It was suddenly Boswell who was leading them, for he seemed to have the power to fight the weakness this terrible place put into a mole.
‘Listen!’ he said urgently. ‘We will run across to the area between the two paths…’
‘But if they see us,’ faltered Mullion, looking up just a little at the owl gazes about them.
‘They mustn’t, and you mustn’t let them. Wait until I start and then follow, and do not look towards them, however near they may seem.’
Boswell waited for another lull and then was suddenly off through the grass and on to a hard, wide path that smelt of death. In the distance an owl’s gaze shone up into the sky, round across the marshes behind them and then along the path towards them, casting their three shadows before it. ‘Run!’ gasped Boswell, hobbling across the road as fast as he could, the road so wide, the danger getting so near. ‘Run!’ The path stretched hard and black ahead of them as the roaring owl grew nearer, its noise shaking the air about them and its gaze bright and moving on their fur.
Fast as they ran, the roaring owl seemed to fly faster towards them, getting bigger as the edge of the path they could now just see ahead of them seemed to retreat. Each pawstep forward seemed to take a lifetime, each second made the owl bigger and nearer, its eyes brighter as they tried to reach the centre, as Boswell trailed behind the other two.
‘Run!’ It was Bracken’s voice shouting out over the owl noise, urging Boswell on to the safety of the central edge. And he was almost there, his paws almost amongst the sparse vegetation that scraped a living there, when the roaring owl loomed mightily above him and roared past, the wind from its wings so powerful that he was bowled several moleyards along the road.
In the silence that followed, Bracken and Mullion watching in dread, Boswell turned back on his paws, shook himself, and ran at last to join them. ‘Running’s not my strong point,’ he said, and Bracken shook his head in disbelief that a mole could make a joke of nearly dying. There was more to Boswell than met the eye.
The central strip between the paths offered them some cover, though the creatures still flew close by in each direction, and every time they did so, the world seemed to be replaced for a few moments by hell itself.
It was Boswell, once again, who urged them on, running out into the darkness of a lull once more, the others following.
None of them knew quite what happened next. However it was, Mullion forgot himself when he was halfway across and looked up at another approaching owl, its eyes catching his in a transfixion of horror. He stopped and turned towards it, and it was only when the other two were across and looked back that they realised what had happened. There Mullion crouched, snout towards the approaching owl, quite still and waiting for death. It was Bracken who gasped, but Boswell who acted. He darted out into the path again, hobbled over to Mullion as fast as he could and went between him and the roaring owl. Bracken could not hear what he said but he saw him shouting, saw him cuff Mullion and saw Mullion shake himself as if awakening, and then Mullion turned and ran towards him to safety.
But then something worse followed, the sight of which Bracken would never forget. As Boswell stood poised to follow Mullion, lit up by the owl’s gaze, there was the sudden ghostly shadow of a ragged translucent white in the sky as from it there dropped, at terrible speed, a tawny owl, its feathers caught in the glare and its talons heading straight for Boswell. The roaring-owl noise got louder and louder, the tawny owl fluttered for a moment above Boswell, its wings shining and shadowy with light, and then down the last few moleyards on to Boswell. There was a squeal, a fluttering of wings as the owl started to rise again, with Boswell as its limp prey. But beyond it, on the far path, a roaring owl passed by and the wind from its wings seemed to beat the tawny owl back down towards the ground, straight into the murderous path of the one that had caught Mullion in its gaze. There was a rush and a thump, a squeal, and a flying of feathers and the roaring owl passed by, taking with it the tawny owl and Boswell. Silence. Nothing. Bracken stared at the path in disbelief. He looked at Mullion, who looked despairingly at him and then into the path again.
‘It even eats its own kind,’ whispered Mullion.
‘But…’ began Bracken, utterly shocked by what had happened. Another roaring owl passed. Silence again. Boswell had gone.
They retreated into the cover of the grass on their side of the path.
‘We had better get out of here,’ said Mullion matter-of-factly. ‘Which way did he want us to go?’
‘To the west,’ said a voice from the darkness behind them. It was Boswell! He was covered with blood. ‘Not going without me, are you?’
Bracken ran back to him, reaching forward before Boswell collapsed from his injuries.
‘It’s owl’s blood, not mine,’ said Boswell. ‘He got killed when the roaring owl went over him, but I didn’t. It went over me, too, but by the Stone’s grace his talons missed me. Now. Shall we get going? Again.’ Even his normal calm sounded just a little shaky.
They followed him down the path under cover of the grass that grew there, so shocked by what had nearly happened that the proximity of other roaring owls going by no longer disturbed them. They hid each time a yellow gaze lit up the path and grass near them, then went on again, until the night grew deep and the roaring owls came less often.
Until at last they came to a part where the path gave way to gravel and then a wall, creeping along its edge, round its far corner, and then blissfully away from the path and down an embankment again, this one drier and less steep. As they went down, they moved into a beautiful darkness, the sounds of the owls now high above them, and never had Bracken appreciated more the stillness of his own world.
Boswell insisted on leading them on along the edge of a field—to get them away from the owl paths as quickly as possible—until there was no more than a distant occasional roar, and they were back in the elements of earth and silence and rustling that they knew. A quick, tired digging of temporary burrows, a snouting out of a couple of worms each, and then tumbling head over heels and falling down a dreamland embankment of moss and soft grass into the sleep of the tired and safe.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They stayed for several weeks near the field to which Boswell had led them. Not only were they all tired and in need of rest and food to regain their strength, but February was just starting and with it the worst of the winter. The thaw was soon followed by more snow, which gave way to freezing rain that finally slunk into miserable cold days when the nights dragged on and on and the days were so gloomy they barely got started before they were finished.
Mullion, being a Pasture mole and used to open ground, stayed out in the field, quickly taking the opportunity of the thaw to create a simple but extensive system deep enough underground to avoid the frost, which, when it came again, drove worms and grubs down into his tunnels. His lines of freshly dug molehills began to poke out of the snow for a wide area over the field.
Bracken hunted around along the edge of the field until he found a small copse just beyond the fence furthest from where they had first come, where he created a more complex Duncton Wood-style of system, with subtly connecting tunnels and secret entrances concealed by long grass or leaf mould.