Duncton Quest (61 page)

“We wish you no harm at Duncton,” he said, “but we must defend our own. But now, fear not. By the power of the Stone you will be healed.”

For a moment the mole stared at Tryfan in astonishment, then he looked round at his wound and the flow of blood there had stopped and he was able to move his front paws. “But I – but —” he whispered.

“Tell no other mole of this. Now go back to your own, mole, and remember that though we may be “accursed” as you have been told, yet we are moles as well as you, no different and with the same fears and desires. Now go.”

Then the mole found he had strength to turn, and strength to walk. There was a look of awe in his eyes as he said to Tryfan, “What is your name? I would know that.”

“My name is Tryfan, of Duncton born. To this place, which is my home, I would have all moles come in peace and all moles be safe. I would seek to heal all as I have healed you, I would wish it as a sanctuary beyond the power of the Word, beyond the power of the Stone as well if ever it was to be corrupted.”

The injured mole looked at him, and saw a mole of strength and certainty.

“My name is Thrift,” he said uncertainly.

“Yes, Thrift?” said Tryfan, his gaze powerful on him.

“If I can do anything, I mean, if ever....”

“That day may come, Thrift, for mole needs mole and always will.”

Then Thrift raised his eyes to the slopes that rose behind Tryfan, and on past them to the trees and woods themselves, on which the morning sun now shone with great beauty. “And I will not forget you desire that Duncton should be a place of peace, and a place of safety. I will not forget. We didn’t want —”

“Go in peace,” said Tryfan interrupting him. “Go now...” for grikes were advancing across the pipe once more, and watchers were coming forward. The mole Thrift went, looking back but once as he was lost among his own kind, looking at Tryfan with wonder and strange comfort.

Then Tryfan turned back to his own, and joined them without a further word of what had happened.

Afternoon came and Tryfan left Smithills at the front line of the fighting to relieve Alder, while he himself went upslope with two watchers appointed to guard him, to return to the main system to see how the moles waiting there were faring. Yet as he went he found his paws dragging, and he felt the need to go out on to the surface, and snout back downslope towards the now distant roaring owl way and beyond it to the fields in whose shadows the New Moles lay hidden.

“Smithills said not to let you go on the surface again alone, Sir,” said one of the watchers.

Tryfan smiled. “Smithills would,” he said, “but I’ll only be a moment or two.” The watchers did not argue, sensing their leader needed privacy. So, in the sunshine of a May afternoon, when the future of Duncton, and perhaps of moledom, itself lay in his paws, Tryfan paused and stared.

He thought of Comfrey and Maundy, of Alder and Smithills at whose flanks he had fought, of Mayweed whom he cared for and who must be down at the Marsh

End now, and of Spindle whom he loved, and who would find him before the day was out. He knew that many of the valiant moles fighting against the grikes that day would not live to see Duncton Wood free again. Many among the guardmoles would not survive either.

At such a time a leader may feel alone, and so then did Tryfan, and he could only pray that the Stone would watch over these moles, as it watched over all of moledom, and its followers would heed its calling.

“Tryfan, Sir!” called out one of the watchers worriedly, “Please, Sir! You
must
come now!”

Tryfan waved a paw at them in acknowledgement and then, with one last look down the slope towards where the watchers fought, he turned to the upslope tunnel and back to the task of saving the moles of the system he most loved.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The grikes finally took the cross-under and broke through to Alder’s second line of defence late the following night, after a protracted and clever assault at three points – the main cross-under, the sluice and the lesser dyke that Tryfan and Smithills had themselves played an important part in defending the previous day.

But long before then and without any major mishap or panic, the different groups of moles awaiting evacuation had been led down towards the Marsh End. They had entered tunnels deserted since the early days of Bracken’s leadership, when the plagues had come and the old quarters had been deserted.

Now moles returned, and Barrow Vale, once the heart of the system, echoed again to the sound of youngsters playing, and adults admonishing gently, and talking. But the voices were low, the adult moles subdued, and the tunnels dusty and in places blocked with vegetation and roof falls. Yet here they waited as night came, looking at each other questioningly as messengers went up to the elders’ burrow near the Stone, and news of the battle filtered back down to them.

Youngsters slept, adults watched, night deepened on the surface, and darkness came to the tunnels. Several trusted moles, Maundy leading them, went here and there, comforting, encouraging and reassuring the youngsters and their friends, and their parents too; for all feared they would lose loved ones in the battle.

Sometime before midnight, when the wind had grown stronger and the tunnels were filled with the strange draughts and air currents that beset decayed tunnels and which disturb moles’ liking for harmony and order, even the most deeply sleeping of the youngsters were woken by the sudden crash of thunder that cracked across the wood, and the flashes of lightning that sporadically lit up the tunnel entrances, and cast into brief, lurid light the huddles of restless, waiting moles that silently lined the tunnels.

Then heavy rain fell, and after it more thunder and lightening, then the pounding of yet more rain as here and there the tunnels began to drip and moles had to move themselves to avoid the leaking of water from the surface.

It was late in the night, when the rain had settled to a persistent downpour, that a single mole hurried along the surface of the wood from beyond the Marsh End. He knew his way, moving rapidly by clever and cunning routes that gave him protection against owl, which were known to strike creatures unwary enough to think the rain might give them cover.

