Categories > Books > Redwall > The Wicked Ground
The jagged mound of red sandstone was less imposing in the clear light of early morning. The bright gold of the sun's rays seemed to pull the dusty red into its spectrum of colors, fuzzying the edges and fading out the bulk until it almost appeared to be some sort of ethereal unfinished castle rather than a material ruin of full consciousness. Yet it was in this light that Aetantim the ferretmaid approached the shell that had been Redwall Abbey, and she was grateful that the environment was making the way feel easier even after creating this obstacle to begin with.
There was already an excavated tunnel aimed toward the Infirmary area, now ironically conveniently located at ground level rather than on the second floor. It had been one of the first to be cleared out, right after the path down into the food cellars. The casualties of the quake had, in all but a few cases, been at the extreme ends of the spectrum - either death or only minor scrapes and abrasions and thus, sustaining the living had taken precedence over bandaging their scrapes. But with sated hunger, the capacity to complain of pain increased, and the Infirmary route had to be cleared. Aetantim had not participated in that clearing, but she had since gone in several times to recover medications.
Her apprehension that morning came not from going in that far alone, but from knowing that she would have to go further this time. She slipped down into the tunnel like a miner descending a dark shaft, stopping in the clear cavern of the room, now empty of all its stores and patients, breathing heavily as the dust she had disturbed settled. From all her work in that room while it was still intact, the ferret could feel for the proper exit in the dark. She let out a squeak of gladness as her paws felt across the handle of the door, but tugging it open into the room proved to be difficult. Aetantim braced her footpaws against a crack in the slanted stone floor and threw her entire weight into the tugging.
The hinges groaned and a rumble emanated from the other side of the door as if the door were the only thing between the young ferret and some dreadful beast of the unknown. And that turned out not to be so far off the mark - taking its limit of strain, the infirmary door busted inward with a tumble of rocks and dust, streaming like a mudslide halfway into the no-longer-quite-so-excavated room. Had Aetantim not been a beast graced with natural flexibility and quick reflexes, she would have been added to the numbers of beasts permanently pinned within the remnants of the Abbey, but she was able to use the same crack in the floor to launch herself out of the path of the debris just in the nick of time.
Aetantim found herself in a darker and narrower space than before, with little headroom and the one exit she knew to go into Redwall rather than to the outside world now blocked. Dust swirled heavily and she shut her eyes and coughed, wishing that the heavy walls would dissipate from her expulsion of air like the dust did. She otherwise remained still for several long minutes, dreading that she might set off another slide that could impede her exit. When nothing came, she experimentally reached one forepaw up in order to start feeling her way out of the cramped nook.
The sandstone was rough against her pawpads, yet she could not have been more glad to feel the right angle edge of a cut brick and the sharp metal rim of a busted-out windowframe. Aetantim snaked her other paw around to this point and pulled herself slowly out of the corner, finding herself facing the remains of the window that had once been the Infirmary's lookout over the Great Hall. The chipped rectangle of stone seemed to be vaguely backlit despite the scattered rocks directly before it, and with new resolve Aetantim chose to slip her way through as best she could.
A ferret's naturally elongated body shape evolved early on to suit a life dealing with tunnels and crevasses, and Aetantim reaped the benefits of that heritage as she skirted the mangled chunks of masonry, aiming toward an ever-brightening but still indistinct backlight. The lack of concrete directionality even in the increasing visibility was a frustration to the ferretmaid, but she pressed on, dust accumulating in her fur and stinging at the inevitable scrapes on her paws.
The light suddenly increased dramatically as Aetantim rounded a decorated chunk of what had once been ceiling. The ferret winced at the sudden influx of light, her eyes screwing shut. After several seconds, she pried them slowly open and found herself in a much brighter space, scattered with rocks and capped with half of a ceiling and half open sky. And in the middle of the pile, a streak of bright light ran along a distinctly metal edge, sparkling from the sunbeams coming over the former east wall and aiming due west.
