The Legend of Luke

The Legend of Luke is a fantasy novel by the British writer Brian Jacques, published in 1999. It is the twelfth book of the Redwall series and the fourth in the series' internal chronology.

The frame of the story is the building of Redwall Abbey. A roving hedgehog named Trimp visits the site and sings a song to help the workers lift a beam, and Martin the Warrior hears his father, Luke, named in the words. He leaves the abbey with a small company, among them Gonff the Mousethief, Dinny and Trimp, and on the road north they are joined by an orphaned squirrel and a goshawk.

Martin's father's old friends, an elderly mouse called Vurg and an extravagant hare, show him a book called In the Wake of the Red Ship, which tells the story he has come for. From there the novel turns back to his own birth and to Luke's campaign against Vilu Daskar, the captain of the pirate ship Goreleech, whose attack on the settlement where the family lived set everything else in motion.