Duncton Found (127 page)

“What others?”

“Grikes who fled down there, but we killed them in the end. As for Drule and Slighe, they were still alive when I last saw them. I doubt that they survived.”

As moles went down Wharfe told how Drule and Slighe and a few other grikes had come down into the Sumps, though Wharfe did not realise then it was to hide from the Welsh moles.

Their coming was preceded by weeks in which the moles in the Sumps had been abandoned, and amid scenes of utter horror most had slowly died. But Wharfe had fought and killed for worms the grikes brought down, and these he fed to Betony and himself and they had managed to survive. They stayed clear of the anarchy that began when the Welsh moles approached Cannock and some of the guardmoles, and Drule and Slighe as well, fled down to the Sumps in the hope they would be thought prisoners and set free.

“What happened to them?” asked Troedfach. “Were they killed?”

Wharfe shook his head.

“They put them in the Lower Sumps,” he said matter-of-factly, but as he named that place Betony recoiled and shivered and it was a long time before Wharfe could settle her again.

The patrol Troedfach had sent to the Sumps returned, bringing out nine moles alive, each but the ghastly shadow of a mole, each driven to the edge of sanity by what they had experienced.

As for Drule and Slighe, the patrol found them alive all right, but there was nothing they could do but watch them go to a ghastly death. It was the senior member of the patrol who described their end.

“We were taken down to the Lower Sumps by one of the survivors and he showed us a slimy, muddy pit and said that weeks past, when it rained heavily, the ways down into there had crumbled and fallen in. Off it was a tunnel, a black tunnel with no light which we were told led on to the many damp burrows and cells where prisoners were sometimes confined.

“The pit was full of seeping mud that was slowly rising up towards the tunnel entrance, and into this mud Drule and Slighe had been thrown along with several of the grikes. These had all fought for their lives, trying to use each other to climb up out of the pit. When we arrived only Drule and Slighe still lived, the latter huddled in the tunnel entrance where he had retreated, while huge Drule, having killed all others there, was trying to find a way out of the rising mud.

“There was no helping him, for a mole could not reach that far down. What was worse was that their struggles had churned the mud and made it worse and as we watched, slowly, very slowly, it surged and turned revealing bodies in its sticky depths among which Drule floundered and cried out in fear. More and more we saw him driven back towards the tunnel out of which Slighe now attempted to come as he realised that if he stayed there and the mud rose higher he would be sealed into that fetid roaring darkness. But Drule would not let him out. He crashed his talons on him and pushed him screaming back inside.

“We watched helplessly as Drule was driven back to the tunnel as the mud rose. We saw him push Slighe into the darkness as he himself sought the hopeless refuge the tunnel gave.

“Nomole can describe the horror we felt as he desperately tried to push the mud’s sticky, suffocating mass back from the tunnel entrance. The last we saw was a paw pushing helplessly at the mud before he retreated into darkness forever, the mud very slowly but relentlessly pursuing him and Slighe into those dreadful depths.”

Such is all we know of the end of Drule and Slighe. Of their final end, in claustrophobic darkness, pursued by suffocating mud, nomole will ever know, nor be able to guess how many days it was they survived down there. There was dripping water enough perhaps for drinking, but we can contemplate only with horror what the last survivor among them, Drule probably, was forced to use as food....

The Welsh moles stayed on in Cannock for some time more and in that time the moles from the Sumps were able to recover. Some might never fully have done so, but Wharfe and Betony had better luck than most, or greater faith perhaps.

Then some days after the fights were all over two moles came to Cannock, saying that they had heard there were survivors from the Sumps and asking if certain friends of theirs might be among them. There were many such in those days, many moles coming and going and few noticed those two as they were led through the Cannock tunnels to see the survivors.

One was but a small and modest mole, and grubby too, the other a quiet female....

“Holm,” said Quince, “do you really think that Wharfe...?”

He could not know. After all the struggles they had had since their escape from the Manifold Valley, and a long period of waiting near dangerous Cannock in the hope of better times coming in the wake of the Stone Mole’s passing, it seemed unlikely that Wharfe had survived – if he had ever got here, for even that they did not know.

“The survivors?” said one of the Welsh moles kindly. “Aye, there are a few living in warm burrows up this way... you go on and see if the moles you want are there.” He pointed to a pleasant but small tunnel. Not many survivors there!

“Is that all the moles who lived?”

“Aye, that’s all, Miss.”

Quince stared at the clean tunnel, and scented its good air. At one or two of the entrances she could see a paw or a flank moving.

“Holm, I dare not go, I daren’t. Will you?”

“I don’t know what Wharfe looks like.”

Quince smiled.

“You knew Tryfan, didn’t you?”

Holm nodded.

“When Squeezebelly told me the truth of Wharfe and Harebell’s parentage, he said that Wharfe looked much like Tryfan.”

“I’ll look,” said Holm.

