...That dark red robe. Jaden recognized it instantly as the Abbot's own robe. The Abbot's voice met him as two surprisingly strong, but shaky paws offered him help.
"Come up, my friend. Quickly now - make haste!"
Jaden turned over on his side and accepted the help. He propped his leg upright and lifted himself on his feet with the help of the grunting Abbot.
"Jaden, before you leave I must give you something. I-"
Jaden peered over towards the new, blazed trail in the grasses. He then turned to the Abbot and took in a breath. "Abbot Kereseth! Mossflower - it's all going to-"
The abbot placed a paw on his arm. "Yes, I know my friend. Mossflower's time is neigh. I knew this would be coming even long before you arrived."
Jaden was taken back at the Abbot's slightly bitter tone. "What do you mean?"
He shook his head. "There's no time to explain, Jaden. You must be leaving. - And before you do I must give you something." The Abbot turned and gestured to two things at his side - Jaden hadn't noticed that the Abbot had them. It was a rather oblong object wrapped in cloth, and a second also wrapped in cloth. The second was tubular in shape and also wrapped in the same color dark cloth. Both were carried in a sack the Abbot had dropped on the ground. The Abbot gave the sack to Jaden and nodded to him. Jaden took it reluctantly. "These here are the heart and soul of Mossflower. History... lies in your paws."
Jaden's eyes flashed with doubt. His brows furrowed deeply. "The Sword and the tapestry." Jaden sighed, looking off. "These are useless to me. They'll just be dead weight to me. But you! Abbot Kereseth, you can come with me! We can-"
"Jaden. You must realize... that you carry the future of Mossflower on your bodice. The future Jaden-"
Jaden cut the Abbot off short. "Kereseth, this is not the time! Hellgates! - we barely have any time before those imbasils come back looking for you. And me!" He reached out to grab the Abbot's wrist. "You're coming with me."
"They don't know I'm out here... I snuck out." The Abbot sighed and looked to the ground for a moment. "My time is of neigh, Jaden, as is the land of Mossflower. I've lived far too many years... Jaden. Far too many. My time is near, Jaden, I feel it in my old, creaky bones... You, though, have the training and diligence and will to carry on. Jaden - you are the key to Mossflower."
Jaden growled. Furious. His grip tightened on the Abbot's wrist. "Abbot Kereseth, don't you dare say that! Don't you ever say that! You are-" He grimaced his teeth and snapped, "I ain't no goodbeast... messenger or savior or whatever in this forsaken earth you think I am!"
"Oh but you are! You have the future of Mossflower in your hands. The strength, the honor, the loyalty. Jaden, you will suceed, Jaden, I know you can!"
Jaden wretched himself away from the Abbot. His bright emerald eyes were blazing with intensity. He gestured, and yelled with a ferocity deemed to his vermin species. "If I can't turn the minds of those blaggerts around, then how in this lifetime do you expect me to just... survive this night? Everyone is going to die! You yourself just... whatever, said it! But if you want to die with them, and rot in your grave knowing that-"
"Oh but Jaden, you proved to yourself that you have the power, the will to go forward! Did you not stand up to... Mossflower? Those woodlanders who hate you equally as you do their ideals and motives and prejudice? But they were not the enemy, oh no Jaden. The enemy there was not them this time."
Tears coursed down Jaden's black features. His expression was a twisted caracature of many emotions. "...Abbot! I-"
"Did you not defeat your enemy and conquor the challenge you set before yourself For once you did and you succeeded! ...And because of this... You no longer need me. I believe I have taught you all I can about life right there. The rest is up to experience, really... Beasts just consider me wise and learned - well most - because I just know, and that's simply because I've seen far more many seasons pass by than many here. My home is here - it has always been. Your home, though is not - you are of a wandering horde, a wandering family...
"...You have no home. Am I not right?"
Jaden nodded. He wiped away tears. - Very perplexed as to why this was happened to his face. Vermin never cried. Not even the strong woodlanders did. Suck it up, or die. Because, as any hunter knew, emotions clogged perception. "All my life... But-"
"But you embody the spirit of Redwall and Mossflower. This is where I have failed as the Abbot of Redwall, as the top... man to oversee Mossflower and not only the physical land but the lives of these people! And I have failed this task that I accepted, a plate that I accepted full well, knowing just how fruitless the hearts and minds of these people were becoming. But now my task is complete. You, Jaden, are my fullfillment... Now I can die in peace. ... I swore to myself one night I remember, sitting alone on a dark many many seasons ago, cold winter night in the Gatehouse when Pheonix was trudging off in the Kitchens: that if I cannot turn all of these woodlander fools, then I vow to instill teaching into one vermin...
