‘There’s a tunnel I’ll show you, off to the east,’ said Curlew. ‘It goes for quite a way. If they come, I’ve got a way of holding them up for a bit, so you go down there and lead them off away from the west, where Mekkins will be. Every little bit gives them time.’
With a thumping overhead and shouts, the henchmoles did come, not long after, and Curlew tried her old trick on them. ‘There’s disease here, contagious disease,’ she hissed up the tunnel at them.
It worked for a while, until a cold authoritative voice came out of the bitter night to the henchmole who was hesitating.
‘Get down there now or I’ll kill you with my own talons,’ it said. Down in the central burrow, Bracken recognised with a shudder the voice of Rune. So he was here! And then there was a thump and a gasp, and old Curlew was outnumbered and outfought as the henchmoles rushed past her and down to where Bracken crouched.
He raced away along the tunnel she had shown him and out into the night, and chased desperately this way and that across the frozen ground, making as much noise as possible and heading for the north and east towards the marsh. Henchmoles were thick on the ground, and more than once he came face to face with one before twisting away into the dark, saved only by their own confusion at each other’s noise. Sometimes he hid in silence and let them chase around him; then, when they seemed to be drifting back to the west, towards where Rebecca, Violet and Comfrey might be with Mekkins, he would make a noise again and they would swing back towards him.
If the night was cold, the dawn was colder. It rose bleakly on a wood full of hate and fear. There was a hoarfrost on the trees and ground which gave the wood a deceptive white calm but meant that the slightest movement brought a crackling of frozen leaves and vegetation.
Bracken was now very tired and responded with a start of alarm at every movement around him. He wanted to run back, or forwards, or wherever they were and say ‘Here I am. Here! It’s over. You’ve got what you want!’
Then a henchmole moved somewhere and he was off again, paw in front of paw, twisting and turning and trying to think ahead of himself, trying not to drown in his own breathlessness and succumb at last to the tiredness he felt. Noises all around, and white-coated twigs and leaves that would have seemed delicate and beautiful had a mole had time to look.
On through the lightening mauve of dawn, nearer and nearer to the wood’s edge, nearer and nearer now to the marsh. He could sense the dreadful space stretching out somewhere beyond the trees and tried to cut away from it back into the bigger trees. But henchmoles were there, more of them running, distant shouts, nearby sneakings of talons on the frosty ground. He was forced nearer and nearer to the marsh.
Sound to the right and left, the fearful light and space ahead, no other way to go for a desperate mole, paw after paw unsteadily in front of another, shoulders aching with effort.
Then he was out of the wood and tumbling down a short bank under an old wire fence to a wall of alien marsh grass and the smell of the unknown. Off to the right two henchmoles came out of the wood as well, down the bank, looked right and then left and saw him; and they were coming, coming, their paws and
talons pounding, bigger and nearer with each moment. He looked back along the marsh grass to his left towards the west and there were other henchmoles, several, sneaking steadily along towards him. Desperate, he turned around to look back up the bank he had fallen down. It was so steep, and he was so tired, each gasp a pain for life. Perhaps he could make it back into the wood, perhaps his near-dead, aching paws would take him back. Perhaps.
Then Rune was there. Rune out on the bank looking down at him. A nightmare come true. Rune triumphant. Rune about to say something. Rune’s mouth open and his talons ready, as left and right the henchmoles came.
Bracken turned away from them all and faced the still, frosted wall of tall, haggard grass, diving into it and through, a final chase to his own destruction. Through the grass, leaving the shouts, into an alien world where the birds have eerie calls and slow flapping wings and long, sharp beaks enough to kill a mole. Running once more, but with the voices fading at last behind him.
‘He’s gone into the marsh, the silly bugger!’
‘Who was ’e then? Never seen him before.’
‘’E’ll be drownded or eaten ’fore the hour’s done.’
‘Who was he, Rune?’
‘Somemole we’ll wait for, that’s who. So patrol this edge until I’m satisfied he’s gone for good,’ said Rune.
Silence came and the wood was gone for ever behind Bracken as he wearily wended his way over the tussocks and ice of the frozen marsh. No food, no shelter, little hope. Lost in a frozen waste. No good going back.