Down briefly into Barrow Vale itself he dropped, past the wondering snouts of the evacuees who pulled a little away from him when they saw what he was, for his looks were strange, his stare intense, his smile off-putting to a mole who did not know it.

“Excuse me, thank you, very kind, wonderfully thoughtful of you, yes, yes, yes, no, you are not in my humble way.. said Mayweed as he squeezed by the crush of waiting moles and then hurried on, only pausing sometimes to listen to the rain with a worried frown.

Meanwhile, from the line of defensive surface burrows on the Eastside, where the campaign to keep back the grikes was now being hard fought in darkness and rain, messenger after messenger was bringing news to Alder, who had taken a central position a little upslope. The news from the various points where battles were being fought and incursions made was that the retreat, though orderly, had not slowed. What was more, Duncton casualties were rising, and Alder was beginning to have to pull in reserves from outlying points where they had been used as watchers in case the grikes tried to get into the system by outflanking the main defence lines.

Tryfan had given strict instructions that the moment those reserves had to be called in he must be informed, for then the evacuation would have to start. They could not risk an incursion of grikes into the system itself, for all the fighters were at the front, and death and confusion and a disorderly evacuation would result. Worse, the tunnel of departure might be discovered, and the point of the surprise and mystery of the “disappearance” of the Duncton moles would be lost.

The grikes now not only controlled the cow cross-under, but had begun a systematic advance on the flanks of the defensive burrows. There was no sign at all yet that they were sending parties further afield, but Alder was taking no chances and as dawn approached, and the rain that had come over Duncton Wood with the storm had eased into drizzle, the order went out for further retreat.

This still left a group of Duncton moles hidden in deep tunnels right in the midst of the advancing grikes and these, led by Ramsey, would make one final confusing assault to slow the advance before they retreated by tunnels too deep for the grikes quickly to find them. But the end was coming, and Alder, now tired, and with two superficial wounds to his face and a deeper talon-thrust to his shoulder which was giving him pain, sent out the freshest of his messenger moles to warn Tryfan that the time of final retreat was coming.

“Tell Tryfan we will await his command to leave, though if I hear nothing before the sun rises over the way itself I will take the initiative and conduct a retreat then,” Alder told the messenger and, as he left, he turned wearily back to the defence burrow, to check and recheck the reports coming in. He wished in any case to stay a little longer where they now were to give Ramsey the cover he might need to get back with the rest of them, though the deep tunnels ought to provide a hiding place if all else failed. His last instructions to Ramsey had been that he should leave by mid-morning at the latest.

At the Stone itself dawn light was late coming because the cloud cover was so thick, and when it did it showed a surface that was bedraggled and dripping wet with trees lifeless after the storm and rain.

In the elder burrow there, Tryfan had been waiting with a few others for news of the fighting, and had nearly gone down to see for himself once more when Mayweed arrived after his trek from the Marsh End.

“Begging your pardon and not wishing to worry anymole here,” he said, interrupting their deliberations, “but I think, Sirs one and all, I think, consider and believe that you better get a move on. The river tunnel’s beginning to flood with the rain. Yes, Sir, sorry, Sir,” said Mayweed.

It had, of course, rained before in the past weeks and Mayweed had had a chance to see what the effects were. The worry was not so much that it would flood right through – it seemed never to do that – but that the ground would become dangerously muddy and the passage of so many moles would not only be slowed, and nomole could guess what the effect of the vibrations of their pawsteps and scrabbling alongside already sodden walls might be.

Even as Mayweed was recovering from his rapid ascent to the elder burrow, and the others were absorbing his news, and being briefed at last by Tryfan and Skint about the tunnel escape route, Alder’s messenger from the Eastside arrived: the retreat had not slowed, the system’s flanks were beginning to be exposed, the time had come to leave.

Rapidly Tryfan gave out his final orders. Comfrey, Maundy, Skint and Mayweed were to go straight back to Barrow Vale, where they would lead the evacuees down through the Marsh End – Comfrey and Maundy’s presence being judged essential to inspire trust and confidence. The Marsh End was much feared as being a place of dankness, disease, and haunting, the ground beyond it was regarded as impassable. But if Comfrey was there then moles would follow him.

“And what of Spindle?” asked Comfrey.

“He will come when the time is right,” Tryfan reassured him... which meant then at that moment, for the cleric appeared frowning at the chamber’s entrance, peered at them all, and said, “Do I presume we are leaving now?”

“We are,” said Tryfan.

“Well,” sighed Spindle, “a cleric’s work is never done! But I have done the best I could, and if Henbane’s moles find the library Mayweed and myself have hidden, the Stone is not as friendly as I thought it was!”

He looked tired, which was not surprising since he had chosen to spend much of the past two dangerous days making final records of what he had seen, as if to remember for a future generation a time which would come to be seen as a crisis of change, though the leaders like Tryfan and Skint and Alder were too busy to take stock of it.

“I think I will come along with you, if you don’t mind,” he said, on learning that Tryfan was going down to see the retreat. “I might as well see the end of it all and anyway, I have a snout for where the main action is, and I have a feeling...” but he stopped, his thin face on one side, his pale talons fretting at each other.