14
A long time later Laramie dared herself to start thinking about a plan. The closet had proven its safety, certainly, as no lizards had torn the door open and torn them to pieces. For a long time that was enough, twisted half on her back in the closet with her footpaws poking upward and her head against the hard stone floor, Roane and the ferret Iredell coiled around her shivering and mumbling and trying their best to keep quiet.
But closet living was unsustainable. She didn't need to feel hunger pangs to know that. So as the adrenaline subsided and her head cleared and all the aches and pains returned to the center of her being—sometime during the scuffle she had taken a cut to the side, it didn't feel deep, but who knew—she tried to think what to do.
She no longer had her sword. She must have dropped it during the sprint through the dining hall, perhaps when Roane slipped and she turned to help him. She asked Iredell if she had a weapon. Iredell said all she had was a knife. But then she lamented.
"No, no, I don't 'ave no knife, I bet it 'gainst Cap'n Jareck an' he took it from me." She began to sob.
Laramie stroked her fur to calm her down. "It's okay. Iredell, that's your name, right?"
Iredell nodded.
"It's okay, Iredell."
"I don't wanna die like this," said Iredell. "I know—I know I ain't been the best of creatures, but I don't wanna die like this."
"It's okay, Iredell. I don't intend on dying, which means you shouldn't, either." It felt odd trying to comfort vermin, but if Iredell turned hysteric things would get ugly fast. And also, she supposed she felt some sympathy for the poor beast. She had taken almost no note of the completely non-noteworthy ferret for the past day, but what she had seen was nothing more than the rankest of rank-and-file, a follower who did what she was told and had done so since birth, and knew no different. She was hardly older than either Laramie or Roane, although a brusque poverty had imbued her demeanor and aged her prematurely. She was not a pretty beast, the way creatures around the Abbey sometimes told Laramie she was. But if Laramie had been raised on the march, and taught to wield a weapon since she could walk, and knew nothing but famine and strife, and had not had a decent bath in over a season, who knew.
"L-Laramie," said Roane. "I'm sorry I messed up."
"You didn't mess up, Roane." Oh, great, now she had two of them to calm down. Who knew what imaginary slights Roane believed he had committed.
Sure enough, Roane began babbling something about making too much noise, or being a burden, or whatever.
"Roane, the fact that you're even still alive is proof enough you didn't bungle everything. And because you're still alive, that means you still have the chance to make up for whatever you think you did wrong in the first place. Okay?"
"Okay."
"So try to think of some way out of this, okay?"
"Okay."
He seemed placated and Iredell seemed placated so Laramie went back to thinking, but as soon as she drew up a mental map of the Abbey and their relative location and the possible locations of the lizards (none of which she had heard since the gnawing outside the closet door had stopped), another voice spoke. It came from outside, faint but audible.
"Come on, open this door," said what could only be Jareck. "I know it's you behind this door, who else'd have a stack of dead lizzerds piled up in front've a barricade like this? Open up."
Quiet.
"That's Jareck," said Iredell. In the dim light, her head lifted.
"Who's he talking to," said Roane.
"In cahoots with who?" said Jareck.
Quiet.
"What's Kludd got t'do with anything? Look, this is ridiculous, lemme in."
"That's Jareck," said Iredell. She started to rise.
Before Laramie could realize what was happening—she was still trying to parse the conversation between Jareck and the mysterious other creature—Iredell had pulled herself up and flung open the closet door, flooding them with light as she stumbled out. Laramie reached out to grasp her and pull her back but the damage had already been done, the door opened, the safety of the closet exploded.
"Jareck!" Iredell shouted, nearly tripping over her own paws. "Cap'n Jareck, it's me!"
Laramie seized Roane by the wrist and jerked him up. His body shook like a doll's. "Come on, Roane, we have to move quick!"
She righted herself and stumbled after Iredell, realizing as soon as she and Roane blundered out of the closet that they probably should have just closed the door as soon as Iredell left and let her get herself killed but then realizing that if any lizards saw her leave they would know where to find them and her entire decision-making process going out the window as she decided that Jareck for all his bluster probably knew a thing or two about not dying, and that sticking with him might be a good idea after all.
Iredell leapt over a lizard lying on the ground around the remains of a rat unrecognizable as Letcher. The lizard allowed Iredell to simply make the leap and keep running without any qualms, which Laramie couldn't comprehend until she realized the lizard was asleep. Or had been asleep, at least, because as soon as Iredell sprinted down the corridor flailing her arms and screaming her lungs out at Jareck, the lizard's eye cracked open and a beady yellow pupil pointed directly at Laramie and Roane.
