“I know of this mole,” said an unctuous voice at Quail’s right ear.
“Well, Brother Snyde? Well?”
Snyde nodded to one of his minions to continue recordkeeping and eased his crooked body near Quail, the better to address him discreetly.
“Maple is of Duncton, I regret to say. He has military pretensions. He was the sinning mole who was observed helping the reprobate Rooster escape.”
“Duncton! Rooster!” repeated Quail, spitting out the words as if they were worms gone bad. “Again! Come closer still, Snyde, and tell me more... Mmm... I see... Quite so... The one who made a fool of Brother Commander Thorne in Cannock, eh?”
Snyde whispered his lies and calumnies, only speaking louder when he wanted Finial to hear, for he knew well how the right words to one mole could gain the favour of another. “The mole Maple is well-kenned in war, and more than likely he had spies to help him at Evesham. Against such evil advantage it might have been hard for any Brother Commander to do better than Brother Finial did.”
The tension eased, Quail nodded, Finial looked less apprehensive: Maple, it seemed, had gained his petty victory unfairly.
“There can be no second chance, Brother Finial. Maple of Duncton shall be caught and made eliminate. See to it.”
“I shall need reinforcements,” said Finial resolutely, “but it can be done.”
“You shall have more help,” concurred Quail. “Our will must be done. Maple, or the mole that fails to arraign him, must die.”
“Yes, Elder Senior Brother!” said Finial, who had achieved the best he could in difficult circumstances: Maple’s life or his own.
Quail nodded to him to dismiss and he went, though reluctantly. He had hoped for discussion of the matter that most concerned him – the rebels’ obvious strength and discipline under Maple. But now was not the moment for more controversy, and biting back his desire to warn the Crusade Council that the moles in the Wolds were not merely a disorganized rabble, he tried at least to get support worthy of the name.
“Forgive me, Elder Senior Brother...”
“Mole?” said Quail indifferently.
“I wonder if I might request that Brother Commander Thorne be deputed to come to Evesham. He is —”
“He is in Cannock, mole.”
“He is able. Elder Senior Brother.”
“No abler surely than any other Brother Commander?” whispered Quail. “And not so able as you might think. He let Maple of Duncton escape from Cannock!”
“I heard that was Squilver’s doing,” offered Finial bravely but after that his nerve failed and truth took second place to prudence. Finial sighed. The Crusade Council were fools to think that Crusades could be so easily won against moles of the kind he had met up in the Wolds. It could only be hoped that the Stone had not permitted other such rebels to thrive elsewhere in moledom.
Quail nodded his dismissal, and Finial left, the only mole there who truly knew how uncertain his future was. Make Maple eliminate! Finial remembered the mole he had met strong, in command, confident, and backed by moles as impressive in their training and discipline as any guardmoles he had under his command. Finial sighed again and left.
The Maple that Brother Commander Finial had met up in the Wolds was an altogether maturer and tougher mole than the one who, with Weeth, had led a “rabble” of moles out of Cannock back in April.
The word “rabble” was the one used by Squilver in his self-saving reports to the Crusade Council concerning Maple’s brilliant escape from Cannock. The force he led with Weeth, Ystwelyn and Arvon was anything but a rabble after but a few days under his command. Disciplined and well motivated, they arrived in Rowton only two days before Thorne reached the same system after the diversion back to Wildenhope with Privet. Learning of the Newborns’ approach, Maple organized the defence of Rowton, little knowing that the mole he was engaging was, without question, the ablest of the Newborn Brother Commanders. Equally, Thorne did not know, nor could he have done, that the inconspicuous system of Rowton was under the temporary command of probably the only follower capable of successfully defending it against a determined Newborn force.
So he arrived, and was astonished to find effective resistance by followers for the first time since leaving active service in Siabod and North Wales. There were skirmishes, there was a clever ambush by followers on one of Thorne’s patrols. There was retreat, attack and capture on either side; and there was an exchange of prisoners, at which Thorne and Maple saw each other from afar, each intrigued enough to eye the other up and down with interest and respect.
