The ghostly phantom appeared. It came in slowly by the doorway, halted, looked up at Ironbeak and pointed with the sword.
‘See, General, there it is, the armoured mouse!’ Mangiz exclaimed.
Ironbeak buffeted the crow savagely. ‘Shuttup, idiot. I’m going to deal with this once and for all!’
The raven went into a short run. He hurled himself over the galleries and sped towards the floor of Great Hall.
The apparition took one pace backward and vanished completely!
There was a cry of horror from the rooks. General Ironbeak skidded to a halt. Landing clumsily in his haste, he bowled over in a bundle of feathers. Swiftly regaining his balance, he dashed outside. It was mere seconds since the ghost had disappeared, but the grounds in front of the Abbey were completely deserted.
Ironbeak whirled about, baffled. He tore at the grass with his talons before rushing back inside. Hither and thither he darted about on the floorstones. Finally he halted, his powerful frame heaving with exertion. Looking upward he sought something to vent his rage upon. The rooks in the corner of the gallery! They cackled as they dashed to get back to the dormitory, but Ironbeak was swiftly among them, lashing out left and right, tearing with his claws, slamming with strong wings and hitting out with his vicious beak.
‘Yagga, krakkah! Why did you not fly down and catch the thing? You were closer than I was. Get back to your perches, you swamp flies. Go on, out of my sight, you soft-beaked craven! You will forget what you saw here. It was only a trick of the moonlight. If I hear one bird speak of it I will break his wings!’
The rooks fled the scene, with Ironbeak chasing them. Mangiz slipped away quietly from the other end of the galleries, not wanting to face his General’s rage. Great Hall lay quiet and still once more.
Behind the half-open door, Constance and Foremole folded the black cloth which they had used to make Cornflower vanish. The three Redwallers slid silently from the Great Hall, out into the tunnel and back to Cavern Hole, where supper was set out ready for them.
The Abbot took the sword from Cornflower as she unbuckled the armour. ‘Well, how did it go?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Perfect, Father Abbot. I appeared, the birds were terrified, the raven flew at me. It was perfect.’
‘Ironbeak flew at you? How did you escape?’
‘Easily. Constance and Foremole tossed the black cloth over me, I dodged round the door and we all hid behind it. Ironbeak searched outside and inside, but he didn’t look behind the door.’
Foremole wrinkled his nose. ‘Yurr, these scones tastes loik ’otroot. Burr, gimme watter. There be enuff ’otroot in yon soops to set afire to you’m!’
Ambrose gave him a look of injured dignity. ‘Try some of the roseleaf and cowslip custard.’
The Abbot prodded it gingerly. ‘Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was a collapsed bird’s nest.’
Ambrose sniffed and went off to the wine cellar with his snout in the air. ‘Well, I enjoyed it. You lot don’t deserve a good cook!’
Night had fallen over the copse. Matthias and Orlando sat upon the step, putting an edge to axe and sword against the stone. Shrews filled their sling pouches, Basil ate his fill, and Cheek and Jess fashioned javelins, hardening their points over the campfire. Daggers, swords and knives were tested, bows made from strong green boughs, arrows tipped and hardened in the fire. It was but a few hours to dawn when all the preparations were completed. They lay down to take a brief rest.
Before they slept, Matthias, Jess, Orlando and Jabez stood above the stone step. They held paws foursquare and swore a solemn oath.
‘At dawn we will go down those steps. We will not come back up without our young ones, nor will we come up if the fox still lives.’
Orlando turned to the five shivering weasel captives and pointed his axe at them.
‘Get yourselves ready, because you’ll be going down first.’
44
THE FIGHTING ROOKS of General Ironbeak were badly frightened. At first it had been exciting to perch and talk of the ghost, when none of them really believed there was one. But now they had seen it with their own eyes, a terrifying phantom that uttered dire warnings. Ironbeak himself could not harm it; the thing had vanished completely in a trice.
All through the night the sentry posts had been deserted while the rooks huddled together in the darkened dormitory, whispering of the awesome event. Grubclaw and Ragwing had been right, so had the wise Mangiz; the great redstone house was a bad place to be. The advent of a golden sunlit morning did little to change their minds.
