Duncton Quest (121 page)

“You mean you’ve just come into the system?” asked the mole suspiciously.

“Yes,” said Spindle, with obvious truthfulness.

“And you came straight here?”

“The grikes said it was best to make for the Eastside and then down to the Marsh End. Suggested the Westside was dangerous.”

“Interesting,” said the mole, still doubtful of them.

“Marsh End seems sensible,” said Tryfan. “It’s not too bad down there in some places, moles from the worm-rich tunnels on the Westside never used to bother much with it and I don’t suppose they do now.”

“Sounds like you’re remarkably well informed, mate.”

“He ought to be,” said Spindle. “He was born here.”

“Well, blow me and lie down and die,” said the mole in astonishment. “You’re not having me on?”

Tryfan shook his head.

“No, I didn’t think you were. There’s an alarming sincerity about you two that’s unusual for Duncton, to say the least. Really born here were you?”

Tryfan nodded.

“Then you’re the first mole I’ve met in this place who was born here. I thought the grikes killed off the Duncton moles.”

“They didn’t,” said Tryfan.

“So you’ve got to be believers in the Stone, then?” said the mole quietly.

“Yes, we are,” said Tryfan.

“What are your names?” But before they could reply the mole pushed them to one side and, lowering his voice, said, “Best to keep your own secrets round this place, let’s find a quieter spot. Tunnels have ears.” He took them some way from any tunnel entrance, then disappeared for a little while and came back with worms, which he laid before Tryfan and Spindle.

“Now,” asked their new friend, “what are your names?”

“What’s yours?” asked Tryfan.

“Hay,” said the mole. “Short and sweet. Now....”

“My name is Tryfan.”

The mole immediately laughed and turned to Spindle and said, “And you’ll be telling me you’re the Stone Mole.”

“Spindle, actually,” said Spindle.

“Stone me,” said Hay, breathing heavily and staring about in alarm. “Well stone the crows!”

He looked at them some more and then said, “Trouble is, I don’t need to ask if you’re serious ’cos nomole would be daft enough to say they’re Tryfan if they weren’t. Too bloody dangerous. Well! What a turn up! Tryfan, eh? And Spindle of Seven Barrows?”

“You’ve heard of me?” said Spindle in surprise.

“Heard of you? You’re famous, mate. As for you,” he said turning to Tryfan, “you’re meant to be dead, and you might decide you’re better off dead when you realise... but you don’t, do you? I can see it in your faces. You’ve got no bloody idea, have you? Blimey! Wait a minute – didn’t the grikes ask who you were?”

“Didn’t get round to it,” said Spindle.

“Perhaps you’d better tell us how you know of us, and why you’re so surprised and what we obviously don’t ‘realise’,” said Tryfan.

“Perhaps I’d better get shot of you as fast as I damn well can, except...” And then his voice dropped to a sudden whisper. He signalled their silence, and turned away into the undergrowth suddenly. There was a short silence and then a scuffle and a scream.

A different voice cried out, “Wasn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t, can’t, just passing by.”

“Passing by, my arse,” said Hay, dragging a protesting mole to the spot where they had been talking. She was as scabby and foetid a looking mole as they had ever seen, and she was blind. She was the one who had been following them.

“You’ll find a lot like her,” said Hay, “wandering about, listening, exchanging the miserable pittance of information they get for a pawful of worms up on the Westside. Eh? And what’s your name then mole? “Filth”? “Vile”? Or they got a better name for you?”

The mole’s snout closed and opened as she scented at Tryfan and Spindle, her eyes white and staring. “I got a name and that name’s mine to tell when I like. A mole’s got to live. Others get worms quicker’n me, others aren’t nice to me, so I get by best I can. Moles blabber, I report. You hurt me and they’ll know who it was.”

“How?” said Hay, who did not look like the hurting kind.

“They’ll know,” said the mole.

“We’ll not hurt you, mole, and there’s no secrets that we keep. My name is Tryfan, my friend is Spindle, we have returned to Duncton and intend no harm to anymole. But tell the ones you report to that if anymole tries to harm us they will not benefit by it. Go in peace, and remember we mean no harm to befall anymole.”

She shook herself, looked disgruntled, finally snouted close to Tryfan, and said, “Give us a worm and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Mole,” said Tryfan softly, “you need only ask.”

With that he pushed the worms Hay had brought, over to her.

“You’re a good mole!” she said. “Time was when I had no trouble. Reared pups of my own and fed them. Time was when I did that. Had two litters before disease came, but, mind you, that wasn’t here, no, I don’t come from here....”

“Off you go!” said Hay. “You’ve got your worms.”

But Tryfan raised a paw to silence him, crouched down with the blind and smelly female, took a worm himself, crunched it companionably and said, “Where are you from, mole?”

“Long way off, long way. Long time ago now, and you wouldn’t think it, looking at me, but I had two litters, a three and a four, all my own to cherish and care for.”

“Tell me, mole.”

“You don’t want to hear my nonsense!”

