Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “Skint will look after you if you let him. He likes you!”

  Mayweed scratched himself and shook his head as if trying to avoid the embarrassment that was attaching itself to him.

  “No, no, no, Tryfan, Sir, you will look after me if I let you!” He grinned and then smiled toothily, and added, “Conundrum that! Mayweed likes such! Mayweed will get news of Spindle for you!” and with that, and a too-loud laugh, Mayweed was gone, leaving Tryfan feeling hopeful for the first time in days. Then Tryfan smiled to himself and settled down. If Mayweed was to be the first follower that he and Spindle gathered to themselves, their followers could only get better! Then he scolded himself for thinking such a thing, for all moles are equal, however pathetic some might seem. But then, he thought, Mayweed was not nearly so pathetic or weak as other moles seemed to think. He might be a worthy and respected follower indeed on the long march towards the Silence of the Stone!

  A few days after this, as Tryfan returned from taking a corpse to the surface, he was surprised to find an elderly female shivering and miserable in some corner near peripheral tunnels where she should not have been. She was confused and seemed to have been trying to escape but did not quite know where to go. He guessed who she was and gently said, “Where are you going, Willow?”

  But this only confused her more, and she seemed to think she was back in her home system and that she knew him well.

  “Oh aye, it’s you again, you come to fetch me now! Wind good outside, is it? Shall you take me there?” And she giggled, her voice weak and old and yet contriving somehow to make her sound young and happy, as once she must have been, long, long before the dark days that had overtaken her, and now were killing her.

  “You can’t go outside here, Willow. There’s moles about won’t like it,” he said, taking her shoulder to guide her back down to safer tunnels, and perhaps over to Skint’s burrow, for that mole would look after her. But she would not go with Tryfan, and protested when he tried to make her. He was frightened that the commotion she was beginning to make would attract a patrol above, so he crouched down in a leisurely way, hoping to calm her, and was relieved when she did the same.

  “You weren’t going off and leaving your friend Skint behind?” he said. She thought about this a little and then snouted about and seemed to understand where she was once more.

  “To Wharfedale was I bound, my dear. Yes, just there for a while for ’tis dark here and getting darker with each day that passes.”

  “To Wharfedale with its river you’re not going!” said Tryfan with mock authority. “Not today anyway, too far!”

  “Then tell me,” she whispered, “tell me, my dear, for you’re from there, you are, yes I know I’ve seen you. Tell me of Wharfedale, and how it has been these troubled years.”

  There was such longing and need in her old voice that Tryfan quite forgot his own problems and moved closer to her, saying softly, “Why, now in our Wharfedale ’tis summer and the larks they sing high over the moor, and the wind burrs in the heather above us on the slopes. Down here the water runs and the food is sweet and the roots of tormentil and toadflax make the tunnels fresh as morning air. Can you snout them out, Willow? I’m sure you can...” He paused and she screwed up her eyes and pointed her snout here and there as if sniffing at the balmiest, sweetest, freshest of summer winds, rather than at the heavy filthy stench of the Slopeside.

  “Aye, I can that,” she said eventually, “and I can hear the patter of the sheep’s hooves, soft as rain; can you hear that too?”

  “I can...” said Tryfan, pausing again, for how does a mole evoke in another the memory of a system he has never been to? Well, such words come if a mole is loving enough and ready to let the Stone use him. From some deep good place they come, like clear water from a sunny hillside or the words of reassurance a father knows who has never had need to speak them before; yes, they come, and they came for Tryfan then, drawing perhaps on things that Skint and Smithills had mentioned of Grassington, or stories Boswell had told him of the northern systems.

  However it was, Tryfan spoke such words then to lost Willow... “’Tis good is our system and the tunnels so rich, and the young learn to sing those old songs... no system in the whole of moledom is like our system by Wharfedale...” and Tryfan felt the strangest of longings, to travel north and see those systems that were to him but places of stories and legends.

  “Aye, my dear,” Willow said, “you’ll take me there; nay, go there now, just for a moment, for ’tis so dark here I feel bereft of the tunnels I once knew.”

