Rune didn’t like Mekkins—far too disrespectful. Nor did he entirely believe his story. But there were other things to think about and the Marshenders’ failure to help oust Mandrake would be just the excuse he was going to need when it came to doing what he had long wanted to do—wipe out the Marshenders, Mekkins included.
As for Mekkins, he slipped quietly back to the Marsh End, where he had plans of his own to see to. He was well aware of the threat to it and had worked various ideas out, which he now intended to put into practice. At the same time, he had to think how he was going to protect Rebecca and Comfrey now that they could expect trouble down that way, and the first thing he was going to do was to work out where to move them to, for surely where they were was now too isolated and exposed should Rune and the henchmoles choose to take over the system from Mandrake.
* * *
It took two days for Mandrake to make his way to the Chamber of Dark Sound, where he stood in the centre and roared out his challenge to the Stone Mole. His noise came back a hundredfold in echoes from the carved wall with the flint owl face at its centre, but had no effect on him. His obsessions seemed to have given him a sublime courage, or ignorance, of where he was and what he was doing. He believed the Stone Mole was there and so he called out to him. He was afraid, but not of a sound that had no effect on him, and the feeling of fear was so alien to him, being Mandrake, that he could only turn and face it with his talons—a courage that few moles would have easily understood.
Violet, wandering disconsolately among the tunnels, heard the roaring and was afraid, but not thinking it came from ‘the big mole,’ redoubled her efforts to find him, hoping he would protect her from everything, and perhaps still help her siblings. She did not really understand that they were dead.
She found him eventually, sleeping in one of the entrances to the great chamber, and without ado, woke him up. Her presence confused him. She wasn’t the Stone Mole. She wasn’t Sarah. She wasn’t Rebecca. He had been a youngster himself. Yes.
She prattled on about Coltsfoot and Pipple and Beech and a big mole. She obviously knew where the Stone Mole was. Perhaps she was a spy. Cunning. But not as cunning as he. He would keep an eye on her, keep her within a talon’s reach. Yes, he would! Better still, he’d get her to show him where the Stone Mole was. Yes. Cunning and clever.
Violet could not understand him. He was alternately kind and angry. He wanted her to lead him somewhere after a stonmole, and she didn’t know what that was. So to avoid him getting angry she led him here and there among the tunnels, her tiny form ahead of his brooding mass as he muttered, ‘Cunning,’ and, ‘You’re a clever one, but not as clever as Mandrake,’ and told her stories about a mole he knew called Rebecca, his Rebecca, who did disobedient things and was with the stonemole, whatever it was.
But they were not alone in the tunnels, for another mole, who knew the ins and outs of the system better than anymole ever had, flitted from shadow to shadow, ahead and behind, looking after them round corners, watching in agonies as Mandrake threatened Violet, watching with relief when he talked more softly to her, and wondering, wondering, how to get her away from Mandrake’s talons.
It was Bracken, who had heard the roarings and had come to investigate. He had recognised Violet as his and Rue’s daughter, and was able, in horror, to piece together something of what had happened from Violet’s pathetic conversation with the demented Mandrake. And he knew that he must act very soon if she, too, was not to be killed.
Outside, the weather was as troubled and changeable as the life of the moles underground. After two days of still coldness the snow had begun to melt, falling with phuts and plops and dollops from the trees, spraying down through the branches, and pitting the snow on the floor of the wood into thousands of minicraters. Here and there a fox’s tracks wove among the trees, and where the badgers lived down on the east side, the snow was roughened and dirtied by soil and debris from their sets.
Then a moist, wet wind came, and the snow began to thaw slowly, making the ground sodden and slushy and the pastures a mixture of green and yellow grass and remnant snow in the hollows where the wind had gathered it. While out on the marshes beyond Marsh End, the snow melted into the water and mud, and at night froze and was deadly still. Then wind again, and change. Uncomfortable weather that did not know which way it was going to go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As far as he could, Bracken always kept himself between Mandrake and the Chamber of Dark Sound, because then, if he was spotted, he could retreat to the relative safety of the central tunnels beyond the chamber, in which, should he be chased there, Mandrake would certainly lose himself.
