Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  Tryfan, directing Brevis to stay right behind him, crept away along the tunnels he himself had made, the surface above creeping now with menace. He was angry with himself for having delayed at Harrowdown too long, angry... but now it was too late, and moles were going to suffer.

  It was not long before, from the tunnels behind, he heard commotion and fighting and it was all he could do not to turn round and help. But dispersal and flight is often the best for a small group which believes itself surrounded, and guardmoles will tend to take prisoners of single moles, but kill several together, so this way survival was more likely.

  Brevis and he ran on, the commotion continuing north of them on the surface. Skint or Smithills must have been taken. Then pattering above, crouching still, and any sense of what was happening elsewhere in the system was gone as the tunnel ahead was filled with a huge guardmole, and the roof behind collapsed as two more tunnelled down.

  “Resist and you’ll be taloned but not killed,” said the guardmole ahead of them.

  “Resist and you’ll be maimed,” said the ones who had come behind.

  “Resistance is folly,” said another above, whose voice Tryfan knew, for he had heard it giving orders on Uffington Hill.

  He surfaced, and Brevis with him, and they found themselves surrounded by moles, and Tryfan was looking into the face of the one he had last met at Uffington.

  “Well, well, well,” said Weed, with a grim smile. “I wondered when we’d meet again. I knew we would. Outcasts do not escape the discipline of the Word. You did well to survive this long. And you as well,” he added, looking at Brevis with menace. “How nice.”

  He came nearer, his twisted snout giving the curious impression that he was circling them though in fact he came straight to them. He peered at Tryfan.

  “Tryfan of Duncton, which means the mole Spindle will be nearby, and Brevis, late of our burrow-cells.”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “How many of you are there here?” asked Weed, unblinking.

  He doesn’t know, thought Tryfan. Or if he does he wants to catch me out. It doesn’t matter....

  “Four,” lied Tryfan, taking a gamble. It was the least he could say: Brevis and himself, and the one they had heard the fighting about, and another one nearby... must be four.

  “Four? We shall see. Bring them,” Weed ordered the guardmoles, who were not slow to use talons if either of them lingered for one second.

  They took them by surface to the south side of the wood where others had been gathered. Skint was protesting loudly when Tryfan arrived: “Take your dirty talons off me, lad, or you know what’ll happen. You’ll get plague....”

  Tryfan smiled to himself. Trust Skint to resist. Then Smithills was brought in fighting hugely, and it needed four guardmoles to subdue him. At a word from Tryfan he was still.

  Willow was there, wounded, though not badly. And then they brought in Spindle who must have been talking too much because as they arrived with him one of the guardmoles was saying, “If you say another bloody word you’ll get a talon-thrust you’ll not forget.”

  “I was only....”

  “Spindle!” and Spindle was silent at Tryfan’s command.

  They were herded together by the barbs of the fence at which the original Harrowdowners had been snouted.

  “All in?” asked Weed, his quiet, hard voice bringing an instant silence to the crowd of moles.

  Nomole said a word. All looked around. Each of them saw that one only had not been found, and that was Mayweed. Everymole was silent.

  “No more there?” said Weed.

  “Not a one, not half of one,” said a guardmole. “Plenty of tunnels there, and we searched them; strange daft affairs where you couldn’t hide a flea. But nomole.”

  “Strange,” said Weed sarcastically to Tryfan, “strange how you followers of the Stone call six moles ‘four’. Maybe this will help you count more accurately!” And with that he raised his talons and brought them crushingly down on Brevis, who gasped in pain and staggered bloodily from the blow.

  Tryfan immediately attempted to strike back, but the guardmoles held him, as they held the others who protested.

  Brevis righted himself, attempted to stem the flow of blood from his shoulder, and said in a shaking voice, “’Tis nothing, Tryfan, nothing that the Stone can’t heal.”

  “Any more, old mole?” said Weed.

  “More?” whispered Brevis.

  “More of you,” he said, raising his talons threateningly.

  “No more,” lied Brevis.

  The talons crashed down, Brevis staggered and fell, the others groaned.

