Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  Much later, at mid-morning, grike guardmoles came huffing and puffing up the long chalk slope and found not the many moles they were hoping for, but just one, lying still and cold by a great Stone.

  “Move him,” their leader said harshly. “Hang him up for others to see.”

  But the sun was in the east, bright and blinding, and its rays touched the Stone massively, shining and fierce, and the grikes backed away, and there was not one there, not a single one, who dared go near the old mole where he lay under the protection of the Stone, and touch him.

  So their leader himself, a tough grike, a seasoned campaigner, approached the mole, the light of the sun so bright that he could barely see, but when he touched the mole – why, he was unable to move him for sound seemed to go and a terrifying Silence was on him.

  He backed off with a curse, said it didn’t matter, said they would rest. They would find living moles. Yes, they would and when they did they would do as Henbane had bid them, which was to kill them. Let none survive, but those she had named.

  “Aye!” shouted the grikes to raise their faltering spirits. But their shouts seemed lost and weak against the bright sky into which that Stone rose, protecting its own.

  Chapter Thirty

  The moleyears of that summer were busy ones at Duncton Wood, full of decisive comings and goings, as the grikes, led by Henbane of Whern, used it as the temporary centre of their operations.

  Henbane had never felt better, and nor had Weed ever seen her so, as if final victory over the moles of the Stone, which the invasion of Duncton had come to symbolise, had seemed to revive in her a spirit and energy which she had had when she had first left Whern and Rune so many moleyears before, but which she had lost along the way of southern advance and imposition of the Word.

  Once the initial anger and affront that had accompanied the entry into Duncton Wood had quite gone, she acted once more with purpose and resolution, bringing to a triumphant close her long campaign as she gave out order after order for the final subjugation and transformation of moledom to the way of the Word. The operation against the retreating Duncton moles had been as successful as a mole could expect. They had been tracked to a Stone to the west of the Wen and from there a good number had been chased and caught as they tried to flee to north and south. All those caught had been killed after they had been made to talk.

  The mole Tryfan and a few others of no importance had travelled on eastwards and Wrekin’s moles had not found him. But that was now of no great consequence, for Wrekin, showing an unusual cunning for so straightforward a mole, had let the word go out that Tryfan had been found, and had exchanged his life for information about the whereabouts of the Duncton moles. In short, Wrekin’s guardmoles told all moles they met that the great Tryfan had betrayed his system and his followers to save his own life.

  Wrekin was not so foolish as to suggest Tryfan had been killed, for there was always the possibility that he would reappear, though it seemed unlikely since he had gone towards the heart of the Wen, and the grikes who had tried to follow him reported that the going had become so difficult for them that it seemed unlikely that moles would have got much further and survived. Roaring owls, twofoot gazes, fumes, vibration, concrete, tunnels that flooded, rats... the grikes barely got out alive. Nomole could survive in the Wen for long they said.

  Wrekin was not so sure. Tempted though he was to spread the rumour that Tryfan was dead he resisted it, and sowed the seed of betrayal instead. He knew that not all the Duncton moles would have been caught and that those who had not would hear these stories, and be cast down by them.

  If they gave themselves up, and were willing to Atone, the grikes said, then they might be allowed to live. Another lie. A few did give themselves up, hoping, perhaps, that they could find a peaceful integration in grike-run systems, with the possibility that in the moleyears to come there would be change, and Duncton would be accessible to them again. But they were vain hopes indeed: for each of those moles was interrogated, and killed. But of that the grikes kept silent.

  So, according to Wrekin’s assessment, the Duncton moles were destroyed as a viable force by late August, and their leadership discredited, and Henbane was well pleased with Wrekin when he came back from that campaign.

  “I could have wished that you had found Tryfan, and those others I named, but despite that your guardmoles seem to have done well.”

  Wrekin smiled grimly.

  “It pleases me,” said Henbane.

  “I had thought you would have left Duncton by now, WordSpeaker,” he replied, “for surely your wisdom and the guidance of the Word is needed at Buckland.”

