Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  Chapter Nine

  “What are your names and whither are you bound?”

  The voice that challenged them came from the shadows of a wide part of the communal way down which they were travelling. It was from a confident male, and one who knew how to take a firm stance without unnecessary aggression. Tryfan went on ahead of Spindle and saw that the mole was powerful of haunch and that his fur caught the entrance light healthily. His gaze was indifferent and untroubled, that of a mole who feels secure in the organisation behind him, but there was something flat and emotionless about his voice which reminded Tryfan immediately of the guardmoles who had held them briefly at Uffington.

  It would have been a dim mole who could not see that he had no intention of letting travellers pass by without checking on what their business was and where they were going. It seemed certain that they had reached the edges of the notorious Buckland system....

  They had learnt much of Buckland in the eight days since they had left their place of refuge and gone forward on their journey once more, and more, too, of the grikes’ cruel ways. All of it confirmed the grim report which the scribemole Brevis, Spindle’s master, had made before he had disappeared and probably been killed during the grike invasion of the Holy Burrows.

  It seemed that when the plagues came, Buckland, a worthy enough place though Stoneless, had been hard hit and many had died and been sealed in. When the grikes took it over they decided to use it as one of their key systems, mainly because of its convenient location at a junction of ways leading to north and south, and to east and west. Just a little to the north of it was a crossing over the Thames, made by twofoots but reputedly ancient, a way moles and other creatures could use in relative safety from roaring owls, often a hazard at river crossing points. Roaring owls are jealous of such points and guard them well, crossing and re-crossing them constantly and blinding moles with the light of their eyes, or fuming them, if they fail to crush them on their onward rush. So a system with a safe crossing over a major river often prospered, and such seemed to be the case with Buckland.

  They were informed that Buckland was to be a centre for guardmole training and much clearing and tunnel repair had been done in preparation for its inauguration at Midsummer as a working system. Indeed, so the rumours went, Henbane of Whern herself was to visit the system then and preside over the rituals the grikes favoured for Midsummer’s eve.

  “Rituals?” Tryfan had asked.

  But the responses to that question among the moles they met were furtive and uneasy, muttered whispers, fearful glances. Aye, rituals, snoutings and killings and that. Punishments and Atonements. From Midsummer on, they learnt, Stone believers were to be outcast.

  “Outcast?”

  “Where do you two come from that you ask such questions?” somemole Tryfan was treating had asked suspiciously.

  “Herbalists like us are more concerned with finding plants than worrying ourselves over-much with these goings on,” Tryfan had replied carelessly, digging his talons in extra hard to the mole whose shoulder he was healing. “We’ve come from east of Fyfield way and the grikes have not done much there yet.”

  “Eastward’ll be the last push, praise the Word!” said the mole. “Ouch! That hurts, healer!”

  “Relax mole!” said Tryfan. “Now, tell me about being outcast. We feel we’ve been such all our lives, eh Spindle?”

  “Yes Benet,” replied Spindle, using the name they had decided to give Tryfan.

  “Outcast moles may be killed by any who meet them, or taken to guardmoles who have rights to kill them as they will. Not to do so is a snouting offence in itself. To be outcast is to be dead, for a mole cannot hide from the Word,” said Tryfan’s patient grimly. “I wouldn’t want to be a Stone follower and anywhere near Buckland at Midsummer. It’d be a snouting for sure!”

  So they had journeyed towards Buckland, bit by bit learning what they could of the grikes. So that when they finally arrived there and were challenged by the guard-mole at the entrance to the Buckland system Tryfan had their answers ready....

  “Of Fyfield am I,” said Tryfan, choosing a system near Duncton which he knew to be extensive and where the plagues had been especially bad. He knew his accent gave him away as a mole from the systems east of Uffington but the chances of meeting a Fyfield mole who might challenge him were probably low. If he did he would just have to bluff it out by pretending to be from the outliers – those areas adjacent to major systems in which more idiosyncratic moles like to live. As it was, the guardmole did not seem to react or to wish to question his claim so he continued with his story. “My name is Benet. My companion is a vagrant and simple, but of use to me.”

