15
In the dark of the hull of a ship whose name Fentress could not even remember, muffled scraps of conversation seeped out.
"He's angry."
"Naw, he's same as allus."
"He said, one more delivery. Who'll it be?"
"Luce. Wonder he hasn't delivered her yet."
"He keeps Luce 'round as a warning."
"I can hear you, y'know."
"Sorry, Luce."
Fentress and Sully, side-by-side on the bench, only rowed in silence. It amazed Fentress that the others spoke, and so openly. Not long after he left, Kennebec had replaced the previous driver Trego with a pair of monstrous, silent shrews, who paced back and forth down the rows of benches holding aloft dry lanterns and needling each beast they passed with baleful expressions. But they said nothing to quell the discussions, even though they could hear them full well.
Time in the hull did not pass. It was only ever dark.
At some point Bristol Isabella Rensselaer-LaBette woke. Fentress had wondered what would happen when she did, whether they would have to suffer through the same rigamarole that she and Sully had gone through when they first discovered their new plight.
Far worse, Bristol only shuddered a little and seized Fentress by the wrist and said, "They've killed us and this is the end."
"No, Bristol," said Fentress. "We're in the hull of their ship. They're having us row. Come on, take a seat here, or the guards'll whip you."
The dazed and confused creature did as bidden. Fentress and Sully scooted over to make room for her. The sight of the hare's pitiful diminutive form in the dry lamplight wreaked Fentress with unfathomable sorrow. She had never seen a Long Patrol hare before Bristol, but she had heard stories—who hadn't? They were creatures born for stories, seemingly born from them as well. Perilous exploits, magnificent battles, romantic ideals of chivalry and class and strength that had no right to be anywhere but long since lost in their modern world of famine and disease and strife. But this tattered and empty beast was not of those stories. Perhaps she had been, once.
"How are you, Bristol," said Fentress. "You were out a long time."
It was an obvious pleasantry meant to illicit an obvious response of utter indignation—(How am I? I've been flippin' trounced left an' right, wrung through the wringer, hurled in the brig without so much as an excuse me marm, and now they're expectin' me to row their blinkin' ship! Plus other insults, exclamations, and vows of vengeance Fentress could not even begin to imagine)—but all Bristol did was slump her shoulders over the oar in front of her and say, "I want to die."
Sully had remained silent for a long time, and she did not speak now.
Fentress put both paws on Bristol's shoulders and tried to shake her back into existence, but in such a nebulous world who knew what that even meant. "Don't talk like that, Bristol. If you talk like that down here, it'll happen, anguished and slow but it'll happen. You have to find something to live for, even if that something is revenge. You have to keep your head up. What about the Long Patrol? What about your duty to the creatures of Mossflower?"
"I'm the last one," said Bristol.
"The last—the last of the Long Patrol?"
Bristol nodded.
"But—Salamandastron! How could it—"
One of the guards walked by, his bulging eye pointed at them. But he said nothing, and kept moving to needle the next bench.
"I saw it," said Bristol. "The mountain. The earth began to shake. A tear appeared in the land, and the rocks came crashing into the abyss—a cataclysmic upheaval, and the mountain was swallowed—I saw it…"
Sully's eyes narrowed. "When'd you see this."
"Not five minutes ago," said Bristol. "I fell into the chasm and then I was here."
Sully made an exasperated noise. "Madbeast," she said. "Utter nonsense."
"It was just a dream, Bristol," said Fentress. "It may have been vividly real, but you're not in any abyss or chasm or any of that rot. You're in the hull of a ship—on the river Moss."
"Rot," said Sully. "Babble."
In a instant, Bristol went from slumped over the oar in a posture of supplication to seizing Sully and drawing her close, the two of them tete a tete with Fentress mashed between.
"Would you like to hear a story," said Bristol. "Maybe when you hear it you'll have a little blinkin' sympathy for my little picadillo. How 'bout it, wanna hear?"
"Just keep rowin' while you blabber on so we don't get whipped," said Sully.
