Duncton Found (108 page)

In truth, even as he arrived he himself felt depressed, as if coming here was slinking away from the responsibilities above. Yet he could think of no other way to see that his moles survived, unless it be through violent and hopeless resistance. And yet... was not that better than this? He smiled and made his greetings as cheerfully as he could, but in his heart was dismay as he looked about the high enclosing walls, and at the distant fissures to the sky above.

There was a general air of dejection, and almost immediately moles began to say that they hoped there might be news from the watchers soon.

“Soon enough,” said Squeezebelly noncommittally. He could see that moles like Bramble and Skelder, who had been vocal in their reluctance to come, were already priming themselves to complain. Well, he would deal with that.

He went the rounds of the moles, most of whom had explored the interconnected chambers already and, as moles will, found a space they liked to settle in. Sentries and patrols were long since deployed at the different entrances and all there seemed to do was wait.

He spoke to them as a whole – or rather in each main chambered grouping they had made – and was careful to lower their expectations, and tell them that it might be a day or more before they had any news of what the grikes had done in empty Beechenhill.

“Swear, I should think!” said one senior mole.

“Bugger off, I hope,” said another, “’cos then we can all go back tomorrow and forget this place.”

“Hear, hear!” cried several with feeling. Well, thought Squeezebelly, for now they’re manageable.

The older moles and females with pup, including Harebell, were in a higher, drier chamber a little way beyond the main ones, through one of the innumerable tunnels in the place. It was warmer, and lighter, and seemed safe enough. Henbane was there and Quince was in charge. The only surface exit, as complex as the rest, was guarded by two moles and so narrow that they thought it would be impossible for grikes to come in that way.

So now the deed was done, the evacuation complete and there they were, subdued, waiting for nomole knew what, and with Squeezebelly, who had worked so hard to get them there, beginning to think that this, surely, was not where they should be at all....

“Stone Mole... Beechen!”

“No talking! Any more trouble and it’ll be your snout next time.”

Tears welled up in brave Buckram’s eyes as he sought so vainly to give comfort to Beechen behind him as slowly, painfully, they climbed the final slopes to the Stone of Beechenhill.

“Buckram,” whispered Beechen, “Buc...” trying to reassure his friend ahead. But another talon came down upon his flank, already red raw from the talonings he had had and he was thrust forward again.

“Go on, you bastard, nearly there now before your precious Stone,” a guardmole snarled at Beechen.

Another heavy talon drove into him, pushing him forward up the slope and he grunted with the pain of it. He stared at the grass, new green mingling with old brown, and another blow came into him and a wave of pain exploded in his back and his limbs and stumbled his weakening body on.

Until they had got to Ashbourne the henchmoles had not touched them, though they had given them too little food, and not let them drink. It seemed they knew about such things, and how to make a mole suffer without taloning him too much.

But then, in Ashbourne, the mood of their captors had turned ugly and wild, and the eldrene Wort had come and spoken to them, words of the Word, words of threat, and Beechen had tried to touch her, for she was a mole who needed that almost more than anymole he had ever known.

She had shied away and cursed him, and told the henchmoles to “subdue” him and they had asked if that meant the other bastard too and she said yes.

So then the talonings had started, not heavy but persistent, drawing blood and weakening them by the hurt and continual pain.

The eldrene Wort had come to them in the night and asked Beechen one last time to renounce, but he would not, and nor would Buckram. Then she had gone and they had been kept awake by more talonings, and the first direct threats that they would soon die. Then the first mention of Beechenhill.

“Stone Mole...” Buckram had whispered.

“Shut up, you,” said the henchmole, and a pawful of talons went into Buckram’s face and for the first and only time he had risen up with his full strength and thrown three of them off.

Beechen had had to watch as they beat him for such insolence. Prayers did not take the pain away.

Then they had been dragged from the place they had been kept in and brought to the surface close-guarded by so many moles they could barely see each other. They had set off north from Ashbourne, and as they went moles had come to stare.

