“Gaze into the fire, young one. Listen to me and I will tell you the story.”

BOOK ONE

Kotir

Mossflower lay deep in the grip of midwinter beneath a sky of leaden gray that showed tinges of scarlet and orange on the horizon. A cold mantle of snow draped the landscape, covering the flatlands to the west. Snow was everywhere, filling ditches, drifting high against hedgerows, making paths invisible, smoothing the contours of earth in its white embrace. The gaunt, leafless ceiling of Mossflower Wood was penetrated by constant snowfall, which carpeted the sprawling woodland floor, building canopies on evergreen shrubs and bushes. Winter had muted the earth; the muffled stillness was broken only by a traveler’s paws.

A sturdily built young mouse with quick dark eyes was moving confidently across the snowbound country. Looking back, he could see his tracks disappearing northward into the distance. Farther south the flatlands rolled off endlessly, flanked to the west by the faint shape of distant hills, while to the east stood the long ragged fringe marking the marches of Mossflower. His nose twitched at the elusive smell of burning wood and turf from some hearthfire. Cold wind soughed from the treetops, causing whorls of snow to dance in icy spirals. The traveler gathered his ragged cloak tighter, adjusted an old rusting sword that was slung across his back, and trudged steadily forward, away from the wilderness, to where other creatures lived.

It was a forbidding place made mean by poverty. Here and there he saw signs of habitation. The dwellings, ravaged and demolished, made pitiful shapes under snowdrifts. Rearing high against the forest, a curious building dominated the ruined settlement. A fortress, crumbling, dark and brooding, it was a symbol of fear to the woodland creatures of Mossflower.

This was how Martin the Warrior first came to Kotir, place of the wildcats.

* * *

In a mean hovel on the south side of Kotir, the Stickle family crouched around a low turf fire. It gusted fitfully as the night winds pierced the slatted timbers where mud chinking had not been replaced. A timid scratch at the door caused them to jump nervously. Ben Stickle picked up a billet of firewood, motioning his wife Goody to keep their four little ones well back in the shadows.

As the Goodwife Stickle covered her brood with coarse burlap blankets, Ben took a firmer grip on the wood and called out harshly in his gruffest voice, “Be off with you and leave us alone. There’s not enough food in here to go around a decent hedgehog family. You’ve already taken half of all we have to swell the larders in Kotir.”

“Ben, Ben, ’tis oi, Urthclaw! Open up, burr. ’Tis freezen out yurr.”

As Ben Stickle opened the door, a homely-faced mole trundled by him and hurried across to the fire, where he stood rubbing his digging claws together in front of the flames.

The little ones peeped out from the blankets. Ben and Goody turned anxious faces toward their visitor.