The Sable Quean

by Brian Jacques

  Diggs moved swiftly up alongside Buckler. “Let’s find out what the rotters do when they see we’ve got one of their crew, wot?”

  It was a standoff. Buckler realised he would have to take the gamble. He nodded. “There’s nothin’ else we can do. Try it, mate!”

  Grabbing Gripchun roughly, Diggs hauled him up onto the battlements.

  Buckler shouted, “This is one of yours—Gripchun, I believe. Harm any one of those babes, and he’ll pay!”

  Zwilt whispered to one of the Ravagers, who passed the word on to some others. The tall sable called to the prisoner on the walltop, “Gripchun, friend, how would you like me to free you from those creatures?”

  The ferret’s head bobbed rapidly. “Aye, sir, I’d like that!”

  Zwilt was smiling as he raised his paw, then let it drop suddenly.

  There was a buzzing noise, like several angry hornets, as three arrows zipped out from the horde. One went wide, but the other two found Gripchun. He gave a startled gurgle, then went limp. Falling from Diggs’s grasp, he hurtled from the battlements to the path in front of the main gate.

  The three little captives were swiftly returned to their sacks. On the walltops, most of the defenders were ducking below the parapet, fearing further arrows would follow. But none came.

  Zwilt had a brief whispered conference with Vilaya, then drew his broadsword, signalling a retreat. “We will be back here before too long. Do not try to follow or discover where Althier lies. It would be very sad for your young ones if ye did!”

  Buckler tore down the wallstairs and unbarred the main gate, calling to Diggs, who had followed him, “Bar the gate behind me, stay in here—that’s an order, Subaltern!”

  Drawing his long rapier, he crossed the path. Taking the ditch in a single leap, he roared, “Eulaliiiaaaaa!”

  Marching at the front of the Ravagers, Zwilt and Vilaya both heard the hare’s war cry. She nodded to the tall sable.

  “Go back and warn that fool off—and don’t get into a fight with him. He could be a dangerous beast.”

  Buckler was waiting as Zwilt came striding over the flatland, brandishing the broadsword. “I’ve been given orders not to slay you, longears. What is it that you want? Speak!”

  Buckler did his best to provoke Zwilt to fight. “You rotten, stinkin’, murderin’ coward! That sword you hold is my brother’s blade. How did ye kill him, yellow guts? By stabbin’ him in the back?”

  Buckler drew his long rapier; Zwilt took a pace backward. He opened his cloak to reveal the medal hanging about his neck. Showing his teeth in a malevolent smile, he replied, “Your brother, was he? Stupid, clodhoppin’ soil plougher! No need to stab that one in the back—I cut him to ribbons with one paw behind my back. I took his pretty medal, too. D’ye like it, longears?”

  The young hare’s steel made the still air thrum as he came at the tall sable.

  “Put up that blade or the young ones die!” Vilaya had dropped to the rear of her Ravagers. Her eyes glittered with menace as she hissed, “I warn ye, do you want their blood on your head?”

  Buckler sheathed the rapier back over his shoulder.

  The Sable Quean called to her commander, “Leave him, Zwilt. Don’t waste your time with the fool. Come on.”

  Buckler was quivering from ears to tailscut. He had trouble keeping his voice level. “We’ll meet again, vermin, and when we do, ’twill be your death day. I swear on my oath!”

  Zwilt sneered. “Big words for a rabbet with a skinny blade. When we meet again, I’ll do to you what I did for your big clumsy brother, but I’ll do it slower so you’ll suffer longer. Now, run back and hide behind those walls with your friends.” Turning his back upon the hare warrior, Zwilt strode off to join the horde.

  Filled with an incandescent rage, Buckler took a pace toward Zwilt as the world turned red in front of his eyes. What he would have done next he would never know. Vilaya’s voice stopped him short.

  “Do as he says, or you will die before the young ones do. Look, fool, and obey me!”

  As his vision cleared, Buckler saw what she meant. He was facing six vermin archers with shafts drawn full-stretch on their curving bows. There was nothing more he could do.

  Turning, he began walking slowly back to the Abbey, where the defenders were watching him from the walltops. Suddenly an arrow skidded by his neck, furrowing a shallow wound. He heard mocking laughter from behind him and Zwilt calling, “Faster, rabbet, or we won’t get the chance to meet again—they’ll kill you!”

