Duncton Found (84 page)

Only as dawn light came did the stark truth become plain to the astonished grikes – their adversaries numbered only four, and all were wounded, all retreating up the rising ground north towards the Stones.

If Haulke had brought up all his moles at first there would have been no contest. If his moles had not been fooled into thinking that the position was held by many more moles than it was, then he might have pushed much harder much sooner. If Troedfach could have been reached sooner than he was....

So many ifs.

But by dawn the battle was all but lost, and Haulke, seeing now how few were against his moles, himself advanced to the very front and shouted out his terms. He was, like Ginnell, a mole who respected other fighters.

“Surrender now and you’ll get away alive but if you don’t....”

“Aye, and if we don’t?” cried out Gareg, emerging from behind the greatest of the Stones and staring down at where so many moles were ranged against him, their bodies cut, their looks murderous, their numbers too great to resist for more than seconds now.

For a long moment Haulke looked at the mole who had resisted his might for so long.

“... And if you don’t, and try to retreat down the northern slope, we’ll have you all dead.”

No good crying “freeze” now! Yet to his enemies it seemed that Gareg was about to give an order, for he half turned and spoke to one of the three who still stanced with him.

“Well?” roared Haulke.

“We are protected by the Stones!” cried Gareg.

“Protected by shit!” shouted Haulke. “Take them!”

Gareg came forward and with an ancient shout seemed to call a Welsh curse of the Stone upon the grikes. As Haulke and his moles hunched forward to climb up the slope and take Gareg and the others, there occurred that which even the moles of the Word never forgot.

For out of the dark dawn sky behind Gareg loomed a great mole, and at his flanks others, and then all about the Stones, and they came past Gareg, and the great mole took command by giving the oldest command of them all.

“Charge!” thundered Troedfach. “And kill!”

Aye, up the night-dark slopes they had come guided by Caradoc to the very point where Troedfach had rightly guessed they must retreat. And out of the dawn they charged.

Yet Haulke, a great commander in the making too, did not panic. He and his moles retreated quickly, back and back again to the edge where they had first encountered Gareg, even to those positions that Gareg had until then used so effectively.

“We’ve until the moon’s wane!” cried Haulke, and so the bigger, even bloodier battle began. Through the day it went, the followers outnumbered yet fighting with the Stones behind them, and mightily. On and on, using those few reinforcements they had at the best moments, retreating deliberately to counterattack again, on and on that day.

Until dusk came once more, and Caer Caradoc was littered with dead, and the followers were in retreat again. Yet on they fought, into Longest Night as the moon rose and each felt that even to raise a paw to strike again was beyond his strength, yet raise his talons he did.

Disarray, mayhem, brutal fighting. The moon rose over it, on and on until at last it seemed that even Troedfach’s intervention had not been enough and the battle was swinging back Haulke’s way once again.

But, as it seemed to the followers, a miracle happened.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

“The buggers are retreating!” cried Gareg in astonishment.

“Ginnell says retreat!” and with that strange cry, Haulke and all his moles were gone and in Caer Caradoc the Word lost the night.

Troedfach did not hesitate one second. He entrenched his exhausted moles quickly, he sent messengers down and ordered a further advance up into Caer Caradoc the moment reinforcements arrived which, before dawn, they began to do.

Dawn came, the dead lay untouched, the wounded moaned their agonies untended. Entrench! Position! Deploy!

“Get our moles up here. Fast!”

Haulke’s spies saw them do it. Haulke’s spies said they could see that Troedfach’s position was still insecure.

“Sir, we can still take Caer Caradoc, but we must move now,
now
.”

It was then that Ginnell had finally forbidden it, and yielded up Caer Caradoc to a force which at that time he might have destroyed, but soon, if it was increased and well deployed, a grike force five times as strong would find difficult to displace.

“But Sir...!” cried Haulke, coming back and trying one last time.

“No!” said Ginnell, “it is too late.”

And by the end of the first day after Longest Night it was.

Thus did the first Battle of the Caradoc Stones come to an end, and a stirring tale it is, often told by moles of the Stone to keep their beleaguered spirits up. For what a contrast it is to the tragedy that befell the moles of Tryfan in Duncton that same night. Yet, when all is said, a mole must think and ask: whatmole did right? Tryfan, who did not raise a single talon to defend himself, or encourage others to do so? Or Gareg and Troedfach? Which of them was closer to the Stone? Which most in the spirit of the Stone Mole’s teaching?

What might a mole lose if he kills others to save himself? What does a mole gain if he saves his enemy yet lets himself and his own be killed? Which is the way to Silence?

These questions old Caradoc asked himself as he wandered among the bodies strewn across the ground he loved.

“Not like this,” he whispered and wept. “Not like this, Stone. Bring peace to this place and send thy Stone Mole that I may know thy peace will stay. Grant it to an old mole who has faith in thee, Stone.”

The wind took his words, and blew them about the Stones, and then out across moledom’s darkened land.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Word may have prevailed in Duncton Wood on Longest Night, but it had not won the hearts of all the guardmoles who witnessed the deaths by the Stone, and by their presence were a part of them.

