Martin the Warrior recap

Martin, a young mouse, is a slave in Marshank, the coastal fortress built by the stoat tyrant Badrang, who took the sword Martin's father left him. Staked out on the shore for defiance, he is freed by Rose, a mousemaid from the hidden valley of Noonvale searching for her captured brother Brome, and her mole companion Grumm. A slave breakout during a rival corsair's attack scatters them: Martin, Rose and Grumm head north to raise help from Noonvale, while Brome and Martin's friend Felldoh fall in with a troupe of travelling players. Noonvale refuses to go to war, but volunteers defy the decision and come south anyway, and the players and the escaped slaves besiege Marshank. Felldoh, unable to master his hatred of Badrang, attacks alone and is killed. In the final battle the fortress falls and Martin kills Badrang and recovers his sword, but Rose is killed in the fighting. Martin refuses to return to Noonvale or to be honoured, and leaves alone, travelling south into the country where the rest of his story will happen.

This book stands on its own and needs no earlier reading. It is set generations before Redwall Abbey is built, and it tells the early life of Martin the Warrior, the mouse whose sword and memory the Abbey keeps in the later books. If you have read Redwall or Mossflower, this is the story of the same Martin before he ever reaches Mossflower Wood.

On the eastern shore stands Marshank, a fortress raised out of stone and slave labour by Badrang the Tyrant, a stoat who came off the sea to build himself a kingdom. Among his slaves is Martin, a young mouse taken while travelling, whose father Luke left him a sword that Badrang now keeps as a trophy. Martin will not work quietly. He is beaten for it repeatedly, and when he defies Badrang openly in front of the whole compound he is staked out on the tideline to die. Also in the pens are the squirrel Felldoh and his father Barkjon, the otters Keyla and Tullgrew, and a young mouse called Brome who wants to be a healer. Along the shore come two travellers looking for Brome: his sister Rose, a mousemaid out of a hidden northern valley called Noonvale, and Grumm, a mole with a ladle. They find Martin tied on the sand and cut him loose.

Martin will not simply run: the others are still inside, and Rose will not leave without her brother. The three of them work their way back to Marshank, make contact with the slaves, and begin planning a breakout with Felldoh, Brome, Keyla and Tullgrew, with Barkjon counselling caution and Hisk's overseers watching the pens more closely by the day. Badrang, meanwhile, has troubles of his own coming in off the water. Tramun Clogg, a corsair stoat who was once his shipmate and partner and has never forgiven how that ended, arrives on the coast with a ship's crew and announces openly that he intends to take Marshank for himself. The two warlords begin manoeuvring against each other, and the slaves inside the walls now have both a plan and a distraction.

The slaves break out of Marshank while the two stoats are occupied with each other, but the escape works only in pieces and the escapers are scattered along the coast in different directions. Clogg takes Marshank from Badrang by trickery and holds it briefly before Badrang wins it back and drives him out, and both stoats come out of the affair weaker and angrier. Martin, Rose and Grumm are together but a long way from anywhere, and Rose argues that the only force capable of helping them is her own people. They turn north for Noonvale. Brome and Felldoh, separated from the others, end up further along the coast entirely, alive but with no idea where the rest are. Martin has left Marshank behind with his father's sword still hanging in Badrang's hall, and he has no intention of leaving it there.

Brome and Felldoh are taken in by the Rambling Rosehip Players, a travelling troupe led by Rowanoak the badger and headed by Ballaw De Quincewold, a hare of enormous theatrical presence, with the vain squirrel Celandine among the company. The Players tour the coast with a cart and a stage, and they are considerably more dangerous than they look. Brome takes to performing; Felldoh takes to planning what he will do to Badrang. Meanwhile Martin, Rose and Grumm work north through difficult country and are held up by the Warden, a great heron who rules a marsh and treats travellers crossing it as trespassers to be judged.

The two parties move toward the same end from opposite directions. The Rosehip Players, with Brome and Felldoh, turn back down the coast toward Marshank, gathering escaped slaves as they go, and Felldoh's determination to have Badrang begins to override everything else in him. Martin, Rose and Grumm complete the northward journey with help from creatures of the high country, and reach Noonvale: a hidden valley of orchards and quiet houses that no raider has ever found, ruled by Rose's father, Urran Voh, whose entire policy has been to stay out of the world's quarrels. Martin has come to ask them to leave it.

Noonvale refuses. Urran Voh will not risk the valley or reveal its existence for a war on the coast, and the council backs him. Rose and Brome's home turns out to be the one place Martin cannot recruit. He prepares to go back alone, and a number of Noonvale creatures defy the decision and come with him anyway, along with allies picked up on the road. The company travels south while, at Marshank, the Rosehip Players and the freed slaves have already begun harassing the fortress, cutting off its foragers and wearing at its walls. Felldoh challenges Badrang directly and is refused, which does nothing to cool him. Badrang shuts the gates and prepares to sit out a siege he expects to win.

The siege of Marshank begins in earnest as Martin's company arrives and joins the Players and the escaped slaves outside the walls. Badrang has the stone, the numbers and the food; the besiegers have surprise, mobility and a leader the slaves inside will rise for. Assaults are launched and thrown back, tunnels and ruses tried, and losses taken on both sides. Inside the fortress the remaining slaves are worked and watched harder as Badrang realizes his own prisoners are the real danger. Felldoh grows increasingly impossible to hold back, convinced that the whole business can be settled if he can only get at Badrang himself.

Felldoh finally goes at Marshank alone, fights his way in, and is killed by Badrang's soldiers after cutting down a great many of them. The allies mount their final assault, the Warden of the marsh comes to the fight, and the slaves inside rise; Marshank is broken and the horde with it. Martin fights Badrang for the sword and for everything the tyrant took from him, and in the middle of it Rose is struck down and killed. Martin kills Badrang and takes back his father's sword, and finds the victory empty. He will not return to Noonvale, where everything would remind him of Rose, and he will not stay to be honoured; he asks that Rose be remembered and his own part left alone. The freed slaves scatter to whatever homes they have, Brome and Grumm go north, and Martin walks away south by himself, into the unknown country that will eventually become his home.

Marshank falls. The allies break the fortress with the Warden's help and the slaves rise inside it, and Badrang's horde is destroyed. Felldoh does not live to see it: consumed by his hatred, he forces his way into the fortress alone and is killed by Badrang's soldiers after cutting down many of them. In the final fighting Martin faces Badrang for the sword and for everything the tyrant took, and Rose is struck down and killed at his side. Martin kills Badrang and takes back his father's sword, and the victory is worth nothing to him. Brome and Grumm survive; Rowanoak, Ballaw and the Rosehip Players survive; the freed slaves are free. Martin will not go back to Noonvale, where every path would remind him of Rose, and he will not stay to be celebrated. He asks that Rose be remembered and that his own part be left alone, and he walks away south by himself into country nobody there knows, carrying the sword. That road is what eventually brings him to Mossflower, and everything Redwall Abbey later remembers about Martin the Warrior begins after this book ends.