  Shafts were zipping all around Buckler. He felt one cut sharply into his footpaw, and he fell. Picking himself swiftly up, he staggered and stumbled in a zigzag path until he reached the Abbey.

  Diggs and Skipper flung the gate open, hauling him inside. Log a Log Jango shouted from the walltop, “The treacherous blaggards! Guosim, string yore bows!”

  Buckler roared back at the Shrew Chieftain, “No! No! Don’t fire at them. They’ll kill our young uns. Don’t do anything!”

  Reluctantly, Jango gave his archers orders to stand down. Everybeast flocked about the young hare. Dymphnia Witherspyk and her daughter Trajidia supported him to the Abbey building where Sister Fumbril took over.

  “Bring him to the Infirmary. Those vermin arrows may be tipped with poison—hurry now!”

  Trajidia looked aghast. “Poison! Oh, the foul fiends, and you were so brave out there, Mister Buckler, so valorous! Facing all those foebeast single-pawed. Alas, only to be fatally pierced by poison weapons!”

  A swift kick in the tail from her grandmother caused her to yelp indignantly. Crumfiss pushed her onward.

  “Don’t let him go, missy. Keep tight hold or he’ll fall. An’ ye can stop all the drama. Save yore moanin’ and wai lin’ for the proper time!”

  Skipper watched the ladies escorting Buckler upstairs, commenting to Oakheart, “Ye won’t get near Buck, not with that lot. He’s in more danger of bein’ nursed, cared for an’ fed t’death than he is from bein’ slayed by vermin. See!”

  Drull Hogwife and the Abbess hurried by, bearing a tray of food and drink as they followed the others.

  Diggs sat down on the bottom stair, chunnering. “Huh, I should’ve gone with old Buck. Blinkin’ chap could starve t’death round here if he’s not been jolly well wounded, wot!”

  Jango turned to Granvy. “Bad luck, losin’ yore vermin prisoner like that. Ye won’t get no more out o’ him.”

  Granvy looked over the top of his rock-crystal glasses, nodding sagely. “Oh, really, d’ye think so? Well, let me tell you, my friend, I learned enough from Gripchun to put a few things together myself. You don’t get to be a Recorder of Redwall by letting your brain go idle.”

  The others were immediately intrigued by this statement.

  Skipper thumped his rudder excitedly. “Things? Wot sort o’ things, matey?”

  Oakheart whispered confidentially, “No secrets here, sirrah—you can tell us.”

  The old scribe chuckled. “Later, perhaps, when Buckler gets back from the clutches of Sister Fumbril. I’m afraid I don’t know everything yet, so I may need a bit of help and some quick-witted ideas.”

  Diggs brightened up slightly. “Chap t’help with quick-witted ideas, d’ye say? Hah, you’re lookin’ at the very fellow, old lad. My quick-wittedness is legendary at Salamandastron, wot wot!”

  Jango chuckled. “I’ll wager it is—tryin’ to work out how t’get more vittles than the rest, figurin’ how ye can pinch pies from the cookhouse an’ so on.”

  Diggs wrinkled his ears at the shrew. “Steady on, there—that’s a jolly hurtful thing t’say about a chap, y’know. Still, I wish I knew where I could pinch a bloomin’ pie or two right now. Most unusual for me, but I do feel a bit bloomin’ peckish.”

  Granvy smiled. “Right, then, shall we say after supper let’s all meet in the gatehouse?”

  Diggs nodded. “Supper, a capital idea!”

  Abbess Marjoram pushed the tray of untouched food toward Buckler as Sister Fumbril
tended to his wounds. He hardly glanced at it.

  She chided him jokingly, “Tuck in, young sir. Even warriors have to eat, you know.”

  Buckler did not even flinch as Fumbril washed his neck wound with hot water and herbal cleanser. He sat on a sickbay bed, gazing bleakly at the wall.

  Dymphnia Witherspyk looked up at him as she began bathing his footpaw. His dark mood was plain to see.

  “Don’t take it to heart so much, Buck. You did all you could have done. ’Twas very brave of you.”

  There was a bitter edge to the young hare’s voice. “Did all I could’ve done? Huh, I had to run away like a frightened babe. Very brave, I’m sure!”

  Log a Log’s wife, Furm, passed him a bowl of hot summer vegetable soup, commenting, “Oh, I see, you’d ’ave much sooner stood yore ground and gotten shot full of arrows. That would’ve made ye feel better, eh?”