As the lizard rose, Roane made a squeak of panic and seized Laramie's arm so tight she could not move it. Her eyes flicked for a weapon and settled immediately on the glint of a blood-soaked blade still clutched in Letcher's dead paw, which was no longer attached to its arm, and ignoring Roane she ducked down and seized it paw and all and thrust it upward into the lizard's gut as it clawed its way toward them.
The thing thrashing and hissing and snarling in a death tantrum, Laramie broke away from Roane, hoisted him under his arms, and threw him over the lizard. He somersaulted into the floor and scampered up rubbing his head and crying out in dismay. Immediately Laramie flung herself after him.
Something curled around her ankle mid-jump and she plummeted. The floor had hardly risen to meet her when the entire cold and pulsing mass of lizard dragged her back toward it, claws cutting into her skin. She screamed, or at least she opened her mouth to scream except nothing emerged save a frantic puff of air. Roane, curled on the ground, extended a worthless paw, as if his paw alone could extricate her from the gruesome mass of scale and flesh slithering atop her.
"Help!" she hissed.
Roane's eyes widened, as if before he had not realized she were truly in danger, as if this entire time he had thought they were on a pleasure picnic with not a care in the world. A change crept over him, a face of bumbling silly good-natured Roane she had never seen before, and with fangs bared he launched at the lizard, seizing the hilt of the blade still imbedded in the monstrosity's infinite torso. Screaming at the same time that she was screaming and the lizard was screaming and the whole world seemed to be screaming, Roane ripped the sword straight upward into the body, unseaming it to its very throat.
The lizard continued to thrash and scream even as all its innards oozed out, but it let go of Laramie and without bothering to watch the accursed thing die or retrieve the sword she and Roane ran full-tilt down the hallway. Jareck stood in front of the double doors to the library, Iredell on her knees beside him. He did not appear to pay attention to her. Instead, he was knocking on the doors. Surrounding him was a field of dead lizards, which for a moment Laramie wondered if he had slain on his own before the smell of several-hours's rot assaulted her nostrils.
Jareck paid them no heed as they approached. "Come on. Lemme in. I swear I ain't with these lizzerds or Kludd or whoever's runnin' the show. Have you e'er had reason t'doubt me?"
The voice behind the doors was audible now. "It don't matter if we want you in or not—we got these doors barricaded such as they ain't gonna open. So scram."
Laramie recognized the voice as belonging to Lady Alagadda.
Jareck tried the handles to the doors, sunk a fang into his coin, and scanned the hallway to either side of him. He tapped his paws against his cloak. As Laramie and Roane skidded to a halt beside him, panting and heaving and in Roane's case actually crying, he acted as though they were not even there.
He leaned back against the door. "I'm coming through the window. You promise not t'kill me?"
"What flippin' window?"
Jareck stroked his chin. "I'll figger it out." And then, as though he had been aware of them the entire time, he turned to Roane and Laramie. "How's one get into this room here?"
"Through that door," said Laramie, pointing at the obvious point of entry.
"What's another way," said Jareck. Iredell had wrapped an arm around his leg; he shook her off.
"That's the only way," said Laramie. "If we want to find someplace safe, we'll need to look somewhere else. The lizards don't seem to have moved into the second story yet, so maybe we can make it to the dorms—"
"I'm thinking we get in through the window." Jareck had moved to the window of the hallway, which looked onto a courtyard bestrewn with lizards. From the window the wall of the library was visible, perpendicular to the wall of the hallway. If one angled themselves correctly, as Jareck was now doing, one could get a glimpse into one of the round library windows, beyond which stretched a black and barren void.
Laramie had scrunched herself close to Jareck to try and see what he was seeing, try and calculate the logistics of a jump from window number one on the hallway wall to window number two on the library wall. Distance-wise, it seemed possible, as the two windows were tucked relatively close together, but the problem was the angle of exit and the angle of entry, which would require one to take a diagonal running start at the window, clear it, and then smash their way diagonally through the other window, which was quite frankly a ridiculous thing to accomplish.
"Not possible," she said.
"I can do it," said Jareck. "Mebbe."
"Don't try."
"There ain't a single exit outta this Abbey not clogged thick with those lizards, and I'd need a good rope afore I tried to climb over the wall, which I'll let you know is currently my long-term strategy for gettin' out. Until then I need someplace safe, an' that place's probably the safest here. So I think I'll try."
