Duncton Stone (60 page)

“Aye, sir. Watch out for the youngsters... but they should be all right. I’ll deploy Cluniac to the rear, so you’ll likely see him first if there’s a retreat.”

“Noakes’ll be all right. Unorthodox bugger.”

“Right! We’re off. Be ready, but I’ll not expect to see you.”

Sly grins in the night. These were moles who prided themselves on their skills, and on their co-operation with each other. These were well-trained moles. These were Maple’s moles and...

Cluniac? Aye, none other than the one who had led Pumpkin out of danger in the Marsh End back on Longest Night, and so helped make possible the escape of the Duncton followers into the Ancient System below the High Wood. The Cluniac who had pleaded through spring and summer to be allowed to do something more adventurous to help the followers against the Newborns.

And Noakes? That same intrepid Noakes who had led a small party out of Seven Barrows in July and then on all the way to Duncton, to make contact with Pumpkin? The very same, ready now to... And Arvon. He, who...

But no time for explanations this summer night, as a heaving of shadows rises up along the Calthorpe Bluff and follows the two guidemoles who were here a little before.

“Where’s the watchers and guides in case we have trouble?” rasped the deep Welsh voice of Arvon.

“Ready and hidden, sir.”

“Hmmph!” growled Arvon, satisfied. He always checked and double-checked, that was his way; and treble-checked. That was why he was the best. But even for the best not everything always goes right, and those hidden guides might be needed.

“Post another here, mole, the line is a little too long.”

“Aye, sir. You!”

And a shadow detached itself from the party; after swift instructions about where to lead others if the need arose, the shadow was left behind.

Eight moles crept on, reached the first obstacle, moved with deadly swiftness in the night, and only two sighs marked the passing into death of two Newborn guards. Then six went on, two remaining behind to act the part of those who had died.

“It’s going well, sir.”

“Never say that, mole, until you’re away and all are alive!”

Yet it was true.

“We’ll go on for a short time more...”

They went, down into the tunnels, past a sleeping guard; had he not been so deeply asleep, he would certainly not have survived that night. And then...

“By the Stone, he’s almost unprotected!”

And indeed Quail
was
almost unprotected, and had Arvon been able to abduct him out of Banbury, matters in moledom might have been brought to a head rather more swiftly. But, unfortunately for the followers, and luckily for Quail, who lay obscenely exposed in post-coital stupor, with the youthful object of his lusts huddled bleeding and near death in a corner of the chamber where she slept, another awoke.

Snyde, his thin snout twitching at the scent of danger, his ugly hump vibrating with the pleasures of discovered danger and incompetence in the night, opened his eyes, and saw the followers.

Oh, yes, he knew what they were! He could almost smell their worthiness, their zeal, and whereas Quail’s stenches once made him retch, now it was the sight and smell of faith and courage that made him want to be sick.

“Halt there!” he cried out, and stepped out of the shadows where he habitually lurked about his master, and stanced in the intruders’ way.

Quail woke blearily, raising himself up behind Snyde to stare, open-mouthed. His victim began to scream in fear, little knowing that a chance beyond imagining offered her, alone of all Quail’s victims since the days of Wildenhope, an opportunity of escape from what had been until then certain death.

“Shut up!” growled Quail, waking as fast as he could, his head throbbing, his left paw reaching out to squeeze silence into his unwilling companion of the night.

“How dare you!” snarled Snyde, rearing up towards Arvon, his twisted talons playing in the dark light, sharp as thorns.

Arvon stopped and stared at the ghastly sight. A deformed mole, quite unafraid. Beyond him a bald mole whose head shone in the dark, whose left eye drooped, and from whose cell and body emanated vile smells. And, to one side, two bulging eyes now white with terror – a female the bald mole was throttling to death.

“Leave her be!” roared Arvon, his companions silent and threatening behind him.

Quail let the female drop choking to the ground and said in his softest voice, “Who are they, Brother Snyde, and whoever they are, how dare they?”

“Evils, Elder Senior Brother; sins; snakes; doubts; the followers incarnate. Names unknown.”

His eyes flicked to the tunnel roof above where the welcome, but none-too-early pawsteps of guardmoles came running. Moles would die for this.

“Quail,” said Arvon, and never had Snyde and Quail come so near death. It stared at them through Arvon’s eyes; it glinted out of the eyes of those behind him. It would have taken almost nothing to cast Snyde aside and reach into that odorous chamber to kill Quail. But...

“Retreat,” ordered Arvon as the first of the guards came tumbling down into a tunnel behind Quail’s chamber.

There was a collective sigh from the followers, but they understood why. This had not been the aim, the death of Quail, not that. Abduction if possible, that would have been good. But not death. Martyrs would not help.

“Retreat, now!” repeated Arvon, needing all his enormous discipline not to push forward past this
thing
that stared so fearlessly up at him.

He looked beyond to Quail again, at his round, shining, dead black eyes, as certain of himself as a mole could be; then at the female retching on the floor, and then back at Brother Snyde. Arvon shivered with the evil of the scene.

“Help us,” whispered the female crawling round and looking up from her hell towards him.

Arvon’s eyes darkened and he turned, and his great paw held fast to young Cluniac who had come up behind him, and should not have done.

“No,” he whispered, “no...” and the orderly retreat began over the protests of Cluniac, who wanted to try to save the female who had said, so strangely, “Help
us
...”

Who? All of them? Others like her?

