The Rest is Silence

[Bellona Littlebrush]

Freyr?

Bell could only half-understand the apparition in front of her as it forced some repulsive thing into her paw and she chewed it slowly. It couldn't be Freyr because Freyr was dead, Freyr only gave her good food to eat... and Freyr knew her name.

Several minutes stretched out as the torch flickered and sputtered, casting haunted shadows on the walls around them. A kit squeaked, and then all was quiet.

-----

"You have to get up, Bells," Freyr whispered, his whiskers tickling her ear as he nuzzled his snout into the hollow between her head and shoulder.

"Go 'way," Bell grumbled into her pillow, flicking her ear at the offending whiskers. "M'first day back from ?trol, m'llowed t'be lazy. Cap'n said."

"Not today," Freyr insisted, pulling lightly at the covers his wife clung to like a limpet. "Today, you have to get up and find mushrooms for dinner."

"I c'n fin' mushrooms later; they don' move."

"Get up, Bells." This time more stern. "Now."

"Why?" She finally rolled over and he smiled down at her, blood dripping from the lacerations on his kind face.

"Because you have to."

-----

Bell's eyes snapped open, her breath coming in fast, ragged gasps. The remains of the torch smoldered just to her left near the paw of -

"Lac...rimos...a?" the dormouse managed around a throat that felt like she?d swallowed the desert outside. The marten did not respond immediately. "Rev...el?" Bell tried instead.

"What?" came the faint response in the gloom.

"We're alive."

"Glad you noticed," Eliza groaned.

"We need...to get moving. Where are the...mushrooms?"

The trio staggered to their footpaws, Bell grabbing up the torch and adding her bandanna for fuel. She coughed a moment, then stared at Eliza, knowing it must have been her. Hated that it had been her.

"Lead."

-----

"Fifteen vermin and sixteen woodlanders left," Birch reported, twirling her hammer unconsciously in one paw.

Birch, Bell, and Sagaru sat about a dying bed of coals as the sun sank for the second day since they'd left the cursed caves behind, loaded down with mushrooms. All three creatures were haggard from their ordeal, but it was Sagaru whose fur had begun to whiten prematurely and whose battle scars stood out most beneath her fur.

So, to relieve her of further suffering, Birch had taken on the unenviable task of marking off the dead as they passed. "Ash pulled through last night, but that otter friend of hers, Flikker, he was too far gone for the cure to work, really.

"Um... I guess I should say... I've decided I'm going back home, back south with Captain Kirby and the rest when they leave.

"I like the Oasis all right," she added hastily as Sagaru opened her mouth to protest. "But I lost the shell that otter gave me, and I have my smithy to run... if Ara hasn't taken it over yet." The squirrel's eyes narrowed for a moment and she smacked the head of her hammer into one paw heavily, as if daring an invisible creature to try to steal her beloved premises.

"But, right. That's all I wanted to say."

"Thanks for your help, Birch," Bell half-smiled at the passionate -- yes, 'passionate,' was a much better descriptor than 'obsessed' or 'fanatical' -- blacksmith. "You fight good."

The squirrel cocked her head to one side and mock-saluted. "Never was there a grander compliment, Leftenant!" With a light chuckle, she sauntered off to find dinner.

Birch would be able to live with this experience -- that was comforting to know.

"Well... I think that's everybeast accounted for then," Sagaru mused. "Ash and Flikker were really the last two who were touch and go on our side."

It had been a mad dash out of the tunnels, stopping now and again as they came upon bodies, some breathing, many not.

Mushrooms in paw, the trio had scurried back as fast as they could with their dying torch, sickened bodies, and Revel's scrawl to guide them. They came upon Birch first, and Bell held a shaking paw to her mouth. A tiny puff of air had warmed her clawtips. Bell had pried open the squirrel's jaws, stuffed a mushroom in and worked her mouth feverishly for a moment. She had then clamped her paws around Birch's mouth and nose and tipped her head back. A beat, and then the squirrel had swallowed reflexively.

They continued on, repeating the pattern on what felt like hundreds of beasts, but could not have been more than a score. Each time, they waited a moment to catch their ragged breaths and then slapped the recently-cured beast awake. Greenfang's group had been saved after Birch -- their torch commandeered for the greater good -- and then only four of Kirby's group, including the ferret himself.

They found part of Sagaru's group scattered near the first delta, some farther back into the branching tunnel. They had hit a dead end, and tried to return. Seven of these creatures still had life and sanity enough worth saving.

Nearly everybeast in the Oasis had been dead by the time they reached it, but there had been a few beasts made of tougher stuff... and one lone hedgehog tending over the dying, not a scratch or bite upon him. There had been no sign of Medjool, either in the caves our outside -- just as well.