Tryfan went close, gently made some of her food easier to reach, and said, “Now, tell me.”

Which she did, in a rambling tearful way as moles do when none has been willing to listen to them for a long time, and they fear that if they stop their listener will go away. But Tryfan stayed, and Hay and Spindle backed a little away and were silent while the female talked as Tryfan desired her to.

It was only much later, when the mole had told Tryfan her whole life history, that she finally got up to go.

“Things to do, got to keep busy. What’s your name again?”

“Tryfan.”

“Mine’s Teasel and it’s been a pleasure talking, Tryfan. I like a natter. Whatmole doesn’t?”

“Company’s everything,” said Tryfan.

“You’re right there,” said Teasel, and she snouted about, scented her route away, and set off. “Bye then!” she called out as she left, humming tunelessly to herself as she went, her blind and wandering form the only movement over the dusky floor of the Eastside wood.

When she had gone Hay said, “So, now I know why there’s stories about you, Tryfan, and you, Spindle. I got a feeling I was meant to meet you today.”

“More than likely,” said Tryfan cheerfully. “Eh, Spindle? We’ve got a habit of finding the right mole at the right time or, more accurately, the Stone does it for us.”

“Now don’t you start preaching the Stone at me!” said Hay with mock alarm. “I’m not one for worship.”

“Not many moles are until they try it,” said Tryfan. “Now, perhaps we had better find some temporary burrows to overnight in and you can tell us what Duncton has become in the time since we left it and what we should know. Spindle is worried about surviving here, thinks we’ll get attacked, so maybe you can put his mind at rest.”

“You’re on! I’ll tell you what I know and in exchange I’ll find out if what they say about you is true. As for being attacked, forget it. Those days have passed. There’s a few idiots about who make a lot of noise, and ’tis true they’re on the Westside, but I just tell them to go and take a walk in the centre of the roaring owl way and they push off and leave me alone.”

“What have you heard about us?” asked Tryfan.

“That you’re the only moles who ever resisted the grikes successfully, and that you did it in the name of the Stone and not yourselves. They say you’re brave and clever and all that, but I’ll judge that for myself.”

“The only way!” said Tryfan.

So two moles came that day to Duncton Wood and now there were three, and the little party set off to find burrows, and to learn what they could from one another.

The Duncton system they had returned to was but a place of quiet desperation compared to the murderous viciousness that had prevailed at the time the immigrants brought by order of Henbane first came.

Hay’s account came partly from himself and partly from what others had told him before they had died, as many had. Now the population was more stable, and though disease was rife deaths were fewer, as if the moles had settled for a lower level of life which took as part of its habit disease and illness and general debilitation.

“Terrible those early times, by all accounts,” Hay told them, shaking his head, “and moles lived in fear of their lives. For in those days most who came were miscreants or scalpskinned, and until madness or the sores set in bad such moles had strength and intelligence. So you can imagine what happened when they came here and were given the freedom of the place to make what rules they liked.

“That Henbane must have been a cunning mole to think that one up! Mayhem it was, and murder. The strong attacking the weak, and the weak attacking the dying, and the dying living off the dead.

“Disease all over, like all the plagues of moledom had settled on this place. Well, knowing the layout of the system you can imagine what happened. The Westside’s where the worms are, so the strongest took that over for a start. Mad bloody lot they were, and cruel, too, and used to raid the Marsh End for poor bastards to snout on the Westside wires that face out on to the Pastures.”

“Was there a leader?” asked Spindle, who always liked to know whatmole did what, and who was who.

“Leader? There’s always leaders, jumped-up bastards most of them, but of course they can’t last long. Diseased, you see. They weaken and others take over and then they go. I seen it so many times I don’t bother to keep track.

“Anyway, the strongest among the first wave of immigrants took over the Westside, and the clever ones who weren’t physically strong lost themselves down in the Marsh End where a mole with sense can hide himself. That’s where I was when I first came, it’s why I know the routes down here, or some of them.

“As for the new moles coming in, the ones who couldn’t fight their way into the Westside, they stayed on the Eastside, didn’t they? And lived as best they could there until they died. “Course the moles of the Westside came and looked them over and took the females for their own.

“And not always females,” he added darkly. “Males as well sometimes, because in those days we got some young ones in, gone mad mainly. Lot of
that
about.

“All this time what they called the Ancient System, which includes the so-called famous Stone of Duncton, was in the paws of the grikes garrison under the control of Eldrene Beake, as vile a mole as Fescue, her predecessor at Buckland.”

“You knew Fescue?” said Spindle in surprise.

“I wouldn’t say ‘knew’, though I saw her once or twice. I’m from Buckland originally and was one of the minions there, serving the grikes. And there I might still be but for a mole you once met, and who indirectly got me into trouble.”

“A mole
we
met?” said Tryfan.

“Aye. Ragwort. Said he met you when you came to Buckland.”

“Ragwort,” repeated Tryfan. Ragwort who had been a watcher and fought the grikes, and who had been lost in the disaster at the tunnel. “Ragwort knew the Stone,” Tryfan said.