Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  ‘That is where Gelert lives and where your path lies.’ She turned away, muttering finally to herself the words she had said before: ‘Hen wyf i, ni’th oddiweddaf.’

  Bracken looked up at Siabod and then back down into the place he would soon have to go to reach it, feeling that if she did not understand, what hope had he?

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Bracken and Boswell crouched on the threshold of Cwmoer with the warnings of the Siabod moles in their ears and shadows in their hearts. A sleepy snow had fallen in the night, layering the fragmented black rocks that lined its gaping valley walls with a thin wet whiteness that only added to the bleakness of the place.

  Only Celyn had come with them, for though Bran had guided them back down the valley, he had refused to come anywhere near Cwmoer, hurrying away from them long before they reached it with barely a word of farewell, as if staying too long would bring upon him the same doom that would surely soon fall upon them.

  But Celyn took them on along a route he had travelled for a dare as a pup, though he did not know its final stages, for the wind from the cwm had been so chillingly vicious then that he had not got that far. Now, however, he took them on as far as the rocky turning that revealed the start of Cwmoer.

  There he stopped, and before leaving them wished them well and gave them one last piece of advice, born of his own long experience on the gentler slopes of Siabod on its eastern side.

  ‘You will probably find this place even more worm-scarce than those parts of Moel Siabod you have already seen. Many a mole has starved to death out on the soggy peat seeking food—or has been caught out in the open by buzzards or ravens, kestrel or merlin. Up here the streams often shelter food, so follow them if you’re in doubt, however unpromising they may seem. There’s plants, too, that like the soil that worms go for, but you’ll not know most of them. Do you get orchids on the soil you come from—on what you call chalk?’ Boswell nodded, the memory of the delicate, curling orchids of the chalk seeming a distant, unattainable dream up here.

  ‘Then watch out for one that’s purple and in flower now. And starry saxifrage which Y Wrach mentioned, and which you saw coming here—you’ll find that near worms and grubs. And sorrel—do you know that?’

  This time it was Bracken who nodded, for they had fed near sorrel many, many times in the last few moleyears, always a few worms near sorrel!

  ‘There’s one that grows up here in the worm-full soils, only a bit different from the one you see in the valley—it’s got heart-shaped leaves, but its scent is much the same. It won’t be blooming yet, but watch out for its leaves; they’ll guide you to food.’

  He left them with a blessing in Siabod, disappearing back down the rough grass over which they had finally had to come, for the tunnels petered out some way before Cwmoer. They did not move for a while, preferring to stay in the safety of the clump of matgrass in which they were crouching while they worked out what to do.

  To their left they could hear and smell the rush of a mountain stream whose noise and heavy splashing suggested that it was the one that took in all the many streamlets that raced and wound their secret ways down the sides of the cwm valley, even fuller now from the fall of snow overnight. A little way up the slope above them, to their right, the grass came to an abrupt stop where the final spewing of a steep and massive slate tip covered it. Not a plant grew on its uninviting face, which rose starkly towards the sky, hiding the base of the great buttress of rock that rose behind and far above it.

  What lay straight ahead higher up the valley they could not sense, though its total distance, judging from the quality of windsound, and the occasional bird cry in it, and what they had seen already from Y Wrach’s tunnels, was perhaps six or seven molemiles—a five hour trek.

  ‘Let’s press on as fast as we can to the head of the valley so that when we get there we’ll have enough time and strength left to find a place for rest and food,’ said Bracken. ‘If this famous hound of theirs is here, so be it! There’s nothing we can do about that. At least there’s plenty of slate to hide away under out of reach of his legendary paws!’ Bracken’s lightheartedness was a poor cover for the unease he felt at the start of this grim journey.

