4: Playing Warrior

[Lucan]

Fire engulfed Mossflower. The greenery of life turned to blackened cinder before his eyes. Beyond the flames, a monster, slavering maw, teeth as long as swords. In its paws, a glittering sword with a blood-red pommel. Behind it, the smoke formed a rising bird shape.

Lucan bolted awake with a squeak. "Momma!" he yelped and lurched upright.

WHACK!

His head thwacked against the inside of the hollow log. He squeaked again, and curled in on himself, paws clasped between his velvety ears.

"Ow," he whimpered, and slowly opened his eyes and looked. Logic caught up with his sleep-fog. He'd curled himself inside a hollow log the night before, pulling his bulging pack in after him. The log felt safer than anywhere else, especially with that monster nearby.

He hadn't had the nightmare since leaving Redwall. Surely it was a sign from Martin that he was doing the right thing. According to his father's recordings, a monster had possession of Martin's sword, stolen seasons before in an attack that had left the badgermarm and a Dibbun dead. Here in this rugged northland, Lucan had found a monster, a wolverine, based on Sister Screeve's description of Gulo the Savage. He'd followed it, too, hiding himself with trees, shadows, distance, and a few of his own tricks.

He shifted his position in the log, crawling to the opening in one end, which he'd covered with a large section of cloth into which he'd woven leaves, bark, and grass. Positioned over the log, it looked like the log jutted out of a hillock. He sniffed first, and listened, then, finally, poked his snout out into the morning. Pre-dawn light filtered through the trees, dappling the ground around him. Nobeast else was about.

He crawled out, standing to stretch and then straightening his habit.

"Right!" He clapped his paws together. "I need a plan. I'm no Rakkety Tam, to sharpen my shield and go up fighting a wolverine, even if it's an old one. I need something else."

No ideas sprung to mind.

"Breakfast and exercises first then." He pulled his pack from the log, pushing aside his ghost and the sack of flour at the top. A pawful of nuts he'd foraged on the road was all that remained of his food. He frowned at them.

"A snack, exercises, then finding more food," he amended his plan for the day.

Lucan cracked and ate the nuts quickly, then pulled out the bow he'd taken from the rats early in his travels. He ran his paws up and down the length. "This is the morning, my friend. We're going to do this!"

The mouse stood squarely, footpaws planted firmly, back straight, head up. He lifted the bow, all serious dignity, pawtips on the string. He tightened his grip, and pulled. The string inched back, whisker by whisker. The bow trembled with Lucan's exertions, but he gritted his teeth and pulled, using his shoulder and arm muscles. With a gasp, he released the string, which twanged back in place.

Undeterred, Lucan rubbed his drawing paw on his habit and tried again. Shaking and straining, he got the string almost to his snout this time before it slipped and thrummed back into place.

Again and again, he tried to draw the bow. Sometimes he lost his grip too soon, other times he got it almost to full draw.

He rolled his shoulders, bounced up and down on his footpaws. "Once more. Come on, Lucan, you can do this!"

He took his stance, black eyes narrowed in sheer focus. He took a few deep breaths, raised the bow, and drew back on the string with every ounce of his strength. It reached his snout, crawling closer and closer to his cheek.

The string slipped, and twanged along the inside of his arm.

"Yeowch!" Lucan screamed, flinging the bow down and clutching at his arm where the bowstring had snapped him. It'd taken a tuft of gray-brown fur with it. Lucan rubbed at the sore spot, tears smarting in his eyes. "Stupid bow!" He kicked at it. "Who wants to be an archer anyway?"

He sniffed, and then heard something crackle behind him.

With a yelp, he jumped, grabbed the bow from where he kicked it, and then brought it up and back, first like a club, and then, scrabbling, he grabbed an arrow from the quiver tied to his pack, and put it in the string. He brought it up, undrawn, to face the origin of the sound.

"Halt!" he squeaked, then cleared his throat and said in a much deeper tone. "Halt! Who goes there!"

A green figure moved, not on the ground, where Lucan was looking, but along a tree limb above him. He redirected his arrow point, but cocked a head to one side curiously. What was that beast, with its smooth, fur-less skin that glistened in the morning light as if wet? It looked at him, yellow eyes wide, then blinked, first one eye and then the other.

"Are you friend or foe?" Lucan demanded.

The green creature shrugged. "Eef I were foe, you thing I woo say so?"

Lucan opened his mouth, closed it again, his bow lowering slightly as he thought about that. With a start, he brought it back up. "Then, state your name and business!"

"Beezneez? I am no merchan'. I am Priideep." The creature trilled the 'r' sound in a way Lucan had never heard before.

