Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “But if you stay and they find you they may know you have helped us,” said Tryfan urgently.

  Alder came closer to him. “I put up resistance, didn’t I? I got wounded, didn’t I?... Strike me, Tryfan. Strike me!”

  It was a moment before Tryfan understood what he meant and then, when he did, and only after he had tried to persuade Alder more, he struck him suddenly, hard enough to draw blood but only in the flank, where injuries are not serious unless they are deep. But at least he looked as if he had been attacked.

  “Now go,” said Alder, his teeth clenched in pain. “Go!” And Tryfan did so, as Alder lay down on the ground near the two dead guardmoles, using their blood to make his own wound look worse, and pretending to be hurt and dazed.

  “May the Stone grant that we see you again!” said Tryfan, and then, pushing Brevis ahead of him, he left.

  Mayweed and Spindle were nervously waiting for them, and with hardly a pause Tryfan urged them back the way they had come, pausing only moments to ascertain there were no moles in the main upslope tunnel before turning north into it and setting off.

  They hoped that if mole came from north or south before they reached the tiny shadowed entrance into the secret way Mayweed had brought them through they might hide in some burrow or cul-de-sac.

  But it was not to be. They heard sounds of alarm and discovery behind them, and they hastened forward, urging Brevis on as fast as he could manage, until they saw guardmoles ahead, examining the wall at the point where they had breached it and, perhaps unwisely, had left it unsealed to permit them to make a quick retreat through Mayweed’s tunnel.

  Two guardmoles were near the wall and a third watching in the wrong direction. But he heard them, turned round, warned the others and suddenly Tryfan’s party was facing three large and determined guardmoles, while behind them more seemed to be in pursuit.

  Mayweed began shivering with fear, grinning stupidly in some hope that this might charm somemole into helping him out of a situation that seemed impossible to escape from.

  “Please Sir,” he began. “Mayweed’s not happy, Sir, Mayweed didn’t mean...” but whatmole he was addressing it would be hard to say.

  Tryfan raised a paw. Took stance, gathered the others about him, and with but seconds before the guardmoles reached them muttered, “Look abject and defeated, and listen. And shut up, Mayweed. By the Stone and for the Stone are we protected. Now follow me and do not stop, nor falter, nor hesitate a single time. Spindle you take the rear, Brevis you in the centre, Mayweed you come with me.”

  “No, Sir, please, Sir, I’ll do anything, Sir, don’t like this, sharp talons and and, and...” whined Mayweed.

  But pushing him first Tryfan suddenly charged forward, just as the guardmoles were relaxing in the belief that the little party they had stumbled on were submitting, and shouted, “Disease! This mole is accursed, this mole has the plague, beware, beware...!” As the guardmoles looked at one another and then at the pathetic Mayweed, with his bald head and foul-smelling sores and yellow teeth, Tryfan surged powerfully past and caught the first mole a great blow on his face, and the second a strong enough strike to unbalance him and make him wrong-paw back on to the third. Then he pulled Brevis through the melee, thrust Spindle along after him and ordered them and Mayweed to run. He turned round and, with mighty thrusts, caught the third of the guardmoles across the flank.

  Then, as the others raced on upslope, Tryfan cried out, “Traitors, miscreants, here, here!” The pursuers from the burrow-cells, who must have found Brevis missing and his guardmoles dead or “wounded”, were closing in and he hoped to confuse them by setting one group against the other for long enough to get himself clear.

  Then he began chasing after the other three, turning from time to time and seeing the guardmoles gather themselves, sort out their confusion, and then come in pursuit.

  If they could reach the main entrance to the Slopeside, which was narrow and easily defended, if they could only get there... but the guardmoles were getting ever nearer and he could hear their angry shouts and heaving breath as they closed the gap, twenty yards, fifteen, ten....

  Ahead he saw Spindle pause and turn, and Brevis and Mayweed disappear into what must be the chamber before the Slopeside tunnel. He saw the look on Spindle’s face as he registered that they had almost got Tryfan, were almost touching him, reaching forward with powerful talons, as he ran and ran up the steep slope.