“He’s a very different kind of commander from Squilver,” observed Maple to Weeth.
“His name’s Thorne, and he’s a military mole first and a Newborn second,” said Weeth.
Meanwhile...
“That’s the mole Maple, sir, the big one on the right. We’ve heard he’s of Duncton.”
Thorne stared impassively at Maple. “He knows how to lead, and he knows how to fight,” was all he said.
And, too, he knew how to surprise, for that night Maple led the Rowton moles secretly out of the system, honours even with the Newborns.
“We’ll fight again, and on better ground,” he said. “We’ll head for the Wolds.”
And when morning came, and Thorne saw he had been outwitted, and his enemy gone, he said sharply to a Newborn guard who described the followers as cowards, “Cowards, mole! No! They did as I would have done in their place. We shall hear of this Maple again!” And so he did, but a few days later, when he discovered what a fool Maple had already made of Squilver in Cannock Chase.
The journey south to the Wolds after the triumph of the retreat from Rowton gave Maple the confidence of successful command; while the band of supporters he had inspired at Cannock was now swelled by the addition of the Rowton moles, with moles like Whindrell, Furrow and Myrtle now making a veritable army of moles with a mission.
Before Rowton, Maple had been a mole driven by a dream, now he had real responsibility and purpose, and impressed all those who met him that he had the knowledge and means to make the dream a reality. By the time he reached the Wolds he had already begun to gather a formidable team of moles able to advise him, and to execute his orders. Ystwelyn of Siabod was his impressive second-in-command, a formidable leader in his own right whose willing subordination to Maple added to the Duncton mole’s authority and prestige. Arvon, another Siabod mole, was one of those who liked to work independently in the field with a few tough and trusted colleagues, brave, dependable, intelligent – and Maple quickly learned he could rely on him for the most difficult of assignments.
Then there was Weeth, with no fixed position, but recognized as Maple’s confidant and friend, adviser and occasional butt, the mole others could rely on to say the difficult thing to their leader, or to protect him when others were too demanding of his time and energy.
Added to these were the considerable skills of Stow, older than the others, wise in the ways of the Wolds, a redoubtable and wily campaigner of moleyears past against the Newborns. A mole sensible enough to recognize his limitations, yet one well able to stance against his younger colleagues’ impetuosity and excess, while willing always to support Maple in the one thing he, before all others, never forgot: that their struggle against the Newborns was neither for revenge or retribution, but to uphold the liberty of worship for allmole, and the rights of all to live and let live whatever their beliefs.
Perhaps one reason for Maple’s success was that he had a clear and single-minded vision of what was wanted and how it might be achieved. His army would be mobile, never resting in one place for too long, and never stubbornly defending a central position if defeat would mean their heart had been destroyed.
“We are,” as he put it, adapting a felicitous phrase that Weeth had used of himself some time in the past, “moles of no fixed abode. We shall not pause for long, nor rest, nor cease to fight, until liberty is moledom’s once again!”
How inspiring
such speeches and sentiments were! How inspiring the Duncton mole who uttered them – large and powerful as he was, his face benign yet etched now with the lines that growing responsibility brings, his manner thoughtful and caring, and his eyes bright, observant, intelligent. To those who met him and served with him he was the personification of Duncton’s fabled fighting spirit.
When Maple had come to the Wolds he was well aware that an early success against the Newborns would unite the disparate moles now under his command, and consolidate his authority over them. But he was in no haste, preferring to find the proper target for his nascent army’s attentions, one which was achievable, and yet would demonstrate its skills.
The Newborns at Broadway seemed the ideal objective, the more so after Maple was approached by two brave moles who had escaped from a system near Broadway, whose population had been subjected to harsh and especially cruel reprisals following resistance to the Newborn way. With Ystwelyn in charge, but with a force made up more of moles from Stow’s group than his own, the attack was made largely to a plan of Maple’s devising. Diversion, ambush, and a ruthless follow-through, for Maple understood that this was likely to be the first time moles successfully resisted the Newborns in strength, and wished the Brother Commanders to understand that the resistance was not weak.
