The woodlanders prepare for war, and Matthias springs into action to recover Martin’s missing sword and reclaim the stolen tapestry. He assumes this will demoralize them enough to give up. Hostilities begin when Cluny sends someone to steal the tapestry from the mice. It unnerves him because he has seen a similar figure haunting his nightmares. While in the abbey, Cluny sees the tapestry of Martin the Warrior. Instead, when Cluny meets with the abbot to demand surrender, he is sent away.

He assumes that the mice in Redwall will meekly give him what he wants, as so many others have done in the past. Ninian, but Cluny covets the abbey for himself.

The rats set up camp in the nearby church of St. He is proven wrong that very evening when a vicious rat warlord named Cluny the Scourge arrives in the vicinity with his band of cutthroats. When novice Matthias declares his admiration for Martin the Warrior, the abbot says that the Order of Redwall is devoted to peace now that the wild days are over. Redwall has been blessed with peace and prosperity for many years. The Order of Redwall consists of individuals who dedicate their lives to taking care of the abbey and tending to the needs of the woodlanders who live in the Mossflower district. Redwall opens with the residents of Redwall Abbey preparing a great feast in Abbot Mortimer’s honor. In the war that ensues, the novel examines the themes of the nature of heroism, the nature of villainy, and the relative merits of competition versus cooperation. Cluny wants to claim Redwall Abbey for himself. That peace is almost immediately disrupted by the appearance of Cluny the Scourge and his army of rats. The abbot tells Matthias that there is no longer a need for a protector since the mice now live in peaceful times. Matthias confesses a desire to be like the heroic Martin the Warrior, who once defended the woodlanders against all their enemies. Mortimer’s favorite novice is a clumsy young mouse named Matthias. The story opens at the peaceful abbey of Redwall, where the inhabitants are preparing a feast to celebrate the golden jubilee of kindly Abbot Mortimer. Events are described primarily from the perspective of Matthias the mouse warrior and Cluny the rat warlord, though multiple minor characters also disclose their thoughts and experiences to a lesser degree. The story uses a limited third-person narrative technique. The action primarily occurs during June in an unspecified year, while the book’s final chapter takes place exactly one year after the events in the novel. Ninian are constructed to the scale of the mice who built them. The novel is set in a medieval English countryside populated entirely by non-human creatures.

Brian jacques redwall series