"Now you must continue on, my friend."
The Abbot's voice trailed off. He looked away, also having tears course from his narrow eyelids. Jaden stood there, not knowing what to do. He looked away - couldn't help it, couldn't help see the Abbot in this condition. The Abbot was the closest to a father and a friend he had ever known. And here he was, the fulfillment of the Abbot. Jaden had always felt guilty about not knowing how to thank the Abbot, not knowing how to pay back his kindly services and just being there for him. His horde life must have drilled that culturative instinct into him - you trade goods, and if you didn't, you get killed. Because that would be then stealing.
How true that is to this much more real life! Jaden thought, looking away again. He reached out to merely touch the Abbot's arm, but pulled back. He looked down at the sack of the Sword of Martin and the tapestry. The strings of the bag felt tight and rigid in his palm. I have felt guilty for stealing the Abbot's life away... hours where he could spend it somewhere else. Fishing... tending dibbuns... Ahh, those many moonless nights where Redwallers would complain to him about him not spending enough time with his people, them, in their narrow-minded views, thinking that an Abbot was all they need to solve all their problems. Interracial and not...
Jaden sighed. How narrow minded I was too - Now he may rest in peace.
But - Jaden still felt compelled. Some inkling of a guilt tugged at his self. "Kereseth. I... I just. I don't know how to thank you for..."
The Abbot brought the taller fox closer and embraced him. Jaden did not wretch back as before - this was the least he could do, he felt, for the Abbot. The old Abbot. "My friend, Jaden, my son. ... Oh how you do not even grasp how much of a thanks your existance. If only there were more vermin to bring to some... peace... as yourself! That has been my true dream, but these Redwallers do not understand it. I-"
The figure of a squirrel suddenly bound out from behind a stump nearby. He held up a dirk - small, but deadly sharp looking. "- Are an old, traitoring fool!"
The squirrel - that face, that tone of voice, the limping form he immedietly recognized as the one he had met on the road. But the voice had changed some. It was as if the squirrel had been basked over hot coals for seasons - angry and raspy, full of hatred and - from the limp - pain. The dirk was held in a striking position and he well sure looked ready to strike as fast as his crippled frame could carry him. He suddenly kicked up pace, though, and leaped forward with the blade outstretched...
The Abbot muttered the words under his breath: "Algornian..."
Algornian. The name quickly brought memory back to Jaden's stressed mind - a radical revolutionary of Mossflower and Redwall. Tried to get the Abbey dwellers to pick up weapons and fight before the Hellsman came. He was a traitor to his own kind just as much as he, Jaden, was - except, Jaden didn't go off killing his own kind for the opposite of consideration for other species.
- The Mossflowers knew the Abbot's tendencies! But Jaden didn't have time to react...
This happened in a quick matter of seconds. The stump was closer than Jaden had unconsciously suspected. Before he knew it, he was on the ground with his belongings sprawled on the grass. He looked up to see the squirrel standing over the fallen form of the Abbot - blood dripping from the dirk. Jaden propped himself up on his elbows, and looked over to see the throat of the Abbot deeply slitted.
A surmounting rage overtook the tod in expressive ferocity. As if his body had taken a mind of its own, he leapt up onto his feet, quickly withdrew a hidden, poisoned dagger he kept hidden in a sheath on the inside of his thigh - in case of emergencies, the only weapon he had taken into the Abbey - and threw the dagger as hard as his vermin frame could bear at the cursed squirrel. The narrow dagger penetrated deep into the belly of the squirrel, who promptly fell to the ground in surprise.
"You are the fool!"
Jaden leapt over and slammed his footpaw down on the wrist of the squirrel holding the dirk. It let go instantly. Jaden moved his arm over his wrist and the other paw onto the neck of the beast. He clamped down tight.
"Nightshade, wolfsbane, mushroom - pick your poison, its all in your blood now, you killer of my Abbot!"
The squirrel's expression suddenly went vivid in a shock of horror and surprise. Jaden grimaced in response to the expression, and promptly picked up and tossed the squirrel by the neck and arm. It tumbled, and struggled to get up but fell short. The squirrel's eyes glazed over as he opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out - the squirrel convulsed violently several times, and rolled over, limp.
Jaden growled and yelled at the top of his lungs. After he had commited the air residing in his lungs, he looked over the Abbot, and to his belongings. He took the sword and strapped it across his back, tucking the tapestry into the strap. He looked over at his scattered bows and arrows, and decided to leave them there, passing them over for his bag of belongings, carry the after effects of shock and adreneline. It was placed over the sword and the tapestry and he trudged off into the mid-morning day. He didn't even process what happened until he turned away and started walking swiftly.
