ENDGAME
In the library, the ferret Iredell and the squirrel Roane sat on the plush lounge chairs doing little of anything. Iredell kept wringing her paws together, while Roane held his head and stared at the floorboards. Around them loomed the entire edifice of Redwall history.
"Wot's yore name again," asked Iredell.
"I'm Roane," said Roane.
"Oh," said Iredell. "I'm Iredell."
"I know, I heard Alagadda say it."
"Oh."
From the open window the sounds of a battle raged. Multiple times Iredell had risen, made for the window, glanced back at Roane, and in an anxious titter sat back down. But as the cries grew louder and louder, she strained her neck further and further to see what could be seen from her vantage. It wasn't much.
"It's best to stay here anyway," she said aloud. Roane nodded in agreement.
As the Abbey bellringer, Roane had never felt himself a truly relevant member of the community. He knew Abbott Walden had shackled him with the simplest and least significant role at the Abbey because he had continually mucked up every other role he tried. He burnt food, missed dust, couldn't work with wood, couldn't work with stone, couldn't work. A malfunctioning creature of dubious pertinence. The belltower was high and out of mind for most creatures of the Abbey, who had grown up with the constant drone of the bells and to whom the sound faded into a laconic ticking in the back of their minds. Roane was fit to disappear up there.
Now all his friends were fighting. Laramie most of all… Laramie, who always had everything right, who knew what to do. When they had fled the lizards through the Abbey, she had led the way, practically dragged him behind her, while he flubbed even basic motor functions, tripping and stumbling over his own dumb self. And now she was out fighting while he languished safe and sound here in the library. What a coward.
Iredell got up again and this time managed to take a few steps toward the window, although with her upper body drawn back as though she expected arrows to come whizzing into her the moment she stuck her head into view. The only weapon she had on her was a slim dirk she had received as an afterthought from Alagadda, and she held it now like a torch in oblivion. She reached the window and peeked out.
A melange of creatures crashed into each other below, completely unoccupied with her minor appearance above them. She strained her eyes but everything was a blur of color, green and red. She could not determine sides or favor to either hypothetical side that might exist. She could make out no individuals.
"Yup, best to stay in here," she said.
She turned around for a book to collide with her face. She fell over stunned as Roane swung again with the tome—the densest and meatiest of the bunch, the tale of Mattimeo—connecting with Iredell around her neck. She held up her paws to defend herself as Roane swung again, splattering Mattimeo all over her, blasting the book into a whirlwind of shredded paper.
He tossed aside the tattered remnants of the book and dove onto Iredell, grabbing the arm that held the dirk and sinking his fangs into her wrist. She screamed and dropped the blade as he seized it and lifted it over his head.
"No, please, don't kill me!" Iredell screamed, tears in her eyes.
Roane paused, chest heaving. Papers cascaded around him.
He rose and went for the window, leaving Iredell to cradle a limp wrist. Clutching the dirk between his teeth he crawled onto the sill, hopped onto the jutting outcropping that they had used to get into the library, and climbed through the other window into the second-story hallway. He needed to find Laramie.
The upper hallway remained deserted. He wasted no time running down the corridor for the stairs, looking for the safest way down. As soon as he reached the stairs and began to descend he realized he should have just leapt from the window in the first place, it wasn't a long fall. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind. He had simply assumed the safest way to descend was the stairs, and headed for the nearest stairs. Ugh.
He navigated to the Great Hall, the quickest exit being the front door. Or perhaps that was simply his one-track form of thinking acting up again. How do you exit a building? Through the front door, of course. There was probably some better way, some shortcut, but he wasn't one for—
So caught in his thoughts, Roane almost walked right into what had to be the only other living creature still in the actual Abbey. He skidded to a halt and stared up at the creature who stood before the famed tapestry of Martin the Warrior, blinking a bit before he could place the face.
It was Captain Jareck. The stoat hadn't noticed him, busy with something about the tapestry. It took Roane a moment to realize Jareck was pulling the tapestry down from its place on the wall.
"What are you doing," Roane asked, although he had only an instant before figured out what Jareck was doing.
Jareck cut a string holding a corner with his ornate blade. "Scram, mate. 'Tis better if you stay quiet in the library." The tapestry drooped over and Jareck caught it, rolling it up in his paws with a few quick motions despite its weight.
"Are you—are you stealing the tapestry?" Roane asked, although he already knew it was so.
