“There’s a better way out by the tunnels I came down,” said Chater quickly, “and as the exits lie a good way back I reckon the Newborns may not have thought to position moles there yet; but we’d best be quick if we’re to take advantage of it.”
“Hamble, you’re the only one with strength enough to point Rooster in a new direction,” said Weeth.
Hamble had no need to be told again, and as he rushed forward, and battled his way among his friends to Rooster’s flank to redirect him Chater whispered in awe, “Rooster? The Rooster? Privet’s Rooster?”
“The same, friend!” said Weeth with a smile. “And did I hear the name Chater, Privet’s Chater?”
“You did.”
“Destiny walks in our shadows,” said Weeth grandly, “and we have things to talk of...”
But Hamble had already turned back and was signalling Chater forward to act as guide to the tunnels down which he had come, a task he willingly and bravely began, taloning his way past two guardmoles and leaving them for others to finish off as he led Rooster and the others quickly out of the chamber. Hamble and others fought off the guards who had been at their front, but now found themselves in the rear as their quarry turned and ran swiftly out of sight.
Perhaps nomole will ever be able to describe the extraordinary running battle that now took place as Rooster, guided by Chater, led his moles to freedom through that labyrinthine set of tunnels that the Newborns had delved in the vale to the south-east of Caer Caradoc.
Of the horror of that night there are accounts enough, and false though Stone followers may regard the Newborn sect’s methods and beliefs, none would deny that they were courageous and persistent in their pursuit of the moles who had escaped. But quite which moles died where, or by whose talons, is now impossible to say, except that all who were witnesses to the chase avow that Rooster was like a mole possessed by some dark and vengeful spirit of the night, and again and again, and again, when the Newborn guards seemed certain at last to block their way and recapture them, he summoned up the energy to charge forward one more time, and rout those at the forefront of the attack against him.
They finally reached the fresh air of the surface only after night had come, and even then had to fight their way through a cluster of guards who had been warned that they might go that particular way. By then Rooster had lost three of his friends, and the Newborns many more, and blood and the weariness that comes with killing and maiming others was on them.
It was then, in the short lull between killing one of the guards who had sought to prevent their escape from the exit and maiming another, as two more ran off into the night, before others appeared to carry on the fight, that Rooster committed that controversial act which some moles have said no true Master of the Delve should have done. He grasped one of the stricken guards in his bloodstained paw and almost incoherent with rage and the excitement of battle and escape, he thundered, “Privet? Where is she? Tell now, mole!”
The guard was raised up into the air, just as Weeth had been earlier that day, and as he refused to speak Rooster continued to roar incoherently at him and shook him so violently that Hamble was forced to stop what seemed little short of torture. Perhaps it was, or perhaps the maimed mole was already close to death, nomole can ever know. But he could only stare at Rooster, and mouth some words made inaudible by the blood that frothed at the corners of his gaping mouth, before he died, and Rooster let him fall to the ground.
“No more!” roared Hamble, buffeting his old friend, “no more killing now! It is enough, and I warned you what I would do if you ever went too far again! No more of this, we’ll climb Caradoc...”
Then with shouts and curses more Newborn guards approached, led by none other than Senior Brother Quail himself, and the Moors group, as if wishing to abide by what Hamble had said, turned and fled into the night, to begin the great climb up Caer Caradoc. A night like that in Caradoc at that season can grow deep and dark indeed if the clouds burgeon and the moon goes in. At that crucial moment the moon darkened and the stars faded, and Rooster and the others were able to make good their escape, if escape it was that was leading them up Caer Caradoc itself
So much confusion, so many doubts of what moles wanted that night, and why they acted as they did. As Rooster led the charge up the great hill Hamble found himself disinclined to follow, and at his flank Chater stayed too and Weeth, all well aware that Newborns were coming. But each alike had been made to pause before the violent and terrible death of the mole Rooster had raised up and then let fall, and now they did not want to follow him. As one they turned north into the shadows along Caer Caradoc’s edge, three running moles, not one of them wanting to raise their paws in violence for Rooster, for the Stone, for themselves, nor for anymole. Not that night, at any rate.