With no question in her mind as to what to do, Aetantim clambered with new urgency toward the bar of light, dislodging small chunks of brickwork as she went but not disturbing the whole arrangement of the disarray. When she at last arrived at the source of the light, again spluttering from the dust, she instantly recognized the impossibly blue-bright blade that was pointing the way. The Great Sword of Redwall, once a functional weapon, had for the past few centuries been kept as a symbolic display in the Abbey's Great Hall. Now, even in its shambled surroundings, it was useful again.
The blade alone was visible, piercing through a dusty but apparently-colorful cloth that obscured the obvious bump of the hilt and a more formless mass below it. Gripping the flat of the blade with cautious paws, Aetantim managed to pull it free of the cloth, the still-sharp edge parting the fibers easily but managing not to inflict even the tiniest cut along the ferretmaid's raw pawpads. Aetantim held the marvelous Sword of Martin the Warrior aloft, staring at the impossibly fresh black wrapping on the hilt and at the glistening red of the pommel stone, the spirited symbol resurgent even within the eviscerated Abbey that it no longer protected.
Fatigue suddenly wracking her limbs, Aetantim lowered the great blade and took several deep breaths. She had momentarily forgotten her initial objective and had to mentally regroup to think of where to search next. In her consideration, the ferretmaid idly rolled back the cloth and let out another squeak of alarmed discovery. The great tapestry of Redwall's medieval history had hung behind protective glass in the Great Hall along the sword for just as many centuries, and the glass had served well to prevent weathering, fraying, and fading. This protection had been naturally undone by the earthquake, and in one movement, the sword had undone part of the fabric that portrayed its own history.
The cut started at the edge of the tapestry, slicing the carefully-rendered individual stitches of grass and stones into hanging edges, then tearing onward through stylized impressions of fleeing hordebeasts and triumphant woodlanders alike, then culminating in a broad slash across the image of Redwall Abbey itself. Tears welled into Aetantim's dusty eyes as she unrolled the tapestry and took in the scope of the damage. Earthquake setting the scene or not, she could not help but feel guilt for freeing the sword as she had and therefore contributing directly to the destruction of this particular piece of Redwall.
But the impression of Martin the Warrior himself was intact. The brave liberator of Mossflower County smiled serenely out from the stitches that comprised his image, too lifelike and present to be oblivious to the great degree of devastation surrounding it, yet too assured and benevolent to dole out any form of blame. Looking at the impression of eyes too dark to be mere dyed thread, Aetantim ran a paw over Martin's image. She did not know what she was really expecting to feel, yet she jerked backwards at the detection of tangible curves of limbs under the cloth.
A mix of horror and curiosity clear enough to have been deliberately planned and stitched crept over Aetantim's face as she reached back toward the tapestry. Paws unsteady, she rolled the Warrior's image to the side and revealed the still-costumed-in-silk and impossibly serene body of Jacinth.
Suddenly inundated with that peculiar sort of strength that only comes in a circumstance of dire and inarguable importance, Aetantim lifted Jacinth's tiny body and the tapestry about it into the cradle of her arms, extending one forepaw to hold the great sword out ahead. She then clambered straight back in the direction from which she had come, practically sensing her way past all the fallen obstacles and not tripping once as she grew nearer and nearer to the outside world.
-----
Despite her overwhelming physical and mental exhaustion, Ruta could not sleep. The badger kept tossing about on the ground, though she was neither disturbed by its hardness nor was she reliving the sickening motion of the great earthquake in her dreams. She simply could not remain in the realm of slumber for long and was heavily conscious of each turn she made. In the few dreams she was able to have, she only dreamed of tossing and turning, which was just as effective as not sleeping at all.
The badger Councilchair could not identify the cause of her restlessness as it was occurring but as the night lifted into morning, thus eliminating any further opportunities for sleep by way of brightness and activity, Ruta realized that a single word was responsible, bouncing around in her subconscious and splitting her nerves without asserting itself by name until the whole community was awake around her. Leave.
It was really not so much the word itself as the concept it represented. Repeating a word over and over can quickly reduce it to a sequence of meaningless syllables, but repetition of a specific concept only magnifies its significance. No doubt the thought of packing up and leaving before another earthquake could tear their lives further apart had crossed the mind of many a creature involved in the cataclysm. Ruta had thought it herself long before the dust had even settled, but she had dismissed it even as she took in the helplessness of the structural failure of Redwall. That was the easy way out, the quick fix.
