47. The Sky Suspended
Ole bull he comes for me, wi's head down. But I didn't flinch ... I went for 'e. 'Twas him as did th' flinchin'.
Flora Thompson Lark Rise
When Hazel stamped, Dandelion leapt instinctively from the grass verge. If there had been a hole he would have made for it. For the briefest instant he looked up and down the gravel. Then the dog was rushing upon him and he turned and made for the raised barn. But before he reached it he realized that he must not take refuge under the floor. If he did the dog would check: very likely a man would call it back. He had to get it out of the farmyard and down to the road. He altered direction and raced up the lane towards the elms.
He had not expected the dog to be so close behind him. He could hear its breath and the loose gravel flying under its paws.
'It's too fast for me!' he thought. 'It's going to catch me!' In another moment it would be on him and then it would roll him over, snapping his back and biting out his life. He knew that hares, when overtaken, dodge by turning more quickly and neatly than the pursuing dog and doubling back on their track. 'I shall have to double,' he thought desperately. 'But if I do it will hunt me up and down the lane and the man will call it off, or else I shall have to lose it by going through the hedge: then the whole plan will fail.'
He tore over the crest and down towards the cattle-shed. When Hazel had told him what he was to do it had seemed to him that his task would consist of leading the dog on and persuading it to follow him. Now he was running simply to save his life, and that at a speed he had never touched before, a speed he knew he could not keep up.
In actual fact Dandelion covered three hundred yards to the cattle-shed in a good deal less than half a minute. But as he reached the straw at the entrance it seemed to him that he had run for ever. Hazel and the farmyard were long, long ago. He had never done anything in his life but run in terror down the the lane, feeling the dog's breath at his haunches. Inside the gate a big rat ran across in front of him and the dog checked at it for a moment. Dandelion gained the nearest shed and went headlong between two bales of straw at the foot of a pile. It was a narrow place and he turned round only with some difficulty. The dog was immediately outside, scratching eagerly, whining and throwing up loose straw as it sniffed along the foot of the bales.
'Sit tight,' said a young rat, from the straw close beside him. 'It'll be off in a minute. They're not like cats, you know.'
'That's the trouble,' said Dandelion, panting and rolling the whites of his eyes. 'It mustn't lose me; and time's everything.'
'What?' said the rat, puzzled. 'What you say?'
Without answering, Dandelion slipped along to another crack, gathered himself a moment and then broke cover, running across the yard to the opposite shed. It was open-fronted and he went straight through to the boarding along the back. There was a gap under the broken end of a board and here he crept into the field beyond. The dog, following, thrust its head into the gap and pushed, barking with excitement. Gradually the loose board levered open like a trap-door until it was able to force its way through.
Now that he had a better start, Dandelion kept in the open and ran down the field to the hedge beside the road. He knew he was slower but the dog seemed slower too. Choosing a thick part, he went through the hedge and crossed the road. Blackberry came to meet him, scuttering down the further bank. Dandelion dropped exhausted in the ditch. The dog was not twenty feet away on the other side of the hedge. It could not find a big enough gap.
'It's faster than ever I thought,' gasped Dandelion, 'but I've taken the edge off it. I can't do any more. I must go to ground. I'm finished.'
It was plain that Blackberry was frightened.
'Frith help me!' he whispered. 'I'll never do it!'
'Go on, quick,' said Dandelion, 'before it loses interest. I'll overtake you and help if I can.'
Blackberry hopped deliberately into the road and sat up. Seeing him, the dog yelped and thrust its weight against the hedge. Blackberry ran slowly along the road towards a pair of gates that stood opposite each other further down. The dog stayed level with him. As soon as he was sure that it had seen the gate on its own side and meant to go to it, Blackberry turned and climbed the bank. Out in the stubble he waited for the dog to reappear.