"What's a Prr-- prr—" He tried to trill the 'r' the way she had. His tongue couldn't seem to get the sound right. "Prr— whatever it is you said?"

Her throat bulged, increasing her size. "Me." She stepped closer, climbing sideways on the branch, seeming to hang there without any effort. "Why are you not weeth your family?"

"I am Lucan the Warrior. I do not need to travel with my family. They would slow me down!" He didn't say that his older sisters would probably  drag him back to Redwall by his ear, lecturing him all the way.

"You mus' be older than I deed think," she said, though a trace of skepticism remained on her face. A beetle flew nearby, its glittering carapace catching the sunlight, and her head turned to follow it. She sprang from the branch, allowing Lucan a clear view of very long legs and strangely shaped back footpaws unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He saw her land on another branch some distance away, and then she leaped again and he lost sight of her.

"Huh," he said, lowering the bow fully. "What was that? A toad?" He thought back to drawings he'd seen of toads in his father's books. She seemed too smooth to be a toad. "Prrr—," he tried again to get the 'r' sound as she'd made it. He kept playing with sound as he put the arrow back in the quiver and rolled his camouflage fabric up. He glanced back once, in the direction the strange beast had gone, then hoisted his pack and started walking. Round yellow eyes watched him from the leafy shadows as he went.

A few hours later, Lucan nibbled on a loaf of bread from a small hut he'd found. He had knocked on the door and, when there was no answer, he'd opened it and poked his nose inside. The fire on the hearth was cold, but a few loaves of bread sat on the table as if to cool. Lucan took one, but left a copper necklace as payment. He'd found the necklace in a vixen's belongings after his ghost had scared her during his long journey north.

As he walked through the woods, he regarded his worn habit. It'd gone through most of his brothers before being passed on to him, and he'd not treated it gently since leaving Redwall.

"I need a good breastplate or something to wear over this. That'd look nice. All dashing, and roguish." He posed, chin up, one arm up and curved before him, paw fisted around the remains of his loaf. He grinned and shoved the rest of his bread in his mouth.

O==[=====>

Lucan peered out between the leaves. The dark shadows of the cave lay before him. His paws trembled, the sling in his paw dancing like a fish on a line.

This is it. I'll show them all! All my dreams have led me to this moment.

He'd found the wolverine's lair! No motion inside the cave's opening and no sound told the little mouse that the hulking monster was not at home. With the beast nowhere to be seen, Lucan decided to try the first tactic that had come to mind.

Searching the empty cave for the sword!

A deep breath. Another. Lucan rushed forward, paws padding across the dirt to the cave mouth. He pressed himself up against a boulder near the entrance, checking, just once more, to see if the old wolverine perhaps slept inside.

The summer sunlight angled inside just enough for him to see the first part of the cave. The rest was hidden behind a curve.

He checked his sling and checked the pouch of rocks and flour packets at his belt. With a breath, he darted out of the warm summer sunlight and into the dark.

A smell hit him just inside, something — wrong. He gulped, swallowing down bile that rose in his throat. He blinked, his eyes adjusting from the bright light outside. He padded forward, going towards the low fire flickering in one corner. He put his back to it, squinting in the dim light of the cave.

Dark streaks decorated the cave wall, but it was the pale objects in a dark back corner that drew his eye. His breath caught. Could it be the sword? He ran forward for a better look.

What he found wasn't Martin's sword. At first, he wasn't sure what he was seeing. Strange branches and rocks, some of them grooved as if gouged by some big knife. A round one caught his attention and he pawed at it. It rolled. Gaping eyeholes stared at him, the skull's teeth yellow in the grinning mouth.

He blinked, then shrieked aloud and stumbled backwards, tripping over the hem of his green Redwaller's habit. He fell on his tail and crab-crawled backwards until his back hit the cave wall.

Bones. Those were bones.

Bones.

And he touched them!

Lucan scrubbed his paws against his habit, a terrified keening cry escaping from his throat. His eyes locked with the skull's absent orbs. He couldn't move.

Only when he heard the thud and crunch of a very large something outside did he realize that he was no longer alone.

He reached for his dropped sling, gasping for air with short choking cries. The monster! It was back and he hadn't looked for the sword! He hadn't found it, and he was out of time.

The wolverine blotted out the sun, blocking Lucan's only way out. It stood, massive and terrible, its long, shaggy dark fur draping it like a tattered cloak. In one paw, it clutched the shaft of spear as big around as Lucan's old dormitory bedpost.

