Indeed, but for Weed’s military leadership, and Henbane’s determined purpose that brooked no failure, and the guardmoles’ fighting strength, the defence might easily have been even more successful.
Eventually the Duncton moles had weakened and retreated, first from the cow cross-under that witnessed so many grike deaths, and then upslope by as clever a line of defences as Weed and Wrekin had ever seen. From there they had held out another half day, even mounting an effective counter-assault downslope, which slowed the guardmoles yet more for a time.
Then suddenly they were gone, gone on all fronts. Surface burrows deserted, defence tunnels empty, quite gone.
Few guardmoles who were there then forgot – or allowed others they told to forget – their first eerie entry into the Duncton system. The slow advance upslope expecting ambush at any time, the entry into the wood itself and the graceful ancient tunnels they found there, deserted but for the strange rootsound of the high trees which made a moor mole nervous and jumpy. So much so that there were at least two incidents of grikes believing they had seen an attack coming and assaulting their own moles. Unheard of.
But there was no doubt about it, the place was deserted, from south to north, from west to east, quite empty, the moles gone. Not a trace, and, to make it worse, the tunnels were left tidy and the burrows clean, so there had been no panic or disruption; and, as more than one grike whispered nervously looking over his shoulder, “as if they are going to come back.”
While looming over it all, threatening to moles of the Word, was the great Stone of Duncton, silent, always silent; a silence that was an intimidation every moment of the day and into the far reaches of the night. A silence that made a mole want to scream.
Then there was the curious report of the guardmole Thrift, who claimed to have spoken with the leader of Duncton, Tryfan, during the battle. Incredible. Wrekin did not believe a word of it, but Weed did, and got as much of the truth from the mole as he was ever likely to. Enough to bring Thrift privately before Henbane herself and have him repeat what he had been told to say by this Tryfan, which was that if Henbane would find the moles of Duncton let her “listen to the Silence” of the Stone. It was when she heard that, that Weed observed Henbane’s annoyance first shift towards anger, and stay there, and he wondered if Thrift would be the victim of her anger for bringing such a message. But no, stranger still, she asked him to describe this Tryfan again and again, and she listened to the guardmole’s faltering and limited words (‘big’, ‘strong’, ‘powerful gaze’, ‘seemed kind’ – kind!) with evident fascination. Henbane had always liked moles who stood up to her, even if she killed them or had them killed in the end.
Whatever that message about listening to Silence meant, (Weed was careful not to have Thrift repeat the nonsense about a healing. In battle? By one foe to another? Ridiculous!) it was one more dark portent that the takeover of the system which had most significance for Stone followers, because of its ancient connection with the Stone, was not as happy as it might be for moles of the Word. Never had a takeover been so marred, for there seemed no satisfaction in conquering moles who were not there or pleasure in a system whose very tunnels seemed to make guardmoles disgruntled and uneasy.
But if their initial unease was caused merely by ill-temper mixed with superstition, they soon had something more real to go on. Within a day of their arrival, a group of guardmoles exploring the Ancient System made their way down to the great vertical lines of the roots of the trees that formed a protective circle round the buried part of the Stone. They were hoping to find a way to the Stone’s base, but the roots barred their way. In truth they had none of them seen anything quite like it: strange twistings and torsions of tree roots, some old and grey, others young and palely moist, all quivering and vibrating and sounding to the movement of the trees they fed and supported.
Among them they went, trying to seek a way through, a little unnerved by the way the roots hummed and shifted, making them lose their orientation, coming close to them, touching them, pushing them, catching them, and suddenly loud in their noise and vibration as great gusts of wind seemed to catch the trees above ground and turned the chamber of roots into a crushing, grinding, twisting place of horror. One after another the guardmoles saw each other caught and turned, pinioned and wrought, and then crushed; eyes bulging, veins breaking, mouths gaping, jaws cracking, stomachs bursting, the others’ screams the last thing they heard as the roots took them into painful death.
Six died that way, and word went about that that was six for each of the Stone followers’ seven Ancient Systems. Would have been seven if Siabod had been taken, aye and there would be a seventh killed if it ever was....
