The worst happened. One of the younger cocks, thinking that he saw a chance to defy Sterndale’s leadership and prove himself, took off straight ahead towards the guns. The young hens, who were already terrified, suddenly panicked and, seeing their cock flying off, followed him. Only Sterndale and the other veterans and three or four of the less flighty new hens kept their nerve and stayed where they were. The old pheasant, feeling sick to his stomach, waited an agonizing few seconds and then suddenly the wood erupted into a hideous bedlam of explosions as the Urkku blasted away and the birds plummeted to earth, to land with a series of sickening thuds on the snow. The air was full of the squawks and cries of pain and fear as the injured birds struggled desperately to get away into the undergrowth, leaving vivid trails of crimson over the snow. The cracks of the guns had stopped now and the Urkku were shouting and laughing with joy at the size of their kill. Sterndale and the others, crouching fearfully in the rhododendrons, could hear the loud crashing of the dogs as they ran after the injured or collected the dead to take them back to their masters. Suddenly Sterndale saw a great golden shape bound past a few paces away with a grim look on his face. He stopped and turned and ran back the way he had come. ‘Sam, ’ croaked Sterndale, as quietly as he could, and the dog halted, looked round and then, spotting the pheasant, walked quietly towards him. ‘A slaughter,' growled the dog, ‘a massacre. What went wrong?’
‘Inexperience and panic, Sam, but you had better go back or your human will be leaving you without food tonight or, worse still, he might even get rid of you. You must keep in his favour; we need your information desperately. Look, there’s a young hen, she’s stone dead, pick her up and take her back quickly.’
The dog went off and picked up the dead pheasant. With a last sad look at Sterndale he ran back through the bushes and as he went Sterndale could see the limp head of the pheasant bouncing stupidly against the side of Sam’s mouth. He looked away in anger.
At the front of the wood Brock had watched the proceedings in horror. He could see the Urkku near him very clearly; he had seen the man pull the trigger, had been deafened by the explosions and felt sickened as he heard the sound all around him of falling birds. The last horror was when the man had spotted an injured pheasant, a young cock, dragging its wing along the ground and scurrying to get into the bushes near Sam. The man had laughed gleefully and run after it, to the great delight and amusement of his friends, who had jeered and shouted at him as he waddled clumsily through the snow crying to catch the terrified bird. Eventually he caught it and, after bolding it up in triumph, had wrung its neck.
After this episode they had all proceeded to walk into the wood, still in their line, and Brock had had great difficulty in stopping himself from running out and attacking the man as he moved within paces of the sett. Slowly they had gone through the wood, passing the spot where Sterndale and the others were still hiding, and jumping over the brook to get to the other side. With every shot that came to him over the snow Brock felt a surge of pain and anger as he imagined the horror and hurt that some animal was going through. Time and again, the question ‘Why?’ echoed through his mind.
There were not too many more deaths that day. Three young and inexperienced rabbits, a buck and two does, had escaped Pictor’s control and ventured out to see what was happening; no sooner had they come out of their burrow than a hail of lead cut into them, leaving the two does dead and the buck writhing on the snow with his back legs in tatters. He had pulled himself with his front paws into the cover of the bushes, where Pictor had found him later, still dying, after the Urkku had left. He had suffered horribly for a night and mercifully died the following dawn.
The other losses were five woodpigeons and a hare which had been startled as the Urkku were making their way back through the field. Eventually they had gone, leaving the wood raped and violated after their crude invasion. For days it was impossible for the animals to forget about it; the smells lingered on and the air seemed full of death: one would come across trampled undergrowth or traces of the Urkku such as red cartridge cases still smelling of gunpowder or pieces of paper or the remains of the white sticks they used in their mouths. Sometimes there were the scattered feathers of a bird that had been shot or tufts of brown fur from a rabbit; mute testaments to the sufferings of their owners. The animals were frightened and nervous; they skulked in the shadows and ran to their burrows or flew off at the slightest noise.
As the line walked back over the field in the watery afternoon sun, Brock’s mind went to the baby Urkku in the sett behind him; it was hard to believe that he was of the same race. He went back down the passage, sad and weary, to find the baby crying frantically and waving his arms in the air.
‘It was the noise,’ Tara said. ‘I couldn’t keep him quiet. Could you hear him?’
‘No,’ replied Brock quietly. ‘No, I couldn’t hear him.’
‘Was it bad?’ Tara said, getting up and coming towards him. She rubbed her nose against his and then pushed the side of her head against his neck, trying to comfort him.
‘Yes,’ Brock murmured, ‘it always is; it seems to get worse. And what can we do? Nothing, Tara, absolutely nothing.’ He lay down on the earth floor with his back curled against the wall and went to sleep. Tara watched him tossing fitfully for a while and then she went back to the baby which was quieter now the Urkku had gone. Soon there was silence again.
Outside the sky had clouded over and it had become warm. In the late afternoon the rain began to fall and on the white snow the crimson streak left by the young cock slowly spread until finally it disappeared with the last of the snow.
CHAPTER VI
The seasons changed and the baby grew into a young boy. They called him ‘Nab’ which, in the language of the Old Ones, means ‘friend’, and he became as one of the animals of the wood. He understood instinctively the joys and sorrows, the sadness and the beauty of each season: the two seasons of stillness; cruel winter, a time of survival when the weak fell and the strong grew weak as the icy winds scythed through the wood, and friendly summer, a lazy time of plenty: a time of drowsy afternoon sleeps in the fragrant green shade under the bracken. Linking winter and summer and leading each gradually into the other were the two seasons of change – spring, with its atmosphere of excitement and anticipation, full of the magic of birth when the trees showed their delicate new buds and the earth covered itself with the glory of flowers – carpets of blue and yellow and pink and white on the woodland floor; and autumn, perhaps, if it were possible to choose, Nab’s favourite time when the wood turned to gold and the air was full of falling leaves and there was a constant smell of woodsmoke and the dankness of rotting vegetation; and above all a feeling of intense and beautiful sadness so exquisite that it made Nab’s heart ache as he watched the brown leaves drifting slowly in the wind down to the floor.
When he reached the age of three Brock and Tara built him a home in the rhododendron bush to the left of the Great Beech as he had grown too big for the sett. The layers of shiny leaves formed a large waterproof canopy over the large round open area inside the bush and when they had cleared some of the branches which ran through the middle there was plenty of space for the boy. Above all, it was well hidden: the branches and leaves were so thick that it was impossible to see through them from the outside although there were a number of places on the inside from which Nab could see out. The entrance to his home was at the back of the bush and it was only possible to crawl through it.