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Nor is there consolation in knowing that even worse horrors than what happened at Lucerne’s command in Mallice’s birth burrow that night have happened elsewhere, and are recorded. No doubt they have. But what he knows is here and now, and that is quite enough.

Of what happened that night this Chronicler has scribed, and then been forced to scratch his talons across it all. Horror happened there. Pups were pupped to die.

Mothers defended their own to the very death. Darkness was red with blood. Mewings started and then died. Seven pups born and Henbane and Harebell forced to defend half of them. Half? Three and a half is half of seven, and this much we can say: if it had come to ripping into two the one who survived the others then had they had the chance Mallice and Harebell would have done it. Aye, mole, it would have come to that and was beginning to when the guardmoles intervened. Their task was to see that one pup alone survived and nomole else. They turned on Harebell and then on Mallice, both already weak from pupping and from wounds the other had inflicted. It was in that moment of murder Henbane took up the one surviving pup.

Whose was that pup?

Perhaps one day your Chronicler will know.

“The bitches have decided, give it to us,” they said to Henbane, reluctant to go for her lest the pup was hurt.

“
No!
”

It was then, with Henbane’s terrible cry, that Sleekit came out of the dark behind the grikes.

The only one there who had never had young, fighting as if all the world were her own pups.

“No!
” she cried as well.

Fighting with all the life she had.

Fighting for the life of the pup she saw was left and Henbane held.

The scene she saw she had lived and heard a thousand times in the minutes that preceded it. Mallice dead; Harebell dead. Pups all... but of that we cannot bring ourselves to speak.

Henbane, potent, dangerous, stancing with the solitary pup that was left and shouting that great “
No!
” at those males who loomed angrily over her, demanding the pup of her before they killed her.

“
No! It is not thine to take from me. It is my kin and it shall live!
”

That was the scene that Sleekit routed.

And then those guardmoles found they faced not two females in disarray but two as one, defending a solitary pup. They might as well have faced an army as face that!

No training could have prepared a mole for the force that Sleekit was. No courage could have bettered the courage that Henbane had.

So Sleekit came and violently taloned one guardmole to one side, and then she and Henbane taloned at the other.

“Take it, Henbane, take it now and run!”

So Sleekit cried and so Henbane did, taking the pup up by the neck and running from that burrow of blood; and Sleekit followed her. Their advantage was not much, but it was enough to give Sleekit hope that Henbane and the pup might be got away.

“Run, Henbane!
Run!
When you see Holm, follow him and look not back. Oh run....”

Desperate, panting, the grikes now close behind and angrier than storms, Sleekit ran and urged Henbane on. Ahead, a shadow. The shadow moved, had eyes, saw, and heard. Holm was ready there.

“Go, Holm, lead her, take her to safety now.
Go!
”

Then Holm turned and Henbane followed, but then turned briefly back as if hesitating at the final moment of escape.

“You gave me your pups once and gave me life,” gasped Sleekit, “now take this for yourself, Henbane, and give back to it what you once lost! Oh, run!”

Then Sleekit turned and as the two great guardmoles bore down upon her, she gathered all her strength and, raising her talons, launched back at them as she had done before, striking, and striking more, taloning, her strength, her speed, her instinct quite beyond their ken.

“
No!
” she cried, and even as they struck mortally, she had the sense and strength to retreat into that tunnel, to block it, to hold them off still more.

“
No!
” she cried again more quietly now.

Yet the last words that she spoke were not “No!” or “Run!” but gentle, and to a mole she had once known, and knew that when the Stone willed it, she would know again. “Mayweed...” was the last she spoke.

But Henbane had never felt so alive as she did then. She ran out into the night where Holm had led her and quickly laid the pup down and stared at him.

“What did Sleekit say to thee?”

“She said I must not fight.” Holm stared at Henbane who looked wild and dangerous and loomed over the pup as if she felt the whole of moledom endangered it, even him.

“Leave me now, Holm. Make your own way from here, for what I must do I had better do alone. I thank you, Holm, and one day this pup I bear shall be told your name and he shall honour it. Now go, and look not afraid for you are as brave as anymole I ever knew.”

“Not Tryfan,” said Holm.

Henbane almost smiled.

“Not
him,
perhaps!” said Holm, looking at the pup that lay between her paws.

“Him...?” she said staring at the pup. Her voice was a mother’s voice, gentle and concerned.

Holm saw her take the pup from off the ground, saw it dangle in the night, saw her look to right and left.

“Up’s best,” he said, “then east.”

He watched her off to safety in the dark, and then turned and stared downslope and sighed, indeed he almost bleated with distress. He shook his head. He stared some more. He opened his mouth and closed it. He listened, and he swallowed, and he blinked in the dark.

Downslope below him at the tunnel entrance to where Mallice had been captive he could hear angry guardmole shouts. In the ground beneath his paws he could feel the vibration of moles in tunnels, big moles.

He slipped downslope in the dark as the most senior of the guardmoles emerged where Henbane and he had come.

“Here!” Holm dared to cry... And drawing the guardmoles away from where Henbane had gone, he darted among the shadows of rocks and scrub until, familiar with the ground, he left the guardmoles utterly confused, and made his way back into the grubby tunnel that led down to the garrison.

There, breathing heavily, he stopped and watched and before long his patience was rewarded.

“Quick, out you lot!” a guardmole shouted down the gloomy main tunnel.

“But Sir, there’s nomole else on guard.”

