Naagat-Yara: Chapter 22

          The Nevarrs were hardened travelers. They kept the voyage going at almost all hours, and would merely slip overboard and dart about the thin ketch for a swim whenever their muscles grew sore from sitting for too long. And they encouraged the others to do the same. Grip was no otter, but the Guosim were admirable swimmers and he had a delightful time bobbing about with a line from the vessel fastened to his waist. This even inspired the Nevarrs before long, and so occasionally one of them would fasten a line to the prow of the longboat and pull the craft along with the other knotted end of the rope clutched in their paws or sometimes between their molars. Deyna could only smile and imagine how some of the abbeybeasts might have reacted: Sister Alkanet would certainly have berated them and insist that they would lose their teeth at an early age if they kept it up.
          The haggering pace may not have been maintainable on land, but with the river doing most of the work, even Grip had to admit that he was impressed with how quickly they were traveling. The longboat only stopped once after three days along the entire journey, when Tikky emerged from one of his swims with an exceptionally-plump catfish wriggling in his arms. By then it was nearing the end of their third day since they’d encountered the water rats, and it felt even longer than that because they’d been traveling through the nights as well. After finding a peaceful inlet on the edge of a patch of marshland, the four friends finally set their footpaws on the shore to stretch and have their first hot meal since they left the abbey.
          Deyna felt a strange mixture of homesickness and comfort as he sprawled out beside the glowing coals where the fish was roasting on a green willow spit. Having spent years searching for somewhere to belong, his time at Redwall had been precious beyond measure to him. He missed his mother, his sister, his friends, and of course the legendary abbey cooking. However, he was far from uncomfortable in the present circumstances. He was living as he had always grown up: sleeping under the stars, living on the move, passing through new territory. And this time, the beasts who were with him were good friends rather than quarrelsome Juska.
          A faint smile crept across the Taggerung’s lips, and he smirked where he sat. Well, perhaps his companions were just as quarrelsome as the Juska… but they certainly weren’t as bloodthirsty.
          “No, mite, you don’t put any seasonin’ on until it’s halfway finished,” Tikky was snapping at Grip as he rotated the willow spit.
          He smacked the shrew’s fistful of herbs away, but the Log-a-Log’s son was hardly cowed by this. “Aw go boil yer tail, you great pudding-headed bumpkin! How else is the fish meat gonna soak up the flavor? We ought to sprinkle this wild ramson on it while it’s roasting — otherwise there’s no point to adding the herbs at all!”
          Deyna glanced up as Tumbol emerged from the riverbank, using her cloak to carry an armful of fresh pennywort and watercress that had been growing at the river’s edge. She plopped down beside the Redwall warrior and laid the cloth out as if for a picnic, then gnawed on one of the plant stalks and ignored the two bickering cooks by the fire’s edge. Seeing that the Nevarrs weren’t going to make any further effort to create something salad-like, Deyna selected a pawful of the greens for himself.  However, just as he was opening his mouth to eat, an unsettling “CRRRROAK,” to his left made him leap upright in surprise. The others were on their footpaws in a flash as well, and they stared as a mottled slimy frog waddled cautiously out of the bushes. His unblinking eyes looked them all over before settling on the roasting catfish. “CRRRROAK.”
          His pasty throat swelled until it was almost transparent when he made the sound. He ambled towards the fire and reached for the end of the spit. Tikky quickly grabbed the other tip first and yanked the rod off the fire, out of the warty amphibian’s reach. “Aw, no ya don’t. You gotta introduce yesself first, mite.”
          The frog blinked with a set of glistening eyelids before waddling around towards the otter again: Grip had to leap out of the way before he was trampled under the marsh creature’s webbed feet. “Oy, watch where you’re goin’, you slimy git!”
          “We’re lucky that fish smells bettah than us,” Tumbol muttered to Deyna through a mouthful of watercress. “We’ve more’na few friends who’ve nearly been eaten by tribes o’these little wretches.”
          Tikky bared his teeth and held up a paw as the impatient intruder approached. “You heard me. This ain’t yours!” But the grubby amphibian merely strained against him and reached eagerly for the fish, trying to hop up and snag a meal for himself.
          Tikky had had enough. With one paw still holding the fish out behind himself, he balled the other into a tight fist. “WHACK!” He swung at the frog’s mottled jaw and sent it rolling away between the trees and out of sight. He wiped the creature’s grime from his knuckles onto his kilt in disgust. “Nasty little fing…”
          “CRRRROAK.” The sound of more frogs deep in the marshland made him pause. A faint wind rustled through the ferns and the bushes all around them… or was it really the wind?
          “CRRRROAK.”
          Grip quickly scaled the side of a gnarled hawthorne trunk and peered into the swamp. He held one paw between his eyes and the fire so that his eyes could adjust to the growing shadows of dusk… and then his face paled. “Run for it, pals!”
          Needing no second bidding, Tumbol snatched her cloak and bolted for the ketch, scattering pennywort and watercress everywhere. Deyna was right behind her after a moment, deciding to trust the Guosim shrew as the sound of more and more creeping creatures approached from the murky forest. He ran beneath the hawthorne on his way to the riverbank, arms outstretched. “Jump, Grip!”
