CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

OPERATION SYNCHRONIZED PANDEMONIUM

Sergeant Peppertail stood with several other Abbeybeasts along the walltop overlooking the orchard, and the rat encampment sprawling within and beyond the fruit grove. All heads turned when they both saw and heard Vanessa coming their way, her rolling barrel preceding her. They shared a chuckle as the Sergeant called out, "Hullo, wot's this now, Nessa? Deliverin' us devoted defenders some liquid libations to quench our parched whistles whilst we stand lookout? Most thoughtful, m'gel, an' jolly well appreciated!"

A squirrel named Twirltuft elbowed Peppertail in the ribs with a playful jab. "I'd say your whistle's staying dry, Sarge, to judge by the hollow rattling I hear coming from that keg. No full cask ever made a sound like that!"

The hare's ears drooped in disappointment. "An' here I was, rampin' m'self up for some cooling cordial, a bit of fabulous fizz, a quaff of refreshin' ale or a spot of ambrosial brandy or wonderful wine! Why, even a flagon of clear, crisp water would've done th' bally trick! Lookout duty's a hard lot indeed!"

Twirltuft's eyes rolled. "Oh, yes, torturous beyond words!"

Vanessa stopped before them, tipping her barrel up on its end; from the ease with which she performed this feat, her audience surmised that the staved vessel must indeed have been as empty as Twirltuft predicted and Peppertail feared, and no sound of sloshing came from within, either. Apparently, it was just another of the afflicted Abbess's playthings.

"Right then, so wot's with this rolling racket anyway? An' just who're you s'posed to be? Some Badger Lady of Salamandastron yore? Not sure that's entirely in good taste, or properly respectful."

"I'm Urthnessa the Bold!" Vanessa declared, with a thump on the top of the barrel for emphasis. The dull echo of her pawslap against the drained container mingled with another softer, muted but more insistent sound only just now impinging upon the awareness of the others. "And this here's for the show!"

"What show?" Twirltuft inquired with a smirk. "Puppets on a barreltop? Or are you going to put Droge in there to reprise his crab monster routine?"

"We've already had our Pageant for this season," Peppertail reminded her. "Can't risk another, lest Browder be tempted to tread the boards again, wot? Don't need to be seein' that spectacle anytime soon, don'tcha know."

"Oh, this won't be like that!" Vanessa promised with a wide, cheerful smile. "My little friends and I will make you forget all about that pretend playing!"

"Your little friends," Twirltuft repeated. "And by that I suppose you mean Percy and his leveret pals? We saw you all playing yesterday by the weapons pile. Not sure why Melanie allowed that, but nobeast seems the worse for it, so ... "

But Vanessa was shaking her head. "Nope. I mean all my other little friends! Got lots 'n' lots 'n' lots of 'em, and they're just dying to come out and play!"

Peppertail and Twirltuft traded puzzled glances. "Wotever you say, Nessa m'gel," the Sergeant agreed in a placating tone. "Wotever you say."

Vanessa just grinned at them, drumming with idle abandon upon the barrel, her percussive thumps helping to hide the noise coming from within.

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The rat looked to be around Percival's own age - which, comparing rats to ferrets, made her slightly smaller than Percy. Which, in turn, made the unfortunate rodent the perfect target. So, with Chevelle in tow, Percy walked right up to the rat and punched her in the face.

Some of the adult rats looking on sniggered at this display of unprovoked aggression, accustomed to such behavior through living and serving in a horde. But most looked on aghast, for such things were not supposed to happen at Redwall, and a few found themselves stoked to anger at the toddler ferret's display.

The struck ratmaid's pained bawling drew the immediate attention of her older brother Drattell, who stormed over to Percy and dealt the ferret a shove that almost knocked him off his footpaws. "'ey, what'd you go an' do that fer, stripeyface? How'd y' like me t' knock out yer front fangs?"

"Don't talka Persee likka that!" Chevelle told Drattell, and kicked the older rat hard in the shin, eliciting a yelp of surprise and setting Drattell to hopping about on one footpaw as he clutched at his bruised leg.

Drattell's pal Tristan lunged forward and smacked Chevelle across the ears - so Chevelle twisted, leapt and kicked Tristan in the shin as well.

Drattell and Tristan jointly tackled the much younger hare, leading Percy to start pummeling them both. More rat youths, who'd been gathered together waiting on Winokur's morning lessons, waded into the fray.

