Grimma was glaring at him.
He shrugged.' 'All right, all right, so they can come with us,' he said.
'You know they won't go,' she said. 'They're too old. They all grew up round here. They like it here.' 'They like it here when there's us around to wait on them,' muttered Masklin.
They left it at that. There were nuts for dinner. Masklin's had a maggot in it.
He went out afterwards and sat at the top of the bank with his chin in his hands, watching the motorway again.
It was a stream of red and white lights. There were humans inside those boxes, going about whatever mysterious business humans spent their time on. They were always in a hurry to get to it, whatever it was.
He was prepared to bet they didn't eat rat. Humans had it really easy. They were big and slow, but they didn't have to live in damp burrows waiting for daft old women to let the fire go out. They never had maggots in their tea. They went wherever they wanted and they did whatever they liked. The whole world belonged to them.
And all night long they drove up and down in these little lorries with lights on. Didn't they ever go to sleep? There must be hundreds of them.
He'd dreamt of leaving on a lorry. They often stopped at the cafe. It would be easy.- well, fairly easy -to find a way on to one. They were clean and shiny, they had to go somewhere better than this. And after all, what was the alternative? They'd never see winter through; here, and setting out across the fields with the bad weather coming on didn't bear thinking about.
Of course, he'd never do it. You never actually did it, in the end. You just dreamed about following those swishing lights.
And above the rushing lights, the stars. Torrit said the stars were very important. Right at the moment, Masklin didn't agree. You couldn't eat them. They weren't even much good for seeing by. The stars were pretty useless, when you thought about it...
Somebody screamed.
Masklin's body got to his feet almost before his mind had even thought about it, and sped silently through the scrubby bushes towards the burrow.
Where, its head entirely underground and its brush waving excitedly at the stars, was a dog fox. He recognized it. He'd had a couple of close shaves with it in the past.
Somewhere inside Masklin's head, the bit of him that was really him - old Torrit had a lot to say about this bit was horrified to see him snatch up his spear, which was still in the ground where he had plunged it, and stab the fox as hard as he could in a hind leg.
There was a muffled yelp and the animal struggled backwards, turning an evil, foaming mask to its tormentor. Two bright yellow eyes focused on Masklin, who leaned panting on his spear. This was one of those times when time itself slowed down and everything was suddenly more real. Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance...
There were flecks of blood around the creature's muzzle.
Masklin felt himself become angry. It welled up inside him, like a huge bubble He didn't-have much, and this grinning thing was taking even that away from him.
As the red tongue lolled out, he knew that he had two choices. He could run, or he could die. So he attacked instead. The spear soared from his hand like a bird, catching the fox in the lip. It screamed and pawed at the wound, and Masklin was running, running across the dirt, propelled by the engine of his anger, and then jumping and grabbing handfuls of rank red fur and hauling himself up the fox's flank to land astride its neck and drawing his stone knife and stabbing, stabbing, at everything that was wrong with the world...
The fox screamed again and leapt away. If he was capable of thinking then Masklin would have known that his knife wasn't doing much more than annoying the creature, but it wasn't used to meals fighting back with such fury and its only thought now was to get away. It breasted the embankment and rushed headlong down it, towards the lights of the motorway.
Masklin started to think again. The rushing of the traffic filled his ears. He let go and threw himself into the long grass as the creature galloped out on to the asphalt.
He landed heavily and rolled over, all the breath knocked out of him.
But he remembered what happened next. It stayed in his memory for a long time, long after he'd seen so many strange things that there really should have been no room for it.
The fox, as still as a statue in a headlight's beam, snarled its defiance as it tried to outstare ten tons of metal hurtling towards it at seventy miles an hour.
There was a bump, a swish, and darkness.
Masklin lay face down in the cool moss for a long time. Then, dreading what he was about to see, trying not to imagine it, he pulled himself to his feet and plodded back towards whatever was left of his home.
Grimma was waiting at the burrow's mouth, holding a twig like a club. She spun round and nearly brained Masklin as he staggered out of the darkness and leaned against the bank. He stuck out a weary hand and pushed the stick aside.
'We didn't know where you'd gone,' she said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. 'We just heard the noise and there it was you should have been here and it got Mr Mert and Mrs Coom and it was digging at the-' She stopped, and seemed to sag.
'Yes, thank you,' said Masklin coldly, 'I'm all right, thank you very much.' 'What what happened?' He ignored her, and trooped into the darkness of the burrow and lay down. He could hear the old ones whispering as he sank into a deep, chilly sleep.
I should have been here, he thought.
They depend on me.
We're going. All of us.
It had seemed a good idea, then.
It looked a bit different, now.
Now the nomes clustered at one end of the great dark space inside the lorry. They were silent. There wasn't any room to be noisy. The roar of the engine filled the air from edge to edge. Sometimes it would falter, and start again. Occasionally the whole lorry lurched.
Grimma crawled across the trembling floor.
'How long is it going to take to get there?' she said.
'Where?' said Masklin.
'Wherever we're going.' 'I don't know.' 'They're hungry, you see.' They always were. Masklin looked hopelessly at the huddle of old ones. One or two of them were watching him expectantly.
'There isn't anything I can do,' he said. 'I'm hungry too, but there's nothing here. It's empty.' 'Granny Morkie gets very upset when she's missed a meal,' said Grimma.
Masklin gave her a long, blank stare. Then he crawled his way to the group and sat down between Torrit and the old woman.
He'd never really talked to them, he realized. When he was small they were giants who were no concern of his, and then he'd been a hunter among hunters, and this year he'd either been out looking for food or deep in an exhausted sleep. But he knew why Torrit was the leader of the tribe. It stood to reason, he was the oldest nome. The oldest was always leader, that way there couldn't be any arguments. Not the oldest woman, of course, because everyone knew this was unthinkable; even Granny Morkie was quite firm about that. Which was a bit odd, because she treated him like an idiot and Torrit never made a decision without looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Masklin sighed. He stared at his knees.
'Look, I don't know how long-' he began.
'Don't you worry about me, boy,' said Granny Morkie, who seemed to have quite recovered. 'This is all rather excitin', ain't it?' 'But it might take ages,' said Masklin, 'I didn't know it was going to take this long. It was just a mad idea...' She poked him with a bony finger. 'Young man,' she said, 'I was alive in the Great Winter of 1986. Terrible, that was. You can't tell me anything about going hungry. Grimma's a good girl, but she worries.' 'But I don't even know where we're going!' Masklin burst out. 'I'm sorry!' Torrit, who was sitting with the Thing on his skinny knees, peered shortsightedly at him.