Thread:SunflashtheAwesome/@comment-3462718-20111011230548

A terrible winds, rain, and lightning storm hits redwall Abbey; the main gates are burned down and Skipper Windryder and his crew, which includes an orphan falcon named Dippertail, battle the elements atop the abbey roof as they put out many small blazes caused by lightning before much damage can be done. Abbess Saffron, Tings the mousemaid, and Raggle the black squirrel are also on the roof helping with the firefighting crew.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Abbey Creatures have taken refuge in the cellars to ride out the storm; a dibbun hogmaid, getting bored, escapes, which causes much argument between the surly shrew Brother Willow and several otherbeasts as to whose responsibility it was to watch the Dibbuns. Meanwhile, a young infirmary assistant (Shermy the Hare) goes after the fleeing Dibbun and finds Martin's sword knocked from the wall by a particularly large thunderclap vibration. As he goes to replace it, Martin appears in the blade and tells him to go out in the storm. Obediently, Shermy does, and finds a huge mud-covered beast in a black cloak collapsed on the path just inside the broken gate.

Dippertail the falcon, from his perch on high, also spots the beast and reports to the Abbess, who tells him to fly down and help Shermy and the injured beast inside. The falcon helps the cloaked figure to her feet, relieves her of a large sack she has strung to her back, and leads her inside; however, just as they are heading for the door, there is a scream from on high; Tings has lost her balance. Raggle tries to stop her falling, but her habit sleeve rips off in his paw and she plunges to earth. The strange creature summons all its strength, bounds into the air, and catches the mousemaid, crashing in an unconscious heap to the mud. Shermy gets his fellow infirmary assistants and Grandmum Dawbil, the head healer, to carry the beast inside.

In another part of mossflower woods, five pine martens and two enourmous blacksnakes (about 9 ft long; they're Eastern Indigo Snakes) are sheltering in Mossflower from the storm, bemoaning their situation. They are followers of Enzi Grexx, a jet-furred wolf who calls himself the Black Shade. Some two seasons back, under his orders, they and had looted and sacked an offshore atoll of islands where a friendly tribe of Wildcats had lived for centuries, totally destroying the villiage and taking over a score of its inhabitants captive. However, one big female and two kittens had made proper fools of them, escaping and sailing off in their ship to shore before fleeing into the night. The commander of the force, one Dankur Clawhook, was so outraged that he forgot his orders to return to the Shadelair (which is really the Arfship, the wreck of the Goreleech) and set off with the two snakes and ten other martens to get his revenge on the Wildcat. Unfortunately, they do not know where in the world they are, and are soon hopelessly lost; the wildcat herself was so lost it took her the full two seasons, wandering in a zig-zag pattern, to make the normally 9 or 10 day journey; following her tracks, the martens have encountered peril after peril and their force is now reduced. They attacked some Guosim shrews and stole their logboats, but in sailing away they lost another Marten to the storm-swollen river. Almost fanatical about his crazy mission, Dankfur still refuses to give up. His resolve is heightened when his serpents Jettcoil and Whiptail scout ahead and find cat tracks leading to the currently gate-less Redwall Abbey.

Back at the Shadelair, Enzi Grexx has taken many more captives and uses them as slaves; he tries to get the stronger members (wildcats and otters) to join his massive army of vermin and reptiles, but no amount of persuading or torture succeeds. He misses Dankfur, who was his most trusted advisor and the only one who knew his grand scheme for the takeover of the southern lands; sending his Raven Yirta and a small snake named Scaleflier after him, the wolf then promotes Dankfur's two sons to the position of captains in their father's absense.

Unbeknownst to him, the captives being housed in the belly of the Shadelair (the vermin live in the top decks of the ship, and little huts dotted about the Tall Rocks, which are now connected by plank bridges) are forming a daring escape plan. In the aftermath of Dankfur's sons, Gatlak and Zalbu, throwing a huge party in honor of their promotion, they begin to tear rotten wood from the floor of their prison to make a raft. Roan the wildcat, Flipp the shrew, and Starburst the otter head up this enterprise. As all the vermin and serpents are either too ill to their stomachs or too hungover to notice, they do not bother with caution; however, one completely sloshed weasel (Vaccar) wakes up and catches a glimpse of Roan sneaking about. Blundering drunkenly to the Black Shade's chambers, he slurs out a report, thinking, in his drunken state, that he can earn some more grog. By the time the Black Shade gets down to the prison deck, the escape raft has been thrown out a hole in the floor that was already there, and there is no sign of any escape attempt or any missing prisoners whatsoever. Angrily throwing Vaccar in with the prisoners, thinking they'll leap at the chance to kill a weasel, the Black Shade leaves. However, the prisoners help him sober up and offer him the chance of escape with them, which, not really being an evil beast, he accepts eagerly. Leaping with the otherbeasts out the hole to the ocean below, he sails off on the raft to where the pirate ships the Black Shade has commandeered in his years of ruling, and steal the one called Bowbolt, which was Vaccar's old ship back before he was forced into service with the Ranks.

Back at Redwall, the big wildcat (Sy) has awakened, as have her two little cousins Speedwell and Rivereye, who were in the sack. She tells her story to the Abbeydwellers; with the exception of an adamantly anti-vermin Brother Willow, the Redwallers readily accept the newcomers to their Abbey. As she recovers, Sy tries her best to get on Brother Willow's good side, but does not succeed. She does, however, make good friends with Tings, Raggle, Shermy, as well as many Dibbuns, who have never seen cat before.