  “There are no more,” said Brevis bravely.

  Weed looked malevolently about them all, his healthy grey fur and strong body a contrast to Brevis, whom he towered over.

  “Are we to believe him or not?” Nomole, including the guardmoles, were sure at whom this question was directed. All the captives were silent, praying that Mayweed would stay hidden and not give himself away and reveal Brevis’s denial as a lie.

  “Only six of you then?” said Weed, gloweringly.

  “Seven’s a number they like to travel in,” said a cracked voice of a female. They turned and saw the vicious eyes of Eldrene Fescue. “It’s lucky they say,” she added.

  Weed smiled. “Lucky is it? Well, well. Guardmoles, search their burrows and tunnels again for I would like to change their luck, and if others are found then as many will we snout, and if none are found then we’ll snout some anyway.”

  Never have the minutes of an hour dragged by so slowly for Tryfan, for that is how long it took the guardmoles to search the tunnels again. Brevis was not allowed to crouch low to ease his pain, nor was Willow. Skint never took his eyes off her, angry with the guardmoles who did not let her rest or give comfort or help. The time went slowly by and the sun rose on a summer’s day, but all of it was lost to Tryfan for it seemed certain that at any moment Mayweed must be found. Over them hung fear.

  Weed waited patiently, crouched low and comfortable. The guardmoles were disciplined and silent. Then as the time went by, Tryfan began to sense that there was another mole there, one he could not see, for it seemed a darkling chill had come over Harrowdown, though what its source he could not tell.

  Brevis, too, seemed to sense it for he looked uneasy and restless and began, suddenly, to whisper an invocation against the eyes of evil.

  “You can shut that right up,” said a guardmole immediately. “Now!” And he taloned Brevis’s haunch. Brevis fell silent, his breathing hurt and laboured.

  Then, one by one, the guardmoles who had been searching drifted back. Nothing to report. The tunnels were empty. It seemed there were only six after all.

  “Strange,” said Fescue, “there are seven burrows. Well, we’ll find the truth out, no doubt.”

  Then a sudden silence fell on the guardmoles, indefinable but infinitely deeper than before, as if fear was settling on them, and awe. As one they seemed to look towards the south and step back a pace or two as if their fate itself was approaching. Fescue moved her thin and raddled body near to Weed. Weed smiled.

  Then around the edge of a great oak tree, whose roots rose higher than where they were gathered, fell a shadow and then a shape. It moved slowly and with purpose and at first it was hard to make out, though it was clearly mole. But there was dark light there, sinister light, strangely blinding at first, for its colour was grey black and its fur shone with the light of the sky in it, but it held a beauty that was of pure dark. It was mole, but huge seeming, powerful seeming, frightening.

  Tryfan was struck still, as were the other moles there, and the only movement was Weed’s, for his paws kneaded the ground in expectation, and his eyes smiled and his face seemed to lighten as he looked up to where the mole came. While Smaile made obeisance, and dared not look at where that dread female came; and Fescue smiled in sickening humility.

  Turning, her body; powerful, her presence; ominous, her stance, as if she held moledom
itself within the sharp compass of her talons. Henbane of Whern was there, studying them, and in her presence a mole felt she had only to move a talon and he would be dead.

  She gazed at each of the captured moles in turn with eyes so dark they swallowed a mole whole, and Tryfan felt the world go silent about him as their gaze fixed upon him alone.

  “So,” she said appraisingly, “So you are Tryfan.” And she stared into him, her dark spirit in him, and he was struck still and in awe.

  “My name is Henbane,” said the mole softly, and her voice was a wind of allurement, and Tryfan felt himself beginning to be caught in bonds he could not fight against. She looked hurt, as if Tryfan and the rest of them were guilty of wounding her in some way and she could not understand why they should do such a thing.

  “And you are dear Boswell’s friend?” she said.

  “I am,” said Tryfan, his voice seeming far from him as if coming from a great height.