That task was left to General Ironbeak, and he set about it with gusto. Sunrays flooded through the broken dormitory window, turning the raven leader’s black wings an irridescent green, flecked with tinges of blue. He paced up and down with an aggressive rolling gait as he confronted his command.
‘Yaggah! You cuckoo-brained bunch, can you not see it is all a trick the earthcrawlers are playing on us?’
The rooks shifted uneasily, inspecting their feathers or staring down at their claws. Some of them looked to Mangiz, but the crow had distanced himself from the whole thing by perching upon a cupboard with his eyes closed.
Ironbeak carried on ranting. ‘Kaah! I flew down to attack this so-called ghost, and did it strike me dead, did it attack me, did it even stay to defend its Abbey? No, it hid away by some silly little trick. It fooled you all, but it did not fool Ironbeak, nor did it scare him. I am the greatest fighter in all the northlands. An earthcrawler mouse with bits of metal does not scare me. I will face it right now, or in the middle of a dark night. Mangiz, is what I say true?’
The seer crow opened one eye. He knew better than to argue with the raven leader.
‘The mighty Ironbeak fears no living thing. He speaks true.’
Baby Rollo was taking cooking lessons. Brother Dan and Gaffer were teaching him to make breakfast pancakes of chestnut flour and greensap milk, studded with dried damson pieces preserved in honey sugar. The infant bankvole was far more concerned with the tossing of the pancakes than the mixing of them. Brother Dan was up to his paws in the sticky mixture, and blobs of it clung to his ears and nosetip. Gaffer discovered he had a sweet tooth for preserved damson pieces. The mole sorted through the supply for the choicest bits and promptly ate them.
Winifred the Otter caught all three of them like guilty young ones as she entered the kitchen.
‘What’s the hold-up out here? There’s a lot of hungry creatures waiting for breakfast out in the – Well, swish my tail! What in the good name of bulrushes is going on? Rollo, stop sticking those pancakes to the ceiling, this instant!’
Rollo was in the act of throwing a pancake from the pan at the ceiling. He stopped, and the pancake flopped neatly over his head, covering him to the neck. A pancake slowly detached itself from the ceiling and began to fall. Winifred grabbed a plate and ran to catch it.
‘Brother Dan, stop playing round with that batter like a hedgehog in mud and help me.’
Winifred caught the falling pancake as Brother Dan took a plate in his sticky paws and went after another potential dropper. Gaffer began trying to remove the pancake from baby Rollo’s head. The infant had eaten a hole in it to give himself some breathing space. Sensibly, Gaffer began eating from between Rollo’s ears.
‘Hurr, bain’t gonna pull this’n offa you’m, Rollyo. Best scoff away both’n uz ’til it be gone. Hurr hurr!’
Cornflower appeared in the kitchen doorway. She tried to look very forbidding, while at the same time doing her best to stifle the laughter that was bubbling through at the comical scene.
‘Shame on all four of you, hahaha, er, hmph! What on earth are you doing, heeheehee, ahem! Gaffer, will you stop trying to eat that infant’s head and remove the pancake with some flou-flou-hahahahaoheehee! Flour!’
As she spoke, a pancake dropped from the ceiling squarely on to her nose and hung there like a tablecloth.
The five of them sat down upon the kitchen floor, laughing up
roariously, holding their aching sides as tears rolled unchecked down their cheeks.
‘Waaaahahahahohohoheeheehee! It’s a good job we hadn’t ordered porridge for breakfast.’
‘Hoohoohurrhurrhurr! Nor soo – soo – hurr, hurr, soup, missus!’
Far out upon the western plain, a great dark red bird crashed to earth among the dandelions and kingcups and lay among the yellow flowers like a red sandstone rock. The great bird’s sides heaved and her neck pulsed as she greedily sucked in air. Her eyes dilated and contracted, fearsome orbs of tawny umber, flecked with turquoise and centred with gleaming black, as she scanned the blue sky above for predators.
One wing tucked neatly across her back, the other hanging limply at her side, she made a flapping run and gained the air. The red bird flew with a painful rolling motion, the injured wing flopping lower than the good one. Flight was becoming too difficult to sustain, so she came to earth again, this time in a rolling heap of feathers as she struck the plain floor, scattering buttercup petals in all directions.
