But most of the moles preferred not to look back down at all, but to struggle slowly on up the benighted hill as Spurling and Peach, Noakes and Fieldfare urged them on, that they might reach the prow of Uffington before dawn came, and find a place to hide where the Newborns might leave them well alone.
“Halt! You! Halt there!”
The shouts were male and commanding, and came from some way across the hill. Newborns!
“We could make a dash for it,” said Noakes immediately, realizing that watchers must be posted on these slopes and have seen them.
“Some of us might get away,” said Spurling, “but some would not.”
“There’s more of us than of them, I suspect, so we’ll just have to face it out!” said Fieldfare stoutly, thinking to herself that was what Chater would have done. Journeymoles often have to brazen things out, he always used to tell her, so they would do that now.
They did not have to wait long before two Newborn moles appeared out of the darkness slightly below them; big, young, confident. Perhaps they felt so because the group of refugees had stopped as ordered, and were clustering uncertainly, as best they could on the difficult sloping ground.
It is often at such moments of crisis that moles discover they have cool heads and strong talons they never dreamed they possessed, and Noakes discovered it now. Realizing that the two Newborns were at a disadvantage so long as they were on the slope below he moved forward towards them and cried out, “What do you want with us?” so firmly that the Newborns stopped short.
This gave the refugees heart, and they gathered more resolutely together; bright though the moonlight was, the Newborns perhaps could not quite see how frail some of them were. Even so they advanced warily upwards and one of them asked which mole was the leader.
Spurling boldly came forward and said he was, but what business was it of theirs anyway... and it was then that the Newborns, perhaps used to such confrontations, rushed up the slope together and grabbed Spurling, saying, “We’re taking him to a Senior Brother down below. If you lot move from here he’ll die a painful death.”
Even as they said this they began to haul Spurling downslope, hoping no doubt that the group would not react quickly enough to prevent them getting away below towards Newborn reinforcements.
But Noakes, having gained enough time a moment before for the group to form itself, now responded yet more effectively.
“You’re not taking him!” he cried, and aimed a powerful kick at the lower of the two Newborns, catching him painfully in the snout. There was a cry and curse, and a moment’s teetering struggle before Fieldfare, inspired by Noakes’ example, leaned forward and herself buffeted the Newborn in the face, pushing him finally off balance and causing him to fall backwards down the slope.
To his credit, the other Newborn kept hold of Spurling and in his turn strove to push him downslope, at which he might have succeeded had not the redoubtable Noakes, by now emboldened by anger, come determinedly forward and sought to wrest Spurling from the Newborn’s grip. But the mole was young and strong, and vicious too, for he talon-thrust poor Spurling in the stomach and pushed Noakes to one side, so that the brave mole was sent plunging helplessly downslope after the first Newborn.
To the others, watching in horror as this violent confrontation unfolded, the moonlit scene seemed almost unreal, and for a few moments more not one of them moved. But then Spurling let out a cry of pain as the Newborn talon-thrust at him to make him more biddable, and out of the murk below into which Noakes and the first Newborn had disappeared, worse sounds came, of a mole in agony, a mole screaming suddenly into death. Fieldfare and Peach, the protective instinct in them aroused, rushed down to where Spurling was struggling, and threw their talons and their female wrath into the face of the Newborn. At first he almost seemed to laugh, but that only provoked them more, and they lunged at him, and grabbed him, and all four, for Spurling was now fighting as well, began a wild, struggling, shouting, violent descent of the slope as the Newborn, realizing he was out-taloned, tried to get away to his colleague below and re-group.
Pushing, shoving, he succeeded at last in holding them at bay, then turned and fled down the slope – straight into the treacherously sharp barbs of the tight-stretched wires. With a scream of pain he struggled to extricate himself from this unexpected and entangling hazard, pulling himself off and back a little way up the slope, unable to go higher, because there the others now stanced still, yet unable to go down until he saw a way through.
It was at this moment of sudden pause that he, Fieldfare and the others who had all tumbled down together saw the reason for the grim sound they had heard earlier. For there, stanced still and staring, was Noakes, and what he stared at was the first Newborn, who had rolled down the slope after Spurling had buffeted him, and fallen violently into the barbs, from which he hung now by his tender snout, emitting a gurgling, suffocating sound of death, as he drowned in the blood that the sharp barbs caused to flow down his snout and into his throat, and on into his lungs.
Panic overtook the second Newborn and in a sudden burst of energy, he turned from the horrors of his dying colleague and the watching moles above, to try once more to find a way under the wire and escape to his friends below. Which he might well have done had not Noakes, seeing his intention, suddenly and most violently lunged at him and taloned him without word or warning straight in his wild fearful eyes. Worse, Noakes followed it with two more talon-thrusts, hard and bloody, so that the bigger mole turned with a gasping cry and fell once more into the barbed wire which had so fatally prevented him fleeing to freedom. This time it was the stretch of higher wire that caught his desperately flailing paws and suddenly he was lifted off the ground, swinging in the night air; then after a final paroxysm of struggle, he was still, and the moonlight caught the swinging of his body, back and forth, back and forth.