In the other paw, it held the limp form of another mouse, blood soaking the tunic it had worn. Lucan knew that other mouse was dead. As dead as he was about to be if he didn't act.

The wolverine lifted its head, blinking in the dim light, squinting towards Lucan as if it wasn't sure what it was seeing.

Martin, help me! Lucan cried silently and began whirling his sling, falling back on seasons of childhood fantasy of being cornered, outnumbered and almost weaponless.

The monster snarled at him, something unintelligible as it stepped, closer to Lucan. Closer to the fire.

Lucan release the stone laden flour packet from his sling and ran towards the monster.

"Redwall!"

The flour packet burst open on one of the rocks surrounding the fire pit and the flames surged upwards with a whoosh as they ignited with the flammable powder.

The monster flinched, dropping its prey as its paw flew to shield its face.

Lucan scrabbled, almost on all fours, to get past the beast.

Something caught the back of his habit and he found himself lifted, paws leaving the ground. He twisted, whacking his empty sling at the claws that had him. They didn't yield or release him, but his habit, worn from days of travel, and more than one previous owner, tore down the back where the claws had ripped into it.

Lucan thudded back on to the ground, paws flailing for purchase, finding it, and then streaking off faster than he'd ever run in his life. He never even looked back to see if the wolverine tried to follow.

O==[=====>

"Some warrior you are. You had every chance of success, and you fouled it up."

Lucan sat under a pine tree, his habit in his lap as he did his best to mend it with needle and thread from his pack. He'd cut a section from the habit's lower half to stitch in to the ripped back. The effect wasn't pretty, but the habit looked like a tunic now. If you squinted and looked at it out of the corner of your eye.

He pulled it on, trying to make it hang right.

"Stupid wolverine."

He sniffed, scrubbing a paw across his nose.

A new voice said, "Hello? Who's there?"

Lucan squeaked and jumped to his paws. As he did so, he saw a dark-furred sable a short distance away. She spotted him a moment later. Her paw went to a bow on her back, but then dropped.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

Lucan straightened his shoulders. "You didn't," he said, deepening his voice just a little.

"I— see." She came closer and as Lucan got a clear look at her face, something seized inside him. On her forehead was a white image, a drawing, like a bird, soaring high into the sky. His dream, the bird rising from the smoke behind the monster! How?

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Are you lost?"

Lucan jolted. "Lost? Me? No! Of course not. I'm not lost at all. I was just resting."

"I'm afraid I'm a bit lost. I know where I need to go, but I'm afraid I don't know exactly—"

"Shh, shh, shh!" Lucan suddenly hushed the young sable, ears a-tremble as he heard the sound of something very large in the trees.

She hesitated, then, her eyes went round in her face as she heard it, too. "The Suneater?"

Lucan spun in a fast circle, eyes searching, then spotted a large boulder nearby. "Come on!" He grabbed her paw, dragging her over to it, throwing down his pack, and untying the camouflaged cloth from the side. He shook it out. "Down," he hissed quietly.

She caught on and crouched next to his pack, her breath coming in terrified gasps. Quickly, Lucan threw his cloth over her, hiding her from view. "Don't move! I'll protect you!"

He pulled his sling from his pouch at his back and scrabbled up the boulder's sides, where he flattened himself on top. He loaded a stone in his sling and watched, ears flat along his head, body trembling.

Lucan didn't know what a Suneater was, but what came into view was the wolverine. It carried no slain beasts in paw now, just its spear. He waited, as the wolverine lumbered off into the trees, looking for all the world like he were simply out for an afternoon stroll.

When silence had returned, he slid down the boulder. He gave himself a shake. You're a warrior. Act like it. A monstrous beast like that doesn't scare you!

"It's safe now." He raised the camouflaged cover from the sable and held out a paw to help her up, though he almost fell over trying to help her, given their size difference.

"What was that?" She seemed less afraid now, as if the monster she'd seen had been less terrible than expected.

"A wolverine," Lucan said. "I've been hunting it for a while now."

She turned a surprised eye to him. "You have?"

"Oh, yes. I believe it stole something of great value from our Abbey many seasons ago. I aim to get it back."

"How? You can't fight it by yourself."

Lucan stared at her. "That's it! Of course! The great warriors always had friends to fight beside them! I'm going to find help!"

She smiled, and something in that smile reminded Lucan of his mother, the indulgent one she always gave him when she thought he was being silly. "Well, perhaps we can help each other. I, too, seek warriors to help me."

Lucan couldn't resist the rising hope. "Well, I'd be honored to assist you! I'm Lucan the Warrior, son of Anson the Warrior, of Redwall Abbey!"

O==[=====>