"It's a bit unfair, though," Sagaru continued when Bell did not reply. "Those vermin have been fine since the first day. Pertinacious brigands.

"But what do we do with them now, Leftenant?" The mouse sighed and directed her solemn gaze toward the huts where the few remaining vermin congregated.

"Send them home," Bell advised without pause, her shoulders hunched and head lowered, staring at the sand near the base of the rock she perched on. A light breeze swirled it in miniature whirlwinds that wiped out any attempt to shape or conform it into something a beast could want or use.

That was the desert: nobeast could control it and nobeast really wanted to, save lunatics and morons.

"Oh?" The mouse sounded genuinely surprised.

The warrior looked up and met Sagaru's sad, brown eye. The old maid had been through the fires of Hellgates and back the last few weeks with the corsairs, the plague, the battle...and Root. Bell had not witnessed the pair together often enough to see their affection for one another, but it was implicit in every misstep and caught breath when the topic of conversation turned to the list of the dead.

"I was going to suggest that, but..."

A wry smile crept across Bell's features. "But what? Thought I'd say live and let die? That sounds like me, doesn't it, m'am?" She shook her head and glanced beyond the Heir, spotting Eliza's unmistakable form slinking about a longbow's shot away. "Any other day..."

She couldn't name the feeling that tempered her otherwise harsh judgment -- it ran somewhere between begrudging gratitude, loathing, and weariness.

Venril's beasts would live because of Bell's agreement with their captain. The stoat had upheld his part of the pact and remained neutral, even if he had proved as incompetent as a mole on a tightrope in the end. Matukhana's demise and Kirby's ascension to the captaincy meant that she had no immediate quarrel with the corsairs. And then there was -

Lacrimosa.

Much as Bell hated to admit it, she owed the marten her life. Granted, the dormouse had saved Eliza's hide more than a few times. But the prissy wench hadn't just saved Bell; she'd saved everybeast. Eliza had had the strength to stand and keep walking, to reason instead of fight, and to find the mushrooms when her mind was clouded with fever and every bit of her body was breaking down.

It should've been me. I'm better than her!

Bell tried to suppress the shudder of self-reproach that clawed its way down her spine. She was the fighter, the leader, the one who had lived through torture and starvation and war. Eliza was just a manipulative vermin strumpet.

...And she saved us all.

Oh, it had been in her best interest. The pine marten never would have done something heroic out of the goodness of her heart, but where could you draw the line? Did actions make a beast a hero, or the reasons behind those actions?

Waxing philosophical, Littlebrush? she scoffed at herself.

"Any other day," Bell continued after a long silence, "I'd say wipe the worthless blackguards out, but I'm tired of fighting a battle that everybeast's already lost.

"I'm going home tomorrow." The sudden revelation startled her as much as it did Sagaru. "I'll take along anybeast willing to come, but I doubt there'll be many. By my guess, most'll stay here or head south. Why step out of a bloodbath and into a slaughter? Ha!"

"Home? To another war?" Sagaru shook her head in disgust. "Don't you think you've fought enough, Leftenant? Why not stay here with us? The Oasis is going to take a long time to rebuild with so many good creatures lost. You've shown you know how to lead beasts well. I could use a creature like you at my side... And then there're the Fritterik to look after. We can't ignore them anymore, not when we have the cure to their plague and the Picture Mountain cave is open."

Bell stopped, seriously considering the offer for five seconds, and then dismissed it. She had more work to do yet, and it was elsewhere.

That knowledge seeped into the warrior's core, down to her weary bones and it infused her with a manic energy she would have associated with the plague if not for the mushrooms she and the rest had harvested and eaten so dutifully the past few days.

"I don't think so, m'am," she refused. "I have to find Damask and make sure he made it out of here alive. And then there's Nashald and his scum to kill."

Bell shrugged, reason asserting itself. "I'll need to get a bit of help for that, but no children this time, m'am. I want proper warriors with seasons behind them and more yet to come because they know how to fight and think on their footclaws. I want to take the offensive instead of just running and hiding, though that's useful now and again. I want weapons that aren't rusted to the hilt and armor that can actually protect a beast. I want a captain who knows how to take every tactical advantage given and to Hellgates with honorable warfare! I want -"

"You want to win," Sagaru concluded.

"Yes, m'am," Bell agreed. "I want to win."

The dormouse watched as a succession of emotions crossed Sagaru's face culminating in a drawn brow and forced smile. She stuck out her paw and Bell took it. The Heir and warrior shook once, twice, thrice, released.

"Good luck to you then, Leftenant," Sagaru said. "I'll ask the Fates and my ancestors to make safe your journey, though the destination, I fear, can be no safer than an Oasis under siege by pirates."

