Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “Loose discipline, that’s what you should expect, Crusade Councillor,” said Dirke, using Sapient’s grander title. “That’s what I saw wherever I passed through. Newborns in command still, but too much that is lax. Vagrant moles seem all about, calling themselves pilgrims. It is the mole Privet they seek, and they think she’s in Duncton, for they are beginning to converge on it.”

  “Privet!” exclaimed Sapient in disgust. “She should have been killed at Wildenhope with the rest of them. When I heard —”

  “I was there at your flank when you heard, sir,” said Dirke, grinning. “You were not well pleased.”

  “Well pleased! The Elder Senior Brother and his advisers, notably Brother Inquisitor Skua, made a grave mistake in letting her live. They should at the very least have got a confession from her. Stone help us if she is still alive.”

  “There’s many think so!”

  “Quail’s problem, not ours. It may have been a fatal mistake, and she may return to cause his downfall if his disease doesn’t do it first.”

  “He still...?”

  “Yes, mole, he stinks. Like rotting flesh, he stinks. I stay upwind of him when we are outside, and by the nearest draughty portal when we are down below. Yet he is our leader, and though he may have many faults as a mole, as our spirit in the Stone he must be seen as faultless.”

  “And the former Elder Senior Brother, sir?”

  “Thripp lives, but is kept out of sight. They say he is incarcerated in Rollright, though by now, were I Quail, I would have had him removed to Duncton itself. But... but... enough of talk, Dirke. Best your head. Say nothing to anymole. Brief me at dawn and then to Buckland we shall go.”

  Sapient smiled faintly with relief that circumstances had fallen out so well.

  “Dirke!” he called, summoning his subordinate back. “Do I understand that we lost hardly any moles at Avebury?”

  “You do, sir: just the ones you wanted to lose. Old scores well settled there! As for the rest, they got clean away and by now should be waiting, and ready and willing, just as you have wished.”

  “Ahhh!” sighed Sapient: and now he smiled broadly, and Dirke grinned in return, darkly.

  The departure of Sapient and Turling and all their forces from the ranks of the Newborns beyond Banbury was as sudden as it had been well rehearsed. There was no discussion, nor even time for argument, and both Brother Commanders were too canny to give Quail time or opportunity to arraign them, which he would certainly have done.

  There was not even any final scene, for though Sapient (with a strong contingent of his own bodyguards to protect him) offered to visit the Elder Senior Brother, Quail did not deign to see him. Instead, Squilver and Sapient exchanged some angry words and the two former allies parted on the worst of terms.

  But the words and anger were ineffectual and too late: whole contingents of moles were already leaving their positions and heading south, and Squilver, who now realized his folly in not integrating the southern-based Newborn guardmoles with his own, could do nothing about it. So that one moment the frontier with Thorne’s force, though static, was at least secure, and the next it was as exposed as a starling chick fallen out of a nest in a north-east gale. – Squilver was nothing if not realistic.

  “We have a day at most to effect a proper retreat,” he told Snyde, having failed to gain quick audience with Quail. “After that Thorne’s moles, who are forever testing us, will have found our weakness and taken advantage of it and what might be orderly retreat will turn into a rout. You must tell the Elder Senior Brother —”

  “Tell him yourself, Squilver,” a voice whispered. “Speak your mind, Supreme Commander. Come on, mole, come closer, come close and speak to the mole who loves you so.”

  It was Quail, coming out of the shadows of his inner sanctum, his left front paw dragging, his eyes red-rimmed and rheumy. He wheezed a little as he moved, and occasionally he winced in pain. As he spoke the words “who loves you” he smiled a smile that was a mask to suffering.

  Squilver told him, told him all, and made no bones of the danger they were now in.

  “We can fool Thorne for a day, perhaps a little more, but only by dint of moving our forces about, and they will soon tire and then begin to become less malleable.”

  “Aye, aye, the snake stirs still, close by, ever closer, sliding and sleeking its way towards us,” said Quail in a voice that was sometimes a whisper, sometimes a rasp, and just occasionally became a phlegmy rattle, like some half-broken branch in a tree past its prime.

