'You're General Woundwort, aren't you?' said the rabbit. 'I've come to talk to you.'
'Did Thlayli send you?' asked Woundwort.
'I'm a friend of Thlayli,' replied the rabbit.' I've come to ask why you're here and what it is you want.'
'Were you on the river bank in the rain?' said Woundwort.
'Yes, I was.'
'What was left unfinished there will be finished now,' said Woundwort. 'We are going to destroy you.'
'You won't find it easy,' replied the other. 'You'll take home fewer rabbits than you brought. We should both do better to come to terms.'
'Very well,' said Woundwort. 'These are the terms. You will give back all the does who ran from Efrafa and you will hand over the deserters Thlayli and Blackavar to my Owsla.'
'No, we can't agree to that. I've come to suggest something altogether different and better for us both. A rabbit has two ears; a rabbit has two eyes, two nostrils. Our two warrens ought to be like that. They ought to be together - not fighting. We ought to make other warrens between us - start one between here and Efrafa, with rabbits from both sides. You wouldn't lose by that, you'd gain. We both would. A lot of your rabbits are unhappy now and it's all you can do to control them, but with this plan you'd soon see a difference. Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves. A mating between free, independent warrens - what do you say?'
At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him. The sun dipped into the cloud-bank and now he could see clearly the track along the ridge, leading to the beech hanger and the bloodshed for which he had prepared with so much energy and care.
'I haven't time to sit here talking nonsense,' said Woundwort. 'You're in no position to bargain with us. There's nothing more to be said. Thistle, go back and tell Captain Vervain I want everyone up here at once.'
'And this rabbit, sir,' asked Campion. 'Shall I kill him?'
'No,' replied Woundwort. 'Since they've sent him to ask our terms, he'd better take them back. - Go and tell Thlayli that if the does aren't waiting outside your warren, with him and Blackavar, by the time I get down there, I'll tear the throat out of every buck in the place by ni-Frith tomorrow.'
The lame rabbit seemed about to reply, but Woundwort had already turned away and was explaining to Campion what he was to do. Neither of them bothered to watch the lame rabbit as he limped back by the way he had come.
44. A Message from El-ahrairah
The enforced passivity of their defence, the interminable waiting, became insupportable. Day and night they heard the muffled thud of the picks above and dreamt of the collapse of the grotto and of every ghastly eventuality. They were subject to 'castle-mentality' in its most extreme form.
Robin Fedden Crusader Castles
'They've stopped digging, Hazel-rah,' said Speedwell. 'As far as I can tell, there's no one in the hole.'
In the close darkness of the Honeycomb, Hazel pushed past three or four of his rabbits crouching among the tree roots and reached the higher shelf where Speedwell lay listening for sounds from above. The Efrafans had reached the hanger at early twilight and at once begun a search along the banks and among the trees to find out how big the warren was and where its holes were. They had been surprised to find so many holes in such a small area, for not many of them had had experience of any warren but Efrafa, where very few holes served the needs of many rabbits. At first they had supposed that there must be a large number of rabbits underground. The silence and emptiness of the open beech-wood made them suspicious, and most kept outside, nervous of an ambush. Woundwort had to reassure them. Their enemies, he explained, were fools who made more runs than any properly-organized warren needed. They would soon discover their mistake, for every one would be opened, until the place became impossible to defend. As for the droppings of the white bird, scattered in the wood, it was plain that they were old. There were no signs whatever that the bird was anywhere near. Nevertheless, many of the rank-and-file continued to look cautiously about them. At the sudden cry of a peewit on the down, one or two bolted and had to be brought back by their officers. The story of the bird which had fo
ught for Thlayli in the storm had lost nothing in the telling up and down the burrows of Efrafa.