Pirkko, who happened to be passing nearby in the company of Droge, Budsock, Pryle and Meggette, found his attention drawn to the budding fracas, just as shrews by their quarrelsome nature sniff out any such altercation close to paw. "Hey, those vermin're gangin' up on Pearce an' one of our bunnies! They can't do that! Let's get 'em!" Pirkko flung himself into the melee with unhesitating abandon. Droge and Budsock, seeing their shrew friend was sure to be outnumbered, rushed to his aid, while the two riverside mice stood back in alarm, not sure what to do.

Seeing this infusion of woodlander reinforcements rushing to the aid of the two troublemakers who'd started it all, some of the adult rats stepped forward to put an end to this, incensed at this assault on their youngsters but also concerned about any such outbreak of disruptive behavior which might jeopardize their position of sanctuary within the Abbey.

And some of the Guosim guarding the rat refugees, seeing grown and gruff rats closing in on their Log-a-Log's son, moved in themselves to quell what looked to be a riot in the making. "Keep yer blades sheathed, boyos!" one shouted out to his comrades. "This's a scrape, not a battle! We'll put this ruckus down with good ol' fashioned shrew power!"

Thus is was that Percy's single punch, in almost no time at all, transformed the tranquil grounds around the orchard into the scene of an altercation drawing in dozens ... and Operation Synchronized Pandemonium was only just getting started.

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At that same moment, Faylona decided this would be the perfect time to go for a swim in the Abbey pond.

The fact that she did not know how to swim deterred her not in the slightest.

With so much attention drawn to the commotion unfolding amongst the rats over by the orchard, nobeast paid the toddler hare any notice as she waded in, first up to her ankles, then knees, then waist, then finally up to her chest and beyond. Before any adult on the scene realized what was happening, Faylona was out in water over her head, splashing and shrieking in frantic distress.

Needless to say, the otters responded to her cries first.

Young Wronk - fully recovered from his less-than-auspicious turn as Deyna the Taggerung earlier that season - led the diving charge to the rescue, along with several adult otters of Monty's crew. As many of the other Abbey creatures and visitors gathered on the pond's banks, their focus split between the tussle over in the rat encampment and this new emergency, the waterbeasts swam out to recover Faylona and bear her to dry land again before her tiny lungs filled with water.

Maura stood among the shorebound onlookers, shaking her head over this potential tragedy in the making. "What was Melanie thinking, letting Fay wander off by herself unminded like that? I'll have to have a word with that hare when I see her ... "

"I do hope she's going to be all right," fretted Deakyne from beside her. "I'd hate to have something dreadful happen during our stay at Redwall ... um, not that I'd want it to happen at any other time either, of course."

Maura cast a worried glance over toward where the rats and shrews were mixing it up royally. "I really should go see what that's all about, since it looks from here as if some of our youngsters might be involved in it. And isn't that your son and daughter standing out on the fringes of the brawl? But I need to make sure Faylona's safe first."

"If the young hare can't swim," Lord Sodexo observed from Maura's other side, "how did she get so far out into the pond at all?"

The otter Webber trudged up out of the water bearing Faylona's limp form in his arms, while his companions followed him up onto the lawns. Laying the hare lass out face-up on the grass, he performed a quick examination of her.

"Well?" Maura prompted as she hovered over them, voicing the question shared by everybeast present. "Do Arlyn and Metellus need to be summoned? Please dear fates tell me we're not too late ... "

"Don't think that'll be a worry, marm," Webber pronounced after very short order. "She's breathin' a'right, an' her heart's pumpin' strong. Aside from bein' soggy as a sardine, she's fit as any of us! Exceptin' mebbe Wronkers over there ... "

Maura's attention shifted from the unconscious toddler to the adolescent otter lad, who stood rubbing at his temple. "Why? What's wrong with Wronk?"

"Hit my head on a waterlogged barrel," he answered for himself. "Wasn't there when we took our swim yesterday."

"A barrel?" Maura repeated, incredulous.

"Several of 'em, actshully," Webber clarified. "Laid out like steppin' stones, smallest t' largest, straight away from shore toward th' pond's center. That's what allowed this liddle 'un t' get so far out. But Wronk's right: they weren't out there yesterday. That's why he conked his headbone - wasn't expectin' 'em t' be there, an' since he was first in, he ran into 'em first too."