“NO!” ordered Arvon again, and his powerful grip brought tears to Cluniac’s eyes and the young mole found his paws pattering ahead of him as he retreated as ordered. But something of his heart was left behind as he strained round for one last look at the female. Then the followers were gone, almost as mysteriously and swiftly as they had come, up to the surface, past the dead guards, to the guides that waited and led them rapidly away into the night. Using the shadows of tree and bush, of clump and tree, of clump again, and then the tunnels earlier surveyed, they melted away into the night. Behind them, from that den of filth they had briefly entered, came the sound of orders and guardmoles running, and the last scream of a female whom chance and bravado might have saved, but who finally found no respite. Ringing darkness descended upon her, and released her from the malodorous paws that reached out for her one final time.

Down near the River Cherwell, all pursuit eluded, but with watchers posted all around, Arvon and some others immersed themselves in a stream’s clear water. As one, and without a word, they felt they needed the water’s flow to wash away not only the dust and grime of the night’s operation, but also the filth that had been deposited within by what they had seen.

“
That
was Quail,” whispered Arvon at last, stancing down on the stream’s bank as dawn light rose about them.

“And
that
was the notorious Snyde,” said Weeth.

“We have done more than we could have hoped,” said Arvon.

“We didn’t save that female,” said Cluniac.

“Nor could we have done without risking more lives. Discretion is the better part of valour, mole, remember that. There will be other chances to put right the wrong you witnessed.”

“Not for her.” The others nodded grimly, sighing, muttering, staring at the coming light, as their mood took them.

“What did she mean, ‘Help us’?”

“She meant help all victims like her,” said Weeth. “Had she said something different she might have saved herself.”

Cluniac looked puzzled.

“Had she said ‘Help
me
’ I would probably have done so,” said Arvon, “but at what cost? Some of us would not now be here. But had she done so... well!” He shook his head as if surprised at his own fallibility, and sighed. “We had a task and we have fulfilled it. Now it is time for us to go. Some to Duncton, some to the Wolds. You know what to do.”

He rose and shook the last of the stream’s water from his fur and for a moment there was a halo of morning light about him. Cluniac glanced westward upslope towards Calthorpe, the horror of what he had witnessed already receding, but the pain remaining.

Arvon clapped Weeth roughly on the shoulder. “Give Ystwelyn my greetings, mole, and tell Maple all you can. We’ll not be many days behind you. As for you, Noakes, you’ve proved yourself with us. We’ll be proud to keep you in our forces for a time – along with Cluniac.”

Noakes grinned and nodded his thanks to several other moles’ grunts of appreciation.

Weeth and two others set off downvale while Arvon and his party turned upstream and northward, one moment there and the next all but gone into the shadows which they knew how to exploit so well.

“Snyde, who were they?”

“Traitors, Master.”

“Names?”

Snyde shrugged. “I think I knew one of them.”

“Think?”

“One of them – but possibly not. A glimpse of a profile behind; something in the eyes; the echo of a voice...”

“Whatmole is it you think you saw? Name the traitor in our ranks.”

Snyde paused, revelling. He loved it all, even the danger. Especially the danger. Oh, yes, when he had looked up into that great mole’s fierce eyes and seen such courage, such nobility! He had almost quivered with the pleasure of seeing what he was not, could never be, never wished now to be. Oh, oh, he would not have minded death at those paws. Fear? No, he had not felt it. Yet Quail had called him brave for what he did.

Or, as he would scribe the moment he had opportunity, as Quail had put it, “I was impressed, Brother Snyde. You did not turn a hair. I thought that in such circumstances you might have been... shall we say, unwilling. Even cowardly. Until now I had not kept you close by me for your courage so much as for your mind.”

“Master,” Snyde had replied, “I love you, and love knows no fear. My life is ever yours.”

Quail had stared at him, his skin taut and gleaming with the excitements of the night. He too had nearly known ecstasy to be so close to death, and with only the distorted form of Snyde between it and himself. It was a reminder of how thin the line between glory and inconsequence really is. Naturally, the Stone had protected him. He felt a new mole for the night’s doings yet revelled in the prospect of punishing the incompetence that had allowed intruders so near his cell. But who was the traitor that permitted followers to get past his guards? Squilver?

“No, Master, not Squilver I think, he was not the mole I heard and saw.”

“Who then?” pleaded Quail in the game they played.

Snyde looked sad. “The Senior Brother Inquisitor, I fear it was he.”

“Skua...” sighed Quail, his voice breaking, his eyes watering. “Then must I let him go?”

“I wish it were anymole but he.”

“You lie, Brother Snyde,” said Quail, the excitement of it all too much for him. He grabbed Snyde and pushed his ugly body to the wall and then raised it up.

“Then make me excommunicate,” said Snyde coolly.

Quail let him go, and sobbed.

“Must I then let him go. Skua? Who has been my friend? My helpmeet?”

“It shall be so,” said Snyde, looking away from Quail to where the light of day cast the shadows of the guards across the portal of the council chamber where they talked. Now Snyde’s voice held new authority. “And you shall punish him yourself, for what other mole can bring the judgement of the Stone upon a Senior Brother Inquisitor?”

“None other,” whispered Quail.

Snyde turned from him without another word, the skewed angles of his paws and back, snout and ungraced shoulder blocking out the light of the portal as he passed through it, and was gone, Master of the Newborns now in all but name.

“But you love me?” whispered Quail after Snyde had gone, and he sobbed again, not for Skua whom he must kill, nor even because Skua, whom he had favoured for so long, had betrayed him, though Stone knows there were tears enough in that. Quail sobbed because the pains he felt in his body were increasing and they were deep and sharp, and he was afraid they would get worse, still far worse. And because he felt alone.

“Yet
you
love me?” he whispered again after Snyde. Then Quail did the thing that gave Snyde reason for the first time to record in his account of Quail’s slow decline those terrible words: “... and then my Master screamed.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Sir, we must stop awhile and rest, we must,” said one of Weeth’s two companions the second evening out from Banbury on the way back to the Wolds.