It was a long time coming; and when at last it pushed its way between the gate-post and the bank into the field, it paid him no attention. It nosed along the foot of the bank, put up a partridge and bounced after it and then began to scratch about in a clump of dock-plants. For some time Blackberry felt too terrified to move. Then, in desperation, he hopped slowly towards it, trying to act as though he had not noticed that it was there. It dashed after him, but almost at once seemed to lose interest and returned to its nosing and sniffing over the ground. Finally, when he was utterly at a loss, it set off over the field of its own accord, padding easily along - beside one of the rows of threshed straw, trailing the broken cord and pouncing in and out at every squeak and rustle. Blackberry, sheltering behind a parallel row, kept level with it. In this manner they covered the distance to the pylon line, half way to the foot of the down. It was here that Dandelion caught up with him.
'It's not fast enough, Blackberry! We must get on. Bigwig may be dead.'
'I know, but at least it's going the right way. I couldn't get it to move at all to start with. Can't we -'
'It's got to come up the down at speed or there'll be no surprise. Come on, we'll draw it together. We'll have to get ahead of it first, though.'
They ran fast through the stubble until they neared the trees. Then they turned and crossed the dog's line in full view. This time it pursued instantly and the two rabbits reached the undergrowth at the bottom of the steep with no more than ten yards to spare. As they began to climb they heard the dog crashing through the brittle elders. It barked once and then they were out on the open slope with the dog running mute behind them.
The blood ran over Bigwig's neck and down his foreleg. He watched Woundwort steadily where he crouched on the earth pile, expecting him to leap forward at any moment. He could hear a rabbit moving behind him but the run was so narrow that he could not have turned even if it had been safe to do so.
'Everyone all right?' he asked.
'They're all right,' replied Holly. 'Come on, Bigwig, let me take your place now. You need a rest.'
' 'Can't,' panted Bigwig. 'You couldn't get past me here - no room - and if I go back that brute'll follow - next thing you'd know he'd be loose in the burrows. You leave it to me. I know what I'm doing.'
It had occurred to Bigwig that in the narrow run even his dead body would be a considerable obstacle. The Efrafans would either have to get it out or dig round it and this would mean more delay. In the burrow behind him he could hear Bluebell, who was apparently telling the does a story. 'Good idea,' he thought. 'Keep 'em happy. More than I could do if I had to sit there.'
'So then El-ahrairah said to the fox, "Fox you may smell and fox you may be, but I can tell your fortune in the water." '
Suddenly Woundwort spoke.
'Thlayli,' he said, 'why do you want to throw your life away? I can send one fresh rabbit after another into this run if I choose. You're too good to be killed. Come back to Efrafa. I promise I'll give you the command of any Mark you like. I give you my word.'
'Silflay hraka, u embleer rah,' replied Bigwig.
' "Ah ha," said the fox, "tell my fortune, eh? And what do you see in the water, my friend? Fat rabbits running through the grass, yes, yes?" '
'Very well,' said Woundwort. 'But remember, Thlayli, you yourself can stop this nonsense whenever you wish.'
' "No," replied El-ahrairah, "it is not fat rabbits that I see in the water, but swift hounds on the scent and my enemy flying for his life." '
Bigwig realized that Woundwort also knew that in the run his body would be nearly as great a hindrance dead as alive. 'He wants me to come out on my feet,' he thought. 'But it's Inle, not Efrafa, that I shall go to from he
re.'
Suddenly Woundwort leapt forward in a single bound and landed full against Bigwig like a branch falling from a tree. He made no attempt to use his claws. His great weight was pushing, chest to chest, against Bigwig's. With heads side by side they bit and snapped at each other's shoulders. Bigwig felt himself sliding slowly backwards. He could not resist the tremendous pressure. His back legs, with claws extended, furrowed the floor of the run as he gave ground. In a few moments he would be pushed bodily into the burrow behind. Putting his last strength into the effort to remain where he was, he loosed his teeth from Woundwort's shoulder and dropped his head, like a cart-horse straining at a load. Still he was slipping. Then, very gradually it seemed, the terrible pressure began to slacken. His claws had a hold of the ground. Woundwort, teeth sunk in his back, was snuffling and choking. Though Bigwig did not know it, his earlier blows had torn Woundwort across the nose. His nostrils were full of his own blood and with jaws closed in Bigwig's fur he could not draw his breath. A moment more and he let go his hold. Bigwig, utterly exhausted, lay where he was. After a few moments he tried to get up, but a faintness came over him and a feeling of turning over and over in a ditch of leaves. He closed his eyes. There was silence and then, quite clearly, he heard Fiver speaking in the long grass. 'You are closer to death than I. You are closer to death than I.'