The precaution was wise, for the moment inevitably came when Mandrake sensed his presence.
‘Shush, girl,’ he said to Violet. ‘I think I hear the Stone Mole ahead.’
Bracken froze and tried to steal away, but Mandrake had heard and was after him, all his old savage speed still there.
Bracken raced ahead, his knowledge of the tunnels making up for Mandrake’s extraordinary speed. He reached the Chamber of Dark Sound, raced across it to the seventh entrance, where the mole skeleton still lay undisturbed, but instead of running on he halted between the two great flintstones that stood either side of it and turned to face the chamber. He waited until Mandrake was about to enter and then began to hum softly up into the convolutions of the terrible owl face above. The effect was extraordinary. The noises that had so terrified him when he was in front of it now sounded out beyond him and gave him the impression of having great strength and power. His talons and shoulders seemed bigger, his sight more deadly clear. He seemed to be able to see across the chamber, which normally was not quite possible, and there to catch sight of Mandrake, halted and baffled, moving as if in slow motion, struggling forward into a sound that clearly caused him great fear and distress. Bracken watched him almost dispassionately, seeing his massive size, each limb seeming as big as a mole, the eyes red with aggression, but fearing none of it. He knew with certainty that so long as he sounded the noise, Mandrake would never be able to reach him.
But the effect of the sound was soon subtler and more evil than that. It began to make Bracken want to torment Mandrake, to hurt him, it made him feel that he really was as powerful as the owl looked; it made him want to kill Mandrake. Worse, it made him start to forget that his real aim was to get Violet away from Mandrake and the Ancient System. For his now dispassionate gaze fell not only on Mandrake but also on Violet, who had followed into the chamber after him and now stood, apparently unaffected by the sound, in its centre.
Bracken’s talons were protracted forward, his back reared up and his snout arched cruelly down, his mouth and teeth setting into a rigour of humming as he felt himself losing control of his body and the hum began to take him over, its evil sound beginning to creep into his spirit.
It was Violet who stopped him. She watched puzzled as Mandrake writhed and thrashed about at the noise, which was only a nasty noise as far as she was concerned, and then she wandered over towards its source. She saw a white skeleton, but that didn’t worry her because she had no idea what it was, and anyway, what was crouched by it was far more interesting. It was a mole that stood like stone, its eyes wide and its teeth clenched. It had terribly big talons, all stretched out. It was humming. It was the stonemole! The thing Mandrake was looking for! She ran forward to it and touched it and oh… it was real, it had fur just like her…
The touch of her paw broke the spell of the hum and slowly Bracken relaxed, and then fell silent, the sound fading out in the chamber as both he and Mandrake seemed to come out of a nightmare.
Poor Violet, upset by shock after shock, started to cry; Mandrake, hearing her, started running towards them both. Bracken stepped forward, put a paw round her shoulders, and pulled her back through the flint entrance.
‘Violet,’ he said urgently. ‘Listen! Run down this tunnel and go into the first entrance you see in the tunnel it comes into. Hide in t
he shadows there. I’ll come. Run!’
She only half recognised him, but she knew his voice, he was a mole who knew Rue. Oh, that was a relief! And she was running, she was running, and perhaps he’d help. ‘Run!’ he shouted after her, ‘run!’
It was as Bracken turned back into the chamber to face Mandrake, who was now halfway across it, and coming inexorably towards him, that the whole chamber was filled with another sound, one that took them both totally by surprise—the pattering of a hundred running paws, and of grim mutterings of moles, angry and full of bloodlust.
Mandrake stopped and turned round, his back to Bracken, and both saw first one mole, then two, then five more pouring through the eastern tunnel entrance that marked the tunnel running up from the slopes. It was Rune and the henchmoles and more besides, and they were chanting ‘Kill him, kill him!’ and massing ready to charge Mandrake down.
