As the water gushed away, and they pulled the faltering mole to safety, they saw that the mole who had been held up behind was slipping and sliding over the Span’s edge, his talons unable to find a grip on the slippery rock, his eyes white with terror, and his mouth opening into a scream as he lost all grip and fell backwards down into the torrent of the Reap, nomole to help him, lost for ever in the rage of white water below.
It was Drumlin on the far side who now took action, realizing that unless those with her pressed on fast their confidence might go. For the moment the loss must be forgotten and the crossing continued as fast as possible. So she urged on the next mole, and the next, whilst Rooster stayed where he was and literally pulled one mole after another across.
It had been arranged long since that the last three of the second group would be Drumlin, followed by Humlock and then by Glee. That way he would know where he was, and could trust the mole at front and back, and if need be communicate quickly with them, for they were moles he knew better than any other, excepting Rooster himself. After them the last of the moles would come, encouraged by those of the Charnel who were staying behind, but felt strong enough to brave the elements and watch this historic exodus of moles from their ancient system.
So now Drumlin started, and as she did the rain suddenly eased, and the air cleared but for the spray that drifted sometimes with the wind from the gorge. It was not that the Reap’s flow had lessened, but rather that its nature had changed from being wild and rushing to something deeper, more angry, more powerful, and far more deadly.
“Come on, Humlock, follow me!” she said, as much to get herself started as to speak to Humlock, who could not hear her words, but only responded to her urgent touch. Then off she set, as did Humlock too after only a moment’s hesitation. Drumlin paused frequently so that Humlock did not lose touch with her for more than a moment, whilst behind, Glee prodded him occasionally just to show that she was there.
Though the rain had stopped the thundering sound of the torrent now increased ominously, and as the three moles reached the Span and began their slow passage over it, the attention of those watching them so anxiously was drawn by an abrupt if distant roaring sound that came from far up-valley, right at the head of the gorge where the three Creeds rose darkly to the skies.
At first nomole could make out what had made the sound, but then one by one they saw its cause, and gasped in awe and fear. The central and biggest of the Creeds was turning white before their eyes as, from off the Moors above, the ancient and forgotten gully that had once fed a stream to carve the great fissure, seemed to have flooded and now directed its waters over the edge and down the Creed’s dark channel.
The re-born waterfall gathered momentum as it fell, fed by water from above, and dark grey chutes of water massed and shot ahead and at the sides as it thundered down into the gorge below, and thence joined the Reap. Even as moles took this horror in they realized its implications, for what must already be coming down-gorge towards them would make the present torrent seem but a tiny stream. Worse, since the Reap was already near to overflowing it was plain that its banks would soon flood.
Even as the moles realized this, and the sudden danger they were in, Hume and Samphire began to order the moles on their side to escape from the bank and head for high ground; while on the far side some of the helpers did the same for the watchers, and had forcibly to push back those still waiting to cross, their hopes of escaping now all gone.
But this left Drumlin nearly at the centre of the Span, with the unseeing and unhearing Humlock behind her, and Glee behind him, and two more moles waiting near her who, perhaps unaware of the danger they were in, stayed close by. The roaring increased and suddenly, up-valley of them, those who dared to look saw an ominous and angry wall of water shoot massively up from the gorge, distant at first but growing ever nearer and ever louder.
With a roar Rooster surged forward up the Span and reached a paw towards Drumlin on the far side of the rise. As he did so Samphire turned from the higher ground a little way off and cried out to him to come back; if he was lost, all might be lost.
At the same time Drumlin, until then only partly aware of the change in the noise, neard the ugly sound of the roaring wave that was descending the gorge towards her; more ominously, the wind suddenly died completely and all was still. Feeling Drumlin stop, Humlock stopped, and half turned and reached out a paw to Glee behind. For her part she had seen what was happening, and the disaster that seemed certain to be about to engulf them, and had quickly turned and ordered the other two moles back. They, after stancing in numb fear for a moment, now turned and fled back to the Charnel side where willing paws pulled them upslope into the portal, and thence out of sight, to retreat up-tunnel to high ground.
