There was a continuous angry growl in the air as the moles fought back and forth, panting and grunting with the effort of staying alive. Gradually, subtly, as Pasture mole after Pasture mole fell and the henchmoles advanced across the chamber, there came the feeling among all of them that a critical point in the struggle had been reached. Brome moved right to the front of his moles, fighting strongly and encouraging them to stand firm. While behind the mass of henchmoles, wounded but not seriously, Rune slid back and forth, encouraging a mole here, warning one there, shouting out orders to them all.
‘Kill their leader… go for their leader,’ he shouted, gesticulating through the fighting talons and noise towards Brome.
Brome stood solid, now surrounded by his most loyal fighters, eyes narrowed with concentration and aggression, his great, strong body and calm stance the central part of the Pasture defence. He had tried pushing forward but the henchmoles were too strong and stolid in their positions, and inch by inch he was retreating. To his left a Pasture mole had rolled over on to his side, blood running from his mouth, and a henchmole was on top of him pushing forward in his determination to reach Brome. To Brome’s right, the henchmoles pulled back and forth, trying to get round one of their own number who had fallen bloodily from an accurate blow to his snout. The talons cut and thrust so fast that had the sturdiest thistle clump suddenly sprouted up between the two camps, it would have been torn to shreds in seconds.
‘Stand firm!’ roared Brome to his forces, but he feared in his heart that the cry was in vain. ‘Hold fast!’ he shouted, pressing suddenly forward in an effort to show his moles that they could make headway if only they would try.
As he did so, the henchmoles wavered very slightly, so subtly that only Brome himself noticed it—but it was enough for him to shout and lunge forward again, the Pasture moles encouraged by his bravery.
And the henchmoles were wavering and looking uncertainly behind themselves as there came confusion in the tunnel from the north. Screams and shouts, different noises, the roar of new moles arriving and a wavering, even by Rune, who turned to see what the commotion was and then found himself pressed back by a retreat of his own forces from the chamber as, with roars and shouts, a gang of Marshenders burst into the chamber.
At their head was Mekkins, swearing and cursing at his own forces, and everymole else’s, flailing his talons before him like the whipping branches of a blackthorn in a thunderstorm.
‘Kill the buggers,’ he was shouting. ‘Give '
Them every bloody thing they’ve asked for!’ He lunged forward and Brome, hardly daring to believe his eyes, saw that among the forces behind Mekkins—as motley and vicious a band of moles as he’d ever seen—were males and females, big and small, all wiry and quick and fighting in a raggle-taggle way but with a resolution that made the rest of them look half asleep.
Then, as suddenly as they had arrived, the henchmoles were in retreat as the harsh cold voice of Rune rose above their heads and he shouted, ‘Fall back in order!’ and, ‘Take it slowly!’ until, fighting every inch of the way, back the henchmoles went to retreat in the direction of the wood, leaving several of their dead and wounded blocking the tunnel up which they ran.
For a moment there was silence in the chamber as the remaining Pasture moles and Marshenders looked at each other in disbelief. Then the noise of relief and cheers as Brome and Mekkins were congratulating each other and there was excited chattering and laughter, drowning the groans of the dying; and the sight of very tired moles, who had stared at death, falling into a fatigue deeper than many of them had ever known as they realised that it was over.
But was it? After the victory cheers had died down and the wounded had been cared for and most moles had fallen asleep, Mekkins remained uneasy, as he had been from the moment Rune had suddenly withdrawn his forces from the chamber. You never could trust that Rune. Nothing he ever did was as simple as it seemed. But in the first flush of victory such doubts were submerged, and only hours later did the doubts come back. He was uneasy. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what.
‘Are you thinking they’ll come back here?’ asked Brome, who had carefully placed some guardmoles higher up the tunnels towards the wood to watch for just such a possibility.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mekkins, thinking and thinking. ‘Unless… unless!’ A shiver of horror ran through him. He looked quickly around to see which of his moles were about and then he was urgently gathering them together, his seriousness putting a pall on the cheer in the tunnels.
