26. The Hunters and the Prey.
Belk's plan for overcoming the new danger was simple. The creatures who stalked them kept well away, observing from a long distance, but not trying to get closer, clearly not the sort who fancied a fair fight, even against just one formidable-looking fighter. Deducing, that their plan was to wait until the travelers stop for the night, and then sneak up on two unexpected beasts, was not hard. It was a good plan, but the combination of fresh snow, on which their darker shapes were so much more noticeable, and Belk's perceptiveness foiled it.
Belk too had a good plan – pretend that they are unaware of the observers, break camp for the night, and get a drop on the stalkers, when they close in to rob or murder them. He didn't relish the idea of getting into a fight, particularly when burdened with Myns, but skies did not promise any more snow for the moment, so an attempt to get away fast enough was bound to leave a clear track.
Belk started to suspect his error, when the foes did not come even after his small bonfire entirely dimmed. Nobody rushed or crawled out of the darkness towards their blankets, positioned over travel bags, to roughly resemble two sleeping creatures. What those creatures were waiting for? With only the waning crescent of the moon in the sky, Belk strained his eyes to see anything. He felt Myns next to him shivering from cold, and felt his own bones aching – laying quietly in ambush on a cold night was quite a trial at his age.
Then snow crunched under a careless footpaw behind him. The warrior squirrel instantly jumped upright. And the next moment he came face to face with a whole throng of smaller creatures, visible only as dark shapes in the night, who were in the process of surrounding the camp. The surprise was equal for both parties, but Belk reacted quicker. The Sword of Martin was sheathed behind his back, but a bow could serve as a bludgeon in a pinch too, as the squirrel warrior demonstrated, laying about with it furiously.
Like almost all night skirmishes, this one was full of chaos and confusion. The creatures, in the midst of whom the two squirrels suddenly found themselves, were no great fighters. Despite their numbers, they panicked, when their plan to pile on two sleeping travelers went awry, and then there was a fiercer beast in their midst, smacking them left and right. If only Belk went for the Sword of Martin as soon as he had a brief moment to draw it, he might have scattered the whole crowd. But the old squirrel was hesitant to cut a swath through creatures he never had a chance to even properly see. Then Myns screamed, as one of the foes literally stumbled on her, and Belk's paw reached for the sword hilt, but too late – somebeast jumped at him from behind, sending the squirrel stumbling to one knee, seizing his neck.
"I caught it! I caught it!" a high, chittering scream drilled right into the squirrel's ear. Belk threw back his head, hitting the foe's nose with an audible wet sound. Strangling paws slackened, but before Belk completely shook this creature off, a dozen more jumped on him, burying the old warrior under a veritable pile of bodies. They had no idea about proper paw-to-paw combat, and weren't using their teeth, but with their numbers that didn't matter.
After both squirrels were safely pinned to the ground, one of the victors lit up a torch, and although Belk, flattened by foes who sat on his paws and neck, was not in position to see much, from the number of footpaws on the ground alone he realized the extent of his miscalculation. These creatures were more cowardly, than he expected – they brought a whole tribe to waylay mere two squirrels.
"Tch, tch, tch. What a fierce beast. Lemme look at him."
Vicious paws held Belk's ears and jerked his head upward, so he found himself looking at a torchlight-illuminated visage, very much unlike that of a savage night raider, already painted by Belk's mind. This creature most resembled a mouse, but a larger than average and really handsome, with fur of deep golden-brown, turning pure white at the throat and belly, shining dark eyes and a long, furred tail. He wore nothing except for a drab woven grass cloak, and a necklace of small bones. Well, that last detail actually was fit for a savage raider, to think of it. But at the moment Belk was too busy struggling to breathe, in spite of several beasts on his back, for noticing small things.
"Tch, tch, tch. Squirrebeast, fighting beast, woodland beast, great weapons, great clothes. What to do with him?"
"Filthy woodlander! Tchah! Kill him!" Another creature, resembling the first one, but ruffled, holding a paw to his bloodied snout, jumped forward, almost pushed the first aside, and angrily pointed a stone knife at Belk. "Jerbilrats need no woodlanders alive!"
