The three moles had set off for Rollright two days after the secret meeting with Stour. They had gone at dusk since the initial part of the journey, through the cross-under and thence along the edge of the roaring owl way, was best done in the obscurity of half-light when daytime predators were already gorged and somnolent, and night-time predators only just beginning to become alert.
Chater led the way, since the northward journey to Roll-right was well known to him, and curbed the inclination of Maple and Whillan to go too fast in their eagerness to get to their destination.
“A journeymole learns early on that you start at the same pace you want to finish, for that’s the quickest and safest way to get there. No good hurrying at the start, for you’ll grow tired and slow down towards the end, and get dangerously careless too …”
They journeyed for four days before finding themselves beginning to ascend towards the higher, drier ground which leads up to that northward-facing stretch of sandstone on which the famous Rollright Circle of Stones stands.
Whillan had heard of it so many times, and of the moles who had passed this way before him on historic journeys to the north — and others who had returned and paused at Rollright before pressing on back to their beloved Duncton Wood — that he felt mounting excitement as they arrived at the first outlying tunnels of the system.
“’Tis my habit to head straight for the Whispering Stoats,” said Chater, calm before Whillan’s excitement, easy in the shadow of Maple’s brooding strength and purpose.
“You’ll both know that the Whispering Stoats are a group of Stones that rise a little to the south of the Circle itself, and a place where moles gather and gossip. A good place to get information about what’s going on, seeing as it’s a meeting place as Barrow Vale is in our own system.”
“But before we go a step further, come out on to the surface and mark well where we are, and the different ways we might get here, for if there’s trouble and we get separated we’d best agree to have a meeting point. Now, ’tis not far off the moon’s full wane — three nights at most — and if we’re lost to each other that’s the night we’ll meet back here, and the following dawn is when whichever of us are here should leave to take our tidings back to the Master Librarian in Duncton Wood.”
This decided, and after each had had a good look about, and marked how a dead elm rose not far off the entrance to that part, they went below again, and continued on their way to the fabled Stoats.
The more the tunnels rose upslope, and the nearer they got to the system proper, the slower Chater went, snouting ahead, pausing to listen, staring down side tunnels.
“Danger?” whispered Maple.
Chater shook his head. “Unease,” he said. “Never did like Rollright overmuch —’tis a second-rate sort of place compared to our own, but it’s more than that makes me dubious. There’s an untoward scent in the air which was not here in late August when I was last here. Stick close, stay watchful …” And on they went.
Certainly Whillan was watchful and proceeded as cautiously as his older and more experienced companions, but the truth was he could scent nothing but dry air, and hear little but the hiss of autumn wind across high open ground above, to displace the natural curiosity and youthful sense of adventure that had been with him for days past. As for Duncton, its cares and memory seemed a lifetime away.
It was not long before Chater, who knew the tunnels well, turned right and left and then left again — pausing each time to ensure the others observed the way he had gone — and surfaced suddenly into a small copse of mixed oak and ash. It was coming on to dusk, and he led them without a word through the undergrowth to some bramble cover where he stanced down.
“We’ll pause here awhile to watch and listen; no good blundering about yet. But I like it not. There’s a foul stench in Rollright and it reminds me somewhat of what I sensed at Cuddesdon …”
Whillan, who had always thought his snout was good, sniffled about but could not scent a thing, but since the other two were keeping quiet, and since he had the sense not to contradict Chater, he kept quiet himself. All, no doubt, would become plain enough.
Yet as dusk deepened, and nothing happened, his curiosity overcame his caution and he asked, “Where’s the Rollright Circle from here?”
Chater nodded north-westward and said, “Takes no more than a few minutes. As for the Stoats … follow me, for there’s nomole about at the moment and it’s a chance to get nearer.”
Chater led them forward across a grassy way that held the sweet-sickly scent of two-foots, and thence over a small rise, until there, ahead of them, leaning hugely into each other, was a triptych of Stones beneath which was a shadowed secret place of bare earth.
