In the course of this advance, Brome was unexpectedly visited by Rebecca. She had refused to accompany his moles to the Marsh End, or even to show them the way, without first understanding what was going on. She did not like mass fighting and wanted no part in causing it. And anyway, she felt she should be where she could help. She shivered at the smell of carnage in the tunnels and her first words to Brome were the simple advice that he had best arrange for the dead to be dragged to the surface for the owls ‘or there won’t be a system worth living in anyway’.
This simple advice was to be the cause of one of the many remarkable myths that grew up around Rebecca. For soon after the advice was taken, the surface above the pasture was covered not by a plague of owls but by a mass of bristling, cawing, fighting crows, pecking at the dead moles and putting fear into the advance guards of the Duncton moles, watching out for signs of Pasture movement.
The idea that the Pasture moles ‘had the crows on their side’, as one of the scouts put it, was fearful indeed. While among the Pasture moles the arrival of the crows, simultaneous as it was with the coming of the mysterious, though increasingly popular Duncton healer, created the idea that Rebecca had the power to summon crows!
‘If Mekkins were to support us from the north,’ explained Brome, ‘then it would probably be worth our while standing our ground. We cannot retreat again, but I do not think we have the skill or strength to resist these Duncton moles by ourselves.’
Rebecca was doubtful. Fighting was not something she liked, although she conceded it was sometimes necessary.
‘What mole is leading the moles from Duncton?’ she asked curiously.
Brome shrugged. ‘He’s a good fighter, that’s for sure. Several of our moles report seeing a cunning-looking mole apparently in charge, quite big, very dark and with as evil a glitter about him as you would find in any nightmare.’
‘Rune!’ whispered Rebecca. Yes, in that case she would do what Brome wanted and try to summon Mekkins’ help.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I will go to the Marsh End—let’s hope Mekkins is still secure. I want to go. Things are happening down there, I think. Here too. It’s all changing, Brome, and whatever you try to do, there’s nothing you can do—but you must try.’ She laughed at his bewilderment at her words and added: ‘I only half understand what I’m saying myself. It’s all right!’
As Brome watched her leave, he thought to himself that there were times when she spoke with the same mysterious certainty Rose had sometimes had. As if she saw a world he could not see and there were no words to describe the realities within it. Yet as she left alone, how vulnerable she seemed, and for the first time he saw very clearly how much in need of protection she really was.
Two days later, as night fell, the battle started up again, first as a skirmish up near the wood’s edge where some Pasture moles went scouting about, and then as a full-scale battle in the Pasture tunnels themselves.
It was bloody and confused as under Brome’s quiet leadership every Pasture mole stood his ground against the brutal assault of the Duncton henchmoles. Brome had sensibly blocked several side tunnels, making it difficult for the henchmoles to advance en masse, and that much easier for them to be picked off one by one. But soon the henchmoles did manage their circling tactics again and the battle raged back and forth from tunnel to tunnel with little pattern except that slowly the Pasture moles began to retreat, moving back steadily towards bigger tunnels where, once the henchmoles were established, they would have room to manoeuvre and crush the Pasture moles with their greater ruthlessness and nerve. It was not that the Pasture moles lacked courage—just the opposite—but somehow they did not have the will to win that Rune inspired in his own moles.
The fighting eventually began to concentrate in a central chamber formed by the crossing of two communal tunnels. The Pasture moles occupied the part that led directly away from the direction of the wood and towards the centre of their own system. Rune’s henchmoles occupied the wood side of the chamber and the side tunnels that radiated north and south from it. Powerful talon thrusts and lunges jabbed out from the dark, moving mass of the henchmoles towards the group of Pasture moles whose light coats showed up the blood from their cuts and wounds more easily. Brome now stood resolutely at their head.
