Sam’s voice was low and unsteady as he spoke and the others edged closer to catch what he was saying.
‘They came soon after you’d gone,’ he said. ‘First with the guns; hundreds of them, killing everything that moved. It was terrible; the cries of the wounded as they tried to escape, and the noise; hundreds of explosions, deafening until I couldn’t think. Everywhere there was terror, panic, blood, the smell of death, the smell of their guns. No one could escape; they were all around the wood; beaters at one end and guns at the other. Rabbits with their legs blown off twitching, bleeding into the snow, pheasants thudding down like rain. The smell of blood.’ He stopped, unable to continue – the nightmare was more than he could recount. Finally, after a silence which no one broke, he went on.
‘Then when the guns had gone they came with the long white tube; round all the holes, earths, setts, warrens. And the silence that hung over everything was broken only by the muffled cries and thumpings underground. Finally they came with the machines and began to tear up the wood. All day, clanking, grinding and banging and shouting. I got out of your bush just before they dragged it away, Nab; it’s over there somewhere amongst that heap.’
There was another silence and then Brock said quietly, ‘Tara?’
Sam looked up for the first time and the misery in his deep brown eyes told Brock the worst. He turned away slowly and walked off into the field. Nab followed him and they both walked until they got to the fence at the far side, when they stopped and began to walk back. There was nothing to say; grief burned in both of them, and the shock of the final loss which death brings held them in a state of trance. As if in a dream they walked unbelievingly up and down the field trying to grasp the fact that she had gone and that they would never see her again. Pictures of her flashed into their minds but when they tried to focus on one and keep it there it began to fade away. Memories flooded back; for Brock the early days, setting up home, having the cubs, life with Bruin, the way she would scold him after one of his escapades, the warmth of the love in her eyes. And then the arrival of Nab, the excitements and anticipation of those first days; the joy in her face when she suckled him, the laying out of the fresh beds of meadowsweet that first night. Nab thought of winter evenings with her in the sett when he was young, snuggled warm into her deep soft fur, and summer evenings when they would sit together outside the sett under the Great Beech and talk while the pigeons cooed and Brock was out foraging. Then, when he was older, the warmth and understanding of pure love which was always there whenever he was worried or had a problem. Now she was gone and it was as if the sun had gone for ever and there would be no more summers. He thought he had got used to coping with sudden and violent death after losing Rufus and Bruin but, he realized now, it was impossible to ever get used to that sickening sense of absolute loss that burns through every part of the body at the death of someone you love. Tears misted his eyes as he tried to focus on the ground while they walked together, he and Brock, up and down the field. They would never see her again; the thought churned itself around in their minds, over and over until it became a mere form of words, and then suddenly the sense of loss would surge back to hit them physically in the stomach and a wave of grief would once again engulf them, forcing burning tears down Nab’s face and sending him once more into sobbing convulsions of despair which hurt his throat and turned his stomach sour.
They walked like that for a long time while the others watched them, miserable and lost, from the mess that had been the wood. Finally when the sense of unreality and the shock of death had given way to anger, the boy and the badger came slowly back to join their friends. Gone now from their eyes was despair and in its place the others could see a towering rage. Hatred emanated from them like heat from a fire; hatred for the obscenity of what had been done to their home and hatred for the revolting death of Tara. Brock was unable to go down and see her for when he put his nose into the entrance the gases flung him back coughing and choking; and this was the final indignity, that she should be down there twisted and broken and alone. He imagined her lying amongst the meadowsweet, strewn around in panic as she fought for breath, with her lips drawn back against her teeth in that hideous half-smile, half-snarl that is the mark of death by poison. At that moment the words of Wychnor came back to him, ‘. and Dréagg planted the seed of cruelty deep within the Urkku so that they were cruel in their ways towards the animals, for Man had been made as an instrument of revenge.’ Nab also thought of these words and they were a help in that at least now they knew the reason for their suffering.
They stood by the stump of the Great Beech for a long time, huddled together in the cold, lost in misery and not knowing what to do. Then they heard a noise in the field and looking up saw an animal moving slowly towards them in the moonlight. It was Perryfoot. As he got closer they could see that he, like Sam, had been wounded. He dragged his back leg behind him leaving a trail of red in the snow and movement appeared to be painful. But they were immensely pleased and relieved to see him, as he was to see them.
‘You’ve been a long time,’ he said, and they smiled ruefully at him and the fact that even at this, their most desperate hour, he could produce some spark of his old self, filled them with new hope. Then he saw Beth standing behind them looking at him with gentleness in her eyes and he recognized her as the little girl before whom he had performed that spring day with Brock and Nab. Warrigal then attempted to explain to both Sam and Perryfoot that the Elflord had told them that she was a part of their mission and would be with them on a long journey they were all to go on.
‘There is much to explain to you,' he said, ‘but we shall tell you later. Suffice it to say that she is not of the Urkku but of the Eldron and that therefore she is a friend.’
Beth did not know what they were saying but guessed that they were talking about her from the way that the dog and the hare, which she thought she recognized from somewhere, were both looking at her as the owl seemed to be talking to them. She went forward and, kneeling down, began to stroke Sam’s head with one hand and Perryfoot’s with the other. At first they were tense and wary but soon, as she continued to stroke them and talk to them gently, they gained confidence in her and relaxed. She looked at their wounds; they really needed a good wash before she would be able to tell how bad they were. She did not know what their plans were nor whether this awful destruction of their homes had changed them but if they were staying she could perhaps find a little stream.
While these thoughts were going through her head she suddenly became aware of a dark shadow swooping down out of the sky and, looking up, saw another brown owl landing on the stump of the tree and starting to speak to them.
The animals were relieved to see Wythen still alive. He explained to them as best he could what had happened since they had left but even he, who was normally so dispassionate and objective, found it hard at times to relate the atrocities he had witnessed and he had to stop frequently and swallow hard before carrying on. He told them how Sam had been shot charging at the Urkku who were putting the long tube down the sett and how even though he was wounded he had got one of them on the ground before the other one knocked him out and left him for dead; that was what had caused the gash on his head.
The owl then recounted how Perryfoot, to try and draw the attention of some of the Urkku with guns away from the wood, had brushed up against their legs and then run slowly out into the field, so that they followed him. He had led them right to the pond, running in a zigzag so that they were unable to get a good shot at him, but then an Urkku had suddenly appeared in front so that he had momentarily stopped. That had been enough and he had been shot in the back leg; he had then crawled away and taken cover in the hedge and the Urkku had been so afraid of missing good sport back at the wood that they had not bothered to look for him.