What was subtly worse was that Henbane and Weed were within earshot of those terrible deaths and came running and could do nothing but helplessly watch their own moles die. Afterwards not a guardmole dared go among the roots to get the bodies, which hung twisted and broken before them, the roots quivering like living things. So a few tree roots showed that Henbane was not infallible, and some tiny part of her credibility died with those moles.
Then, two days later, two guardmoles were found, dead, in quite different parts of the system. Talon-thrust to death in public communal places where others should have seen; but there was never a sign nor sound of othermole. Then a third guardmole simply disappeared, sent on some errand or other and gone: no sound, no trace. Then yet another! Panic and unease, patrols only willing to go out in twos and threes. Henbane was formally approached by guardmoles through Wrekin himself and asked to speak the Word and protect them from further “assault” from the ghosts of dead Stone followers.
Which she refused to do, dismissing the guardmoles’ superstitious fears, and ordering instead a systematic search of the system to find the moles perpetrating the attacks, who must be hidden somewhere or another. Which Wrekin had done from the high wood down to the very Marsh itself. Nothing, no trace of mole. She ordered that the routes in and out, which in this system were well defined, be guarded, lest these moles were creeping in, killing and creeping out again. For a week guardmoles kept to their stations and nothing more happened and confidence began to be restored. Then suddenly another mole was killed inside the system, the ninth so far, and the two others who had vanished. His body was found at night after the strangest and eeriest of sounds, a calling, a haunting, a frightening.
So the guardmoles had been sent out to search the system yet again, and Henbane had summoned the moles she relied on to the Stone to hear Wrekin’s report. But the search had once more drawn a blank and not a living mole had been found. Henbane, now crouched staring, had become more frustrated and enraged. For a time she had stared malevolently at the great Stone, seeming to see more in it than Weed could. To him it was just a... Stone. He had seen them before, most impressively at Avebury. High rising things that caught the light strangely.
So she had stared, and then she had muttered, “Silence? What Silence?
What
Silence? How does a mole hide in Silence, let alone a whole system of moles?”
Then her eyes shifted this way and that, staring at each of them, looking, Weed knew well, for weakness. She found it soon enough, in Smaile of course. But he was not going to be killed. Moles who carry out orders as well as he, moles who keep their traps shut, moles whose highest ambition is to do unpleasant things for others are rare indeed, and Henbane too clever to kill them. Her anger was not yet that mad.
Wrekin would not weaken before her gaze, and nor would Weed himself; Weed knew
that.
But Sideem Sleekit? Mmm... Weed eyed her. Promoted above the heads of all the sideem currently serving in the south, picked out at Buckland soon after the death of Eldrene Fescue.
Weed knew the type, he had
trained
that type of sideem in the days when he was in Whern with Henbane, coaching her for Rune. Yes, Sleekit was the type all right: clever, cold, secretive of speech, utterly cynical, organised. And yet:
something.
Weed knew not what.
Something.
Something about her that made him think she was not quite right; had been once, was not now.
Something.
So he had Henbane promote her so that he himself, sideem too of course, very special sideem, could watch her the better.
Until here, today, this fretful afternoon, with Henbane malevolent, Weed had had a clue, and at first dismissed it as unthinkable. Impossible. And yet there it was, in her eyes, nearly all of it disguised. But he was a trainer, an expert, and not passionate like Henbane, so he could see that tiny part the sideem could not hide. Awe before the Stone. It was not that she was afraid of it, what grike wasn’t? Unless he was stupid. No, not afraid, but in awe, yet more than awe. Love. That was the bit she could not hide. Love. Tiny, fractional, distant, but there. A sideem in love with the Stone. Quite unthinkable. And of course unstoppable. She probably did not even yet know it herself. He must think of a way of using it. Most original. Don’t tell Henbane. Don’t let Sideem Sleekit know I know, thought Weed. Yes, yes,
use
a sideem who is in awe of the Stone.
Use
her to reach this Tryfan. Mmm....
Weed turned his attention back to Henbane, his face inscrutable. She was going to speak. About time too.