One guardmole, Romney of Keynes, the same who had witnessed the brave struggle Skint and Smithills had put up against such overwhelming odds and had muttered their rough epitaph, “You brave bastards”, had been more appalled than awed by the bloody rite of ordination.

Not that Romney was a weak mole, or one who until that night had ever faltered in the Word. But it happened that one of the moles he saw killed that night was one he knew and had special reason to be grateful to – Dodder. So he had tossed and turned all night in deep distress by the cross-under, quite unable to join in the celebrations that accompanied the new Master’s triumphant exit from Duncton Wood.

For Romney had served with Dodder in days gone by and knew the old rascal well, knew him to be true to the Word and true to everymole under his command. More than that, Dodder had once saved Romney’s life. So, seeing that old mole appear suddenly among the other moles put a face and personality to moles which until then he, like most others there, saw as mere fodder for the Word and for a rite.

Romney knew Dodder did not deserve such a death, and guessed that if such a mole as him stanced unflinchingly by the others then they did not deserve it either. Nor was Romney the only one who felt that way, for he heard others mutter their doubts, and had not moles like Drule and the eldrene Wort been about they might have muttered more.

But of them all, Romney was the only one so upset that the following morning he took advantage of the confusion and euphoria that followed the ordination, and wandered off to be by himself.

It is at such moments that a doubting mole gets confirmation of the truth that the Stone, silent though it usually is, is about us all the time, and sees what we do, and directs us to its way. When a mole prays “Guide me! Help me!”, the Stone, almost always, brings him help through another mole as much in need of help as he. Romney did not pray to the Stone for he was of the Word. But yet he gave out a heartfelt prayer for help to whatever power might help him, and a curse of anger against the Word that had just wreaked vengeance on a harmless mole he had once loved. Unable to get the sight of Dodder’s final moment of defiance and of Drule’s talons out of his mind Romney wandered bleakly about not knowing what to do with himself.

Of the moles from Rollright who had travelled with the mass of the sideem to serve their needs of food and tunnelling, there was one we know: Rampion, Holm’s daughter, and one who had been witness to the touching of the Stone across the seven Ancient Systems that day in June with her father at the Rollright Stones.

Her father and she had made their escape from the guardmoles that distant day and, the system being lax and the summer languid, had succeeded in the course of time in returning to their different tunnels and resuming their life once more, sharing the common hope that one day the Stone Mole would come and the Word be put into retreat at last.

The experience in June had strengthened her and increased her faith, and, despairing of the Rollright followers who compromised themselves for favours from the eldrene and a comfortable life, she felt isolated in her faith. She served the guardmoles, she abased herself, she watched, and most of all she waited: for one day the Stone Mole would come, he really would, and moles must be ready then, and strong, and knowledgeable.

So in her own way, with but her father Holm believing in what she did, she debased herself and curried favour with the guardmoles, and knew her time would come.

But the way it came took her by surprise. For when the eldrene Wort came to Rollright Rampion briefly saw her, and had that same shocked sense of recognition that Mistle had had in Hen Wood.

But Wort travelled on, Lucerne and his entourage came and Rollright bulged with guardmoles and sideem. It was a simple thing for trusted Rampion to have herself chosen as one of those to travel on to Duncton Wood to serve.

But such moles as she, though they knew the ordination was to take place, were not allowed near the cross-under itself. Nor were they told what had really been involved in the rite of ordination. But when dawn broke and they heard what some of the guardmoles were saying, they knew something bloody and evil had been apaw at the ritual. There was a look of violence in the eyes of the guardmoles, a wildness, and Rampion who had never been to Duncton Wood, nor knew much – though her father had come from there – beyond that it was outcast, feared something dire had happened.

She was curious and worried, and in half a mind to try to find a way past the sideem and the guards into the system itself. It was in the course of this abortive search for a route into Duncton that she saw the guardmole Romney, and sensed immediately that far from challenging her he was upset and needed help.

She knew enough to know that such moles talk.

“Mole, you are troubled. Was it...?”

It needed no more than that. Romney saw a female, a server from Rollright, he saw her sympathetic stance, and he began to talk. And talk. The world grew still about her as she heard, for the implications of what she heard were plain enough. These same moles who had, it seemed, massacred Duncton moles by the Stone on Longest Night, would very soon return to Rollright. There, she surmised, they might easily massacre a second time. She must escape and return at once to Rollright.

She stared at the troubled guardmole, she saw his loss of faith, and the Stone guided her.

“What are you going to do, mole?”

“I don’t know... I shouldn’t have spoken. I cannot ever forget. I should not have spoken. If you....”

“Mole,” said Rampion, and though her voice was gentle her spirit was firm, her purpose resolute, and she sensed that the Stone was giving her a task, “I have no reason to speak of what you have told me, indeed I have a special reason
not
to. Well then, mole, let
me
tell
you
something that I should not: I am of the Stone.”

Romney looked surprised at such a confession, as well he might, for at the least it would normally mean an Atonement, at the worst it could mean death.

“Aye, it is so,” continued Rampion. “Now listen. I am leaving here. I am going back to Rollright and I am going to warn the followers there that what this Drule and others did here in the name of the Word may soon be done in Rollright.”