Duncton Tales (40 page)

In mid-October the closed world of Privet and Hamble and many of their peers was opened up for ever by the renewal of interference from Ratcher’s grikes on Saddleworth. There had already been some slight disturbances in September — Crowden moles venturing beyond the system’s edge had been half-heartedly attacked, and grikes had been seen lurking at dusk across the waters of the Crowden Tarn at the system’s north-eastern boundary. A grike’s body was found, wasted and diseased near one of the defences.

“Left there to intimidate us!” declared the older males. “Let the rooks take it!” Young males like Hamble had watched silently as all day rooks wheeled and dived upon the corpse. There was growing up in that.

But not since then had there been anything serious, for Ratcher and his moles had gone quiet, a quiet that had seemed ominous until Crowden heard rumours that the plague of murrain had come to north Saddleworth the previous spring and blighted the mating period, forcing Ratcher to retreat to his home ground and stay there.

Since spring nothing more had been heard of the grikes until the September incidents, when moles like Hamble had found their duties as watchers and delvers along the boundaries of the system had been increased. Now the grikes were active once more and Crowden was confronted with a crisis from the Moors that would change all their lives.

Grey weather had come, and the first cold damp winds of winter which affect the Moors sooner than the lowlands to the east and west, and a molemonth or two before more southern parts. As one of the strongest and most dependable of his generation, Hamble had been given the task of night-watching over on the north-western defences.

One night he saw ominous shifting shadows, moles beyond the perimeter, talons glinting in the stars, eyes staring from afar. Then calls, strange and haunting and carried on the wind. Hamble reported it, and others came and watched. Nomole appeared from out of the dark, but shadows were seen, now here, now there, and an alert was sent out and moles were deployed to the defences. As yet it was nothing too unusual, and the system went through these precautions smoothly, with most moles asleep and not even knowing anything might be apaw.

“No point in going forth after the bastards,” said the commander of the night, “we’ll wait. If they attack, the defences will slow them down and we all know what to do. You, Hamble, and those with you now stay alert.”

All night Hamble watched on, but heard only those plaintive calls and saw only grey shadows like frightened moles too timid to approach, not grike warriors at all. Vagrants wanting to get in perhaps, or …

Then screams out of the darkness, and the sound of moles chased, and then bigger, darker shadows and gruff voices. Screams then, and lingering cries, the sound of moles being killed.

“They might be some of our own returning,” said Hamble urgently, “or moles seeking asylum, caught by grikes. Couldn’t we go to them?”

“Ours would not come that way, nor be afraid to enter in. If it’s bloody asylum seekers they can wait until the light of day when ’tis safe for us to go to them. Most likely ’tis grikes’ trouble with their own. Leave them to it!”

Dawn, which came with the slow rise of light into the wintry sky, was accompanied by the moans and weak cries of a single mole out beyond the system’s edge.

“Can’t we go to him?” said Hamble, unable to bear the sound.

“Listen to that sound, youngster, and get used to it. Listen and be strong. That might be you one day if you’re ever weak. Aye, it’s a mole dying, a grike mole no doubt caught trying to get here.”

“But —”

“We’ll have a look when the light’s better, and when we’ve made sure there are no grikes about. They have been known to maim one of their own to decoy us out. Or the mole may be putting on his agony. Eh?”

It could be so, thought Hamble, if the moans had not been so deep, and the sense of despair spreading across the Moors not so strong with the risen dawn. In the time of waiting he went to his burrow and slept, for his watch was done, and when he woke Privet was nearby, waiting for him to tell her what had happened in the night, news of which had travelled quickly round the system.

He told her, and together they went to the East End, to find that a reconnaissance had been made and moles were just going out to investigate more thoroughly the dead bodies which had been seen.

“You stay here,” the commander said grimly to Privet, “this isn’t for the likes of librarians. But you, Hamble, follow me. Since you saw the beginning of it, you may as well see the end.”