  They set off quickly, finding their way to a wide, slaty track that had the smell of roaring owls about it, with the stream on one side and the slate tip on the other. There were patches of sheep’s fescue and matgrass here and there, a welcome break from the snow and slate, but otherwise their way was bleak and steep. The higher they got, the more oppressive they found the towering tip on their right—and even more so because flurries of snow occasionally slid off the great flakes of grey and rusty-brown slate of which it was formed, while in several places along the track there had been rock slips from the tip and great pieces of slate, many twice as thick as a mole and many times longer, had spilled across the track, giving the whole area an atmosphere of oppressive instability.

  After an hour’s steady climb in which they used outgrowths of grass for cover as much as possible, the slope levelled off and the track slued round to the left on to a bridge over the stream and then round the left side of a long lake that filled the valley floor ahead of them. Although its water was clear, it appeared cold and black because of the reflection in it of the towering slate cliffs that rose bleakly on its far edge. Impatient little wavelets lapped at the edge of the lake near the track on which they travelled: the whole effect was black and chill.

  Here and there on the lake, though a mole could not see it, there were runs of icy white, where the reflections of the precipitous backdrop took in a steep side of snow-covered grass between the cliffs.

  To their left the peat gave way to shallow, rocky slopes covered in drier grass and studded here and there by the only cheerful colour in the whole miserable scene, the bright yellow petals of squat tormentil. But behind this grass, too, the slope gradually steepened, rising eventually to more overhangs of rock, or sheer black-grey faces where only an occasional raven or crow moved, visible only when it rose high enough to break out across the dull white sky.

  Bracken and Boswell now moved faster, for the track was exposed ground, only pausing to rest at a spot where a rivulet ran under the track in the peat to join the lake. They expected to find food there but were unlucky, and all they could do was to rest and snout out at the sky for predators.

  Then on they went, right along the edge of the lake, until that too lay behind them and they were rising again, back among great steep jumbles of snow-covered slate tips that edged the now increasingly rough and rocky track.

  They might by now have been lulled by the sheer uneventfulness of the journey into thinking that its dangers had been exaggerated had they not quite suddenly moved into a bank of the heavy odour of some creature they had never faced before, whose path must have crossed the slaty track a short time previously. Its scent had something of the wild deadness of the thick brown peat and something more of the savagery of a carnivore; worse, it held the vaguest hint of that stupefying smell that goes with roaring owl and which, if a mole is not careful, will dull his snout into senselessness.

  They retreated off the track for a while, taking refuge by some loose slates amongst which matgrass was growing, and snouted out for a stronger indication of the scent, listening for movement or vibration.

  ‘What creature was it?’ asked Bracken.

  Boswell shrugged and shook his head. He was frankly frightened. But as he watched Bracken stir and eventually snout out of the protection of the grass, he admired again, as he had admired so many times before, his friend’s obstinate courage. So often it had been the only thing that had led him, Boswell of Uffington, a scribemole who was meant to know so much, forward into new awareness and wisdom.

  There was a kind of courage Boswell had seen in moles many times that was born of ignorance and stupidity. Give such a mole a task, tell him to get on with it, and off he goes. But Bracken? He was not stupid, he had so many things he understood and sought to live for, a
nd yet on he went in the wake of this fearful odour.

  ‘Truly the Stone was wise to have bound me to Bracken,’ thought Boswell, following with something near a rueful grin.

  They very soon found they had good cause to fear, for as the path took them nearer to the stark rock face at the end of Cwmoer, leaving the lake now some way behind and below them, they moved straight into the terrible smell again, this time finding as well the awesome tracks of the creature that had made it. Each impression was at least half the size of a mole and comprised the five padmarks like a dog’s, which at their forward edge had an additional deep gashline in the snow where a claw had left its mark. The space between each print was three or four times wider than they had seen in any other creature’s tracks and bigger by far than the tracks of even the biggest fox or badger, while the weight of the creature was such that, whereas their own tracks in the snow just broke the surface, these pressed right through to the black slate beneath. They looked like dog, but a monstrous dog, and one whose size would block out the very sky.

