Duncton Stone (86 page)

“Time’s come, time’s come,” said Rooster.

Then down they all followed, straight towards the cross-under, straight into the silent, still, terrible waiting gap that lay between one army and another and seemed about to be filled by violence; down amidst the ugly shouting, and the stamping of paws, and the imminent beginning of something that once started would not end until the winter grass was red with blood.

While far across the vale, beyond the roaring owl way, from the edge of the High Wood, two moles also came, running downslope, unnoticed then by anymole, follower or Newborn, hurrying down towards the cross-under. Black, unidentified, breathless, shocked, running and running, the counterpoint to the coming of Rooster.

Meanwhile, outside Duncton Wood, moles began to notice the approach of Rooster, with Frogbit at his flank, and Chervil and Rolt, and the others with them, like a tiny third force, but one that had purpose and a presence far, far greater than its numbers.

The ugly shouts died away, whispers replaced them, and then the whispers changed to a name, and the name was uttered first by one mole and then another, then four, then eight, then sixteen, then...

“Rooster! Rooster! ROOSTER!”

It was a roaring chant, now loud, now soft, and if Rooster heard it he showed no sign. His eyes were on the cross-under, which could be clearly seen now, and the line upon line of Squilver’s moles that defended it, five moles deep; and then more beyond on the other side. Impregnable.

But Rooster continued straight at it, the chanting of his name powerful all about him; Thorne to one side and Maple to the other separated from the armies they led to join his march, subordinates at their flanks, watching, astonished, all following. While through the cross-under there was movement amongst Squilver’s ranks. Two moles arriving, breathless and with news. Flurries of activity.

Rooster came on and on, ever nearer, unstoppable, Frogbit to his right, almost running now to keep up, and the others all behind.

Thorne and Maple were together now; and Ystwelyn and Brother Rolt; follower and Newborn, pilgrim and rebel, strong and weak. Not a mob now, nor even a crowd, but moles behind those that led, and in front of them all, Rooster, Master of the Delve, advancing like the spirit of moledom that had been troubled and uncertain, but is troubled no more.

The bark of an order echoed out of the shadowed recess of the cross-under and the first line of Squilver’s force, their talons raised, cold sweat trickling down their faces, fear in their eyes, backed away and parted. Then the second, and then the third: and Rooster advanced in amongst them, certain and unafraid.

Until there, facing him on the grass beyond, the High Wood upslope behind, stanced Supreme Brother Commander Squilver, a look of horrid triumph on his face.

“You’re too late, mole,” cried out Squilver dismissively, his voice sharp and a shade smug, the voice of one who cares not what happens from now on, even to himself, for his task is fulfilled and nomole can change things now.

“Where is the mole Privet?” called out Chervil in a commanding voice from behind Rooster.

“Aye, it’s she we’ve come to protect,” said Maple at Thorne’s flank.

Fear showed in Squilver’s eyes, and not just of moles, but of something that carried these moles towards him, something it seemed he had not ever seen or guessed at before.

“Protect Privet?” replied Squilver, still managing to sound triumphant. “You’re too late. She gave herself up to the protection of the Elder Senior Brother to make obeisance to him, and to offer herself to him, as Thripp has done. You are too late to give her protection now!”

But now Squilver suddenly looked afraid, as a mole might well look who sees the great tide almost upon him that will sweep him aside for ever.

“Too late?” roared Rooster.

Squilver’s face showed anger and surprise, dismay and finally bewilderment, for what was advancing on him
was
more than he could ever have imagined; more than anymole could imagine.

“Yes, yes, too late,” he gabbled, his voice rising to a scream that it might be heard, that his message might be known, “the holy ordination of the Elder Senior Brother Quail by the anointing of the blood and the transmutation of the flesh of others into his has already begun.”

Then Squilver fell away and was lost for ever beneath the marching, taloned paws of time.

Chapter Forty

It had begun, the ritual of anointment had begun...

Yet not so late perhaps that Privet might not be saved; nor so late that moles were not already apaw in the tunnels of the Marsh End and High Wood before Rooster, Chervil and the others came into Duncton.

It was but a day and a half since Privet had so strangely come to the cross-under and been admitted as quietly and as easily as if she were a mole making an afternoon visit in answer to an invitation made long before. A lifetime of a day,
ten
lifetimes more of half a day, to Pumpkin and Hamble and the rebels in the High Wood who had heard from Sturne of her coming, and had been wondering since what they might do about it.

As long, too, had that day and a half been to Arvon and his covert group, who, ignoring all the advice of Hibbott that Privet might not wish to be rescued, and the later pleas of Arliss and Rees, who were quite sure that more killing to rescue her was not what she would want, had bravely and brilliantly entered Duncton by way of its marshy north end.

Moles knowing the history of both these groups and their indomitable courage and unswerving purpose in the cause of traditional worship of the Stone, will not doubt that they had done – no, they
were doing
their best to devise some means by which they might bypass the heavy guard that Squilver had placed about the Stone, to reach Privet and anymole-else who needed help.

Certainly Arvon, who knew the secrets of Pumpkin’s rebels in the High Wood as well as any mole then living, had no doubt at all of what Pumpkin and his friends would be up to.

“If only we can reach them, or let them know we are coming and that they can rely on us, then perhaps something positive may be made of this,” Arvon had said, when the decision to try to infiltrate Duncton had been agreed.

Of the ascent of the embankment north of the cross-under, of the killing and hiding of three guardmoles before they crept into the dangerous marshy ground that lies beyond the Marsh End, and of the bloody fight to enter the Marsh End itself, we need not here relate. We know of what Arvon was capable, and those with him, and we may be sure that having guessed that time would be against them they did not hesitate in what they did.

