Terrouge Firebird
Picture this: you're a famous and accomplished horde-leader, with over four thousand beasts at your command. Your aim: badger treasure. Immediate disadvantages: you're on the wrong side of the mountain walls that house the treasure, the mountain is well-guarded by a seasoned Badger Lord and forty or so Long Patrol hares, and you've raised your son so closely in your shadow that he's beginning to think he can do your job better than you can. In fact, he may have already shown you up a bit by both scouting out the mountain fortress from the inside and bringing back hostages, but you sent him on that mission, so you can claim all the credit if you like - after all, you're the horde-leader. You could shout "Jump!" and a couple thousand lackeys would soon be thundering back down onto the dunes. What do you do?
If you've read Salamandastron, you can probably already answer "Fail, because I am, after all, a vermin leader in a Redwall book."
Though Ferahgo the Assassin does ultimately fail—and die, via Lord Urthstripe's Jumping Hug O' Death—he moves through the book finely balanced between success and failure. On the one hand (or paw), he makes good use of several tools and turns of luck. Yet still, when victory seems assured in the final battle for Salamandastron, it is snatched from him when enemy reinforcements arrive: three more badgers, a couple of hares, a squirrel wielding the Sword of Martin, an anomalous mole, and a flotilla of shrews. What could any horde, especially one thinned by siege and previous failed attempts at taking the mountain, hope to do against an entire family of badgers and their assorted warlike friends?
Ferahgo is very smart, and very lucky, for a horde-leader. His first stroke of luck comes in the form of his son Klitch's success at making friends with the Badgerlord's adopted daughter Mara and her hare friend Pikkle. Klitch and his friend Goffa are allowed into the mountain because Mara lobbies for her friends and two young vermin all on their own are no threat to a mountain full of hares. Thus, they have a chance to look around inside the fortress, and they report back to Ferahgo on the exact state of Urthstripe's fighting forces. Mara and Pikkle become a big bonus when they run away from Lord Urthstripe's authority -- hostages, perhaps! Unfortunately, they're tailed by two of Urthstripe's most trusted hares, who espy the entire vermin horde. Sergeant Sapwood sends Big Oxeye back to the mountain to report and tries to warn Mara, but Goffa catches him. In the confusion of discovery, flight, and pursuit, Mara and Pikkle become lost and start their own adventure. Rain obscures their hiding-place, and the incompetent forces sent after them return empty-pawed. Such a loss eventually spells failure for Ferahgo, because when Mara and Pikkle finally return they'll bring the reinforcements that break his horde.
From this point on, however, the story at Salamandastron becomes a duel between commanders. Urthstripe has the superior position, as he's cozily ensconced in-mountain and appears to have enough supplies to last his force quite a while. His hares appear to know some tricks, too, because after Ferahgo's horde shows itself by night with torches (twice as many as hordebeasts) the Long Patrol hares stay quite cool, and after the Assassin gives the order to extinguish, the hares don't sit at their windows on full, worried alert in the dark but simply post sentries and let the vermin get on with whatever they wish to do. Frustrated, Ferahgo orders fire-arrows and burns the crops on the sides of the mountain. Klitch is quick to criticize him, pointing out the obvious futility of sniping back and forth, so he sends for his friend, Farran the Poisoner.
Urthstripe at this time learns that his ultimate destiny is to die in battle. Fully accepting this "warlord's death", he becomes too impatient to fight. When Ferahgo's horde makes a bid for the top of the hollow volcano as a distraction for Farran to slip in, Urthstripe vetoes the idea of blocking up all entrances and sitting tight. He'd rather go and battle, and so by calling his hares to fight he leaves his mountain just open enough for one beast. Luck strikes again for Ferahgo.