Jareck slung the rolled-up tapestry over his shoulder and began a casual stroll down the main hall, passing Roane. "I went through all the trouble of comin' here, might as well leave with some profit."
Roane stood by, flabbergasted. "You can't take that! It's important!"
Jareck kept walking.
Gritting his teeth, Roane rushed forward, waving his dirk wildly. "Redwaaaaaaall!"
Before he got into what he would have considered striking distance, Jareck swung around and swept Roane's legs out from under him, knocking Roane onto his back.
He turned and kept walking.
Roane climbed back up, seething. He rubbed the back of his head, which had bounced against the ground and now felt sore.
"You can't do that," he said, walking after Jareck. "You'll have to kill me before I let you take the tapestry!"
His gait rose to a sprint and he charged Jareck again, crying the war cry of Redwall Abbey. Jareck paused midstep and sighed before swinging around and slamming the hilt of his blade on Roane's head.
Roane dropped in a heap. He did not get back up.
Jareck stole out of the main hall, the tapestry still propped on his shoulder.
Vellis had no arrows left. She had not wanted to waste her last one to save Alagadda's neck but Alagadda had demonstrated a severe lack of situational awareness Vellis found disconcerting if not altogether distressing.
"Ya got her!" said Switz from other her shoulder, staring in awe as the small creature Vellis had hit toppled off the steps.
"Yes," said Vellis. She strummed her empty bow before placing it aside.
Two creatures had gathered around the spot where the bodies had fallen. An otter and another squirrel. Vellis regarded them with some interest.
The otter looked in Vellis's direction first. Then, the squirrel did. Unlike the otter, the squirrel did not look away.
Down below, Sully forgot all previous injuries, pains, and aches. She forgot everything. Her eyes set on the bowbeast in the gatehouse with undying ire. Her body trembled with an aura of vehemence that overtook her senses completely.
She rose from the slain body of her sister, Laramie, and sprinted toward the gatehouse. She seized a discarded spear from the corpse of a shrew without slowing or pausing or even noticing she had seized it.
"Get ready, Switz," said Vellis to her dubious companion. "It's a vengeance-seeker."
"A wot," said Switz.
"There are few good beasts in this realm you can kill without somebeast wantin' to kill you for it."
Vellis reached into her cloak and drew her secondary weapon, Alagadda's gift to her for her captaincy. A machete, of modest but durable materials and of unparalleled craftsmanship, sharp, heavy, steel. The blade had once belonged to the Skipper of Otters of Mossflower County, who had forged and constructed the thing himself as an instrument for fishing, not for warfare. Designed to hew the heads from pike and other aquatic creatures, the blade and its stalwart simplicity had nonetheless become a symbol of his right to rule his clan, despite his protests to contrary and his offers to make more such blades for anybeast who desired one. The Skipper's clan had grown prosperous and peaceful and the Skipper had enjoyed the love of a devoted wife, a love that bore him a sole child, a daughter. Despite tradition and some minor protests by the clan elders, the Skipper had aims for this daughter to inherit the rule of the clan and had instructed her from a young age in the ways of combat, implanting in her mind the seeds of a warrior. And so he had led his life until a weasel warlord from the northern lands and her blood-hungry horde had without warning descended upon the tribe, slaughtering otters left and right, torching their simple huts and riverboats, paying no heed to whether the creature beneath their falling blade was elder or infant. The Skipper had run to his wife and instructed her to flee with their daughter, their only child, and to take the blade with them. His distressed wife had asked what he planned to do and he did not respond, turning his back to her and plunging back into the fray, proving the only creature who could elevate a one-sided massacre into a full-fledged battle. The blade had traveled with the Skipper's wife until an arrow from an expert marksbeast had sunk into her spine, and then it had traveled with the Skipper's young daughter, a minuscule thing, hardly as tall as the blade itself, who nonetheless carried it into the forest. The weasel warlord had sent a single captain of hers, a wizened stoat, to retrieve the blade and slay the ragamuffin carrying it, and the loyal stoat had complied, trailing the young otter to the edge of a swamp. He had stopped her moments before she made a misstep and plunged headlong into the mire, scolding her for her carelessness, before harmlessly plucking away the blade and giving her a pat in a direction that eventually led to the Abbey of Redwall. The stoat had returned to his warlord with the blade and presented it as a gift along with the promise that he had slain the final scion of the Skipper's family. The warlord had given the blade to her best friend, Vellis.