She watched him go down the tunnel, peering into each burrow in turn. Her heart beat hard and she barely seemed to breathe as one by one he turned back to her and shook his head.

One by one Holm went, and saw moles thin and gaunt. Some whispered to themselves, some stared, some lay fast asleep.

But then he came to one burrow where two moles were. He saw the female first for she was facing towards the burrow entrance. She smiled at him.

Then the male slowly turned to face him. He was gaunt as well, but his body was big, his shoulders broad and his paws and talons were large. He had the bearing of one who had suffered and survived and still retained the good spirit that he had always had; and as his gaze fell on him, Holm saw his eyes were like Tryfan’s.

Holm stared, stanced up as he usually did at such moments which were always so difficult for him, looked round the burrow for inspiration and said, “Quince has come.”

Quince saw Holm pause at another burrow, almost the last indeed, she saw him stare, she saw him stance up and look desperate and she saw him speak.

Then a mole came out of the burrow, and he turned towards her, and she knew him not from his thin flanks, or his scarred shoulders, but from his gait and his gaze. Her Wharfe was still alive.

“Wharfe!” she said as he came to her. And his great paws were on her shoulders, and for a time they spoke no words.

“Betony?” she said at last.

“She’s here.”

“Harebell?” he asked, but even as she shook her head he seemed to know the answer.

“Bramble?” he asked.

“No, my dear, we understand that few in Beechenhill survived.”

They held each other in silence some time more before he said, “Come and meet Betony now, but be warned she has suffered much and is very frail.”

“Then Beechenhill will help her recover, for soon we must go home.”

Then with cries of pleasure, and tears as well, those moles came together once again and what had been their little group was, as moledom itself was, not the same as it was before, yet not altogether lost.

It was Gareg who suggested what they might do.

“Troedfach has asked me to take some moles from Cannock and travel north as far as Whern, just to be sure that there are no moles of the Word still wishing to impose themselves on moles who do not want them. They can believe what they like provided they don’t try to bend others to their will. Anyway, that’s for me to worry about, but these are troubled times and you might like our protection for the journey back to Beechenhill if you’re willing to go back now after what has happened.”

They nodded their agreement.

“Also,” continued Gareg, “you can tell me a lot about moledom that I don’t know. We’re cut off in Wales, see, and when I go home I’d like to know more than I did.”

“Like what, mole?” said Wharfe cautiously.

“Places; moles; incidents. I’ve heard so much about moles like Lucerne and Henbane, Tryfan and Beechen of Duncton and as you come from Beechenhill you must know something about all that. It seems to have been a kind of centre for the Stone.”

“But hasn’t he told you whatmole he is?” said Quince surprised.

Wharfe put a restraining paw on hers and smiled.

“Who is he?” said Gareg.

“I’ll tell you about that on the way to Beechenhill,” said Wharfe. “Not afterwards, mind, because we’re going to have our work cut out and you....”

“Me?”

“Well, mole, you’ll not be coming back from Whern. Didn’t you know? Giants live up there!”

Gareg laughed.

“Aye, like giants named Troedfach come out of Wales!”

It was soon after this that Troedfach, leaving only a small garrison at Cannock, said farewell to Gareg for a time and turned his great and disciplined force back towards its homeland. Then Gareg was set to leave.

Many farewells were made then, and many tears were shed. The whole of moledom seemed to be on the move, but Holm was not a mole to enjoy saying goodbyes and, knowing that, Quince held him close for a time and would not let him go.

She told him how much he meant to her, and how much he had achieved, and that he had fulfilled every task the Stone had set him.

“What will you do now, Holm?” she asked as she said the last goodbye.

He stanced up, he stared, then he waved in a southerly direction and grinned happily and said, “I’m going home!”

Chapter Forty

The victory of the Welsh moles over the forces of the Word at Cannock, bloody and terrible though it was, brought to an end the hegemony of the Word over moledom as a whole. To be sure, the struggles of moles for the Mastership, principally that between Clowder and the sinister Thripp of Blagrove Slide, would occupy the northern parts for many a moleyear yet, but the Word of Rune and Henbane in her prime, the true Scirpuscan Word, the Word of darkness and dismay, was no more.

Where did it die? At Beechenhill, when Beechen was barbed? At Caradoc, when Troedfach first led the Welsh moles out? Or at Whern itself, when Henbane first knew doubt?

Would that it were so, or that we truly knew what the Word was. For after Troedfach had retreated with his forces the violence that his moles had contained broke out as all the hatred of moles of the Stone against the Word burst forth. Now the revenge for those sideem strikes was taken. Now moledom saw begin a wave of retaliation that would spread like fire across a wood, and burn fierce indeed before it died. Whole systems of the Word were slain, even the moles who professed to a belief in the Stone, youngsters, old moles, females. Everymole killed.

The scenes we witnessed at Beechenhill, aye and even the cruelty we saw in a burrow on the Manifold were repeated again and again now, and shaming it is for us, for they were done in the name of the Stone.