  Tryfan stopped, turned, and talon-thrust blindly back at his pursuers. But their speed was too great and he felt himself falling upslope, talons on him, and his strength leaving as he sought to right himself and take stance in the narrowing tunnel. Guardmole on guardmole slowed and ranked before him and he knew he was moments from capture and death now, with no hope of escape.

  “Take him,” said one to another. “Then after that the others before they get into the Slopeside. Take him!” And as two of them lunged forward at him, and Tryfan raised his talons to try his best to ward them off, he felt his balance suddenly go as talons from behind grabbed him, and a voice, slow and familiar, said, “Go on Tryfan, back now and leave them to us!” He staggered back and the great solid form of Munro took his place, with Skint on one side, and Smithills on the other.

  “It’s a fight you want, is it?” he heard Skint say.

  “We’re ready for you!” Smithills cried out with glee.

  And the guardmoles found they faced moles long used to surviving and using their strength in narrow places, as Tryfan withdrew behind the solid wall of talons and muscle his friends had made, and ran after Spindle and the others into the tunnel leading into the Slopeside. Methodically behind him, the three clearers fought off the guardmoles, beating an orderly retreat until, one by one, with the guardmoles cursing in frustration and pain at the great parries Munro was making, they retreated into the Slopeside tunnel.

  Once there they seemed to know what to do. For Munro bodily pushed them all further in as Smithills and Skint burrowed rapidly at the walls and ceiling above the tunnel, and with a crash of dust and debris the whole lot collapsed down, sealing the Slopeside off from the advancing guardmoles.

  “That’s just for starters!” roared Smithills through the debris at the muffled shouts and voices of the guardmoles. “Come through here and you’ll be diseased for life!”

  “Welcome to the Slopeside, scribemole!” said Skint, addressing Brevis and shaking the dust off his fur. “I can’t say I’m a Stone follower, but you can’t be worse than the moles of the Word after what we have witnessed this day!”

  “But I said...” began Tryfan.

  “You said to wait, but clearers protect their kind, and you are a clearer, Tryfan, and ever shall be one in our eyes. Come, the others are safe enough. The guardmoles are out on the surface killing those they can get their talons on, including the zealots, and we will make our escape with Mayweed’s help.”

  “Yes, Skint Sir. Can I have worms when we’ve done?”

  “As many as you like!” said Skint, “Now take us back to where you first left us.”

  “This way...” began Mayweed.

  “That way?” questioned Skint and the others.

  “Safe way, good way, quick way, Mayweed knows, none will find us. I know the best ways, Sir.”

  “Go on Mayweed, we’ll follow,” said Tryfan with a laugh, for he felt exhilarated by the chase and escape and knew that the Stone was with them, and would see them safely through that day.

  One by one they followed Mayweed up into the strange tunnels he knew, by root and by post, by lost chamber and by false seal; by dark and by light, as on the surface overhead to north and south, to east and west, all across the Slopeside, a massacre as bloody and notorious as any in the history of moledom began.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “They must not be allowed to escape! It will be worse for all of us if they do! Henbane the WordSpeaker is here, and Weed. All of them! I have never seen Eldrene Fescue so enraged.”

  The panic-striken vo
ices of grike guardmoles played back and forth across the Slopeside as patrols searched desperately for Brevis and the moles who had made his escape possible. Now near, now far, Tryfan and the others heard their paws going this way and that as they tried to snout them out, not quite knowing how many moles they were looking for.

  Dawn was long past, and the massacre of the clearers all but over, its dreadful sounds fading but never to be forgotten by the moles in the narrow tunnels beneath the tree that had been their refuge, the same spot where Tryfan and Mayweed had originally left them.

  It was from there that Skint had led the others after Tryfan and Mayweed had left, rightly believing that they might be needed, and risking leaving Willow alone while they did so. She had not wandered, except a few yards about to collect food against their return. Nor, once Brevis was safe into the Slopeside, had they been pursued, for the tunnel block had held, and, in any case, the chasing grikes were not eager to enter the diseased tunnels into which the clearers had fled.