Vellis drew the blade now. She rarely had the need to use it beyond utilitarian reasons. She was not a swordfighter, she had never practiced bladecraft.
The squirrel sprinted to the entry to the gatehouse and disappeared inside.
Vellis watched the door from the stairwell and waited. "She'll come from there, an' she'll come fast," she told Switz. "Get ready."
Switz had no weapon, but he balled his paws into fists and put on an angry face.
The door burst open and Sully vaulted through. Vellis dipped under the jutting spear and seized the shaft, forcing the polearm harmlessly into the air. With two clean blows she split the cord holding the flint spearhead. Sully wrenched away and regarded the long, toothless stick she held in her paws.
Vellis kicked the fallen spearhead out the window.
"Haw-haw-haw," said Switz. He pointed at Sully. "Y'ain't got no weapon now!"
Sully unleashed a shriek of rage and jump-kicked Switz in the chest. Still laughing, Switz stumbled backward out the window. He landed with a thump.
Sully flung herself at Vellis again, raising the staff over her head and slamming it down on the weasel. A spurt of blood shot from Vellis's nostrils as she clattered over a table. Before she could even raise her head another blow came down and cracked against her skull, dazing her. She raised a paw to defend herself but a third blow found her on the chest, whacking with crushing velocity, sending explosive pain through Vellis's senses.
Vellis recuperated enough to swing her blade through the air blindly. It struck nothing and she received another strike as recompense, hitting her head and sending her vision into rays of black. She swung another time, but the next blow from the shaft hit her on the back of her paw and she dropped the blade. It clattered to the ground somewhere distant, somewhere eons away.
Rolling over, Vellis pulled herself off the table and onto the floor. Unsure where the exit was, or if there was an exit, she started to crawl, slugging her dead weight over the cobblestone. Sully swung again and connected with her back. Vellis cried out and slumped onto the ground.
Another strike.
Another strike. Vellis no longer had the strength to move.
Another strike.
"P-please…"
Another strike.
"You murdered my sister, you—you—"
Another strike.
With a final exertion, Vellis rolled onto her back and faced Sully, holding her paws up weakly. Tears were in her eyes. "Please…"
For a moment Sully stayed her paw. She panted.
"Spare Rhea…"
Sully blinked. "Who?"
"A… Alagadda… She's—"
Sully forgot herself again and swung. With a leaden crack, Vellis went silent.
Alagadda scrunched her mouth. Her scribe was dead. She had kind of hoped that wouldn't happen, since her chronicle was still only half-complete. Well, she'd find another. First things first.
Fentress scooped up Conredd's rapier. Holding both it and Kennebec's sabre she hobbled lopsided to the base of the stairs, nearly colliding with a creature who came sprinting out of the fracas still raging on the turf. It was Sosostris, extricating herself from an attacking shrew. She and Fentress toppled atop each other and Sosostris scratched her paws against Fentress's face as she scurried back up. Sosostris catapulted to the south wallgate and froze the moment she reached it. She managed to throw her paws up to defend herself as an entire platoon of shrews and woodlanders charged in and enveloped her, Friar Alger at their lead. Fentress wasn't sure what had transpired at the east gate to cause him to re-enter here, nor did she care. She collected her swords and began her ascent.
With the Sword of Martin in one paw and a dagger in the other, Alagadda had not budged from her perch. A snaggletoothed grin spread over her face.
"'Ello, Fen."
Fentress paused, surprised to hear her name.
"Think I forgot?" said Alagadda. She tapped the hilt of the dagger against her cranium. "I don't forget." She leaned back and chuckled.
Fentress pulled her arm and threw Kennebec's sabre. The lightweight blade pinwheeled through the air. Alagadda had only a moment to duck to the side, but the narrow stairway offered no room to dodge. The sabre slashed against her shoulder and ricocheted into oblivion. A massive red gash tore open down her arm and she dropped the Sword of Martin. It clattered onto the edge of the stairs.
Tossing her dagger down at Fentress she seized the sword with her good arm, the other hanging limp at her side. Fentress dipped under the dagger and dashed up the stairs with the rapier. Alagadda backpedaled to escape, slithering to the walltop.
When Fentress reached the top Alagadda was standing again, holding only Martin's Sword at a low angle, breathing through her mouth, wiping sweat from her brow with an elbow. The blood running down her shoulder had spread through the white bandages that covered her body and dripped onto the sandstone.