  “Of use?” asked the guardmole.

  Tryfan shrugged. “A healer am I and I know of herbs, and he finds them well. And what is more —” Tryfan laughed – “he finds worms and I can eat them well!”

  A brief obligatory smile went across the guardmole’s face at this pleasantry and so, seemingly satisfied, he turned from Tryfan to Spindle.

  “Your name?”

  Spindle gawped at him stupidly, wiped his snout messily on his flank, peered at his talons and said, “They do call me Spindle. They do call him Benet. What’s your name?”

  The guardmole recoiled a little at this rudeness but then, dismissing it, said to Tryfan, “Well, Benet, you have done wisely to come here. Healers, genuine healers that is, are in short supply and always needed when the Word has come. Are you of the Word?”

  “Never was much of one for all that business, the Stone, the Word, and that,” he said slowly, adding indifferently, “It’s all one to me.”

  “Well, you are obviously not initiate,” said the guard-mole. “But the eldrenes will see to that! A mole who is not of the Word lives against the Word and that is wrong, and by Midsummer it will be an outcasting for moles who have not Atoned. You have time enough. We don’t hold it against southerners to have been of the Stone if they’re willing to change their ways and learn the Word, may its power be praised.”

  The mole paused, looking from one of them to the other.

  “You always travel together?”

  “Yes,” said Tryfan, puzzled by the question. “Why, is...?”

  The mole smiled, a little too positively, and, shrugging, raised a paw and said, “It’s nothing, no, no, nothing.” He paused again. “You’re a healer, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Tryfan.

  “Of Fyfield?”

  “I have said so.”

  “And where have you come from?”

  “Wandering, here and there.”

  “Well, well, it is good. You are welcome. But take care to become initiate. The eldrenes will help.”

  Tryfan relaxed for the guardmole seemed satisfied, though for a moment his questions had expressed suspicion. As Tryfan looked suitably apologetic he wondered why the idea of the “eldrenes” – who were presumably no more than female elders – left him feeling uneasy.

  “Moles who do not learn the Word,” the guardmole was continuing pompously, “are a source of trouble and concern. They are outside all systems and after the Atonings of next Midsummer then such moles will be reviled and punished, hunted and driven from security into loneliness, and lost. The WordSpeaker says this must be.” The lecture ended there except for a final “Merciful is the Word”, spoken rather tonelessly, as if the guardmole was repeating words he had learned by rote. His eyes expressed little emotion and certainly no warmth, love and charity, the impulses that might be associated with “mercy’. Tryfan was beginning to get the measure of grike guardmoles.

  “WordSpeaker?” repeated Tryfan doubtfully. “We’re just simple moles of a system hit by plague and find all this hard to understand. The Word I know, but the “WordSpeaker”?”

  “You southerners are ignorant,” said the guardmole dismissively. “The WordSpeaker is Henbane of Whern, Word be with her, and she will honour us with a visit before long – which is why we are recruiting moles, even doltish herbalis
ts, to get the system ready. Buckland is to be the mission centre for the final push to the east, to Duncton Wood and beyond to the very edge of the Wen.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Tryfan, sounding as stupid as he could and thinking that this was useful information. The Wen was the same place as the “Empty Quarter” that Boswell had mentioned in their final moments together on Uffington Hill. But more than that, when the guardmole mentioned the name, Tryfan felt that stirring of power come to him and a certainty that their way must lead into the Wen.

  Spindle, perhaps sensing that the time had come to move on, looked about unhappily and declared in a loud voice, “Time to move! Food!”

  The guardmole seemed to lose interest at this point and, evidently satisfied with their story, said, “You stay here and I’ll fetch a mole to take you to the visitors’ burrows. You’ll stay there a day or two, be interviewed by an eldrene, and then be allocated a task within your competence.”