Bristol grinned, a long silly grin, and relinquished Sully to grip the oar instead. As three they pulled the massive wooden shaft forward and backward, forward and backward, forward and backward. Bristol waited until they had settled into a rhythm before continuing.
"I imagine, as a young Redwaller, hardship an' grief ain't been such a large part of yore life. Ah, livin' an' eatin', that's the life, ain't it? It's every Long Patroller's daydream on a long march, when yore paws're sorer than sore itself an' you ain't had a decent meal in what seems like a season. Redwall Abbey. The life."
"My parents died afore I knew 'em," said Sully, with almost casual diffidence. Fentress decided not to ante up in the pot of tragedies suffered lest their mutual losses turn into a cruel competition.
"Well, leastaways yer not totally insulated," said Bristol. "You may understand what's befallen me, in that case. So then, with that preface out the way, allow me to commence my story proper. Ahem. Attention, please."
Bristol held up a theatric paw to her audience, which consisted of not just Fentress and Sully but the entire host of wide-eyed creatures at the other benches, all rapt in attention of the hare since who knew how long. Probably since she awoke.
"Allow me t'set the scene. Winter. Cruel time. Snow to yore knees, can't walk a step without losin' yore boots. I'm on the march with my platoon, which contains a whole host of creatures near an' dear t'my heart, creatures I've fought alongside and scoffed tuck an' provender alongside and who all-around I've trusted with my life just as they've trusted me with theirs. There was our commander, Lieutenant Botetourt, and our chief medical officer, the pretty Miss Audrain, and who else am I forgetting—ah yes, there'd be my beloved, one Corporal Oliver Habersham, Olly for short, who I was engaged to marry."
Sully kneaded her fists into her sockets. "Okay. Okay. I get where you're goin' with this. I apologize. You've been through a lot—"
"Oh no no, you wanted a story. Funny story about Olly an' I. We'd been engaged for goin' on four seasons by this point, was kinda the joke around the mountain to say we'd be engaged 'til the day we died, not quite so funny to me now in retrospect, I must say. Truth was, Olly'd been hesitant about weddin' all official-like, wasn't his cup a tea, fellow'd charge right into a vermin horde hollerin' Eulalias like you wouldn't believe without the bat of an eye but when it came to the topic o'marriage he'd clam up and make a whole lot of awkward um and uh noises not unlike the ones you seem to be makin' a lot of right now, Miss… Sully, wasn't it?"
Fentress decided not to say something, although Sully seemed mortified in regards to the obvious course Bristol's story was taking, mortified at how she had so snidely quipped at the hare without knowing her whole story. But come on, Sully. You had to have had some inkling this had happened, the way she had clambered after Sosostris with such dogged determination. Fentress decided it would teach Sully a good lesson to have her words come back to haunt her for once.
"He was always so shy speakin' t'me, in fact I'd be the one initiatin' every conversation. It wasn't like he was that way around anybeast else, he'd spin knee-slappers with the other members of the platoon same as they all would, an' laugh great big guffaws, an' boast, an' all that good ol' Long Patrol hare activity we're so well known for. But get him near me and, well, couldn't get a word outta him."
"Get on with the story," said one of the shrew guards.
"Stow it you big lout, can't y'see I'm seasoning it with a few choice details to get the emotional investment goin'? Yer the kinda foul beast that's always skippin' to the end o'the book afore yer through just t'see what happens, aren't ya?"
The big shrew groused under his breath.
"As I was sayin', afore I was so rudely interrupted. Wintertime, on the march, a ways a bit northward from yon, assumin' yon's still about where I 'spect it is, which may or may not be the case. North's an atrocious place t'be, by the way, both in the winter and on the march. Snow's twice as cold, and blows twice as long, an' it sticks in yore fur so you've got literal icicles running down yore snout, it ain't just a metaphor up there. No sirrah. An' course there's twice the number of vermin in the north, north's a breedin' ground fer the pestilent louses, rival clans all vyin' fer territory and whatnot, each one with their own leader settin' hisself up like the next vermin chieftain warlord extraordinaire, each one with some silly moniker or name, half a which they ain't e'en got the decency to make up on their own, gotta pilfer it from some other better warlord who at least had an ounce a creativity in him. I swear, I once swapped blows with one ugly ferret callin' hisself Spoony the Scourge, actin' as if 'twere a name to instill fear in his foes. Instilled nothin' more'n hysterics in us.
