With that he wished them all good luck for tomorrow and, as the moon began to sink in the night sky, all the animals of the wood made their way thoughtfully back to their various holes and setts and roosts, where they pondered over the strange story they had heard.
Mystery was in the air and there was not one of them who, beneath his overriding fear of the Killing tomorrow, did not feel a little thrill of anticipation as he settled down for what remained of the night.
CHAPTER V
The next day dawned bright and clear and cold; the sun shone down from a blue sky, cloudless except for a few wisps of white that drifted purposefully across. Already drips of thawing snow could be heard all over the wood and the icy crust that had formed on the surface began to give way to a mushy layer of large wet crystals which sank as they were trodden on.
Brock was suddenly woken by the persistent hooting of an owl. He looked across at Tara and the baby; she had been fast asleep when he came in from the meeting last night and he had not told her the good news that the Council had agreed that they could keep the Urkku in the wood – at least until he began to grow into an adult. She was awake now and, when he told her, she was both pleased and relieved. ‘It’s odd,’ she said softly so as not to waken the baby, ‘in only one day and night I’ve grown really fond of him and I think he trusts me and feels comfortable with me. I was dreadfully worried that the Council might take him away.’
‘Listen,’ said Brock, ‘do you hear it; Warrigal’s warning? He’s by the pond; we arranged that he would roost there and hoot loudly when he saw the Urkku coming. You must stay down here of course when they’re in the wood and keep the baby quiet. Although there’s very little chance of their hearing him crying from above we must not take the risk.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Tara.
‘I’m going up to the surface to see what happens. Don’t worry; I’ll stay in the passage and just poke my nose out as far as I need to be able to watch. I’m anxious to see what comes of the plans the Council arranged last night. Besides, Bruin is too old to be up during the day now – he needs his sleep – and he asked me to report to him.’
When Brock reached the top he cautiously put the black tip of his nose out and looked to left and right before proceeding, a pace at a time, until he could see almost the whole of the field at the front. All around him, in the wood, hundreds of rabbits were running in from their morning feed and vanishing into their holes. He could see Pictor in the field shouting at them to get a move on, hopping after them and herding them in like a sheepdog until he himself finally vanished down his hole in the centre of the rhododendron bush to the left of the Great Beech. He could also make out in the distance a number of hares running off over the fields, although he couldn’t tell whether Perryfoot was among them. If only they could keep their ears down when they ran, Brock thought, they would be so much more difficult to spot. Still they were far enough away from the Urkku not to be fired at and there were no mishaps.
He could see the Urkku approaching over the field. It was a frightening sight. There seemed to be very many of them and they were stretched in a single straight line right across the field. Slowly they walked towards Silver Wood with their death sticks pointing outwards and downwards from their bodies. There was a hum of conversation from the line which broke the stillness of the morning and shattered the peace. Brock could smell the unmistakable pungent smell of Urkku and the other smell which often came from them: a cloying smoky smell which rasped in his nose and stuck in his throat so that he found it hard to breathe. These smells lingered in the wood where the Urkku had been, sometimes for a whole day and night, tainting the air and serving as an awful reminder of the death and suffering they had caused, for it was extremely rare that Urkku came into Silver Wood except to kill.
When the line got to the very edge of the wood it stopped and an Urkku at one end gave a great shout; suddenly the air was full of a cacophony of strange whistles, shouts, guttural calls and the sound of the undergrowth being thrashed. This noise came from behind Brock, at the back of the wood, and slowly began to come nearer. These were the beaters.
Brock waited, his heart pounding. He could see very close to him one of the Urkku standing with his legs apart and the death stick raised against his shoulder ready to kill anything that flew out; his body was round and fat so that Brock could see, where the overjacket was open, a great roll of flesh hanging over the belt in the middle of the man’s stomach; the face was a purply-red colour and had loose jowls of skin hanging down around the neck.
Sterndale had gathered his pheasants together in the innermost part of the wood where the rhododendrons and undergrowth were so thick that the beaters were unable to get through. They had been there since before dawn and he had been talking to them in his low murmuring cackle, telling them to stay on the ground, keep their heads down and their tails low and above all not to move, no matter how close the beaters came. If they stayed where they were then they would be safe, but if they lost their nerve and flew up they would be as good as dead. Some of the pheasants were last year’s brood and there were a number of veterans of two or even three seasons; these experienced ones knew the routine and were fairly easy to handle. It was the current year’s brood that were always difficult; they had been bom and reared by the Urkku and kept in cages until they were old enough; then they had been let out into the fields and woods around the Urkku dwelling and fed with com twice a day by hand. They had therefore got used to trusting the Urkku and expecting only food and protection from them; they were far more likely to go towards the beaters than away from them and were totally unable to comprehend the fact that if they flew up and were seen they would be shot at and injured or killed. Sterndale had had to have many long and frightening talks with them but it was really only when one of the arrogant young cocks who had consistently accused Sterndale of being old-fashioned and out of touch had come limping back one day with half his chest blown away by the very same Urkku who had some short time previously been throwing down com for him, that they had begun to comprehend. The difficulty was that Sterndale couldn’t explain, because he himself couldn’t understand, why the Urkku went to such enormous trouble to protect them from poison or shooting by any of their natural enemies and then later, when they were fully grown, would organize themselves into groups and purposely try to slaughter as many as they could. In one of his talks with Wythen, the owl had told him that the Urkku were a race of creatures which enjoyed killing and that they protected the pheasants only so that they themselves could have the pleasure of killing them later on, but for a long time Sterndale had been unable to believe that.
The beaters were now coming closer. The cacophony of hoots, whistles and shouts drew slowly nearer and the thrashing of the undergrowth sounded deafening. This was the most difficult part; trying to keep his flock from panicking. He could see some of them now shifting about nervously from foot to foot and in their eyes he recognized the unmistakable glazed look of fear.
‘Don’t move, ’ he cackled as loud as he dared, but his command was lost in the din as the Urkku came nearer until the noise seemed to blot out everything and the undergrowth all around seemed to come alive. Sterndale felt his heart pounding and the blood rushing in his ears as he closed his eyes and with an enormous effort forced himself to blot out the sound and concentrate on rooting his feet to the ground and conquering all the natural instincts which urged him to fly away.