up and see just a couple of them floating overhead.

Neither of them had ever seen a bird bigger than a sparra and these seagulls seemed nearly four times their size as they flapped their wings occasionally as opposed to the sparrow's constant fluttering. McKaid had been curious at these large birds which could somehow float in the air despite their size, but the feeling was only mild and the birds few.

But now, he raised his head up with a contorted, ugly expression on his face which seemed to be a mixture of disgust and hate. These birds made him uneasy all over and as they continued to get increasingly lower he felt his legs tensing to run. He knew, that after making it more than three quarters of the way to the badger mountain they'd finally get assaulted and not by any vermin hoping to loot their corpses.

It happened. There was hardly a warning as suddenly a bird's shadow seemed to grow alarmingly wide around him and he dived to the side, already rolling to his feet and running. He reached back for Martin's sword and shouted aloud to Adrin, "Run to the mountain, Adrin, run!"

His breath nearly caught in his throat when the horrible screech from the bird sounded frighteningly close next to him after it came up with an empty beak. It glared at him and, instead of taking to the air, it flapped its wings to hop after him. Martin's sword flashed in the dying remnants of the sunlight—having drawn it for the first time he still grasped it surely—and he followed the birds movements, steadily backing up the entire time.

The orange-eyed creature jabbed its beak aggressively at him only to receive the blunt side of the blade smacking its beak with all the strength McKaid had. It cawed horribly and jumped back once more, giving McKaid room to look around. More seagulls were landing as they watched his fight with one of their comrades and he noticed that Adrin was slowly and surely getting caught in a circle herself as she deftly, but vainly dodged the snapping beaks and birds working to fly in her way.

McKaid panting had turned into ragged breaths of rage as he watched his best friend struggle to try and get out of her situation alive. He'd promised he'd be there to protect her and he wasn't! He was caught in another trap! The young mouse's mind suddenly turned to desperate motives as he picked up his speed and began sprinting around the circle trying to break through, swinging his sword at offending birds only to have it clack harmlessly against their beaks.

No, no, no! I can get out of this. I have Martin's sword and the Abbot wouldn't have entrusted me with it if I wasn't incapable of using it. To your honor, Martin, McKaid thought disjointedly before he suddenly called aloud into the night, his words causing a few of the birds to take off into the evening sky, "Redwall! Redwall!" The blade fell with deadly purpose on the neck of the first bird that had plunged after him, using the stunning affect his shouts seemed to have to kill it.

The blood pounded and his eyes clouded as he savagely dealt death and hideous injuries to the creatures hoping to get an easy meal off of him and Adrin. With two birds dead to his wrath he turned and sprinted after Adrin, who was doing her best to dodge and swing her pack formidably. "Redwall," McKaid shouted with zeal, swinging the blade to scatter the birds. He nearly stopped when he heard an answering cry.

"Eulalia, eulalia! Blood and vinegar," the battle cries sounded from several different voices and suddenly in his and Adrin's midst were three hares slinging stones and jabbing with their dirks. The remaining seagulls took to the sky without hesitation when they had sighted them, leaving in their wake several bodies of their allies.

Breathing heavily McKaid took a cloth in his pack and wiped the blood from the blade, making it appear as clean and beautiful as ever. When he saw his handkerchief stained the dark red splotches of blood though, he shivered and grew pale, but then he seemed to pull himself together and strung the cloth onto his belt. He didn't feel like putting something that was now bloodied back into his pack where his food was. Trying to keep his mind off the killing he'd just done, he turned his eyes onto the hares and said, "Thank you, friends, for showing up when you did. I don't know if I could've held them off for much longer."

"Blinkin' blighters, wot wot! You did a bally good job out there, chap. I would've expected you could've taken 'em all out without our help. A true warrior, indeed," the leader of the trio began, bowing with a leg. "M'name's Colonel Crenshaw. These two fellows here would be my cadets Marbury and Trenton." McKaid noticed, even in the dying light, that all of them appeared to be the same dirt brown color with a white chest and mouth dressed in sandy tunics that would better camouflage them against the landscape.

"Good day to you, colonel and cadets," Adrin said after having finally found her way to the group since she'd sensibly run past the seagulls once Martin's blade had been flying. "I am Adrin and this is my companion McKaid. We're envoys sent from Redwall."

The hares black eyes widened in surprise when he heard the name and said, "Redwall, wot? I've heard o' the place. 'Sposed to have the best bally food ever; even better than Salamandastron's. But wot are you two doing out here? This isn't exactly a safe place. There're vermin hereabouts. And 'envoys' you say? Not warriors?"

McKaid saw Adrin's spine stiffen at the comment where both could hear a distinctive undertone of disdain. But she appeared no less disturbed by it and smiled warmly, "Yes, sir, I've been sent here on a mission of my own. I would like to speak to the badger lord here if you don't mind. And as quickly as possible."

Colonel Crenshew regarded the mousemaid with an unreadable expression, and merely twitched his nose before he said, "Well, I can't say he'll be able to lend ya much bally time to hear your case. We've practically got a horde crawling up our walls. He can't very well talk and fight now can he, wot wot?"

Adrin gasped in alarm and asked urgently, "Are they here then? Why aren't you there defending them if they are?"

"Well… They aren't here yet, wot," Crenshaw managed to say bobbing up and down as though he were impatient to get back to the mountain, or on his rounds, "But Lord Broadstripe sighted them marching the south coast this morn. I imagine they aren't very bally far away."

"Then lets get back before they cut us off from the mountain," McKaid butted in and started off in the direction of the mountain. He'd always heard that hares were supposed to be outgoing, amazing warriors who seemed laidback about everything, but the manner in which this colonel treated Adrin impatiently told McKaid that he was either stressed, or annoyed at the fact Redwall hadn't sent any backup their way. Whatever it was he was glad he finally directed them toward that notion.

"Right! Attention, cadets! Steady on their, chaps, and march," he began, but he broke into a more of a loping gallop rather than a rigid stride. It was much faster than the pace the pair of mice had set that morning, but both managed to keep up after their adrenaline pumping experience with the seagulls.

As McKaid pumped his legs beneath him and worked to keep up he glanced toward the south of the mountain and felt his breath catch in his throat. He could see the files walking in stiff formation, much as Salamandastron's Long Patrol would do, with their spears pointed upward to the sky. It still had to be a good mile away, but it was growing in their view with every stride.

I sure hope Adrin knows what she's going to do, McKaid thought when he turned his eyes to stare at the back of her head. That isn't a force to be easily reckoned with. And he hoped the badger would listen to Adrin's request. He hoped for so much and yet they felt empty.