Noakes stared horrified at the violence he had committed and the others stared with him at the two dead moles who hung, still and silent now, on either side of him.
“If he had got away downslope,” whispered Noakes, staring at his bloody paws and then in horror and disbelief at the Newborn he had killed, “he would have told others we were here, and they would have come... I did it to stop him. Somemole had to...”
Fieldfare was winded and shaken by the buffeting she had suffered, and Peach was exhausted, so it was Spurling who rapidly took charge once more.
“There is nothing we can do for these moles,” he said. “We will go back upslope and continue to climb up to Uffington Hill, and then we will find a safe place to hide. I do not like violence... but we were attacked, and but for Noakes and Fieldfare one or more of us might now be in the paws of the Newborns, and the rest uncertain what to do and likely to be taken prisoner before long. As it is we may yet escape undetected, for dead moles tell no tales.”
They turned from the grim moonlit spectacle, returned to their companions, and in silence and with a strange almost ferocious energy climbed on up through the night, so that as they clambered at last over the final gentler slopes, and faced the eastern horizon, they saw that dawn was already beginning to reach its talons to the sky.
Nor did Spurling let them dawdle once the party was all collected, and they had gained their breath. He had already instructed the fitter moles to gather food for the slower ones, and they ate it quickly, from hunger and a desire not to stay where they were for long, and then stanced up once more, ready to leave.
The presence of Newborns so high up made Spurling suspect that Noakes’ belief that the Newborns stayed clear of the Hill might not be true any longer, a suspicion confirmed by a quick examination of some of the tunnels they found. In former days, they knew, the system of Uffington had been extensive and most splendidly delved, but most of what they found was ruinous and open to the sky. Here and there the beginnings of ancient arches survived, and a few tunnels stretched away, their roofs still intact. But there was sign and scent of recent unknown and unseen mole about, and with th
at, and no promise of good cover or ways of escape, it was plain that so large a group as theirs would be conspicuous and it would be unwise to linger.
To the west the escarpment stretched into a ridgeway of lingering darkness, while southward its dip-slope went gently down across fields, amongst hedgerows, to dry valleys in which copses nestled.
But it was to the east that Noakes turned. “That way,” he said, “lies the Blowing Stone, if I’m not mistaken; it has always been a place of sanctuary.”
“Aye!” said several of the moles, who remembered hearing of it in tales of the old days, and whose imaginations, when they were pups, had been stirred by tales of how the strange fissures and contours in its sides caught the wind, and sounded a deep roaring note – once as a warning, twice for guidance, three times for sanctuary.
“Aye, and “seven times and moles shall rise and know their way”!” said one of them, quoting an old legend of those parts.
But the air was still, and there was no chance the Blowing Stone would sound now, not in warning, nor to guide or offer sanctuary.
“We could go along the ridgeway to the place where once the Silent Burrows were...” mused Spurling.
“But we’re not sure how to find them, or even if they’re still there,” said Peach.
But Fieldfare had been staring steadily to the south-east, and watching how the strengthening dawn lit up the graceful curving vales which seemed to invite a mole to follow them.
“Seven Barrows is down that way,” she said, “and according to old Duncton legends that was where good Mayweed, greatest route-finder that ever lived, found his way to Silence. I feel that it is a place where we could go and find safety, and as a Duncton mole I would like to pay homage to my forebear.”
As she spoke she felt a strange, sweet surge of certainty that it was the place to which they must go, and she went a little forward of the group and stared ahead, suddenly excited.
“This is the way Chater would have led us if he were here, for he is a journeymole and always said that Seven Barrows with its mysterious Stones was the place in moledom to which he most wanted to go. Oh, Chater...” she whispered, and longed for his affectionate presence, his good humour, his growling impatience with her at times, his love; “you want me to go that way.”
But if he was not there, the Stone seemed to be, for from over the dark high pastures to the east came a haunting note carried on the wind; and then another. Deep and sonorous, mysterious, and if not quite frightening, then enough to awe the troubled moles.
“The Blowing Stone!” whispered Fieldfare. “That’s what that must be. It sounds when... when it needs to, when followers need to hear it. In the wind..
“There isn’t much wind now!” said Spurling softly.
“No,” said Fieldfare, “but we may be guided by its sounding. In all the old legends of this place, when the Blowing Stone sounds then moles should be alert. Oh, Spurling, we must go to Seven Barrows. I’m sure of it now...”
“Then it’s the way we’ll go!” said Spurling, going to Fieldfere’s flank and nudging her affectionately. “We’ll find sanctuary among the Stones of Seven Barrows, and the time to decide what we should do next.”
So off into the dawn they wearily went, wending their way from the summit of Uffington Hill, and leaving behind its ruined tunnels, forgotten and unvisited ways, and wild historic surface. Only when they were gone did the winter day rise, and what little touch of cold breeze there was turned and wound, swirled and fell, to find its way down the steep slope they had climbed, to linger for a time where barbed wire stretched and two moles dangled dead. Above them two black rooks circled, eyes sharp, beaks eager, before they dived at the carrion, to remove all evidence that violence, of a kind that might soon come across all moledom, had visited that desolate place the night before.