  “Perhaps,” sighed Henbane, enjoying Wrekin’s respect and seeming to need his advice and support. It was a way she had, to make moles relaxed and feel she needed them. It was hard to resist, but Wrekin had not survived so long by being fully taken in by Henbane. His eyes stayed respectful but cold.

  “We have missed you,” lied Henbane. “Much has been decided and done for the future, and the position of Buckland as the centre of southern moledom is now secure.”

  “What eldrene is in charge there now?” asked Wrekin, his voice betraying the distaste he felt for the eldrenes. Henbane smiled. It was a clever thing to have eldrenes in charge of systems but guardmole armies separately controlled by moles like Wrekin, with she herself in charge of both. She liked it best when eldrenes and guardmole leaders disliked each other. And she liked it most when they combined to dislike the sideem. In such an atmosphere of dislike and distrust it was, as Rune himself had once suggested to her, easiest for a WordSpeaker to maintain control, and keep absolute power.

  “Eldrene Beake rules Buckland and she does it well.”

  “Beake? She’s young,” said Wrekin.

  “I was young, Wrekin. You were young. Youth may have the ruthlessness such an eldrene needs. Beake will do. She supplies you with guardmoles enough I think?”

  “She does,” agreed Wrekin; guardmoles and spies. Sideem too, probably, though of them, she most likely does not know. Wrekin had his way of spotting spies and informers and though he had never said a word, such moles, placed no doubt by the eldrenes at the command of Henbane, had a way of having accidents under Wrekin’s command. Henbane knew it, Wrekin knew it, Weed knew it, the eldrenes suspected it. It was a game played between them, never once acknowledging its rules. “Oh yes,” said Wrekin, “there are guardmoles enough, though not of the old grike school we knew first. We need more of those and must make do with grike half-castes bred of grike stock in southern wombs. Good, strong enough, well moulded by the eldrenes, loyal to the Word, dismisses of the Stone.” Then he added with an unusual display of nostalgia, “Yet not of the old grike school of Whern, WordSpeaker.”

  Henbane smiled. She liked a mole to talk.

  “Well, we all miss the north, Wrekin, each one of us.”

  “I am glad to have Siabod to fight for, WordSpeaker, it is good to be able to offer guardmoles more than guard duties. Many ask to go and it is easier to keep them in order that way. We will take Siabod before long now.”

  “Yes, so I have heard. It is well. I would like to have had that settled before we...” But she stopped herself saying more.

  “Before?” queried Wrekin, easing his squat and stolid body at its stance. These days his face was lined, and he frowned permanently from an old scar that coursed his face.

  “Before,” repeated Weed from the shadows. “Before this and before that.”

  “Ah!” said Wrekin, realising he had asked too much and Henbane had made a rare slip. He did his best to remain impassive. He had not even known Weed was there.

  “So, all is well. All in order. All settled,” Henbane said.

  Wrekin was suddenly uneasy and alert. All in order, what in order? All settled, what settled? All’s well, too well? Yes, he was uneasy.

  “You will go to Siabod?” asked Henbane softly.

  Should he? Shouldn’t he? What did she want? Him away perhaps, but aw
ay from what? Yet he felt powerless without the best of his guardmoles and they, the very best of them led by Ginnell, a mole he had trained himself and whom he trusted, were already at Siabod, or on the way there.

  “I had hesitated to go, WordSpeaker, until you made your desire known.”

  Henbane narrowed her eyes. From his corner Weed watched impassively, Wrekin waited, watching and listening. He was uneasy.

  “My advice rather than my desire, Wrekin, is that you go. Siabod may be harder to take than we think. It may need your experience. But go back to Buckland when you are done.”

  “You will be there by then?”

  Henbane shrugged.

  “If I am I will wish to speak to you. If I am not then I would wish to have a mole I trust at Buckland.”

  “And Beake?”

  “Beake will not be there.”

  “Ah!” said Wrekin noncommittally. “To Siabod I shall go then. And return to Buckland.”

  “Fast, Wrekin. Fast and furious. I like not such a system’s defiance. Siabod is the last of the seven, the very last. When you have taken it and subdued it, send news to Whern. Whern would know. Whern must know.”