‘There he is!’ cried Rune, pointing a taloned paw at Mandrake.
Mandrake looked at them uncomprehendingly. He wasn’t interested in them. He had the Stone Mole almost at the end of his talons and he wasn’t going to waste time on Rune and a bunch of henchmoles. Were they threatening him? He laughed, shook his head, turned his back contemptuously on them and started forward again to pursue Bracken.
‘He’s running!’ cried Rune triumphantly, and that was enough to give the moles the courage they needed to begin their assault on Mandrake. Several of them reached him before he reached the flint entrance and thrust their claws at him with screams and shouts. One got in the way of his back paws and made him half trip, forcing him to stop. He turned to face them again, and as he did so Bracken, unseen by anymole, took the opportunity of running off down the tunnel to find Violet and slip away. The Duncton system was clearly going mad.
In amongst the moles, Mandrake rose up magnificently, and with a mighty sweep of his right taloned paw, killed three moles with one terrible blow. He had not forgotten how to fight. He stepped back, throwing, as he did so, another two off his huge back. His left paw thrust viciously forward and two moles crumpled up screaming below his snout. His movements were not hasty or rapid, but had the leisurely grace of a confident fighter who had never in his life been beaten. With dead or dying moles around him, he stepped back once more, swinging his right paw back so that two more moles went flying forward into the mass who had been clamouring to get at him. He laughed and then roared, and the moles hesitated, the ones in front no longer willing to go forward to what seemed a certain, and cruel, death. Only Rune was still there and shouted out again for the moles to kill. Mandrake might, indeed, have killed Rune there and then, but he remembered that his main purpose was to kill the Stone Mole, not this snivelling rabble or Rune.
He backed into the flint entrance, watching as the moles still advanced slowly towards him. He saw the great flints on either side of the entrance, raised a paw to each of them, dug his talons deeply into the soil behind them, and with one massive roaring and grunting effort, pulled down the two flints in a mass of dust and debris before them all, blocking the entrance completely and leaving himself free to pursue the Stone Mole.
As he ran off, the remaining flint capstone over the entrance broke free from the soil above it and crashed on to the flints below, and from out of their dust and debris, all that Rune and the other moles could now see were the gaunt, hollow eyes of the skull of a long dead mole, the rest of its skeleton lost under a mass of impassable debris.
* * *
Bracken almost carried Violet round the circular tunnel and out into his own burrows, he was so anxious to get her out of the Ancient System and away from Mandrake. And himself, too, for that matter.
He went as fast as he could straight up the entrance nearest the pastures and then out on to the surface, where a grey morning was well advanced and the ground was wet from the thaw of snow. And there they were almost immediately seen by a henchmole—one of the many Rune had prudently posted all around the surface of the Ancient System for just such a possibility as this. Only it was Mandrake Rune had expected to try to escape, not some other mole. Bracken dived back down into his tunnels, pushing Violet roughly ahead of him and, knowing that the henchmole would delay some while before he risked chasing down after him, made for a different exit.
The fact that they had so nearly been caught was a blessing in disguise, for it warned Bracken of the dangers they now faced. It seemed to him that the only possibility open to him was to get as far away from the top of the hill as possible, to somewhere where they could find friends. And that meant Rebecca’s hideaway down in the eastern Marsh End.
Of their trek down there, which took almost three days, almost every terrifying detail is known, for it was a memory that Violet was to carry with her for the rest of her life and accounts of it now lie recorded in the Rolls of the Systems in the libraries of Uffington.
What Violet never revealed, however, was that the real reason for their delay was her incredible slowness and her inability to understand the danger they were in. At moments when they were close to being sighted by pursuing henchmoles, or when Bracken was despairing of ever keeping her alive, or when the cold of January seemed certain to freeze them both to death, she would ask some irrelevant question like ‘Who is that stonemole, then?’ or ‘Do you really know where we’re going because I’m getting bored’ or ‘If he was Mandrake, who was that big mole?’ Or she would declare in a loud voice that would shatter the silence they were trying to sneak through: ‘I’m hungry!’
