Thunder oak, p.6
Thunder Oak, page 6
Chapter Seven
‘I have in here,’ said Wodehed, the magician, ‘a small needle which should assist us in finding the way.’
‘A needle?’ scoffed Luke. ‘What do you expect to do with that?’
Wodehed looked haughty. ‘I am about to tell you, if you will be so patient as to wait. This needle has been magnetized by me. You can do that to certain metal – that is, metal with iron, cobalt or nickel in it – and it turns the needle itself into a magnet.’
‘So far, so good,’ growled the sceptical Luke. ‘We have a long magnet with a sharp point. What do we do with this object?’
Wodehed took out a thread of cotton from his pouch and tied it to the centre of the needle. ‘We turn it into a pointer,’ he said, dangling the needle from the thread. ‘You see how it spins? It’s lining itself up with the lodestone mountains of the north. Once it settles we’ll know which way north is and be able to work out the direction of the Yellow Mountains, which as you all know are to the east of Welkin.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Sylver.
‘Thank you,’ replied Wodehed modestly. ‘I didn’t invent it, of course – I merely discovered it.’
Luke snorted in a jealous fashion. As the two learned members of the band they were often in competition with one another. Their rivalry was brisk.
‘So much for the direction, but how do you think we’re going to be able to see a needle in pitch blackness?’ said Luke. ‘If we take flaming torches down there we’ll suffocate on the smoke.’
‘I think you’ll find,’ said Wodehed in a superior tone, ‘that it will not always be pitch black down in the tunnels. There will be times when we shall get close to the surface – where those mounds appear, for instance – and we will be so used to the darkness by that time we’ll be able to see the needle in the light which filters down through the loosened soil.’
‘You hope,’ said the huffy Luke.
‘Right then,’ Sylver said, ‘down we go. I think it’s best we go in single file. I’ll go first. If we meet any moles I don’t want a scrap. That would only slow us up. We’ll have to change direction or hope that the mole turns and runs.’
They dug away at a mound and found the entrance to the mole network. Sylver went first with Wodehed close behind him carrying the magic needle. Luke had been right, though – it was as dark as the inside of a tree. Tunnels went off in all directions. It really was a maze of corridors and passageways, punctuated by the occasional large chamber.
It was also hot and sweltering down under the ground, as Sylver found his way along a narrow tunnel, hoping not to bump into a mole, or perhaps even a badger, whose tunnels might interconnect with those of the moles. Or indeed, any creature who lived below the surface of the world in this subterranean darkness.
Finally, it happened, as Sylver rounded a corner and immediately scented a mole ahead of him. He stopped suddenly, only to have Wodehed bump into him, and Icham into Wodehed, and so on to the end of the line. No-one spoke though. They all knew instinctively that Sylver had stopped for a very good reason. It was best to keep silent until they knew what that reason might be.
Each one of them heard the slow chomping of a mole eating what sounded like a rather juicy worm.
Sylver decided to brazen it through. ‘Out of the way, mole,’ he called. ‘Fierce weasels coming down the tunnel!’
The chomping sound stopped, then there was a scuttling, and soon the scent of the mole was merely a lingering odour in the tunnel ahead, which had now been vacated.
‘Huh, that was easy enough,’ said Sylver over his shoulder. ‘It looks like we’re not going to get any trouble from the moles, if they’re all like that one.’
And so it turned out. This appeared to be a peaceful colony. The moles scuttled ahead of the band, not wishing to tangle with weasels, whose scent was now filling the tunnels where they lived. There were certain moles, brigands and thieves, who could be savage creatures. These gangs were to be found mainly in the east. Here it seemed they did not go looking for fights, but happily avoided them.
Every so often the band would come upon an air shaft, down which the light filtered through the loose soil above. Here Wodehed would check his magnetic needle to find which way north lay, and then if there was a fork in the tunnels they could take the nearest to an easterly direction.
Sylver was travelling down one tunnel, confident all was going to plan so far, when he came across two evil-looking eyes, staring directly into his face from a metre away. ‘Out of the way, mole,’ he growled. ‘The weasels of Halfmoon Wood are impatient to be travelling on.’
