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start of week one.
Chapter 1. The New Rulers
by Admin
Major Rocrova Bloomley Regaworth couldn't help but feel a little twinge of dismay every time she looked at her new lord. Even without the factor of his…problem, the badger lord of Salamandastron was only just barely an adult. Seasons, both of Major Regaworth's LEVERETS were older than the 17 year old male badger who had inherited his post half a season ago with the death of his father, the previous lord of the mountain. All the way up to the ceremony when the youthful heir had been confirmed, Major Regoworth, a mature doe whose white fur was marked only by a circle of black around her left eye, had hoped against hope that some previously unknown badger of qualified age and pedigree would show up. Such a badger had failed to materialize, and so Garrilan Sharpstripe became LORD Garrilan Sharpstripe. There had of course been murmurs of discontent, of course, and a certain lack of confidence in a lord who, it had been confirmed, was lacking in one of the primary qualifications held by most of his predecessors. Be that as it may, however, the hares of the Long Patrol were professionals, not some rabble of vermin who mutinied or deserted when they didn't like their leader, and so Major Rocrova Bloomley Regaworth, whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents had served their respective lords, maintained a stiff upper lip and a completely professional demeanor as she delivered a flawless salute to a creature who had been learning to walk and talk when she had been a junior noncomissioned officer preparing to seek her commission.
Lord Garrilan looked at her with a slightly puzzled expression when she continued to stand at attention, then remembered what he was supposed to say. "Oh, right, uh, at ease." He didn't sound remotely intimidating or majestic. He certainly didn't sound like he should be in charge of one of the major powers in Mossflower. He didn't look the part either. His features still seemed like those of a juvenile, and his plain blue tunic and simple girdle, while well made, did not seem quite in line with the attire of a ruler. "So, ah, I needed a hare to perform a mission that needs to be kept a little, a little discreet. Are you aware of both the background and recent event on the island of Evnakt?"
"Indeed, sah. The Patrol's been watching the vermin of Evnakt fall about themselves for quite some time." Major Regaworth did not bother to remind Garri—LORD Garrilan, she corrected herself—that the name of the island was Evnara and it was the city that was called Evnakt. "Our contacts and informats'll keep a weather eye on things. It seems t'me, though, that that bunch of greenhorns callin' themselves Felldoh's Heirs are handlin' the situation right enough. I believe you've met their leader, sah, squirrel by the name of Marcion."
"Yes…" Lord Garrilan said, frowning slightly. "He is a friend of mine, if you are using a very loose definition of the word.. Or at least he was when I met him last, but, ah, Marcion is not—I'm not sure, ah, well, I don't know how much we can trust him. We did not part on the best of terms." The youthful badger lord looked as uncertain as he sounded, and something in Major Regaworth wanted to cringe at the badger lord's lack of gravitas. Garrilan continued. "Marcion is a good squirrel, a good woodlander, but…sometimes he is so busy being a good woodlander that he is not always an easy beast to deal with.. That, and he has an ego big enough to sink a ship. I could ignore that before, but since he left Redwall I don't really trust hin, That's, ah, why you're here, actually. You see, there's something on that vermin island that I want to have, and if I can't have it, I at least want him to not have it. Marcion, I mean."
"What is the nature of this item, sah?" Major Regaworth asked, feeling even less pleased than she had been earlier. Getting into the middle of political bickering was not her idea of an ideal first assignment under the new badger lord.
"Well, I don't actually really know how it works, but that's what hares are for." Garrilan picked up a scroll of his desk and opened it. "The, uh, the…I think you call them intelligence...well, they wrote this description of it for me, and even if I don't know how it works, they were very clear on what it does. I want this item, I NEED this item, and I'm going to need you to go get it for me." Lord Garrilan handed Major Regaworth the scroll.
The doe twitched her right ear, which had lost its tip to a fox's sword years ago, as she read the description of the item in question. "Great seasons, sah... you don't suppose this Willowfur chappie could be pullin' your leg on this, perhaps? I realize the intelligence lads think he's trustworthy, but you can jolly well never be too certain… and with respect, sah, it's not unheard of for escaped slaves to try embellishin' stories. Blighters think it'll prompt us attackin' their captors, wot."
The badger lord's scowl did not look nearly as intimidating as it should have been. "Are you questioning the integrity of a personal slave to a high ranking vermin who risked a fate worse than death so that his two kits would grow up free? This is exactly the sort of beast who has carried the day for us again and again over history. I'm surprised that a Long Patrol officer would, doubt, ah, their word for that of vermin."
Major Regaworth was not intimidated, but she was a bit surprised. "Beggin' yer pardon, sah, but as a Long Patrol officer I'd reckon I know what vermin're capable of rather better than most." Especially creatures who are the age of a lot of the green recruits she didn't add. "However, liars, cads, bounders and killers that they are, vermin are not incapable of reason. The residents of Evnakt, as I see it, were neither starving nor abused. They seemed t'be looking towards material gain rather than power or cruelty. It doesn't make a wit of sense that they'd put a whacking great amount of time and energy developing summat like this. Though, if they did invest the time and energy, why not use it? And surely they'd at least spread the alarm, wot? Tell everybeast about it so's nobeast would trifle with them?"
Garrilan chuckled in an almost condescending fashion that sent Major Regaworth's mood plummeting even further. "Major, I do hope that living at Redwall as a leveret has not made you soft. I find that most of the Redwallers no longer have any spines under their green habits."