  “Not yet, Willow, you stay safe here with me and sing a song....”

  “Not of Word or Stone, not them. The songs before that, aye which I learnt, I did, I know I did,” she said.

  “You sing one now then, Willow, one of Wharfedale...” and his voice soothed her into a cracked old song that once a young female learned before the plagues came, and before what the plagues brought came, and before the shadow of the Sideem and the Word came across moledom and took moles from their homes who never went back. She sang of a home system she had loved, and when she had finished she said, “Will you take me back to my burrow before you return to Wharfedale?” and Tryfan did, leading her slowly down the tunnels to safety, and letting her lead him the last part for he had not been that way before.

  “So, now you can leave me,” she said when she reached the entrance to an untidy ill-made burrow, barely more than a scraping, “this is my home now.” She looked at it briefly and then at him and seemed suddenly ashamed of it and herself and said, “I had a burrow once, the prettiest you ever saw. You remember...” and she sounded so tired.

  “Yes,” he said, “I remember.” And he went forward to her, and laid his paw on her flanks, where the sores were, and then across her aged, furless face, and he whispered, “May the Stone be with thee, and may you know content once more.”

  “Don’t,” she whispered, “don’t,” but she did not move away as he touched her. “I’m so tired,” she said.

  “Then sleep now, and you’ll feel better when you wake.”

  “Yes,” she said, and turned into the darkness of the only place she had left that she could call her own.

  Tryfan watched after her, and then turned away and back down the tunnel she had brought him to, not seeing in the shadows the mole that had watched them, and followed them, and heard all that had passed between them.

  That mole went quietly down to Willow’s place after Tryfan left and looked in on her and her voice came sleepily out of the darkness, “Whatmole is it there? Is it Skint? Eh? Skint?” And then, “I was going to Wharfedale but a mole stopped me. Young he was and I knew him well, met him once, but I couldn’t remember his name. Did you see him, Skint?”

  “Aye, I did. His name’s Tryfan.”

  “Tryfan?” repeated Willow shaking her head. “No, that wasn’t his name. He touched me, Skint, here he touched me, and here. He touched me like... like my... it was like I was a pup again. Like that. Like my... What was his name?”

  “Tryfan,” said Skint again. “Now you sleep, Willow, we want you rested. Might have to journey. Might have to make a run for it soon and you’ll be coming.”

  “Who is he, that mole?” said Willow, mumbling to herself and beginning to breathe slow and deep. “Because I remember being touched like that, yes I do, before, when... I should have asked his name.”

  As she fell asleep Skint looked up the tunnel the way Tryfan had gone and there was puzzlement and awed curiosity on his face as he whispered to himself, “That mole? I don’t rightly know... not sure who he is! But... I don’t know.”

  If this incident made Skint feel that Tryfan might well be a mole to trust, then another, which occurred a day or two later, made him think he was a mole to respect as well.

  It started in a trivial way, after some ominous doings out on the surface when the moles of the North End heard the patrols catching and punishing an escaper. Skint had gone to make sure that Willow was secure, and on the
way had met up with Tryfan. The trouble had seemed to pass and both moles went back to their tasks.

  But a short time later, when Skint had reason to be briefly and legitimately out on the surface, a strange guardmole confronted him.

  “Hello, scum,” said the mole, coming close to Skint.

  Skint, ever a mole to respect, took a solid stance and said nothing.

  “Yes, Sir, I’m scum, Sir,” said the guardmole laughing. “Say that, scum.”

  Skint did not feel inclined to. He had outfaced guardmoles before. But now a second appeared, and then a third, and then a fourth. The last two had bloodied talons, and that wildness to their eyes and heaving to their breath that follows a killing.

  “This scum won’t say he’s scum and needs to be made to,” said the first.

  “This scum needs punishing by the Word!” said the third.