But then, twice in two days, the concept had been brought up to her by serious and powerful creatures. Rhynn would not have proposed such a thing if her aim had been conquest. The grave honesty in the silver weasel's strange green eyes had been of an intensity that no earthquake could dislodge, an intensity that stuck in the badger's mind. And the otter Admiral Streamrunner - Ruta knew him well. She had backed him in the Northern War and considered him a friend outside their realms of duty for a long time. She knew that his spirit was genuine and that his characteristic light humor never extended to joking about matters of business, politics, or war. Why should unforeseen natural disaster be any different? There was no chance of it.
Two strong and powerful creatures, both with followers to speak for their persona pull, and, perhaps more importantly, both with the ships to do the deed if it came down to that. Having the ships made it all different, changing a hypothetical course of action into an immediately possible one. Spend seasons sifting through the shards of a crumbled history, dismantling it further before it could be rebuilt in some semblance of continuity? Or just hop on a ship and go someplace fresh and different and let that shattered history lie, an artifact in itself?
The badger paced slowly around the perimeter of Redwall's ruins, just as much a motion to help her remain awake as it was one to aid deep thought. Concepts and alternatives jumped around in the exhausted space of her consciousness, with the further consideration of each one leading only to more ideas of consequences and more indecision. But within this pensiveness, Ruta's eyes were at least properly focused on the path she trod, thus preventing a messy run-in with a young female ferret carrying an impressive sword.
Aetantim had placed Jacinth's body alongside those not yet buried and was turning the corner to search for Maestro Liedswelt when she nearly gutted Ruta. She let out a yelp of surprise and jerked backwards, the tapestry sliding off her arm and the sword swinging sideways in avoidance.
Ruta gaped at Aetantim and her artifacts, thoroughly startled in the best possible way, though the wetness that pooled in the corners of her eyes may have been a more ambiguous sign of emotion. "You found those..." The normally eloquent badger was reduced to short phrases. "Where did you find those?"
"Inside," the ferret responded, pointing the tip of the blade toward Redwall. "In the middle. Pointing due west."
Ruta bent down and lifted the tapestry with the utmost care, frowning at the deep tear in the cloth, then looking back up at the gleaming blade. "West..."
There was already an excavated tunnel aimed toward the Infirmary area, now ironically conveniently located at ground level rather than on the second floor. It had been one of the first to be cleared out, right after the path down into the food cellars. The casualties of the quake had, in all but a few cases, been at the extreme ends of the spectrum - either death or only minor scrapes and abrasions and thus, sustaining the living had taken precedence over bandaging their scrapes. But with sated hunger, the capacity to complain of pain increased, and the Infirmary route had to be cleared. Aetantim had not participated in that clearing, but she had since gone in several times to recover medications.
Her apprehension that morning came not from going in that far alone, but from knowing that she would have to go further this time. She slipped down into the tunnel like a miner descending a dark shaft, stopping in the clear cavern of the room, now empty of all its stores and patients, breathing heavily as the dust she had disturbed settled. From all her work in that room while it was still intact, the ferret could feel for the proper exit in the dark. She let out a squeak of gladness as her paws felt across the handle of the door, but tugging it open into the room proved to be difficult. Aetantim braced her footpaws against a crack in the slanted stone floor and threw her entire weight into the tugging.
The hinges groaned and a rumble emanated from the other side of the door as if the door were the only thing between the young ferret and some dreadful beast of the unknown. And that turned out not to be so far off the mark - taking its limit of strain, the infirmary door busted inward with a tumble of rocks and dust, streaming like a mudslide halfway into the no-longer-quite-so-excavated room. Had Aetantim not been a beast graced with natural flexibility and quick reflexes, she would have been added to the numbers of beasts permanently pinned within the remnants of the Abbey, but she was able to use the same crack in the floor to launch herself out of the path of the debris just in the nick of time.