"But even if you make it," said Iredell, still on her knees, "How're we s'posed to make it too?"
Jareck patted her on the head. "That ain't my problem, sunshine."
In the outer edges of the hallway, where vision gave way to vanishing point, black shapes manifested.
Roane opened the hallway window and poked his head out. "We don't need to jump," he said. "We don't need to jump! Look here!"
He had forced his entire upper body out the window and was pointing at something, but in the process of doing so had obscured the vision of everybeast else. Jareck and Laramie pulled him out of the way.
"See the ledge? See it?"
Jareck didn't say whether he saw it or not, but he must have because without pause he pulled himself out the window and stepped into thin air in the direction of the library wall. For a moment it looked as if he had simply walked out of the window and started to hover in the corner intersection of the hallway and library walls, until Laramie realized one of the stones of the Abbey was jutting out a little, either a fault of design so many eons ago or else the pull of time seeking to remove the cornerstone from its place of integral architectural purpose into one of meaninglessness and entropy, the very stones of the Abbey itself coming undone. Laramie didn't have time to ponder the implications. The jutting ledge served an ample stepping-stone to the other side.
Jareck leaned over, steadying himself against the wall, and tapped the library window. He tapped it again and a face emerged in the window, which at first Laramie thought was the face of Lady Alagadda and wondered to herself what would happen if she went through that window, what Alagadda would do to Laramie or what Laramie would do to Alagadda, but it was a different weasel, one she hadn't seen before. The weasel opened the window.
"Why hello there Vellis, be a dear an' help me up will ya?"
Vellis disappeared from the window without another word.
Jareck grinned and pulled himself through the window. Soon he too had disappeared, leaving only Laramie, Roane, and Iredell watching from the other window.
The shapes at the far ends of the hallway were moving closer.
"Okay Roane," said Laramie, pushing the squirrel forward, "Your turn. Onto the ledge, through the window. You think you can do it?"
Roane peered out the window at the courtyard below. Many of the lizards had woken from their slumber and now stared with eyes unblinking. Ten, twenty of them, all staring at the exact same place, all making not the slightest movement save a quick lick of the chops and a slight twinge of the claw.
"Yeah," said Roane. "Piece a cake. But—But that's Alagadda in there. What if she—"
Laramie glanced over her shoulder at the encroaching shapes, now no longer shapes—now lizards, stalking in their direction. "No time, Roane. Alagadda's got worse to worry over than us right now. Now go!"
With a push he went, sliding out the window and hopping tip-paw to the ledge, before recalibrating his direction and pulling his way into the library window. He may have been a bit of a layabout and prone to absent-mindedness, but Roane was nonetheless a squirrel born, and Laramie took a little bit of pride that even the clumsiest of her kind were still able enough to pull such an acrobatic endeavor without pause or worry.
As soon as Roane reached the window, paws shot out from inside and pulled him in.
Laramie prepped herself to get through the window when Iredell, previously forgotten despite her constant sniveling, grabbed her by the habit. "Don't leave me—please don't leave me!"
No time to argue. "Fine! Go, hurry!"
Iredell gave a grateful nod but as soon as she pulled herself up to the window she froze, staring down at the lizards staring back at her.
"Don't think, don't look, just go! Or else they'll kill us."
But Iredell just stood in the window frame, frozen and useless, and Laramie felt her knuckles clench and her brows knit and she contemplated for a brief moment—a brief moment—just reaching out and giving the stupid ferret a great big shove out into the open air, down down down into the courtyard, where either she'd crack open her great dumb skull and spill her brains across the grass or else the lizards would rend her writhing body limb from limb, either outcome equally cathartic given the present circumstances. In fact, Laramie's arms almost started to rise in the gesture of one about to shove before she recoiled in horror at the things that had passed through her mind, a wave of absolute disgust impaling her before she realized she had fallen under the same spell as Iredell if for a different reason. She didn't even bother checking down the hallway to see how close the lizards were.
"Come on, Iredell, you can do it. Come on."
Trembling, Iredell nodded. With a tremulous footpaw she stepped to the side, touched the tip of the jutting stone, and leapt. Laramie was already on the sill ready to follow by the time Iredell had steadied herself. She stood in the crux between the hallway wall and the library wall, balanced precariously on the tiny outcropping barely wide enough to support an entire footpaw. She began the slow process of turning herself for the second jump into the library window.
