Duncton Quest (37 page)

It started in a trivial way, after some ominous doings out on the surface when the moles of the North End heard the patrols catching and punishing an escaper. Skint had gone to make sure that Willow was secure, and on the way had met up with Tryfan. The trouble had seemed to pass and both moles went back to their tasks.

But a short time later, when Skint had reason to be briefly and legitimately out on the surface, a strange guardmole confronted him.

“Hello, scum,” said the mole, coming close to Skint.

Skint, ever a mole to respect, took a solid stance and said nothing.

“Yes, Sir, I’m scum, Sir,” said the guardmole laughing. “Say that, scum.”

Skint did not feel inclined to. He had outfaced guardmoles before. But now a second appeared, and then a third, and then a fourth. The last two had bloodied talons, and that wildness to their eyes and heaving to their breath that follows a killing.

“This scum won’t say he’s scum and needs to be made to,” said the first.

“This scum needs punishing by the Word!” said the third.

“Bugger the Word,” said the fourth. “
This
scum needs punishing by
us
!” He laughed and Skint suddenly knew fear, and knew he was facing death. These guardmoles were corrupted, and maddened in some way by the punishment they had inflicted earlier. To flee would mean chasing, and chasing incensed such moles; to stay meant he would have to find something to say, something quick and clever, something....

Too late. The third mole came forward and thrust a talon under Skint’s snout.

“I don’t like you,” he said. He was grinning.

“
None
of us likes you, scum,” said the first.

“You’re coming with us,” said the fourth, hunching his shoulders and moving round the back of Skint and pushing him forward through the grass.

“We’ve got something to show you,” said the third unpleasantly, and Skint knew it had to do with the blood the mole had on his talons. Smithills, I need you, was Skint’s last thought before he was led away.

A mole running, a scabious frightened mole, running through those North End tunnels, panting and desperate, running to find not Smithills but Tryfan.

“Sir! Now, Sir!”

“What is it, Mayweed?” said Tryfan, who was working.

“They’re going to kill, Sir. Kill Skint, Sir. Please, please now,
now
sir.”

Mayweed never forgot the way Tryfan responded to his plea. Mayweed, who had heard and seen the patrol take Skint, for he had already heard and seen that same patrol kill another clearer and, seeing them head in the direction of the North End, had followed secretly and unobserved. Then Skint had been caught, and then taken back towards where that other mole, that mole that wasn’t a mole now, that....

“Where is he?” said Tryfan softly. Enormous he was, his coat dark and his talons purposeful. No, Mayweed never ever forgot that, nor doubted that, of all moles he had seen and would ever see, Tryfan was the one who would know what to do, and how to do it when resolve and decisive action was needed.

“Follow me, Sir, now, Sir, strong Sir, follow!”

Mayweed ran fast, this way and that, all under the surface, across the North End and then beyond it to places strange, the twists and turns, and roots and stones in those tunnels seeming to fly past Tryfan as if he was dreaming them.

“Is it much further?” he called out.

“It’s here, Sir, ssh, Sir!” said Mayweed almost skidding to a halt and pointing forward and upward. “Just ahead...” The tunnel was really now no more than a dried crack in the ground which somemole (Mayweed! realised Tryfan) had made a little bigger. The light came in clearly and ahead a fence post, the cause of the crack, thrust down. Wire whined in the breeze from it, and there was the low murmur of thuggish voices nearby.

“Scum, that’s all you are, and that’s why —” a voice was saying.

Tryfan did not hesitate. He pushed past Mayweed and then straight up on to the surface, the soil and grass seeming to burst open as he came through it. So fast and unexpected was his arrival that the guardmoles all fell back in alarm, and the one who had already raised his talons to strike Skint simply stared in alarm.

Tryfan advanced straight on them, thrust his snout towards the largest and fiercest, and said in a voice of extraordinary power and command, “And what do you all think you’re doing?”

Before a single one of them had gathered himself together to find an explanation, Tryfan taloned the biggest on the shoulder and said, “Is this where you’re
meant
to be patrolling? No. I thought not. Have you any idea whatmole this is you’re just about to kill?
No? Then get back to your posts or by the power of the Word itself you’ll suffer for it!”

The four guardmoles stared at him some more, and even if a couple of them had seen him before they would not have recognised him. For Tryfan seemed huge and menacing, darker in effect, terrifying in appearance, and his talons seemed black and shining.

“This mole is named Skint, and scum though he is he happens to have more knowledge of these bloody tunnels than any other mole alive, so we
need
him. Now get out of here before you go on report....”

The guardmoles looked at each other doubtfully, but none had the nerve to ask who this strange mole was. He seemed important, and he was certainly threatening. Tryfan glared at them and they at him, and for a long moment it seemed that his bluff might be called, and he would be challenged. But no, one of the guardmoles stepped back and muttered that he was off, and then another, until all of them left.

Even after they had gone Tryfan loomed, and afterwards Skint reported that if he had been frightened before he was frightened even more as Tryfan turned and stared at him, his eyes cold and black, his talons fierce.

Then the moment was gone and Tryfan was himself once more, and he hurried Skint away from that place, where that other mole, less fortunate, lay, limp and bloody where he had been killed.

From that day on Tryfan was part of Skint and Smithills’ councils, and privy to their intent to escape from the Slopeside when the right moment came, or the violence that seemed to be brewing in the tunnels erupted. They had decided to take the only route out that seemed feasible, and the one that Alder had mentioned to Tryfan – over the northern stream.

“We’ll get you over that!” said Smithills confidently. “Northern moles like us are used to streams and rivers, floods and spates. There’s ways to get across troubled water if you keep your wits about you, and know what to do.”

