7
The east gate had been removed from its hinges and placed with diligent care in the meadow just beyond the Abbey walls. Conredd inspected the shape and frame with a straightedge, calculating the dimensions necessary to recreate the door without exposing any chinks in the Abbey's defenses.
He had two stoats beside him, each with a hatchet slung over his shoulder. Glancing up from the gate, Conredd clapped the straightedge in his paw. "I need twenty-four planks of wood this length by this length by this length. Fell me the timber an' I'll reward the both of ye with promotions t'be my personal assistants."
"An' wot if I don't wanna be yore assistant," said one of the stoats, named Clatsop.
Conredd nodded, as if this were a perfectly logical concern. Truthfully, he despised stoats; they were lazy and stupid and cheats, like Jareck. But since Conredd himself was the only fox in the entire horde, stoats were the largest and strongest creatures he had at his disposal, so he would have to make due.
"If a promotion don't tickle the fancy of two brainless oafs like yerselves, then lemme add this: personal rooms 'ere in th'Abbey for each of ye."
Clatsop and his companion were about to demur when from the forest's edge came a rustle of leaves and branches. Vellis emerged from the overgrowth, supporting with one arm a half-conscious Lady Alagadda.
They staggered their way up to the gate. Conredd and his assistants stood by idly.
"Well now," said Clatsop. "Looks like summat took a bite outta yew, Lady Alagadda."
"Stow it," Alagadda muttered.
Conredd folded his arms and sighed. "Where are Kludd and the others?"
"Where d'ye think?" said Alagadda.
"And Redwall's famed sword? Back in the paws of the woodlanders?"
"Nah," said Alagadda, spitting a globule of blood at the fox's footpaws. "Lost in the swamp forever. A fittin' end fer such a worthless lunk of metal. You were the one that sent Vellis after me, ain't ye."
"She went of her own accord," said Conredd. Addressing Vellis, he added: "Talk some sense into her. She won't hear a word I tell her, but mebbe she'll listen to you."
Vellis said nothing as she led Alagadda through the open portal into the Abbey.
The Abbey library was a cavernous room, with high vaulted ceilings through which buzzed an aura of potential energy. Towering shelves loomed from the floor into the shadows, packed with tomes of seasons past, of warriors and villains and courage and fear. Small rounded windows tucked between the shelves peered over the eastern grounds of the Abbey, with the pond shimmering in the dull gray evening.
Only a few loose vermin straggled in the library when Vellis and Alagadda entered, with a pair of mangy rats stoking a fire in the hearth with a few of the lower-hanging chronicles. Without a word, the vermin desisted their tasks and filed out the doors, leaving Vellis and Alagadda quite alone in the monolithic edifice of history.
Vellis set Alagadda down on a large old chair that had, unbeknownst to either of them, once belonged to the mouse warrior Fannin and was even now surrounded by his reading material, the tale of the Abbey's inception bookmarked at the place where he had hastily shut it when Kludd and his goons had stormed the library earlier that morning. Vellis swept the books aside with a wide fling of her arm, scattering the yellowed pages into the air.
Shuffling out of her hooded cloak, she unslung her bow and quiver and dropped them aside, before detaching from her belt the sheathed blade Alagadda had once bestowed upon her as a gift and placing it away from her as well. She cracked her knuckles and leaned forward to inspect Alagadda's wounds. Most of them were scratches and cuts, nothing worth even a bandage, but she had sustained on her shoulder what was unmistakably a serious bite, a semicircular ring of deep punctures extending from under her arm to the base of her collarbone. The blood had matted the fur as well as Alagadda's shirt into a dense, hard clot. Vellis licked her paw and wiped away the worst of the excess.
"'Ow's it feel," said Vellis.
"Like nothing," said Alagadda with a shrug. "I'll be fine."
Vellis pressed her forefinger to one of the punctures and Alagadda cried out in pain.
"'Twill need t'be dressed," said Vellis. "Mebbe put in a sling."
"It's fine."
Removing the belt of knives that criss-crossed across Alagadda's torso, Vellis peeled the fragments of torn cloth away from the blood, cracking the dark red knot into a plume of scabby flakes. Alagadda winced.
Vellis extracted a long, curved tooth that had been lodged in one of the punctures. "I ain't one like Conredd who'll try an' tell you how to run yore own horde," she said, examining the tooth. "I've seen you do too many smart things in the past to fault yore judgment now. But I will ask you what in Hellgates you thought you was doin' out there."
"Searchin' fer some Abbeybeasts that's escaped," said Alagadda.
"Yeah, but what were ye really doin'?"
They stared at each other for a moment.
"I'm bored," said Alagadda. "We took the Abbey and nothin' happened. I slew that mouse warrior an' it wasn't even difficult. What's the point of conquerin' Redwall if you don't enjoy it? What's the point of livin' if you don't enjoy it?"