  So they had successfully got Brevis back to their original hiding place, but further they could not go, partly because they were all too tired, but also because the Slopeside surface was busy with moles, and they would not have got far.

  No sooner had they regained their refuge than the first light of dawn had come, and all about them, in a silence broken at first only by the uncomfortable flutter of corvid wings and the thump of grike paws, clearers had emerged thinking they were to travel now to a better place, their job well done. Many were diseased, many blinded by a light they were not used to, most weak and unable to resist. At first the slaughter had been easy enough, and the grikes had methodically got on with their work, killing the clearers one by one as they came out, the panting of the righteous bloodlust audible even where Tryfan and the others crouched hidden underground.

  Then fitter, more cautious clearers must have sensed the carnage going on and had begun to resist. Some tried to flee, and a very few had stayed to fight. But the grikes were well prepared, sending down zealots to herd them out or kill them in the tunnels where they crouched.

  Now only a very few remained as the tunnels were checked and the last few taken out and brutally killed. Until the final and most ruthless act of all – organised it seemed by Eldrene Fescue, as mole historians of those times have established she organised the similar killing at Rollright – for those zealots who had gone into the Slopeside, and the guardmoles whose task it had been to patrol the surface since before this cynical and cruel operation, now found that they themselves were victims. Each of them was killed in turn, as if Henbane and her associates feared contamination from anymole who had been in the Slopeside.

  Now even that phase was over, and still the mole Brevis had not been found, nor his helpers, and now the last energies and anger of the grikes that day was being spent on finding them as they crouched in their hideout in silence, terrible silence, waiting and wondering what to do.

  On the surface above them sun shone, and a black mob of corvids had descended to feed on the fodder that the clearers had become. It was a scene such as nomole who saw it would ever forget, and one by one, quite silently, Tryfan allowed them all to creep to a surface entrance and stare across that pitiful ground which the Slopeside above Buckland had become. Just the fallen blood-sodden bodies of moles, and the shining, turning, beaks and wings of predators and above them, wheeling sometimes, the white wings of a gull, sensing food but driven from it by the mass of rooks already there. That was the sight Tryfan and his companions saw that day; they were the witnesses, theirs would one day be the testimony.

  What made it seem a worse sight was that, for corvids at least, mole is not a favourite food. So they pecked disdainfully at the dead and dying moles – for some were still living, a few still able to call out in despair – pecked and discarded and pecked again at anything that moved, completing Fescue’s foul work.

  And Henbane? Not seen. Watching no doubt, but not getting her black talons wet in those shameful hours. Let others do the dirty work, for that is the way of the Word!

  At midday the rooks suddenly all clamoured more loudly, and then the hiding moles heard the flapping of a thousand wings and a great shadow darkened the tunnels, circled, faded, darkened it once more and then was gone. The rooks had flocked, and left.

  Silence fell on the surface except for one lone surviving mole, calling out in despair off to the west, weaker and then heard no more. Silence, but for the occasional shifting of their tree in the slight gathering breeze, as down some of the more ancient roots came the sinister churl of roosting owl, and the wither and flap of a wing in a dark recess. Patient still. He would not discard the fodder round his tree. He would swoop and take it when night came, and pull it to pieces at his roost, and if, even after that, it lived still, he would relish it, to death.

  With afternoon came the frightening stomp of the guard-moles in the Slopeside tunnels, and the voice of Eldrene Fescue in a rage, directing a search for... themselves. A search which still brought out a few last survivors, cleverer moles who had suspected something was amiss and had taken refuge in some corner or burrow they thought might go unnoticed. Sometimes one was found, and was dragged screaming to a surface entrance, beyond any help that Tryfan and his huddled band could give against such numbers, and there murdered with a talon-thrust.

  “No prisoners, no witnesses, for these are traitors to the Word and blasphemers, and deserve to die!” So under the evil Fescue, the willing grikes performed the noble work of the Word.