"Barrels?" Maura looked down at Faylona again - just in time to catch the harechild sneaking a mischievous peek at her through a slitted eye before quickly closing it again. Her own eyes widening in confused consternation, Maura looked from Faylona in her pretend swoon to the altercation by the orchard, and then up to the walltop beyond where Vanessa loitered with a barrel of her own.

"What in the name of Martin is going on here?" she muttered to herself.

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While all of this went on by the pond and orchard, Lysander chose that moment to do his best impersonation of a squirrel. Or perhaps it was a Sparra - but the end result was the same.

Melanie had by this time joined her husband on watch above the main gates, and the two of them failed to notice their toddler son working his way along the ramparts toward them, distracted as they were by the twin commotions unfolding across the Abbey. It was Melanie who first sighted the leveret as Lysander paused a few dozen paces north of them, his intent gaze upon the crenelated battlements to his right.

"Clewy, wot th' blazes is Lysander doing up here on his own?! Maura's supposed to be watching over the levs this morning. I'll have to have a word with that badger!"

Gazing across the south lawns, Clewiston advised, "Wouldn't hold it against her too hard, Mel m' gel. Looks like she's mixed up in wotever kerfuffle's going on down there, an' may have her paws jolly well full. Knowin' how willful an' precocious our brood can be, wouldn't be surprised if one or two've slipped their bally leash an' wandered off on their own. At least Lys showed the good sense to seek out his mater 'n' pater. We'll just hafta mind him until Maura's done with that little bruhaha down there."

"I guess we - Lysander, wot're you doing? Get down from there!"

Assuming their son not to be in any particular danger, and trusting to the ingrained Long Patrol sense of self-preservation, neither parent had felt any urgent need to rush right over to Lysander upon spotting him - which gave the leveret the opportunity he needed to climb clumsily up onto the stone bench nearest him, and from there up onto the battlements themselves, with the rampart walkway on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Seeing her son gain the bench, Melanie went into a jog; seeing him attain the far more perilous perch atop the defensive wall, she went into a flat-out run, with Clewiston not far behind.

But they weren't quick enough.

Lysander smiled and waved, then his smile faltered along with his balance and, pinwheeling his tiny arms, he tumbled over the side.

"LYSANDER!"

"Oh, bloody sod!"

Clewiston practically had to hold Melanie back when they reached the spot where Lysander had toppled from the parapet, to keep her from throwing herself over after him. Leaning far out over the battlements herself, she stared down at the outside ground below. "Oh, Clewy, he's fallen all the way down! He's not moving!"

"Not doin' th' lad any bloody good up here, Mel. Come on, let's get down to him, an' see wot's to be done!" Leading the way and taking the steps down to the lawns two at a time, Clewiston bellowed, "Youngbeast over th' wall! Youngbeast over th' wall! Get those gates open!"

The day shift of shrews, reacting more to the urgency of the hare officer's tone than the words themselves, scrambled to dislodge the drawbar and get the heavy gates swung wide. And when the two hares raced out onto the path and then along the base of the wall to reach their fallen son, every shrew followed, none thinking to stay behind to guard the area inside the gates ...

And thus none saw Troyall, peeking around the edge of the gatehouse cottage, tippaw out once the coast was clear and let himself into the small residence with a tiny lit lantern.

Clewiston and Melanie knew at once that something was amiss as they came upon Lysander, and not in any way they could have anticipated. For, as they drew up to their progeny's landing spot, they saw what Melanie could not have made out from the walltop: a deep, wide bed of moss and dried grasses, nearly as deep as the leveret's own standing height, piled up against the stone face exactly where it would break Lysander's fall, and nowhere else.

"Wot kind of flippin' game is this?" Clewiston muttered as he stared down at his son, who now sat up on his plush natural cushion, beaming up at them. "You mean t' tell me this was all just some kind o' warped, twisted, demented joke?"

Melanie knelt and grabbed little Lysander close to her, incredulous that he could have weathered such a plummet unscathed ... or that anybeast could have conceived such a prank that left her heart in her mouth and tears streaming down her cheeks. Checking him over to make sure he was as unharmed as he seemed, she hugged him tight. "Oh, Lysander! Don't you ever scare us like that again, do you hear?"

The shrews stood looking on in puzzlement themselves. "Hey, who put all that moss there anyway?"

