Duncton Rising (19 page)

The position in Crowden was as grim as Hamble had implied. For one thing, the system had suffered losses through murrain, and was weaker than ever before. For another, Red Ratcher had come their way almost before spring was done, to continue his lifelong war against them. Only now his clan seemed stronger, and at his flank stanced moles as big as he, who, they now discovered, were Rooster’s brothers from Samphire’s earlier litters. Then, too, the defences had become ruinous, and there were no moles who had the arts of yesteryear to build them in the complex subtle way their ancestors had succeeded in attaining.

“We try, but somehow we don’t have the skills, or the will, or the way with the soil and rock,” explained Hamble. “We’ve seen the problem coming for a generation, but not known what to do to solve it. So now we’re vulnerable, and the harder we try to improve the defences the worse and more confused they seem to become. That’s why the three of us set off looking for you all that time ago. Rooster.”

But there was something worse, of which the rest was perhaps indicative.

“We lack leadership, and that’s the truth of it,” said Hamble frankly.

“But I thought you were the leader now, Hamble,” said Privet.

“Me?” He laughed. “I’m a warrior, a fighter, the perfect aide for a better leader than me, if one could only be found. Meanwhile I must bully the others here, appoint the guards, and lead such elders as we have. But I’m no match for Ratcher, nor have I the will to fight as he has. I don’t say, as I should, “I’ll defend Crowden to the last breath in my body”, but instead I ask, “Is Crowden worth defending? Isn’t there something more to life than
this?”
Eh?
You
understand. Privet, you used to say you wanted to go off and explore moledom.”

“Duncton Wood,” said Rooster. “She wants to go there.”

“That’s
right,
that was the place. So I’m not the right mole to lead others in defence. You’re more the kind others will follow, Rooster, but the trouble is you’re a delver.”

Since the Charnel moles had come not one of them had agreed to fight alongflank the Crowden moles, explaining that if they had a creed it was for peace. Delving was a peaceful art.

“Rooster’s the nearest we have ever had to a Master,” explained Hume, not for the first time, “and Masters do not hurt others.”

So Hamble understood that Rooster would be unlikely to fight. But at least he began to help with the defences. Even so...

“’Tis a pity, Rooster, you look more of a fighter than a pacifist to me. You would have been a good leader. Dammit, our youngsters here already follow you about, and I’ve yet to see a mole threaten you, or even think of it.”

Rooster shrugged and grinned. “Best way!” he said.

“And when your brothers come back and attack again, which they’ll do before long, what do we do then?”

“Delve,” said Rooster. “Like we’ve begun. Not fight, I won’t.”

It was true that much good had now emerged from his coming. He had directed the other moles to delve according to marks he made, and in a surprisingly short space of time had created a defence of Dark Sound, just as he had at Chieveley Dale – so successfully, indeed, that the Crowden moles were afraid of crossing through their own defensive lines, such was the agony of dark confusing sound the delvings emitted.

“Trouble is,” grumbled Hamble, “your delvings can’t tell the difference between friend and foe.”

“Delvings
can,”
said Rooster, “but I don’t make
those
ones here. Not right. Not holy these delvings’ purpose, not made for good reason. Right delving for right place.”

“What’s better than protecting your own?” asked Hamble.

“Helping your enemy,” said Rooster promptly. “That was what Gaunt taught me, what Hilbert taught him through his ancient delvings. Help, love, pacify, give. Best, but hard.”

“You’ll really never fight?” said Hamble doubtfully, on another occasion when they were alone on one of their tours of the system. Rarely had two moles found it so easy to be friends.

“If I hurt another I lose all for ever. If I kill I am no Master. If I think to kill it’s harder to think like a Master of the Delve.”

“But you
have
thought like that, eh? You’ve wanted to hurt a mole?” asked Hamble shrewdly. “Like Ratcher, for example?”

Rooster nodded uncomfortably. “Wanted to hurt him.” He was silent for a little and then suddenly blurted out something that seemed to have been worrying him: “Wanted to hurt Privet.”

“Privet?” repeated Hamble, astonished.