Some said, “What moles are they?”

When the henchmoles said, “Moles of the Stone being taken to suffer the vengeance of the Word,” those watching laughed and said, “Kill them well!”

Their progress had been slower than the henchmoles wanted, and so they had begun to buffet and talon them to hurry them up.

At Broadlow, Buckram was unable to go on for a time, and they let him stance still there, and gave them something to drink and eat at last.

“Let him eat my food, let him drink my drink,” Beechen said to one of the henchmoles.

“I cannot,” said the henchmole, frowning and unhappy.

“What is thy name?”

“Mole, I cannot,” said the henchmole thickly, turning from them and letting others guard them for a time.

The next part of the journey, to the slopes by Thorpe Cloud where moles can cross the River Dove, was yet slower, and Wort ordered that the talonings cease.

“We shall cross here and rest until nightfall. I would have us reach Beechenhill at dawn, and the Ashbourne moles say that from here the journey is not so far.”

She did not talk to Beechen or Buckram, or look at them, nor say her prayers to the Word. She was like a driven mole, her eyes only on the journey ahead and the coming day. This time Beechen and Buckram were allowed to rest near each other, but not to talk. When they laid their bodies down they slept the restless sleep of the tired suffering.

Deep in the night Beechen was woken by a henchmole.

“Eat,” he said.

Beechen looked at him and saw it was that same henchmole who he had sensed had wanted to help them before.

“Give it to my friend.”

“He has already said the same, mole,” whispered the henchmole with a half smile.

Beechen took the food and ate it and felt better for it.

“Whatmole are you?” he asked.

“I know not any more,” faltered the henchmole. And he wept.

Beechen reached a hurt paw to him.

“Then you too have begun your journey, mole,” he said gently.

“You will die tomorrow,” said the henchmole.

“He will not die,” rasped Buckram. “He shall never die.”

Another henchmole stirred at the sound of Buckram’s voice and a third came in and that was all that was said by the Stone Mole that night.

Before dawn came they left the Dove behind them and began the long climb into Beechenhill, following routes which their Ashbourne guides seemed to know. They saw little and remembered nothing but the endless painful struggle up the slopes. Except one thing: in the dark the henchmole who had spoken to them was able sometimes, under the guise of buffeting him, to help Beechen along.

First light, dragging, bloody steps; dawn, talon thrusts and pain; morning, and now this final climb, so slow, and the Stone rising ahead beyond the henchmoles’ swaying bodies, the sky cloudy and sheep’s wool fretting on the barbs of the wire that stretched across the field beyond the Stone.

“Stop!”

They stopped, and were turned, and through their pain, nausea and fatigue, saw the eldrene Wort stanced proudly by the Stone, staring at them.

Her eyes were blank, her mouth was whispering prayers to the Word, one paw was raised in a parodic benediction over them, as if she were the Master himself; as if she were the incarnation of the Word.

Beechen tried to speak, to tell her not to be afraid, for it was plain to him that she was afraid of much, but even if words had come she wished not to hear them, or anything else he might say.

She nodded her head and a henchmole hit Beechen again, so that he slumped and slewed to one side, while to his right Buckram was hit as well, and fell likewise.

In that moment, as Buckram fell, Beechen knew fear. He saw the Stone and the spirit of the evil Word in the form of the mole who stanced before it. He heard the distant chuckle and rumble of angry henchmoles. He heard the rattle of Buckram’s breathing. All of this and a spiralling darkness in the morning clouds, and he knew fear.

Slowly, desperately, he tried to turn his head to see

Buckram, but the grass, the hard earth, the whole of moledom perhaps, seemed against it. He felt a crushing blow to his left paw which made him roll and crush it more and he found himself staring into Buckram’s eyes.

“Stone Mole,” whispered Buckram, his mouth twisted and bloodied, his teeth broken now, “forgive me, I cannot stay with thee.”

