Writer's Note: Thanks again for the reviews and reading this. The conclusion shall be coming soon, as in, the next few days. All thoughts and suggestions on tale are welcome. Forgive me for some of my dialogues...
• • •
"Before you stands a traitor, a despicable specimen of the lowest sort of vermin. But, since I am a fair beast, I think it would be best to let this creature answer to his crimes."
Nobeast in the horde had ever heard Velaren give anybeast the chance to say anything before their maw was separated from their face. There was a collective consensus that this would prove to be an impressive, if bloody, interrogation.
Mark didn't know what to say...
• • •
"Where do I start?"
"Missy, we lost three of our troop to those vermin because you went gallivanting off into the woods like a candied chestnut high Dibbun," Skipper growled.
"But oi loik candied chestnuters."
"Rerick, no interrupting meetings in Cavern Hole. Go grab a scone and run outside," Badgermother Tulip said to the molebabe as she lifted him from under the table and carried him out. Elizabeth faintly smiled, wishing that she could return to the bliss experienced in Redwall, that she wasn't in this situation now, under the biting tone of the fierce otter Skipper.
She focused on the otter and said, "I was i not /i gallivanting."
"What were you doing?"
Liz crossed her arms. "Meeting a friend."
Skipper edged closer, leaning across the table. "You mean that weasel?"
"Skipper, let us hear this from the beginning. Elizabeth? Where did you live before you came to Mossflower?" the Abbot asked, a kind look on his face. He placed a restraining paw on Skipper.
Elizabeth wasn't sure what to say anymore. This was madness. She felt sick and could no longer could think straight. If this was madness, why didn't she just answer in her truth of madness?
"We were in a library. My boyfriend was with me. I told him that we needed to break up. I tried to leave, but he followed. We fell. We ended up in Mossflower."
The Recorder, an aging mouse, rubbed his chin. "A 'boyfriend'?"
• • •
There were murmurs of question in Mark's explanation. No one could make head nor tale of it, and Velaren's temper grew.
"What's a girlfriend?" he growled. "Some fantastical delusion? You are responsible for a whole scouting party being killed, and any chance of taking Redwall off guard. And you are going to pay."
Velaren stopped, an odd grin slipping over his features, and he backed away from Mark. He spoke loud enough so the horde could hear. "So, is this 'girlfriend' that squirrel?"
Mark felt himself growling at the fox. "You're stupid."
"What was that?" Velaren hissed, turning, fury in his movement.
• • •
"Stupid. There is nothing that says I can't talk to a weasel."
"Then why..."
"Why doesn't matter! It doesn't. It doesn't even mean anything. So what if he is a weasel. I'm sorry lives were lost. That's not my fault..."
"It is your fault, whatever you say, missy. It is your responsibility."
Liz bit her lip, trying to hold in the tears. "Why were you there?"
Skipper backed away from the squirrel maid. "Patrolling the woods."
"Why?"
"There was vermin activity."
"I didn't know about that last night."
"There was no need for you to know. Nobeast in the Abbey past the elders and my holt knew. There was no cause for alar—"
"So that's it. You leave everybeast in ignorance," Liz said, not believing that she was saying this. "All they know of vermin is that they are soulless scum covered with fur. Caricatures of pure evil. Do you even know a vermin?"
"No..."
"Then why do you think you can tell me anything about that weasel?"
"It looked..."
"Hellgates what it looked like. I don't even know..."
• • •
"Shut your babble," Velaren ordered.
"You don't like hearing anything besides what you think. Redwall will never be defeated. Does your horde know how many vermin have died trying to defeat that stone building? You. Are. Stupid."
Velaren gripped Mark by the throat. "I said, shut your maw."
"A duel," Mark managed to croak.
"A what?"
"A DUEL," Mark said louder, the grip lightning.
"You, duel me?" Mark could see the ill-covered glee in the fox's expression. He released the weasel. "Fine. At sunset." Velaren walked away through the horde in the direction of his tent.
Thorn ran up to Mark. "Flinch, what made you say all those things? Why did you challenge him to a duel? You'll die against him. Nobeast has ever—"
"Shh, I know the odds. They are always like that. Just get me a weapon."
"Oh," Thorn said, taking the weasels face in her paws. "You are pretty stupid. Whatever that means."
Mark didn't expect the kiss.
• • •
The Abbot cleared his throat, "Elizabeth, I find what you tell me hard to believe, and yet, I trust you completely."
"I'm really sorry about yelling at Skip—"
"Pah. That's nothing to fret about. I'm amazed you stood up to that fierce waterdog. Many a beast quivers under his opinionated, fish-breathed maw."
Elizabeth was surprised to hear such things from the Abbot, a supposedly sturdy and even-minded beast, or at least that's what all the books had portrayed. It was a face the Abbot hadn't shown her entire time here. Then again, she hadn't had the chance to speak with him alone. Now they were in his homely office, papers everywhere and a window open to the setting sun, which set the office into golden hued shadows.
