PROLOGUE: SLEEPERS RISING

The kingdom of Southsward sprawled across the southern reaches of the lands, encompassing nearly as much territory as Mossflower itself. Woodlands and forests deep, open plains and gentle meadows, sandy desert and rock-strewn wastes, rolling hills and soaring mountains, all fed by lakes and rivers and streams and springs, and a stretch of varied seacoast which afforded several fine trader ports.

Situated at the center of it all, perched high atop elevated crags of its own, sat Castle Floret, ruled over since time immemorial by the Squirrel Kings and Queens, just as the lines of Badger Lords and Ladies ruled Salamandastron.

But if Floret and the lands immediately surrounding the castle devoted themselves to matters of rule and aristocracy, much of Southsward lay outside that sphere, its residents of all species flung to the far corners of the kingdom, concerning themselves little with what went on in gilded halls and banquets and ballrooms, focused upon the farming of their plots and hauling of their nets and lines, the crafting of their wares and the tailoring of their clothes, the tending of their sick and elderly and the raising of their children. The most some ever saw of the central authority was when the otter patrols passed through once or twice each season, maintaining the security of the common good and collecting tribute to bear with them back to Floret. Otherwise, most of Southsward consisted of ordinary creatures leading ordinary lives, far removed from the pomp and intrigues of the royal court, and from the affairs of the privileged and powerful.

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"A fine tideline haul it is," Merris declared as she stood admiring the two wicker bushels crowding her kitchen table, each piled past its brim with gray-shelled clams. "King Fael will have nothing to complain about from us this season!"

Her husband Koren readily agreed, swiping his paws together to rid them of the residue from his packing work. "Indeed not. No sea otter clamming crew could have done a better job of filling these baskets! The tidal flats were most generous in their yield this time around, and working out along the wet sands held a special kind of quiet bliss this day. All was silent down there except for the soft kiss of the waves lapping the shore. It seemed as if the whole rest of the world had fallen into a hush as I toiled with my shovel."

"Oh?" For the briefest of moments a shadow of concern crossed the mousewife's face - rumors from other distant reaches of Southsward about dark happenings when the lands along the Western Sea grew improperly quiet. But Merris shook it off in the face of their fortuitous bounty. "Well, speaking of otters, I just hope Dawton's patrol heads back this way in good time to pick them up and get them back to Floret while they're still nice and fresh."

Koren laughed off this concern. "I'm not worried. He promised when he passed through two days ago that he'd be swinging back our way sometime this morning, and that riverdog's always shown himself a beast of his word. Besides, that's why I went with clams instead of shrimp or fish; they come in nature's own hard-shelled packaging, and they travel much better!"

The two mice dwelt in a tiny village of fewer than a dozen simple homesteads overlooking the Western Sea from the high dunes. Here, mouse and hedgehog and mole shared good times and bad, bolstered by each other's presence and supported by their pools of common skills. When there was carpentry or stonework to be done or garments to be sewn and mended, food to be gathered or grown and meals to be prepared or ills to be tended, all these abilities and more resided in this modest group of families. Too small and tucked away to draw the attention of sea raiders, they'd all resided here in this place for many seasons, secure in their connections to Floret, however tenuous, and largely untroubled by the wider world beyond beyond their sandy shores.

"Don't forget, I've got the Billerspine twins to sit for today," Merris reminded her husband. "If our good otter Dawton doesn't get here soon, I'll have to head over to their lodge, and leave you here alone to deal with our ruddertailed friends."

"That's all right, Mer, I'm perfectly capable of - "

A sudden scream from somewhere outside cut Koren off in mid-sentence.

The two mice stiffened, gazes locked as their faces froze into masks of alarmed fear. "That ... that sounded like Stickler," Koren breathed.

Then other screams and shouts joined the first, some cut off as quickly as they'd begun - the day's preternatural calm shattered in the worst possible way.

"Stay here," Koren ordered Merris, grabbing up the sword he sometimes wore but never used. "I've got to see what this is about."

The mouse husband never had time to join his fellow villagers in screaming, cut down even as he raced outside into the morning sun.