  The guardmole left them briefly, and quickly returned with an abject looking male.

  “This one’ll guide you,” said the guardmole shortly. “No talking, pausing, eating, fouling, or wandering. And don’t surface. The guardmoles patrol and have orders to talon anymole they find on the surface without permission. It’s for your own good: there are a lot of owls about.” With that they were dismissed into the Buckland system. Their guide looked at them briefly and muttered, “The Word be with thee,” before leading them into the tunnels.

  They were too intent on following their guide into the tunnel, which grew suddenly rather dark and unclear, to notice a female who appeared from a concealed side entrance near the guardmole and, like him, watched after them.

  She was slim but somehow more impressive than the guardmole, but there was little doubt about whichmole had most authority.

  “Whichmole’s their guide?” she asked, her voice clipped and cold.

  “Ragwort. He’s trusty enough, Sleekit. A bit dim but he knows this infernal system better than most.” The guardmole stopped speaking and waited for her to reply, obviously in some awe of her.

  “I like them not, I trust them not,” said Sleekit. “They were not nervous enough. You did well to detain them with questioning. They may be the ones we seek, or they may not. ‘Benet’, ‘Spindle’ – the mole we seek is named ‘Tryfan’. The White Mole Boswell told us that much. But the second we have no name for. These two seemed unsuspicious and it is best they remain so.”

  Sleekit thought for a moment and then spoke a quiet instruction: “Send word of their descriptions by the northern route and put a watch out for them. They must not be alerted that they are under surveillance, but neither of them must escape or be killed. They may have information of something we are looking for. I will follow behind them. Take that order now.”

  Sleekit followed on down the tunnel the way Tryfan and Spindle had gone, while the guardmole rapidly went by another route until he found a colleague.

  “Another alarm,” he said heavily. “The sideem thinks a couple of moles I just let through may be the ones there was a fuss about a while ago. They seemed all right to me, just a bit ignorant. But you know the sideem, especially Sideem Sleekit. Take the usual password for watchout and give them these descriptions...” The two guardmoles talked a little longer and then set about their tasks.

  For a time Tryfan and Spindle followed their guide directly north in good but mundane tunnels, but then they turned west into what was obviously an older part of the system. The tunnels were more winding, the soil darker, and they both felt more at home. Their guide slowed a little and Tryfan took the opportunity of asking him his name.

  “Talking’s not allowed,” replied the mole.

  They travelled on in depressing silence a little longer until Spindle said, “I’m stopping for food!” He had seen a wormful tunnel and turned into it. The party came to an abrupt stop.

  “You’re not meant to,” said the guide wearily.

  Tryfan shrugged. “He’s rather...” He shrugged again and smiled.

  “Oh,” said the guide apathetically. “Yes. Well, all right. But if some guardmoles come we had better move right on.”

  “You’re not a guardmole then?” asked Tryfan.

  The mole grinned a little ruefully.

  “Me? I’m just... a mole.”

  “Nomole’s just a mole,” said Tryfan almost to himself, crouching down as Spindle tucked into a worm.

  The guide seemed surprised at this response. “A mole’s just a mole in this system, you’ll soon find that out,” he said.

  Tryfan turned full on him and gazed at him. He felt the power of the Stone in himself and so, evidently, did Spindle, for he turned from taloning the roof for more worms and watched Tryfan.

  “What is thy name?” asked Tryfan softly.

  “It’s Ragwort, but...” His voice faded weakly. His eyes were wide on Tryfan.

  “Then remember, Ragwort, that no Word nor Stone, nor anymole but thee can say truly what thou art or might become.” Tryfan seemed angry and Ragwort backed away from him in awe. “There will come a time when thou must stand firm and say, “I am and nomole may gainsay it,” and so long as you talk weakly of being “just a mole” so long off is that hour.”

  Behind them in the tunnel they had journeyed down, the sideem female, who had followed them, listened intently, looked thoughtful, and then purposefully went off another way.