A henchmole loomed over Buckram, and to Beechen, watching sideways on from where he lay helpless on the ground, it seemed the henchmole was part of the mounting dark cloud above, as if it had come down to wreak vengeance on stricken Buckram here before Beechenhill’s Stone.

“You should not have spoken,” said the angry cloud that was a mole.

Beechen saw the great taloned paw raised and saw the mole look towards the eldrene Wort, wait, nod his understanding of her command, and then bring down his paws one after another in two great thrusts into Buckram’s back, and then he moved and dealt a third blow, this time to Buckram’s neck.

For a moment Buckram’s mouth stretched wide in pain and he grunted deep and gutturally. The rear of his body seemed to twist and turn and then go limp and as blood poured down his side he strived to reach a paw to Beechen, and he said, “Forgive me. Be not afraid.”

And there, before Beechen’s gaze, in the shadow of the Stone, great Buckram died.

Then Beechen turned and tried terribly to stance up and all there heard him cry out to the Stone: “We are but mole and much afraid!” He faltered, and fell sideways, and cried out again towards the Stone saying, “Father, you have made me but mole!”

Then the henchmole who had killed Buckram came and stanced over Beechen and raised his bloody, taloned paw and turned once more to Wort.

Wort stared, and, most terribly, she smiled.

“Not yet,” she said, “the holy Word would not have him die so easily.”

“Shall we snout him then?”

It might have been any of them that gathered there who asked it. It might have been all of moledom that spoke it, so loud did it seem across Beechenhill.

Shall we snout him?

“
Now?
”

“No,” murmured Wort, “not yet.”

Then she stanced up, and came forward, and peered down into his eyes and reached out a paw as if to touch him, but she would not, or dared not.

“I do not hate you or anymole, Wort,” said Beechen feebly.

Then, for the first and only time, the eldrene Wort struck him, her paw and talons across his wounded face.

As his head fell back further on the grass she stared at her paw and saw his blood on it and a look of disgust and horror came to her face.

“Now, eldrene?” grinned the henchmole.

She seemed to want to say, “Yes”, but then she whispered, “It is temptation to want him dead, the temptation of pity to put him from his misery. Yet cruelty too, for he might yet redeem himself before the Word. So... kill him not yet. The Word will have its vengeance of him and choose its own time.”

Then, she wiped her paw hard and harder on her flank as she sought to clean it of the Stone Mole’s blood. But she seemed to fail in that and turned off downslope to where other moles were coming, led by sideem Merrick. And Merrick looked uneasy.

And well he might.

He saw the eldrene Wort coming towards him spattered in blood. He saw that behind her by the Stone the big mole Buckram now lay dead. He saw a cluster of blood-lusty henchmoles gathered about that other mole, the mole with eyes that were like talons of light into a mole’s heart. He saw that that mole was beginning to die.

And beyond it all were stretching barbed wires of a fence, black against the strangely mounting sky, taut in the heavy tense air. Merrick felt oppressed.

“And where are the Beechenhill moles, sideem?” said Wort. Her eyes were wild and her mouth a little open with her quick, sighing breathing, almost as if she had just been pleasured by a male. Merrick felt afraid of her, and of all of
this
.

“We think they have hidden underground just to the north-west.”

“All of them?”

He nodded abstractedly. “Yes, yes, all of them.”

“Then it is your duty to the Word to flush them out.”

He laughed, a little out of control. Some grass by the Stone was touched by a freshening wind and suddenly moved. His head felt pressured and strange.

“They might be got out, eldrene Wort, if we knew exactly where they were, had a moleyear to do it and could find a way of attacking them in a probably inaccessible place. But they cannot escape, of that we are sure. They are probably in the Castern Chambers, of which we know a little from information extracted over the moleyears from watchers we have captured. It won’t help us get at them, but at least the lower exit routes are covered, and I presume they cannot hide forever.”