They were at the back door now. Jim opened it and they felt the cold night air on their faces.
‘Are you sure you won’t come with us?’ Beth said, but they both shook their heads.
‘Don’t you worry about us,’ said Jim. ‘We’ll be all right. Now, off you go. Take care and good luck.’
Beth kissed them both goodbye sadly. Ivy gave Nab a quick hug and Jim grasped both his hands in his, in what Nab realized was a gesture of affection.
‘Goodbye. Thank you,’ said the boy and then resolutely they turned their backs on the little house where they had been so happy and started to run steadily and slowly up the path through the heather following Warrigal, Brock and Perryfoot. Beth did not dare look back, for if she had, she knew she would have burst into tears and it would have been impossible to leave. Jim and Ivy watched them go, their eyes misty and damp with emotion, and then when the darkness had swallowed them up they turned and went back in the house.
‘You know what to do?’ said Jim, for they had discussed this last night.
‘Yes,’ Ivy replied, and she started barricading all the doors and windows with furniture while Jim nailed battens of wood across them on the outside, both for extra strength and, more important, to make it appear obvious that the cottage had been barricaded.
At just about the same moment that Nab, Beth and the animals arrived at the top of the path and began making their way through the little valley between the hills that Jim had described, the Urkku reached the cottage. Because of what they saw, they assumed, as Jim and Ivy had intended, that the travellers were inside so they immediately surrounded it and began trying to bargain with Jim and Ivy to make them hand them over. It must have been at least half an hour before Jeff and the other leaders lost their patience and began more direct methods of persuasion. Hearing the bleats from the goat shed they first of all dragged Amy out and killed her and then, when Jim still refused to release his guests, they killed Jessie, only more slowly so that every whimper and cry of pain shot through Jim and Ivy like a red hot poker in their stomachs and tortured them with doubt and anguish.
When that proved no more successful, and another half-hour had been wasted, they began to break in through the doors and windows until finally, after yet more precious time, the Urkku, having smashed their way in and searched in every corner and cupboard in the house, realized that they had been tricked. Their anger was horrible, and cruel were the deaths they inflicted on the old couple and yet, even as they died, their faces were fixed with such an expression of confidence and contentment that those who killed them, and all those who witnessed their deaths, were frightened deep within at the force that could inspire such strength.
The hounds by now had picked up the scent at the back of the house and were straining at their leashes to get away up the path, barking and yelping in a bedlam of noise. Many of the Urkku, having looted the house for anything of value, were now packing hay from one of the outbuildings around the outside walls and inside in the kitchen. Then coals from the fire, still red-hot from last night, were gathered in a bucket and scattered over the hay, which flared up immediately into high crackling flames that danced and flickered against the walls in the early dawn. Soon the flames were leaping over the roof and, by the time the column of Urkku, led by the hounds, was halfway up the back slope, the little house had been almost completely consumed by the fire.
CHAPTER XXI
By dusk that day the animals found themselves standing at the foot of the mound on top of which the strange rocks of Rengoll’s Tor loomed large and mysterious; casting strange shadows on the ground around them as the sun, yellow, weak and watery in a cold autumn sky, started to go down behind the mountains. The earth and the heather all around them smelt damp and mist hung in the air so that the sounds of barking which had been behind them all day now seemed muffled and remote. Nab and Beth had thought of the old couple as they jogged steadily along the track towards the Tor which Jim had described, and a terrible sense of foreboding had come upon them once or twice as they travelled but it had quickly been pushed aside; the thought of anything happening to them had been too awful to contemplate. Once, as the path took them on to the top of a small ridge, Beth had even believed that she could smell smoke on the wind but she immediately put it down to imagination or the fires in the distant lowlands.
They had no idea how far behind them the Urkku were. Soon after dawn they had seen them coming through the little valley between the two hills at the top of the slope but they had not seen them since; nor had they been seen for the cover was good and the path had run for much of the way alongside a little mountain brook which cut its way deep into the earth leaving banks of rich dark peat on either side through which the tangled roots of the heather stuck out and in which cotton grass grew.
They had stopped for a very short break around Sun-High and eaten Ivy’s packed lunch, which had tasted delicious and made them feel as if they could go on running for ever. Now, however, Beth felt tired again; she had not really recovered fully from her exhausted state, and the fact that she was soaked to the skin again because of the damp mist made her feel worse. At her side Brock suddenly gave a frantic shake in an attempt to get rid of the large droplets of water which the mist had deposited all over his coat. They were staring at the huge rocks and wondering, now they were here, how they would go about finding the mountain-elves when suddenly they heard a sound from way above them. It was a high plaintive tune, the notes of which floated down to them on the wind almost as if it was being played by the breeze itself.
‘Look,’ said Perryfoot, and they all saw on top of one of the rocks a little elven figure sitting cross-legged and playing a reed pipe.
‘Jim was right,’ said Beth. When the elf saw that they had seen him he stopped playing, stood up and waved at them, beckoning them towards him up the mound. Quickly they clambered up the slope and met the elf at the base of one of the rocks which towered over them, completely blotting out the sun.
‘I am Morar,’ said the elf. ‘There is no time to lose; follow me,’ and he began to climb back up over the rocks, leaping nimbly from boulder to boulder, while the others did their best to follow, groping for footholds and grabbing on to pieces of lichen and moss as they made their way up these enormous pieces of granite which leant against one another as if they had been thrown down by some giant and so precariously that the animals felt they were liable to collapse at any moment and did not dare to look down.
Suddenly they were at the top, bathed in a pale yellow light as the sun tried to shine through the mist, and Morar was urging them to descend down into a dark gaping opening in the rocks. Beth climbed in first and helped Brock and Perryfoot down. Warrigal and Nab were about to follow when the mist suddenly cleared for an instant and to their horror they heard a chorus of shouts from behind them which rose swiftly in a crescendo of triumph. Looking round they saw the column of Urkku not far from the base of the mound, pointing at them and yelling excitedly at one another.
‘There they are. We’ve got them. They’ll not get away this time.’ Nab felt his stomach turn to ice. He had a vision of a sea of howling faces, mean, pinched and dirty with empty narrow eyes and slavering mouths which dripped hatred like blood, and then he felt Morar push him and he half-slid and half-clambered down into the dark space under the rocks where the others were waiting. It was blessedly quiet in here and he felt his heart thumping.