"Dunno," Clewiston growled, immensely relieved and intensely incensed at one and the same time. "But when I find out, some hide's gettin' tanned courtesy of my parade baton, you mark my bally words!"

"Reckon we'd best get 'im inside fer Arlyn 'n' Metellus to have a look at 'im, just t' make sure 'ee's ... "

The shrew's words trailed off as they all became aware of a new strident alarm shouted from above, this time from the squirrels who'd remained at their walltop posts after the hares' panicked evacuation.

"Fire! Fire! The gatehouse is on fire!"

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Sergeant Peppertail's vantage atop the wall overlooking the orchard afforded him a unique overview of everything that was unfolding within Redwall.

Immediately below him, the Guosim sought to sort out the brawl started by Percy and Chevelle. Farther out near the banks of the pond, a large knot of concerned creatures clustered around the youngbeast who'd been pulled from the water. And away to the western grounds, the main gates stood open and unguarded while smoke billowed from the gatehouse cottage. It seemed as if pandemonium had broken out all over the Abbey - which, indeed, it had, and quite by design.

"Great gallopin' seasons!" the hare exclaimed. "Has the whole world gone batty all of a sudden?"

"Oh, it's about to get even better," Vanessa told him as she ceased her drumming on the barrel. Leaning down close to the keg and placing her paws to its convex sides as if communing with it, she brought her face close to the aged wood and softly murmured, "Be savage but gentle, my little friends. Inflict many, but cause serious harm to nobeast."

Then, straightening, she dealt the barrel an assured kick that sent it over the side of the walkway and plummeting down to smash open upon a hard-packed patch of ground just alongside the rat encampment. The pre-weakened hoops gave way entirely as the old vessel shattered into its individual staves, revealing the nest of agitated hornets hidden within.

Almost immediately, the hornets began to swarm.

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The clashing shrews and rats (and youngbeasts too) quickly forgot their differences of the moment when the stinging insects descended upon them, and those gathered around Faylona by the pond were soon put on the run as well, along with most of the encamped rats, as that entire quadrant of the Abbey grounds was thrown into pained, panicked turmoil. Beasts of every species were set running this way and that in attempts to elude the riled hornets, but most found their efforts futile as they felt the hot, burning stings on ears, snouts, arms, legs and tails ... although, as would come out later, by some inexplicable fluke no victim suffered more than a single sting anywhere on their body.

Most of the otters, spotting the angry swarm before it hit them, drew deep breaths and dove into the pond to escape it. Maura scooped up Faylona and sprinted for the far side of the Abbey, seeking to put the main building between herself and the buzzing stingers, but still endured a hit on her fleeing tail even as she successfully shielded her leveret burden from any such harm.

The main part of the molested, threatened masses made for the Abbey itself, seeking the safety of indoors. The sheer number of sanctuary-seekers (and the rats were cast anew in that light in a different way than they ever would have imagined) created a bottleneck at the door, with stricken creatures jostling and elbowing to get in first, until the Guosim laid about with their gruff voices and the occasional fist to impose some slight order upon the scene. Fortunately, the hornets did not seem to be pressing the attack this far from the orchard, and some semblance of stressed, nervous calm settled over the crowd.

In all that frantic melee, it was very easy for a single beast to get lost amid the confusion.

Castor grabbed Latura by the paw when the attack began, thinking to lead her to the shelter of the gatehouse where they'd been spending their nights. Upon seeing that refuge in flames - or at least spewing smoke, hinting at a conflagration within - Castor had faltered, unsure what to do. In the rush of colliding bodies, the agony of punishing stings and the horror of the furious drone overlaying the entire scene, brother and sister became separated, Castor carried by the stampeding throngs toward the main Abbey while the living current swept around Latura and passed her by, leaving her standing befuddled upon the lawns in the midst of the riot.

And then, weaving her way through the madness as if it didn't affect her at all, came Vanessa, practically skipping with glee. Prancing right up to the ratmaid, the badger-painted former Abbess smacked Latura across her flimsy biceps. "Tag! Ye're it, Lattie Ratty!" And then Vanessa took off toward the east grounds, seemingly oblivious to the miniature disaster she'd wrought all around her.