  They now took a path that prudently meandered from side to side of the track to seek out a route ahead that went as near as possible to growths of matgrass or slate crevices in case quick refuge was needed.

  The pawmarks they had seen crossed their track and rose impossibly in great, leaping bounds up the steep side of the slate tip and over its distant top. Here and there, though the two moles could not see it, the heaviness of the creature had been too much for the sometimes delicately balanced slates, and the tracks were marked by slidings of snow and slate that had avalanched down the face of the tip with its passing.

  A hovering kestrel might have seen, in the wastes of Cwmoer below, how the tracks dropped down on the far side of the tip, bounded up another, wandered here and there after the smell of sheep, and then dropped back lower down the valley, padding across the snow-layered grass and rocks until they cut back on to the very same track up which Bracken and Boswell had laboured an hour or so before.

  A kestrel might have left it at that, but a carrion crow, who knows how to seek out death and feed off it, might have seen that the tracks then ran clumsily back and forth across the fresh moletracks, the snow beside them stirred and messed by the sniffing and slobbering of some great maw, until finally and inexorably they began to follow back up the track after the scent the moles had left behind.

  Meanwhile, Bracken and Boswell were beginning to get tired. They seemed to have climbed and climbed all day, with never a sniff of food before them. The walls of the valley had closed in and now forced the track, and them, round to the left, past a bluff that cut off any view of the lake below and then up a much steeper incline on the right-hand side of the now narrowing valley. Below them the head stream of the cwm rushed icily down in the direction they had come. They began to regret not following it up because, as Celyn had suggested, they might have found food somewhere along it. Now it was too late, for the route down the valley side to it would be too steep and slippery, and so they pushed on up the track, hoping that finally it would reach the head of the valley and rejoin the river again.

  As they went on, the sound of the river below became slowly muffled by the infilling of yet another ugly tip of slate, far bigger than any they had passed so far, that looked as if the very head of the valley itself had slumped forward in one massive, loose mound that rose higher and higher up the valley side, the river issuing forth at its foot, until the tip was level with the track on their left and soon rising above it. With this on their left and the final stages of the valley wall proper on their right, they were hemmed in on both sides so that if danger should come, they had little hope of moving to right or left unless to hide among the looser slates at the side of the tip.

  But for the half-hearted snow about them, all was black and oppressive, and even the afternoon sky seemed to have turned the colour of slate. There was no colour left in the world at all, and the only sound was that of the stream, rushing below them somewhere through the depths of the tip, and other streamlets coursing their eternal way down the steep, echoing walls of the cwm that now, finally, had the two moles in the depth of its savage grip.

  They grew fearful, with danger all around them—from shifting slate, from diving predator, from polecat and from monstrous hound—and never in all their travels had they felt a greater sense of foreboding.

  The track rose sharply over a thin line of harder rock protruding from the valley side on their right and then dropped before them into a tip-surrounded hollow, its far side towering above them, to the far right of which, over a rocky ledge, the stream that had been on their left tumbled in a waterfall through ruined slate and then under the track of loose slate before them. They looked back at the last of the cwm, and forward into a hollow that looked like a dark well, for barely any light seemed to be reflected out of it. It was a moment at which Bracken would have given his very soul to catch one glimpse of sunshine on a bare face of white chalk, to hear the run of a summer Duncton breeze through dry grasses, and to see the orchids and blue harebells that lift the heart of the saddest mole. But beyond the hollow surely there would be safety and food!

  So down into it they went, slipping here and there on snowy slates, lifeless wetness all around them and the rush of the waterfall growing louder all the time. There was not the scent of a single living plant to cheer them, and they knew without searching that they would have to climb back up out of this hollow even higher before having any hope of finding food.

  It was only when they reached the bottom, with difficult steepness all about them and the feeling that the slates might suddenly slide inwards and bury them in their jagged darkness for ever, that they caught smell of the creature again. The same savage smell they had had before, only fiercer and nearer.