But while she may have driven Bracken mad, perhaps her continual puppish ebullience kept his spirits up as well.
They were under pressure from henchmoles from the moment they started down the slopes towards the Eastside. On their flanks, behind, sometimes in front, henchmoles chased them, cutting back and forth in numbers across the wood’s floor to find their scent and track them down. Bracken avoided them, partly by sticking to the surface the whole time—except for once, when he had to use a tunnel to escape several henchmoles coming at them from different directions—but mainly by his extraordinary ability, developed in his long period of solo exploration in the Ancient System, to foresee route alternatives and take the one that would confound his enemies. He himself later pinned his success on the fact that thawing snow created temporary rivulets, particularly just below the slopes, which masked their scent tracks.
However, they avoided rather than lost their pursuers and by the third day, when they were nearing Curlew’s burrows, they were being very hard-pressed. The more so because, unknown to Bracken, the pressure to find them had been increased by Rune’s decision to join the search and abandon Mandrake to the central part of the Ancient System, where he seemed content to stay. Henchmoles only remained up there to monitor his movements while Rune rapidly went down the slopes to find out who these two moles were who had escaped so mysteriously from the Ancient System.
By the time Bracken realised in horror that his own arrival might lead to the discovery of Rebecca and Comfrey and Curlew by directing the henchmoles to their tunnels, it was too late—henchmoles seemed to have cut off any other route. All he could do was to make a final dash ahead and hope he would be in time to warn Rebecca.
On the afternoon of the third day, when the weather was turning bitterly cold again and the light in the wood was gloomy and dark, Bracken finally reached the entrance to Curlew’s tunnel. Henchmoles were not far behind and so he pushed Violet down it, with an instruction (which he had scant hope would be carried out) that she should warn them that he was there, and turned round to ward off any henchmole who might come and surprise them.
Violet tottered complainingly down into the tunnels, saying she was hungry and she hoped there was some nice mole around who would do the proper thing and produce a worm or two, or three, and that Bracken never answered any of her questions, and ‘Aren’t there any moles here at all? She found herself face to face with Mekkins, who had advanced warily up the tunnel to see what the fuss was about.
‘Hullo,’ sa
id Mekkins, ‘and who are you, then?’
‘Violet. I’m hungry.’
‘Yes, so I heard. I expect Rebecca’ll find you something.’
‘He’s up there,’ said Violet, looking back up the tunnel. ‘He said to warn you.’
When Mekkins saw Bracken, he was relieved to find him safe but shocked at how terribly weary he was. But a moment’s account of what had happened soon explained why.
‘I’ve come ’ere myself to take them away,’ said Mekkins, ‘’cos I could see the way things are goin’. There’s only one place where they’ll be safe, and that’s out of the system.’
‘But where?’ asked Bracken.
‘With Rose, on the pastures. It’ll be risky getting them there and might even be risky once they’re there, because Rose’s protection may not be enough. But anywhere else… well…’
Bracken was almost falling off his paws with tiredness. But still he snouted into the gloom for signs of henchmoles.
‘They’ll not come this far yet, surely?’ said Mekkins.
‘Yes, they will,’ sighed Bracken. ‘There seem to be so many of them and they’re so determined to find us that they keep on and on. They nearly caught us several times. You’ve got to get out of here, Mekkins. I’m sorry…’
‘Listen, chum. You’ve worked a bloody marvel. The more I know about you and Rebecca, the less I understand. But don’t you say you’re sorry. Now look, there’s no sign of them at the moment, and it would take them a while to find these tunnels anyway, so you go down and rest for a bit and I’ll keep a watch out and come down later to work out what to do. You send Curlew up as well, ’cos there’s something she can do…’