But some small spirit of rebellion came to Privet then, and despite Hamble’s protestations, she followed him through the twists and turns of the defences, down one level and then up two and finally out on to the wild Moor beyond. It was the first time she had ever in her life been beyond the system’s bounds, and as she emerged into the grey light of early morning and felt the cold winds across her snout, she felt fear and a surge of freedom all at once.

“Well, if you must come, keep close by me, Privet,” said Hamble protectively, going on. And so she tried, nervous of doing anything else. Slowly they went among the hags, turning here and there, the watchers calling to each other to keep in touch.

“Over here, mole! Here!”

“Aye!” cried out Hamble, “I’m to your left.”

Then, “Here! A body here!” A call from a mole to the right.

Privet’s heart seemed to stop inside. Death was not a thing she yet knew.

“Here, Hamble, look at this!” The voice was horror-struck.

Privet followed behind Hamble, they turned a corner, saw the mole who had shouted, and there, her view half obscured by Hamble in front of her, Privet caught a glimpse of death. She saw the bloodied open eye, the paws arced back defensively, the brutally-taloned stomach wounds; and the flies already at the flesh.

“Go back, Privet, go back!” said Hamble urgently. “Go back, this is not for you!” She saw his eyes were shocked, and without argument she turned back the way she had come. Or thought she had come. For one hag rises brown and dank much like another, a black puddle has many replicas; the Moors delude a mole.

“Go back!” Hamble had ordered her, but it was to the left she veered, uncertain, running to get away from death. She paused, decided on a different way, turned round another hag and into worse than death.

Three moles lay slaughtered, their blood thick at a puddle’s edge. One’s head was half submerged; another smaller mole, a youngster, was curled up as if asleep. The blue-white sheening bones of his spine showed bright through his flesh and fur where grikes had broken him. The third was a little beyond these two and Privet would have turned and run away had not the slight movement of that mole’s front paw stopped her.

She stared, her horror mounting, and saw the mole was still alive. Privet stanced quite still, her heart like thunder in her breast. The mole moved the other paw and tried to turn. A female, and young too. But her fur seemed old, all patched and thin, and from her haunch, blood had flowed and dried and was thick down to her paw.

Her head shook with effort or with pain, and on the hag above short grass trembled in a breeze that wafted over it. A sound, the moan of pain, and fear was all gone from Privet, and all sense of anything but the need to help the mole who tried so desperately to crawl away.

“Mole,” whispered Privet, moving at last, past the two bodies to the injured mole’s flank. “Mole …”

For a moment more the mole tried pathetically to flee, but her frantic front paws soon stilled. She turned her head and stared into Privet’s eyes. Her face was caked with the sweat and blood of death, and vomit was on the hag’s edge nearby. There was a stench.

Yet though Privet saw and scented all of it, all she knew was that mole’s suffering. The mole opened her mouth and Privet reached a paw to hers.

“Help us in Chieveley Dale,” said the mole.

Privet had not even time to think she had never heard of Chieveley Dale when the mole’s head turned and seemed to snout up towards the breeze that blew beyond her reach. She tried to turn to look at Privet once again, but stiffened, moaned once more, and even as Privet touched her, she died.

Long moments later Hamble came, and saw the scene, and poor Privet stanced near a dead mole. He went to her and she turned to him and sobbed, “They wanted help, they wanted help from us.”

So it was that the first of the refugees from Chieveley Dale across Saddleworth came to Crowden. Eight were found, all showing the swellings and fur loss of virulent murrain and all killed by Ratcher’s grikes for fleeing during the night.

Three days later there were more screams in the dark, and this time one was found alive, though barely so. At least he survived longer than the one Privet had seen die, and was able to tell them something of Chieveley Dale, and of recent happenings on Saddleworth. Though weak from the taloning he had received, he lived a few hours more and in that time repeatedly asked to be admitted into Crowden, as if he were certain that he would find healing there.

But the elders decreed against it and several of the younger moles made him comfortable where he lay, while others watched out for grikes returning. It was then he told what he could of his system’s circumstances, and Shire, being unwilling to come beyond the system’s bounds, sent Privet to scribe down what he said, or tried to say, for his speech was wandering, and he mentioned moles and places that meant little to those who heard him.