  “Then I have news of him for thee,” said Henbane, her body seeming massive and a thing of treacherous beauty, her talons black and sharp, her eyes upon him as if she could see into his very soul.

  “I wish for news,” faltered Tryfan, trying to fight the terrible feeling that he liked her, wished to serve her, was guilty in some way. “What... what is thy news?” he managed to say.

  She smiled, and it seemed that in that smile was a terrible suffocation and a death that a mole might like, might yearn for, might almost plead to be given.

  She reached forward and caressed him on shoulder and face, and her touch, her touch was sensual and deep and he wanted it more, he wanted, he desired... and trembling, struggling, fighting her gaze, he whispered again, “What is thy news?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” she said lightly. “Boswell, the last scribemole, White Mole, greatest mole of Uffington, Boswell is dead,” she said.

  And even as the world thundered and broke in Tryfan’s ears, and he staggered and seemed to suffocate, her touch turned to pain as she tightened her grip on him, her talons digging into him, her face contorted into evil and malevolence, and she turned from him, raking his cheek hard and drawing blood, as she pointed at Brevis and Willow and said in a voice that was darkness itself, for it lacked all pity and care, “Snout them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Henbane of Whern’s stark command was no sooner given than several of the guardmoles obeyed it with ruthless routine. Before Tryfan and the others’ horrified gaze, first Brevis and then Willow were taken on either side by a guardmole, and a third came forward and plunged his talons one after another into each of their shoulders.

  Protest, cries, shouts of rage and fear, horror, struggling... It was no use, and force was met with worse force. Brevis and Willow went into an initial state of limp shock as, without a single word, the guardmoles got on with their task. Above them, in the stunted trees of Harrowdown, a wood pigeon flapped and called to the blue July sky beyond, as if nothing in the world was wrong. And sun slanted through the wood, catching the white flowers of helleborine there, flower of mourning, flower of death.

  They took the two moles over beside the loop of barbed wire that hung down lowest to the ground between the old fence posts that edged the wood. Above it bent a branch of a blackthorn, its gnarled and vicious branches stabbing in the soft breeze.

  Brevis was now half conscious from the talon-thrusts he had had, and Willow was half mad with pain, crying in her cracked old voice and calling out to Skint to help her. While Skint and Smithills, fought desperately to go to her and, failing, bent their snouts low in distress.

  All the time the guardmoles were silent and efficient, indifferent to the nature of their task. “Move him along a bit, that’s right, there, just there....”

  “You’re not helping, old bird,” said another to Willow. “The quieter you are the sooner it will be over.” Both moles tried feebly to resist, sensing perhaps the awfulness so soon to come, but the taloning of their shoulders had disabled their front paws, which hung at their sides, and dripped blood into the ground.

  When they were ready the guardmoles looked to Weed for the signal to continue, but Tryfan called out, “In the name of love of allmole, Henbane of Whern, stop this cruelty. And if you will not, let me take their place for I am their leader and responsible.”

  Henbane raised her talons and the guardmoles held their victims fast, the barbed wire ready above their snouts, and waited for a signal to begin.

  “But of course Tryfan, of course! I understand. Discipline and right punishment is always distressing. You need only Atone and they shall live.”

  “What is this Atoning?” said Tryfan.

  “Oh nothing much. Just a confession of sin, an admission of the Word, and a rejection of the Stone.”

  “I —”

  “No!” cried out Brevis even from his agony. “Thou canst not.”

  “As a mark of my special favour,” continued Henbane, coming closer once more, “and because I think these two moles are too frightened to make the right decisions by the Word, you can Atone for them all.” She paused and watched Tryfan closely.

  “Just a word,” she said. “Just a nod,” she whispered. “Just ”

  “You’re accursed,” hissed Willow suddenly, “and neither he nor any mole speaks for me.”

  “Well, Tryfan?” purred Henbane, her talons caressing him.

  “I – I – If I atone, can they and the others go free?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I will do what is right,” she said.

  “Will they go free?”

  “That may be possible.”

  “Free?” insisted Tryfan.

  A momentary anger crossed Henbane’s face. She did not, it seemed, like to be questioned.