Farran is frighteningly effective: the sleek black fox approaches the top crater on the opposite side and infiltrates the fortress thusly, killing one hare who isn't fighting. He quickly finds the water reserves on the top level -- which seems to imply that the mountain's water supply is collected primarily from the crater. Because all the hares are out repelling the invaders from every window, Farran is able to poison the dinner laid out unattended for their return, but he is trapped when they do come back. Young Shorebuck, having distinguished himself in his first battle, is first and only to fall victim to the poison. Urthstripe quickly bars the other hares from eating, orders a search of all stores (which turns up nothing but dead ants: Farran got to everything), and uses his hares to force the unknown poisoner down to the deepest cavern, where he is waiting unarmed but for a wet length of cloth, knotted at the end. Oh, and his anger.
At this stage, Ferahgo has scored a few points for effective use of effective personnel (Klitch and Farran), though he has taken a hit via the incompetence of a few, with having lost both potential captives and the element of surprise. Yet Urthstripe counters him with good command of exceptional fighting-beasts: the hares have lost three to battle and two to the poisoner, while the distractory push alone has cost Ferahgo about forty beasts. Not much of a dent in his forces, true, and at this rate Urthstripe will run out of fighters sooner, but the badger has discovered the poison plot and orders his forces to keep their heads down to make the weasel think his plan worked.
Ferahgo, meanwhile, continues to make good use of his large horde by preparing death for Farran should he return: the weasel's four Captains are convinced that they will have a share in the badger treasure only if they knock off the fox. Ferahgo has already promised Farran a share of the treasure, so to be sure that Farran neither lives to collect his share nor assassinates Ferahgo himself, the fox poisoner must be killed.
Next: a sneaky cunning plan from the weasel and a brilliant, if lucky, counter from the Badgerlord. Ferahgo discovers the old Salamandastron kitchen drain outlet, long since blocked up with rubble but still a weak spot. He, like various other warleaders in Mossflower before him, decides to tunnel. Klitch mocks him at first, because tunneling through the side of a mountain is about as productive as laying siege to it. But the older weasel soon puts his son in his place. Luckily for the Long Patrol, the garrulous Barty Thistledown hears the vermin hacking away at the loose rubble, so when the vermin finally do get through they are met by Farran's corpse and, very quickly, a wall of boiling poisoned water. Thirty or so hordebeasts die in the hot flood, and Ferahgo himself is injured. Now, if Ferahgo hadn't sent in Farran, the hares would never have been searching the mountain from top to bottom, Bart would never have heard the noises of tunneling, and the weasel's horde would have successfully invaded the lower levels of the mountain. Once their presence was discovered, they might have been held off, as Urthstripe was in top shape at that point, not half-dead as he was in the final Salamandastron battle. The Badgerlord even saw fit to send out a foraging party while he was dealing with the tunnel, so Salamandastron once again has some supplies.
Ferahgo, cunning even when injured, escapes assassination in a way very similar to how Cluny rid himself of Cheesethief, but he does Cluny one better in that he does it on purpose: noting his new vulnerability, he tricks a subordinate into looking just like a wounded Assassin asleep under a cloak, and then swiftly kills the pair that knife poor Sickear. Klitch, meanwhile, orders a retreat. Urthstripe sends hares out after them to try to figure out the reason for the withdrawal, but it turns out that that is exactly what Klitch is waiting for. Sixty vermin close around Sergeant Sapwood, Oxeye, and young Pennybright. What does Oxeye do? He chucks Penny over the heads of the vermin and she runs flat out for Salamandastron. Points to Klitch for cleverness and to Oxeye for brazen cheek, but a demerit for the Salamandastron command for falling so neatly into Klitch's trap.