It was a mob of rooks too, turning and diving at something on the flanks of Rockgreen Hill above Ludlow, which caused Chater to deviate from his route to investigate, and so be caught right near the end of what many have described as one of the swiftest treks any journeymole ever made.
How far he had travelled, and how fast, following after Privet and the others into the Wolds in his desperate effort to catch them before they reached Caer Caradoc, and warn them of what he knew. By the time he reached Bourton he had begun to tire, but there Stow gave him news of his friends, and he in turn reported all that Spurling had told him.
“Tell Maple when you find him,” said Stow, “that already moles have begun to gather across the Wolds in expectation that they will have to do their duty and stance their ground against the Newborn threat. If he needs us we will not fail him, and if he wishes us to follow him we shall do so!”
Thus encouraged Chater had journeyed on night and day, night and day and night, snatching sleep only briefly here and there. Once he had dropped down into the Vale of Evesham he had gone yet faster, up the valley of the Teme in the pawsteps of his friends, picking up information along the way which told him he was gaining on them rapidly. Then on he had gone, ever faster, fooling two parties of Newborns he encountered, and gaining useful news from them too.
But at Ludlow he had grown tired, and careless, and when he saw the rooks he went over towards where they preyed, thinking that there he might find moles to give him information. He found moles all right, dead ones, the same indeed that had been strettened days before by the Newborns, torn to pieces now and scattered over the field; the remnant of a head sunk in a pool of water, and fur caught in the basal stem of a withered old thistle plant. It was there he was caught, there questioned, and might have been killed had he not been forced back on to the tale he had always planned to tell if all else failed.
“I’m part of the Duncton delegation to Caer Caradoc,” he said, rightly suspecting that no Newborn would dare harm him if that were true, not then anyway.
A Brother Inquisitor was found, one going that day Caer Caradoc way, and his story seeming at least plausible, Chater was taken along by Newborn guards, once more at a fast pace since the Brother was anxious to get to Caradoc before Longest Night. The only part of his story that was not believed was how recently he claimed to have left the area of Uffington – “Not possible,” he was told, “nomole could travel that far that fast.” When they neared Caer Caradoc Chater was detained as his friends had been before him, without explanation or interrogation. That was, it seemed, the Inquisitors’ way – detention and uncertainty soften up a mole.
At last a Newborn came who said, “You’re to come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Ours is not to reason why,” said the guard, going on ahead of him, and though Chater was not one to follow another meekly and without questioning, it was hard not to in a tunnel when two were prodding him along from behind with sharp talons.
“Just asked,” said Chater, thinking to himself that this was beginning to have the feel of as bad a situation as any he had got himself into in all his long days as a journeymole. Just then he felt, inexplicably yet powerfully, the presence of Fieldfare with him, urging him on, giving him support, praying for him, and he followed on down the dark tunnels with the Newborn guards determined that to the end he would try to do his duty to his friends, and to his faith.
“At least I’ve told Stow of Bourton what I know,” he consoled himself, “but by the Stone I would have liked an opportunity to warn Privet, Maple and Whillan...”
The tunnels seemed suddenly dark indeed.
It is reasonable to think from such evidence as we have that it was on that same day, at that same time, that Fieldfare found herself alone out on the surface of Seven Barrows, staring over the rough grass towards the Stones that rise so mysteriously there. The weeks had passed since her escape with Spurling, Peach and the others up Uffington Hill, and without further incident they had made their way to Seven Barrows, and found it safe, quite free of Newborn mole.
What was more there had been a few more vagrants about who had joined their number, and they had fo
rmed a little community, and in their rough and ready way, under Spurling’s sensible guidance, created a system of simple interlocking tunnels and places for watchers to stance unnoticed by any alien moles that came nearby, such that only a force of mole, deliberately looking for them, would have found them out.
They had decided to over-winter where they were, and then, when spring came and travelling was safe once more, to send out a few of their number – Noakes early on volunteered to be one of them – to go and find out what was apaw in the vales below Uffington Hill, and if they might yet dare venture back to Duncton Wood. It was a dream of all of them to go there, and one that would sustain them well through the hard winter years.
Meanwhile they shared their lives and memories, and, almost without realizing it, after the stress of moleyears under the paws of the Newborns, they could allow the special Silence of Seven Barrows to seep into their hearts, and shine out as a new-found peace from their wrinkled, care-worn eyes, as such a light should begin to shine, in the days and hours immediately before holy Longest Night.
Amongst their number Fieldfare had become quietly pre-eminent. Like the maternal mole she had always been, she was the one who knew how to care for those who needed attention; the old, the ailing, those who had lost moles they loved in spirit or in body to the Newborns and now had time to discover that there were great empty, lonely, spaces in their hearts. To these moles loving Fieldfare gave help and succour, and in truth, by doing so, as Longest Night approached she found a way to escape the aching void she felt in her heart for the mole she loved, and missed more and more.