Their progress was mainly slow, for the valley was steep and rocky, but here and there it flattened out into sheep-pasture fields where the food was good and the going easy. But however flat the ground immediately ahead of them sometimes was, they were aware, constantly and claustrophobically, of the steep valley sides rising to their left and beyond the river to their right, and of the dark green forest that clothed it, out of which ugly snouts and flanks of grey-black rock protruded more and more frequently. Bracken felt he was taking them straight into a rocky trap from which, should they run into trouble, there would be no easy escape. The river raced and roared down past them and occasionally its sound was joined by the rumble and rattle of a roaring owl as it went by on the way that ran a little higher up the valley side.
Because the valley was so closed in they could get no sense of what lay beyond it, either to the side or straight ahead, while from down the valley and into their faces ran a continual run of bad weather, rain and wind, sometimes hail, and air that got colder and colder. It gave them the feeling that their situation was only going to get worse.
It was on the fourth day after crossing the bridge that they ran into their first snow—not falling from the sky, but lying in wet, streaky patches in hollows in the ground and several days old, judging from the way it had been trodden over and messed on by the sheep. It was grubby, half-thawed snow and it matched the place they were in. High above them, where rock was exposed, an occasional snow patch glared against the dark rise of trees, though these had now shed whatever snow had settled on them from their steep branches. As night fell, the temperature dropped and the snow patches began to freeze and crackle at a talon touch, their icy surfaces catching the last purple glimmer of daylight in the chill sky above.
It was on the following day, the fifth in their journey up the valley, that they met their first Siabod mole. It happened suddenly among some tussocky brown grass near the river’s edge where they had gone to take a drink in a tiny backpool made accessible by treading sheep.
They heard his voice from the tussocks above before they saw him: ‘Beth yw eich enwau, a’ch cyfundrefn?’ They did not understand the language at all, though from its tone and his stance it was obvious what it meant.
‘We’ve come from Capel Garmon,’ said Bracken, to make things simple.
‘In peace,’ added Boswell.
‘Dieithriaid i Siabod, paham yr ydych yma?’ His words were a question, but that was all they could tell. They waited in silence. If he was a Siabod mole, he was not what either of them had expected, which was a mole as big as Mandrake, and as fierce.
He was thin and wiry and had a wizened, suspicious expression on his face that spelt distrust. His snout was mean and pinched, and his fur looked more like a bedraggled teasel than anything else. His small black eyes travelled rapidly over them, taking in their strength, their relative size, Boswell’s crippled paw, their position (which was lower than he, down by the water), and generally giving them the feeling that they were being picked over by the snoutiest little mole they had ever come across.
Then Boswell spoke again. ‘Siabod?’ he asked.
The mole stared at them, his eyes flickering from one to the other, the faintest wrinkles of contempt forming in minute folds down the furless part of his snout.
‘Southerners, are you?’ he asked, speaking in ordinary mole so they could understand, but in such a way that the question was also an accusation and with a harsh, mocking accent to the words.
But before they had time to reply, he darted back into the grass from which he had emerged, and by the time Bracken had climbed up to it, was gone. Bracken called after him, shouted out that they intended no harm and asked him to come back, but the only reply lay in whatever words a mole cared to divine in the rushing and rippling of the cold, indifferent river.
‘He’s gone,’ said Bracken.
‘Let’s press on,’ said Boswell, ‘as you have said more than once. Anyway, he’ll be back.’
‘Yes, and with other moles. He was a Siabod, all right. He spoke with the same accent Mandrake had,’ said Bracken.
‘Well, I can’t see where else he can be from up here,’ said Boswell, running along a little behind, ‘and that must have been Siabod he was speaking and—’
‘He was so pathetic,’ said Bracken contemptuously. ‘He reminded me of nothing more than a wireworm in a tunnel when you expected to see a lobworm. Nasty little character he was. I mean, he might have helped us…’ The anger in Bracken’s words reflected his apprehension about what they might soon face.
They pressed on, a new life flowing through them now that they had made contact, if contact it was, with somemole, however contemptible he seemed to Bracken.