  “What was that?” said Spindle suddenly, looking back the way they had come, and attuned to subtle noise from moleyears of being alone in the Holy Burrows.

  “Nothing. Surface noise,” said Ragwort.

  But Tryfan was not so sure either, and moved quickly back down the tunnel. There was nothing there and nomole in sight.

  “Nomole there,” said Tryfan returning. “It was nothing but nerves.”

  He seemed suddenly weary and crouched low and said no more. Spindle brought him food. Ragwort settled a little way off, thoroughly unhappy and trying to summon up courage to speak but failing to find it.

  Eventually Tryfan turned on him again and said, more gently now, “If you’ve something to say then say it. I’ll not harm you.” But Ragwort only shook his head, and said apologetically that really they ought to be moving otherwise they might be found and he would be punished by the eldrenes.

  “Who are these “eldrenes” anyway?” asked Tryfan getting up to move on.

  “They’re the female elders who run the system and instruct the initiates.” said Ragwort. They —”

  But there was the sound of movement ahead and they all three fell silent as they advanced on their way. A guardmole was crouched impassively in a major side route and watched them pass. Further on another waited too, this time blocking the way ahead. Ragwort signalled to them to stop and indicated a new tunnel that went off to the east, sloping down a little. An angled unfriendly tunnel cut into the hard subsoil. They stopped in the entrance.

  “There’s to be an Atoning,” whispered Ragwort. “That’s why there’s a lot of guardmoles about.”

  Before they could ask what he meant there was a heavy rush of air from the tunnel and a huge guardmole appeared followed by a frail looking mole, half-starved it seemed and his fur ragged. Two of his talons were bloody and broken and there was a look of despair in his face. Behind him, and driving him on with vicious talon-thrusts, came another guardmole.

  “Come on, come on!” shouted the second one. “The eldrene Fescue does not like being kept waiting.”

  The prisoner mole stopped for a moment very near Tryfan and Spindle, and he seemed for a moment to seek them out, to gaze at them, as if sensing there were still at least a few moles who might help him. Tryfan instinctively pushed forward towards him, and only Ragwort’s restraining paw prevented him from making a gesture of rescue that might easily have endangered them all.

  Then the moment passed, the mole was driven on down the tunnel ahead of them, and after a short interval they were allowed to proceed.

  Ragwort led them on, sl
owing because others were ahead of him. There was a curious mood about the place, full of light cheer and dark laughs, excited, unkind.

  “What’s going on?” Tryfan demanded of Ragwort, pulling him to one side to let others pass.

  “Trouble,” said Ragwort. “Best to keep your snout low. Best not to notice.”

  “Where are they taking that mole we saw?”

  Ragwort did not answer the question directly but said instead, “There’s things go on here....”

  “Th – things?” asked Spindle. Suddenly the atmosphere of Buckland seemed dark and ugly. Guardmoles seemed to be watching them from the shadows. They felt entrapped and threatened.

  “Disappearances,” said Ragwort shortly.

  “And snoutings?” asked Tryfan.

  “There’s things worse than snoutings,” said Ragwort, “and places that are punishments in themselves.”

  “Such as?” asked Tryfan.

  “Where clearers are, which in this system means the Slopeside.” He said “clearers” with a distaste and fear, as if the very word itself tainted the mole who spoke it. “Take my advice and stay away from the Slopeside. Hardly anymole knows the half of what goes on up there, and the deaths that result.”

  “But clearing’s an honourable enough task,” said Tryfan, surprised. Clearers are moles, usually first-years or weaklings, who sort out and repair roof-falls and damage in the summer tunnels, and open up the deeper winter runs when the first cold comes and the worms go down.

  “To be a clearer in Buckland is to be as good as dead.”

  “Why? What do they do?”

  “They clear plague corpses and open the seal-ups. But it’s not what they do, it’s what they catch doing it.”