  As the stream rushed and bubbled and raced, they heard over its noise what sounded like the rumble of slate on slate but was, in fact, the first grim growlings of a massive hound whose great paws and claws now covered the tracks Bracken and Boswell had left minutes before at the top of the hollow.

  As Bracken stopped, turned and looked back the way they had come, the scent and the sound melded into the terrifying knowledge that a hound was on them. Gelert of Siabod was at them and it seemed that the sky itself had a snarling muzzle of teeth, that it had fiery yellow eyes, that the slate tips were great living paws. Then the sky, the tips around them and the very ground on which they stood so defencelessly seemed to emit a scent of death. His fur was yellow flecked with white, thick as wire grass, his paws heavy, and his great head massive as a bulwark of rock.

  Gelert the Hound of Siabod tore down towards them mockingly, his snarls the sound of pleasure as he raced upon them, his great maw of flapping, loose flesh hanging momentarily over them to take in their scent before racing away up the other side of the hollow where he turned on loose slates, which flew away beneath his weight, and began the pleasurable descent upon them once more.

  Moles! It was usually better fun to dig them out from where they shivered in fear among the slates to which he had tracked them; even better to dig them out of the valley meadows below Cwmoer, where they left a trail any hound could follow. Only once before that he could remember had mole come to Cwmoer itself, and that was many killings ago. But if he could not sniff them out of the slates or dig them out of the ground, he could play with their fear of him right here, before shattering their silky bodies against the slate and seeing their blood-stains in the snow.

  So, enjoying himself, Gelert tore down upon them again, adding growls to his snarls, just for fun, because living meat was so much more exciting than dead.

  It was as the hound passed by a third time without touching them that Bracken realised that they were being played with and might yet have time to escape into one of the many hollows off the track under the slates at the foot of the tip. He grabbed at Boswell and pushed him towards them, automatically shielding him as the hound began its fourth run upon them down the steep track.

  Seei
ng them move, Gelert’s great muscles rippled and flexed in his shoulders. He shifted his weight with the subtlety of a bird in flight, his back legs following his body in a swerve to the left as, to his delight, the moles pathetically scrabbled for shelter. With the slightest of halts in motion and speed he effortlessly brought his great paws hard on the ground just in front of their snouts, making them stop in panic and giving him the pleasurable whiff of their scent of fear.

  They turned away, as he knew they would, and he swung his great rough-furred head to look at them, enjoying the flow of his great body as it turned sharply back on itself and he went in for a proper snout at them.

  Bracken had stopped still when the hound came at them again, but as he went past, he pushed Boswell ahead again, turning back towards the hound. There are some threats so vast to a mole, so utterly beyond his sight, that resistance seems as absurd as a six-day mole pup fighting with its mother. And yet a pup does fight.

  So, as Boswell ran on, Bracken turned back towards the great shining muzzle of Gelert and with all his body and spirit thrust out his talons at it as Medlar had so long before taught him. His talons were sharp and the lunge was very powerful. It caught the hound and caused him such surprise and sudden pain that he pulled massively back and growled for the first time with genuine anger.

  With one great sweep of his paw he sought to catch both moles at once, the one who had struck out at him and the other who was fleeing. As Boswell dived beneath the massive slate towards which Bracken had pushed him, Gelert’s claws, or one of them, ran searingly down Boswell’s back, bringing an immediate rush of blood to it. This was sufficient to halt the swing of Gelert’s paw enough for Bracken instinctively to sidestep its nearly fatal sweep, to snarl in his turn and to run under Gelert’s gaping jaws after Boswell into the safety of the slate. A smaller adversary has some advantages. There was a great growling and snarling from above them as Gelert, angry but delightfully excited now, smelt the blood on his paw and hungrily thrust it under the slate, the claws scratching noisily at its edge. Getting a purchase on it, he strained to pull it aside, but though it rocked and Bracken felt its weight lift and slide above him, it did not shift sufficiently to give Gelert access to the moles.