The track rose sharply over a thin line of harder rock protruding from the valley side on their right and then dropped before them into a tip-surrounded hollow, its far side towering above them, to the far right of which, over a rocky ledge, the stream that had been on their left tumbled in a waterfall through ruined slate and then under the track of loose slate before them. They looked back at the last of the cwm, and forward into a hollow that looked like a dark well, for barely any light seemed to be reflected out of it. It was a moment at which Bracken would have given his very soul to catch one glimpse of sunshine on a bare face of white chalk, to hear the run of a summer Duncton breeze through dry grasses, and to see the orchids and blue harebells that lift the heart of the saddest mole. But beyond the hollow surely there would be safety and food!
So down into it they went, slipping here and there on snowy slates, lifeless wetness all around them and the rush of the waterfall growing louder all the time. There was not the scent of a single living plant to cheer them, and they knew without searching that they would have to climb back up out of this hollow even higher before having any hope of finding food.
It was only when they reached the bottom, with difficult steepness all about them and the feeling that the slates might suddenly slide inwards and bury them in their jagged darkness for ever, that they caught smell of the creature again. The same savage smell they had had before, only fiercer and nearer.
As the stream rushed and bubbled and raced, they heard over its noise what sounded like the rumble of slate on slate but was, in fact, the first grim growlings of a massive hound whose great paws and claws now covered the tracks Bracken and Boswell had left minutes before at the top of the hollow.
As Bracken stopped, turned and looked back the way they had come, the scent and the sound melded into the terrifying knowledge that a hound was on them. Gelert of Siabod was at them and it seemed that the sky itself had a snarling muzzle of teeth, that it had fiery yellow eyes, that the slate tips were great living paws. Then the sky, the tips around them and the very ground on which they stood so defencelessly seemed to emit a scent of death. His fur was yellow flecked with white, thick as wire grass, his paws heavy, and his great head massive as a bulwark of rock.
Gelert the Hound of Siabod tore down towards them mockingly, his snarls the sound of pleasure as he raced upon them, his great maw of flapping, loose flesh hanging momentarily over them to take in their scent before racing away up the other side of the hollow where he turned on loose slates, which flew away beneath his weight, and began the pleasurable descent upon them once more.
Moles! It was usually better fun to dig them out from where they shivered in fear among the slates to which he had tracked them; even better to dig them out of the valley meadows below Cwmoer, where they left a trail any hound could follow. Only once before that he could remember had mole come to Cwmoer itself, and that was many killings ago. But if he could not sniff them out of the slates or dig them out of the ground, he could play with their fear of him right here, before shattering their silky bodies against the slate and seeing their blood-stains in the snow.
So, enjoying himself, Gelert tore down upon them again, adding growls to his snarls, just for fun, because living meat was so much more exciting than dead.
It was as the hound passed by a third time without touching them that Bracken realised that they were being played with and might yet have time to escape into one of the many hollows off the track under the slates at the foot of the tip. He grabbed at Boswell and pushed him towards them, automatically shielding him as the hound began its fourth run upon them down the steep track.
Seeing them move, Gelert’s great muscles rippled and flexed in his shoulders. He shifted his weight with the subtlety of a bird in flight, his back legs following his body in a swerve to the left as, to his delight, the moles pathetically scrabbled for shelter. With the slightest of halts in motion and speed he effortlessly brought his great paws hard on the ground just in front of their snouts, making them stop in panic and giving him the pleasurable whiff of their scent of fear.
They turned away, as he knew they would, and he swung his great rough-furred head to look at them, enjoying the flow of his great body as it turned sharply back on itself and he went in for a proper snout at them.
Bracken had stopped still when the hound came at them again, but as he went past, he pushed Boswell ahead again, turning back towards the hound. There are some threats so vast to a mole, so utterly beyond his sight, that resistance seems as absurd as a six-day mole pup fighting with its mother. And yet a pup does fight.