The great bird rested momentarily, her huge curved beak gaping open, tongue hanging to one side. Doggedly struggling to her legs, she walked for a while, the injured wing trailing limply in the dust, her eyes fixed upon the building in the distance at the woodland edge. It was not so open there. Her beloved mountains were too far away, so she would try to make the building before sunset. There would be places where she could lie and rest, nooks and crannies where she could not be caught out. The open plains made her feel vulnerable; in flight she was a redoubtable hunter and fighter, but crippled like this she could only keep low and hope there were no flocks of other birds abroad that would relish the chance to attack an injured bird on the ground.
Flapping and hopping, scrambling and crawling, the great red bird made her way east towards the building which offered refuge.
On the farflung south reaches of the plateau lands, dawn broke placidly over the copse. Matthias rose and picked up his sword.
‘A good day to settle business, Orlando.’
The badger shouldered his axe. ‘We travelled a long way to see this dawn, my friend. A good day.’
All around, shrews were girding themselves up for war; bows, arrows, slings, lances, even clubs were got ready. As Basil lugged the five weasel prisoners along on a makeshift lead, they wailed pitifully:
‘No, no, please, don’t make us go down there!’
‘We’ll be killed, we won’t stand a chance!’
‘We have no weapons, we’ll be slain!’
Basil tugged the lead sharply. ‘C’mon, step lively there, you wingeing weasels. You’ve lived like cowards; try to die like heroes. Hmph! Fat chance o’ that, eh, laddie buck? Stop snivellin’ and wipe your nose, you villainous vermin.’
They broke away from Basil’s grasp and flung themselves in front of Matthias, grovelling shamelessly.
‘Spare us please, sir, spare us!’
Sir Harry flapped down from an alder.
‘There’s nothing affects a craven
Like the thought of sudden death,
The idea he might not see the night
Or draw another breath.’
Orlando kicked a weasel in the rump as he stepped over the prostrate creatures.
‘You know, Matthias, these scum aren’t going to be a bit of good down there. They’ll probably give the game away with all their sobbing and bawling. Shuttup, you snivelling snotnoses, or I’ll finish you here and now!’
The weasels fell silent. Matthias leaned on his sword, stroking his whiskers.
‘You’ve got a good point there, Orlando, but what do we do with them if we don’t send them ahead of us on the stairs?’
Orlando hefted his battleaxe. ‘Let me finish ’em off now, and save a lot of trouble.’
The weasels began moaning afresh. ‘Stop that crying, d’you hear me, stoppit!’ Matthias snorted impatiently. ‘Right, here’s what we’ll do, Orlando. I couldn’t let you kill them in cold blood, that isn’t our way. We’ll set them going southward. Sir Harry, would you accompany them on their way to make sure they keep going? Sorry about this, but there probably won’t be a lot of space down there for you to fly about, and you’d get into trouble under the ground.’
Sir Harry shrugged.
‘As you wish, as you wish, Matthias.
We each have a role to be filled.
I’ll take these weasels south for a bit,
But the first one to cry gets killed!’
The owl picked the lead rope up in his beak and flapped off, with the five weasels stumbling and hurrying behind him.
Basil watched them go. ‘Pity about old Harry. He looked a bit peeved to me. D’you think he’s gone off in a huff, Matthias?’
The warrior mouse nodded. ‘I’ve no doubt he has. Don’t worry, he’ll be back. Meanwhile, I’d like a last word with everybeast. Gather round and listen to what I have to say to you.’
The small army squatted in the copse, while Matthias stood on the top stair of old Loamhedge and addressed them.
‘First, I want to thank you all for your help and for coming this far with me. You have left your homes and territories far behind. Orlando, Jess, Jabez and myself have good reason to live or die today. You see, we have young ones to rescue. The rest of you, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your lives for our cause; they are not your young ones down there.’
Basil Stag Hare stood up. ‘Beg pardon, old lad, but young Tim and Tess are down there. What’d my old chum John Churchmouse and his good lady wife say if I came back empty-pawed without their young uns? Coming with you? I’ll say I am, bucko. You try and stop B. S. Hare esquire!’