"So that's the usual day in our line of work, routin' those neverending barrages of vermin, one chieftain gone an' another's replaced him the next day, harassing the pore honest folk up there who've got it hard enough on account of the abysmal weather an' now can't get a break from this infestation, this plague spreadin', an' I hear it's even worse further north you get, 'til there's no north left to go an' you can't see nothin' but an ocean of ice. But I digress."
"Yew shore do," said the same shrew guard from before.
Bristol took a moment to clear her throat again. She leaned toward the guard. "Say, ol' chap, my throat's feelin' a tad dry, have you anything to wet my whistle with?"
"Rations'll be served once at sundown and once at sunup, same as always," said the guard, as if Bristol should have known the routine already.
"Ah, 'tis a pity," said Bristol. "Can't tell a good story with a dry gullet, that's the truth. Guess you'll all have to wait."
The shrew bristled, before relenting and reaching for a flagon strapped to his belt. The other guard reached out and stopped him. "You know the rules. Kennebec's orders."
"I wanna hear the story," said the first shrew.
"It ain't even a good story," said the other shrew. "She's just babblin'. What's she even said? Some rot about the north, who even cares."
"Beats standin' hear listenin' to nuttin'," said the first shrew. "You got a problem with it?"
He apparently didn't have a problem with it. The guard unlatched the flask from his belt and passed it to Bristol. The hare unstopped the cork, sniffed the contents, recoiled a little, and took a long thick swig. She terminated with a cough.
"Well, you know what they say, beggars and choosers," she muttered, passing the flask back to the shrew. She gave a contented sigh and eased up a little on the oar, which Fentress found irksome because she had to put in additional effort. She didn't think Sully was rowing at all, just resting her paws on the wooden staff as it bobbed back and forth.
"So where was I. Oh yeah. Soon we start hearin' whispers. A name of a new warlord creatures are startin' to fear. These names pop up all the time as a matter of course but when the name's said enough times it's kinda our job to pay attention. Anyone wanna guess what this name is?"
"Log a Log Kennebec," said some pitiful creature in the dark.
Bristol scoffed. "Pshaw! Kennebec? Are you even payin' attention, he ain't anywhere near this story yet, but he'll come around in due time, don't you worry. No, the name that's got everybeast up in arms is quite the silly one, if at least a little original. The more I've turned the name over, the more it's grown on me, it has a flair to it you don't usually see with vermin warlords. An' trust me, I've turned this particular name over a lot. 'Cuz it's gonna be me puts an end to it."
"Alagadda," said Fentress.
"Not just Alagadda, oh no. You know her whole spiel? Alagadda of the Many Blades. Five whole words for one single name, six if you count the Lady gets appended to it from time t'time. We didn't know what t'make of it at first. You know why they call 'er that, yes?"
Fentress tried to remember her brief encounter with Alagadda, back at the swamp. "Because of all the knives she has, right?"
"Wrong. The knives came second. Back when we dealt with her she only had a couple, had t'keep pickin' 'em up after she threw them. They called her Many Blades 'cuz of her collection.
"The way any vermin chief gains notoriety, at least in the north, is by killin' other chieftains. From our intelligence, she'd started out small, some lesser hordebeast in some lesser horde. She assassinated her own leader, whose name escapes me. Challenged him to a duel an' killed him. Took over. That's how it usually goes with chieftains. We don't kill 'em, one of their own does. But Alagadda had something right 'cuz soon she's snowballin' into other clans, takin' 'em over, aggregatin' an army. An' every chieftain she kills, she keeps the sword. Scimitar, sabre, cutlass, what have you, pries it from the dead leader's stone cold fingers to add to her collection.