Latura stood staring after the retreating mouse wide-eyed and slack-jawed, even more dumbfounded than was usual for her. That brief contact, that fleeting slap of a playful open paw against her own flesh, evoked flashes of prescient insight before her inner eye, the tantalizing temptation of a mystery half-revealed, begging to have the veil pulled away entirely. She almost knew in that instant why this perplexing mousemaid baffled her so - almost, but not quite.

A hornet buzzed into Latura's open mouth and, finding nothing there of particular interest, buzzed back out again.

The slap had been an invitation, a summons, an edict not to be ignored. Automatically, Latura started to follow after Vanessa, but a sudden tug on her arm held her back. Turning, she saw Palter grabbing her, urgency in his expression.

"Lattie, where're y' goin'? We gotta get inside!"

She shook her head and tried to pull away - a battle of weaklings. "Hafta see what's inside that mouse. Hafta follow 'er."

"Ain't no time fer - yeow!" A diving hornet buried its stinger deep within the paw holding Latura, forcing Palter to release his poor excuse of a grip and suck on the wound, once he'd finished waving it in pain. "Yeow yeow yeow! Mmrphgh - hey, Lattie! Lattie, come back 'ere!"

Matowick, holding his ground on the east side of the Abbey, saw Maura go running by him with Faylona in her arms, the big beast cursing and grumbling. And not long after that he beheld Vanessa traipsing toward him, grinning and waving as she headed toward the now-unguarded wallgate, all the shrews and otters there drawn away by the brawl and the pretend near-drowning. "It's time!" she called out to him. "Here she comes!"

And then, to the Gawtrybe Captain's utter amazement, Latura came jogging his way in her unmistakable peach dress, totally alone and unguarded. Too flabbergasted to stir himself, he simply watched as the ratmaid followed in Vanessa's pawsteps toward the east wallgate. So fixated was he on his target that he didn't even realize the Abbess had exited Redwall entirely, leaving the gate standing wide open after her.

Latura hesitated at the egress, uncertain what to do. Then, glancing to her left and right, she ducked into the portal and passed under the wall to the forest beyond.

The sight of Latura slipping out of the Abbey stirred Matowick to action at last. Keeping his gaze over his shoulder at the open gate and still scarcely believing this turn of events, he started for the south grounds where everybeast seemed to be ... and almost ran right into Palter, feebly racing after Latura himself.

"Watch where you're going!" Matowick berated the hapless rat, but then spared the scrawny rodent no further thought as he resumed his run to find his fellow Gawtrybe.

Palter stood watching the Northlands squirrel for a moment, then looked back to the gate. Never the most astute of creatures, even he could piece together what was going on. The enemy soldier had seen Latura exit the Abbey, and now seemed driven to strong purpose as a result. And that could mean only one thing.

"Oh, Lattie, what've y' done?" Palter groaned to himself, and then crossed the rest of the empty grounds to the east wallgate. Pausing before it just as Latura had, he took a gulp and then hastened through it himself into Mossflower.

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Matowick somehow managed to find two of his squad right away on the fringes of the creatures trying to squeeze through the door into the Abbey. Ignoring the sting he'd suffered traversing the swarm zone, the Gawtrybe captain pulled his two comrades out of the mob and off to the side so that they might not be so easily overheard by the rats, Guosim and Redwallers.

"Our target's just left the Abbey!" he shouted at them. "Now's the chance we've been looking for! Brisson, come with me - we're going out after her! Flaquer, go round up Nixalis and the others as fast as you can, gather up all our weapons and go out through the west gates, in case she tries to circle around and come back in that way! If I can overtake her in the forest, I'll bring her back to the road and we'll leave straight for Salamandastron! We've not a moment to lose!"

"What about Captain Saugus, sir?" asked Flaquer.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Then forget him for now. He'll catch up to us once he figures out what's happened. Now let's get moving!"

Matowick and Brisson were racing back for the open east wallgate almost at once, meeting no opposition, no questioners and no witnesses on the abandoned grounds. "Sir, what about our weapons?"

"I doubt we'll need arms to snatch one weakling ratmaid all by herself," Matowick shot back, forgetting all about Palter - and Vanessa too, for that matter. "Besides, Chetwynd's patrols are out there, guarding the approaches to Redwall. They're as likely as not to come across her before we do - and they'll be very well armed!"

"You think the Redwallers will let us get away with her? We'll have to come right past the Abbey on our way back. We'll be spotted."