"Not bad," she said. "Say, you happen to be any good at writin'?"
Fentress lunged with the rapier, which was awkward and unlike the way she expected to use a sword. Alagadda deflected the blow but slow and tedious and the point almost grazed her already-wounded arm. She broke back and regarded the Sword of Martin with a frown.
"Too heavy."
Jumping back, Alagadda span her body once, twice, and shot-put the Sword of Martin well behind her, hurling it further down the wall where it hit the stone with a crystalline crack. She had drawn another of her daggers before Fentress even had time to attack. Hopping from footpaw to footpaw, Alagadda studied her opponent.
"Ye can't win," she said. "No skill. No practice. I'm faster'n you, too."
Fentress didn't speak. She remembered what Bristol had told her on the ship.
"A rapier's no blade fer a novice. Takes too much finesse, y'ain't got none." Droplets of blood pitter-pattered off her.
"Redwaaaaaall!" Fentress lunged forward with the rapier, swinging it like a blade, slapping the tensile iron at Alagadda's eyes. Alagadda maneuvered her knife to deflect the blow, and a second blow, and a third blow, giving up ground with every successive whack. The weasel's hurky-jerky motions exemplified her stiffening, swelling arm, restricting her movements. She managed great efficiency with her arcs and fulcrum pivots regardless.
Soon Fentress had pushed Alagadda almost the entire distance of the south wall, growing weary from the rapid whack-whack-whack of the rapier, knowing the moment she slowed her onslaught Alagadda would strike back. Alagadda's footpaw struck against the Sword of Martin where it had landed and she nearly slipped on its blade as a thin red line spread on her heel. She swept the blade back with another footpaw and swished away from Fentress's range, giving both combatants a chance to recuperate.
Alagadda glanced down the east wall, at the intersection of which they had stopped. Darkscale remained where she had posted him, but she detected no sign of the lizards who had accompanied him or any attacking army until she noticed the bramble of swishing tails and realized his troops had physically barred the entrance with their bodies. Darkscale stood inside, talking to another creature, whose face she couldn't make out—some kind of rolled-up carpet obscured it.
"Darkscale, you nincompoop—Get up here an' fight!"
Darkscale heard and fixed his gaze on her, but did not act. Carpetface skulked away at the sound of her voice.
With an exasperated groan she flung her dagger at Fentress, who was ready and avoided it. Reaching down, Alagadda grabbed the Sword of Martin and held it aloft for Darkscale to see. The brute nodded with understanding and made for the nearest stairs.
Without pause, Alagadda lunged with a staggered horizontal slice at Fentress's midsection, seeking to bifurcate her. Fentress stumbled back to avoid the unexpected swipe, and fell onto her rear as a second came. The tip of Martin's Sword raked against her skin.
Alagadda lifted the sword as high as she could with one arm and came crashing down with a vertical coup de grace. Fentress rolled to the side, the blade sending sparks skittering as it clashed against the stone of the Abbey it had helped to construct, ringing with cacophonous clang. Fentress shot out a footpaw and hooked Alagadda in the thigh, knocking the leg out from under her. She landed on Fentress, who dropped the rapier and dug her claws into Alagadda's wounded arm. The weasel writhed in agony and flung the Sword of Martin aside to reach for the sheaths strapped across her body. With a paw around Fentress's throat she rifled through each pouch and buckle, finding each empty in turn. Alagadda of the Many Blades had run out of blades.
"No," said Alagadda, as if in protest. "I have blades left!"
She opened her maw wide and sunk her fangs into Fentress's neck, just above the collar. Fentress struggled against the weasel, her eyes widening and the tendons in her neck going taut. She got an upside-down view of the walltop sprawling behind her. Darkscale was there, fangs and claws outstretched hungrily to partake in the feast, weasel and lizard alike seeking to rend Fentress's flesh from her bone and devour her bit by bit.
Fentress wrapped her arms around Alagadda's back in a deathgrip and rolled off the walltop, out of the Abbey.
They fell forever, suspended in air, Alagadda slurping down the blood from Fentress's throat.
Then they hit the ground.
The wind and all sense knocked out of her. For a time Fentress could not even move, locked in a white haze, her mind coherent enough only to ponder if death had become her. With a sunburst life erupted back into her, life and pain, the throb of her throat and the splinters of her ribs and the thousand small abrasions on her skin and the dull ache that pervaded all understanding.