The yellowy eyes with narrow black pupils did not move. They continued to stare at Sylver with burning hostility. When he came to think of it, they did not look like mole’s eyes at all. They certainly did not belong to a rabbit. No rabbit’s eyes could be that sinister, nor any rabbit bold enough to stand and outstare a weasel. He tried to recall what badger’s eyes were like, but not having had much to do with those unsociable creatures he failed to remember.
Sylver turned to the other weasels waiting nervously in a line behind him and asked, ‘What other creatures are we likely to get under the ground?’
‘Wildcats?’ suggested Mawk, helpfully. ‘Wolves? Wild dogs?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Bryony. ‘Your imagination’s running away with you. It couldn’t possibly be any of those large carnivores. It’s probably only a fox.’
‘A fox!’ yelled Luke. ‘If that’s a fox we’re done for! It might be the dreaded Magellan.’
‘I can’t smell fox, can you?’ said Sylver. ‘In fact it doesn’t smell very much at all. I simply don’t recognize the faint scent it puts out at all. Foxes can get pretty rank, you know – they would be especially so in a hot place like this. We’d smell a fox a mile off.’
‘Can we turn round and go somewhere else?’ suggested Miniver. ‘It’s not moving. It’s just staring at us.’
‘This is the direction we want to go,’ said Sylver. ‘We’ll just have to face it out. I’m going to go forward. You lot stay here until I see what it is we’re up against.’
‘Could be a giant toad,’ said Mawk, helpfully. ‘Or a shrunken deer.’
‘Thank you, Mawk,’ muttered Sylver, ‘I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.’
And Sylver did. He had only taken a few more tiny steps forward when the creature hissed violently into his face. A forked tongue flicked out only a few centimetres from Sylver’s nose. Sylver retreated rapidly. ‘Snake,’ he said, his heart beating fast. ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it isn’t an adder. Grass snakes are not usually so aggressive, are they? No, what we’re dealing with here is a rotten old adder, who won’t get out of the way.’
‘Back!’ cried Miniver. ‘Let’s go back!’
‘Wait a bit – let’s see if we can think of something else first,’ said Sylver. ‘It would waste too much time retracing our passage here. Anyone got any ideas? Wodehed? Luke?’
‘Not me,’ said Wodehed. ‘I don’t like snakes.’
‘Who does?’ Luke said, scornfully. ‘Listen, I read in one of Lord Haukin’s books that snakes are dreadfully afraid of mongooses – that is, mongeese – no, correction, I think it is mongooses. Anyway, they’re scared of them.’
‘What’s a mongoose?’ asked Sylver.
‘Well, it’s a creature a bit like us, really, only they don’t live in Welkin, obviously, or we’d all have heard of them. No, they live in some land across the seas. They jump on a snake’s neck and they bite it. I read that they’re quicker than lightning dipped in lard . . .’
‘Greased lightning,’ muttered Wodehed.
‘Yes,’ said Luke, not at all put out now that he had centre stage and all the other weasels were looking to him to find a way out of their present problem. ‘That sort of lightning.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Sylver.
‘The plan is,’ replied Luke, ‘you pretend to be a mongoose.’
‘And how do I do that?’
‘Search me,’ snapped Luke. ‘I can’t be expected to solve all the world’s problems in one go, can I?’
Sylver said he was quite right, he could not be expected to do that. It was up to the leader of the band to come up with an answer. ‘You try and think a bit more about what you read, Luke, while I have a go at this adder.’
Then he turned and yelled, ‘I’m a mongoose. I’m coming through, snake. If you don’t get out of the way I’ll bite the back of your neck!’
The adder’s head shot forward a few centimetres. It hissed fiercely into Sylver’s face. The bright, burning eyes bore into him with unerring hatred in them. The snake’s jaws opened and in the weak light coming from an air shaft ahead, Sylver could see two long white fangs glinting wetly. The snake’s nostrils flared. It did not seem as if this ploy of Luke’s was going to be at all successful.
‘Any more ideas?’ croaked Sylver, with the snake’s nose almost touching his. ‘We need a few ideas very quickly.’