'The wire!' squealed Bigwig. He jerked himself up and opened his eyes. The run was empty. General Woundwort was gone.
Woundwort clambered out into the Honeycomb, now dimly lit, down the shaft, by the daylight outside. He had never felt so tired. He saw Vervain and Thunder looking at him uncertainly. He sat on his haunches and tried to clean his face with his front paws.
'Thlayli won't give any more trouble,' he said. 'You'd better just go in and finish him off, Vervain, since he won't come out.'
'You're asking me to fight him, sir?' asked Vervain.
'Well, just take him on for a few moments,' answered Woundwort. 'I want to start them getting this wall down in one or two other places. Then I'll come back.'
Vervain knew that the impossible had happened. The General had come off worst. What he was saying was,' Cover up for me. Don't let the others know.'
'What in Frith's name happens now?' thought Vervain. 'The plain truth is that Thlayli's had the best of it all along, ever since he first met him in Efrafa. And the sooner we're back there the better.'
He met Woundwort's pale stare, hesitated a moment and then climbed on the earth pile. Woundwort limped across to the two runs, half-way down the eastern wall, which Groundsel had been told to get open. Both were now clear at the entrances and the diggers were out of sight in the tunnels. As he approached. Groundsel backed down the farther tunnel and began cleaning his claws on a projecting root.
'How are you getting on?' asked Woundwort.
'This run's open, sir,' said Groundsel,'but the other will take a bit longer, I'm afraid. It's heavily blocked.'
'One's enough,' said Woundwort, 'as long as they can come down it. We can bring them in and start getting that end wall down.'
He was about to go up the run himself when he found Vervain beside him. For a moment he thought that he was going to say that he had killed Thlayli. A second glance showed him otherwise.
'I've - er - got some grit in my eye, sir,' said Vervain. 'I'll just get it out and then I'll have another go at him.'
Without a word Woundwort went back to the far end of the Honeycomb. Vervain followed.
'You coward,' said Woundwort, in his ear. 'If my authority goes, where will yours be in half a day? Aren't you the most hated officer in Efrafa? That rabbit's got to be killed.'
Once more he climbed on the earth pile. Then he stopped. Vervain and Thistle, raising their heads to peer past him from behind, saw why. Thlayli had made his way up the run and was crouching immediately below. Blood had matted the great thatch of fur on his head and one ear, half-severed, hung down beside his face. His breathing was slow and heavy.
'You'll find it much harder to push me back from here, General,' he said.
With a sort of weary, dull surprise, Woundwort realized that he was afraid. He did not want to attack Thlayli again. He knew, with flinching certainty, that he was not up to it. And who was? he thought. Who could do it? No, they would have to get in by some other way and everyone would know why.
'Thlayli,' he said, 'we've unblocked a run out here. I can bring in enough rabbits to pull down this wall in four places. Why don't you come out?'
Thlayli's reply, when it came, was low and gasping, but perfectly clear.
'My Chief Rabbit has told me to defend this run and until he says otherwise I shall stay here.'
'His Chief Rabbit?' said Vervain, staring.
It had never occurred to Woundwort or any of his officers that Thlayli was not the Chief Rabbit of his warren. Yet what he said carried immediate conviction. He was speaking the truth. And if he was not the Chief Rabbit, then somewhere close by there must be another, stronger rabbit who was. A stronger rabbit than Thlayli. Where was he? What was he doing at this moment?
Woundwort became aware that Thistle was no longer behind him.
'Where's that young fellow gone?' he said to Vervain.
'He seems to have slipped away, sir,' answered Vervain.
'You should have stopped him,' said Woundwort. 'Fetch him back.'
