FicWad

The assessment that the trace would be easier to follow in the daylight held true, at least for a little while. In the first light hours of the morning, Andreas, Elsinore, Garlock, and Hayward continued to follow that straight disturbed line on the ground, requiring no genuine sense of direction to stay on the correct route. But as the early morning wore on into hours that would be seen by all but the latest sleepers, the feature that had been their guide so far began to be more vague in its directions. The ground progressed from harder soil and rock to a softer composite, not quite a sand or powder but close to it - soft on the pawpads and smooth enough to slide in over any tracks they might make. It also, however, seemed to have this masking effect on the earth's own track. Elsinore observed that the strange groundcover consisted entirely of pulverized sediments, sandstone, and granite - an indication that tectonic forces were still at work in the area - but that did not make those processes easier to follow. The four continued for quite some time in a straight line from the last distinct evidence of the crack, but by the time the sun swung around into the afternoon hours their path had also become dissolute and aimless.

They stopped for lunch by a stream that ran straight, though this straightness related to their general direction only indicated that the stream did not cross the fault at any visible point, thus providing no hints as to the potential way the trace had turned. While Hayward, Elsinore, and Garlock pulled out their rations, Andreas again broke his usual habits on timing and pulled out his black notebook and Lontano's map. But he did not yet write; he was not concerned with forgetting that the goal of their expedition had disappeared in a soft powder. Rather, the marten regarded the larger picture he'd started to assemble over those three and a half days, considering the sequence of marked displacements for a good ling while before he even pulled put a pencil. The line that he eventually drew to connect the dots was light and tentative in his handwriting - such a contrast from the real thing until this point - but it was as straight as any planned road and lined up exactly with larger meanders in major waterways in addition to with the new rearrangements that the expedition had found.

Andreas considered this line, so far only stretching from Salamandastron south and partially east. He glanced north along the unchanged part of the map, then allowed his eyes to flicker between the line and the known and marked cities and landmarks indicated all over the face of the countryside. If the other three had been watching him instead of eating, they might have noticed his eyes linger even longer on a point on the lower right-hand corner of the map.

"Oh dear," said Andreas, now drawing attention indeed.

Hayward's ears stiffened and swiveled toward the marten. "I say...of all the beasts to ever utter an oops, I'd have hoped to not hear one coming from you, eh wot."

"Why are you worrying, Zurr Andras?" Elsinore questioned, sifting some of the soft dirt through her digging claws. "We may not be able to see it, but it has to be abaout here somewhere."

"No, no, not that," Andreas mumbled, pressing his lips tightly together as he leaned in closer over his own map, searching for errors on his part that would differentiate it from Lontano's. But there was no such luck.

"Wot kind of oops do you mean?" Hayward pressed, his persistent smile going a little crooked in concern.

Andreas pointed at the map and his new line upon it. "We've been following the break, no question, but it goes nowhere near the crevasse discussed in the Golden Plains records. See..." he pointed now at specific places that matched between his chart and Lontano's. "There's Salamandastron and Redwall and way over to the southeast is Loamhedge. Here's the Bell and Badger Rocks and the caves in the cliff. And over here's The Narrows, where some of those crevasse-dwellers went after so much of their domain collapsed, here's where the Stumps and their neighbors founded a town to get away from the shaking, and here's Big Bend, halfway between Redwall and Loamhedge, but," Andreas' claw drifted to the other side of the map, "we're way over here. Much further west and too far south too. We're much closer to the Great Inland Lake and Castle Floret than to where I thought this would lead us!" The marten sounded genuinely upset by this realization.

"There's something rotten abaout this," Elsinore stated, her brow lifting up into little fuzzy ridges. "But if they've got urthquakes daown at Loamhedge and naow we have them too, it has to be related, stand on moi tunnel."

"Oh, I'm certain it's connected," Andreas continued, shaking his head. "But I don't know if, if we've lost this track entirely. It doesn't make sense, but we've stopped seeing the deflection, and..."

From Andreas' first spoken indication of a problem, Garlock's eyes had been locked on the marten's face. Now, as the Recorder continued to express uncertainty after uncertainty, the ferret's restraint gave way and a shout ruptured forth from his throat. "And you know why we're off course? You know why we're not over there like you so insisted we should have been? It's nobeast's fault but yours, Andreas. You and your pretty mountains and forgetting your own oh-so-essential goal."

The marten's expression transformed from one of vague worried confusion to one of hard and focused irritation. "The goal was to trace the cause. The assumption was that it would lead to Loamhedge. There is no blame to assign here, only a need to rethink the experimental design."

"Well, you know what sure would have fit both that pet theory of yours and the practical application of this whole disaster? If we'd gone north. If you just wanted to track this thing, I know it goes up to Darkhill, and that matters to me more than anything else here. But you don't care about that, nor about anybeast at all. Nature this and prevent that? You'd reduce us all to science!" Garlock drew in closer to Andreas, the intensity of pent-up stress streaming out in his voice and his glare.