The Abbot continued, "I find your argument for your actions to be compelling. Of course, three otters did die—though in the confusion of conflict, who is to know whose fault it was." The mouse took one of Liz's paws in his own. "You are young, and yet you seem to hold some knowledge from beyond, something we Abbeybeasts could never dream of. I do not believe that you are from these parts."
Liz's gaze widened. The Abbot could say that again.
"I'm sorry for coming here. I don't know what led me to the Abbey. I will leave if..." Liz stumbled. She really did not want to leave the joy and warmth of this place. Her experiences in her time here spread forever in her mind, a sea of bliss.
"No. Everything that happens has a reason. You coming to Redwall is not by chance, it is by fate."
There was a glimmer in the mouse's eye that Liz couldn't decipher. It made the fur on her tail tingle.
"Liz, just before you came, I had a dream..."
• • •
"Watch his tail and his flanks. Do not stay still unless you have a moving point, whether it be your tail or your weapon. I...do you even know how to use a broadsword?"
Mark shrugged. "I know enough."
Thorn kissed him again on the cheek, the electricity causing Mark's tail to wave about erratically.
Mark playfully pushed her off. "Oh Hellgates, I'm not visiting the Dark Forest yet."
Thorn didn't say anything as she quickly left the tent. She wouldn't dare reveal her true emotions. Mark sighed as his patted down his fur, looking into his reflection in the broadsword. There was a sense of peace within him, as if his tensions and fears had reached their limits and drained away. They were replaced by a deep awareness of his being and a sense of surrealism. This no longer felt real to him. This had to be dream, despite everything.
Could Thorn be a figment of his imagination? An incarnation of those books he had read so long ago? That sensation he felt when he talked to her…
Mark exited the tent, scanned over the crowd of vermin faces, grim, and yet there was some collective glimmer hope as they looked at him. Why?
The thoughts of Thorn were bothering him now. What was it that he felt? He knew very well that feelings had no words to describe them and yet he wanted to place that feeling that burned at him.
He was close to a clearing in the crowd, an open space around a campfire. He held his broadsword at the ready. It was quiet, and Mark could read the looks of support on the hordebeast's maws.
They wanted him to win.
Love.
The word hit Mark as Velaren stepped into the clearing, his own gleaming broadsword in paw.
The burning feeling for Thorn. He knew it once before, when he had looked upon Liz...
The fearsome fox sneered, and yelled loud enough for all the horde to hear, "Ready?"
Mark caught Thorn's face among the crowd.
Could his be a dream?
Oh Hellgates...
• • •
Somebeast was holding her, carrying her in their arms, her tail dragging along the floor. Liz cracked open her eyes to see Treeskip's face grinning down at her.
"You nodded off in the Abbot's room, and he called me to retrieve you," he explained.
Liz hadn't nodded off. It was because of what she had been told by the Abbot. Her mind was spinning, but in the strong arms of Treeskip all confusion melted away with the sound of his deep voice.
This couldn't all be a dream. Treeskip could not be her imagination. In his presence there was a rush in her heart that she couldn't deny. The sensation was something she thought she had lost to an overwhelming pain. Something she thought she felt with Mark.
"Do you believe in love?" Liz whispered.
Treeskip stopped walking, considered it a moment, and then brought up Liz's face to nuzzle her nose. "If you can't believe in love, nothing else is worth believing, fair maiden."
Pleasure enclosed the squirrelmaid's heart. "I thought so."
• • •
Steel clashed upon steel, reverberating through Mark's paws. He possessed certain skill as a weasel that he could not imagine having as a human. Thorn's lesson's had helped, but there were methods he was using that were...instinctive. The blade swung about to counter every swing, ever patiently. It almost did feel like a dream.
What would happen if he let the blade hit?
What would happen if he stopped fighting?
A flicker of a pause. Velaren swung upwards with the blade. Mark didn't block it. He watched it come toward him—steel death rushing up at his head. He suppressed instinct.
"MARK!"
He flinched as the blade hit his skull. Pain exploded, blood splattered, footpaws lost contact with the ground. He hit the ground, his vision flashed. He saw everything, everybeast looking down at him. The fox rushing into view, Thorn yelling, Blookill kicking him to move. He heard no sound but that of pain, he saw the blade flashing the gold of sunset, the blood red of the sky.
"Please get up..."
Instinct flooded back to him.
His footpaws shot up, catching Velaren in the gut.
The fox saw the bloody weasel stand up in the shadows, his appearance changed somehow. An odd paing of fear hit him, a horrible sensation that something had went wrong. He tried backing off, but the weasel lunged forward.
Mark barely knew what he did. He kept moving forward, moving the weapon with a sudden power and fierceness, ever harder, unable to hear or feel or even see as he continued forward into a dark fury of hate and rage.
And then it stopped.
Dark blood covered the blade, dripping hot over the hilt, sinking into the chestnut fur of his paws.
The sun set.
• • •