Running paws, a hurried conference beneath where Holm watched down.

“There’s trouble where they kept that Mallice bitch. The Master’s
mad.
He wants us out and searching for the Mistress Henbane who’s escaped.”

“She
won’t get far. But what about the ones in here? There’s nomole to cover for me.”

“Threaten them. Tell them that if one so much as moves they’ll all be killed. We’ll not be long. Get on with it!”

He did, and Holm heard him snarl a warning to the captives there and then come on out again, and set off for the hunt.

Holm waited until he had gone, scrambled down with some difficulty from the narrow ledge where his fissured tunnel came, and hurried quickly to where the captives must be.

He found them cowering in a corner of their chamber, and felt scared himself just seeing them.

“Come!” he said. “Quick, quick!”

Two of the three shook their heads.

“Please!” he begged. “It’s safe for now.”

“He’s Holm, the mole who came with Harebell,” said Quince. “He’s all right.”

Holm stared and they stared, looking petrified.

“They’ll kill us if we move,” said one.

“Come
on
!” pleaded Holm. Then turning to Quince he said, “Make them, Miss!”

But she could not, and they would not and uselessly stared and trembled, and kept their snouts all low.

“You come then,” said Holm firmly to Quince.

Then he turned and ran and Quince, with a final look of despair at the trembling females, followed him.

As they went they heard the pawsteps of a mole coming towards them and Holm ran faster, gasping with fear as he hurried to get back to his point of entry into the tunnel. Quince, who was bigger than him, ran at his flank.

“Here!” said Holm triumphantly pointing up at the ledge he had scrambled down from. But his triumph faded, for try as he might he could not quite reach up to it, and the limestone walls which had been easy enough to scramble down were too slippery and awkward to climb up again.

In any case, it was too late, for round the corner came a guardmole.

“What the...?” he shouted angrily when he saw them.

Holm gulped.

“Luck’s run
very
out,” he said.

“Stay where you are and don’t move,” said Quince of Mallerstang, an adept of an ancient martial art, very quietly. She went a pace forward and, as it seemed to Holm, leapt upward, turned slowly in the air and merely touched the guardmole on the flank with her paw. The guardmole fell back as if a hillside had hit him.

“What’s...?” he began.

Quince struck him but once more and Holm could see the surprise in his eyes as he turned, fell back, smashed against the opposite side of the tunnel and slumped, unconscious for all Holm knew, upon the ground.

“Oh dear,” said Holm. More pawsteps were coming down the tunnel.

“Is that the way you came in?” said Quince, pointing a talon at the fissure out of Holm’s reach.

Holm nodded bleakly, and was still nodding as he felt a paw thrust under his rear and he was lifted bodily up and found himself scrabbling into the tunnel.

“Pull me up,” ordered Quince from below.

Holm turned round, peered down, and saw a paw reaching up to him.

“Quick,” said Quince.

The pawsteps were getting nearer, and across the tunnel the guardmole was beginning to stir and mutter darkly to himself.

Holm grabbed the paw and tried to pull Quince up.

“You’re big, I’m small,” he said hopelessly.

“Imagine I’m something you want,” said Quince.

Holm grabbed her paw tighter, closed his eyes, and with a mighty shout of, “Lorren!” heaved Quince up and with a scraping of her back paws and another heave from Holm she was into the tunnel as well and they were gone.

Lucerne liked it not, not at all. He liked it so little that by dawn, and once he had got what information he could from the two senior guardmoles to whom he had entrusted the culling of the pups, he had them both snouted on the spot for failing him.

Then, when it was discovered that the mole Quince had escaped as well as Henbane and the pup, he had two more of the garrison guardmoles killed. So mad with anger was he that had he had the means he might have had everymole in the place killed there and then.

How much
Terce
liked it not was hard to say since when he was taken by Lucerne to see Mallice dead, and Harebell, and their pups all mingled, he said nothing, but stared and blinked. His daughter dead and a father blinks! For such is the training of a Twelfth Keeper!

“Well?” hissed Lucerne. “Henbane gone and with the one surviving pup. The Word speaks strange in this.”

“Yes, Master,” said Terce cautiously.

“To find her myself... or to send others out for her. Which? There is much to do just now in moledom, much to consolidate. I have not time to find her, Terce. You warned that the Stone Mole might become a martyr, and so he might. We must stop that soon.”

But Terce was thinking, and nor was he so sure.

“The pup that survived, Master, it might be thine,” he said slowly. “If it is the mole Harebell’s, then it is still thy kin and a potential threat to us. All the more so in the apostate paws of Henbane.”

Terce watched the seed he planted take root and as he did so he mused upon the supreme power of the Word. With what elegance it was using Henbane to lead Lucerne towards the darkness of divinity! He, Terce, was but the guide along the way.

“She will not kill the pup, Terce,” said Lucerne. “She shall fawn and fondle it, as once she fondled me. She must be found and then the pup will be mine to train.”

“I agree, and it must not be long, Master, before we take her lest she trains the pup to become your enemy. She is a Mistress of such arts. No, I should have pressed you harder to find Henbane when she first fled Whern. Nomole in moledom has greater powers than she, nomole but yourself. Worse by far is the undermining of your authority by the fact of Henbane’s existence, not forgetting that of the pup’s. This will be known, for rumours spread upon the wind of discontent, and discontent there always is where power is fragmented. Master, you must seek Henbane out, you and only you must kill her.”