"Come on. You can do it. Come on." Coaxing softly, quietly. "Don't look down. There's nothing there. Just a quick hop. You can do—"
Laramie had completely forgotten to watch her back, so when the lizard came snarling at her from the hallway she did not think. She leapt onto the ledge before Iredell had even begun to leave it, slamming against the ferret and pressing her into the wall and searching for a pawhold and not finding one. She began to fall, her arms shooting out for anything to grab.
She grabbed Iredell just as her second footpaw struck the ledge with a stiff shock and she managed to not fall and instead sandwiched Iredell to the stone.
The lizard came clawing out the wall after her.
"Help," said Iredell. "Help us!"
Laramie tried to shuffle herself deeper and deeper against the wall, but she only pressed against Iredell. The lizard reached out a claw and swiped at her. Wind rippled past her gut, where the claw came dangerously close.
"Help!"
The lizard rose its claw again to swipe when a long wooden shaft grew out of its eye and it slumped over the sill, limp.
In the library window was the weasel Vellis, with a bow. Another lizard emerged from the window to take the place of the first, and she shot it too. Still more lizards came, and the lizards below had pressed themselves against the wall with mouths upraised, as if expecting a morsel to come tumbling in.
"You need to jump, Iredell," said Laramie. "You can do it."
Iredell did not look like she could do it. "Vellis is in the way," she whispered.
Vellis fired another bolt into the hallway window, striking something Laramie could not see.
"Vellis," said Laramie. The weasel did not respond. "Vellis, we need you to move so we can jump."
Vellis fired another arrow. "Can't y'see I'm busy?"
Another lizard reared its endless head through the window, clawing and scraping for Laramie and Iredell on the ledge even as Vellis shot at it, as if it had no mind for survival or self-preservation, perhaps long having lived in a realm where such things as death were unknown to it, a world where it reigned supreme over the lesser beasts it preyed on; perhaps it did not know it could bleed. Laramie tried to press herself closer against Iredell and the other wall, and Iredell made some kind of scream and either fell or flung herself headlong at the library window, colliding with Vellis as she was in the midst of reaching for another arrow from her quiver. Both of them disappeared through the window with a crash and a lot of shouting.
Laramie braced herself to jump before Vellis could return but as her paws left the ledge the lizard from the hallway window lunged at her and sank its talons into her side and she made a staggered little oof noise as her movement went completely lateral. The sill to the library window remained perfectly even with her eye level and she flung out her paws to catch it, hooking the fingers into the solid stone with the kind of intensity only a creature in imminent danger of death can muster, the stone feeling like some kind of cold pliable custard instead of solid object, until she realized the cold wetness came from the blood oozing from her cracked nails.
The lizard seizing her whiplashed into oblivion, lost its hold, and plummeted, leaving her dangling over the abyss, clinging to the sill.
Mustering the last surge of strength in her body, she tried to pull herself up. The muscle in her arms felt as if they would rip out of her skin. She couldn't even budge. She could only hang there, the blood draining from her arms, her threadbare grip loosening, a legion of lizards growling below her.
Something wrapped around one of her wrists and she started to rise, up and over the sill. When she had made it up, Jareck swung his other arm around her and pulled her inside, depositing her on the rug of the library floor.
She fell onto her back, sucking in air, staring at a ceiling obscured in shadow, surrounded on all sides by towers of books and records, spines familiar to her. She had spent much time in this room, surrounded by the tomes, opening them, running fingers along the pages, reading their ancient font.
In one corner of the room was Vellis, counting the arrows in her quiver. Facedown the ground beside her was Iredell, who Laramie couldn't tell was alive or dead. Roane was nowhere, Jareck had vanished as soon as he dropped her inside. She could hear his voice. Talking to somebeast else. Someone on the far side of the library, beyond the field of Laramie's perception.
"Just some mates I brought along," said Jareck. "Woodlanders, no weapons 'twixt 'em."
"Toss 'em back out the window. Placate the lizzerds you riled up afore they batter their brains through this barricade."
"Harmless, really. You'll like 'em I bet."
"I said toss 'em."
"The one's a Recorder. She writes."
The other voice, which was murky and indistinct, went silent. In the corner Vellis finished counting her arrows. Iredell sniffled and wrapped her arms around herself.
A large face swelled in Laramie's line of sight, grinning, scarred, ragged, like that of a monolithic statue, something found buried in the dark parts of the woods. Even in her daze Laramie knew it to be the face of Alagadda of the Many Blades, conquerer of Redwall Abbey.
"Writes, eh?"
Laramie could only stare, transfixed in horror.