But it was Groundsel who returned to him a few moments later.
'I'm sorry, sir,' he said, 'Thistle's gone up the opened run. I thought you'd sent him or I'd have asked him what he was up to. One or two of my rabbits seem to have gone with him - I don't know what for, I'm sure.'
'I'll give them what for,' said Woundwort. 'Come with me.'
He knew now what they would have to do. Every rabbit he had brought must be sent underground to dig and every blocked gap in the wall must be opened. As for Thlayli, he could simply be left where he was and the less said about him the better. There must be no more fighting in narrow runs and when the terrible Chief Rabbit finally appeared he would be pulled down in the open, from all sides.
He turned to recross the burrow, but remained where he was, staring. In the faint patch of light below the ragged hole in the roof, a rabbit was standing - no Efrafan, a rabbit unknown to the General. He was very small and was looking tensely about him - wide-eyed as a kitten above ground for the first time - as though by no means sure where he might be. As Woundwort watched, he raised a trembling fore-paw and passed it gropingly across his face. For a moment some old, flickering, here-and-gone feeling stirred in the General's memory - the smell of wet cabbage leaves in a cottage garden, the sense of some easy-going, kindly place, long forgotten and lost.
'Who the devil's that?' asked General Woundwort.
'It - it must be the rabbit that's been lying there, sir,' answered Groundsel. 'The rabbit we thought was dead.'
'Oh, is that it?' said Woundwort. 'Well, he's just about your mark, isn't he, Vervain? That's one of them you might be able to tackle, at all events. Hurry up,' he sneered, as Vervain hesitated, uncertain whether the General were serious, 'and come on out as soon as you've finished.'
Vervain advanced slowly across the floor. Even he could derive little satisfaction from the prospect of killing a tharn rabbit half his own size, in obedience to a contemptuous taunt. The small rabbit made no move whatever, either to retreat or to defend himself, but only stared at him from great eyes which, though troubled, were certainly not those of a beaten enemy or a victim. Before his gaze, Vervain stopped in uncertainty and for long moments the two faced each other in the dim light. Then, very quietly and with no trace of fear, the strange rabbit said.
'I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could.'
'Blame you?' answered Vervain. 'Blame you for what?'
'For your death. Believe me, I am sorry for your death.'
Vervain in his time had encountered any number of prisoners who, before they died, had cursed or threatened him
, not uncommonly with supernatural vengeance, much as Bigwig had cursed Woundwort in the storm. If such things had been liable to have any effect on him, he would not have been head of the Owslafa. Indeed, for almost any utterance that a rabbit in this dreadful situation could find to make, Vervain was unthinkingly ready with one or other of a stock of jeering rejoinders. Now, as he continued to meet the eyes of this unaccountable enemy - the only one he had faced in all the long night's search for bloodshed - horror came upon him and he was filled with a sudden fear of his words, gentle and inexorable as the falling of bitter snow in a land without refuge. The shadowy recesses of the strange burrow seemed full of whispering, malignant ghosts and he recognized the forgotten voices of rabbits done to death months since in the ditches of Efrafa.
'Let me alone!' cried Vervain. 'Let me go! Let me go!'
Stumbling and blundering, he found his way to the opened run and dragged himself up it. At the top he came upon Woundwort, listening to one of Groundsel's diggers, who was trembling and white-eyed.
'Oh, sir,' said the youngster,' they say there's a great Chief Rabbit bigger than a hare: and a strange animal they heard -'
'Shut up!' said Woundwort. 'Follow me, come on.'
He came out on the bank, blinking in the sunlight. The rabbits scattered about the grass stared at him in horror, several wondering whether this could really be the General. His nose and one eyelid were gashed and his whole face was masked with blood. As he limped down from the bank his near foreleg trailed and he staggered sideways. He scrambled into the open grass and looked about him.
'Now,' said Woundwort, 'this is the last thing we have to do, and it won't take long. Down below, there's a kind of wall.' He stopped, sensing all around him reluctance and fear. He looked at Ragwort, who looked away. Two other rabbits were edging off through the grass. He called them back.