  “The Word is merciful,” she said.

  “Eldrene Fescue promised me freedom,” cried out Smithills, “and I am not free.”

  Henbane ignored this, but the moment of danger seemed to be passing, the guardmoles were getting restless, and strength, of a kind, seemed to be returning to the captors.

  Henbane moved swiftly to recover the initiative.

  “Well, Tryfan? Will you Atone for these moles and yourself?”

  Never was a mole more troubled and more suffering, never was a mole so bereft of life as Tryfan seemed then. His world was dark, and the darker for the knowledge that Henbane had said that Boswell was dead.

  “For myself, Henbane, I can speak, but for others I cannot. Brevis has said he does not wish to Atone, and Willow, than whom a more harmless mole there could not be and whose snouting proves your Word as merciless and cruel, has said you are accursed. But for myself....”

  “Yes?” whispered Henbane.

  “I will Atone if you swear by the Word itself to set all these moles free.”

  For a moment Henbane looked at him, angry and intense.

  “Clever, but not possible. Enough of discussion. I like not this mole. There is something about him. I like him not.” She was suddenly enraged, her mouth ensnarled, her eyes narrowed, her presence huge and dark.

  Then to Weed she said indifferently, “Give the order on these two, then snout them all.” Then her voice rose to a scream that nomole could ever forget: “For the Word, and by the Word, and to the Word shall they be punished. They shall not Atone, nor be forgiven, and as their screams die so shall they be forgotten. And it will be made known that Tryfan of Duncton was coward enough and unbeliever enough in the Stone that he offered to Atone!”

  And Skint and Tryfan shouted, “Take us in their place, have mercy on them.”

  But Brevis and Willow turned one final time and looked at their friends and there was love in their eyes and no fear, and Willow spoke for the scribemole too as she whispered softly to Skint, “Nay lad, I am ready to die and I’ll be glad to go. But thee, why, thou have strength yet to go to Wharfedale for me and go thou shalt, whatever this wickedness of a mole may do or say. Say you’ll go home now.”

  And bleakly Skint nodded his thin snout, tears of pity for
Willow on his face.

  “Snout them!” cried out Henbane.

  Then Willow and Brevis were raised up, their snouts above the metal barbs, and suddenly, dreadfully, swiftly, they were pulled down on to the points, their snouts bursting blood and their mouths opening into an agony of pain.

  Then they were let go, hanging unsupported there, their crippled paws trying for a brief moment to rise up and break themselves free, their bodies shaking into the rigor of pain, their eyes open in the fear that precedes the knowledge there is nothing left but to die.

  Yet as they began to scream Tryfan rose up despite the guardmoles that held him and cried out, “Stone, take them and show thy mercy. Let them know thy Silence now.”

  At which it seemed a sigh came from each of them, first Brevis and then Willow, peaceful and strange, and Silence was theirs, and death. Where their bodies hung their spirits were no more.

  At this the guardmoles seemed amazed, and one of them went near to Brevis’s body and talon-thrust at it and another pushed him away saying, “Can’t you see he’s dead? Now leave the poor bugger be.”

  Then was Tryfan powerful, his shoulders huge, his talons fierce. “And this is what the Word says you must do?” He waved his talons at the pathetic bodies hanging from the barbs. “Such a Word will never speak to me!”

  The guardmoles holding him seemed afraid at his strength and might, and not one moved to stop him as he turned on Henbane and cried, “Thou art accursed by Stone, and thy Word is false. Thou shalt die and thy Word will die.”

  It seemed that his anger and contempt crossed the sky above Harrowdown itself, for there were great black clouds there, and for a moment the sun was gone, and the winds were bitter for a summer’s day.

  Henbane seemed suddenly affected for she stepped back, staring at him as if, in his strength and purpose and defiance, she saw something like her own. She reared up to strike him, meeting defiance with murderous revenge, but in that moment what Tryfan had lost the evening before, by not acting on instinct and leaving Harrowdown then, he regained now in the sheer power and surprise of what he did.