While Sy is still too weak to travel, the three young ones go out with a large force of Redwallers on a woodcutting expedition to get new beams for the gate, and shingles for the burned patches on the roof. While out, they meet up with a deputation of a robber band of stunted, patchcoated foxes, who call themselves the Krozfoxx People. Dippertail and Skipper step in and soundly rout the foxes, binding them and sending them scurrying for their lives into Mossflower - however, Kaiah, the leader of the band, lost his tail in the exchange, and he is not about to let the matter rest without revenge.

When the Krozfoxx return to their camp, where about fifty of their number stayed behind, they find that in their absense a mercenary vixen (Akalle Bladewhip) has taken over things, and has brought them two new captives - namely, a very sulky Jettcoil and Whiptail, who have been trussed up to a pair of huge trees. Dankfur, however, does not want to lose his precious pets, who can kill ten beasts with a mere whip of their huge bodies, so he and his martens sneak in and free them, allowing them to revenge themselves upon the Krozfoxx, while Dankfur and his four martens sling rocks and fire arrows at them. The few dozen survivors of the attack are pressed into service as Ranks beasts under Dankfur, and accompany him to Redwall.

Sy, by this time, has made a full recovery, and, as she can sing and play the fiddle very well, has been offering her services as an entertainer to the Abbeydwellers. During one performance, a Mossflower dormouse by the name of Walldoh shows up, and tells the beasts Dankfur's small army is on its way. Immediately, defenses are prepared; Walldoh, being a proficient archer, sticks around to lend a paw. The night before Dankfur arrives, Shermy is again visited by Martin the warrior, who informs him that Sy, Tings, Raggle, Shermy, Walldoh, and a hedgehog named Ayeriss Pinspikes must leave the Abbey after the battle and rescue Sy's kinfolk and the other slaves from the danger of the Ranks.

Early the next morning, which dawns very foggy and drizzly, Yirta and Scaleflier find Dankfur. However, the snake, who managed to lose the raven and get there first, wishes to use the divide-and-conquer method to destroy the Ranks; he feeds Dankfur a pack of lies about Yirta trying to take over from the Black Shade, and being a traitor. When Yirta arrives, Dankfur orders his execution; to prove he's not a traitor, the raven offers to capture a Redwaller. Dankfur agrees, knowing that Dippertail will kill the Raven as soon as he shows his face (which does, indeed, occur, after a spectacular aerial battle above Mossflower). While the Abbeybeasts watch the fight, Dankfur, his snakes, his martens, and the Krozfoxx sneak in. However, several Dibbuns had escaped out an abbey window and are playing in the fog-enshrouded grounds; they spot the enemy and sound the alarm. Gronk, a marten, slays a baby hog named Kwinsee Pinspikes, which proves to be a fatal mistake, as her sisterAyeriss chases him down and throws him over the ramparts. Shermy loses a paw, and Brother Willow is slain in the conflict, even though a fully recovered Sy tries to rescue the old shrew, taking an arrow in the process. As he is dying, Willow begs her forgiveness and tells her she is a good vermin.

The battle, which is a loser for the vermin from the get-go, ends abruptly when Raggle takes up Martin's sword and thrusts it through Whiptail's mouth; seeing the giant serpent dead, the rest of the vermin flee to Mossflower to regroup and think up a new plan. They find a wounded Dippertail, and decide to take him hostage and flee back to the Shadelair, knowing Sy and the others will follow. Once the Black shade has so many Redwallers in his power, he can force the Abbey to surrender on his own terms. This, at least, is Dankfur's plan, which he believes will please the Black Shade. However, Scaleflier, who is still tagging along, has plans of his own; namely, the undermining of the scheme by turning every creature in the Krozfoxx and Marten band against each other.

On finding the prisoners and Vaccar gone, the Black Shade orders his crew to his two best ships left (Bowbolt was the very best by far) and sets out in pursuit. At first, they nearly catch the Bowbolt, but then Flipp the shrew has the idea of putting Vaccar in charge. With the weasel, who knows the ship like the back of his paw, at the helm, the ship skillfully outruns and outmaneuvers the Ranks fleet, sailing up River Moss. Acting on Flipp's advice, they destroy the ship by rowing it straight through a waterfall into the completely disguised tall, narrow cave mouth behind; a long drop and one badly broken ship later, the fugitives find themselves in a huge underground pond in the middle of an even huger cave, which is home to the imperious but friendly tribe of Whisperer bats.

Sy and her friends, meanwhile, set off to rescue Dippertail. They come across Tikah the stoat and her extended family, who are torturing an ancient, completely off-his-head fox (Zaikee) to death with spears. Sy engages them single-pawed, having met up with them on her journey to Redwall before and having suffered countless scars from similiar treatment before being left for dead; when the fight begins to go against her, her friends step in, only to find themselves severely outmatched. Walldoh's sons (three dormice and one adopted woodmouse), who live nearby, show up with their bows and arrows and drive off the stoats. The travelers are taken back to Walldoh's home camp where many more dormice live, and plan their next move.

This is as far as I've gotten; there are a few more chapters before the end. Sy and Grexx do duel at the end, on one of the plank bridges, after the Shadelair has been destroyed and set to flame. There is also a fierce battle between Raggle and Akalle Bladewhip on a seacliff in the final scene, as well as a scene where Shermy takes on Dankfur and both his sons at once on a rocky shoreline. 