15. Wreckage.
When they both were younger, and King Kunas hadn't started his descent into drunken madness yet, Eikeru Manybattles once heard from him a piece of wisdom with which she wholeheartedly agreed: to survive a warlord needs patience and resolve in equal measure, so that neither trait outweights the other. Eikeru knew that she did not lack for either virtue, but while Kunas lived patience was the one she had to exercise above all. In any vermin band, crew, horde or army there always was discontent – greater when pickings were lean, but never fully going away even in times of plenty. There always were beasts who wanted more wealth, power and fame, than their current positions could provide. Beasts like her. But however often and sorely Eikeru was tempted to conspire with some of malcontents she knew, to turn her popularity among rank-and-file into a plot against the king, she remained patient.
Today the time for patience was in the past. Eikeru looked one last time at Ulakhai Stonestrength, whom she watched from the infirmary's door. The big mustelid hissed profanities as he kicked away a medicine weasel, his voice pained and hoarse. Marroch's sword did not cut too deeply into cord-like muscles of the captain's neck, touched no major veins. Normally a wound of such size would not be too difficult to treat, even for pathetic beasts that passed as healers in the Kunas' horde. But as far as Eikeru could see, none of them knew how to bandage a neck wound properly without strangling Ulakhai. The black rat couldn't believe her luck. Out of the three other captains, Yellowfang died with the king, Rugger was just alive enough to make everybeast afraid of as much as approaching him, and now Ulakhai was hardly in a shape to fight too! Truly, her long patience paid off.
Now was the time to act fast and decisively! Eikeru licked her yellowed front teeth in anticipation, as she walked away. She already knew what first move will immediately earn her support of the horde.
Ubel was not hard to find. The white ferret was at the tower's entrance, ordering frightened slaves and sullen soldiers around, his high voice audible from far away. "Swifter, you lazy scum. Pile the carcasses there for now and start cleaning the tower!"
As far as Eikeru could see, Ubel was alone, with no obvious guards around. Vermin, whom he drove on, hardly counted. Eikeru was sure that they would be glad to have a piece of him too.
So she headed directly for Ubel, a spear on her shoulder, a frown befitting the grim scene before her, rather than exhilaration she felt, on her face. Beasts milling around, carrying dead bodies out of the tower, made a throw uncertain – killing a random creature, instead of bringing down the hated sorcerer, was quite unbefitting for the soon-to-be ruler. It is not like the ferret was going to disappear in a few seconds she needed to reach him…
As it happened, those few seconds changed much more than Eikeru thought possible.
Just as she roughly pushed aside a slave, just as Ubel started turning to her, just before she was close enough to strike, a loud cry of a sentry on the southern walltop reached all across the courtyard.
"Sails! I see sails! Sails on the horizon! Two big ships are comin'!"
Eikeru stopped, at the last moment she could, and turned her head towards the wall, as if she could see the accursed ships from this position, her features twisted with rage. Sails around Ergaph in these seasons meant one thing – corsairs! Of course, corsairs quite often visited the Seacrag Bay to trade, exchanging treasures they looted and slaves they captured for food, drinks, entertainment and good iron weapons, sometimes even spending a winter here. But Eikeru, who started her career as a cabin rat on a corsair ship, knew firstpaw, that the difference between trading with other beasts and plundering them was always quite fine for corsairs. Two ships in all likelihood could not carry nearly enough seavermin to overwhelm the remaining part of the Kunas' army… unless it was in the middle of a power struggle.
Sorting out those thoughts took too much time. Just as Eikeru turned back to Ubel, intent on slaying him first, and sorting out other problems later, new beasts entered the scene.
Eikeru would have much preferred to see a look of suitable apprehension on the puffy face of Kopek, instead of conceited expression he wore now, probably thanks to the two tough-looking foxes who flanked him. Eikeru knew this pair quite well – Norgam and Renn, fierce battlers and cunning score commanders both. Perhaps too cunning for their own good.
"You heard that, Ubel." Kopek spoke as if he had no doubt about his authority as the new king. "Corsairs are coming. I know you've always handled trade and all that petty stuff before. I trust you to do it now. I need no trouble with corsairs right after all this!" He waved his paw, looking disdainfully at carcasses, piled up in an undignified heap, and mud mixed with blood.
"Have no worries, Your Majesty." The white ferret bowed gracefully. "I, Ubel, will ensure that the seascum will see no weakness in our position."