“In the old days moles met there to seek a blessing before going on up to the Circle,” said Chater, “and this was the spot where the Stone Mole himself once paused before he began his ministry, first at Rollright and thence to so many systems north of here until at last …”
But whether he stopped because they all knew the outcome of that holy ministry of moledom, or because he heard the approach of mole before the other two, Whillan did not know, but stop he did, and tense, and then signal them both to lie flat and watch.
Five moles came, a mixture of males and females, silent as the approaching night, close to each other as sibling young threatened by a predator. They passed the hidden watchers without a word and went straight in among the Stoats, and there whispered nervous prayers whose implications were all too plain: help us, Stone, help us now …
The three moles listened for a time and then, after a hurried consultation, agreed that Maple would go forward and greet the moles in the hope of learning something of the state of things at Rollright. He would make a little noise so they heard his coming and would strive to seem as unintimidating as he could.
Out into the now starlit night he went, humming quietly in a cheerful way — a move which silenced the moles among the Stoats and had them turning to face him from the shadows there.
“Greetings,” he called out, his deep voice reverberating among the fissures and chasms between the Stoats, and then echoing into the whispers that gave the place its name.
The response was as sudden as it was startling, for there was a short cry of alarm from one of them and then they all scattered out of the shadows into the night, one of them almost running into where Whillan stanced, and then all back northward towards the Circle itself.
At which Chater looked around in alarm, started forward quickly, hauling Whillan with him, and joined Maple beneath the looming Stones.
“Scent the air!” said Chater urgently to Whillan.
“Aye,” growled Maple, “’tis sickening to be within …”
And Whillan scented, and looked about, and his eyes widened.
“It is the stench of fear,” he whispered, horror-struck. For there it was, palpable, thick, all about, heavy on the air where those poor moles had been. No sooner had Whillan said it than he heard, as the others did, cries and shouts of fear from the direction in which the five had run.
“They’re in trouble,” said Maple, taking sudden and instinctive command. “We’ve frightened those moles into trouble. Come, they may need our aid.”
At which Whillan, who though by now strong enough to wield a tough talon had never been near a serious fight in his life, found himself swept along upslope towards the Circle with Maple and Chater, to help the frightened moles they might unwittingly have driven into danger.
“Slow down!” rasped Chater from behind as they neared the Stones, but Maple did not need to be told. The great Stones of the Circle loomed ahead of them and he came to a smooth stop in their shadow, holding out a paw to make sure that Whillan did not go charging past in his haste. Then signalling them both to lay low and keep quiet, he went forward to investigate and disappeared from view.
Moments later he was back, even as they heard renewed cries of moles in fear somewhere within the Circle itself.
The ones we saw are being arraigned by a whole group of moles,” he said urgently.
“Dark, male, cold-eyed, smiling?” said Chater.
“Not smiling,” said Maple, “but all the rest. Newborns! There’s ten or fifteen of them.”
“Too many for us to take on,” said Chater as a deep and terrible ritualistic shout came up from the Circle.
“I’m not so sure,” said Maple, stancing up as he heard more cries of ‘No! We didn’t mean …’ and ‘Please …” He continued, They look tough enough but I’ve a feeling they’d not stance up to us if we were bold enough. And we did get them into this trouble.” He looked dubiously at Whillan. “We’ll need you, lad, but for Stone’s sake say nothing, and do nothing but look confident. Stay half a pace behind me at all times. Do you think you can do that?”
Whillan gulped, his heart beating violently in his chest, which was already heaving from their run to reach the Circle. Then he heard another pitiful cry, looked at strong Maple and confident Chater, and his fears left him and his courage came.
“I’ll not let you down,” he said firmly.
“Right then,” said Maple powerfully, “let’s sort this little problem out …”
With that the three of them, with Chater to the right, Whillan to the left, and Maple huge and menacing between them, broke through the shadows at the edge of the Circle and into the moonlit sward in its centre.