The Abbot is dead. Those four words tolled in his head like the brassy bell of the Abbey. The Abbot is dead... History and years gone. Mossflower...
- But what did he mean by those words? The tod stopped abruptly and took a slow, painful look back. Both the squirrel and the Abbot lay where they had fallen, Abbot belly up, the squirrel back up in a twisted demeanor.Memory flashed into him, and what more, a quick recollection of his condescending past his normal cynical attitude. It filled him with a heavy bitterness, causing him to turn swiftly and trudge on.
What a stupid fool I am! I am the fool! A fool for even -
The Abbot's words: "...existance." Existing. A fool for even existing. He felt a quick surge of guilt, in the mix of his heart-wrenching bitterness, for even thinking half that sentence. How dare I think such things... such a vermin I am in leu of death.
- Death. That is what will come over this land, once for all. Hah - I guess I won't have to deal with the Abbey dwellers anymore.
The Abbot's kindly words echoed in his mind again: "You have the future of Mossflower in your hands." He rememberd that he had been holding the Sword and the tapestry when the Abbot said that. The future in my hands. His mind quieted for a bit as he toyed with that phrase. The future for that Sword is dirt. The wood on the handle is all rotten off, and the red pommel went missing seasons ago, and it hasn't been oiled in forever - less unsheathed in a century. In all that heat and weather this climate tends to have, I bet its rusty, and useless. Besides - even if it could be used it is a bit big for my liking. He recalled times when he tried out swords before, but found them too clumsy and bulky. He always liked the thin, light feel of an arrow shaft in his hand, and the taught edge of the bow in the other. And the tapestry. That's just a memory. Of another... dead beast.
-Erg. Did I really say all that and mean it? At Redwall... That isn't me. My place is to be quiet and keep my ideals and concepts to myself. If I didn't, then I would just add to the irritating, obnoxious noise those Redwallers - had placed - out.
Jaden instantly was overcome with suspicion. He recalled the tone behind the words of the Abbot throughout the time. The Abbot was hiding something from him, he felt - no, it wasn't the tapestry or the sword. The Abbot already told him that. ...Jaden always knew when the Abbot was hiding something of value or importance, especially when in conversations like that. Except for the fact that Jaden had never gotten emotional like that. Everyone around him always toughened it up. In a culture where personal fears and dreams were shunned and pushed under, emotions were only valued if you could get some nice-looking vixen to marry you or you kill more than your horde "friend". Jaden frowned at the thought to let his guard down - but his complexion softened. Just this time. For the Abbot.
But this Sword... why would the Abbot give it to me? "You carry the future on your body." Well - now I am. If you call rust and a crappy tapestry future. He quickly shoved away the thought on verge of guilt.
What am I doing? Why am I thinking this? He sighed. Those were the last words of the Abbot.
Jaden had shifted off the trail he was following. If and when Mossflower comes to a dead end, one beast may suggest to comb south and west instead of going north north-west. Couldn't take the risk. Those beasts have always been accustomed to traveling the way most normal, everyday beasts do - by common road. Common road meant you knew where you going, and how long it was going to take. Jaden took this to mind figuratively, for fact that he wasn't walking on it. He did indeed not know what he would do after he found a boat. Where... he could find a boat, quickly. If he traveled on foot it would take a day or two to get to it. If he could remember where the nearest otter holt or trading post was, he could certainly snag a boat.
The grasslands faded abruptly on the shoreline of the sister stream to the Great South Stream. Bohladaira- Jaden recalled, in the ancient language of the black foxes. His parents were of an extinct tribe that once flourished in the Northlands. Foxes of the Night they were called. But that was the past. Jaden felt no correlation to it, and thus could care less for it. But those words his mother had taught him stuck with him - Bohladaira, Mother of the West, Providor of the Western Mountains. Bolhadaira ran from the Big Island Lake. Big Island was south and east of the mountains, above sea level, once called Bohladaahg, Father of the West. Its name had faded with time, as his Mother couldn't even recall the Fox name for it when he asked about that lake. His mother showed him the names for everything else - the land including the Abbey it once inhabited, Merebeau Sau Fav'Alious - Maker of the Keys. And the Northlands? Nornigheles. Land of the Foxes of the Night of the Northlands, to be precise. Jaden recalled each one very quickly as his mother instilled these into her son well. He spent every day learning new history - his mother had several black-labeled books, books of history. History was considered futile in the regime of the Northern Hellsman, as the King's eyes were always set on the future. To pause one moment to look back? That would be like a young man looking away for a moment from the heat of battle, to be met with lance to his death. That's how the King equated it, and he did it well.