Skint did not trouble Willow with their plans, though she came to their evenings together more frequently now, but Munro, the other of the Rollright clearers, was briefed, and Tryfan was glad to meet him. He was, as Smithills had hinted, short of a sensible word. But he was cheerful enough, and generous with his food, and would laugh and thump his paws to the tunes that Smithills liked to hum.

“Food and song – that’s what you like, isn’t it Munro?” Smithills would say, and Munro, beaming, would grin his agreement, easing his large form into a more comfortable position and accidently knocking poor Willow from her stance.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to,” he’d say, helping her back.

“’Tis all right, dear,” Willow would whisper.

“You never “mean to” but you do!” Smithills would scold him.

“Sorry,” said Munro.

Tryfan had never seen him angry but there were stories that he could be, and once a threatening guardmole had retreated in fear of him, and he’d saved a mole or two from snouting without really doing much at all.

“Useful mole, that one,” Smithill’s would say, ’eh Skint?”

“Munro? Aye,” Skint would reply shortly.

Then, quite unexpectedly one morning, when Tryfan was hard at work and had just been visited by a guardmole, Mayweed popped his head round an unpredictable corner and said, “Surprised Sir, it is I, humble Mayweed, tired from a journey, and one I have not undertaken alone! No, no, no, no! Not alone at all!”

But before he could go on, somemole pushed past him muttering and, to Tryfan’s delight and relief, Spindle appeared. He looked healthy and had put on some weight, returning him to his normal thin self rather than the skeletal form he had had when he left to be a tunneller.

His greeting was so hurried and perfunctory that it froze Tryfan’s before it began.

“Yes. Greetings. No time. Not meant to be here. Trouble coming now, very soon. You know the season?”

“Summer,” said Tryfan.

“Midsummer, nearly,” said Spindle. “Henbane of Whern has come to Buckland. Guardmoles are massing, the patrols are strengthening and massacre is apaw. Massacre, Tryfan!” His brow furrowed and his eyes were troubled. “This
will
be,” he said. “Now listen....”

It seemed that new tunnellers had come from Rollright and were directing the clearing of tunnels and burrow debris from a point just below the Slopeside, in the hope of avoiding becoming diseased themselves. It was as one of several go-betweens that Spindle had been taken on. He had managed to convince the grikes that he knew what he was about, but others who had tried the same thing had failed, and died. He had no illusions about his own future. Go-betweens like him would be killed once their task was finished, and it nearly was. Hard for an individual to say exactly when the task was done, but the night before one of the tunnellers had disappeared and he himself might well be the next.

So he had come while he still could. He had had limited access outside the Slopeside into Buckland. He learned that the clearers were to be moved, mainly by surface, before the tunnellers came in to finally clean up the system.

“By the surface? So many?” said Tryfan, surprised and suspicious. He knew that overland mass movements of moles was dangerous, making them prey to owls and corvids.

“I think the ‘move’ is really an excuse to get them out into the open and kill them. Have you seen strange guardmoles up on the surface? Are the patrols strengthening?”

Tryfan nodded.

“Yes, I thought so. Listen. I was able to talk briefly with Alder, who reported that Thyme and Pennywort are safe and well, though partially guarded, working down near the riverside tunnels. Alder has talked to the mole Marram and he is inclined now to be sympathetic to the Stone. But more than that I was unable to discover.

“But something more serious is that they’re expecting trouble from the clearers and have moved many guardmoles up to peripheral Slopeside tunnels and round on the surface to stop any of the clearers trying to escape. It may be too late for Skint’s plans. Now – Brevis. I haven’t heard anything definite about Brevis, but I came across one of the guardmoles who was there when we were and he said there’s hardly any moles left in the burrow-cells at all. They’ve either been snouted or sent on up here. He thought Brevis would be kept there until Midsummer because there are definite orders that he’s to be snouted as part of the rituals... I must go now, otherwise... Mayweed will bring news, and when he does, act swiftly Tryfan. My life will depend on it and so will that of Brevis. Swiftly...” and Spindle was gone, and Mayweed with him to direct him back through the complex way he had come.

Never had Tryfan felt the ominous frustration he felt then. To see his friend go back into the very midst of danger, to be unable to follow him, and to have to wait and wait, night after night, day by day, starting at every sound, uncertain of every shadow, yet ready at every moment... imagining his friend and companion, whom he had grown to love, dying unloved, unknown, unfulfilled.

He told Skint what Spindle had said, and Skint readied the others. If any of them discovered anything, or saw any sign of killing, they must summon the others immediately. Willow, protesting, was brought to Skint’s burrow and made to sleep there, for her own miserable place was too far off to be safe. Munro moved closer, too. The nights were dark, the days long, and sleep when it came was restless and shadowed, full of starts and distant rolling darkness which flared sometimes as a roaring owl’s eyes flare across the sky; but red not yellow, red as the blood that drips from a feeding owl’s beak. Those nights were nights of fearful sleep. Fearful and....

“Psst! Wake up!
.
Sir
!”

Tryfan rolled over and took immediate stance, his talons ready to kill.

“Only me, Sir, Mayweed. Ssh, Sir! Follow me.”

“Where to?”

“Spindle says to come with me, Sir. The time’s here now and there’s no time.”

But Tryfan would not go.

“Must, Sir, please, Sir, Spindle said, Sir. Now, now, now, now. It’s Brevis. Getting him we are, taking him we are, away, away. Tonight’s the only chance, the last chance.”

“I will come,” said Tryfan rapidly, “but first I must warn Skint.”

“No time, Sir,” moaned Mayweed, half sobbing. “None.”

“Well I’m going to, Mayweed, right now, and then I’ll come.”

“Skint’ll stop you, and he’ll hit me.”

But Tryfan did not argue any more and ran quickly through the dark, still tunnels to Skint, whom he found was awake, already sensing something was wrong.