But the first beast did not take this outburst kindly, and pushed the second back so roughly, that he almost fell:
"Temper, Jeibras, temper! I'm Gerrul, the chieftain of all Jerbilrats, and I decide, whether prisoners live or die!" Gerrul looked sourly at Belk, who was on the verge of blacking out. It dawned on him that commanding to kill the warrior squirrel right now will make him look like a petty bully, even though common sense suggested that Jeibras was right. "Tie their paws, bring them to the camp!"
As they were hauled upright, roughly stripped of everything remotely valuable, including their warm clothing, and had their paws bound behind their backs, Belk still had no strength to resist. Thankfully, Myns didn't put up enough a fight – she might have died after being brought down in the same way. After seeing in what shape her husband was in, she tried to rush to him, but a couple of jerbirats held her.
"I'm alright." Belk tried to smile. "It will be alright."
He felt a little bit more confident about this statement after seeing – and feeling – that his captors had only a few short lengths of rope, poorly made of twisted grass fibers, and were no masters of tying knots or binding wrists in a way that wouldn't let sharp squirrel claws to reach said rope. Getting free from their bounds was not going to be a problem. But dealing with the small horde of jerbilrats around them was.
While jerbilrats were squabbling about the travelers' possessions, Belk took a better look at them. Belk was no stranger to sights of abject poverty, but in Mossflower even the most shabby vagabonds and the most pitiful refugees tended to be better clothed and armed than this tribe, among whom only the chieftain had a bronze-tipped spear, clearly a trophy that came from more civilized lands. Belk gritted his teeth, when Gerrul unsheathed the Sword of Martin.
"Tch!" The jerbilrat stopped, frozen in fascination of the deadly blade.
"You better not touch this sword." Belk could not keep his mouth shut, despite knowing the danger. "It brings the worst luck to those who have no right to carry it!"
The next second he felt the needle-sharp swordtip tickling his throat.
"No right? Tch, tch, tch, a beast who loses his weapon in battle is the beast who has no right to it. Brave beast, stupid beast, be silent, before you're a dead beast."
Belk had no suitable counterargument to that.
Before the sun's disk showed itself from under the eastern horizon, where the earth melded with the sky, Belk had plenty of opportunities to regret not being ruthless enough. A forced march through a winter night with only one's own fur to keep cold at bay was bad already, and to add injury to insult, a handful of jerbilrats found prodding their prisoners forwards with sticks to be great fun. Belk endured worse things in his life, but every time he heard his wife yelping or felt her stumbling, his claws clenched reflexively. Absorbed by his anger, he didn't even notice, that the brighter sky got, the more insistently Gerrul urged his tribe and prisoners forward, as if afraid of something.
Whether it was a matter of chance or intuition, the jerbilrat chieftain was correct to be afraid. The crowd of forty-something jerbilrats, surrounding the two squirrels was all too noticeable from the air. To spot it, one didn't need to have keen eyes of a buzzard, who decided to hunt early this morning.
All happened in less time than it takes to read about it. One moment Belk was concentrating on the ground in front of him and not tripping, the next moment a shrill scream of panic rent the air, and instantly everything was chaos.
Jerbilrats had some slings and wooden spears with fire-hardened tips, enough for a group this big to drive off an enterprising buzzard. But they had no nerve to stand and fight! Half of them froze in utter terror as soon, as they saw a descending winged shadow. The same terror drove the other half to burst in all directions. And Myns ran too, ancient instincts kicking in when she saw fellow rodents scattering in panic.
Belk didn't notice that immediately. He was busy kicking the nearest jerbilrat out of the way and headbutting Gerrul, before the jerbilrat chieftain could wrestle himself from the grip of paralyzing fear. Only after two seconds the warrior squirrel turned his head, to see his wife running, and the buzzard swerving in the air, to dive on her.
The big raptor picked out a couple of strange, unfamiliar beasts in the crowd. She wondered, if they were going to have better taste than her usual prey. One of them was running straight, an easy target.