Rooster looked both ashamed and strangely pleading. “Have
you
ever?” he asked quietly.

“Wanted to hurt Privet? No, never. She’s like a sister, she is, I’d defend her to the death. Wouldn’t hurt her ever.”

“Or any female?”

“
Hurt
them?” said Hamble puzzled, and not understanding Rooster’s meaning, or his sense of shame and confusion about his previously violent feelings of desire for Privet. “I wouldn’t hurt a mole I loved. But you wouldn’t, would you?”

“Not hurt a mole I loved, no, no, no,” said Rooster, shamed even more. Hamble didn’t understand that by “hurt” Rooster meant “make love’, which was something that seemed so violent to him, so uncontrollable that he mistook his natural passion for Privet for something it was against the creed of a Master to do. If only Hamble had understood poor Rooster’s guilt and agony.

“You’re a strange mole,” said Hamble, not knowing how upset Rooster felt to be told that, or how convinced it made him feel he really
was
strange, and wrong in the feelings he had for Privet. How hard it is to listen to another mole, and understand what his words really mean – how often the right moment slips away.

As the time went by and the work of defensive delving took Rooster from her flank. Privet saw how right she was to worry over Lime, for her sister was without shame or scruple in her desire for Rooster. But Privet had the reassurance of Rooster’s response to Lime’s advances; puzzlement and growing irritation. He did not like Lime, and sensed that she was trouble, and he did not like to see Privet upset. All of which made Privet feel easier, the more so because from the first Rooster shared quarters with her near the Library, and did not dally with the females as other male moles did at that season. Indeed, though she worried still, she felt all was reasonably well, and even put the threat of Lime to one side in favour of worrying, as friends will, at Hamble’s failure to find a mate.

“You’re too nice a mole!” she counselled him privately. “Be a bit tougher on them and they’ll come seeking you out!”

“Well, you’re the wise one. Privet, having found a mate!”

“We haven’t mated,” said Privet, “we’re just good friends.”

“Like you and me?” Hamble laughed.

“More than us,” said Privet shyly. “But we’re not ready for that yet. One day —”

“Hmmph!” said Hamble, unconvinced. “You may think you’re not ready for it, but I’ve never met a male who wasn’t, and nomole would say Rooster isn’t male. And you advise me about getting a mate! You better practise being more alluring. Get some lessons from Lime, she knows how!”

So the two moles teased and confided in each other as the days continued, and the sense grew that renewed attacks by Ratcher’s clan were ever more imminent.

“It’s strange, Privet, but since Rooster’s come there’s been a different feel to Crowden, a new sense of purpose. He says he’s a pacifist but I’ve never met a mole with greater brooding strength, as if he’s waiting for an excuse to get angry. I mean —”

“You mustn’t let him, Hamble, not ever. He is angry, angry for his past and for what happened to Samphire. Don’t let him get angry; I’ve seen him and I know how violent he could be. He fears his anger and the feeling of wanting to hurt a mole.”

“Aye, he said as much to me, and he said it about...”

“About what?”

“No matter,” said Hamble quickly. “I’ll see he doesn’t, if I can.”

“It’s important, Hamble. He carries a responsibility far greater than anymole really understands. Being a Master of the Delve is a burden almost too much for a single mole to bear. In the past Masters worked in groups and shared their tasks. I think Rooster had formed a group with Glee and Humlock, but he’s lost them now, and Hume and the others here aren’t quite the same. I don’t know why or how, but his two Charnel friends were part of his Mastership, like a support he needed, and now he’s lost them he’s angry and vulnerable.*I can’t give him the support myself for I’m just a scribe. So you must try to save him from himself until he’s found some other way of finding support in the delve. The Stone made him, and the Stone will find a way. It will! I pray to it all the time!”

*See
Duncton Tales
. The albino female Glee, and her blind deaf-mute companion Humlock were left behind to die in the Charnel Clough from which, because of landslips and river torrents, nomole could escape.

Hamble stared at her. “Mole, you love him with a passion.”

“I feel he’s my whole life.”