First she saw the grass, a small expanse of meadow terminating at the forest. Then the gleam of Martin's Sword in the splash of sunlight, resting between the blades of grass, perched on the terrain as though it belonged there, as though it had never in its existence been disturbed. Fentress reached for the blade wearily, but her arm did not go long enough. It was small and crippled in comparison to the pure solid length of the sword.
Gritting her fangs, she shuffled forward on her shoulders, dragging the rest of her body behind her across the grass. Her body felt dead and heavy and in pain. Pain was good. Pain meant you weren't going to die right away. Despite the reassurance, a dizziness had seeped into her head, and the ground in front of her undulated and tilted in odd directions, although the Sword of Martin remained a steadfast brand of thunder before her, a blaze of gold in her eyes.
Beside her, another creature groaned, something low, feral, apocalyptic. Before Fentress could even turn her head a set of small needlelike nails dug into her ankle, causing her to cry out in pain.
"Get—over—here—you—WRETCH!" Alagadda started clawing her way up Fentress's body, pulling herself with Fentress's flesh.
Fentress tried to kick at her but couldn't move her legs enough. Instead she tried to pull herself closer to the sword, dragging Alagadda's ravenous form behind her, screaming in pain as claw and fang cut and tore at her.
The Sword of Martin stretched before her. If her arm was longer…
Next to her something landed with a soft plop. Something heavy. Alagadda quit clawing at her for a moment. Fentress's eyes flicked to the right. All she saw at first were legs, long, studded with rings of scales. Darkscale had followed them over the wall.
With renewed urgency, Fentress tore forward, propelling herself and Alagadda as much as she could with her elbows alone, tearing at blades of grass for the blade of Martin. "Darkscale, kill her!" Alagadda shouted, climbing to her footpaws on top of Fentress's torso.
The lizard streaked forward in a flash of green as Fentress's fingers fell on the hilt and clenched it at once. Rolling over she slashed the sword out, the massive metal blade somehow weightless, almost as if it swung itself.
She didn't die, so she figured she must have hit her target. Her eyes were closed. When she opened them, the lizard stood aways from her, staring at her dumbly. She had not slain it, but it was no longer attacking.
A drop of blood trickled down the upraised sword and onto her paw. She regarded it dumbly.
Alagadda stood beside her, staring down at her stomach, which had been wrapped in bandages long before. A long, red line spread horizontal across it, bleeding through her paws.
"You filthy otter," said Alagadda, still holding her stomach. "You disgusting, wretched—"
She staggered back, almost as if her weight had given out from beneath her. Her back hit the wall of the Abbey and she slowly slid down, sinking into a sitting position as the red line across her stomach reddened and reddened.
Fentress rolled to her side and pointed the Sword at Darkscale. "Go away," she said. "Go away and never come back!"
The lizard made no motion he understood, but turned and vanished into the folds of the forest nonetheless.
Fentress sagged back and let the Sword fall. Her strength had sapped from her. She stared at the sky. An endless vortex of blue aether, cyclones of cirrus circling to the upper gates. Sun streamed into her eyes.
"Never…" said Alagadda, a hunched and hobbled form.
A shadow crept over Fentress's eyes. A creature loomed above her, nothing but a black shape. It had a massive elongated snout, like a horizontal head. She blinked, shifted her view. It was a stoat, carrying a rolled-up tapestry. She had thought the tapestry was his head for a moment, but it wasn't.
"Well, this sure looks over," said the stoat. He nudged the Sword of Martin from Fentress's paw with his boot. "Whaddya think, milady? Should I take this along too?"
Was he talking to her? No, he was looking over his shoulder. At Alagadda. He picked up the sword and glanced it over, ricocheting sunbeams from its gleaming edge.
"Never…" said Alagadda, a hunched and hobbled form.
"As you command, milady," said Jareck, tossing the Sword of Martin back by Fentress's side. He crouched close to her, his eye reaching into hers. "An' who are you? Some kind of hero?"
"No," said Fentress.
"That's too bad," said Jareck.
Whistling a tune to himself, he strolled onward, carrying Redwall's tapestry over his shoulder. His tune lingered in the empty breeze, dying only after an infinitum eked by.
"Vellis…" whispered Alagadda.
The clouds curled overhead.
At some point, quietly and without a creature to notice, Alagadda of the Many Blades bled to death against the wall of Redwall Abbey.