Aetantim found herself in a darker and narrower space than before, with little headroom and the one exit she knew to go into Redwall rather than to the outside world now blocked. Dust swirled heavily and she shut her eyes and coughed, wishing that the heavy walls would dissipate from her expulsion of air like the dust did. She otherwise remained still for several long minutes, dreading that she might set off another slide that could impede her exit. When nothing came, she experimentally reached one forepaw up in order to start feeling her way out of the cramped nook.
The sandstone was rough against her pawpads, yet she could not have been more glad to feel the right angle edge of a cut brick and the sharp metal rim of a busted-out windowframe. Aetantim snaked her other paw around to this point and pulled herself slowly out of the corner, finding herself facing the remains of the window that had once been the Infirmary's lookout over the Great Hall. The chipped rectangle of stone seemed to be vaguely backlit despite the scattered rocks directly before it, and with new resolve Aetantim chose to slip her way through as best she could.
A ferret's naturally elongated body shape evolved early on to suit a life dealing with tunnels and crevasses, and Aetantim reaped the benefits of that heritage as she skirted the mangled chunks of masonry, aiming toward an ever-brightening but still indistinct backlight. The lack of concrete directionality even in the increasing visibility was a frustration to the ferretmaid, but she pressed on, dust accumulating in her fur and stinging at the inevitable scrapes on her paws.
The light suddenly increased dramatically as Aetantim rounded a decorated chunk of what had once been ceiling. The ferret winced at the sudden influx of light, her eyes screwing shut. After several seconds, she pried them slowly open and found herself in a much brighter space, scattered with rocks and capped with half of a ceiling and half open sky. And in the middle of the pile, a streak of bright light ran along a distinctly metal edge, sparkling from the sunbeams coming over the former east wall and aiming due west.
With no question in her mind as to what to do, Aetantim clambered with new urgency toward the bar of light, dislodging small chunks of brickwork as she went but not disturbing the whole arrangement of the disarray. When she at last arrived at the source of the light, again spluttering from the dust, she instantly recognized the impossibly blue-bright blade that was pointing the way. The Great Sword of Redwall, once a functional weapon, had for the past few centuries been kept as a symbolic display in the Abbey's Great Hall. Now, even in its shambled surroundings, it was useful again.
The blade alone was visible, piercing through a dusty but apparently-colorful cloth that obscured the obvious bump of the hilt and a more formless mass below it. Gripping the flat of the blade with cautious paws, Aetantim managed to pull it free of the cloth, the still-sharp edge parting the fibers easily but managing not to inflict even the tiniest cut along the ferretmaid's raw pawpads. Aetantim held the marvelous Sword of Martin the Warrior aloft, staring at the impossibly fresh black wrapping on the hilt and at the glistening red of the pommel stone, the spirited symbol resurgent even within the eviscerated Abbey that it no longer protected.
Fatigue suddenly wracking her limbs, Aetantim lowered the great blade and took several deep breaths. She had momentarily forgotten her initial objective and had to mentally regroup to think of where to search next. In her consideration, the ferretmaid idly rolled back the cloth and let out another squeak of alarmed discovery. The great tapestry of Redwall's medieval history had hung behind protective glass in the Great Hall along the sword for just as many centuries, and the glass had served well to prevent weathering, fraying, and fading. This protection had been naturally undone by the earthquake, and in one movement, the sword had undone part of the fabric that portrayed its own history.
The cut started at the edge of the tapestry, slicing the carefully-rendered individual stitches of grass and stones into hanging edges, then tearing onward through stylized impressions of fleeing hordebeasts and triumphant woodlanders alike, then culminating in a broad slash across the image of Redwall Abbey itself. Tears welled into Aetantim's dusty eyes as she unrolled the tapestry and took in the scope of the damage. Earthquake setting the scene or not, she could not help but feel guilt for freeing the sword as she had and therefore contributing directly to the destruction of this particular piece of Redwall.
But the impression of Martin the Warrior himself was intact. The brave liberator of Mossflower County smiled serenely out from the stitches that comprised his image, too lifelike and present to be oblivious to the great degree of devastation surrounding it, yet too assured and benevolent to dole out any form of blame. Looking at the impression of eyes too dark to be mere dyed thread, Aetantim ran a paw over Martin's image. She did not know what she was really expecting to feel, yet she jerked backwards at the detection of tangible curves of limbs under the cloth.
