Duncton Found (126 page)

Overtures had been made, the grikes had refused to surrender, so Alder and Caradoc decided to try to stop more bloodshed on their own initiative. Up they slowly went, knowing that the chance was high they would be killed.

Perhaps lesser moles might have been, but those two had strength in their grizzled paws and wise eyes, and peacefulness, and the grikes recognised them for what they were.

“Not one of you shall be harmed, I pledge that upon the Stone itself,” said Caradoc. “You’ll be prisoners for a time, until our campaign is over, and I’ve a grim feeling you’ll be safer as prisoners than roaming the countryside. After that you can go home.”

“Yonder’s my home,” growled a grike, pointing southeast to the slopes below the hill. “I may be of grike stock but my father was stationed here before me and I was born of a local mole. Where shall my home be now, eh, mole?”

Then, in a memorable gesture, Caradoc said, “Mole we may not be kin by blood but by birthplace we are, for the place you point to is as near to where we stance now as my own birthplace is.”

Then he put a paw to that grike’s shoulder, and pointed out the slopes to the north-east where he had been born.

“What’s your name, mole?”

“Clee,” said the grike.

“When peace comes, Clee, and it will come, you climb this hill again and I’ll give a welcome your good sense and faith in our justice this day deserves.”

“That’s well said for a mole of the Stone,” said Clee. “What’s
your
name, mole?”

“Caradoc of Caer Caradoc,” said the old mole proudly.

“Then by the Word, Caradoc, I’m not ashamed to yield to you. But if the day comes when I climb this hill again I’ll expect you to yield to me for a day, just for old time’s sake, mole to mole!” Clee laughed, a great, rough grike laugh, and Caradoc looked at Alder, and Alder at Caradoc, and they laughed as well.

“It shall be so, Clee.”

But it was at Cefn-Mawr in the north Marches, when the Welsh moles discovered their true strength, that the war and its direction really changed. Not for the first time in moledom’s sometimes bloody history, a force of moles, well-led locally, won a battle and then a local war, and suddenly all looked different.

What had seemed established and permanent forever was suddenly seen as vulnerable, its weaknesses exposed. For from the few captives taken at Cefn-Mawr, Troedfach and Gareg discovered that the Master Lucerne was in all probability dead, Clowder’s force was stuck in the obscure south Marches, and contained, and no other coherent force ruled moles but a bunch of sideem and eldrene, each with their own patch to scheme over.

But more than that, within days of the Cefn-Mawr victory, moles began appearing at the Welsh moles’ quarters. Followers and well-wishers, of course, but moles of the Word as well, who said that for too long they had suffered the rules and restrictions of the Word and were changing their faith....

The Word and its weakness was indeed exposed. But Troedfach was not impressed: all that Alder had told him over the years suggested that the moles of the Stone had been equally fickle and weak when Henbane had come down from the north against them. Perhaps the Stone Mole
was
needed to give moles the strength they lacked in themselves.

Nevertheless, if the Word’s power had still been at Whern Troedfach would not have thought to advance much more. But when he learned it was at Cannock, which was not too far off at all...! If his forces were able to take that as well then the Word would be well broken. It seemed, too, that on the way, there were systems that needed to be liberated of the Word....

In this way, what had begun as a campaign now became a crusade that in its early enthusiastic weeks was only just controlled by Gareg and Troedfach, but controlled it was. Gradually, methodically, they journeyed east and south, splitting first into two groups and then into four, and meeting little or no opposition at all except in some of the bigger systems and that desultory.

What surprised Troedfach was the ready disloyalty of the moles of the Word to the Word itself. It was as if the rumours of Lucerne’s death, and the failure of Whern to provide a successor who could bring the moles of the Word together had caused faith in the faith itself to die.

“We have the Stone, Gareg, and that is always there. But the Word seems to need a Master or a Mistress to give it strength, and failing that it looks an empty thing. Remember the Word started with Scirpus, a
mole,
not with the Stone.

“We shall continue to advance on Cannock, and perhaps we’ll find tougher opposition there, but after that our real task will be to turn our moles back. Victory is a heady thing, and freedom to kill across these vales may become more alluring than the rough Welsh hills.”

“Aye,” said Gareg grimly. “I’ve had to discipline some of my own moles harshly to stop them running wild. Caradoc was right to warn us as he did.”

Yet there was something more abroad than mere failure of the Word, something that a military mole like Troedfach was not able easily to understand, for he had never lived under the thrall of the Word, nor seen the corrupting years of eldrene rule; nor known the snouting of his kin and the stealing of his pups.

Such things make moles harbour hate, and though they may live for years without their masters knowing what they feel, the hatred thrives with each fresh injustice. Take away restraint and the evil pus of that hatred spews out and vile killing starts.

This was the force that now threatened to unleash itself where the Welsh moles went; this the dark side of the smiles of the moles who suddenly emerged into the daylight of freedom once more. And, some might say, this was the beginning of the new Word. Aye, revenge is often how it starts; freedom spawns its own failure.

This danger was very real, but thus far Troedfach’s restraint, and Gareg’s good example, hindered it.