As he did so, Kopek turned to Eikeru, who was measuring up him and his newly-found bodyguards, eyes dangerously narrowed, the fact to which he remained oblivious. "You've served father well, Eikeru, and you led my troops well the last night. I'll consider making you my chief captain, one above others, if you keep up the good work."
The black rat bowed in turn, if only to hide her involuntary snarl of rage. What this conceited whelp thought he was?! The two foxes were just playing him! Maybe she still had a chance to turn things in her favor right now – strike down the sorcerer, decry the worthless successor of the failed king, rally vermin that were scurrying around to her side?
But patience and discretion were rooted too deeply in Eikeru's soul after so many years of waiting and biding her time. "I'll not fail you… Your Majesty".
"Good, good." Kopek was about to walk away, then looked back at Ubel again. "Oh, and one more thing… my father's wench and her spawn do not deserve the same burial as him!"
To Eikeru it seemed as if a shadow of a smile passed across Ubel's face for a brief instant, before he spoke quite strongly. "That is not in doubt. However, I'm afraid this point is rather abstract at the moment, as both Marda and Seien are alive. Our craven foes wanted to use Marda as a hostage, before she was freed by beasts who invaded through the secret tunnel, and Seien managed to hide himself in a wooden chest."
It was impossible to miss how Kopek's face darkened with each new word. "Cowards!" he sputtered. "Living when father died! How dare they?"
Ubel bowed again. "That is beyond my imagination, Your Majesty. Do you want to go into the tower and ask them personally?"
For a second, Kopek was clearly torn between hatred and cowardice. Then one of the foxes quickly whispered something in his ear. Pine marten curled his lips disdainfully and grumbled. "No. You take care of… their needs. I don't want to add to my grief by seeing such disgusting worms!"
"As you command, Your Majesty. Meanwhile, may I suggest that your brave captain here should go and organize troops, so that walls will be guarded, when the corsairs make their landing?"
"Oh. That needs to be done. Eikeru, did you heard that? Then go!"
The black rat curtly bowed, and walked away, frustrated, but hopeful. She breathed deeply, stench of cloyed blood almost enjoyable to her. It looked like Kopek was not the only fool, drunk on his own dreams of power here! She was willing to bet that Ubel is not going to take Kopek's rather unsubtle hints and quietly dispose of Kunas' second surviving son. Was the sorcerer ferret not realizing how precarious his position was and hoping to create his own puppet king? Whatever. If all those wannabe lords were to stick with each other, they might have stood a chance. Now Eikeru already had an idea how to bring them down before the next sunrise!
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Two more of Marroch's hapless followers died before the midday. Rowanbloom was sure that something as simple as warm beds and warm food might have saved them. Something simple, yet as unreachable as the sky, when you desperately tried to escape possible pursuit in a boat, lashed by cold wind and angry waves. The only reason any of its miserable crew stood a chance at all was Selvathy. The young otter knew both how to steer a boat on a windy day like this one, and where to find refuge on the western coastline.
That refuge was a small cove, hidden by the thick coniferous forest, almost invisible from the sea, protected by wild thickets and windbroken trees from the land. Thankfully it was big enough to make two small camps on its opposing sides, for otters, who escaped ahead of them, already were present – and, as far as anybeast could see, less than overjoyed by the company of vermin survivors.
And not many survivors there were. Kethra, still unconscious. Suran and Spikepelt, both clawed by pain for every incautious movement. Luggun and another rat, Stumptail. Smalltooth the stoat and Tezza the weasel. With Ewalt, who was still in a daze, the tough mouse slave, who introduced himself as Trugg and certainly joined their pitiful crew only because the otters had not waited for him, and, finally, herself, that was just ten beasts. Less than a third of the number that left Marroch's camp for the fateful battle!
The Starscatter otters suffered even harder, as far as Rowanbloom could count. Not even a dozen of them remained, even with Selvathy going to their side as soon as the second boat hit the shore. Speaking of Selvathy, she could hear her voice from the other side of the cove, and, even though most words were unrecognizable, the conversation clearly wasn't friendly there…
"So, it was ye, who left me behind to be fishbait!" Selvathy managed to hold herself together for long enough to get here, but now her self-control was slipping. If she couldn't die, and couldn't cry, at least she could rage.