"Now you may ask, but Bristol Isabella Rensselaer-LaBette, Alagadda's but a slight beast fer warlord standards, how's she luggin' around all those blades an' same-such? Of course she ain't now, and she wasn't then, neither. She handed 'em all off to her lieutenants, gifts and symbols of status. But also making a statement. This blade some warlord held, which he used to lord over a land, to claim dominion, well that blade ain't good enough for Lady Alagadda. Maybe it'll serve a captain, a subordinate, a lackey—so it at once stratifies her army and purchases the loyalty of her closest followers, but also establishes her own dominance."
"Ain't you s'posed to be talkin' 'bout how yore mate died," said one of the shrew guards with a scowl.
Bristol waved a flippant paw at him. "So when our intelligence learned all these things about Alagadda, as well as how large her horde was, we knew we weren't dealin' with yore run-a-the-mill vermin chieftain, we had somebeast with real history-shakin' warlord potential in her nascent stages. Usually we don't see 'em this early, they come from overseas or even further north already established and at their zenith, an' so there was some clamor 'mongst the platoon that we should squash Alagadda afore war could come to Mossflower. I won't lie, Olly an' I were the chief proponents of that side o'the argument. But Lieutenant Botetourt wouldn't hear it. They had roughly twenty times our numbers, an' while the Long Patrol ain't one to back from a fight just 'cuz the odds ain't good, we'd be fightin' in the winter in land we knew half as well as they did with no reinforcements headed our way an' nobeast back at Salamandastron even knowin' we were fightin'. So his order was to return, make our report to Badger Lord Galveston, muster a more suitable force, an' return full swingin' to erase the blight from the realm.
"Well, the officer's word is the final word, wot. We broke camp and set about the long march south, back into Mossflower country.
"But wouldn't you know? Turns out, we weren't the only ones reconnoiterin' around up in the north. We watched Alagadda, an' she watched us in turn. We'd of course gained some well-earned notoriety of our own by wipin' up a few aforementioned vermin clans ev'ry so often, an' the name of the Long Patrol's one heard far beyond the reaches of our fair country, so Alagadda, ever the smart one, sniffed us out. An' when we started to move, she moved too. But not her whole army. Nah, we'd've known about such a force followin' us. She organized a group of elites, led by herself. Who knew who she left behind to watch her army in the meantime, mebbe she didn't leave anybeast and had 'em sit tight in the cold fer a week. Either way, speaks chillin' lengths about the loyalty of her horde, which I won't muse about here."
"Phew," said some creature, who wasn't one of the shrew guards. Fentress herself didn't mind the extraneous detail. In fact, she wanted more, wanted to know more about Alagadda and her horde and her tactics and her temperament, because she knew that soon she would have to wage war against her. Her dream with Martin had been what dreams with Martin must always be; a call to arms, a call to defend the Abbey. He had not spoken, but in the end he had not needed to. Fentress now knew that there would be no other recourse but for her to lead the fight. Truthfully, she no longer minded.
"But Alagadda could've beset us under any conditions an' we still would've obliterated her little so-called elite group, which aside from her an' that one bowbeast she's always got at her side wasn't too elite at all. Except there's one last angle to this story, an' this is where our good friend Log a Log Kennebec makes his grandiose entrance. You see, when we first left Mossflower country, Kennebec wasn't the Log a Log at all. He was a trusted second to the Log a Log, an' a prominent member of the guerrilla union, an' so when he met us at the northern end of the River Moss tellin' us how the previous Log a Log died an' how by Guosim law he was now in command, we didn't question it none."
For the first time in her rapid-fire delivery of the story, she paused. She didn't give a dramatic gesture or respond to one of the handful of snide remarks cropping up in the darkness, including what seemed to be an attempt by Luce to hijack the story and give her own explanation of the events, which for the most part was quieted by one of the shrew guards. (Which made Fentress wonder how Luce was connected to all of this; she had seemed defiant before on the subject of Kennebec, and the other rowers looked to her as some sort of leader. Perhaps she had some sort of connection to the previous Log a Log, which might explain her presence here now.)
