Quest for the Faradawn - страница 11

These extra meetings were usually concerned with matters such as security when they knew there was a Killing due, or with other emergency items such as plague or upset of the wood when the Urkku were carrying out some new operation such as digging a new drainage ditch or putting up a new fence. The meeting tonight was one of these extra meetings, as the regular winter one had already taken place. Any animal from the wood could go to a meeting and sometimes when an animal had a particular contribution to make or where it was of special interest to him, he would be specially asked to attend.

Brock loved going to these meetings; he always got a great thrill from seeing the famous names whose stories had been told to him when he was a cub by old Bruin, himself a member of the Council for the last three seasons. As he settled down now with Sam, their backs against a large elm and next to them some young rabbits, Brock could see Bruin at one end of the log talking to Rufus, whose magnificent russet red coat shone, in the moonlight so that it almost looked polished.. Here was the fox who had outrun and outsmarted every pack of hounds in the area and who was a master in the arts of doubling back, water-running (to conceal his scent) and sheep-mingling, which consisted of hiding in the middle of a flock of sheep to confuse the hounds and annoy the farmer whose land was being used for hunting. On one memorable day in the autumn many seasons ago Rufus had actually been caught by the leading hounds in a particularly fast pack and had been brought to the ground by them: snarling, he had sunk his teeth into the necks of two of them and broken the leg of a third before running off again like the wind to vanish in the wood, leaving the furious and disappointed huntsmen nursing their wounded dogs and shaking their fists at him. Recently he had taken to going into the village at night and getting food from the bins of rubbish which the Urkku kept; while there he would look through the windows of the houses and had learnt a lot about the ways of the Urkku. But he was getting old and he was losing that edge of speed which had made him famous and kept him out of the clutches of the hunt for so long. Brock, looking at his fine noble head with its two sharp triangular ears and long pointed nose, pondered with great sadness that it could only be a matter of time before Rufus was caught by the hounds and tom to pieces by them.

Brock put this distressing picture out of his mind and looked at Perryfoot the Fleet, sitting some few paces from Rufus. Perryfoot was a brown hare; another near-legendary hero whose speed, as his name implied, had earned him his status. He sat on his own, lost in his secret thoughts, with his body hunched over into a great grey-brown furry ball and his two long ears tucked down so that they lay along his back. Apart from his speed he was also famous for his sense of humour which, particularly in March, led to his performing some strange antics. It was felt by the wood, although no one actually knew this, that he had some knowledge of and connection with the Magical Peoples and for this reason he was regarded with some wonder and awe by the others. His home was in the field at the front of Silver Wood but he was known to wander far and wide and his knowledge of the area surrounding the wood was second to none. He went regularly to Tall Wood and was rumoured to have gone even beyond there to The Heath.

Next to Perryfoot sat Pictor the Proud, a large rabbit who, as the head of a large colony of rabbits in the wood, was a highly respected figure. He had brought a new structure and organization to the rabbits of Silver Wood so that now their defences and warning systems against the coming of Urkku had become famous. Other colonies from the other woods would come to look and to learn so that losses to the Urkku were decreasing season by season. Recently however there had been a number of setbacks since the Urkku had begun to use that nightmare of all tunnel creatures, gas, and Pictor was under some pressure to come up with a new scheme which would combat this horror.