Duncton Wood (48 page)

As for Mekkins, he slipped quietly back to the Marsh End, where he had plans of his own to see to. He was well aware of the threat to it and had worked various ideas out, which he now intended to put into practice. At the same time, he had to think how he was going to protect Rebecca and Comfrey now that they could expect trouble down that way, and the first thing he was going to do was to work out where to move them to, for surely where they were was now too isolated and exposed should Rune and the henchmoles choose to take over the system from Mandrake.

It took two days for Mandrake to make his way to the Chamber of Dark Sound, where he stood in the center and roared out his challenge to the Stone Mole. His noise came back in echoes from the carved wall with the flint owl face at its center a hundredfold, but had no effect on him. His obsessions seemed to have given him a sublime courage, or ignorance, of where he was and what he was doing. He believed the Stone Mole was there and so he called out to him. He was afraid, but not of a sound that had no effect on him, and the feeling of fear was so alien to him, being Mandrake, that he could only” turn and face it with his talons – a courage that few moles would have easily understood.

Violet, wandering disconsolately among the tunnels, heard the roaring and
was
afraid, but not thinking it came from “the big mole,” redoubled her efforts to find him, thinking he would protect her from everything, and perhaps still help her siblings. She did not really understand that they were dead.

She found him eventually sleeping in one of the entrances to the great chamber and without ado, woke him up. Her presence confused him. She wasn’t the Stone Mole. She wasn’t Sarah. She wasn’t Rebecca. He had been a youngster himself. Yes.

She prattled on about Coltsfoot and Pipple and Beech and a big mole. She obviously knew where the Stone Mole was. Perhaps she was a spy. Cunning. But not as cunning as he. He would keep an eye on her, keep her within a talon’s reach. Yes, he would! Better still, he’d get her to show him where the Stone Mole was. Yes. Cunning and clever.

Violet could not understand him. He was alternately kind and angry. He wanted her to lead him somewhere after a
stonemole,
and she didn’t know what that was. So to avoid him getting angry she led him here and there among the tunnels, her tiny form ahead of his brooding mass as he muttered “Cunning,” and “You’re a clever one, but not as clever as Mandrake,” and told her stories about a mole he knew called Rebecca, his Rebecca, who did disobedient things and was with the stonemole, whatever it was.

But they were not alone in the tunnels, for another mole, who knew the ins and outs of the system better than anymole ever had, flitted from shadow to shadow, ahead and behind, looking after them round comers, watching in agonies as Mandrake threatened Violet, watching with relief when he talked more softly to her, and wondering, wondering, how to get her away from Mandrake’s talons.

It was Bracken, who had heard the roarings and had come to investigate. He had recognized Violet as his and Rue’s daughter, and was able, in horror, to piece together something of what had happened from Violet’s pathetic conversation with the demented Mandrake. And he knew that he must act very soon if she, too, was not to be killed.

Outside, the weather was as troubled and changeable as the life of the moles underground. After two days of still coldness the snow had begun to melt, falling with phuts and plops and dollops from the trees, spraying down through the branches, and pitting the snow on the floor of the wood into thousands of minicraters. Here and there a fox’s tracks wove among the trees, and where the badgers lived down on the eastside, the snow was roughed and dirtied by soil and debris from their sets.

Then a moist, wet wind came, and the snow began to thaw slowly, making the ground sodden and slushy and the pastures a mixture of green and yellow grass and remnant snow in the hollows where the wind had gathered it. While out on the marshes beyond Marsh End, the snow melted into the water and mud, and at night froze and was deadly still. Then wind again, and change. Uncomfortable weather that did not know which way it was going to go.

   24  

A
S
far as he could, Bracken always kept himself between Mandrake and the Chamber of Dark Sound, because then, if he was spotted, he could retreat to the relative safety of the central tunnels beyond the chamber in which, should he be chased there. Mandrake would certainly lose himself.

The precaution was wise, for the moment inevitably came when Mandrake sensed his presence.

“Shush, girl,” he said to Violet. “I think I hear the Stone Mole ahead.”

Bracken froze and tried to steal away, but Mandrake had heard and was after him, all his old savage speed still there.

Bracken raced ahead, his knowledge of the tunnels making up for Mandrake’s extraordinary speed. He reached the Chamber of Dark Sound, raced across it to the seventh entrance, where the mole skeleton still lay undisturbed, but instead of running on he halted between the two great flintstones that stood either side of it and turned to face the chamber. He waited until Mandrake was about to enter and then began to hum softly up into the convolutions of the terrible owl face above. The effect was extraordinary. The noises that had so terrified him when he was in front of it now sounded out beyond him and gave the impression of having great strength and power. His very talons and shoulders seemed bigger, his sight more deadly clear. He seemed to be able to see across the chamber, which normally was not quite possible, and there to catch sight of Mandrake, halted and baffled, moving as if in slow motion, struggling forward into a sound that clearly caused him great fear and distress. Bracken watched him almost dispassionately, seeing his massive size, each limb seeming as big as a mole, the eyes red with aggression, but fearing none of it. He knew with certainty that so long as he sounded the noise. Mandrake would never be able to reach him.