  “Bugger the Word,” said the fourth. “This scum needs punishing by us!” He laughed and Skint suddenly knew fear, and knew he was facing death. These guardmoles were corrupted, and maddened in some way by the punishment they had inflicted earlier. To flee would mean chasing, and chasing incensed such moles; to stay meant he would have to find something to say, something quick and clever, something....

  Too late. The third mole came forward and thrust a talon under Skint’s snout.

  “I don’t like you,” he said. He was grinning.

  “None of us likes you, scum,” said the first.

  “You’re coming with us,” said the fourth, hunching his shoulders and moving round the back of Skint and pushing him forward through the grass.

  “We’ve got something to show you,” said the third unpleasantly, and Skint knew it had to do with the blood the mole had on his talons. Smithills, I need you, was Skint’s last thought before he was led away.

  A mole running, a scabious frightened mole, running through those North End tunnels, panting and desperate, running to find not Smithills but Tryfan.

  “Sir! Now, Sir!”

  “What is it, Mayweed?” said Tryfan, who was working.

  “They’re going to kill, Sir. Kill Skint, Sir. Please, please now, now sir.”

  Mayweed never forgot the way Tryfan responded to his plea. Mayweed, who had heard and seen the patrol take Skint, for he had already heard and seen that same patrol kill another clearer and, seeing them head in the direction of the North End, had followed secretly and unobserved. Then Skint had been caught, and then taken back towards where that other mole, that mole that wasn’t a mole now, that....

  “Where is he?” said Tryfan softly. Enormous he was, his coat dark and his talons purposeful. No, Mayweed never ever forgot that, nor doubted that, of all moles he had seen and would ever see, Tryfan was the one who would know what to do, and how to do it when resolve and decisive action was needed.

  “Follow me, Sir, now, Sir, strong Sir, follow!”

  Mayweed ran fast, this way and that, all under the surface, across the North End and then beyond it to places strange, the twists and turns, and roots and stones in those tunnels seeming to fly past Tryfan as if he was dreaming them.

  “Is it much further?” he called out.

  “It’s here, Sir, ssh, Sir!” said Mayweed almost skidding to a halt and pointing forward and upward. “Just ahead...” The tunnel was really now no more than a dried crack in the ground which somemole (Mayweed! realised Tryfan) had made a little bigger. The light came in clearly and ahead a fence post, the cause of the crack, thrust down. Wire whined in the breeze from it, and there was the low murmur of thuggish voices nearby.

  “Scum, that’s all you are, and that’s why —” a voice was saying.

  Tryfan did not hesitate. He pushed past Mayweed and then straight up on to the surface, the soil and grass seeming to burst open as he came through it. So fast and unexpected was his arrival that the guardmoles all fell back in alarm, and the one who had already raised his talons to strike Skint simply stared in alarm.

  Tryfan advanced straight on them, thrust his snout towards the largest and fiercest, and said in a voice of extraordinary power and command, “And what do you all think you’re doing?”

  Before a single one of them had gathered himself together to find an explanation, Tryfan taloned the biggest on the shoulder and said, “Is this where you’re meant to be patrolling? No. I thought not. Have you any idea whatmole this is you’re just about to kill? No? Then get back to your posts or by the power of the Word itself you’ll suffer for it!”

  The four guardmoles stared at him some more, and even if a couple of them had seen him before they would not have recognised him. For Tryfan seemed huge and menacing, darker in effect, terrifying in appearance, and his talons seemed black and shining.

  “This mole is named Skint, and scum though he is he happens to have more knowledge of these bloody tunnels than any other mole alive, so we need him. Now get out of here before you go on report....”

  The guardmoles looked at each other doubtfully, but none had the nerve to ask who this strange mole was. He seemed important, and he was certainly threatening. Tryfan glared at them and they at him, and for a long moment it seemed that his bluff might be called, and he would be challenged. But no, one of the guardmoles stepped back and muttered that he was off, and then another, until all of them left.

  Even after they had gone Tryfan loomed, and afterwards Skint reported that if he had been frightened before he was frightened even more as Tryfan turned and stared at him, his eyes cold and black, his talons fierce.