Merris stood paralyzed in terror, paw to her mouth, as she beheld the nightmare at the threshold. The shimmery-scaled monster studied her with its outward-bulging, rotating eyes, a cold visage from another world. Then it lunged at her, moving faster than the eye could follow, scimitar raised high.

A very short time later, the twin baskets of clams had the plain kitchen all to themselves, left behind in favor of meat wrapped in warm, furred flesh.

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Skipper Dawton of Holt Bluesnake stood atop the rocky prominence overlooking the shores, heavy whiskers wrinkling in distaste at the sight of the searat ships anchored just to the north. Although the frigate and the galleon lay at rest upon the coastal swells as they had for many days, flanked by their two attendant messenger craft, enough of their red, black and green canvases stood unfurled like a tricolored provocation, a proclamation that the Searat King was here in Southsward, and that all should take notice.

Dawton spat over the edge of the ridge, his indignant gob landing in the sands far below. Bad enough that the searats had, for many seasons now, maintained their lumber yards somewhere farther to the north, fortified with enough barbaric soldiery to repel any assault the King might dare to muster against them. But now these warships, stationed right at the mouth of the river leading almost directly to Floret itself ... and the smaller landing boat and its contingent, who'd actually followed the broadstream up that winding course to the castle, making their claims of diplomatic overtures. As if searats could be trusted ...

Well, that was King Fael's affair. Let His Highness determine what was to be done with these unbidden envoys. If there was one thing Fael was good at, it was dispensing with creatures he deemed not worth his time.

The otter turned to his companions. "Come on, let's shake our rudders, lads. We've got a village waitin' on us, an' if those mice 'n' moles 'n' 'hogs're as good as their boasts, we'll have a treasure trove of the sea's finest to grace His Majesty's tables when we get back!"

The dozen or so river otters filed down from the lookout ridge and passed along loamy trails weaving in and out of pine woods with carpets of soft needles underpaw, sometimes hidden by the trees and sometimes open to the sea on their right. At last they broke out into the high dunes of the nameless village where they were expected ... but they did not expect what greeted them there.

The blood on the sands was their first foretaste of something being very very wrong here. Then there was the total absence of any activity, which itself bespoke a dire warning; in all his many visits to this settlement, Dawton had never once seen it without at least one or two of the villagers out and about, tending to something or other.

"Sir," whispered an otter named Bludder, on account of his blunt rudder, "listen. The birds've all gone quiet ... even the insects too. 'Tis still as death."

Dawton softly swore. "It's happened again."

Every otter's lance came out as they grimly advanced into the deserted village, senses keyed and nerves on a knife edge.

If the splotches and splashes of blood on the sand were bad, the ones indoors were even worse. Several of the domiciles bore clear evidence of massacre and slaughter, of a level of violence difficult to conceive being unleashed against largely unarmed family beasts.

Bludder led the last of the scouts back to rejoin the main group. "They're all gone, sir. Not a beast left. The fiends have claimed the entire village."

Dawton gripped his lance like a simmering berserker as he digested this grim report. "This's the worst yet. They're gettin' bolder, brasher, whatever the fur they are. An entire village ... this has got to stop."

"King Fael can't ignore these attacks any longer," another otter called Noke asserted. "He'll have no choice but to raise a force to deal with it."

"Deal with what?" Bludder countered. "We don't even know what we're up against. No tracker who's tried t' hunt down these marauders has ever come back, so nobeast who's seen 'em has lived to tell."

Dawton worked his jaw. "'Fraid our Royal Highness only sees what's right in front of him, an' these attacks lie far enough from Floret that he can't see 'em as any great concern."

"Well, we gotta make 'im see, then!"

"Agreed. Back to the boats, mateys - we got some hard rowin' t' do, an' I mean hard!"

"We headin' back to Floret to report this?" Bludder asked.

"Nay, not until we've got sumpthin' t' show His Majesty that he can't ignore. It's back to the Bluesnake fer us - I'm mustering the entire holt, an' our neighborin' holts too. We're gonna hold ourselves a hunt of our own - see if we can't turn the hunters into the hunted!"