  Ah. So. Henbane is to go to Whern, thought Wrekin. It was likely to be so. Yes, then I had best be in Siabod with good guardmoles behind me. Yes.

  “So do it,” whispered Henbane, sighing again. “Now, I am tired....”

  Wrekin left, with a parting glance at Weed. Henbane turned to Weed.

  “I would hear from Rune, Weed, I would know.”

  “Soon now, Henbane, soon I am sure. He has been sent word.”

  “Good. Good. Siabod is the last decision. Wrekin will do it well. Yet do you trust Wrekin? The mole that desires rest and dreams of home needs replacing. I would leave before September ends. I made a promise that we would.”

  Then she left, and Weed was alone. He did not move. He thought.

  “I made a promise that we would.” Weed smiled grimly. Oh yes, he had sent word to Rune, but it was not a request. It was a suggestion. “Order her back,” it had said. “The time is come.” For Weed knew that Henbane’s good spirits were not only to do with the fact that she had sought to conceal from Wrekin, which was that she would be returning to Whern soon, and certainly long before he ever came back from distant Siabod.

  No, it was not only the prospect of that that cheered her. But also the presence of a mole every grike in Duncton had grown to dislike, including even Weed himself, whose habit it was not to dislike or to like, but as Rune had taught him, to evaluate. The pathetic Bailey had cheered her! And his evaluation of the mole Bailey was that he was trouble, for he had released in Henbane something that not even Rune had guessed was there. Something the Word had no name for, something unruly. All the moleyears of summer since the youngster had come had Weed pondered it, concluding that only Rune would know best what to do, though he, Weed, had now come to a conclusion, and would offer his advice. So Weed had sent that suggestion urgently: order her back. And he would be glad, too, to see its positive response. Like Henbane, like Wrekin, he too wanted to go home.

  Bailey smirked at Henbane’s side, secure in her patronage, the grike guardmoles disguising their hatred of him behind blank stares. Henbane was angry. Chubby Bailey smirked.

  Since his first coming to the Ancient System he had been happily adopted by Henbane. Others had seen it before with young male moles, but Weed, who knew her better than anymole but Rune himself, saw there was a special quality to her interest in Bailey. It was something to do with Bailey’s innocence and misguided faith in her, as if, having lost his older sister, he had elected Henbane, most evil of moles, to this trusted post. Not only that, but he assumed an access and right to her attention such as a younger brother may assume, or even a son, for there were elements of mothering in Henbane’s attitude to this innocent male. He accepted willingly enough that at times he was not welcome. But however much she rebuffed him, which she could do with savagery, he came back, secure in some mysterious certainty of his own that she must receive him.

  Weed knew this because Weed had eyes to spy with, and ears to eavesdrop by; Weed was silent and secret and knew ways of learning the most secret of things, most shameful of things... and now most extraordinary of things.

  For what he knew, and nomole else did, was that in private, where nomole was allowed access, deep in the burrows she had requisitioned as her own, Henbane changed. With this mole Bailey, Rune’s daughter, the most feared of all moles, the most cruel, who maimed her lovers when she had used them and then had them killed... this same Henbane became a pup again – with a pup’s rages, a pup’s sulks and... often, a pup’s laughter....

  “Where were you Bailey?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You must have been somewhere!”

  “Was, but it’s my business.”

  “I know you know where you were! I hate you, Bailey, and I’m not talking to you.”

  (And this was Henbane. No wonder that Weed sent word to Rune.)

  Silence.

  “What were you doing? I asked, ‘What were you doing?’”

  Silence.

  “Bailey!” she screamed, her elegant beautiful flanks fluffing up with rage, her face fur swollen with anger, her eyes suddenly pig-like: her shining talons hooked and dangerous.

  And Bailey, still smaller than her though he had grown much since he had come, and still vulnerable-looking, stared at her unmoved.

  “Won’t tell if you’re not nice,” he said. “Won’t play with you! I was hungry, Henbane, I wanted to eat, I had to eat and I found some food and I ate it.”