  Then the moment was gone and Tryfan was himself once more, and he hurried Skint away from that place, where that other mole, less fortunate, lay, limp and bloody where he had been killed.

  From that day on Tryfan was part of Skint and Smithills’ councils, and privy to their intent to escape from the Slopeside when the right moment came, or the violence that seemed to be brewing in the tunnels erupted. They had decided to take the only route out that seemed feasible, and the one that Alder had mentioned to Tryfan – over the northern stream.

  “We’ll get you over that!” said Smithills confidently. “Northern moles like us are used to streams and rivers, floods and spates. There’s ways to get across troubled water if you keep your wits about you, and know what to do.”

  Skint did not trouble Willow with their plans, though she came to their evenings together more frequently now, but Munro, the other of the Rollright clearers, was briefed, and Tryfan was glad to meet him. He was, as Smithills had hinted, short of a sensible word. But he was cheerful enough, and generous with his food, and would laugh and thump his paws to the tunes that Smithills liked to hum.

  “Food and song – that’s what you like, isn’t it Munro?” Smithills would say, and Munro, beaming, would grin his agreement, easing his large form into a more comfortable position and accidently knocking poor Willow from her stance.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to,” he’d say, helping her back.

  “’Tis all right, dear,” Willow would whisper.

  “You never “mean to” but you do!” Smithills would scold him.

  “Sorry,” said Munro.

  Tryfan had never seen him angry but there were stories that he could be, and once a threatening guardmole had retreated in fear of him, and he’d saved a mole or two from snouting without really doing much at all.

  “Useful mole, that one,” Smithill’s would say, ’eh Skint?”

  “Munro? Aye,” Skint would reply shortly.

  Then, quite unexpectedly one morning, when Tryfan was hard at work and had just been visited by a guardmole, Mayweed popped his head round an unpredictable corner and said, “Surprised Sir, it is I, humble Mayweed, tired from a journey, and one I have not undertaken alone! No, no, no, no! Not alone at all!”

  But before he could go on, somemole pushed past him muttering and, to Tryfan’s delight and relief, Spindle appeared. He looked healthy and had put on some weight, returning him to his normal thin self rather than the skeletal form he had had when he left to be a tunne
ller.

  His greeting was so hurried and perfunctory that it froze Tryfan’s before it began.

  “Yes. Greetings. No time. Not meant to be here. Trouble coming now, very soon. You know the season?”

  “Summer,” said Tryfan.

  “Midsummer, nearly,” said Spindle. “Henbane of Whern has come to Buckland. Guardmoles are massing, the patrols are strengthening and massacre is apaw. Massacre, Tryfan!” His brow furrowed and his eyes were troubled. “This will be,” he said. “Now listen....”

  It seemed that new tunnellers had come from Rollright and were directing the clearing of tunnels and burrow debris from a point just below the Slopeside, in the hope of avoiding becoming diseased themselves. It was as one of several go-betweens that Spindle had been taken on. He had managed to convince the grikes that he knew what he was about, but others who had tried the same thing had failed, and died. He had no illusions about his own future. Go-betweens like him would be killed once their task was finished, and it nearly was. Hard for an individual to say exactly when the task was done, but the night before one of the tunnellers had disappeared and he himself might well be the next.

  So he had come while he still could. He had had limited access outside the Slopeside into Buckland. He learned that the clearers were to be moved, mainly by surface, before the tunnellers came in to finally clean up the system.

  “By the surface? So many?” said Tryfan, surprised and suspicious. He knew that overland mass movements of moles was dangerous, making them prey to owls and corvids.

  “I think the ‘move’ is really an excuse to get them out into the open and kill them. Have you seen strange guardmoles up on the surface? Are the patrols strengthening?”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “Yes, I thought so. Listen. I was able to talk briefly with Alder, who reported that Thyme and Pennywort are safe and well, though partially guarded, working down near the riverside tunnels. Alder has talked to the mole Marram and he is inclined now to be sympathetic to the Stone. But more than that I was unable to discover.