  “Yes, Elder Senior Brother,” intoned Squilver, not sure what else to say. He was in any case fighting to stop himself from gagging, for Quail’s odour was so pungent it was almost tangible, and growths and excrescences seemed to be spreading across his body and his head daily now. What had once been simply bald and smooth was ridged and crinkled now, and bulging in places, while from that normally unseen place between body and forepaws peeped sacs of skin, filled with Stone knew what foul bile. As for that excrescence at his rear, sometimes soft and flaccid, sometimes erect and threatening, Squilver could hardly bring himself to look at it – but look at it he must. For Quail turned, slowly, painfully, and there it was, longer, dropping into a knob of yellowness, and seeming about to burst.

  “What... is... he?” Quail asked Snyde, meaning Squilver.

  “Your friend, Master, and mine.”

  Snyde smiled over Quail’s foul, bent head and Squilver did his best to smile back.

  “He jokes, Master, he is but jocular today,” said Snyde.

  “Are you that, Squilver?” asked Quail, somewhat disconcertingly not turning back to the Supreme Commander, but reaching out a paw to Snyde, whose hump he caressed.

  “I am jocular,” said Squilver, “I joke, I jest.”

  “He makes a jape.”

  “A pretty jape,” whispered Quail, laughing terribly, and then sobbing softly. Then falling silent, snout low.

  Snyde looked intently at Squilver, whose mind raced for something to say, or rather, to find what he was expected to say.

  “Elder Senior Brother,” said Squilver with sudden confidence, “the serpent that is Thorne shall shrivel in defeat. Already he does so. We must not permit him to be an obstacle to your rightful entry into Duncton Wood. Eschew further parleys and parries with him; turn from him; leave him to shrivel up alone.”

  “You hear, dear Snyde? He was jocular; now he jests not.”

  “No, my Lord, he jests not,” said Snyde heavily. “The Supreme Commander is right, we must be bold and go to Duncton Wood. And you must rest while the preparations are made.”

  “Thripp will be there. And my son Squelch. And Privet, she shall come as well to see the Stone honour me. And mine eyes shall be talons into Thripp’s heart, who came so near, so near, to the greatness that shall shine upon me instead, and make me whole again. For...” And here, most horribly, he swung round, all his appendages with him, to stance snout to snout with Squilver. “... for I have been unwell.”

  “Have you, Lord?” said Squilver.

  Quail nodded his head, his eyes puplike and wide, as if to share some secret nomole-else could know.

  “But I am getting better.”

  “Much better,” said Snyde, jocularly.

  “Do I not look it?”

  “Elder Senior Brother, I never noticed that you were ill,” lied Squilver with delicacy, “but now you mention it you look well indeed; never better, never better.” He too smiled with ghastly enthusiasm.

  “No, no, I have been ill, I have,” simpered Quail like a flattered female. “But now I am better, and ready to go to the Duncton Stone in triumph and there be made first among moles, nearest to the Stone, which is no more than I am. For allmole I shall do it, for thee, Squilver. You shall come?”

  Quail turned from him before Squilver could find a suitable reply, and has gone into darkness again.

  “We leave today,” said Snyde rapidly. “Depute a strong guard to be with us. Deceive Thorne a while l
onger, for the Elder Senior Brother cannot travel fast when he is in contemplation. It is not fitting.”

  Being “in contemplation” was an expression new to Squilver, but no matter. He supposed it must mean “ill”. Betreat it must be, though not to defeat.

  “We shall consolidate and we shall overcome Thorne’s forces,” said Squilver. “Here we have been at a disadvantage, and perhaps Sapient has held us back. Now we shall make Duncton our own, and from it send forth the Last Crusade.”

  And he meant it, as foolish commanders whose delusions lead moles to their deaths always do.

  “So be it,” said Snyde, “then go to it.”

  “I shall!” cried Squilver, and was gone.

  “And is he gone?” said Quail, emerging a little later. “Has that jumped-up little has-been gone?”

  “He has.”

  “He cannot win against Thorne – he will lose. He is a fool, that’s all.”

  “Probably.”