          The shrew hopped into his paws without protest and scrambled onto his shoulders. Behind them, Tikky was still brandishing the fish on its spit and had drawn his hatchet with the other paw. Tumbol shrieked at him from where she stood with her shoulder against their longboat, shoving with all her might to get it back into the water. “Tikky, you bandy, get outta there!” The sudden appearance of six glistening lidless eyes in the darkness made the older Nevarr realize that his little sister might be right. He whirled about and charged for the inlet. Moments later a pair of frogs hopped into the clearing, followed soon by an additional toad. More croakings and gurglings were still coming from within the dingy marshland behind them, closing in fast around the vessel that had yet to budge from the shoreline.
          “Oy can’t move it,” Tumbol screeched from up against the ship’s hull as her footpaws kicked up chunks of mud from the bank. Deyna reached her side, clamped his paws on the ketch’s bow, and heaved.  The boat slid into the water so suddenly that Tumbol fell backwards into the shallows headfirst. She rolled onto her side and scrambled upright, spluttering and splashing, then returned to her position at the prow to help to turn the vessel around and push it out of the inlet. Behind them, the clearing was almost entirely filled with the advancing tribe of amphibians, which seemed intent on overwhelming the newcomers by sheer numbers. A few of them reached the water’s edge and hopped in, only to find themselves facing a very angry Nevarr who was still defending his supper. “SMACK!” “BONK!” Tikky was swinging his hatchet and striking the invaders with the blunt back end, knocking them senseless and kicking their limp bodies back towards the shore. “Take that, you ugly goons! An’ that! If your faces weren’t already flat, Oy’d pummel ‘em wiv’ me ruddah and squash ‘em flat! Git!”
          One or two frogs slipped into the inlet from the side and darted towards the ketch as quick as fish. Leaning over the gunwales, Grip darted to and fro with his rapier and sent it flashing down on their shadowy forms like a switch. Deyna and Tumbol had snatched the lead ropes fastened to the longboat’s prow and swam ahead of it towards the river with the lines clutched tight in their paws. The Redwall warrior dove to the bottom of the inlet and dug his claws against the rocky ground, heaving the vessel towards the current. He could taste the fresher water as they drew close to it.
          Tumbol’s head broke the churning surface and she twisted around to holler at her brother where he was still lingering in the shallows. “Tik! Move it, before you’re surrounded!”
          The elder Nevarr glanced at the swamp creatures that were closing in on both sides, then at the increasing distance between himself and the ketch as its prow hit the edge of the river. He shoved his hatchet into his belt and dove backwards into the water, holding the spitted catfish aloft like a precious trophy. Many of the frogs splashed into the inlet after him, ribbiting and croaking uproariously as their prize bobbed away over the waves.
          “Throw it here, matey!” Grip called with a wild wave of his arms when Tikky surfaced. The sea otter gave a quick wriggle to force the rest of his arm and shoulder above the surface of the water, then cast the spit towards the vessel like a javelin. The Guosim shrew sidestepped and caught the missile neatly in both paws.
          Tikky barely had time to reach the ketch and grab hold of the gunwale before the hard current of the Great South Stream hit it full force. With two otters towing it deeper into the river’s center and further downstream from the inlet, the vessel picked up speed immediately. Behind them, a few daring frogs swam out from the marshlands to grapple at Tikky’s tail — but the Nevarr easily yanked out of their grasp and snapped his fangs in warning. Before long the amphibians realized that their distance from the shoreline and the rest of their tribe was increasing. Without sheer numbers to overtake their quarry, and with the increasing danger of larger fish that might be lurking in the murky depths, the intruders soon began to dart back to the inlet in grudging defeat. There they trundled onto the muddy banks, shook grubby webbed fists at their disappearing quarry, then vanished one by one back into the dingy marshlands.
          With the last of the frogs finally vanishing in retreat, the three otters hauled themselves back into the boat and flopped down dripping in the belly of the vessel. Grip was obliged to take the rudder without remark, and he steered them downstream while he examined the half-roasted catfish in his other paw. “See, this here,” he remarked to Tikky with a wry grin. “This is exactly why you put the spices on early.”
          The panting Nevarr waved him away with a roll of his eyes. Beside him, Deyna sat up and shook himself dry in a matter of moments. Hauling the ketch back into the river had hardly put a strain on him at all, and he was barely out of breath. “The fire must have attracted them in the first place. They were quite nasty, weren’t they?”
          “Oy can’t believe we missed ‘em on our way up to Redwall,” Tumbol gasped as she remained lying on her back. “We had to carry the ketch ovah-head on the banks when we hit the rapids. Lucky we was on the othah side of the rivvah, eh Tikky?”
          “Oy,” her brother sighed. He propped himself up on one elbow and eyed the spitted fish that Grip was still holding. “Think we can still eat it, mite?”
          Deyna took the tiller while Grip prodded the meat with his rapier and sniffed it cautiously. “Looks alright to me.”
          “The meal may have to wait, friends,” Deyna murmured in concern as his ears picked up a distant hissing and rumbling up ahead. He eyed the rushing waters on either side of the vessel and noted that they were traveling at near breakneck speeds. “I think we’re coming up on those rapids.”