X: The Dash
Maudy and Gavin had been running for what seemed an eternity. By now, they were aware that Corzon was following them, but that wasn't why they ran so fast; both were confident they could defeat the lizard in a fight. They ran because the fate of every Redwaller rested squarely on their shoulder, and they had no intention of dropping the ball here. Not after they had left Colonel Caldwell behind.
King Kirrent had actually made a good choice when choosing Corzon to handle such an important task. Only his stupidest general had the ample strength and endurance to not be completely lost by the hares. The other five lizards King Kirrent had sent had all collapsed somewhere along the line, unable to go any farther. But not Corzon. This was his big chance to get back in the king's good graces, and he had no intention of dropping the ball here. Not after the king had decided to rely so heavily on him.
All three of them ran almost all day, rarely stopping. The marathon's toll could be seen on the two hares, but their determination kept them going, even if their pace dropped and their lungs felt ready to explode. Corzon, however, showed no signs of stopping. There had been a very good reason why King Kirrent had been able to overlook the lizard's total idiocy when promoting him to the status of general, and this was it.
Then, after a long time of extremely exhausting dashing, Salamandastron loomed in the distance. The two hares stopped running. "We… made… it…" gasped Maudy in a barely audible whisper.
Gavin glanced behind him. "Maudy… the… lizard…" The two hares turned. Corzon was barreling at them at an insane speed. Maudy and Gavin began running as well, as fast as they possibly could.
Corzon, however, was not about to let his prey escape, not after he had run all this way. He drew his sword and heaved it forward. The curved blade soared through the air like some sort of bizarre death instrument. It hit Gavin in the side of the leg, forcing him to the ground. Maudy skidded to a halt and readied his spear. He had left behind Colonel Caldwell, but he wasn't going to leave behind Gavin.
"Come… on… scalebrain!" Maudy shouted. Corzon charged forward, screaming some sort of war cry. Maudy lunged forward with his spear, aiming to pierce Corzon right through the heart.
Instead, he missed.
Maudy didn't even realize what had happened before the general slammed into him. Both of them toppled to the ground in a heap. Maudy's spear left his paw, flying too far away to reach. Corzon, however, didn't need a weapon. He brought his claw down on the hare, once, twice. The claw rose up again. Maudy figured that this was the end; he had failed. A wave of sorrow swept over him.
Suddenly, Corzon slumped over, unconscious. Maudy found himself surrounded by a group of hares, one of which had beaten Corzon in the back of the head with a spear butt. Maudy recognized the hare as Lieutenant Tabbins, a respected officer.
"Maudy? Gavin?" exclaimed Tabbins, glancing over the pair's numerous injuries, "It's about time! We thought you fell off the face of the blinking earth! Where's Caldwell and the rest?"
Maudy found he could not speak. Instead, Gavin spoke for him, choosing key words that could convey the point across the most easily. "Redwall… danger… help… lizards…" Then he passed out. Tabbins frowned.
"Wot was that? I didn't quite understand," he said. Neither Gavin nor Maudy made any reply. "It doesn't look like these two will be fit to speak for a while… It's like they ran the whole way here from Redwall! We need some medical assistance, wot! And we need to know what just bally happened!"
"Ask the lizard," another hare suggested.
"Ah, that scaly devil will be out for a while, hard as I hit him. Clements! Go get Lord Oxpaw, let's get this sorted out."
The hare named Clements dashed off. Tabbins wore a puzzled expression on his face and scratched his head in confusion. Lizards, Redwall, and a lot of running… None of it made any sense. Tabbins hoped that the lizard would hold some answers.
---
Corzon's eyes snapped open. Almost as soon as they did, he was grabbed by some giant paw and lifted up. A deep, bull voice was yelling at him, but his mind was still in a fog, and he couldn't understand what was being said. There was a pause, then the voice started up again, and then the giant paw started shaking Corzon like a rag doll.
The lizard general's eyes suddenly went into focus. Corzon nearly panicked; he was being shaken by some sort of giant furry monster. "What are you?! What going on?!" he exclaimed in fright.
The large bull voice began to make sounds that didn't sound like a jumbled mess as Corzon became more aware of his surroundings. "I am asking you the same question," growled the monster.
Corzon looked around. The monster was backed by a huge amount of hares. Corzon moaned. "I izz Corzon!" he exclaimed.
The monster spoke again, "And I am Oxpaw, Badger Lord of Salamandastron! Now, tell me, why were you chasing those two hares?"
Corzon suddenly remembered everything that had happened, as if a switch had been flipped in some dark cavern of his brain. "Yez, the longearz! I wuz after them cuz King Kirrent ordered it!"
The badger sighed. This King Kirrent character had been giving them a lot of trouble lately. More trouble than real warlords, like the weasel Regner the Magnificent. Luckily, King Kirrent the Great was a lot easier to deal with than Regner's expansive horde.
"Where is King Kirrent right now?" Oxpaw demanded. At least the lizard was being cooperative. Oxpaw was not very good at keeping alive creatures that made him angry, and he got angry at uncooperative creatures.
"He izz in red fort!" Corzon answered. There was a murmuring among the hares. Oxpaw suddenly realized that there may be a serious predicament here.
"You mean Redwall?! Kirrent captured Redwall?!" Oxpaw shook Corzon again. After he had stopped, Corzon nodded. Angrily, Oxpaw threw the lizard to the ground. Corzon scampered to his feet, stepping away from the angry badger. Oxpaw looked as if he were about to crush Corzon with his bare paws, but then desisted.
