DISCLAIMER:

Redwall belongs to Brian Jacques. Nakaris and Cress are mine.

Late afternoon shadows fell over Redwall Abbey, filling up the hollows of the orchards, settling like water into the curves and hollows of the wall-buttresses, hanging in the corners of the buildings. Autumn had faded now, the orchards mostly empty; the grasslands before the Abbey were yellow and dry, their bounty already reaped. The great ovens of the Abbey were bustling as always, baking nutbread and fruit-rich sweets, preparing food for hungry woodland creatures against the coming of the dark.

In the infirmary, hung with pale muslin and fragrant with mint leaves crushed into bowls of hot water, the mousemaid Lucire sat beside the Abbey Recorder's bed. Brother Campion had been ill for weeks, on and off, feverish and coughing, dreaming aloud about crystal swords and vermin with grey eyes, and Sister Comfrey hadn't been able to help him beyond dosing him with feverfew and willowbark. She had set Lucire to watch over him while she attended to her other patients, and Lucire was getting weary of her task.

She leaned over and bathed the Recorder's brow with cool water. He shifted in the bed and murmured, shivering. Lucire leaned closer.

"…the cold one is coming…winter is on its way…"

"Hush," she said. "It's warm and safe in here."

"…Iceblade…" He closed his eyes and sighed, curling up. Lucire sat back, folding her paws into her habit sleeves, watching over him. It had been the same for weeks now, Campion stirring occasionally and muttering something about winter, and then going back to sleep. Lucire got up, went to close the curtains against the autumn dusk. "Who's Iceblade?" she muttered to herself. "Huh, crazy fever-dreams, dunno what they mean, Iceblade, Kinslayer, white wraith-beasts with grey eyes…"

"White wraith-beasts?" said someone behind her. "Sounds like somebeast in need of a good feast, wot wot?"

Lucire turned. Cecil Murgatroyd Leawort the Third, a young hare from Salamandastron who had come to the Abbey that autumn for training (or, as he put it, "top-hole scoff an' lots of it") was standing in the doorway, waggling his ears. "Oh, Cecil," she said. "I don't know what poor Brother Campion is going on about, lots of crazy stuff about evil white beasts from the north…"

Cecil came forward into the infirmary. "Don't worry your 'ead about it, Lucy, eh? Jolly ol' Brother Redroot's come to relieve you, wot? C'mon down to Cavern Hole an' get stuck in to dinner, there's a good gel."

Lucire smiled. "What's on the menu?"

"Stap me, what isn't on the menu? Autumn applebake, damsoncream pudding, leek n' onion flan, nutbread an' acornbread, a whackin' great cauldron of otters' 'otroot soup, oh, and the cellar'ogs are rolling out the first of this year's October Ale. Stir your stumps, mouseygel, an' let's get scoffing!"

"Oh, hotroot and watershrimp soup, my favourite!" Lucire joined Cecil, stepping aside to let the infirmarian Brother Redroot take her place by the Recorder's bed. "Lead the way, Cecil!"

Together the two friends descended the stairs from the infirmary, all thoughts of Iceblades and wraiths with silver eyes forgotten.

The Abbey's Cavern Hole was always a pleasant, welcoming place to be, but on an afternoon such as this, with a sharp autumn wind blowing outside and a feast set out on the old oaken tables, it was a sight to behold. Otters and hedgehogs, mice and moles, bankvoles and squirrels sat side by side, with the diminutive Abbot Ranulf at the head of the table; to his right sat Lindenfall, the Abbey's badger Mother, and to his left was Brightleaf, the champion squirrel. The tables were laid with an enormous repast to celebrate the ending of the harvest: the Nameday of the autumn had come and gone, but Redwallers would take any opportunity to hold a feast; it was one of the things that made the Abbey such a remarkably nice place to live. Tonight all the specialities were available for sampling: a huge grayling from the Abbey pond had been roasted with cream and wild fennel by Friar Lockspur and his assistants, the otters had cooked up a huge cauldron of their famous watershrimp and hotroot soup with fresh farls of nutbread, the moles had trundled in five enormous deeper 'n ever tater 'n turnip 'n beetroot pies, and Abbot Ranulf had produced his own particular masterpiece: a six-layer Redwall Autumntide Pudding topped with candied red-maple leaves and lashed with glittering caramel.