"That hypothesis could have only been disproved by our doing exactly what we have done and coming down here - we will still go north and we'll go east, too." Andreas' face remained even now, but his voice started to show the accumulation of strain from Garlock's accusations. "And I care about every creature who was effected by this - every single one. That's bigger than just me and it's bigger than just you. You're a selfish beast to impede the understanding of Nature in order to satisfy yourself, and you're foolish to think your own rage has so much consequence to me or to anyone else as Nature's rage does. You're being subducted here, but if you think, you'll notice that we all are. So find a way to reconcile that or you can head back up to Darkhill on your own."

"You'd have to let us know what you find when you go up there, all right, old chap?" Hayward could not resist getting in a shot of his own, and it was delivered with his usual smile deformed into a maniac smirk.

Garlock jabbed a finger toward Hayward. "Like you really have personal investment in this, you lopeared creep. Go back to your badger fort, then. You just showed us a little crack in the road and ended up pointing us the wrong way to begin with."

Hayward huffed, but Andreas' retort resonated sympathetically with the hare's words. "And the only unilateral decision here was your decision to come along to begin with," he explained to Garlock. "Which makes you alone responsible for your ending up here."

In that moment, the magnitude of the situation increased dramatically. "Stop talking like you're a perfect little saint, Andreas," Garlock snarled, the low sound coming from deep in his throat as he thrust his forepaws forward to strike the marten.

Andreas dipped down just in time, slipping away from the intended blows and responding with continued scientific levelness, "What then, Garlock? Would you have me be a martyr instead?"

Further enraged by his miss and by Andreas' quip, Garlock skidded forward, kicking up tracks in the dirt, the snarling wavering violently as he aimed to turn around for another shot. But before he had a chance, Elsinore darted in as fast as her short mole legs would carry her, placing herself between the ferret and the marten and waving her digging claws fast enough to shear the fur off of any paws that might move to attack.

"Naow, if you kill each other aout here, there is nobeast who would find you and that would be two more casualties of the urthquake-" Elsinore glared meaningfully, though more toward Garlock than toward Andreas. "I think splitting up goes against both of your ideas. We need to keep going naow."

Though fire still smoldered in his eyes, Garlock was more receptive to a point from Elsinore, as the mole had done no single thing to try his nerves on the journey so far. His springloaded muscles untensed, though he continued to cast mistrusting expressions toward the marten.

Andreas narrowed his eyes right back at Garlock, then eased off in a nod toward Elsinore. Without another word, he picked up his map and notebook and strode purposefully to the right, the direction in which they had been traveling. Hayward leapt along to parallel the marten's path. But Garlock, with a last flash of his teeth, turned quite deliberately to the left and started off. It was Elsinore again, standing still, though facing right and beckoning left, who drew the group back together. "Naow, if one of us is going back to Redwall, then we should, but like Zurr Andras said, if we go back naow, it should be a different way than the one we took to get here, in case we foind more things,"

"I'm not interested in finding..." Garlock began in the course half-whisper of someone who knows his misplaced anger could bring him great harm.

"Back to Redwall?" came an unfamiliar voice. The four travelers cut their argument short at the sound, the first creature they had encountered other than themselves since they had left Mossflower. Seconds after these words were spoken, two light-furred squirrels appeared in the travelers' path, so suddenly as to give no indication of the direction from which they came.

The second squirrel spoke now, "We're sorry to interrupt you, but we heard you arguing even louder than we usually do ourselves. Yours are the first new voices we've heard in over a week!"

"And you said Redwall!" the first squirrel reiterated, voice high with excitement. "That means it's still there and we can go up there! I've never been more glad to be wrong!"

The second squirrel pointed a thumb toward the first. "Heh, poor Fialko here's convinced that just because we got hit by an earthquake, everyone did. But he says that every time we have one, and it's never gone further than a couple of towns over."

"Aw, you never know, Hosgri," Fialko retorted. "You never know. It could just be warming up for a really big one some day."

"Every time?" Andreas cut in, undeniably intrigued. Garlock eyed him murderously.

Hayward cut in front of the squirrels, tipping his ears in respect and regret. "My good squirrels, it befalls me to inform you that your fears are entirely too assured and warranted. Redwall has been full-out demolished by the earthquake."

Both squirrels cut their chatter and blinked in disbelief at the hare. Yet as quickly as the solemnity had set in, Fialko broke it by jabbing both of his forepaws toward Hosgri. "I told you! I told you the big one was no joking matter!"

"But Zurr Falko...you're joking around now." Elsinore's observation was a gentle one, even as she held her ground between Garlock and Andreas.

Hosgri shook his head several times. "I'd assumed that if you got down here alive and well, you must have pulled through all right up there."

"Well, we pulled through. We're not great, though, but at least we haven't bally well fallen off into the ocean or anything, eh wot." Hayward was apparently incapable of maintaining seriousness for long, as if he had worn out his quota on the run from Salamanadastron to Redwall immediately following the quake.

