After that, he brought her the ‘news’ of the Stone Mole as it came along, and there was plenty of it. Nothing highlighted the system’s decline in morale under Mandrake’s thrall so well as everymole’s willingness to believe that anything out of the ordinary that happened in the system was the Stone Mole’s doing. It was as if the whole system were looking for a saviour, if only a fictional one, to rid them of Mandrake and his henchmoles. If a wind-broken branch was found at the foot of a tree, it had been felled by the Stone Mole; if a badger left his trail in moist soil down near the Marsh, the Stone Mole had passed that way; if weasels had a fight and left a mess on the ground, why, of course, the Stone Mole had done it!
Mekkins and Rebecca laughed together at these stories, for even Rebecca, eager as she was to have her hopes confirmed, could not believe them all when a mole as sceptical as Mekkins was her mentor.
But even Mekkins was surprised at something that happened just a few moledays before the arrival of Rue and provided almost the perfect preface of violence to it. One night, over on the part of the Westside which was adjacent to the pastures, there were screechings and unearthly growlings as two creatures locked together in combat late at night. The woodland silence was shattered by it, and many moles trembled to hear the fatal sounds carrying down into their burrows.
Everything finally fell silent as dawn broke, and some brave Westsider, whose burrows lay nearby, crept out to find, hanging limp from the pasture fence in the cold, dull light of very early morning, a massive owl, savaged to death. One wing was entangled in the barbed wire of the fence, the body tilting from it down on to the ground, its talons hooked and dead. One eye was staring open, its yellow glare overtaken by a lifeless, opaque haze; the stomach and neck were bloody with gore, while the only movement was in the soft downy feathers of its inner legs when the morning breeze stirred them where they were not stiff with dried blood.
Burrhead was summoned, and he immediately sent henchmoles to get Mandrake and Rune, for a dead owl is a rare sight for a mole and something the elders should see. And the word quickly got about that the Stone Mole had killed an owl!
The only mole not visibly shaken by the sight was Mandrake himself—even Rune seemed put out by it, looking at the body sideways and unwilling to get too close to it. Mandrake doubted whether the owl had been killed by a mole at all—the descriptions of the unearthly growling that had been heard, presumably sounds made by the owl’s successful adversary, sounded very like a wild farm cat to him. But then, he thought, looking contemptuously around at the miserable Duncton moles gathered there, he was forgetting that this lot had never seen a farm, let alone a farm cat. They had never even been out of their own system.
But he didn’t say anything—he had his own strategy for dealing with the Stone Mole rumour and it hinged on fostering the system’s fear and awe of the Stone Mole until he felt the time was right to make an excursion to the Ancient System and kill it. Or rather, find some scapegoat mole and kill him in privacy in such a way as to impress on these miserable moles that only one mole was in charge in Duncton Wood and that was himself. Mandrake was beginning to get heartily sick of the Stone Mole rumour and was looking forward to putting into effect his simple plan to scotch it at one fell blow.
Meanwhile, his sense of bloody drama had not left him. As the rest of the moles hummed and hawed at the sight of the owl, and Rune looked at it in his sneaking way, Mandrake went up to it and plunged his right paw, talons outstretched, into the owl’s torn breast and smeared the blood over his face fur. Then, turning on the moles, he looked at each of them in turn and laughed. They looked shocked and frightened at his actions, as if believing that in some way he would now be able to inflict the owl curse on them. Then he licked his talons with relish and, with a mighty blow, knocked the owl’s wing in such a way that the body fell on to the ground with a thump.
‘Anymole here like a taste of owl as well?’ he taunted them. ‘Good for the health, it is,’ he mocked.
The moles slunk away, excitement over, aware once again of Mandrake’s brutish power. And even Rune, who had strategies within strategies of his own for dealing with the Stone Mole and Mandrake together, could not help wondering, as he looked at Mandrake exulting in the owl’s gore, whether this bestial mole might not kill them all before he had a chance to take power for himself.