“Beware then. Privet, for in these troubled times a mole had best not beheve her whole life depends upon another.”

“We’re always giving each other advice, you and I,” she said affectionately.

Hamble held her close. “With you, Privet, I feel closer to myself than with any other mole. I feel it’ll always be like that, always. I never thought for one moment you wouldn’t come back from Chieveley Dale, and now I’m sure that wherever you are I’ll know if you’re well or ill, safe or unsafe.
Always
.”

Privet felt warm and loved, and wished she could feel as sure of things as Hamble did. She remembered the difference between his parents, whom she had loved so much, and her cold mother. Shire, and knew that if there was one reason why he felt such assurance, and she could not quite trust that life would treat her well, it lay in the difference in confidence their parenting had given them.

“I know one thing, Hamble: if ever I have young it will be to the example of your parents I shall look for raising them, and to you as well.”

“And to the infamous Eldrene Wort, my dear, for I know of her Testimony and what finding it must have meant for you. She’s kin to be proud of.”

“Oh Hamble, why do I feel so uncertain and full of dread? I have felt so from the moment we first came back to Crowden. I do still”

“Rooster’s the mole to take that from you,” said Hamble. “When he gets round to seeing the treasure he’s got he’ll make you feel wanted, and more than wanted! He’s a bit shy with females, that’s all – just like me.”

He laughed, but when he went his way he found himself wondering if dread could be infectious, because he was beginning to feel it rise up in him as well.

Chapter Nine

Two days after this the Ratcher clan’s offensive began in earnest, and such things as Privet and Hamble had talked about seemed but niceties of living when set against the harsh realities of war.

A careless guard, made bored and complacent by the recent lack of activity, had ventured beyond the defences and was caught at dusk by the grikes. His screams as he was tortured, deliberately in earshot of the defences, cast a pall of dread and loathing over Crowden. This tactic had been used before as a way of luring out Crowden’s guards to the rescue, and though from time to time successful attempts had been made, in recent times, with Crowden under the younger leadership of Hamble, the grikes had known how to ambush the rescuers, and take even more prisoners. Therefore it had been generally agreed that rescues would not be attempted, and the agony of the captured mole was perhaps greater because he knew none was likely to come for him. At dawn his screams became quieter, and later he was found deposited near the defences, mercifully close to death, his snout crushed and his eyes blinded.

It was an experience that Privet, who witnessed the maimed mole being brought back to communal chambers near the Library, could scarcely believe, nor ever forget. In years past such behaviour had called forth savage reprisals by the Crowden moles, but by Hamble’s time, as he himself said, some sense of resolve or purpose had gone from Crowden, and the grikes’ brutal tactics produced the effect of moles wondering why they should struggle on in such a place in the face of such assaults. Why not leave the

Moors and find a better and less brutal place to live?

There were skirmishes, and others were wounded, and two more caught – and returned, dying. One with his snout amputated and in such agony that he was put out of his misery; the other with a wound in his chest so wide and deep that the broken ribs protruded from his body, and each breath he tried to take before he died was an agony that Privet, who was amongst those who tended him, felt herself. Then a third mole was treated in the same way, his face half ripped off, his looks gone, his flanks, so strong, so sturdy, shivering with fear and shock.

In all cases these moles whispered the same name before they died; “Red Ratcher did it; it was Ratcher himself... and one called Grear...”

Bleakly Rooster heard this, and saw what his father and brother had done, and stared blankly at the wounded, and the dying, and the dead. His breathing quickened, his restless paws grew deadly still, and there he would stay until one of the Charnel moles, usually Hume, took him away and tried to divert his shame, anger and frustration into delving more and better defences.

“Can’t do nothing,” Rooster said, “not nothing at all. But want to want to; WANT TO.”

And when he tried to sleep at night with Privet he was restless and distressed, wanting to go out to the defences, to stare into the dangerous night, to do
something:
to rise up in fury, to attack his kin that brought this agony and death.

“Want to hurt,” he whispered again and again, “want to. Want to kill him. Grikes only bad because leaders bad. I’m grike and I’m not bad.”