"Why are you down here, then?" Hosgri wondered.

"We came to chart the damage in hopes of identifying its causes," Andreas explained, looking more at Garlock than at the squirrels. "The trail of destruction brought us right down here."

Fialko pointed at the marten. "But you're going back to Redwall anyway?

"Eventually, we'll..."

"We are going back to Redwall," Garlock cut in, voice strong and decisive enough to be like a stone road marker hammered into the middle of the little circle of beasts.

"Good!" Fialko clasped his paws together. "We'll come with you and tell you all we know."

Hayward hemmed and hawed and considered the flour sack of rations, lighter than it had been at the outset of the expedition. "Ahem...I don't think we bally well have the rations to take on new recruits, wot wot."

Hosgri waved a paw at the hare as if to shoo his concerns. "Oh, we have those. We know how to keep them safe even through the regular quakes. And," the squirrel's voice became more inviting, "if you're worried about speed, we can even go by train."

"Train?" Andreas had previously been exhibiting a great deal of intrigue at the wealth of evidence and information that he was certain the squirrels could provide him about seismic history and protection, but his expression flooded with discomfort at the last word. "Along our path thus far, we have come across a great deal of split roads and railways and other deformations in the ground. If think it would be unlikely that the track from here to Redwall would be undisturbed and safe."

"We've never had problems with it before." Hosgri shrugged.

"But you had also never been in a tremor that has had such a widespread range of effects before?" Andreas' sentence sounded somewhere between a statement and a question.

Garlock pointed past Elsinore, in the general direction of the mapbooks in Andreas' paws. "We never crossed that line in the dirt," he sneered, no matter how many other lines he felt had been crossed in the course of the journey. "We're on the same side of it as Redwall is, your tracks should be fine - unlike the ones up to Darkhill, that we would have needed to walk to get to all along."

Andreas shuddered slightly and consulted the maps, realizing the correctness of what the ferret had said before the comment had turned inflammatory.

"We're taking the train back to Redwall," Garlock insisted. "And today."

The marten gritted his teeth, the conceded, "If the plane of motion has been shown to not meet up with the cracks at Loamhedge...it perhaps is more imperative to report that to the council, then to continue tracing the unknown parts of the new crack up north...going to Loamhedge to make conclusions will perhaps work best after we have charted the whole of this. So...we can take the train back to Redwall."

With this decision, Elsinore finally found it safe to remove herself from the space between Andreas and the now-gloating Garlock. Hosgri and Fialko beckoned for the four travelers to follow them.

In a scant twenty minutes of walking, the group came upon a town that, despite the name of Parkfield printed on the sign at the train station, was more of a wooded glen on a stream than either a park or a field. The structures within were not wholly untouched, but unlike every other town that the four Mossflowerites had passed, the most severe form of damage here was a series of collapsed chimneys - a fate that many from the area around Redwall would have considered incredibly lucky. Another major thing that differentiated Parkfield from the other towns was that its population, though small, was still present and alive. Mostly squirrels, with the occasional mole, mouse, or hedgehog among them, they came out into the streets to observe the newcomers' arrivals.

"You get that train to Redwall, we can help you with anything you need. As you can see, we've done alright ourselves." Hosgri gestured between the town and the train in its station.

Andreas nodded slowly, then did a doubletake. "Wait. If we get the train to Redwall?"

Fialko clasped his paws together, almost begging. "Our usual conductor went to Redwall for Nameday, then there was the quake, and then he didn't come back. That's why I thought this one was maybe the big one." He shot a glance at Hosgri. "But since you creatures at Redwall started this whole rail system and since all the tracks lead to the city there, I figure one of you knows how they work, right?"

"Oi certainly don't," Elsinore told the squirrels. "Oi dig the trackbeds, that's it. And that recollection of duty now only brought the mole a sense of severe unpleasantness.

Garlock shook his head with a jerky motion. "You think the political-types actually know how the things they propose work?"

"I hardly ever even ride in them, let alone drive, eh wot." Hayward did, however, seem excited about the prospect of a ride.

All eyes fell on Andreas, and the marten shuffled his feet and bit his lower lip. "I've looked over the diagrams. I know how they work, on principle, but I've never done it. And I don't like them. You miss so much detail on a train."

"We've seen the scenery." The danger reemerged in Garlock's voice. "Don't go back on your word."

Hosgri worded things more gently. "You're what we've got. We can't get up there and help you if we can't get up there at all."

Andreas glanced toward the gleaming black locomotive engine in the Parkfield station. Stationary and turned off, it seemed more like an odd building with wheels than the frightening creature it became when screaming along the tracks and belching smoke. He considered the blue-and-black-on-white charts that laid out the working parts and controls in laboratory-sterile order, charts that were surely now buried under tons of debris.

The marten inhaled deeply, then let all the air out in a short sharp burst. "I can try."