But when it was realized that several senior Newborns were fleeing to Evesham to raise the alarm, Maple deputed the enterprising Arvon to take a force in watchful pursuit, and reap what advantage he could. He did so brilliantly – capturing Brother Commander Finial of Evesham as he foolishly came hurrying out towards Broadway with insufficient forces to protect him.
But Finial was kept alive – and in this Arvon was following Maple’s strict instructions – since having killed Newborns in Broadway and shown their strength, it seemed prudent to spare others, and show the quality of their mercy. Finial was better alive than dead – better as an emissary from Maple to the very Crusade Council itself, where his effect might be lasting and demoralizing, than as a dead Newborn, swiftly forgotten.
“Tell them we have no wish for war,” said Maple when he met Finial, “no wish to kill anymole, no wish for strife. But we must defend our right to be free. Tell Quail this, and impress upon him that moles will fight for that right all over moledom until they are sure it is theirs once again.”
So it was that with such reasonable warnings ringing in his ears the humiliated Finial was set free with several of his colleagues, and the first true account of Maple and his army in the Wolds – disciplined, formidable, and enterprising – was heard by the Newborn high command: though with what scant effect we have already seen.
While Finial was away in Wildenhope, and the Newborns were regrouping after a successful breakout of moles from Evesham to join those in the Wolds in the wake of Maple’s first successes, a rumour was picked up by Weeth that led to a very different kind of expedition, but one whose results were even more significant.
Maple had long since made clear his views about the Wildenhope outrage, but they were to all but Weeth barely credible. For from the first Maple had refused to believe that so great a mole as Rooster could possibly be dead, and, more controversially still in view of the evidence, he did not really think that Whillan could be dead either. As for Privet and her retreat to Silence, that, to him, was entirely credible, for he had foreseen something of the sort ever since the journey westward out of Duncton Wood with Whillan and Privet so long before.
“The Stone is in all she thinks and does, and I duly pray for her safe deliverance from the journey she has undertaken,” he told his growing number of followers and friends. “We will never forget that the hard physical trials and struggles we must suffer for success will be as nothing compared to the mental and spiritual journey she has undertaken on behalf of allmole. She will return to Duncton Wood safeguarded, and on that day victory will be ours!”
Such were Maple’s sincere if controversial views, and it was soon after the success against Finial that partially at least they had startling and inspiring confirmation.
For the rumour – the intelligence – that Weeth had gained from moles of Evesham was this:
“You’re telling me what?” said Maple when he first heard it.
“I am telling you, sir, most perspicacious mole, that regarding Rooster you may well be right,” said Weeth. “Whillan, sadly, is another and less cheerful story and I now doubt that he can be alive, but I do have reason to believe that a mole who sounds to me very like Rooster is now alive and well and delving in a system some way west of Evesham and more or less under the snouts of the Newborns.”
“Tell me all you know,” growled Maple with a delighted grin – the delight was for the discovery that Rooster might really be alive, the grin was in rueful appreciation of the indirect way in which Weeth sometimes liked to reveal the most important news – infuriating to some of Maple’s colleagues, but indulged by Maple, who understood Weeth’s subtleties, and knew that he often revealed more indirectly, and reached deeper into moles’ hearts, than he would have if he told things simply and starkly.
“Permission to disappear for a few days!” said Weeth, in a tone that suggested that even if Maple did not grant it, he would still go. This was a task he wanted for himself
“We need you, mole, and there may be others better suited. Tell me what you know that a sensible decision can be made.”
Weeth shook his head, suddenly very serious. “Must go,” he said, “only me, all alone. I found Rooster before and helped him be free, and I will again. Other moles don’t understand Rooster and why he matters. Don’t know how to talk to him.”