A mix of horror and curiosity clear enough to have been deliberately planned and stitched crept over Aetantim's face as she reached back toward the tapestry. Paws unsteady, she rolled the Warrior's image to the side and revealed the still-costumed-in-silk and impossibly serene body of Jacinth.
Suddenly inundated with that peculiar sort of strength that only comes in a circumstance of dire and inarguable importance, Aetantim lifted Jacinth's tiny body and the tapestry about it into the cradle of her arms, extending one forepaw to hold the great sword out ahead. She then clambered straight back in the direction from which she had come, practically sensing her way past all the fallen obstacles and not tripping once as she grew nearer and nearer to the outside world.
-----
Despite her overwhelming physical and mental exhaustion, Ruta could not sleep. The badger kept tossing about on the ground, though she was neither disturbed by its hardness nor was she reliving the sickening motion of the great earthquake in her dreams. She simply could not remain in the realm of slumber for long and was heavily conscious of each turn she made. In the few dreams she was able to have, she only dreamed of tossing and turning, which was just as effective as not sleeping at all.
The badger Councilchair could not identify the cause of her restlessness as it was occurring but as the night lifted into morning, thus eliminating any further opportunities for sleep by way of brightness and activity, Ruta realized that a single word was responsible, bouncing around in her subconscious and splitting her nerves without asserting itself by name until the whole community was awake around her. Leave.
It was really not so much the word itself as the concept it represented. Repeating a word over and over can quickly reduce it to a sequence of meaningless syllables, but repetition of a specific concept only magnifies its significance. No doubt the thought of packing up and leaving before another earthquake could tear their lives further apart had crossed the mind of many a creature involved in the cataclysm. Ruta had thought it herself long before the dust had even settled, but she had dismissed it even as she took in the helplessness of the structural failure of Redwall. That was the easy way out, the quick fix.
But then, twice in two days, the concept had been brought up to her by serious and powerful creatures. Rhynn would not have proposed such a thing if her aim had been conquest. The grave honesty in the silver weasel's strange green eyes had been of an intensity that no earthquake could dislodge, an intensity that stuck in the badger's mind. And the otter Admiral Streamrunner - Ruta knew him well. She had backed him in the Northern War and considered him a friend outside their realms of duty for a long time. She knew that his spirit was genuine and that his characteristic light humor never extended to joking about matters of business, politics, or war. Why should unforeseen natural disaster be any different? There was no chance of it.
Two strong and powerful creatures, both with followers to speak for their persona pull, and, perhaps more importantly, both with the ships to do the deed if it came down to that. Having the ships made it all different, changing a hypothetical course of action into an immediately possible one. Spend seasons sifting through the shards of a crumbled history, dismantling it further before it could be rebuilt in some semblance of continuity? Or just hop on a ship and go someplace fresh and different and let that shattered history lie, an artifact in itself?
The badger paced slowly around the perimeter of Redwall's ruins, just as much a motion to help her remain awake as it was one to aid deep thought. Concepts and alternatives jumped around in the exhausted space of her consciousness, with the further consideration of each one leading only to more ideas of consequences and more indecision. But within this pensiveness, Ruta's eyes were at least properly focused on the path she trod, thus preventing a messy run-in with a young female ferret carrying an impressive sword.
Aetantim had placed Jacinth's body alongside those not yet buried and was turning the corner to search for Maestro Liedswelt when she nearly gutted Ruta. She let out a yelp of surprise and jerked backwards, the tapestry sliding off her arm and the sword swinging sideways in avoidance.
Ruta gaped at Aetantim and her artifacts, thoroughly startled in the best possible way, though the wetness that pooled in the corners of her eyes may have been a more ambiguous sign of emotion. "You found those..." The normally eloquent badger was reduced to short phrases. "Where did you find those?"
"Inside," the ferret responded, pointing the tip of the blade toward Redwall. "In the middle. Pointing due west."
Ruta bent down and lifted the tapestry with the utmost care, frowning at the deep tear in the cloth, then looking back up at the gleaming blade. "West..."
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