"Maybe, maybe not. In all this chaos, they may miss us. The Abbess has certainly done a good job of giving us the diversion we wanted!"

"The Abbess? Sir, what're you talking about?"

"I'm not really sure myself, Briss. But as long as the breaks are breaking our way, I'm not about to question them!"

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Melanie stood back from the smoking gatehouse as the others worked to straighten out the situation there; she clutched little Lysander's paw tightly, as much for her own peace of mind as to keep him out of any further trouble.

Clewiston wiped at his watering eyes as he regarded the oversized laundry tub he and the Guosim had finally managed to drag out of the cottage onto the lawns, its nest of straw within still smoldering furiously. Their discovery that the gatehouse itself had not been set alight scarcely rendered the calamity any easier to deal with, requiring the removal of the incendiary arrangement from the structure - no mean feat to achieve without burned paws or smoke-choked lungs.

The Colonel shook his head in grudging admiration. "Whoever rigged this up knew exactly wot they were doing. Damp straw that would smoke like the devil without makin' too hot a fire, contained in a heavy tub that'd keep it from spreadin' an' burnin' the whole bloomin' lot down to bare stone. Just the thing to make it look like the gatehouse was totally ablaze inside, without causing any real an' permanent damage. Fiendishly clever, I must say, even if they'll get no blinkin' medal from me!"

The shrew Klugo cast his gaze toward the orchard, even though only a few rats remained there trying to ride out the hornet swarm hunkered down in their shelters instead of seeking the protection of the main Abbey. "Reckern t'was one o' them verminy villains who did it?"

"Not jolly likely, since some of 'em sleep in there, including the one they all think led them here to safety. Wot sense'd that make?"

"Maybe it was those squirrels?" suggested another of the Guosim. "Seems like th' kinda trouble they'd wanna make."

"Well, did anybeast here see who might've hauled that heavy tub into the gatehouse in the first place? Took all of us workin' t'gether to muscle it out just now, so this can't be some prank by our youngsters 'n' leverets, even if Lysander's little pratfall off the wall just now coincides a tad too neatly with all this other mischief. Alex and our rat friends an' all the rest of us have been keeping too jolly close an eye on those Gawtrybe, at least when they're out and about on the grounds, so I doubt they could've pulled this off without us seein'."

"Well," said Klugo, "if it weren't them, an' it wasn't th' rats themselves, an' it couldn'ta been any of our young pranksters, who does that leave?"

"Who indeed?" Clewiston's gaze went to Melanie, and their thumb-sucking son standing at her side. ""Little Lys is too young yet to give any answer we'd easily understand, but I'll bet his niece Faylona and nephew Chevelle might have something to tell us about all of this. Assuming their mouths aren't swollen shut by hornet stings ... "

Klugo waved the air in front of his snout to clear it. "That's one good thing 'bout all this smoke: at least it's keepin' those furforsaken stingers away from this area. Y' reckern we oughta go see if we c'n lend a paw gettin' ev'erybeast inside the Abbey?"

Clewiston mulled this over. "Naw, looks like they've got enuff creatures there t' worry about without us adding to the jolly mob. We'd prob'ly only end up gettin' in the way, an' gettin' stung ourselves, addin' to the overflow in the Infirmary. 'sides, somebeast's gotta stay here an' guard the entrance, 'specially if this's some kinda diversion intended to leave us open to attack. Speakin' of which, we'd best send out a couple of you shrew chappies to make sure all our gates are staffed. Looks like most of our lookouts are down from the south an' west ramparts, an' by my eye there's only hornets guardin' the south wallgate."

"We'll see to that, Colonel!" volunteered Elmwood, who'd come down from the walltop with his companions to help with the gatehouse fire.

"Right ho. But, won't that leave the west battlements empty?"

"Shouldn't matter, just for a little bit. Just get those gates closed and locked, and it wouldn't matter if Cluny's own horde sprang up out there! We'll get some lookouts back up topside in good time, once we've seen to everything within the Abbey."

"It's more a certain badger's own horde springin' up on us I'm worried about," the Colonel muttered as the Redwall squirrels jogged off to see to matters elsewhere in the Abbey. But before he and the Guosim could move to close and bar the west gates, the hare commander spied Nixalis and three of the other visiting Gawtrybe racing full tilt across the lawns toward them. Thinking at first that their headlong pace meant pursuit by hornets, Clewiston saw he was mistaken when they made straight for their weapons lying on the lawns nearby.