Maple frowned, concerned for Weeth’s safety. “Won’t you let me send just a couple of moles with you? Arvon’s discreet, and —”
“No, sir. But don’t worry! Weeth will come back sooner than you think.”
“Go then, mole, go where you must. But remember...”
“Yes?”
“This mole cares for you. Many care for you. Now, go!” And Maple’s voice was gruff as he said this, and a worried look crossed his face as he watched Weeth leave.
“Maple?”
It was Ystwelyn come to discuss several pressing matters.
“Yes?” muttered Maple vacantly.
“You look concerned, mole. What ails you? Eh?” Ystwelyn had never seen the vulnerable side of Maple before.
“What do you know of Rooster of Charnel Clough?” asked Maple.
“A brave mole, but a strange one. Might have been a Master of the Delve, but was drowned at Wildenhope. Why?” Ystwelyn spoke quickly, his deep Welsh voice betraying his impatience to get on with urgent matters; yet he was puzzled at Maple’s mood, and by the question he had asked.
“It could just be,” said Maple, “that Rooster is alive.”
“Alive?” repeated the Welsh mole, surprised. His gaze sharpened and he asked, “And free? Available to us?”
Maple nodded and stared at Ystwelyn. Both were suddenly calculating what this might mean.
“Aye,” said Maple giving no more away, “he may be alive and, as you put it, “available to us”. And if he is...”
“And if he is,” continued Ystwelyn, “there’s not a free mole in moledom will not be cheered and inspired to hear it. Why, if he is...”
“If he is,” concluded Maple, “and we can keep him alive, there’s no Newborn force, however large, will be able to stop us. Ideas are impossible to defeat. Indeed, the Newborns may already have lost, just when they must be thinking they have won.”
Ystwelyn stared at the Duncton mole, thinking, as often in recent days, that anymole would want to follow one so confident of success and convinced of the justice of their cause.
“Mind you,” said Maple a little ruefully, “if Rooster is alive and joins us you’ll not find him an easy mole to know, nor one who’s comfortable to live with. As for letting us protect him...”
“Let’s worry about that when he’s with us, Maple! Now we’re going to have to mo
ve on.”
“Not for a few days. We must wait, it’s the least we can do.”
“Wait for Rooster to show his snout? That could be a long wait!”
“It has been already,” said Maple. “But having waited for centuries for the coming of the Master of the Delve, moledom and ourselves can surely wait patiently for a few more days!”
But a “few more days” turned into ten long ones before Weeth returned, and when he did it was in a Weeth-like way – quietly, unexpectedly, with few even detecting that he had come back.
Down into the great chamber where Maple and some others were discussing their next move he came, hardly noticed by anymole before his mischievous eyes and much-loved snout appeared at Maple’s flank.
“Mission accomplished, sir!” said Weeth with a grin.
“Weeth!” roared Maple, taking the smaller mole in his paws in a great hug, a gesture that delighted his fellow rebels who liked to see their leader relaxed and content once in a while.
“Well, you secretive mole? Well?”
“Well! A bit of a to-do it was, but he’s here safe and sound, along with his friend. He’s up on the surface, contemplating the stars. He does a lot of that these days.”
“Whatmole’s he talking about?” cried out one of the Siabod moles.
“Rooster, Master of the Delve,” said Weeth with mock self-importance.
“Here?” said Ystwelyn, scarcely able to believe his ears. A rush of excited chatter went among the assembled moles, arid it seemed that others outside had already heard the extraordinary news, for they came crowding in at various entrances.
“There!” announced Weeth with a flourish, pointing at one of the portals.
And there was Rooster, as massive as ever, making those about him seem smaller than they were. At his flank was a young mole, muddy from journeying. Rooster’s eyes were bright, the shaggy fur of his face and shoulders was glossy with health, and he seemed somehow trimmer, or leaner, and thereby even more powerful-looking than ever before. But older, too.
Duncton Stone Page 24