  Buckler’s eyes, still hot with seething anger, swept the ladies. “That Zwilt . . . that piece of filth! He was wearing my dead brother’s medallion—aye, an’ wielding his sword, too. That tiny leveret, the one they had in a sack, I’ve never set eyes on it before, but I’ll take my oath that the babe’s my nephew. Where else would they get a little hare around here?”

  Trajidia clasped her paws, declaiming dramatically, “Oh, the agonies you must have suffered, sirrah, standing there helpless in front of your tormentors!”

  Catching her mother’s icy glance, she trailed off into silence. Sister Fumbril bound a neat light dressing of sanicle and dockleaf to Buckler ’s footpaw.

  “There, you’re as good as new, matey. How d’ye feel?”

  Buckler touched his neck, which was smeared with a healing unguent. He stood up, testing his weight upon the paw. “Better, thanks. I don’t have to stay here, do I?”

  Abbess Marjoram moved the tray out of his way. “Not if you don’t want to. Could I tempt you to take a little food before you leave?”

  She spoke as Diggs entered the room. The tubby Subaltern beamed, thinking the remark was addressed to him. “You certainly can, Mother Abbess, marm!”

  Plonking himself on the bed, he pulled the tray to him. “What ho, Buck, you look jolly chipper. Still, I was just sayin’ to old Log a Thing, takes more’n a couple of mis’rable vermin arrows t’stop a Salamandastron chap, wot!” He swigged off the soup and wiped his lips. When he looked up, his companion had gone.

  “Well, now, didn’t stop to chat, did he? My word, what’n the name o’ fur’n’feathers ails him?”

  Furm shook her head. “Huh, warriors. No tellin’ wot goes on in their minds. I should know, I’m married to one!”

  Diggs bit into a plum turnover. “Say no more, dear lady. Know exactly what y’mean. Us warriors are a jolly odd lot, wot, wot!”

  Supper was a very subdued affair. Everybeast was mulling over what had taken place that day. Most Redwallers were feeling apprehensive following the appearance of a vermin horde at their very gates. They ate in silence, keeping their feelings to themselves.

  Skipper finished eating quickly, then nodded to Buckler. “D’ye fancy a stroll over t’ the gatehouse with some of us? Ole Granvy reckons he’s onto somethin’ that might help with our problem.”

  Buckler had hardly touched food; he stood promptly. “Lead on, Skip. Anythin’s better than sittin’ round wondering what t’do next.”

  The Abbey Recorder looked about at the assembly in the little cottage. Skipper, Buckler, Diggs, Jango, Oakheart and the Abbess. He tapped his quill pen on a stack of yellowed scrolls, obviously ancient writings. “Listen now, friends, I’ve been trying to piece together a few things which might reveal the location of where the Dibbuns are being kept.”

  Oakheart scratched his headspikes. “Aye, sir, but will it do any good? You may be bringing disaster on our young uns heads. D’ye recall what that scoundrel Zwilt said? If we try to follow them, or find the babes, then they’ll harm our little ones.”

  The sound of Jango’s teeth grinding together was clear—the Guosim Chieftain practically spat out his words. “So wot d’we do, eh? Sit about twiddlin’ our paws, an’ let those scum have all their own way? Never trust wot a vermin says, Oakie.”

  Skipper’s rudder thwacked the floor. “Aye, yore right there, matey. We should be doin’ all we can to free the little uns, an’ quick about it, too!”

  Buckler had hardly spoken thus far, but now he came to the fore, firm and decisive. “Are we all agreed, then—action must be taken?” They called out as one, “Aye!”

  The Blademaster nodded. “Good! So, then, Mister Granvy, what’ve ye got to tell us?”

  The Recorder adjusted the little spectacles on his snout. “Right. First things first: I don’t think that the Dibbuns are being held more than a day’s march from here. Why should the vermin keep them any great distance away? It doesn’t make sense. Agreed?”

  Abbess Marjoram nodded. “Agreed, that’s my feelings. Also he said that they would return to our Abbey before too long, so they can’t be far away.”

  Granvy acknowledged Marjoram. “Thank you, Mother Abbess. Now, this word, Althier, is a strange name, not one we’d know around Mossflower. I kept repeating it to myself—Althier. You may say that I have a quirky mind, and so I do, friends. So I wrote the name down and tried to decipher it. D’you know, I think it’s actually made up from two words. The first one would be probably a word we use all the time—the! The pond, the Abbey, the orchard, the kitchen. And it’s definitely there. So, take away the word the, and what are we left with? Four letters. A . . . L ... I . . . R. What does that suggest to you?”