"Ye lived, ain't ye?" dryly answered Torbit, to whom her words were addressed.
"No thanks to ye, and yer crew! Ye were too busy saving yer tails!"
"Mind yer tongue, lass!" The big, tough-looking male otter, who sat next to Torbit by the small fire, which the otters tried to make as smokeless as possible, and nursed his wounded paw, was not amused. "Who d'ye think ye are?"
"What?!" Selvathy fists clenched without her noticing, the huge scar that bisected her forehead darkened. "What are ye trying t'say, Scrimmo?"
"Shut it, both of ye." Torbit sounded as if raising his voice was too arduous for him. "Scrimmo, we're all in one boat here. Selvathy, the last time I saw ye, ye were chargin' up the path, not down to the boats."
"And I didn't saw ye in battle at all, after the wall! Where ye was, when they cut down grandfather?!"
"Go rage at vermin over there, if ye want to find somebeast guilty." Torbit did not change his tone or pose. "Ilmo died because he had brains of a shellfish, and decided to trust vermin. And a vermin's plan. May he never find coast in the Dark Sea, the old fool."
Scrimmo actually thought that Selvathy will charge his friend and try to kill him with her bare fangs, so enraged she was. He reached for a javelin with his healthy paw. But even though the ottermain wanted to do just that, something inside held her back. Even saying those horrible things, Torbit still was her kin!
"Take those words back, Torbit! Ot I'll…"
"Or ye what?!" Torbit suddenly straightened. "Look around, granddaddy's girl! Errybeast 'ere will say the same! What ye're goin' t' do, fight all of us?!"
Selvathy gave a glace to the left, then to the right. Every otter in the small camp now was looking at her. Every look was a hateful glare. Behind every glare was grief for kin and friends, dead and left unburied. However headstrong, however hysterical Selvathy was, she felt fight draining out of her.
"Sit." Torbit commanded, slumping back, and Selvathy obeyed. "It is no time to squabble. We're not past the dangerous waters yet."
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Since leaving the Seacrag Castle behind, Ewalt the Ghost had yet to speak a single word. After they reached the hidden cove, he finally fell truly asleep, instead of straddling the hazy line between consciousness and unconsciousness, too exhausted to care what might be done to him while he's sleeping. After waking up, he felt better. Physically, that is. The throbbing pain in his skull, as well as many lesser pains, still persisted, but now he could move without vertigo and nausea. He just didn't feel like moving anywhere. Neither realization that he had no weapon and was still surrounded by vermin, nor the biting autumn cold could remotely motivate him. Then he heard a yelp of pain not a ten steps from himself.
"Order or push me again, and it will be your neck!" Trugg the former slave growled menacingly, as Stumptail bawled out, the rat's wrist caught in the viselike grip.
"Hey, ye rotten, stinkin' slave! What ye're doin' to me mate, eh?!" Crying this, Luggun drew his cutlass and rushed to help the fellow rat. He ignored Ewalt, perhaps thinking that the mouse was out cold again, and that was to his detriment, as he found, when his paws were swept under him, and head roughly slammed into the sand. The only reason he lived was Ewalt not having any weapon. Before his cutlass was wrenched from his grasp, a loud command made everybeast freeze.
"Enough!" Kethra walked towards them, leaning on the long haft of her battleaxe. "By thunder! You, bullies, think there ain't enough foes on Ergaph to kill us all and to help 'em?"
Trugg let go of Stumptail's paw, and the rat backed away, hissing hatefully. "He started it! Look, me poor paw, it's just about crushed!"
"Some fighter you are, letting a mouse crush your paw!" Kethra pushed the rat away contemptuously. "Get lost, you two."
As Ewalt freed Luggun, and the rats scampered away with all due haste, Kethra glared at Trugg. "And what you're still doing here, among us, big, bad slavers? Ain't otters over there should be more like your sort of crew?"
"Sure they are." Trugg did not flinch. "If only they didn't kick me outta their camp."
Ewalt was still sitting on the grass. Rush of movement made his vertigo return for a time.
"Why?" he asked mechanically.
"They no longer trust any woodlander who as much as sails in the same boat with vermin," Trugg explained.
"Watch your bloody tongue, mouse, before I nail it to a tree!" Kethra hissed. Trugg crossed his muscular paws on the chest, rather unimpressed by the threat, but did not answer. "You two. You're strong enough, for mice. You can stay with me. Or go die in some burrow, if you have no will to fight, I don't care. But if you stay, you'll have to obey me as your warlord."