Cecil ushered Lucire before him into Cavern Hole, making an elegant leg. "Ladies first, doncha know? Hurry up, though, if we don't make it to table before that great spiky feedbag Armand Stickleback there won't be any jolly old tucker left, wot?"

He ducked as a scone spread with applecream narrowly missed braining him. "Great spiky feedbag yerself, flopears, iffen we let you loose in the kitchens you'd eat us out of house an' Abbey, so you would!"

"Hurr, both of 'ee be champeen scoffers, zurrs," said the Foremole, raising his snout from a bowl of the otter hotroot soup. "Moi moler Furrley be better'n both o' ee, tho, boi okey ee be!"

Cecil drew himself up, puffing out his thin chest behind a plate piled high with leek and onion flan, chestnut turnover, apple and cheese salad with pickle and mint, damson trifle and custard tarts. "I say, steady on there, sah! Nobeast challenges Cecil Murgatroyd Leaword the Third lightly!"

Armand Stickleback, the Cellarhog, looked up from his damson trifle. "Aye, an' nobeast says the Stickleback can't 'old 'is own in a scoffin' contest, yeh ole soil-walloper!"

Foremole chortled. "Goo on, Furrley, show ee guddbeasts wot you'm be made of, hurr."

All along the laden table, Redwallers turned to watch the contest shaping up. Dibbuns stared wide-eyed as the hare, the hedgehog and the mole cleared a space and began stacking up vegetable pasties dipped in dark onion gravy. Fernall, a young squirrel with a notched ear, sprang up on the table and drew everyone's attention. "An eatin' contest has been called for!" he cried, flicking his tail. "The first beast to give up ends the contest. On my mark! Get set! GO!"

Fernall dropped his tail and sprang out of the way as the three trencherbeasts set to with a will. Lucire nudged the otter she was sitting next to. "Look at them, they'll make themselves sick!"

Rill the otter grinned unconcernedly and ladled himself some more hotroot soup. "Nay, don't you worry, mate, those three'll do themselves no 'arm. I've seen Furrley eat 'is way through three whole turnip'n tater 'n beetroot pies afore now, an' suffer no ill consequences besides 'avin to be rolled away from the table!"

Lucire giggled and applied herself to the greensap milk. "I hope you're right. Look, Cecil's eaten four already!"

Cecil was industriously munching his way through a fifth pasty, dipping each one in the savoury gravy before beginning to eat. Armand Stickleback was moving more slowly, but he already had three and a half pasties to his credit, and the pile beside him was shrinking appreciably. Neither of them were doing as well as Furrley, who had demolished six pasties already and was beginning to steal them from Cecil's pile. The hare whacked the mole's digging claw with a spoon. "Oi, steady on, those're my pasties wot you're snafflin'!"

"Oi done run out o' moine, zurr," Furrley grinned through a mouthful. "Ah, yurr cooms zurr Lockerspurr wi' more."

As the fat little Friar wheeled a trolley laden with fresh pasties up to the table, everybeast's attention was fixed on the contest. Abbot Ranulf leaned over and whispered, "Lindenfall, my old friend, you're awfully quiet. What's on your mind?"

Lindenfall the badger Mother sighed, taking a sip of dandelion and burdock cordial. "It's nothing, Ranulf. I'm just getting old and foolish."

"Nonsense, you're young enough to be my own daughter," the Abbot smiled. "Come on, what's bothering you?"

"I've been having strange dreams." Lindenfall shrugged. "I expect it's just the winter on its way, but I keep seeing a strange figure—a white creature, slender and shining white, like a ghost…"

The Abbot sighed. "Does this figure carry a great glittering sword?"

Lindenfall stared. "Why, yes, it does…a great clear crystal blade. I've never seen such a sword in my life, I don't know why I should dream of one."

"I have had the same dream as you, old friend," said Abbot Ranulf. "The white creature is dangerous, Ifeel. Slender and delicate, but dangerous. Like the white crystal blade."

"Exactly," said the badger. "I don't know what to make of it. Has Martin spoken to you, Ranulf?"

The Abbot shook his head. "Not a word. I expect everything will be made clear, old friend. I shouldn't worry about it, if I were you."

