Predak is one of the secondary antagonists of Marlfox, the eleventh book in the Redwall novel series. She is a Marlfox who had been assigned along with his other siblings by their mother Silth, the tyrannical ruler of Castle Marl, to get rich and beautiful items for her. He winds up going to Mossflower with his siblings to find some where they come across Redwall Abbey, a place they steal from by means of instigating a battle against its residents as a distraction. After being abandoned by Mokkan, who had encouraged them to try to conquer Redwall Abbey with the intent to get them killed by its residents, he partakes in the multiple attempts at conquering the abbey his siblings instigate with the intent to rule over its residents.
Biography[]
As a Marlfox, Predak had been raised along with his siblings by their mother Silth, who would rule over Castle Marl oppressively. From time to time, she and her siblings would be assigned by her to get rich and beautiful items for her chamber. One time, they end up going to Mossflower to fulfill it. While Ascrod and Vannan were miserably failing at kidnapping a squirrel named Songbreeze, the daughter of Janglur who foiled their attempt, upon hearing her singing voice with the initial intent of taking her back to the castle as a singer against her will, Predak had been spying on the a circus troupe called the Wandering Noonvale Companions troupe with Gelltor with intent to rob them. When it reached dawn, they got up from the rocks they were spying from and approach the camp upon noticing they've been spotted. They are greeted politely by the hare Florian, the troupe's leader, before they interrogate the troupe a bit.
As they do so, Predak asks what's in the pot they were carrying, sniffs it, and insults it by calling it slop. When Borrakul complains to her for insulting it, Predak prepares to attack him with his axe, though Florian quickly gets between them. After interrogating and insulting them a bit more, Florian insults them back, leading to Gelltor trying to draw his ax only for the otter Elachim to flick the air in front of his face with a pole while Predak faces Borrakul holding his big pebble ready to throw and backed by the two moles brandishing burning sticks from the fire. Threatened and intimidated, Gelltor and Predak back off toward the rocks before Predak tricks the troupe into turning around by lying that there are others behind them. When they fall for it, Predak and Gelltor exit the scene and go to the camp Mokkan set up with Ziral.
At camp, Predak defends Gelltor a bit when Mokkan scolded him for making a mess of the plan by telling him they likely knew already prior to that, telling him he couldn't have done any better while eating a portion of a trout. She then listens as Gelltor rants about how one of his rat guards, Fatchur, had been killed and how he wants to kill the Redwallers responsible only to be talked out of this by his siblings who seek a more pragmatic approach to steal from Redwall Abbey rather than starting a war. Afterwards, Mokkan reveals a scheme he concocted to steal from the abbey. He carries out the first part of it with the help of Gelltor and Ziral along with some water rat guards by tricking one of the abbey's children, Dwopple, while posing as a kindly creature named Stickabee into jumping off the walltop into a cloak he had be held out by his water rat guards to kidnap him. Successfully doing so, he holds him ransom in front of the Redwallers, telling them to bring the Marlfoxes something rich and beautiful before returning to camp with Dwopple as hostage.
There, he informs them of their roles in the next part where once the Redwallers arrive, Mokkan knowing they'll attack, they'll instigate a battle against them as a diversion while two of them sneak into Redwall Abbey to steal something. The Redwallers later come to the camp under the pretense of complying with their demands only to unleash their weapons and attack with Mokkan starting a battle between them while Ascrod and Vannan had snuck into Redwall Abbey. During the battle, Mokkan issued orders to his siblings with Predak being ordered to keep the Redwallers pinned to the wall. The battle ended with a few deaths while Ascrod and Vannan had stolen a tapestry from the abbey, said tapestry being of the warrior mouse Martin, which they show off back at camp. Mokkan, pretending to limp, had returned to camp then and put on a facade, pretending to commend Gelltor and Predak for their roles in the battle and be upset over Ziral's death as she had died in the battle. Pretending to want to fulfill their code of blood for blood, he displays faux support for their idea to conquer Redwall Abbey.
When they march off with their own water rat guards, however, Mokkan betrays them by destroying all but one logboat and abandons them while escaping it and stealing their tapestry, intending for them to be killed by the Redwallers to avoid the future battle he hinted at between them. When they arrive at the abbey, Gelltor makes a declaration of war before trying to burn the wallgate later with Vannan though this gets foiled by the Redwallers killing off the water rat guard carrying the material they intended to use to burn it with an arrow with both of them avoiding the other shots. Soon, they discover Mokkan's treachery much to their anger as they make plots to conquer the abbey for its riches and have the shrews build them new boats so they can start back for the island when Mokkan's least expecting them to start a reckoning. They would make multiple other attempts at getting into the abbey from this point on.
One attempt involved trying to get over the wallgate using a ladder set up by Predak that Gelltor tried to climb over while Predak, along with Ascrod and Vannan, urged their troops on even as they were caught which resulted in Gelltor and some water rats being killed when he entered the abbey in a fight against Janglur. After losing more of their army, they reluctantly ally themselves with Raventail and his tribe, whom they initially kicked out of an area in the marshlands that they moved in. With their help, they make another attempt after hearing he killed a creature that's likely to be a Redwall scout by climbing the battlements, though this attempt gets foiled by the Redwallers pouring in several types of oil onto them as they're carrying torches, causing them to be caught on fire and burnt. Another latet attempt involved cutting a giant tree with the intent of it falling onto the abbey, though this only resulted in termites coming out to attack them and bees to come out to sting them.
Eventually, they succeed at breaking in through a plan concocted by Ascrod where after Predak returned with the army, they opened the gates by causing the gate bar to hit the ground before entering, though they get spotted by Friar Butty who alerts the other Redwallers. In spite of this, they manage to get a hostage even with Raventail slaying several with his tribe. After Predak breaks up the argument briefly started between Ascrod and Raventail, Ascrod proceeds to light a fire and try to goad the abbey to surrender only to be killed off by an arrow shot at him by them. This prompts Raventail to launch fire arrows at the abbey with the intent to burn it before Florian requests a truce. Hearing this, Predak signaled the archers to cease firing and ordered them all to come out unarmed under the threat of having the archers double their fire. They pretend to comply only to unleash twoscore Redwallers who charge against them as Vannan prepares to try to kill them while drawing her ax and remarking this to Predak only for her to be slain by a javelin thrown at her by an otter from the otter crews that charged over the abbey lawns against the forces. Predak herself gets slain by Borrakul, who strangles her to death as revenge for the death of his brother, Elachim while their army gets slain as well.