The tallest Stone in Rollright, and the circle’s natural focal point, rises on the northern edge of the circle, and round one side of it there was a cluster of dark male moles, their backs to where Maple had led the three out. The moles were chanting in a guttural rhythm, their paws keeping grim time with the chant as, almost imperceptibly, they moved steadily forward into an ever tighter mass, each more eager than the next to get at what lay in their centre.
But what they were intending, and what was in their midst, was not immediately clear to the three Duncton moles since their view was obstructed, nor could they see any sign of the five moles whose cries they had heard earlier; Maple looked round at Chater in puzzlement. It was now probably but a matter of moments before they were spotted and the thought had occurred to him that they could still retreat back into the shadows, their coming and going never seen, and their presence in the system still unknown.
But then Whillan, staring intently at what seemed at first no more than a ritual by the Stone, suddenly hunched forward tensely, with a look of mounting horror on his face. Then he urgently touched Maple’s flank, and when the great mole turned to him, he said, “Listen!” in an angry voice.
They turned back to the massed and closing throng of Newborn moles whose chant grew suddenly louder and more urgent, their movements co-ordinated. The stamping feet were timed now with the sinister in and out and in again of talon thrusts, and the total effect was so evil that it made the fur on their backs rise sickeningly.
They listened as Whillan had bid them do, and slowly, from out of the darkness of that mass, from beyond its rhythmic vileness, each of them heard more and more clearly a sickening, gasping, rasping sound, muted yet mortal, a croaking, a choking, a dying of moles.
“They’re being crushed!” said Whillan, even as Maple, also realizing that they were witnessing what seemed the ritual murder of harmless frightened moles — though so thickly massed were the Newborns that not one of their victims could actually be seen — rose up and rushed forward towards the frightening group.
For a moment Whillan and Chater were left behind, their horror replaced by alarm at the sight of Maple seeming to seek to attack so large a mass of moles all at once. Even so, after a moment’s pause, and without concern for their own safety, they followed Maple across the clearing.
But as they caught him up at what seemed the very instant before his massive risen talons descended on the broad strong back of the nearest chanting mole — the chant was now a roar, the stamping now a rage, the in-out-in of the talons now a brutal act — he delivered not a death blow but a deafening, frightening, all-powerful roar.
“In the name of the Stone,” he cried, his voice even stronger than their chant, “cease!”
For a few moments more the chant went on, moments in which Maple turned swiftly to right and left as if to make sure that Whillan and Chater were boldly at his flanks, and then the moles faltered, and the rhythm of the stamping and thrusting broke. Then the throng began to turn away and break up, some one way, some another, shouting, questioning, wondering, and Maple, maintaining his advantage of surprise, moved forward among the last rank of them, their backs still half to him as they struggled to sort themselves out and see from where the commanding shout had come.
Then even as the first of them managed to turn at last in the awkward space they themselves had created, and others at the side fell away in surprise and alarm, Maple reached forward to right and left and bodily pulled moles away and forced his way in amongst them.
At his flanks Whillan and Chater found themselves doing the same thing, the anger of the moment and the confidence engendered by Maple’s leadership giving them not only courage but, it seemed, strength far beyond their normal measure. With grunts and muted roars they routed the Newborn moles aside to right and left without a single talon thrust, and so powerfully and impressively that the Newborns were too taken aback to strike a single blow in return, but fell away, and stared, and did not move.
As the last of them were thrust aside a terrible sight met the eyes of the three moles, made worse by the luridness of the moonlight that cast pale sepulchral shadows all about. The five moles they had seen earlier were there, turned, hunched down, huddled and terribly entwined one on another, the cause of the sounds they had made all too plain. The nearest was turned towards them, his mouth open in a ghastly cry of silent agony before his body spasmed and a gasping, throttled sound came from his throat. Beneath him another lay, the moonlight picking out the white froth that bubbled from his half-smashed snout. A third was crushed upright against the Stone, paws spread out above his head, which arced up towards the sky in mute appeal for help. Two more there must have been, buried somewhere in the paws and rumps and bent bodies of the first three. One of these, perhaps the least harmed of them all, was struggling to free himself and swearing in a youthful high-pitched voice.