  After a moment’s thought, Oakheart spoke out. “Rail!”

  Granvy shook his head. “What word might we associate with most vermin, eh?”

  Diggs shouted out, “Liar, that’s the word. Hah, didn’t Jango say that only a moment ago? Never trust a vermin, an’ why? ’Cos they’re all liars, flippin’ liars!”

  The solution dawned on Buckler. “Lair. Vermin hide in lairs, that’s what Althier means . . . the Lair!”

  Granvy patted the young hare’s back. “Well done, Buck. The Lair. So, what are we seeking?”

  Oakheart sounded excited. “A vermin lair within a good march from Redwall!”

  Diggs began chunnering. “Dearie me, it must be a jolly big lair. Somewhere large enough to take all those bally ravagin’ rascals, plus the young uns. Anywhere that bloomin’ size you could spot from a flippin’ league away. Sounds like a pile of balderdash to me chaps, wot!”

  Granvy shook his head. “No, no, you’re wrong. Didn’t Gripchun say that he didn’t know where Althier was? That suggests Zwilt and the Sable creature keep the main body of their army well away from it. There’s lots of places in Mossflower where you could set up a camp for a mob of vermin. Doesn’t have to be particularly secret—nobeast is going to attack that number of armed vermin. But Althier, now, that’s the secret hideout, where only the chosen few are allowed to be. The Quean, Zwilt, some guards and jailers and, of course, the captives.”

  Jango scratched at his scrubby beard. “You got a point there, scribe, but where is it, where do we start lookin’?”

  Skipper tried reasoning. “Well, those Ravager vermin ain’t been seen hereabouts until lately. So maybe they ain’t had time to build Althier. P’raps they just found it, an’ the Quean made it their lair.”

  Abbess Marjoram was in agreement. “It sounds feasible to me. So, what natural hideouts do we know of around Mossflower Country? Who has a working knowledge of the area? Abbeybeasts mainly stay here at Redwall—we’re not travellers. Jango, maybe you could suggest someplace?”

  The Guosim Chieftain pondered. “Hmm, lemme see. I’ve spent all me life on Mossflower’s waterways. Hah, wot about the old quarry? That’s full o’ caves!”

  Granvy pointed a paw at Jango. “You could be right. I read in the records that the quarry was where they took the stone from to build Redwall. That’s how it became a quarry. It was said to be a breeding place for serpents, though, poisonte
eth adders. D’you think they’d choose that? I’m not so sure, friends.”

  “Corim, the place of Corim!”

  The words had come from the Abbess, but the voice did not sound like hers. Granvy stared at Marjoram. “What was that you said? Corim?”

  Abbess Marjoram shook her head and rubbed her eyes, as if just waking from a nap. She blinked at Granvy. “I don’t know. What did I say?”

  Oakheart held out his paw theatrically. “As I heard it, marm, you said, ‘Corim, the place of Corim!’ I never forget my lines, you see, and neither should you, Mother Abbess. Corim, the place of Corim. Heard it m’self, distinctly—though I recall, your voice sounded rather different.”

  Granvy spoke in hushed tones. “That’s because it was the voice of Martin the Warrior! It isn’t the first time he’s spoken through some other creature. Martin’s sending us a message.”

  Jango carried on with his former idea. “I think the ole quarry’d be a likely place—”

  “Silence, please!”

  Granvy had both his eyes shut tight, his paws clenched. The old Recorder was concentrating hard.

  Jango went quiet; they all stared at Granvy. Now he was rocking back and forth, muttering, “Corim, Corim, the place of Corim . . . Corim, where have I heard that name before? Corim, a word from long ago . . .”

  He suddenly leapt up in a fever of elation. “Hahah! Of course! Now I know, ’twas here all the time, here right under our snouts!”

  Skipper could stand it no longer. The big otter picked Granvy up and stood him on the gatehouse table. “Corim here? Granvy, me ole mate, will ye stop jumpin’ about an’ talkin’ in riddles? Wot’s right under our snouts? Now, calm down an’ speak plain!”

  Granvy sat down on the edge of the table. He took a deep breath, then polished his glasses slowly. “Er, forgive my little outburst—not quite the thing for an Abbey Recorder. However ’twas not without reason. Buckler, d’ye see that bookshelf on the far wall? I’d like you to find me a volume there. I’m not quite certain of the title, though.”