"Thank you, m'am." The warrior took a step back and saluted. "May the Fates smile upon your endeavors."

The mice turned away from each other, then. Sagaru went to convince the other woodlanders that life in the Oasis could be preferable, and Bell marched toward the vermin huts. There were still a few matters to conclude.

-----

"Lacrimosa."

The vermin scattered around Bell, neither acknowledging nor ignoring her completely, but keeping a 'safe' distance.

"What, Scarface?" the pine marten, ignoring the wary actions of her fellows, approached, the rags of her dress swaying from her thin frame. She looked a gaunt mess, but admittedly, she was holding up well under the adoration of everybeast from Southsward to Mossflower.

Rightly deserved adoration, the cursed voice of reason whispered in Bell's mind. She didn't want to say what she had to next, but she knew it needed saying -- for herself if not the marten.

"Thank you." Bell made an abrupt about face and strode away.

"Wait, what?" Eliza demanded, catching Bell up and snapping her grimy claws for attention.

The dormouse closed her eyes, relaxed her clenched jaw, and exhaled slowly. Then, she spun and stared straight into the detestable vermin's face. "Thank you." She inclined her head a fraction, then snapped it back up. "You saved all of our lives. I know you don't care... You're a despicable, self-important, conniving strumpet who only acts to benefit herself - "

"How dare you," the marten began, ears jutting forward and sharp white teeth appearing beneath her drawn lips. She pointed an accusing claw dynamically at Bell's face. "Why, you're the ugliest, most ungrateful, crudest little ragamuffin I've ever been cursed to associate with. I don't doubt it will take a full season to get the stink of you out of my fur and memory! Have you even considered that I was the one - !"

"Thank you," Bell repeated, interrupting the tirade and slapping Eliza's paw away as if she were a bothersome insect. "There're good, honest beasts alive today because of you. You should be proud of that, marten. Goodbye, now. Wave your claws at me again and I'll cut them off." The dormouse turned away, and this time Eliza did not follow.

"I don't need you to tell me what I should be proud of, Scarface!" The marten spat at her back.

"Yes," the warrior called over her shoulder, "you do."

And that left just one last creature...

-----

Of course, it couldn't be simple. She found the object of her search sitting beneath a coconut palm, but they had an audience.

"Baez." Bell acknowledged the hedgehog with a nod and then shifted her gaze. "Stoat."

While Baez returned with a weary hello, Revel held her silence, staring vacantly out at the desert while she rubbed the dusting of fur atop one of her kits' heads.

The dormouse took a breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. She had to say this, Baez or not.

"Stoat," Bell hurried to force the words out of her mouth before her better judgment could stop her, "you're poison. Worse than that, you don't even realize it."

"What?" Revel's head swiveled toward her, snout wrinkled in confusion.

Baez had the presence of mind to lower his ears and stare anywhere except at the warrior and vermin. "Something got into you," Bell continued, "some disease that can't be cured, that makes you like those Fritterik, but worse. So much worse because you're big enough to be a threat and stupid enough to put a beast off her guard."

The dormouse scratched at the back of her neck and eyed the vermin from the corner of her eye. Revel's ears had gone back and her hackles risen at the word 'stupid.'

"I think thee are being unkind, Leftenant," the hedgehog finally interjected. "Revel's suffered through so much, and she helped my Suellyn, and she's just had to cure her new kits of this plague. How can thee call her 'poison' and 'disease?' She's brought new life into this world. Beautiful new life." He spread his paws above the kits and Bell briefly considered stabbing each of them in turn then and there, but refrained. She didn't want to deal with the problems that would inevitably precipitate before her departure.

"Beautiful?" she asked instead. "From a monster who tries to kill and eat intelligent beasts for sport? Who?s so enthralled with her own base instincts it's a wonder she even walks on two footpaws? No. That's not beautiful, Baez. That's disgusting."

"They're not disgustin'!" Revel protested, then fell silent, eying the kits closely and biting at her lip in what must have passed for thought in the empty space between her ears.

"I hope you die, Revel," Bell concluded bluntly. "You and your Hellspawn, before you can wreak havoc on your next unsuspecting victim." Her gaze lingered a moment on Baez's gaping jaw and wide eyes, and then she stalked away, conscience lighter somehow.

That creature, Revel, should never have borne kits. She would corrupt them and they would become ignorant killing machines like their mother. Praise the Fates she was headed in the opposite direction. Bell had no desire to ever set her sights on the feral stoat again... or Eliza, or any of the corsairs, or Venril?s lads, for that matter.

No, she assured herself. There were other vermin she wanted to see and destroy now -- mainly, Nashald and his horde.

But first: a musical interlude with a wayward robin.