Bristol finally spoke. "I dunno if I wanna tell this part, as it's the part where all the thoughts about what could've been if only we knew, if only we realized, if only we suspected some ounce of the suspicion pervading Log a Log Kennebec an' his self-assured demeanor an' how his crew didn't seem to sing anymore the Guosim songs we'd heard 'em all sing the last time we met, or how he told us the prior Log a Log died a' natural causes even though the ol' feller'd seemed pretty spry an' it'd only been a half-season—or well, some amount o'time, I don't quite recall—since he'd danced a jig fer us as hospitable entertainment. But we were cold an' we'd marched the last few days without rest an' we weren't 'spectin' treachery from the Guosim of all creatures. So we stayed at their camp an' supped their supper an' had ourselves a jolly time.
"At some point durin' the feast, a cloaked figure slipped into camp an' met discreetly with Log a Log Kennebec. I didn't know it at the time, but this figure was that same wretched vixen you so adamantly attempted to shield from me." Bristol gave Fentress a friendly nudge in the ribs that Fentress wasn't sure how friendly it was. "I was sittin' with Olly and Lieutenant Botetourt at the time, spinnin' some yarn for a few of the shrews, mebbe these guards here were among them. But I noticed this odd figure and kept an eye on her and at some point managed to get it into my head that she was a vixen, which led to the question of why she was there in camp talkin' to Kennebec like she was s'posed to be there. By then, it was too late. I'd just broken my story off long enough to ask the lieutenant what to make of this vixen when Kennebec signals his cronies and bam, blades're bein' drawn left an' right an' beasts's shoutin', hollerin', stabbin' at each other. Course we hares weren't keen to bringin' weapons to a meetin' 'mongst friends but at the same time we're soldiers and not havin' yore blade with you's tantamount to suicide, so soon we're up an' the frenzy's on us and Eulalia's singin' on the wind an' guts are spillin'.
"Then Alagadda shows up.
"In the heat a battle, disorganized and rank broken, we didn't realize 'twas her at first. But shore enough I garter some beast through the gullet with my sword an' look up and tain't no shrew starin' back at me wide-eyed and babblin' blood, 'tis some nasty rat, an' a pair a his mates is comin' for vengeance. I lash out with a right hook—" (she demonstrated) "—knock the block offa one a'them, parry back an' slice open the stummick of the other, when there's a fourth one, wily lanky fox character, lookin' not unlike the hooded vixen who'd tipped the whole thing off, comes at my back. But Olly's there an' he blocks the blow an' swipes at this fox, while I take on a pair a weasels chargin' my front, so we're fightin' back-to-back vermin after filthy vermin. Lieutenant Botetourt's off to the side, holdin' a line with the rest of the survivors, crossin' blades with the Many-Bladed One herself. That only registers a tangential on my frame a reference, I've taken down one weasel and set to clobberin' the second, whalin' on his weaselly head a few extra times for good measure.
"That's about when I turn an' see Olly take a blow to the side from that fox." Bristol's voice starting to lose itself. "Who knows what kinda dirty scoundrel tricks such a louse-ridden cross-bit mange-furred infidel'd have t'pull to do one on Olly, but that's about when I start gettin' real mad, an' by mad I mean in the hare sense as much as the fury sense, an' all I'm seein' is red, an' that's about when I get this—" (pointing to the long scar down the side of her face and neck) "—an' this—" (pointing to the scar running the length of her arm and terminating in a mangled finger) "—an' this—" (pointing to a ragged gash in her coat through which another scar could be seen) "—An' I'm startin' to lose track a who I am, see, so I swing out like this—"
She leapt out of her bench and seized the whip from the nearest shrew guard and had a full second to batter the guard senseless with it before the second guard registered what had happened. By then she had the whip around the first guard's throat and set to throttling his head off with it and when the second guard hesitated for a moment unsure whether to run for help or do something to stop her she lashed out with one of her footpaws and struck him directly in the neck with a well-aimed high kick, dropping him to the ground making no noise at all.