Jaden had to agree with the King - the past was, well, past. Those names his mother taught him meant nothing to him, those oral legends he memorized - the stories, poems, ballads; songs of death, sadness, war, marriage, celebration, elation... And the meanings and legends behind each of those names on the maps that his mother taught him, and the names of the various warriors he learned about as a child - all was past. Each meaning the words had meant nothing to him, because, simply, this Encarheles he knew would be up in flames. That is, world. Not to mention he never had use for it except in reminiscing.
Silly pasttimes.
The Bohladaira, correctly named since it generally had many names instead of one well-known accepted name, was rather smaller than Jaden remembered. A lot more smaller - it was far too shallow for a large boat - not that Jaden alone could pilot something larger than a small yacht. His desire for the sea has been large, yes, but his skills are lacking. But he does know the basics - a few knots his once tent-mate rat-pirate Halbag taught him, and the names of the sides of the boat. Halbag even took him out on the seas a few times - it became a normal occourance until he was shot dead by a woodlander's arrow. His boat was chopped up and used for fire. No grave.
Jaden quickly remembered exactly where he was - the more he walked along the banks of the clear Bohladaira, the more he remembered. The otter tribe trading post of Potsly. Mossflower was in fact populated enough for trading posts, but still had its pockets of population and loners. Those who lived out in the woods were far and few between, but very self-sustaining. Those who lived in population thrived on community, assisting each other - whether they viewed it that way or not - in living. There were things he admired about both.
"Oi! S'squirrel aye see down thar? Maties - wot's it?"
The tone of the voice conveyed who it was: Captain Gregshaw Mudclaw of the Potsly Mudclaw. Jaden fought off the urge to simply retreat - he had, indeed, become fast friends with the friendly Gregshaw, and on many occasions was welcomed into the otter holt when left abandoned, which happened often, by those incandescent types in Mossflower.
A second voice. "Oi! S'not a squirrel, ye blight - that's Jaden!"
Jaden grunted. He was baited. He couldn't leave now. He offered an impatient wave, but quickly held himself in check. Less he make the crew and captain suspicious for his odd manner, and have to explain everything. Which he had in mind to do. Besides the Abbot, they were the only peoples he trusted. Outside of knowing what other Mossflowers would do and how they would act.
"Ahoy there! Is that the sound of the boat-scrubbing, riverdog pirating, hotroot slurping captain and crew of the Potsly?"
A few hoots and cajoling greeeted Jaden as he rounded the bend of the small river. Grasses had obstructed his view to the giant oak tree surmounting the holt and the pier, but now it all came into view. A large pier, dashed with otters of different types, Jaden reasoned from the way they walked and mingled, jutted from the earthy hill the large oak grew out of. The entrance to the holt itself was in the hill as well. The pier opened up from the entrance.
A pug-faced sea otter looked up from his fishing line and grinned. "Ahoy! S'me messmate Jaden, laddies! Did ye bring a few vixens fer us ta meet, ye lady-lover you?"
Jaden offered a chuckle; dry, thought, and forced. The Captain emerged from the holt with his burly arms crossed. The beast was indeed a sea otter - tall, muscular, with a stone-hardened face weathered from seasons on the open sea. He wore the same exact vest, pants, and boots Jaden remembered him in.
"Jaden, me lovvie, how ye been? I'ven't heard from yeself in ages! Where ye been?"
Jaden cleared his throat to help mask his unease. He hopped up onto the pier from the bank as best as he could with his load, forcing a smile. There was some edge in the Captain's voice that was very abnormal. "I've been out and about, here and there. Doing my best to avert the gaze of the King's eyes." And he added after a quick second, "At least for a little while."
The sea otter smiled. His wise eyes observed the black tod. "So's said, matey. A group 'o yellin' Redwallers an' Mossflowerians came up 'o these parts a little while ago fer ye preceedin' entry, don't y'know. An' the funny thing is they ne'r come down here! Too busy with their idle games and parties…" The Captain gestured for Jaden as he turned to go inside the holt. "Come with me laddie. We've got some catchin' up ta do!"
Jaden looked at the other otters suspiciously. Some greeted him, slapped his shoulder - about knocked him into the clear waters of the dock as he stood there - but none betrayed the fine choice of words the captain had, and also in combination with, his whole demeanor. Jaden followed the otter quickly inside.
The otter holt was as he remembered as well: rather on the small side, but cozy. The smell of soups and other foodstuffs in different stages of preparation wafted in from the kitchens, and a few voices stopped momentarily as he passed different rooms. The entrance entered into a circular intersection of a few rooms and hallways. Gregshaw gestured, and walked down one. Jaden followed once again.