And find them he did, scenting her deliciousness in the shadows of the wood’s edge and then cutting back and forth along towards it like a fox quartering a wood. Until he found what he was snouting for—the entrance to a burrow from whose depths came the smell of Rebecca and the smell of a male. Rune smiled, stretched his talons, and started down boldly into the tunnel without any other thought than the pleasure of killing. There was only one mole in Duncton he was afraid of, and that was Mandrake.
Rebecca tensed the moment she smelt his odour, turning to face the burrow entrance, even before Cairn knew there was trouble.
‘Is it another male?’ asked Cairn quietly and calmly, coming to Rebecca’s side and then easing himself ahead of her nearer the entrance, where he could defend his right.
‘No, it’s Rune. A Duncton elder. He’s dangerous, Cairn, and he’ll fight to kill.’
Cairn laughed out loud, just as Stonecrop, his brother, had laughed the several lifetimes before when they had all met out on the pastures. A deep laugh that mocked the sly odour of Rune’s coming.
Rune said nothing, but came to the burrow entrance slowly, his eyes taking in the size of the tunnel, the possibilities of blocking and turning, and the size of the entrance where Rebecca and her consort lay hiding from him. He liked a fight, especially one which he knew before he started that he was going to win.
It wasn’t hard to win a fight when a male was trapped in a temporary burrow with no room to move and all he, Rune, had to do was to power-thrust his talons into the darkness and feel the soft fur, or even better, the vulnerable snout of his opponent yield before him.
Yet Cairn laughed. He had been in just this position so many times with Stonecrop, who was a master of fighting, that he knew exactly what to do about it. Instead of pushing forward boldly into his opponent’s thrust as most males would have done, he fell back, pushing Rebecca behind him and keeping as far away from the entrance as possible. Rune’s shadow fell across it and, as fast as it did so, Rune plunged forward and round into the entrance, his talons shooting to where Cairn was reared up ready and waiting. They brushed his fur but went no further. There was a momentary pause as Rune puzzled over the contact he had failed to make, and taking advantage of it, Cairn lunged forward into the fleshy part of Rune’s paw, a searing plunge of sharp talons that forced Rune to withdraw with a twist and a cry of pain.
As he did so, Cairn lunged forward, plunged out of the entrance with his left talon, straight into Rune’s left shoulder and narrowly missing his snout. The whole thing was done with such speed that Cairn was back in the burrow and crouched still and waiting before Rebecca knew what had happened. They could hear the sharp, hurt breathing of Rune in the tunnel beyond, as he fell silent and thought what to do.
Then all was movement, as Rebecca heard a growling and a snarl, saw a rush forward by Cairn, heard a hissing from Rune and the two moles were attacking each other at the entrance, the dark body of Rune now in full sight, the lighter fur of Cairn contrasting with his blackness. For a moment both fell back; but then Cairn lunged forward again and was out into the tunnel driving Rune back down it towards the entrance. ‘Be careful, Cairn,’ called Rebecca desperately after him. ‘He’s not just a mole, he’s Rune. Be careful.’
But Cairn was not a defensive fighter and Rune’s retreat gave him the false impression that this was a fight to be easily won. When he heard Rebecca’s voice, Cairn laughed and drove forcibly forward. But Rune, too, was strengthened by its sound.
Rune saw that the mole he was fighting was young but strong, and no fool, and that it would be cunning, not strength, that defeated him. And for Rune, what was worse and increased his hatred of this mole still more than the fact that he seemed to be Rebecca’s mate was the fact that he was a Pasture mole. The fresh cropped-grass scent on Cairn sickened Rune, used as he was to the rotting of leaf mould in the shadow of the wood in which he habitually slunk.
So Rune backed slowly away, avoiding the worst of the blows that the young Pasture mole powerfully directed at him, as he worked towards the manoeuvre that would allow him to inflict the fatal talon thrust that he had made his speciality.
Cairn pressed on, impressed by Rune’s ability to avoid his fastest and most dangerous blows and to use the tunnel to prevent him from getting round and under him; warned, too, by the way Rune seemed to keep even his snarls under control.
For a moment, almost experimentally, Cairn relaxed in the face of his opponent’s retreat and immediately, without a moment’s hesitation and with no sign of the fear that a mole might mistakenly have thought would go with his retreat, Rune came in with a talon thrust which twisted and tore into Cairn’s cheek, drawing blood on to his face fur, on which a thin trickle wound down to his snout.