Woundwort told Campion to post sentries and keep a patrol round about, while Vervain and Groundsel tackled the blocked holes. Groundsel set to work along the bank, while Vervain went into the wood, where the mouths of the holes lay between the tree roots. He came at once upon the open run. He listened, but all was quiet. Vervain, (who was more used to dealing with prisoners than with enemies) ordered two of his rabbits to make their way down it. The discovery of the silent, open run gave him the hope that he might be able to seize the warren by a sudden dash to the very centre. The wretched rabbits, obeying his orders, were met by Silver and Buckthorn at a point where the run opened out. They were cuffed and mauled and barely got out with their lives. The sight of them did nothing to encourage Vervain's party, who were reluctant to dig and made little headway during the darkness before moonrise.
Groundsel, who felt that he ought to set an example, himself dug his way into the loose, fallen soil of one of the bank runs. Ploughing over the soft earth like a fly on summer butter and holding his head clear, he suddenly found himself face to face with Blackavar, who sank his front teeth into his throat. Groundsel, with no freedom to use his weight, screamed and kicked out as best he could. Blackavar hung on and Groundsel - a heavy rabbit, like all the Efrafan officers - dragged him forward a short distance before he could rid himself of his grip. Blackavar spat out a mouthful of fur and jumped clear, clawing with his front paws. But Groundsel had already gone. He was lucky not to have been more severely wounded.
It became clear to Woundwort that it was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take the warren by attack down the defended runs. There would be a good chance of success if several runs could be opened and then tackled at the same time, but he doubted whether his rabbits would attempt it, after what they had seen. He realized that he had not given enough thought, earlier on, to what he would have to do if he lost surprise and had to force an entry: he had better give it some thought now. As the moon rose, he called Campion in and talked it over with him.
Campion's suggestion was they should simply starve the warren out. The weather was warm and dry and they could easily stay two or three days. This Woundwort rejected impatiently. In his own mind, he was not altogether certain that daylight might not bring the white bird down upon them. They ought to be underground by dawn. But apart from this secret anxiety, he felt that his reputation depended on a fighting victory. He had brought his Owsla to get at these rabbits, knock them down and beat them. A siege would be a miserable anticlimax. Also, he wanted to get back to Efrafa as soon as he could. Like most war-lords, he was never very confident about what was going on behind his back.
'If I remember rightly,' he said, 'after the main part of the warren at Nutley Copse was taken and the fighting was as good as over, there were a few rabbits who shut themselves into a smaller burrow where it was difficult to get at them. I said they were to be dealt with and then I went back to Efrafa with the prisoners. How were they dealt with and who did it, do you know?'
'Captain Mallow did it,' said Campion. 'He's dead, of course: but I expect there's someone here who was with him. I'll go and find out.'
He returned with a heavy, stolid Owsla sentry named Ragwort, who at first had some difficulty in understanding what it was that the General wanted to know. At last, however, he said that when he had been with Captain Mallow, more than a year ago, the captain had told them to dig a hole straight down into the ground. In the end the earth had given way under them and they had fallen down among some rabbits whom they had fought and beaten.
'Well, that's about the only way it can be done,' said Woundwort to Campion. 'And if we get them all on to it, relieving each other in shifts, we should have a way into the place before dawn. You'd better get your sentries out again - not more than two or three - and we'll make a start at once.'
Soon after, Hazel and his rabbits, below in the Honeycomb, heard the first sounds of scratching above. It was not long before they realized that the digging was going on at two points. One was at the north end of the Honeycomb, above the place where the tree roots formed a kind of cloister in the burrow. Here the roof, latticed through and through with fine roots, was very strong. The other seemed to be more or less above the open centre of the Honeycomb, but rather nearer to the south end, where the hall broke up into bays and runs with columns of earth between. Beyond these runs lay several of the warren's burrows. One, lined with fur torn from her own belly, contained Clover and the pile of grass and leaves, covered over with earth, in which her new-born litter were sleeping.
'Well, we seem to be putting them to a great deal of trouble,' said Hazel. 'That's all to the good. It'll blunt their claws and I should think they'll be tired out before they've done. What do you make of it, Blackberry?'