Bristol wound the whip around the first guard's throat until he stopped moving too, and let him drop.
She pulled the whip off and lashed it into empty air. "I'm leaving. If you're with me, okay. If not, I don't care. An' don't expect me to ever finish that story."
As soon as she realized what was happening, Fentress dove to the corpses of the guards and searched them for weapons. Whisking her paws over their cold still bodies she managed to find one small dirk hidden on an ankle and drew it. "I'm in," she said.
Sully rose. "Guess I'm comin' too."
"And the rest of you," said Fentress to the other shriveled creatures in the hull of the ship, keeping an eye on Bristol who was already limping toward the hatch. "This is your best chance at escape. I implore you come too."
Nobeast stirred.
With a wince, Sully put an arm around Fentress to steady herself. "I think my ankle got worse in all the kerfuffle back on the riverbank. Mebbe I should—"
"Don't even say that you'll stay, Sully," said Fentress. "It's not happening." She helped Sully through the darkness of the hull, swiping one of the fallen guards's lanterns to light the way. Nobeast else made a noise or moved; as Fentress swept the light of the lantern over their emaciated faces, an array of inset eyeballs glimmered back at her.
Bristol tripped over something and cursed.
When they had almost reached the ladder leading up to the hatch, somebeast finally spoke. It was Luce, the ringleader, the one the others always referred to in hushed tones no matter their subject of discussion.
"Don't you try it. You won't get two paces out that hatch."
Fentress held aloft the lantern and tried to put a face to the voice. "I'm willing to wager we can. If enough of us rise up at once, we'll overwhelm them. There's not so many and not so ready as can stop us all."
The voice that returned was harsh, mocking. "As if we 'aven't tried it afore. Whaddya think we are, idjits? We ain't even chained down here, first thought popped into each an' ev'ry one of our pore heads was breakin' out. An' we did it too, overpowered the guards—Kennebec never leaves many of 'em—made a rush through the hatch. But he's there, he's allus waitin'. It's his sick pleasure. By makin' escape look so easy, he can batter us down all the harder. Look into my eyes, an' tell me what you see."
But Fentress couldn't find Luce's voice in all the turmoil; she could only see a hundred incandescent eyes in the lamplight. Finally, a small, tremulous paw reached out and gripped her wrist, pulling the lantern toward it, and the thing staring back at Fentress wasn't staring at her at all, because it had no eyes—it had only two sockets welded shut and scarred.
"You—you're blind?"
"Aye, the last time Kennebec caught me he did it himself. Said rowbeasts didn't need to see anyway. Not like I'd ever be out in the light fer the rest of m'life… Eventually he'll decide to deliver me, an' that'll be the end of it."
"Deliver?" said Fentress, mouthing the word, still in awe at Luce.
"Don't worry about it. You'll find out soon enough—it's where we're headin' now."
Sully shook Fentress. "Come on, Fen, we ain't got time for this—Bristol ain't waitin' up. Just 'cuz she didn't make it don't mean we won't!"
Fentress nodded. Taking one last glance at Luce, she broke away and reached the ladder to the hatch, which Bristol had already begun to ascend. Helping Sully onto the first rung, she placed down the lantern and followed her up.
Bristol reached the hatch, flung it open, and spilled out, snarling and shouting and cracking the whip. Sully and Fentress tumbled after her, into the dusky air of an orange sky. They landed on the deck of the ship.
The first thing Fentress saw when she looked up was Log a Log Kennebec staring down at her from beneath his obnoxious hat, an insufferable grin etched on his face. At his back, it seemed, stood his entire crew, each brandishing a weapon. Fentress glanced to the right, and then to the left—they were surrounded. Even Bristol, who had seemed so eager to gamble her life on this last chance at freedom, stopped short of the innumerable tide of Guosim shrews stretched before them, clotting the deck of the ship, impassable for their sheer numbers before even considering their armaments.
Kennebec gave a foppish tip of his cap. "Good evening, dears. You're just in time for the ceremony."
He extended a paw to help Fentress up.