Where do our leaders stand now? Ferahgo once again has captives, but he's also got a boiled backside, and his son to thank for hostages once again. Urthstripe's impatience has cost him two hares already, and possibly two more if he can't rig a rescue for Oxeye and Sapwood. Ferahgo knows the badger will do anything to save his own creatures from death, so he and Klitch bargain for the badger's surrender with the two hares. The two weasels sit down and feast noisily, well within arrow-range, but the integrity of their hides is saved by two spearpoints pressed to the necks of the captive hares, who are staked below the tideline and well within Urthstripe's sight. They give the badger until dawn to consider surrender, by which time Oxeye and Sapwood will be dead anyway because the tide will have come in. Ox and Sap are no idiots, though: when the tide does come in, they're able to work themselves free of their water-softened bonds and make for a piece of deadwood that will serve them as a boat. Oxeye is a little slow getting up, though, so he has to knock Sapwood senseless and push him onto the makeshift boat to make sure that at least one of them escapes - Sapwood would rather have stayed behind to help. Luckily, Oxeye trips himself in the high water and swims clear of the vermin, then makes his own supply run before reporting back. His foraging returns are very welcome; Salamandastron is in dire straits.
Urthstripe, realizing the vulnerability of his starving mountain and now stripped of two of his best officers, armors himself and recklessly crawls out his forge window. Why? To challenge Ferahgo and son to double combat. If they win, they get the mountain; if he wins, they and their horde leave -- simple enough, until he easily defeats them and they call the horde to their aid. Hardly honorable, but a sound strategy for victory. It might have ended for Urthstripe there and then, if Oxeye hadn't happened to try to report directly to his commander and thus be on paw to see him as he went down the mountain. Oxeye leads a rescue party, twenty strong hares to unearth their Badgerlord from the mob of hordebeasts that have taken him down. There's no chance of getting him back in through the window he came out of, so they must quickly clear a ground entrance to get him in. Too quickly: the former blockage scatters and will be impossible to reassemble under enemy pressure, so the hares must surrender the lower level of Salamandastron to the vermin when they drag their leader back in.
It starts to look really bad for the mountain fortress, as the vermin gain level after level and run free through the mountain. However, Sapwood was picked up by the army of shrews and badger family and the two out-of-place Redwallers. Mara and Pikkle, in their travels, met up with and gained the friendship of Log-a-log Alfoh, Sword-wielder squirrel Samkim, sling-wielder Arula (uncommonly warlike for a mole), Urthstripe's albino brother Urthwyte, and their grandmother Loambudd. Urthwyte, Samkim, Alfoh, and Arula climb to the top of the mountain to get a look at how bad the situation is while Mara, Pikkle, Sapwood, Loambudd, and the shrews flood the lower levels and work up. About the time the top-crew settle into the fight at the crater, Urthstripe feverishly breaks himself free of his sickbed and, half-dead, lumbers up to rejoin the battle. The first thing he sees, and goes for, is Ferahgo, who is aiming both his killing knife and his skinning knife at the back of Urthwyte's unprotected neck. The Badgerlord's last action is to grab Ferahgo, who stabs him in a panic, and then jump over the rim of the crater, yelling "Eulalia!" to the last.
The reinfrocements that Mara was allowed to go and collect in her travels became the weight on the scale that tipped Ferahgo's luck against him finally, but it was Urthstripe's impatience that opened the mountain to Ferahgo originally, and that chance was brought about by Ferahgo's tunnel blunder and Klitch's subsequent rise to the occasion.
If Klitch had commanded from the beginning, he might have fared better than his father even though he was only able to show his cunning usefulness when his father let him act on his own. However, his inexperience might have ended him far more quickly: he finds his demise in one last poisoned barrel of water, apparently having quite forgotten that the supplies in the mountain were not going to be safe, but at least he was smart enough to play dead at the end and attempt escape that way. Without Klitch, Ferahgo would not have succeeded, not for all his cunning -- he would have begun the battle without the crucial information obtained by Klitch and Goffa, and though he might have lured Urthstripe out with the pressure of low supplies, he would not have had the two hare officers his son captured to force the badger's hand. Most of all, Ferahgo the Assassin was lucky to have raised a son who was highly useful yet not the least interested in patricide.