  “His thoughts, his efforts, the work of those who do his bidding and follow his orders – orders issued in my name, Brother Snyde, my very own – will all be in vain, of course.”

  Quail spoke in a clear, cold, dispassionate way, and a mole who did not know him as well as Snyde might have thought him a different mole altogether. Certainly what he said seemed true, and chillingly sane. What hope had Squilver against Thorne without Sapient’s and Turling’s forces to back him up?

  “And so Squilver will fail, and then he will die. I will kill him myself. He is beginning to displease me.”

  Quail’s gaze slid away to some vacant corner of the chamber. A dusty half-worm turned and twisted in the murk.

  “But it does not matter. We have no need of guardmoles finally to keep us in power. The Stone is our army, our force, and it will crush the Worm and the Snake that seek to eat and entwine, to slither and to bite. Do you see, Snyde, do you see that all those things Squilver does – and Thorne, and that treacherous Sapient, the things they do as well – are in vain. The Stone will crush them all. Righteousness is our might. I shall be left, supreme; and you, Snyde, at my flank. Can you not see it coming soon now?”

  “Yes, Master,” said Snyde. He sniffed at Quail, he closed his eyes, he thought of nothing but the day when Quail would die and he, Snyde, would have the ultimate pleasure of loving the mole that had been greatest in the land. Snyde eyed the living Quail with expectant lust and said softly, “Oh, yes, Lord.”

  “Then shall the pains I have suffered for allmole,” went on Quail, “and borne without complaint, then, then, then shall they be banished from my body, and peace return once more, and Light, and Silence. Thripp will be there, his blood to anoint me. And Squelch, my son, his love to embrace me, and his song to soothe me; and she will be there, that Privet, that mole I was guided to let free: she shall be there to offer up the Book of Silence to my safekeeping, and for ever and all time I shall be remembered as the mole who brought the lost last Book to ground. She shall come back to Duncton Wood to love me, Snyde. Forgiveness is the greatest thing. And you...”

  Unadulterated lust was in Snyde’s bent eyes but what he said was this: “And I shall be Master Librarian of Duncton Wood, successor to Stour. It is all I ask.”

  “Yes...” said Quail vaguely, utterly uninterested in Snyde’s dream, utterly unaware of the nightmare nature of his real desire. “Can you not see?”

  “Yes, Master. I see it all.”

  “And Sapient will have Turling killed.”

  This last was so unexpected and irrelevant to what had gone before, and spoken so simply and matter-of-factly, that Snyde almost thought he had misheard. But now he considered it, yes, it did seem the most likely thing.

  “Master,” said Snyde, “your mind is the clearest of them all.”

  “Pain has not conquered me. Pain has sharpened me. My hour will soon come and I shall be released from it a stronger and more powerful mole, my penance paid.”

  “Master, you must sleep. Tomorrow your triumphal progress to Duncton shall begin, and you must look your best.”

  “It does and it will; and I shall,” laughed Quail crazily, and with sudden and obscene intimacy he tried to get Snyde to join him in a dance.

  Snyde declined, smiling most uncomfortably, backing away until Quail let him be.

  “You see!” said Quail, as all his energy fled him and he dropped his outstretched paws; he looked old, and ugly, and frightened. “I too can be jocular.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  No struggle – not a single one from out of the grisly procession of wars in the mediaeval era, nor one from the ghastly catalogue of cruelty perpetrated by moles of the Word in more modern times – can compare for the fierceness of its fighting and the horror of its outcome to the battle of Buckland, waged over eight days that late October, in the period when Privet was returning to Duncton Wood.

  The “failure” of the Newborns at Avebury had been a clever strategy by Sapient, planned long before against the possibility that his sojourn with Quail would be so long that he was unable to return to Avebury before the followers reached it. As we have seen, he did not get back and they did reach it, and so trusty moles like Dirke of Devizes oversaw a clever retreat from Avebury, keeping most of the Newborn force intact.

  We know now that behind Sapient’s strategy was the desire to take over Turling’s command in Buckland, thus securing for himself sufficient territory, and moles, to emerge as undisputed master of the south. Sapient appears to have agreed to go up to Banbury partly to gauge Quail’s strengths and weaknesses, but also to investigate creating some kind of pact with Squilver. We may only guess at this, for no records remain, and Snyde seems to have been unaware of such possibilities – or, just as likely, was by then too uninterested in such details to bother recording them.