Vellis retrieved a clean cloth and dabbed at the wounds. "Ye've taken Redwall Abbey, th'most feared and ill-whispered place in all this accursed country, with an army to fight fer you and a host o'slaves to serve you. Ye've got the smarts and skills to take complete control o'this realm and create a new empire. All in all, ye have ev'rythin' you need to do the things we used to talk about doin' back afore we was great horde leaders, back when we was nuttin' but lowly pawsoldiers who di'n't 'ave but two crooked arrers and a dull kitchen knife a'tween us. 'Member that?"
Alagadda said nothing, but of course she remembered. Back when their seasons were enough to count on two paws, and the family they had between them totaled zilch, when they were trod upon by everybeast with paws for trodding. Back then they had big dreams because they had nothing else, dreams fed on tales told by the older vermin who had scraped by season after season of famine and war and pillage—tales of fanciful Abbeys and magic swords and badger mountains. Tales of horror and death but also the slimmest shred of hope: hope that one day they might rise above their ancestors and do what nobeast had done before. Hope that had fed Vellis and Alagadda through nights with naught but a crust of molded bread to feed them both, nights of a frigid chill that seeped through their fur and struck them to the bone, nights spent in the crevices of some bog, cowering beneath a fallen tree log as their comrades were slain around them by other vermin, or hares, or whatever. Dark nights, empty nights, lonely nights—but there was still that hope. They said all the old warlords had started as nothing but pawsoldiers too; before they had big names with fancy epithets, they were just rats and stoats and weasels same as any other.
And so while other vermin just tried to eke out an existence, Vellis and Alagadda (back then her name had not been Alagadda) had put time in learning how to use weapons, working with the ratty old tools they had at their disposal. Alagadda learned how to throw by chucking her kitchen knife at a tree trunk time and time and time again, and Vellis had practiced firing the same two arrows into a field from a bow she had filched from a corpse and then scouring the entire field to find where they had fallen so she could fire them again. Back then there had been no boredom, although the things they did were the epitome of boring; back then each repetitive throwing of the knife or firing of the bow had seemed something important, almost magical, and they had wasted entire days doing those things without a word of complaint.
For Alagadda to say she was bored now, now that they had finally after so long achieved everything of which they had ever dreamed, everything of which every vermin since the dawn of time had ever dreamed—it was the closest thing to a betrayal Vellis could ever expect coming from Alagadda.
"'Twere I any other beast hearin' you babble like this," said Vellis, "With you prone an' defenseless here. Well, I shan't need t'tell you what might happen."
"An' 'twere I any other warlord hearin' my captain talk like that," said Alagadda, "Let alone havin' already suffered you crackin' me over the skull and haulin' me halfway across Mossflower Wood, I'd have done the same t'you as yer sayin' you'd have done to me."
Vellis closed her eyes and exhaled. "Let's not speak like this," she said. "There's too many stories of vermin warlords who went sour 'cuz o'things like this."
"There's too many stories of vermin warlords who went sour in general," said Alagadda, with a glance at the reams of books that lined the shelves around her.
"Then don't become one o'them," said Vellis. "If yer bored, make that yore challenge—don't become like ev'ry other leader our kind's ever had an' wind up dead from yore own weakness. Make 'em write a story about how you lived out yore seasons prosperous and powerful, and died at an old age, an' not from some metal gettin' rammed in yore gut or some woodlander revolt tearin' you t'pieces. That's a story I'd like t'hear."
"Aye," said Alagadda, "An' who's gonna write it?"
"There's more'n one way to tell a story than to scribble it in some dusty book," said Vellis. "Just ask Jareck. But we can worry about that later. Fer now, promise you ain't gonna do anymore o'this foolhardy stuff, especially now that there ain't no more reason t'do it."
Vellis extended a paw toward Alagadda and let it hang in the still air of the library. Alagadda regarded the paw like an incomprehensible shape before reaching out and taking it.
"I promise, mate."
Clatsop and his companion Tilly, the two stoats Conredd had enlisted to help build a new eastern wallgate for the Abbey, schlepped a bushel of hacked-up wood out of the forest and into the field around the Abbey wall. Despite the twilight, Conredd remained standing in the open portal, measuring and inspecting, tweaking the hinges and studying their motions.
They plunked the wood down in front of him. "This good enough?"
Conredd took a cursory glance at the pile. "I'll need about twice that."
The two stoats groaned in unison.
"But the big feast's startin' now!"
"Why dontcha get some o'those woodlanders we captured to do this fer you?"
