He raised his talons, stepped back to give himself more room, and then lunged forward towards the mole’s eyes and snout with all his power. He missed wildly, however. When he got there, the great mole moved easily out of his path, leaving his talons stabbing at the air, while the mole laughed cruelly at him. And then grew serious.
‘What’s it feel like, Duncton mole? What’s it feel like?’ he roared.
Bracken charged again, but this time the great mole simply leaned up and backwards and Bracken could not even reach his face with his talons. He tried bringing them down on the mole’s shoulders but he simply stepped sideways, letting Bracken fall vulnerably forward, carried by the force of his own futile blow.
By now Bracken was gasping for breath, and frightened, as he looked desperately around the burrow for his adversary. The mole was now behind him, talons loose and raised, mocking him in his inability even to hit him.
Then he said, ‘Is this what you’re trying to do?’ and lunged a blow forward that caught Bracken powerfully below his shoulder and made him sound a deep grunt of pain, the sound of a mole who knows that a few more such blows will mean death.
‘Or this?’ said the mole, suddenly swinging round and kicking him so hard that for a moment it seemed that the chamber was collapsing about him as he fell back against the wall where Boswell still lay, now groaning and beginning to stir.
Bracken tried to move but couldn’t. A thousand painful weights seemed to be dragging each limb down. The great mole started towards him, talons out, and a look in his eyes such as Bracken had only once seen in anymole’s, and that was Mandrake’s as he came towards him in the Chamber of Dark Sound.
He tried to pull himself up, but even his head would not move as he wanted it to, seeming to slur to one side with a mouth that hung open and gasping with pain. The mole came nearer, the talons of one paw rising. He was saying something but there was such pain in Bracken’s head that he could not hear—only see the mouthings of accusation, and recognise the word, ‘Duncton, Duncton,’ and then, as talons rose over him, he knew with terrible certainty that he and Boswell were going to die. His head turned uselessly to look at Boswell, by the entrance, still lying where he had been thrown by the mole’s kick. Bracken tried to speak, tried to say ‘Why?’—tried to push his body back into the wall, through the wall, out of the chamber to escape the talons, the fear like a root round his throat.
But then the talons stopped, the mole’s head turned away to look at the entrance near where Boswell lay and then at something beyond it. The mole’s motion slowed to stillness and a look of surprise came on his face and his body started to turn aggressively towards the entrance when, through it, there came a snout, then a face, and then the front half of a mole; an old mole, a frail mole, a mole whose coat was wrinkled with age and whose movement was hardly movement at all.
Sound returned to Bracken’s ears.
‘So there’s another one of you!’ roared the big mole.
The old mole half smiled, he turned towards where Bracken and Boswell lay and was suddenly there between them and the big mole, crouching down and facing him.
‘Then three of you can die,’ shouted the big mole, moving suddenly forward again. How does a mole remember something impossible but which he has seen happen? He remembers it as a dream.
So it was a dream to Bracken as the great mole lunged towards them and the wrinkled old mole moved forward and away, perhaps lunging gently with one paw, and the great mole was suddenly falling backwards, wheeling round and back against the far wall of the chamber. Then the old mole was in the middle of the chamber, crouched quiet again, and the attacker coming forward with a massive lunge of both paws.
In Bracken’s dream the old mole stepped, or rather seemed to float, to one side and with the softest of flicks of one of his back paws sent the great mole shuddering into the side wall of the chamber. A dream, but a dream with sounds. For Bracken could hear the pained gasping of the great mole and the scrabbling of his paws as he tried to right himself and staggered round for a third attempt. But even as he drew himself up, the old mole, whose smile never seemed to leave his face and whose eyes stayed clear and calm, stepped forward slowly as if time had stood still especially for him, and gave the big mole the gentlest of blows with his left paw, which made him fall back into unconsciousness, as if he had been struck by some massive storm-torn oak branch.
The dream seemed to continue. As Bracken watched, still half conscious, he heard a fifth mole slowly enter the chamber on his left. He turned his throbbing head towards it, and there he saw Mullion standing open-mouthed, taking in the scene before him. Bracken could almost hear Mullion’s thoughts think themselves.
Three moles lying around the chamber walls as if swept aside by a raging storm and in the centre an old mole crouched still and peaceful, aged paws stretched harmlessly before him, snout settling down comfortably on to them.
‘Impossible!’ Mullion was thinking.
‘Oh no, it’s not,’ thought Bracken. And then, ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ as Mullion started angrily towards the old mole. But he got up, turned his snout to Mullion, seemed suddenly more powerful than anything Bracken had ever seen in his life, and without so much as flexing a talon, brought Mullion to a respectful halt.
The dream ended. To his right Bracken saw the big mole stirring and heard him groan and gasp. To his left he felt Boswell’s paw, against which he had fallen, moving as the mole from Uffington slowly came to. He felt himself stretching, aching and pained, as he righted himself back to his paws, and turned to look at the old mole again.
‘It would be a courtesy if you told me your names,’ said the old mole in a kindly, wise voice.
‘Mullion, of the Pasture system,’ said Mullion, awed and respectful.
‘Bracken of Duncton,’ said Bracken. The old mole turned to look at him, nodded gently and said nothing. He turned to the big mole at the side of the chamber, who raised his snout, shook it, and said, ‘My name is Stonecrop, also of the Pasture system.’
At this, both Bracken and Mullion started with surprise. ‘Stonecrop!’ thought Bracken. ‘Stonecrop. Brother of Cairn. Known to Rebecca. So that was why…’
‘Stonecrop!’ said Mullion delightedly, but with the old mole so much in command he did not dare move.
The old mole smiled and turned to Boswell who, instead of saying his name, got up slowly and moved out into the chamber before him.
‘My name is Boswell of Uffington,’ he said, lowering his snout respectfully to the old mole.
‘May the blessings of the Stone be with you, as they must have been to have brought you safely so far from the Holy Burrows,’ the old mole said to him. ‘And may they be with the rest of you. My name is Medlar of the North and it would be better if there were no fighting in these tunnels—not at any rate by moles such as yourselves who are prey to ignorance and fear.’ He said this severely, as a father might to a recalcitrant youngster.
Then he turned to Mullion and said gently, ‘I think you have come to learn how to fight, but I tell you, your nature is not that of a fighter but a friend. Anymole that counts you as a friend will be stronger by far than if he stood alone.’
Medlar turned to the other three and looked at each of them in turn and then said: ‘I do not know what forces have brought you here, or indeed have led me here myself. But in all my long life I have never met three moles who have more to learn about the way of fighting, or have given me the sense that they will learn as much. I hesitate to speak of this and after it will say little more on the subject. Each of us has a task and with the Stone’s grace only may he fulfil it. All moles may choose to be a fighter if they wish, though many do so who are not fitted for that way. All moles perhaps may be warriors, too, though few, too few, can find the way to it. My task is to try to show you the difference between a fighter and a warrior and it may not be what you expect.