"Stay to do what?" Trugg asked.
"To do what?!..." The ferretmaid tried to shout, but immediately stopped, cringing from pain, took a few breaths, rubbed the side of her head and continued on a more restrained note. "To get revenge. To kill as many of that scum from the castle as we can."
Ewalt found himself actually considering the proposal. Truth be told, he never thought what he is going to do, if he somehow were to outlive King Kunas, at least by more than a few minutes. But Kethra's idea sounded as good as any to him.
Trugg, however, had other plans. "No. I haven't yet seen enough of life, to throw it away. Also…"
"Then, by Vulpuz' whiskers, run, like a cowardly slave you are!" Kethra turned away – and came face to face with Rowanbloom, who just returned from a less than successful attempt to forage for food in the forest. Had Kethra been able to notice emotions of other beasts at the moment, she would be quite surprised by the squirrel's obvious anger.
"Out of…" Kethra started.
"Stop the foolishness right this instant!" Kethra was much bigger and stronger than Rowanbloom, and ten times a fighter, even after taking a dangerous blow half a day ago, but in her indignation the squirrel forgot all that. "First, you should not move yet!"
Perhaps said blow to the head made Kethra a bit slow, but before the idea of just sweeping the insolent woodlander out of the way come to her head, Rowanbloom already forced her to sat on a small grassy hillock.
"In your condition you might fall any moment, and break your skull for good," explained the squirrel healer. "And second, if anybeast is to ask me, you should not mistake despair for courage."
"What do you bloody know about despair, little rodent?" Kethra suddenly seized Rowanblom by her shoulder with crushing force. The squirrel felt as if her whole left paw is about to be ripped from the body, together with the shoulder joint. But Rowanbloom wasn't the dewy-eyed squirrel girl that left Redwall many seasons ago anymore. She was not about to be cowed by a bit of physical pain, or even by enough pain to make her eyes glisten with involuntary tears.
"Well," she hissed, "after being thrown through the storm on the ship with no masts left, after crawling out of the wreck to be left the last in line for torture and death, because our crew did not bow to some pine marten cur, after hearing what you and your lot said about me when you thought I couldn't hear, I think, I know a thing or two about despair!"
Kethra was surprised enough to let the squirrel go. "Then why did you try so much, so hard to help us? Just because of your forebodings?"
"Well, not only. But that the simplest reason." Rowabloom answered as she rubbed her bruised shoulder, her voice low-key. She turned her head towards the two mice then back to Kethra. "And about forebodings... The terror that I felt when first witnessing the wicked King and his retinue, the doom that hangs upon all – it is not gone. Kunas is dead, but the evil remains, still plotting to despoil other lands beyond the sea. Don't ask me how I know it, but I do. You have to believe me..."
"I do believe you." Trugg's response left Rowanbloom surprised. "See, marm, every slave knew that Kunas was not the most terrible beast in the castle. The sorcerer, the white ferretspawn of Hellgates – he was who truly ran things, while that rotten King was drinking."
Trugg shuddered involuntarily. "And to make his vile sorcery, he took many beasts to his lair, from where none returned alive. And I also know, I heard that once, when serving food – they, the King and him, and captains, were discussing another war, going to plunder some famous kingdom on the mainland… The King did not like the idea much, but the rest, they must still want to conquer lands beyond the sea, just as you said!"
"But how?" Ewalt's thinking was a bit slow today. "They have no ships!"
"But the corsairs have plenty of ships." Rowanbloom's answer was grim. "Allying with them, and raising a fleet to transport Kunas' vermin to the mainland is definitely possible for a canny beast."
She looked from one beast to another. "And we're the only ones who can do something to stop that."
"We're the only ones?" Kethra growled. "You just said that my brother died for bloody nothing, accomplishing nothing! What can we do with not one-seventh of the number of beasts he had? What can we do?"
"Not throwing themselves against the foe, seeking death in battle, that we certainly can do, for the first thing. And…" For the first time during the conversation the squirrel lowered her eyes, uncertain of herself. "And if our foe seeks conquest beyond the sea, we too can seek help there, on the mainland. I'm sure, if we put our minds to it, we can do it, cross the sea, and find those who can help to free Ergaph!"