Brock and Sam now made their way towards the comer of this back part of the wood, and they could see clearly, in the moonlight, the other animals heading for a gap in a belt of trees; this was the only way in for the larger creatures although the smaller ones like the rabbits and hedgehogs could squeeze through anywhere. When they went through the narrow gap, knocking some snow down on to themselves as they brushed against the branches of a little ash tree on one side, they saw that many animals were already there, arranged against the outside of the semi-circle. Facing this semi-circle, sitting along the straight side of the amphitheatre with their backs to the stream, on the far side of which stood the huge solid bank of rhododendrons, were the Council. Here were the legendary figures of the wood whose names had been linked with so many heroic stories and deeds that even they themselves had forgotten which were true and which imagined. They had arranged themselves along the far side of a large fallen tree-trunk which ran parallel to the stream and were now fully engrossed in conversation amongst themselves. The members of the Council were not so much elected as elevated; there was never any dispute as to who was entitled to sit; if there had been then that animal would not go on to the Council for he could not have earned his proper place. Meetings were held once in every season so that the necessary arrangements for that particular season could be made, but they were also held when there was a special need.

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.

Perryfoot was talking to Bibbington the Brash, a hedgehog who had once been captured by a family of Urkku and had stayed with them for an entire season. While there he had actually gone into the house and walked into all the rooms, looking around and memorizing what he saw. While with the family, he had watched, listened and learnt all he could of the ways of the Great Enemy and this knowledge had since proved to be invaluable to the Council in their discussions on defence and other matters concerning the Urkku. Since the virtual disappearance of the wandering Urkku known as Gypsies who used to eat them, the hedgehogs’ only real enemies were the enormous noisy creatures which the Great Enemy rode to get from place to place and against which there was no defence.

Perching on top of the log next to these two, Brock could see the long magnificently coloured tail feathers of Sterndale the Fierce, King of the Pheasants. He was lost in conversation with his great friend and ally, Thirkelow the Swift, a magnificent steel-blue wood-pigeon with a chest like a tree trunk. It was an achievement for either a pheasant or a pigeon to survive more than four seasons and these two had now lived for more than twelve each. Knowledgeable in the killing ways of the Urkku and with an instinctive inborn cunning, they were the natural leaders of their two species. Thirkelow’s speed was almost magical; he would streak across the sky like lightning and be gone before you could blink. The great Stemdale had acquired his title from an incident when he had attacked an Urkku who had just wounded one of his hens. He had stalked his way up to the killer through the undergrowth and suddenly flown at his face beating with his wings and biting and scratching with his beak and claws. The Urkku had dropped his gun, which went off and alerted other Urkku who, hearing the gun and the cries for help, came running through the wood. Instead of flying off, in which case he would almost certainly have been killed in the air, Sterndale had scuttled off through the undergrowth and watched, hiding, while they carried the killer off. This incident had earned him great admiration from the wood and he had set about using the knowledge and experience he had gained from it to try and lessen the enormous losses which the pheasants, in particular, suffered every autumn. He had attempted to train them not to call out when they were alarmed or when they took off and, most important of all, to keep dead still when the Urkku were in the wood. If they really had to move then they should walk, slowly and quietly, rather than fly off, presenting a perfect target for the death sticks.