"The leaderless foxes, weasels, stoats, ferrets and rats ran. They ran as they had never run before, stumbling and pushing to get out in front. Not a word was spoken amongst them. All that could be heard was the harsh panting of breath as they sped away into the far sunlit distance, each one feverishly hoping that, regardless of the others, he would be out of sight by sunset, away from Mossflower and its grim horde of dangerous woodlanders."

— Mossflower, Chapter 49

Chapter 1: Alone on the Plains

Whegg the rat sat beside a hastily made campfire, still catching his breath from his hurried flight. Eight other fires around him cast a muted glow into the night sky of Mossflower's Western Plains. He and the other beasts encamped on this low hill represented the last of Lady Tsarmina Greeneyes' Thousand Eye Army. Their fortress of Kotir destroyed after a titanic battle, the woodland creatures on the other side had driven the survivors from the forest just a few hours before. Whegg recalled perfectly well the words of two of the hare guards who had sent them off:

"So, you've got until sunset to vanish into the distance, savvy?"

The other had added,

"Actually, if we can sight you then, there's going to be another jolly old battle."

He supposed that the other vermin resting around him remembered well enough too, since no one, as far as he could see, had dropped behind and been subsequently picked off during the mad dash away from the treeline. Whegg did not know exactly how far they had run, but he reckoned that they had crested the hill on the horizon from the woodlanders' point of view and then gone ten thousand pawlengths besides. Far enough so that they were far out of site from those creatures.

He had begun to breathe regularly and spared a few glances at the huddled shapes around him. There seemed to be many, but even a rat as totally unskilled in numbers as Whegg could tell that the army's count was pathetically small compared to what it had been before. It seemed to him that perhaps one in five, maybe fewer, had survived both the ferocious battle and the flood that welled up from beneath the ground and swallowed up Kotir forever.

—

Although Whegg could not possibly have known this, his offhand guesstimate was relatively correct. While Lord Verdauga's records were spotty at best, they all pointed to his Army of a Thousand Eyes having just about that— and five hundred beasts to hold them in their heads, give or take a few empty sockets. And if one were to have then counted up the vermin corpses littered around the battlefield or saturated with river water under the fallen stones of Kotir, they would have concluded that slightly under a hundred of the horde still lived. Chalk it up to a soldier's intuition.

—

As they had reached a safe distance, or so it seemed, gradually hisses of conversation began to spark up between the vermin grouped at the campfires. Uncharacteristically, Whegg did not feel like joining in. He usually fancied himself as a talkative rat, especially when compared with his fellow hordebeasts (some of whom didn't require more than grunting or angrily pointing to get by day by day). He also had an unusual streak of curiosity within his soul —sadly, not indicative of any touch of inventiveness or ingenuity also present— that often got him into trouble.

...Hellgates, how he'd thought that badger would rend him limb from limb when he'd spoken up back in the forest! Well, they all wanted to know, didn't they? What would happen to them? If it had been the other way around, with vermin the victors, it would have been instant death for the ringleaders and painful slavery for the rest. Or maybe Tsarmina would have lopped all their heads off anyway. She hadn't been the same at the end, not really. Whegg had seen that on the wall, when he, Slinkback and Foulwhisker attempted their ill-fated escape.

He shook open the pack each prisoner had been given. Two days of grub and water, some hare had said. Inside he saw several well-made biscuits, each smelling slightly of honey, a piece of bread, a turnip, some assorted berries and a few flasks of water. Better vittles, Whegg knew, than anything ever to be served up by the cooks of Kotir. Though he would have preferred a mug of grog to any other drink. How were they supposed to get more food when the two days were up, anyhow? He hoped that some of the Thousand Eye Army's foragers were still kicking, for he himself had always been a wall guard and those never went out with the hunting parties. Breakfast, lunch and supper rations in the mess hall had been his life. Well, Whegg supposed, that would have to change in the coming seasons. A lot would.

End of Chapter 1.