“Quick, Drumlin!” roared Rooster as she strove to turn back and then, unable to because Humlock was there, turned forward again. She looked up-valley and saw the huge risen wave smoking and thundering massively towards them all, and stanced suddenly still, unable to think, unable to move, unable to do anything at all.
Glee meanwhile was first pushing, then pulling, and then pushing at Humlock, wanting him to do one thing or another,
anything
but stance still. She screamed at him to move, but he seemed not to understand.
“Run!” cried out Drumlin to Glee. Though herself in panic, she seemed yet to have a mother’s instinct to save her kin. Glee’s desperate face told more than words ever could. She clung to Humlock, and would not leave him, come what might. So there the three stanced, doomed by their uncertainty as the great wave of water roared nearer with each moment.
Then Rooster reared up, looked past the panic-stricken Drumlin to Humlock and with a great cry brought one of his paws down on to the Span, and thumped it several times in rapid succession. What it meant nomole could tell, but that it was a signal, and one meant for Humlock too.
“Yes!” roared Rooster as Humlock, calm in the storm of chaos and danger all about him, turned a blind head towards Rooster, who thumped the Span once more. “Do it, mole!”
Then Humlock turned and seemed to stare up-valley, his head bent to one side into the stancing he habitually made when he was listening to vibrations; his paws lightly touched the Span ahead of him and then behind. Then, with a strange primeval bellow, as of a creature that is emerging into light after a lifetime in the dark, he turned massively to Drumlin in front of him, reached out his paws to her, heaved her from the rocks to which she clung so obsessively and hurled her bodily towards where Rooster had struck the ground.
As she flew through the air, and Rooster strained forward to catch her and pull her to safety, Humlock turned on his back paws precariously, and reached out towards Glee.
Already the level of the Reap had risen, and now the water that flowed under the Span was smooth and yellow, and treacherously fast, while where it touched the edges of the gorge that confined it great splashes of water shot this way and that, and fell back into themselves. Rooster saw this, and caught a glimpse of a great shining wall of water bearing down upon the Span, before he took Drumlin up as Humlock had done and threw himself back to the Reapside, scrabbling desperately up the slope that Samphire and the others had already run up in the hope of escaping the oncoming flood.
As the great wave struck the Span with a thunderous roar, Rooster thrust Drumlin ahead, and Hume reached down to pull her up to safety. Then, disdaining the security of the high ground and the peril of the flooding water that was surging up towards him Rooster turned, not to run back to the Span — that was too dangerous now — but to watch in desperation as the waters descended upon his friends.
But he was too late, too late to see, that is. Already the flooding wave was breaking over the Span, and spray and raging water and driving yellow foam were over it and over them. There was vague movement in the racing broken water, a great paw reaching desperately out, a white-furred haunch among the foam, black talons thrusting helplessly from out of yellow water, as on and on the flooding came.
Rooster stared; the water drove up towards where he was, right over him, and he pushed upslope to fall and flounder amongst his friends, so that for a moment he thought they were all going to be drowned. But no sooner had he struggled to hold his stancing than he was buffeted half off balance by the water’s return as it rushed back downslope, and he found himself struggling to help others hold their place, and not be swept past him downslope into the raging torrent of the Reap.
The moment passed, the water eased, and all were safe. He turned in hope that he might yet help his friends upon the Span, turned to hear a growling, cracking roar, turned to see the Span’s highest point shudder and twist, crack and break, and then, a sight that mocked the earth’s great strength, he saw the Span begin to slide and fall, water crashing over it as it collapsed down into the raging Reap.
Once more water rushed up towards him, once more he was forced to hold his place and help others do the same, once more the flow came back again, this time pushing him downslope as Samphire screamed behind him. Only with resolution did he hold himself, every muscle straining as the water drove on by and cascaded down to where the Span had been and thundered over into the gorge below.