A sense of these truths must have begun to come to Troedfach before the battle at Cannock, for sensing that his moles were fast becoming marauders, he re-formed the groups of four from two, with himself and Gareg in supreme command. More than that, he personally spoke to all the commanders under him, and had Gareg do the same, and told them that if Cannock was a victory then it would be the final one. After that the fighting must end, and moles of these parts must find their own way. Whatever happened now, the Welsh moles had proved that they could defend their own, and it would be many a moleyear before any force ever tried to attack Wales and Siabod again. This restraint marks Troedfach out for greatness, and did much to set the tone for moles of the Stone for a time.

Yet Troedfach could still be ruthless if he felt it justified, and in Cannock, most infamously perhaps, his moles were violent for a final time. To that place all the sideem and Keepers who could get there had fled, and so too had many of the guardmoles from the systems in the Midlands, which explains why so many had fallen so fast.

Troedfach had learned that Drule and Slighe had been deputed by Lucerne to be in charge of Cannock before his ill-fated journey to Beechenhill. These two, at least, he no doubt hoped to take, though he would not have had the respect for them he had for Ginnell and Haulke, who both survived the war.

We may imagine the miserable inability of Drule to deal with the military crisis that faced him after Lucerne and Terce had vanished and when the Welsh moles appeared, and all without Clowder nearby to help. We can guess the difficulties Slighe faced as the structure of reports and counter-checks that Lucerne had made ground to a total halt.

Under those two Cannock ceased to work. Yet there, panicking, arguing, even murdering perhaps, the sideem and the guardmoles rushed; and there they had to wait their fate as, inexorably, the Welsh moles approached nearer to them and, to make matters worst, Gareg took a force of moles round to the eastern side of Cannock and prevented a retreat.

Then, just as at a single blow Troedfach had stopped the fighting on the Marches by ruthless killing, so in Cannock he desired to destroy the hierarchy of the Word. Nomole knows how many died, or what moles they were, but after Cannock if a Keeper lived he did not speak his rank; and if a sideem lived he lied to survive. In Cannock, as in Cefn-Mawr, few prisoners were taken.

In Cannock the grikes’ power died. In Cannock the Word died. In Cannock Whern itself lost its hold on moles’ hearts and minds.

And Drule? And Slighe?

Oh,
them?

We know their fate.

It seems that when the last killing in Cannock was done, and the Welsh moles were finishing clearing out the system and picking off the last moles hiding there, they heard a cry, a subterranean cry.

Then from out of a deep and fetid tunnel, like a creature from a lost vile world, a mole staggered up bringing with him one other mole, a female, who looked all but dead.

Those who first discovered them were aghast at what they saw, but the more living of the two, the male, seemed to roar at them and threaten them in a voice that was no more than a rasping croak, and with a body that was nearly broken. His face and flanks were hollowed out with hunger, his paws and body had wounds that had congealed and yet been torn again as if he had been in a fight for days.

His companion, if that’s what a mole could call so ghastly, broken a thing as she seemed then, lay motionless, her eyes swollen and closed, her body nothing more than ragged fur half hanging off her bones.

The Welsh moles recoiled from them in horror, and uncertain what to do summoned senior commanders to the place. But though these tried to approach they were threatened more, and the male cried out at them, such sounds as he made at first making no sense at all.

It was not until Troedfach himself came to the mole that any sense was made of what he said. All that was plain was that anymole who touched the weak mole he had carried out would have to kill him first. Yet when they retreated he still whispered on.

“I think he wants to know what moles we are,” said one of the Welsh moles.

“We’re from Caer Caradoc, we’re....”

“We’re of the Stone,” said Troedfach, suddenly understanding. “We’re of the Stone.”

The mole stanced down and turned to his companion, and seemed to whisper to her, to comfort her.

“Bring them food,” said Troedfach softly, “bring them good worms. This mole is not threatening us. He is defending himself, and his companion too, and I think he has had to do so for a very long time.”

The worms were brought and Troedfach told all the others there to leave. He placed a worm before the mole, who stared at it in disbelief and suddenly grabbed it, guarded it, and with one paw poised to defend it, to the very death it seemed, he chewed some of the worm and then fed it slowly to the female.

Troedfach guessed that the scene he saw was one that had been enacted many times before, and that somewhere below them where the mole had been was a place nomole should ever have to go. He put more worms before the mole and watched as he fed the female again and then, finally, took food for himself. His stance, though still feeble, grew stronger.

“Mole, I am Troedfach of Tyn-y-Bedw, commander of the Welsh Marches. I am of the Stone. Cannock is no longer of the Word. Cannock is free and you are free as well. You shall not be harmed more. What is your name?”

The mole did not reply, but turned instead to his companion, and Troedfach heard him whisper again and again, “Betony, did you hear that? Did you hear? He’s of the Stone. We’re safe now, we’re safe. Betony, we’re all right now....”

“Mole, what is your name?” asked Troedfach.

The mole looked at him with strong, proud eyes and said, “I am Wharfe of Beechenhill and I too am of the Stone.”

“What is this place from which you come?”

“The Sumps,” said Wharfe.

“Are there others like you in the tunnels below?”

“Only a few are left, but we must try to get them out.”

He tried to stance up as if to lead Troedfach towards the tunnel but he was too weak and fell back again.

“I’ll send moles in.”

“Tell them to beware of mud, and if they find moles to say they are of the Stone or otherwise they may be killed. The others must be dead by now.”