  “You’ll get fat!” said Henbane, ruler of moledom.

  “That’s what Starling used to say.”

  “I don’t care what Starling used to say,” said Henbane. “I don’t like you talking about her. You’ve got me now. I thought you had forgotten her.”

  “Yes,” said Bailey quietly, “yes...” Low voices then. Tickles? Silence. Laughter. Laughter! Then... “I still don’t like you saying her name, Bailey.”

  “No,” said Bailey.

  Weed heard the hurt in his voice and the loss, and knew, though Henbane did not seem to sense it, Bailey remembered more of his past than he claimed. Much more. The youngster might look innocent, but he knew enough to play the game of seeming to like Henbane to the exclusion of his past, and Weed did not doubt that he remembered more than he ever mentioned.

  Why at Midsummer’s Night Weed had found the youngster crying by the Stone....

  “What are you doing?” Weed had asked, snout turning, for he disliked the Stone. “Worshipping, yes?”

  “N-no,” sniffed Bailey. “But Duncton moles come here on Midsummer’s Night. Starling would have made me come, so I came.” He stared at the Stone and whispered gibberish as if by this southern magic he might invoke some prayers or song he felt he had forgotten.

  “You came to do what?” asked Weed.

  “Don’t know,” said Bailey. “Can’t remember.”

  “The last such night was before you were born, so we wouldn’t expect you to, would we Bailey?”

  “N-no,” said Bailey.

  “Well best to run along then, the WordSpeaker will be missing you,” said Weed.

  “Do I have to?”

  Weed laughed.

  “Don’t have to, but best to,” he said.

  “All right,” said Bailey....

  Though the molemonths had passed and it was nearly September now, Weed did not doubt that Bailey still remembered things that Henbane would have preferred him to forget.

  “Didn’t you think about me waiting? We were going on the surface down to Barrow Vale,” said Henbane shrilly, continuing the argument. “I’m angry with you,” she concluded, mock petulantly.

  Bailey grinned.

  “I could find you some food, if you like; then you won’t be angry.”

  “Well....”

  “I can! I’ll get it now.”

  And Weed, in the shadows, ro
und a corner, listening and spying, watched Bailey patter by before he peered round and down the chamber and saw Henbane soften and look, for a moment, defenceless, almost molelike. And he, who knew her better than anymole, saw what none had ever seen, or perhaps ever would: Henbane of Whern, happy with herself, playful, affectionate, curled in a corner like a young female pup at play with others.

  So Bailey found favour, and the leaner, harder, bigger grike guardmoles could not understand the attentions Henbane showed him nor have guessed correctly what it was that the two did deep in the privacy of Henbane’s quarters.

  “Is he...?” they wondered.

  “Has he...?” they asked.

  “No,” said Weed. Henbane showed no interest in that with Bailey.

  But sometimes her anger with him was real enough, and expressed in a violent way. Once she struck him in front of Weed, drawing blood on his shoulder. Another time (and, although nomole saw it, plenty heard it and assumed he would be dead by the time she finished with him) she hurled him from a chamber in a moment of pique whose origins none knew and then, so much later, went to find him and cosseted him till it made a mole sick to hear it.

  And Bailey dared to smirk. A face, however innocent, can change unpleasantly if it is brought up wrong. Bailey’s had changed. But anyway, more than that, a youngster’s face will always change as autumn comes and blood runs faster, and strength comes to a body whose mind is not yet used to it, and feelings run riot for a time until they settle down. So Bailey now.

  He had shown interest, very timid interest, in a female, the youngster of one of the guardmoles – an interest about which the guardmole had complained verbally, having been inclined to thump Bailey but deciding, wisely, not to risk it.

  Henbane knew the female, by sight. A silly young thing who had, it seemed, encouraged the liaison and even boasted about it to her friends. So... Henbane was loudly angry with Bailey whose initial smirks had been replaced now by embarrassed hurt and anger, since he had never had such feelings before and they seemed harmless enough to him; and Henbane was being a pain.