Plot Summary
The story begins in the Mossflower Wood, where a community of animals suffers under the tyranny of a ruling wildcat named Verdauga. When a mouse from the north, Martin the Warrior, comes to Mossflower Woods, he is captured and brought to the castle Kotir, where his sword is broken by Verdauga's daughter, Tsarmina, and he is imprisoned within the Kotir dungeons. Meanwhile Tsarmina poisons Verdauga with the help of the vixen Fortunata and blames it on her brother Gingivere. She places her brother in prison and takes the throne for herself.
While in the dungeons, Martin eventually meets Gonff the Mousethief, who was imprisoned for stealing food from the Kotir storages. Meanwhile, Abbess Germaine and the surviving members of Loamhedge, an abbey stricken with the Great Sickness, arrive and join the woodlanders. Martin and Gonff escape with help from the Corim (Council Of Resistance In Mossflower) and join with Dinny the mole and Log a Log Bigclub of the Guosim, on a quest to find Boar the Fighter, Badger Lord of Salamandastron. Bella, Boar's daughter, believed only her father could defeat Tsarmina and put an end to her cruel reign.
After a journey through Bat Mountpit and the Toadlands, the companions reach Salamandastron and meet with Boar the Fighter. Boar then reforges Martin's broken sword with metal from a meteorite, but is killed while fighting his mortal enemy Ripfang the searat who had attacked Salamandastron several times before. Ripfang's former oarslaves (including Martin's childhood friend Timballisto) and several members of Log a Log's former tribe take over the searat ship, Bloodwake, with help from Martin and his allies. They return to Mossflower Woods, where Martin kills Tsarmina and destroys Kotir by both flooding it and knocking over its walls with a ballista. In the final battle with Tsarmina, Martin is left near death. With the help of the woodlanders, he eventually recovers, but his memory is never the same thereafter, as evidenced in The Legend of Luke. From the ruins of Kotir would eventually rise what would later become Redwall Abbey, with the flooded area becoming the Abbey Pond.
The book ends with Bella's son, Sunflash, finding Salamandastron and becoming its ruler.
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