"Tie this lizard up. We may be able to use him as a bargaining chip," Oxpaw growled, "I want the complete maximum amount of Long Patrol hares ready to march in an hour. If this rat has actually captured Redwall… Then I don't know what."
---
Back at Redwall, King Kirrent opened the door to the room where Colonel Caldwell was being kept captive. Kalzmar nervously shuffled away from him, but King Kirrent paid the odd action no mind. He had spent the whole day devising was he could torture the hare, and he had a batch of good ideas.
"Hello there, Colonel," the rat smiled.
"Hello there, King Kirrent," Caldwell said, overly cheery, "I know something you may find interesting."
"Oh?" King Kirrent's smile did not falter in the least, "And what would that be, Colonel?"
"Your general there, Kalz-whatever, and her friend Mar-something are plotting to kill you behind your back, you bally rat!" Caldwell shouted. Instantly, an uneasy silence enveloped the room. Kalzmar wanted to vanish right then and there, and she slowly began shuffling towards the door. She had completely forgotten about Caldwell, and even if she hadn't, she wouldn't have expected him to say anything. Hadn't King Kirrent been torturing him for the past day or so?
King Kirrent drew his cutlass. Kalzmar suddenly froze in terror. The rat king raised the blade. Kalzmar knew that was it, that King Kirrent would finish her then and there. There was a flash of metal as the cutlass was swung down rapidly. Colonel Caldwell shouted out in pain as the lifeless bundle of flesh that had been his paw flopped to the ground in a splatter of blood.
"Telling me lies, eh?" King Kirrent shouted, right in Caldwell's face, "You're just trying to make me crazy! Don't think I don't know what you're up to, yes! I refuse to believe that Kalzmar, my second most trusted general, would turn on me! I don't know who this Marclaw is, but I know Kalzmar would never do something like that. Right?"
Kalzmar nodded nervously. She was still wondering why it had not been her that had been stricken with the king's sword. Oh, why did Marclaw have to start this whole— Wait. Did King Kirrent just say that she was his second most trusted general?
King Kirrent was satisfied by the nod. It wasn't that he refused to believe that Kalzmar was plotting to assassinate him, it was that he didn't want to believe. He turned back to the screaming Caldwell. "Hurts, don't it?" sneered the rat.
King Kirrent held out his blade and wiped the blood off on Caldwell's face, leaving a red smear. "Mebbe I'll just take the other paw, yes!" he cackled, "Yes, the other paw… Hahaha!"
"You… bally rat…" Caldwell half-spoke, half-screamed in some bizarre display of pain, "You… need to stop… hanging around… these lizards… You're beginning to… sound like one!"
King Kirrent looked as if he were about to say something. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, and closed it a second time. Caldwell felt he could make the perfect comment about the rat looking like a fish, but his last jeer had been too painful for him to try to speak again.
Neither Caldwell nor Kalzmar realized the magnitude of the hare's insult. King Kirrent had been harboring hate for the lizards for the longest time, wanting a real horde, wanting to be rid of the idiocy and incompetence. The only reason General Davian had been able to capture the red fort had been because Limptail did most of the work, the rat had finally deduced after a lot of thinking. Now that King Kirrent had everything he wanted (almost), he had been able to do a lot of thinking. He had remembered Corzon, who burned down a village just for a few lousy trinkets, and Davian, who had slaughtered almost forty lizards against the blade of a giant badger, and Kalzmar, who had ordered all the lizards back at the swamp to attack the hare that sat in front of him now. Yes, Kalzmar had done that! It hadn't been him! It couldn't have been him.
King Kirrent hated them all, but he hated that disgusting hare in front of him even more. The hare had… had… had compared him to those scaly lumps that he commanded! King Kirrent was absolutely, positively furious right now, and when King Kirrent got mad, King Kirrent got irrational.
"Kalzmar!" King Kirrent finally shouted, angrily, "I… have to leave now! You heard the lies this longears, er, this hare, told you, yes?! I mean no! No! Gaah!!" The rat pushed his general aside and opened the door. "Just… Just torture him yerself! He… he called me a lizard! How?! How could he even think I'm anything like you?!" the rat screamed, shooting a disgusting look neither at Caldwell nor Kalzmar but instead at someplace in between.
"A-are you okay?" Kalzmar stammered. King Kirrent seemed to have lost his head. It was almost as scary as when she had thought he was going to kill her. But still… the hate inside Kalzmar grew. He was insulting her rank, insulting her pride, and now insulting her race.
"Yes!" King Kirrent roared, like some sort of defunctive blaze, "I am not a lizard!! I hate you stupid hares and I hate you stupid lizards!!" The rat slammed the door shut and stormed off.
Kalzmar looked over at Caldwell, who was leaned over the table in a small puddle of blood. She poked him with her spear, wondering if the hare was dead. Caldwell stirred a little, and the lizard retracted the lance swiftly.
Author's Note: Okay, I've always considered this chapter to be a tad abrupt and a little unrealistic. But it was either make the chapter like that or make two to three chapters of filler, and I did NOT want to do that, so I chose the former choice.
By the way, there are only three chapters left in Part 1, until we go to Part 2, which has an almost completely new cast of characters and a completely new plot (Here's a fun little hint: one of the new main characters in Part 2 is mentioned in this chapter...).