Cheek stood by the hare. ‘I’m with Basil. He’s a grumpy ol’ frump and I like him, so there!’
Basil and Cheek went to stand with Matthias. Log-a-Log drew his short sword.
‘Shrews and Guosim are friends of Redwall. I never started a job that I didn’t finish. I go with you.’
The whole of the Guosim moved as one with Log-a-Log to stand at Matthias’s side.
Orlando raised his huge axe. His voice was tight with eagerness as he called: ‘Come on, Warrior, what are we waiting for?’
Mattimeo and the slaves had been taken from their darkened cell. Nadaz and several black-robed rats led them to the edge of the ledge where the statue stood. They were permitted to look over into the depths.
Through the greenish mist, Mattimeo could make out the thin bedraggled forms of scores of young creatures: squirrels, otters, hedgehogs, mice. They were hauling huge blocks of stone on towropes, and rats stood guard over them with whips and cudgels, urging them with heavy blows to greater efforts. Other young ones were lifting the stone blocks into position with pulleys and tackles, while yet other young woodlanders laid mortar and limestone cement in the gaps that were to receive the stones. Sometimes a young creature would cry out and fall over exhausted, only to be beaten by the rats until he or she got up, or lay permanently still.
Numbed by the horror of it, the new slaves were led before the statue and forced to bow their heads whilst Nadaz spoke to Malkariss.
‘I am Nadaz, Voice of the Host. O Ruler of all below earth, these are your new servants. What do you require me to do with them?’
The hairs rose on Mattimeo’s neck at the sound of the voice emanating from the crystal-toothed statue’s mouth.
‘They have looked upon my kingdom. Soon they will have the honour of building it for me,’ it proclaimed.
From his bowed position, Mattimeo glanced along the line. He saw Vitch chained and held by two rats. The young mouse nudged Tess.
‘Look who’s there, our little slave-driver being rewarded for his services. I hope they chain me next to him for a while down there.’
Tess stamped her paw hard against the ledge, her eyes blazing. ‘They can chain me next to who they like, but I’m not building any filthy underground kingdom for a talking statue!’
The young churchmouse’s angry tones echoed around the rocky cav
ern. There was a brief silence, then Malkariss spoke again.
‘Take them back and lock them away without light, food or water. They are not ready to serve me yet.’
As they were led up the gloomy winding passages, Tess began to weep. ‘Oh, I’m sorry I spoke out. I’ve caused you all to be locked in the dark and starved again.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Cynthia Bankvole said bravely. ‘I’d rather starve than be beaten to death like those poor creatures.’
Auma seconded her. ‘Aye, don’t worry, Tess. If you hadn’t spoken out, I would have.’
‘That’s it friends, we stick together. Redwallll!’ Mattimeo’s voice rang out like the Abbey bells.
He was knocked flat with the butt of a spear before they were flung back into their darkened prison.
45
IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON, and Redwall lay quiet under the heat haze. Hardly a leaf stirred in the vastness of Mossflower beyond the north and east walls, and the plains shimmered and danced, making the horizon indistinguishable.
Down below in Cavern Hole depression had set in. It had started when little Rollo and a baby fieldmouse wanted to go out to play. Naturally the Abbot had to forbid any such idea with the birds about, so Ambrose Spike took them to play down in his wine cellar. Cornflower fanned herself with a dockleaf. The heat seemed to have penetrated the stones, even down to Cavern Hole, where it was usually cool.
‘Poor Rollo, he did so want to go out to play on the grass. I remember Mattimeo, Tim and Tess used to go out in the orchard. Sam Squirrel would teach them to climb the apple and pear trees, and that sweet chestnut over by the gooseberry patch.’
Abbot Mordalfus mopped his brow with his habbit sleeve. ‘Ah yes, he was a scamp, that Sam Squirrel. Mind you, so was I at their age. I used to get sent off to bed for dashing around the top of the outer wall when I was a young one. Haha, old Sister Fern used to say it gave her dizzy spells just watching me. Phew! I don’t know about Rollo, but I could certainly do with a stroll outside in the grounds. It’s hot in here.’
Mattimeo (Redwall) Page 31
