Despite his shock and cuts, this sight of Boswell, whom he knew had never harmed anymole in his life, being knocked unconscious, brought to Bracken the kind of rage he had felt overtake him when he had first confronted Mullion in the channel beyond the marsh.
He raised his talons, stepped back to give himself more room, and then lunged forward towards the mole’s eyes and snout with all his power. He missed wildly, however. When he got there, the great mole moved easily out of his path, leaving his talons stabbing at the air, while the mole laughed cruelly at him. And then grew serious.
‘What’s it feel like, Duncton mole? What’s it feel like?’ he roared.
Bracken charged again, but this time the great mole simply leaned up and backwards and Bracken could not even reach his face with his talons. He tried bringing them down on the mole’s shoulders but he simply stepped sideways, letting Bracken fall vulnerably forward, carried by the force of his own futile blow.
By now Bracken was gasping for breath, and frightened, as he looked desperately around the burrow for his adversary. The mole was now behind him, talons loose and raised, mocking him in his inability even to hit him.
Then he said, ‘Is this what you’re trying to do?’ and lunged a blow forward that caught Bracken powerfully below his shoulder and made him sound a deep grunt of pain, the sound of a mole who knows that a few more such blows will mean death.
‘Or this?’ said the mole, suddenly swinging round and kicking him so hard that for a moment it seemed that the chamber was collapsing about him as he fell back against the wall where Boswell still lay, now groaning and beginning to stir.
Bracken tried to move but couldn’t. A thousand painful weights seemed to be dragging each limb down. The great mole started towards him, talons out, and a look in his eyes such as Bracken had only once seen in anymole’s, and that was Mandrake’s as he came towards him in the Chamber of Dark Sound.
He tried to pull himself up, but even his head would not move as he wanted it to, seeming to slur to one side with a mouth that hung open and gasping with pain. The mole came nearer, the talons of one paw rising. He was saying something but there was such pain in Bracken’s head that he could not hear—only see the mouthings of accusation, and recognise the word, ‘Duncton, Duncton,’ and then, as talons rose over him, he knew with terrible certainty that he and Boswell were going to die. His head turned uselessly to look at Boswell, by the entrance, still lying where he had been thrown by the mole’s kick. Bracken tried to speak, tried to say ‘Why?’—tried to push his body back into the wall, through the wall, out of the chamber to escape the talons, the fear like a root round his throat.
But then the talons stopped, the mole’s head turned away to look at the entrance near where Boswell lay and then at something beyond it. The mole’s motion slowed to stillness and a look of surprise came on his face and his body started to turn aggressively towards the entrance when, through it, there came a snout, then a face, and then the front half of a mole; an old mole, a frail mole, a mole whose coat was wrinkled with age and whose movement was hardly movement at all.
Sound returned to Bracken’s ears.
‘So there’s another one of you!’ roared the big mole.
The old mole half smiled, he turned towards where Bracken and Boswell lay and was suddenly there between them and the big mole, crouching down and facing him.
‘Then three of you can die,’ shouted the big mole, moving suddenly forward again. How does a mole remember something impossible but which he has seen happen? He remembers it as a dream.
So it was a dream to Bracken as the great mole lunged towards them and the wrinkled old mole moved forward and away, perhaps lunging gently with one paw, and the great mole was suddenly falling backwards, wheeling round and back against the far wall of the chamber. Then the old mole was in the middle of the chamber, crouched quiet again, and the attacker coming forward with a massive lunge of both paws.
In Bracken’s dream the old mole stepped, or rather seemed to float, to one side and with the softest of flicks of one of his back paws sent the great mole shuddering into the side wall of the chamber. A dream, but a dream with sounds. For Bracken could hear the pained gasping of the great mole and the scrabbling of his paws as he tried to right himself and staggered round for a third attempt. But even as he drew himself up, the old mole, whose smile never seemed to leave his face and whose eyes stayed clear and calm, stepped forward slowly as if time had stood still especially for him, and gave the big mole the gentlest of blows with his left paw, which made him fall back into unconsciousness, as if he had been struck by some massive storm-torn oak branch.