‘I could try my slingshot,’ Dredless cried. ‘I might be able to bean him one, but the space is a bit tight.’
‘You’d probably hit me,’ said Sylver, ‘even though you’re the best shot in the band.’
Luke suddenly let out a little cry. ‘Wait, I’ve remembered what sort of sound mongooses – mongeese – no, mongooses make. They make a sort of tikki-tikki-tikki noise when they face up to a snake. Shall I try that?’
‘Please,’ Sylver whispered as the eyes came even closer. ‘As quickly as possible.’
Luke made the noises which he thought were right, clicking with his tongue on his upper palate. The adder’s eyes changed on hearing this sound. Gradually it began to withdraw. Sylver could sense fear in the snake.
Probably something deep within the ancestral memory of the snake told it that this sound was associated with a killer of snakes. Perhaps back in prehistoric times, even in Welkin, there were mongooses – mongeese – no, mongooses who terrified snakes with that sound. Perhaps the reason a mongoose made that sound was because it alarmed snakes. Whatever, it seemed to work, and soon the tunnel was clear again.
‘Well done, Luke,’ said Bryony. ‘You see – all that reading you do doesn’t go to waste.’
‘I never said it did,’ replied Luke testily. ‘It’s dunderheads like Mawk who say things like that.’
‘Who’s a dunderhead?’ cried Mawk.
‘Stop that quarrelling back there,’ whispered Sylver. ‘Listen!’
They all ceased making a noise and listened hard. Above them they could hear the harsh tones of stoats, talking to each other. The weasel band was obviously now directly below the ditch where the enemy forces were gathered.
‘Can you see them?’ said a voice from above. ‘Where are those weasels? They seem to have disappeared.’
‘Probably cowering in the grasses,’ cried another stoat voice. ‘You know what lily-livered loons those weasels are – we’ll have to go looking for them, I expect.’
A third clacked raucously. ‘They’re probably running all the way back to Halfmoon Wood, their knees knocking together. I’ve never met a weasel yet who could face a stoat on equal terms . . .’
‘Equal terms,’ growled Sylver. ‘There’s at least a thousand of them up there!’
‘Forget it,’ whispered Bryony. ‘You know what braggarts they are – you know what they’re like – just let them get on with it. We’ll have the last click of teeth, when they realize we’ve tricked them. Prince Poynt will have them hanging from the battlements by their heels before evening.’
‘You’re right,’ Sylver replied. ‘Come on, let’s get to the end of this tunnel. I’m fed up of having worms and spiders for company. I need some fresh air.’
The group finally emerged in the middle of the next field. When they looked behind them they could see the stoats all lying along the ditch, looking in the opposite direction. Sylver was tempted to shout, ‘Oi, you lot! Over here!’ but knew that would be foolish and managed to restrain himself.
When they were well away from the stoats they found a stream and washed the dirt off their coats. Icham made a fire with some flints and they dried themselves. Their escapade under the ground had taken the best part of a day and the evening was coming on now. A big red ball of a sun was descending slowly behind the forest they had left behind.
‘Well, I hope we don’t have to do that again,’ said Alysoun. ‘I hated it down there. I’m definitely a weasel who likes the light and open air.’
‘Once upon a time we used to make our nests in holes under the ground,’ Bryony remarked.
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Alysoun, ‘but in hollow stumps and places like that as well. I suppose I’m a hollow stump sort of a weasel. I don’t like the smell of earth. Give me ivy and fungus any time.’
Now that the second day of their expedition was over they were almost at the border of County Elleswhere, the shire where they held sway. Tomorrow and after the weasel band would be in unfamiliar territory, where animals would not know them too well. Lord Haukin’s county was now behind them, and Lord Ragnar’s county, Fearsomeshire, was before them.
‘Get a good night’s sleep, everyone,’ said Sylver. ‘We need to be up bright and early with the dawn.’
Chapter Eight
Sylver felt responsible for the decision to make a journey to the Yellow Mountains, even if the others had agreed to it. He knew it to be a dangerous expedition, because they were going into unknown country. There might be weasels there, who would help them, but equally there might be rogue polecats, or pine martens with a grudge against ground animals, or even strange dangerous misfits. There was still magic and mystery on Welkin, in small pockets, caught like marsh gas in the peat hags. Sylver felt it was up to him to make sure that the expedition did not fall foul of some accidental catastrophe.