"Because," said Conredd, tapping his straightedge against the vast red walls of the Abbey, "If I have t'get woodlanders to do the work that means I need creatures to supervise them, or else they'll escape, so I'll just have to use you idjits anyway. Plus, if I get woodlanders to do it, they won't do it right at all. Trust me, I've used slave labor afore. Worthless, absolutely worthless. Sickly, broken creatures, slaves is. An' afore they're broken they're even worse, 'cuz they think they can stand up t'you e'en though they're in chains and you got the whip. A whole lotta wasted energy and a whole lotta wasted time, an' I don't have either. These gates need to repaired, an' quick. Now quit yore complainin' and fetch me more wood."
The two stoats exchanged a look before sauntering up to Conredd, their arms folded and chests puffed out.
"Oh yeah? And how're you gonna make us do it?"
"I think yer the one who oughtta be out there cuttin' wood, not us!"
Although the stoats were each a head taller than him, Conredd betrayed not the slightest inkling of lack of composure. "I wonder what Lady Alagadda'll say when she hears the both of ye were disrespectin' the orders of a direct superior."
The bigger stoat, Clatsop, jabbed Conredd in the chest with an outstretched finger. "By the look of Alagadda when she came in, she's got bigger problems t'worry about than what the lot of us are doin'. Now get outta our way afore we make you get outta our way."
In a flash Conredd had his rapier drawn and pointed just under Clatsop's chin, needling his throat. Clatsop's paws flew up in a gesture of supplication as his companion Tilly stepped back, unsure of what to do.
"I ain't usually one t'slay hordebeasts under my command fer silly things," said Conredd, "But in the face of open insubordination I may make an exception. If y'think Lady Alagadda appoints any of 'er cap'ns fer their dashin' good looks alone, yer sorely mistaken. Now fetch me more wood."
Keeping the rapier point level despite Clatsop's trembling and undulating throat, Conredd dismissed the two stoats with a flippant wave. They took a tremulous step backward in unison, one of them almost tripping on a plank of wood.
Something in the woods behind them snapped.
Already tense, the stoats wheeled on the noise, peering into the blank darkness and the uncertain forms contained wherein. Conredd regarded the noise with far less curiosity.
"But cap'n," said Clatsop, apparently humbled by the rapier still aimed in his direction, "There's somethin' out there, didn't y'hear it?"
"Oh yes, I heard it alright. A woodpidgeon settlin' down to nest fer the night. Don't tell me the you were both just swaggerin' around actin' tough and mighty an' now yer both scared of a twig."
Something in the woods rustled.
Clatsop's voice fell to a whisper. "What if it's them Abbeybeasts come back? What if they brought an army?"
"Lookit these excuses yer tryin' to pull, just to avoid the slightest ounce a work. What army've they got t'bring?"
They came from the sides. In an instant, Tilly was on the ground with his whole side split open and something large and heavy on top of him. Clatsop turned to run only for something to barrel into his back and take him down before he had taken a single step. A third shape emerged from the darkness and lunged at Conredd. Conredd sidestepped and lanced the back of the thing's neck with his rapier, sending it skidding across the grass in a shrieking heap. He whipped the rapier through the air and readied it for another attacker but the two that had attacked the stoats were still attacking the stoats, tearing into them although their limp lifeless corpses made no sound or movement. Conredd ducked through the open portal of the Abbey, wiping the bloodied rapier on his sleeve, keeping an eye over his shoulder as he retreated, moving with quick steps but not a sprint, nothing to mark him as a target to whatever had attacked.
He headed toward the Abbey building, intending to sound the alarm in the mess hall where most of the horde would be, midway through the grand feast they had cobbled together from the delicacies and liquors left behind by the Redwallers. He made the orchard before the furtive, slick shapes began to stream through the east gate, clawing and snarling their way over each other to fit through the narrow orifice. His vision was good enough in the dark to make out the shapes as some sort of reptile, lizards perhaps, or something else. They were fast and large.
Casting his cloak over his red-furred face, he sunk low amongst the groves of the orchard, hoping to camouflage himself. Claws puttered over the loamy soil around him, no other noise than the low hiss of reptilian voices. Too low to alert a horde of revelers, likely steeped in drink and song and good cheer. Conredd peeked from beneath the cloak to count the creatures that passed. He estimated fourscore, maybe five.
If Alagadda had simply allocated the resources earlier to have the gates repaired in proper time and fashion, of course, this would not be an issue. With even ten well-bodied creatures operating under fear of Alagadda's retribution and Conredd's meticulous design, all four gates could have been replaced by eventime. Doors were not complicated mechanisms. All he needed was the wood, but no. Alagadda as usual had not given thought to such bureaucratic matters, and thus Conredd had had to acquire his own help, and of course they had not wanted to help him, because he did not command the respect that she commanded despite all her many many many flaws, and ooh it made Conredd furious to think about just how easily this whole debacle could have been sidestepped completely.
When he caught up with her, he would give her one big I-told-you-so.
The lizards streamed into the Abbey.