"Hey!" Klugo snapped, moving to intercept them. "No weapons while ye're in the Abbey - that was the agreement!"

"Out of our way!" Nixalis roared, all but knocking the smaller creature off his footpaws. "We're leaving - an' we're taking our weapons with us!"

Clewiston stepped over to the hurriedly-outfitting squirrels. "I say, wot's the dashed rush, chappies?" He'd almost asked them, "Where's the fire?" but didn't think it appropriate under the circumstances.

"Never you mind," Nixalis snapped, shouldering his own bow and quiver and then stooping to retrieve Matowick's as well. "We're leaving, and that's all you need to know!"

"Fair 'nuff. Have it your way, chum." Clewiston and his Guosim companions stood back as the quartet of Northlanders streamed through the open gate into the path beyond.

"Hey, that was only four of 'em!" Klugo remarked. "Where're the other two?"

Clewiston motioned to the now-empty spot on the grass alongside the piles of confiscated rat armaments. "Don't think it matters, since wherever they got to, they won't be armed. Now let's get these gates closed, 'fore they change their minds an' want back in!"

As the group of defenders put their backs into closing the gates and repositioning the drawbar, Klugo joked, "Mebbe they just ain't fond o' hornets, heh!"

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Latura raced through the woods after Vanessa with halting assurance, only vaguely certain which way the mysterious, mischievous mouse had headed. And yet, she also knew instinctively when she deviated from the path of pursuit, when her pawsteps threatened to lead her astray, almost as if some invisible trail of breadcrumbs had been put down for her to follow, a trail perceived by her spirit rather than seen with the eye.

Given the glimpse she'd spied into the former Abbess when Vanessa slapped her, this hardly surprised Latura at all.

At one point she stumbled almost directly under two of Chetwynd's Gawtrybe patrollers in the limbs overhead, but since Vanessa had preceded her along this path, the gazes of the squirrel pair stayed elsewhere, nor did they particularly hear the sounds of Latura's heavy breath and clumsy progress. Thus did the ratmaid press her way through nearer Mossflower, within woods that would normally have been considered in the shadow of Redwall but nowadays lay under a shadow much darker.

She came at last upon Vanessa, kneeling over a tiny trickle of a stream along soft mossy banks, the morning sun through the trees casting a halo of light around the scene. Vanessa splashed her face with water, and worked her paws through her fur, washing away the mock badger mask. When she finally looked up to acknowledge Latura, she'd regained the semblance of an ordinary tawny-furred mouse, even if Latura knew just how far from ordinary this mouse was.

"Can't figger you out," the ratmaid muttered as Vanessa sopped at her damp face with the hem of her tunic; somewhere along the way she'd also jettisoned the robe of her Badger Lord disguise, now appearing more the part of a normal, run-of-the-mill woodlander. "Can't figger you out t'all. Th' parts don't all fit right ... livin', dead, maid, malebeast, peace, war ... an' what was that badger get-up 'bout?"

"Oh, that? Just being silly - a bit of fun and games to help recruit the young ones to my purpose. Although I've known my badgers in my day, indeed I have - Bella, and Boar, and Rowanoak too. And these days badgers seem to loom very large, don't they? One in particular ... but no, there was no great significance to my play-acting in this case. That's all it was, a bit of play."

"Oh. Cuz I was wond'rin'. When you touched me, I saw so much, but t'weren't any stripedog in it, so I got confused."

"It was time," Vanessa announced, settling herself down on a natural tussock formed by a mossy rock, and gesturing for Latura to join her on an adjacent fallen log. "Make yourself comfortable, and I'll answer all your questions. We don't have much time; they'll be here soon."

Accepting the invitation, Latura hiked up the hem of her beloved peach dress and kick-splashed her way across the brook, seating herself opposite the mouse as bidden. She screwed her features up hard, as if trying to will the creature before her to resolve itself into something she could understand. "Er, what's yer name again?"

The other smiled at Latura, a smile of supreme benevolence surpassing what any mortal creature could possibly know. It was an expression the ratmaid had seen before, in her dreams and once, staring down at her from a magnificent tapestry hanging on display within a haven of sanctuary for her kind.

"My name is Martin," said the mouse on the rocks before her. "Martin the Warrior."