But the effect of the sound was soon subtler and more evil than that. It began to make Bracken want to torment Mandrake, to hurt him, it made him feel that he really was as powerful as the owl looked; it made him want to kill Mandrake. Worse, it made him start to forget that his real aim was to get Violet away from Mandrake and the Ancient System. For his now dispassionate gaze fell not only on Mandrake but also on Violet, who had followed into the chamber after him and now stood, apparently unaffected by the sound, in its center.

Bracken’s talons protracted forward, his back reared up and his snout arched cruelly down, his mouth and teeth setting into a rigor of humming as he felt himself losing control of his body and the hum began to take him over, its evil sound beginning to creep into his spirit.

It was Violet who stopped him. She watched puzzled as Mandrake writhed and thrashed about at the noise, which was only a nasty noise as far as she was concerned, and then she wandered over toward its source. She saw a white skeleton, but that didn’t worry her because she had no idea what it was, and anyway, what crouched by it was far more interesting. It was a mole that stood like stone, its eyes wide and its teeth clenched. It had terribly big talons, all stretched out. It was humming. It was the stonemole! The thing Mandrake was looking for! She ran forward to it and touched it and oh... it was
real,
it had fur just like her...

The touch of her paw broke the spell of the hum and slowly he relaxed, and then fell silent, the sound fading out in the chamber as both he and Mandrake seemed to come out of a nightmare.

Poor Violet, upset by shock after shock, started to cry; Mandrake, hearing her, started running toward them both. Bracken stepped forward, put a paw round her shoulders, and pulled her back through the flint entrance.

“Violet,” he said urgently. “Listen! Run down this tunnel and go into the first entrance you see in the tunnel it comes into. Hide in the shadows there. I’ll come. Run!”

She only half recognized him, but she knew his voice, he was a mole who knew Rue. Oh, that was a relief! And she was running, she was running, and perhaps he’d help. “Run!” he shouted after her, “run!”

It was as Bracken turned back into the chamber to face Mandrake, who was now halfway across it, and coming inexorably toward him, that the whole chamber was filled with another sound, one that took them both totally by surprise – the pattering of a hundred running paws, and of grim mutterings of moles, angry and full of bloodlust.

Mandrake stopped and turned round, his back to Bracken, and both saw first one mole, then two, then five more pouring through the eastern tunnel entrance that marked the tunnel running up from the slopes. It was Rune and the henchmoles and more beside, and they were chanting “Kill him, kill him!” and massing ready to charge Mandrake down.

“There he is!” cried Rune, pointing a taloned paw at Mandrake.

Mandrake looked at them uncomprehendingly. He wasn’t interested in them. He had the Stone Mole almost at the end of his talons and he wasn’t going to waste time on Rune and a bunch of henchmoles. Were they threatening
him?
He laughed, shook his head, turned his back contemptuously on them and started forward again to pursue Bracken.

“He’s running!” cried Rune triumphantly, and that was enough to give the moles the courage they needed to begin their assault on Mandrake. Several of them reached him before he reached the flint entrance and thrust their claws at him with screams and shouts. One got in the way of his back paws and made him half trip, forcing him to stop. He turned to face them again, and as he did so Bracken, unseen by anymole, took the opportunity of running off down the tunnel to find Violet and slip away. The Duncton system was clearly going mad.

In amid the moles. Mandrake rose up magnificently, and with a mighty sweep of his right taloned paw, killed three moles with one terrible blow. He had not forgotten how to fight. He stepped back, throwing, as he did so, another two off his huge back. His left paw thrust viciously forward and two moles crumpled up screaming below his snout. His movements were not hasty or rapid, but had the leisurely grace of a confident fighter who had never in his life been beaten. With dead or dying moles around him, he stepped back once more, swinging his right paw back so that two more moles went flying forward into the mass who had been clamoring to get at him. He laughed and then roared, and the moles hesitated, the ones in front no longer willing to go forward to what seemed a certain, and cruel, death. Only Rune was still there and shouted out again for moles to kill. Mandrake might, indeed, have killed Rune there and then, but he remembered that his main purpose was to kill the Stone Mole, not this sniveling rabble or Rune.

He backed into the flint entrance, watching as the moles still came slowly forward on him. He saw the great flints on either side of the entrance, raised a paw to each of them, dug his talons deeply into the soil behind them, and with one massive roaring and grunting effort, pulled down the two flints in a mass of dust and debris before them all, blocking the entrance completely and leaving himself free to pursue the Stone Mole.

As he ran off, the remaining flint capstone over the entrance broke free from the soil above it and crashed onto the flints below, and from out of their dust and debris, all that Rune and the other moles could now see were the gaunt, hollow eyes of the skull of a long-dead mole, the rest of its skeleton lost under a mass of impassable debris.

Bracken almost carried Violet round the circular tunnel and out into his own burrows, he was so anxious to get her out of the Ancient System and away from Mandrake. And himself, too, for that matter.

He went as fast as he could straight up the entrance nearest the pastures and then out onto the surface, where a gray morning was well advanced and the ground was wet from the thaw of snow. And there they were almost immediately seen by a henchmole – one of the many Rime had prudently posted all around the surface of the Ancient System for just such a possibility as this. Only it was Mandrake Rune had expected to try to escape, not some other mole. Bracken dived back down into his tunnels, pushing Violet roughly ahead of him and, knowing that the henchmole would delay some while before he risked chasing down after him, made for a different exit.