“And where, Wrekin, do you imagine they’ve gone?” said Henbane. She was well aware that Wrekin, like Weed, was one of the very few moles who had no fear of her. “And where do these invisible moles who kill your guardmoles appear from? What of the Pasture moles to the west?”
“We have sealed their system off and have guards at all entrances.”
“Are there
no
other signs of mole at all?”
Wrekin was prepared for this and had his little surprise, perhaps kept back to deflect Henbane from the matter in paw. Anyway, Weed listened....
“No signs that are fresh. But we know, or think we know, how they escaped. To the north are marshes, beyond them the River Thames. We found tunnels to its edge, and temporary chambers there filled with mud.”
“Moles never escape through mud!” said Henbane impatiently.
“There is more than mud there, WordSpeaker. There are bodies as well. Many of them. Drowned moles. We think that they made a hasty tunnel under the river, that they tried to escape through it, and that some of them drowned when the tunnel collapsed.”
A tunnel under the river? Henbane mused on it and relaxed. Such a tunnel
was
a sign of panic and disarray. Such a futile attempt pleased her, made her feel less affronted. The Duncton moles were not so clever after all.
“Are there no survivors?” Her voice was cold and she asked in the hope of retribution on those surviving, not out of charity or care.
“None that we have seen. But naturally, it is possible, and unfortunately the Marsh End of the wood is not only foul and filthy, but riddled with tunnels of a kind. We are searching them thoroughly, and if moles did survive then we will find them in due course. But the idea that such moles are causing these other deaths seems to me farfetched. Moles who survive such a thing as a water-collapsed tunnel do not usually mount covert attacks.”
Then Wrekin added thoughtfully, “If that
was
the means of escape, rather than some twofoot crossing we have so far missed, it shows these moles to be resourceful and bold. I say that merely to warn you that it is easy to underestimate one’s enemy after as long a series of successes as we have had. Needless to say, many of the guardmoles are attributing magical powers to the Duncton moles for escaping, but of course there will be a rational explanation and I now think the tunnel is it.”
Henbane stared at the stolid fighter and, had she not been in such a grim mood, she might have smiled darkly. Wrekin won systems by logic and reason, and in the moleyears he had campaigned for her he had developed a nearly infallible approach to taking over systems. One after the other had fallen to his guardmole forces.
But here, at Duncton Wood, something different had happened than ever before and Wrekin seemed not to appreciate the fact. As far as he was concerned, all that mattered was that victory over another system had been achieved: these later deaths and troubles seemed to him relatively unimportant compared to that.
“We’ll find out, WordSpeaker, rest assured of that. I left enough guardmoles in adjacent systems to pick up information about any escapers, and that news will come in soon enough now. They’ve orders to take prisoners and get what information they can from them in whatever way seems best.”
His mouth hardened and his eyes went cold. Wrekin was a fighting mole, not a torturer, but his instincts told him that these Duncton moles were more insanely fervent than other Stone followers they had defeated, and he feared that the job of getting information from them might have to be given over to the sideem. Which meant that Weed would have a paw in it.
Wrekin said no more and Weed, who had been crouched nearby, shook his head in exaggerated disbelief.
“And that’s it, is it?”
“What more is there to say?” asked the fighter coldly. “They put up a good defence, they weakened, and we won. Now they have gone leaving a few residual problems. But they fought well, and I respect them.”
“
Respect
them? Hasn’t it occurred to you, Wrekin, that what has happened here in Duncton Wood is strange and ominous?”
“You see shadows in the brightest sunlight, Weed. You always have, you always will. We
won
, Weed. We defeated them. What more do you want?”
As Weed opened his mouth to argue further, Henbane raised a talon to stop him, turned to Wrekin, complimented him on all he had done, and told him to go and rest. But when news came in she wanted to know about it.
As Sleekit made to go after Wrekin, Henbane motioned her to stay, saying, “You should hear all things, sideem, everything. Did not the Master tell you that?” Henbane’s voice was soft as a willow’s bud, and frightening. Sleekit smiled, glanced at Weed and settled down.