"Sah?" It was all Major Regaworth could do to avoid gawking at this statement and the harshness with which Garrilan had said it. The rudeness of the implication that she was insufficiently committed notwithstanding, she had never heard of any case of a badger lord speaking of Redwall like that.
"Marcion being an egotistical prat who likes to use name dropping a, pretty face and loud speeches to get what he wants notwithstanding, he has a point. Redwall HAS gotten soft. All those seasons of nobeast attacking them has made them forget all the seasons of everybeast attacking them. So much so that they left their own warrior and his companions out to dry because they had the guts to fight vermin who did all the things that the vermin hordes of the past did but made sure not to attack directly." There was a darkness and intensity to Garrilan's face that Major Regaworth had never seen before, and the doe began to wish that she knew more about her new lord than the little he had told them when he had first arrived. A moment later, however, it passed, and he was once again scarcely an adult. "Be that as it, ah, may, this thing, it, it doesn't belong to Marcion. It needs to belong to me. Take a small, stealthy force that can move quickly and remain unnoticed and, ah, go get it on Evnakt. Bring it back to me, or at least make sure nobody else can have it. I need it. It will fix me It will fix all of us. It will make me the badger lord my ancestors would have wanted, and make the Long Patrol even more than it is now. It will mean Salamandastron will never fall."
"Thillep! Thillep!" Marcion got to the young mouse, barely a juvenile, just as the rodent staggered forward, his abdomen slashed open by a knife. His own wounds momentarily forgotten, Marcion's fury quickly overcame the ferret who had wounded his friend. Thillep was already dying, blood and entrails spilling out onto the grass, his eyes starting to glaze over. Before he died though, Thillep managed to sit up just a little, enough to look Marcion in the face.
"Th—they left us alone, Maaa—cion, they ab—abb…." Thillep couldn't even finish the sentence before he died. Marcion would never forget the look of absolute despair and hopelessness on that face…
Marcion sat up in bed with a start, but quickly established that he was in safe location, specifically in a room of what had once been a fairly upscale inn. He was not in danger, and he was almost alone. Still, despite it being the middle of the night, the squirrel elected not to go back to sleep. He quickly dressed, and walked from the bed to the desk, sitting down with the large, table-sized map he had drawn up of the city and then market with small stones of different colors to connotate areas controlled by Felldoh's Heirs, areas controlled by specific groups of vermin, and areas controlled seemingly by nobeast at all.
There was a stirring from the bed, and a slender female otter sat up, blinking sleepily. "Marcion? What are you doing? Come back over here where it's warm…"
"Get back to work. We're finished here and I'm busy right now. And no, that wasn't good enough for a promotion." The squirrel didn't even look up from his map at the scowling female otter as she left in a huff while he continued to plot out his future tactics. Fighting in a city was more difficult than he had predicted. Cleared buildings and streets had to be recleared again and again, key areas wound up taking much longer to search and secure than planned,, and the streets, buildings and piles of rubble or collapsed structures all contributed to creating an environment of low visibility, considerable potential for ambushes and low potential for use of traditional woodlander fieldcraft and tracking techniques. As the female otter left, scowling, he turned his attention to supply reports. As troubling as the unusual environment was in many ways, it did at least serve to ensure that they actually had MORE supplies than he had thought they would. They had found hidden stores of drink, forgotten weapons, fishing equipment that the non-otters could use, and even a small but welcome cache of medical supplies. This didn't even mention the various abandoned trinkets and trade goods. The squirrel had been a little bit disappointed in the conduct of a few of his soldiers after they had secured their main forward operating basis and cleared out most of the vermin from immediately surrounding areas. Many of them had chosent o spend their off duty time looking for abandoned goods, drinking, or even fornicating within the ranks—the very idea!--, and otherwise acting a bit too hedonistic for Marcion's tastes. That was the downside to having an army that, despite having a significant presence of similarly disappointed Redwalls who had left over Abbott Olleran's infuriating accomodations towards vermin, was still composed largely of regular woodlanders not connected with the Abbey. Sometimes he wished there were more true believers and fewer beasts looking for profit, adventure or anything else other than the establishment of an important strategic outpost. Still, Marcion was a practical squirrel, and he knew to pick his battles.
The handsome squirrel frowned as he contemplated the distinct lack of papers dealing with one of his primary objectives. Posters hangings in all of the areas where vermin were detained stated that there would be freedom and safe passage of the island in store for anyone with information about Sarkleyet, Nevyeer, or the Red Brandy, but so far absolutely nothing useful had been divulged. Many vermin had tried to explain to him that Sarkleyet and Nevyeer were a pair of rich musteline academics who lived in a large house near the outskirts of the city and employed a number of healers and fellow academics for some poorly defined purpose, but Marcion already knew all that. He also knew that they had been among the relatively few residents of Evnakt to own any slaves, let alone a large number of them, and that they seemed to experience an a very high mortality level amongst both woodlander slaves and the vermin menial laborers they sometimes hired as well. Inquiries about the Red Brandy had been even more pointless, with most just guessing that it was a particularly strong or desirable alcohol.
Resolving to solve this particular mystery later, Marcion turned his attention to more immediate matters. Changing the whole strategic calculus of Mossflower would have to wait.