  By then his narrow vision had narrowed still further to the coming inauguration of Quail by the Duncton Stone as Prime Mole – or some such absurd over-reaching title – legitimized by the presence and blood of Thripp himself. We need not doubt Sapient’s assessment of Quail as a spent force, one literally dying; and of Squilver as a mole who did not have quite the ruthlessness to last long once his sponsors, Quail and Snyde, were gone. No, Sapient rightly saw that Thorne was likely to be the greatest obstacle between himself and real power, and his hurried return to the south and determination to take over Buckland and all its appurtenances, reflected the insight that unless he got on with fulfilling his ambition, it might be too late.

  The matter of the followers concerned him rather less, though he was not so sanguine as Turling, a less cunning and imaginative Brother Commander, about their weaknesses. The followers under Maple had, after all, held the Wolds well against Caradoc and Wildenhope, and Sapient’s own forces from the south.

  But like all arrogant bullies, success had blunted Sapient’s judgement, and he dismissed Maple’s Woldian campaigns as trivial and unimportant. Yet Maple’s rapid overwhelming of Avebury, achieved far more quickly and with far less loss of life than Sapient expected, caused him to revise his opinion.

  “This is a mole who needs a beating,” he told Dirke of Devizes, two days out of Banbury and well on the way to the south, “and we shall see that he gets it.”

  “You shall share the campaign against the followers with Brother Commander Turling, sir?” asked Dirke provocatively.

  “Shall I?” said Sapient, eyes chilly, snout thrusting out as if considering a future shared with anymole as a most disagreeable prospect.

  “Shan’t you, sir?” asked Dirke.

  “I hope that Turling suffers no accident, mole, that will force me to assume responsibilities I have no wish for,” responded Sapient ambiguously, shifting his yellow eyes from the middle distance down to his sharp and shiny talons.

  “Yes, sir,” said Dirke, smiling, “or do I mean no, sir?”

  “You must decide, Dirke, and only you, what you mean by that.”

  Dirke made his decision and a few days later, Brother Commander Turling was
found dead at dawn in a temporary scrape near Littlemore, to the south-east of Duncton Wood. He had been suffocated, though only after a fierce struggle. His personal bodyguards, six in number, were unable to give a satisfactory explanation why not one of them was at least within shouting distance at the time, though one report states that all six were seen near Dirke’s quarters, in dubious female company, enjoying themselves.

  Sapient expressed surprise and rage at the loss of so able a Brother Commander, and had all Turling’s guards drowned in the river near Sandford. Then, assembling such of Turling’s commanders as had travelled north with him, he announced that he must forthwith “assume responsibilities he had not wished to even consider”. In the circumstances loyalty would be demanded, and to emphasize the point Sapient had one of Turling’s commanders (who made the mistake of not declaring himself loyal to Sapient with quite sufficient alacrity) killed as well. So by the time Sapient approached Buckland some days later, he was able to claim to be its Acting Brother Commander.

  He did not attempt to enter the infamous tunnels of Buckland until the large and well-trained force that had escaped Avebury had made contact with him, which it duly did at the place, and in the way, he had arranged. Indeed, an observant mole, able to watch the disposition of the Avebury Newborns about Buckland, might well have concluded that this was an invading force rather than one on the same side. But Sapient was not inclined to leave such things to chance, and wished to be sure that the Buckland Newborns would give him fealty.

  He need not have worried. He sent Dirke himself in to the misleadingly clean and spacious lower tunnels of Buckland with the sad tidings of Turling’s demise, and before long all the junior commanders in Buckland, and four of the five senior commanders, were falling over themselves in rushing out and offering themselves up to Sapient’s leadership.

  Two exceptions, one a cousin of Turling, and the other his oldest crony, were caught trying to escape, and put to death. A few others whom Sapient decided he could not trust were demoted, and so, with relative ease, Sapient took control of Buckland and, in effect, of southern moledom.