But Brother Inquisitor Fetter was no fool, and he had had time, plenty of time, in the molemonths of the autumn and since news of the arrival of Quail in Banbury, to prepare Duncton Wood against attack and invasion from any flank. More than that, Squilver had long since deployed some of his force to Duncton, and these guardmoles, added to those already in residence, were enough to create a ring of talons about the system’s edge, north, south, east and west, if not quite the marshy ground as well.

There is always a way in, as Arvon was in the habit of saying, but this time, there might not be a way beyond that.

For there were more than enough guardmoles to go round, which was why Fetter, determined as he was to be the one who had the honour of seeing Quail safely ordained and exalted into greatness before the Stone, had disposed so many moles about the High Wood.

So, bold and brave though Privet’s rescuers might be, the chances of any of them getting through, especially such a small force as Arvon’s, or so debilitated a one as Pumpkin’s, were slim.

News of the deaths caused by invaders on the northern end of the roaring owl embankment reached Fetter and Squilver soon enough for them to deploy more guardmoles down to that end of the Wood, so that even as Arvon’s party reached the Marsh End it was seen, ambushed, and decimated.

Yet even so, with half his force dead, and the rest, including himself, wounded, Arvon broke through and made his escape into the narrow dank tunnels of the Marsh End; here he was forced to lie low through the night that followed, as moles hunted for them, quartered the tunnels where they had gone to ground, and waited for the dawn.

The same dawn which saw the coming of Thorne’s army; and dawn of the same day that saw the arrival of Rooster on the valeside above the cross-under, and when Maple led his army, and the pilgrim force that followed it, up out of the south to the cross-under.

Trapped, hunted, desperate, the weakening Arvon led his few moles on, and as the skies darkened that day he broke out again. More died, his force was smaller, his hopes decreasing, but out into the tunnels of the Eastside he went, whilst his pursuers, fooled for a time, headed for the Westside. Yet what could so few hope to do against so many, knowing not where Privet was, nor what the Newborns intended?

But Stone help the mole who tried to get in their way...

“Talk, bastard. Where would followers be? Eh? Talk!”

The Stone did not help the hapless guardmole who had fallen into Arvon’s paws, and now lay helpless in the tunnel he had been patrolling, his companion already dead and he faced by talons not poised to kill him, but to cause him pain.

“Don’t know. None left alive in the main system. Honest, honestttttschhh!” His scream would have been heard had it not been muffled by Arvon himself. The dark side of warriorship.

“Only followers are in the High Wood. Rebels, starving. Dead probably.”

“Where’s Quail?”

“The Elder...?”

“Quail?”

The guardmole began to cry. All moles will if hurt enough.

“Everymole’s up by the Stone. Brother Inquisitor’s prepared it. Thripp —”

“Thripp?”

The mole’s eyes widened, a talon began to turn and then stopped and was withdrawn; the mole breathed easier, broken now, eager, desperate to say what little he knew.

“Thripp’s been kept up there for three days now. Waiting for the coming of the Eld... the... of Quail. They’ll all be
there
.”

They kept the mole alive, and with them: he might be useful. Then, through that day, slowly, silently, secretly, Arvon began the long journey by shadow and by stealth, by the secluded root and the ruined portals of tunnels fit only for diseased stoats and voles, up the Slopes towards the Stone.

“We’ll be too late...”

“Try going faster and we’ll be too dead,” said one of his Siabodian friends, wry and ironic even in this, their most dangerous hour.

Pumpkin and Hamble had no idea that anymole other than themselves might be trying to reach the Stone to help Privet, if she was there. Dreadfully isolated since the departure of Weeth, Arvon and the others, the territory available to them ever more encroached upon and watched over by the Newborns, it had sometimes seemed that it was faith not food that sustained them.

Sometime in October, as the weather grew colder and insect life declined towards winter somnolence, the mole-months of semi-starvation began to take their toll, and some of them began to die. Already by then the twenty or so moles who had originally fled with Pumpkin had dropped to only twelve in all, with three lost to the Newborns and seen no more, and the rest dying from natural causes, if stress and weight-loss, and an abandonment of hope, be deemed “natural” in a system that ought to be wormful for allmole, and was blessed by the presence of the Stone.

For his part Pumpkin was always the first to do without and to offer what little food he had to others more needful of it than himself. The first, too, to say that but for Hamble’s coming, and the advice and training he had given on survival, they would all by now be lost. Now, even Hamble looked gaunt and weak, and sometimes felt listless and unable to summon up the energy to inspire others as he had when he first came.

Yet, such was the inner spirit of this suffering refugee community of Duncton moles, in whom the last vestiges of the Duncton spirit might be said to survive, that when one was down, another found strength to be the source of inspiration. The female Elynor, mother of Cluniac, was one who would raise her spirits and those of others when Hamble or Pumpkin, or both of them, were low.

“Now, now, we’re not defeated yet. We’ll... we’ll sing a song! We’ll tell a tale!”

“We’ll have two worms each this evening!” rasped one old male, grinning toothlessly, and chuckling feebly to himself at the thought of it.

“You shall!” Elynor might say, and that mole did, once at least. For she deputed everymole to search and search again, to take little risks if need be, to find those extra worms, that the old mole’s fancy might come true.

“Not two each,” declared Elynor that same evening, “but two for
you
, mole, and with all our love.”

“For me?” whispered the old mole, staring at the two thin, sour worms that were all that could be found, yet seemed a feast to him. “No, no, not for me, I couldn’t eat so much!”

“You eat ’em, and tell us how good they are!” declared Hamble, who until then had been low for days past, but whose spirit revived to see such real communion.