"You're probably right." Lindenfall sighed and turned her attention back to the eating contest, which was once more slowing down. "Great seasons, would you look at that? They've eaten Lockspur out of vegetable pasties!"

The Friar was pacing unhappily. "It'll take us a half hour to bake more," he said, flustered, as Cecil, Armand and Furrley called for more food. The contest was unanimously called a draw, and the three friends moved on to attack a deeper 'n'ever pie in celebration.

The feast continued, as the long afternoon drew to a close.

Night fell in a gentle grey mist over Mossflower Woods. Autumn came slowly here, in the green land of plenty; the leaf canopy was a riot of scarlet, orange, gold and lemon-yellow, and the grass was already littered with the first leaves to fall, but only at night did the chill of the coming winter truly make itself known. Through the mist a thread of smoke rose in slow curves, barely more than mist itself; a watcher in the trees, had there been one, would have been able to trace it down to what appeared to be nothing more than a section of stream-bank, quiet and dark in the growing twilight.

The stream babbled gently to itself, as streams do. Slowly, a darker darkness appeared in the undercut area of the stream-bank, looking more like a shadow than anything else, and there was a faint muffled plashing as something hit the water and sank. Silence, except for the soft hooting of an owl, a long way off.

Then there was another splashing, and something was lifted from the water; the darkness retreated, and there was nothing on the streambank but grey autumn mist, and that odd faint thread of smoke, rising.

Inside the home of Cress Darkheart, all was warm and bright and dry. The black otter had hollowed out a section of the bank, camouflaging his holt with carefully crafted curtains of barkcloth and weeds to mimic the slope of the earth down to the water, and built a chimney out of stream-clay to carry the smoke of his cooking fire up and away, opening out a little farther back from the stream itself. He spread his dripping net out on the flat floor-stones, revealing a young perch, silver-bright in the glow of his rush-lamps, and killed the fish with a single neat blow to its skull. Removing a small ugly knife from the selection shoved through his belt, the otter carefully cleaned and gutted the fish before flaking it and adding it to the contents of the small iron cauldron bubbling over the fire. Soon the delicious scent of watershrimp and fish stew filled the small rock-lined chamber, and Cress sat back on his couch of pine boughs to wait for his supper to be ready.

The solitary otter was not entirely black. In sunlight, with his fur dry, he was a deep, dark brown with glints of red in his fur; in the water, or in shadow, he appeared black as night itself. His eyes were an odd shade of brown that somebeasts had called golden. He wore a simple tunic of woven barkcloth, belted with a thick length of steel-studded leather; from the belt hung curiously made waterproof leather pouches, lumps of rock crystal, and strange bright feathers. Several knives were stuck through this belt, as well: a long narrow skinning blade, short throwing knives, a delicately balanced dirk with a lump of malachite rounded like an egg for the pommel-stone, and one supremely beautiful dagger with a curving blade like a snaking ray of the sun, which Cress had taken from a searat on the shores of Mossflower years before. This last dagger was Cress's favourite possession, the one thing he would kill for, and had.

The name Darkheart struck fear into those who did not know the otter, as he had intended it should. He was called Darkheart partly because of his strange colouring and partly because of his odd, solitary nature; he preferred his own company to that of otherbeasts, seldom laughing, seldom speaking unless necessary. Creatures thought him strange and uncomfortable and...in some cases...evil, although Cress had never slain anybeast without a reason, nor used threats or force where reason would have sufficed. He kept the name because it spared him unnecessary visitors. The legend of Cress Darkheart had grown over the years he had spent in Mossflower, living on his own, foraging for food and supplies in the rich woodland, keeping to himself.

The stew was ready; he ladled it into a deep scallop shell, another relic of his days on the shores of the great sea, and settled back to eat. Something was bothering him, had been all day; he could not quite put a paw on what was wrong, although with his customary saturnine nature he was content to wait until it revealed itself. Once before he had felt this way, when a roving band of slavers had entered the woodlands and passed close by his holt; all the day before they arrived, he had felt strange and uneasy, the fur on the back of his neck standing up. He had followed them, and when he had understood that they were making for the great redstone Abbey set further back in the woodlands, he had slipped past them in the night and gone to warn the Abbeydwellers of the coming danger.

He rather thought he might have to do so again.

tbc