He raised his head and looked in numbed disbelief across the gap, and saw that on the far side water rushed over the gorge’s edge as it did below where he now stanced. He looked desperately for his friends in the broken water, but saw only jags of protruding rock, and tumbling waves, and wild nothingness. Gone, gone into that horror that flowed angrily past, gone. All gone.
A scream, feint in the water’s roar. A strange, muted, bellowed shout. Desperately his eyes searched the water and the rocks, and he rose, ready even then to try to go to the aid of whatever mole it was that called. Then he saw them, not down in the gorge itself, but clinging on to the edge of the far side, the back of a great mole, the left paw of a great mole, reaching, heaving, pulling, whilst its right paw held on for dear life, life that was most dear to it.
It was Humlock who clung and Glee he held, his strength pulling them now up on to the bank with one paw, his blind mute love driving him on far past the point where mere brute force would have failed him. How small she was, how hard to see amongst all that white water that still cascaded over them; but he had her, and held her, and with those strange bellowings he heaved her up to safety through the dying waters of the flood, and pulled himself to safety as well.
Only then did the Charnel moles above them see where they were and that they were safe, and several helpers came timidly down and took the half-drowned Glee in their paws.
Then Humlock turned and snouted out across the impassable gorge, stancing up as Rooster did, two friends, two great moles, who for a moment of terrible despair seemed to reach across a void nomole could ever hope to cross again. Rooster opened his mouth in a silent cry, and raised his paws, but it was Glee who screamed on one side and Drumlin and Sedum from the other, before Glee shook herself free of the protection of those who held her to go back to Humlock’s flank and stance with him and stare and reach to mothers and a friend they could surely never reach again.
It was Humlock who turned first, perhaps sensing a resurgence of the Reap’s torrent, and he reached out and took Glee towards the Charnel’s entrance upslope among the scree. The last thing Rooster saw before the returning wind threw spray across the gorge and obscured all view, was Glee, eyes wild, mouth open in grief, and a thin white paw raised in a solitary gesture of farewell and benediction towards him: he to go on into life now on their behalf as well, and they to stay for ever where they had been born, never to know what might have been.
Then they were lost in the driving spray, and when it passed on by all Rooster could see were the wet grey rocks of the Charnel’s surface, the ragged tufts of vegetation, and looming over them all the great dark cliffs which had been the boundary of his puphood, and was now the prison of his dearest friends.
Yet one more thing occurred before he turned away from his loss, and he ever after believed it to be significant. Samphire had often told him of the raven that had stooped down into the gorge on the day she had taken him M the Reap’s edge to hurl him in at Red Ratcher’s command. Now another stooped down, a great ragged thing that turned and twisted in the violent wind and hovered for a time over where the Span had been, unaware it seemed of the danger it was in, or defying it.
Then a great fountain of spray rose up and was driven by the wind on to it, and for a moment it was lost in white. Yet it seemed undaunted, for the water fell away and the raven opened its bedraggled wings and sent forth a dark raucous cry, before wheeling round into the wind and over the Charnel once more. It rose slowly up the cliff’s face, higher and higher, gyring sometimes in the eddies there most purposefully before, with a last thrust, it powered its way above the cliff’s highest edge, turned for a moment as if to survey the Charnel Clough a final time, and then was gone across the unseen Moor.
As Rooster turned blindly from his grief to find Samphire and begin the now reluctant flight from all he knew, he heard her cry out to him to beware, and come quick, come now, or it would be too late. Was it the waters she feared, or that he would turn back and hurl himself into the gorge for loss of the friends who were his life, his limbs, his normality? Or was there something more in her cry than that?
Certainly some warning note made him instinctively stiffen his body as if for assault as he looked up, and was brought immediately to an appalled stop by what stanced directly in his path.
For there reared a great mole, his taloned paws outstretched, and as Rooster stared at him it seemed he saw the embodiment of the wild elements that had seemed to bring such disaster so early in their escape. The mole was massive, his fur as rough and dark as Rooster’s own, and russet in places just as his was; his face too was furrowed and lined, like Rooster’s. Only his eyes were different. They were piggish and deep-set and rimmed in red, ignorant and cruel.