‘The wolves are howling tonight,’ said Bryony, hunched up by the small fire. ‘They must be going out for a hunt.’
‘Perhaps they’re just singing because they like it,’ Sylver suggested. ‘I mean, I’ve always envied the wolves because they can sing. Weasels try to sing sometimes, but what always comes out is a thin whine rather than a full-throated note. Listen to that sound. It’s as mellow as a full moon.’
Mawk-the-doubter shivered. ‘I just find it creepy. I don’t like the sound at all. It’s like the hooting of owls. You know it’s coming from the throat of a creature who could tear you open just like that, with fangs and claws. Creatures of the night.’
‘Some animals think the same about us,’ said Luke.
They listened to the baying wolves, far off in the distant hills, for a while longer. Sylver thought he could detect a sad note in their calling. Perhaps, he thought, they’re mourning a wolf who has passed on. Or an infant lost in the high snowy mountain peaks. Or some remembered great ancestor, who had left behind him or her a power which was good. Sylver did envy the wolves their sense of togetherness. The pack worked, played and slept as a single family, and the pack was more important than any solitary wolf which belonged to it.
Sylver’s band was a little like that, but with the wolves it came naturally, whereas the outlaws had been thrown together by necessity, because they had been tyrannized by Prince Poynt and the stoats of Welkin.
When they awoke next morning they were mindful of the fact that they were in Fearsomeshire, the county ruled by the stoat warlord known as Ragnar-the-warrior-chieftain. Although Sylver had never had a lot to do with Lord Ragnar, one of Lord Haukin’s cousins, that stoat’s reputation was not a good one. Sylver had heard stories of weasels being tied to the horns of sleeping stags, so that when the timid deer awoke they went charging over the grasslands, the weasels fighting for breath in the wind.
Also, being in Fearsomeshire was no protection against the prince’s troops, who could enter any county in search of outlaws.
‘Let’s stick to the ditches today,’ said Sylver, ‘and if you scent a stoat, hide straight away. We don’t want to rouse the whole county against us.’
‘Won’t Prince Poynt have sent a messenger to Lord Ragnar, telling him we’re coming this way?’ said Miniver.
Sylver replied, ‘I expect so, but I’ve heard that Lord Ragnar is not fond of Prince Poynt – he’s rather jealous of the prince – he might not put himself out much to catch a few weasels in order to send them to Castle Rayn.’
So the band proceeded cautiously through the countryside, moving through the dry, dusty weeds of the ditches. There had been little rain in this part of the country for so long that the ground was hard and parched, cracked in places where the clay had shrunk and parted.
Some ditches had seen so little water that they had been abandoned as places of habitation. Normally a ditch bank was covered in homes: holes for mice, shrews, rabbits, voles, ducks and various amphibians. Now the trenches crackled with sun-burnt docks and wind-burnt thistles, as if they were passing blue electric sparks between their fronds.
‘Not many weasels know,’ said Wodehed, who was showing off his knowledge again, ‘that there are four different types of mice and three different types of vole which live in the countryside of Welkin. There’s house, wood, harvest and yellow-necked mice and water, bank and field voles—’
‘What about dormice?’ interrupted Luke, who hated it when Wodehed got all the attention. ‘There’s the hazel dormouse and the grey dormouse.’
‘True,’ said Wodehed, ‘but I was going to get around to them, after I’d told you about proper mice.’
‘What about the field mouse?’ cried Icham triumphantly. ‘You forgot about the field mouse.’
‘No we didn’t,’ said Luke and Wodehed, banding together against the common enemy.
‘A field mouse . . .’ began Luke.
‘. . . is a wood mouse,’ finished Wodehed. ‘They’re the same thing.’
‘The wood mouse is also known as the long-tailed mouse, as well as the field mouse,’ added Luke.
‘So there,’ finished Wodehed.
Icham very wisely kept his peace, knowing that he would have trouble arguing with just one of the learned weasels, let alone two of them together.