Belk didn't think that he had strength to just tear the ropes, yet when he saw the buzzard's aim, they snapped like dry ivy strands. He grabbed Gerrul's spear and raised it for a throw. It was a decent weapon, of suitable length and weight, but even then, at the angle he had, the probability of hitting the decelerating bird in a vital spot was slim.
Myns' life was unwittingly saved by one of running jerbilrats, who, eyes too clouded with fear to see where he was going, slammed into her, pushing the squirrelwife to the ground. She tried to spring away on all fours – changing direction just enough for the buzzard to veer in the last moment before the strike, giving Belk a much better target.
If that was not the best throw in the old warrior's life, then certainly the most important one. The spear struck the buzzard right behind her beak, transfixing the neck and severing the spine, right when the vicious claws were about to seize the prey. The big bird's consciousness faded in a single heartbeat, thrashing of the great feathered body, after it hit the ground, being merely muscular reactions.
At that moment, Belk forgot all about enemies who still surrounded him or about Martin's sword that still was in Gerrul's grasp:
"Myns! Myns, answer me!" he rushed to her, throwing jerbilrats out of the way, heedless of the buzzard's wings, still beating about convulsively. His heart sunk, when he saw her knocked flat, blood on her back.
"Ow. I… I think I'm alive." Myns tried to rise, unsteadily, but still clearly in control of her body. Only after Belk hugged her in a desperate embrace, and his paws touching her back found only long, but shallow scratches under the fur, he felt like his heart started beating again.
"Owch!" Myns shuddered. "It hurts! You're hurting me, you oaf!"
Belk let her go hastily:
"Sorry. Sorry." He wanted to laugh, despite jerbilrats surrounding them, and pain suddenly stabbing now in his left wrist, probably sprained when he tore the ropes. Speaking of jerbilrats…
The one with the squashed nose, Jeibras, or however he was called, was standing in three steps from them. As jerbilrats all around were coming to their senses, every head turned into the direction of the two squirrels, and only then Belk remembered clearly, that their predicament is not yet over. Jeibras pointed his shaking paw at Belk:
"You… you slayed the winged death, the ruler of skies."
"That's what I did." In absence of a way to both dart for the Sword of Martin and protect his wife, Belk saw talking as the best choice.
He absolutely didn't expect to see Jeibras dropping to his knees and bowing down to earth:
"Then you're the Foretold Beast!"
Belk could only look from one jerbilrat to another in dumb surprise, as one by one they bowed before him, repeating again and again, until their words started to sound like a chant:
"The Foretold Beast! The Great Slayer! The Foretold Beast!"
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By midday, Belk and Myns were in the jerbilrats' camp. For the winter, the tribe moved to caves and tunnels, numerous along the walls of the great gorge. There they found some shelter from weather and winged predators.
Now the two squirrels sat across a small bonfire from Gerrul, back in possession of their clothes and weapons, Myns' wounds safely bandaged. The jerbilrat chieftain rubbed paws and smiled apologetically every time he looked at them:
"Ours is a meager life, dangerous life, harsh life. But there was a prophecy, tch, tch, tch. It said: "One day, a beast, who is like us, but not like us, will appear. Brave and strong beyond our measure, with our own weapon he will slay the winged death and free us from fear. This beast will show us the path not walked before." You must be that beast, the Foretold Beast, yes you. Can you forgive jerbilrats for not seeing you for who you are, can you, yes?"
"We'll see." Belk still felt he'd enjoy strangling all those slimy rodents much more, than showing them any sort of path, but the talk of prophecy piqued his interest. "And who made this prophecy?"
"An old beast, a great beast, a wise beast, one called the Ruler of the Abyss. But you'll met him soon enough, tch, tch. He said, he warned, that if we want to complete the prophecy, we have to bring the Foretold Beast to him!"
Author's notes: While the real-life name for the rodents that appear in this chapter are "gerbils", I've decided to use their own name for themselves from the Redwall canon.