Since the first incident Sward had explained where Chieveley Dale was, and something of the mystery of the delvings on Hilbert’s Top, the high part of the Moors that formed the Dale’s eastern flank. Privet had heard from him too of the Charnel Clough, the den of the Ratcher mob, which no outside mole had ever visited voluntarily, and from which none ever returned; the Charnel was an ancient source of fear, and of rumours of gorges and raging rivers, and ogreish moles who ate their young. This place was Red Ratcher’s home.

That much she had heard and was able to understand when the Chieveley mole referred to it, and she knew that the system of which he was a part consisted of moles who in very recent years had made an exodus from the Charnel and occupied Chieveley’s long-deserted Dale.

The mole talked of disease and death, and siege as well, and of Ratcher’s desire ‘to kill us all’. And, of other moles, “their delvings will not hold out much more’.

“What delvings?” asked Privet, for the matter seemed pertinent and worried the dying mole.

“Rooster,” replied the mole, his eyes gentling at the mention of this odd word.

Rooster? He did not say more.

Except that when she asked him to explain he said, as if it meant much, that ‘she is dead, like others, like our best delvers. Rooster’s in retreat.”

Such fragments as these did Privet scribe down, urging the mole, as much as she dared, to say more.

Hilbert, he mentioned him. And Rooster, that again. But most memorable of all, because he said it as clearly as a lark’s song in the spring, and it was the last thing that he said; ‘Thank the Stone, we have a Master of the Delve at last, Rooster …”

It was not much, and yet it was enough for Sward to say, “A Master of the Delve, he said? That will be the day!”

“What is that?” she asked.

He gave an answer steeped in legend and history, and as he did she remembered kenning of such a thing somewhere, not in mole but Whernish. She had thought that such Masters were evil things who practised Dark Sound.

“No, no, my dear,” said Sward, “the Scirpuscuns corrupted them and wiped them out in mediaeval times. The mole was babbling of the past, for there’ll never be more Masters of the Delve.”

“And Rooster? What did that mean?”

Sward shrugged.”

“’Tis not a thing I’ve heard of before.”

“Perhaps it is a mole,” said Hamble simply.

Yes, thought Privet, strangely thrilled, it
is
a mole. That explanation makes most sense. “Rooster’s in retreat”, the mole had said. On Hilbert’s Top, perhaps. And so began a dream.

Such was all that last survivor said, and it did not amount to much. Yet his coming, and more particularly the decision of the Crowden elders to deny him access to the system, began a fierce debate about what to do if others came.

If we are of the Stone then we must admit moles to our sanctuary,” argued the younger moles, and with them, for the first time in her life, Privet found her voice. She was angry, and upset, and at night could not close her eyes without remembering those other eyes that stared into hers before they died, and a voice that called out, “Help us in Chieveley Dale!” So with Hamble she persuaded others of like mind to complain and argue with the elders.

But most were against them, including many like Lime who were of their own generation, who sided with the majority of older moles and began to call them grike-lovers, and sneered at them. Whilst Shire, who as Librarian had elder status, mocked Privet and turned the elders against her and Hamble and others like them, saying they had too little experience to judge such things and that Crowden had not survived this long by giving space to grikes.

Then two moleweeks later, four more refugees from the Dale arrived at the western boundary, attempted to enter Crowden, and after a near-violent argument led by Hamble and Privet in favour of allowing them in, against the majority who refused them entry, the refugees were denied admission. Nor was Hamble or any other mole allowed out to talk to them, though over that there was more dispute.

That night the grikes came, and the Crowden moles heard the refugees tortured and murdered but a short way beyond the defences. It was a shameful night in Crowden’s history and as red sun bloodied the dawn sky, the refugees’ corpses were found taloned to the ground.

Had Privet been a bolder mole, had Hamble had less common sense, either one or both would have left the system that day. As it was they watched the rooks wheeling and swooping over the fodder the grikes had left, and for days after watched the Moors. If refugees had arrived then, violence would have come to Crowden over their admission and perhaps, after all, the system’s elders would have relented and let them in.