  The guardmoles were thorough and occasionally came near to the escapers’ high and obscure hideaway, and all huddled still as death lest the smallest sound should give them away. Until, by mid-afternoon, all the tunnels seemed to have been explored, and the last clearers found and killed.

  “I know they are here somewhere near, for the place is surrounded and they would have been seen getting away!” Fescue cried, ordering the search to continue, even to the most unlikely places. “I will have them found.”

  “’Tis that Henbane she’s afraid of,” whispered Spindle, “for I’ve heard she’s displeased with this and that at Buckland, and it is said some think the Slopeside moles should have been killed weeks ago.”

  “But the clearers have only just finished clearing the main part of it, and on time for Midsummer too,” Skint protested. Even now he took a pride in a job well done.

  “They didn’t want to use the tunnels, not for guard-moles, not for living, Sir,” smiled Mayweed. “Never wanted that. Oh no... not for using.”

  “What do you mean?” growled Smithills.

  “Nothing, Sir, and no harm please,” said Mayweed.

  “He means,” said Spindle heavily, “that the Slopeside has been a way of keeping the clearers in one place and under control until Henbane was confident there was no further use for them; at least, that’s what I heard. It was a useful way of getting rid of unwanted moles as well, like Stone followers – like us. She never had any intention of using it, did she, Mayweed? A few were going to be kept for snouting at Longest Day, including Brevis here, of course....”

  “Yes, Sir, correct very much so, very exactly so,” agreed Mayweed.

  Skint and Smithills were appalled.

  “Why didn’t you say?” they said together.

  “Mayweed wasn’t sure, Sir, couldn’t be certain, didn’t want to tell no lie nor partial truth, he didn’t. No, no, no, no. Mayweed only guessed too late, only knew too late again. Mayweed’s sorry, Sirs and Madam. Mayweed’s frightened, too.” His voice had become a whimper.

  But as they talked a strange silence seemed to have fallen in the Slopeside tunnels, and there was a sense of change and chill, as if the sun had gone in on a warm day, and a northern wind sprung up.

  “Don’t like it,” whispered Skint. “It’s time we thought of leaving, Tryfan.”

  But as Tryfan started to reply he was cut short by the beginnings of a thumping, at first quiet and then louder, of the kind they had heard when Weed and hi
s guardmoles had been chasing them at Uffington. The tunnels vibrated with the frightening sound, and occasional deep shouts and orders; then absolute silence, then thumping again.

  The moles looked at each other with fear in their eyes, except for Tryfan, who gathered them near to him.

  “I think another mole is in charge. Weed, perhaps. Or...” and the same thought occurred to all of them:

  “Henbane!”

  “Aye, ’tis likely she’s taken charge,” said Smithills. They looked around uneasily. Outside on the surface the sun was beginning to set on the long, warm day, inside their burrow the urge to run out and try and escape was strong. The thumping was so ominous a mole could hardly bear to crouch still.

  “We’ll not move yet,” said Tryfan firmly. “That’s probably what they want. It’s what such a mole as she would do: frighten us out to the surface. Then she’s got us. No doubt guardmoles are ready higher up, or lower down if we went that way, to get us. So we’ll crouch it out and wait till dusk. Easier to get clear then, less danger, too, of gull and rook and possible, perhaps, for us to creep unnoticed out on to the pastures.”

  He looked around at their party, studying each in turn for signs of panic or weakness. Skint was crouched low and relaxing, experienced at crises; Smithills was scratching himself and looking here and there. Munro was grinning, frightened of nothing – too foolish, perhaps. Willow had stayed closed to Skint, half asleep and looking old and ill. Sometimes she snouted about a little but Skint would still her and she seemed content with that. Brevis was meditating, his snout a little to one side, but a muscle in his left flank twitching. He looked thin and grey, older than his years. Spindle had taken stance near him, and his eyes were open and his face upset. The massacre had shocked him deeply: he was the only one who had gone up to near the surface more than once to see what was going on. The last was Mayweed, who grinned nervously all the time. One of his scabs was weeping and he gnawed at the raw flesh of a sore just above the talons of his right paw. Nomole looked more nervous than he. Yet all kept silence.