‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we can't stay here all day.’
‘What are they, Nab?’ said Beth.
‘I don’t know but there’s something about them which makes me afraid. We must move on.’
‘It’s almost Sun-High,’ said Perryfoot. ‘Couldn’t we stay here for the afternoon by the hedge? It seems as good a place as any.’
Nab looked at Warrigal and the owl spoke.
‘It may be our last opportunity to rest for quite some time. I think we should stay here and move on in the early evening.’
So the animals walked over the field towards a thick hedge which ran along one side. Growing in the hedge were a number of large oak trees and they settled down in the shade of one of these, huddled around the trunk with Warrigal perching on one of the high branches to keep a watch for any signs of danger. It was beautifully cool in the green shade of the oak and they were soon asleep.
When evening came and the dusk began to fall they awoke and moved on. In the darkness they could not see the black smoke fromthe fires but they could smell them and occasionally they caught sight of red flickering flames in the distance and heard noises of shouting and crying coming from the direction of the fires.
As dawn arose they were walking along a little grassy ridge with wooded heathland on one side and meadows on the other. The ground was blackened and scorched so that there was very little grass left in the field and all that remained of the heath was an expanse of charred black scrub and bushes. The smell of burnt wood was everywhere and their feet became sooty as they walked. They could see now that the countryside all about was the same and the air was full of black smuts.
It was mid-morning when they saw the Urkku. They had been making their way up the scorched slope of a little hill when suddenly they froze at the sound of two shots from the far side followed by ferocious guttural shouts as if an argument was going on. They crawled through the blackened grass until they could just see over the top. There was quite a deep valley the other side and halfway up the far slope stood a number of Urkku, all with guns, yelling at one another. On the ground were some dead rabbits and the Urkku seemed to be in two groups, one on each side. Beth looked in amazement at the men, for she had never before seen any like them. Their clothes, if that is what they had once been, hung off them like strips of dirty rag and their bodies were so emaciated that the ribs stuck through their puny barrel chests and the skin hung in loose folds. They were wearing what appeared to be trousers and out of the bottom of these protruded thin bony ankles like matchsticks, and bare feet. She looked in mounting horror at their faces and was transfixed by what she saw. The hair was long, dirty and matted so that it hung down in tangled knots or else stuck out in greasy spikes, and beneath this filthy thatch, deep-set sunken eyes stared out of a face so covered in grime and dirt that as they shouted their teeth seemed to flash silver in the sunlight. Their cheeks were sunken and hollow and the cheekbones appeared to be all that held the covering of skin from falling away. Beth held her nose and had to stop herself from retching when the stench from their bodies, exaggerated by the heat, was carried over in the breeze.
The cause of the argument seemed to be the rabbits for each group was pointing at them and then gesticulating wildly and shouting. Suddenly an Urkku from one group ran forward and, flinging himself on one of his adversaries, began wrestling with him on the ground. They rolled around spitting and biting and kicking and a cloud of dust rose up around them. The others transferred their attention from the rabbits to their mauling companions, each side yelling encouragement to its own until finally one of them, whose hair under the grime was a ginger colour and who looked the bigger and stronger of the two, grabbed hold of a rock on the ground and brought it smashing down on his opponent’s head. There was silence while the one who had been hit went still and rolled back on to the grass with blood pouring from his head. The ginger one was just disentangling himself from his grip when one of the other group shouted at him and, raising his gun to his shoulder, shot the victor in the chest and sent him flying back to end up lying on top of his opponent. The friends then looked on in amazement as the two groups began blasting away at each other from where they were standing. It was over in seconds and the crashing noise of the guns seemed to have only just started when it had already finished, the echoes dying away in the still silent air and the smell of gunpowder clogging up their nostrils for a fleeting instant before it blew away in a little cloud of light brown smoke. Eight Urkku lay dead on the grass and the survivors from the winning group were running away across the field carrying the rabbits by the back legs so that as they ran the heads jerked crazily up and down as if they were rag dolls. They were laughing in a high-pitched, hysterical way.
The animals remained where they were for a long time, in silence. The sun beat down on their backs and the smell of burning was heavy in the air. Finally Warrigal broke the silence.
‘Most odd. Most peculiar, ’ he said. ‘Something is happening in the world of the Urkku. I’ve never seen them look or behave like that before. Beth, what do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Those men. They seemed so – I don’t know – so strange. And that fight; all that shooting. It was horrible. I don’t like it. Let’s move on quickly; get away from here.’
The girl felt a cold chill all over despite the heat of the sun. She was horribly afraid; more so than she had ever been before, and she, who had lived nearly all her life with humans, had felt it more than the animals. Something was going terribly wrong. She turned to Nab. ‘Hold me,’ she said, and he put his arms around her and she closed her eyes for a second and with her head snuggled against his shoulder she felt better.
On they walked but they could not escape the ghastly black columns of smoke nor get out of the scorched blackened landscape which seemed to stretch for mile upon mile around them in every direction. The sickly stench from the fires grew steadily more unbearable until even the act of breathing became something which they dreaded. Their hands, faces and feet were ingrained with black from the soot and the charred ground, and nowhere was there enough clean water to wash it off properly. When they came to a pond now it was almost certain to be dried up, its bed split open and cracked in great mud fissures, and they would search for a little corner somewhere where there might be a remaining puddle of foul-smelling brackish liquid with which they would attempt to slake their ravening thirst.
Every day now they saw two or three bands of Urkku like the first, wandering ragged and aimless on the burnt ground, guns under their arms and eyes constantly moving as if they were afraid of being seen. This made it harder for the animals to avoid them as they were far quieter and less easily spotted than they used to be and the travellers were only able to move slowly with Warrigal flying ahead to make sure everything was clear to go on. Often now he would come back and report Urkku in front and they would have to wait for agonizing hours until they had moved on and it was safe to go ahead. They slept during these waiting periods and travelled when they could rather than sleeping every afternoon, and they found that they made better progress after Sun-High because the heat was so intense then that there were fewer Urkku around. The sound of shooting was also common, either a single crack or a battery of shots such as they had heard that first time, and then they would come across the casualties of these random fights and be careful to avoid going too close to them for fear of disturbing the flies and because of the smell. There was very little shade from the searing heat of those afternoons because all the green foliage from the hedges and trees had been burnt off. Giant oaks and sycamores, whose leaves had once cast a fragrant cool green shade on the grass, now stood gaunt, black and naked, their charred limbs standing out starkly against the clear blue sky.