Above them they heard their friends climbing into the darkness, pursued by the Newborns; but these sounds died away, and about them a silence slowly fell. But one last moment of horror came, strange, memorable, and scribed down by the one of those three good moles who survived to tell the tale.
For as they ran on, up out of the ground in front reared a Newborn mole. Who he was, what he was, or why he was there none knows. But out of the darkness he appeared and raised his paws in self-defence and then, well trained perhaps, or thinking his hour had come, he thrust hard and blindly at the one nearest to him.
It was Chater who took the violent blow, straight into his chest, though at the time it seemed no more than a mild buffet. In the spirit of the three moles’ new pacificity, the Newborn was simply pushed aside, not taloned or hurt at all. They ran on for a time, Chater doing no more than clasping his chest at some pain he felt and swearing in the way for which Fieldfare had so often admonished him.
On, on they ran, not from fear, but from a common desire to escape from those tunnels and fields of death to a more peaceful world they hoped might come with the dawn, which would herald the coming of Longest Night, and the seasons’ turn to a better world, and better ways, away from the violence they had witnessed, of which they had been a reluctant part.
“Moles,” whispered Chater, stumbling suddenly as his face twisted into mortal pain, “I cannot go with you further. That mole hurt me, I cannot...”
Then Weeth stopped and held him at one flank, with great Hamble at the other, and they shook their heads and said they would not go on without the mole whose arrival, and whose resolution, had given them all another chance of liberty.
“Then help me on,” said Chater, leaning on them, “and maybe if I can rest for just a little somewhere safe I’ll recover my breath.”
But the night stayed cruel, for the sounds of pursuit began behind them, the now-familiar shouts of Newborn guards. No doubt the one who had struck Chater had given the alarm, and had noted the direction in which they had fled.
“Lead him on,” said Weeth to Hamble, stopping suddenly. “Go on. I’ll lead these Newborns another way and find you a little later. Go on.”
As he turned back so bravely to mislead the Newborns they heard him stop and call after them, “But I forgot to tell you about Rooster! There’s something about him, about it all. Something I should have told you. Hamble... it’s Rooster...”
But the shouts grew louder, and Weeth’s voice faded, as Hamble, his strong paw about Chater, drew him on into the night, to find a place where a journeymole who had served his time and done his duty bravely and well, might now find peace, and rest, and the need to journey on no more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If Maple and Whillan, high up on the top of Caer Caradoc, had thought they could easily escape into obscurity amidst the busy and over-watched tunnels to which they had been confined that night of death and dark treachery preceding the beginning of the Convocation, they were much mistaken.
But they tried. Sometime in the evening, when things quietened down after the tunnels reached a crescendo of frenetic rush in late afternoon, they set off separately for their quarters, and on the way, in a place they ha
d prearranged, met up and slipped away, as they thought, quite undetected.
Snyde at least had not seen them, that much was certain, for he was busily engaged in talking to various scribemoles who had been deputed to him, and to whom he was assigning tasks of recordkeeping. To Whillan it seemed increasingly more likely that Snyde had been given a task by the Newborns simply to shut him up and keep him busy; if this was the Newborns’ hope, they underestimated Snyde. But no matter, at least it took his attention away from them.
The two Duncton moles met up and took off, doing their best to look like busy moles entrusted with a task and on their way to do it; they went down one tunnel and then another, keeping nearby the busier parts until they were far from the huge communal chamber in which they had spent much of the day and back towards the Eastside of the hill where they had first come down.
Near there they found a small unoccupied chamber and stayed awhile in it, listening as moles went back and forth, relieved that no great hue and cry had followed them.
“We’re benefiting from the general confusion,” said Maple with some satisfaction, and in a sense he was right, for nomole but one had noticed their disappearance. “Probably the Newborn guards think we’ve retired to our quarters, and so long as Snyde stays away from them sorting out his stupid task, then there’s no reason for anymole to discover we’ve gone. And when they do, what can they do? Just stance back and wait, for I’ll warrant they’ve got guards about the ways off Caradoc who they’ll rely on to pick up wanderers like us who try to leave.”
During a lull they sneaked out of their refuge, and moved on down to yet obscurer tunnels, and found another small chamber, really no more than an underground scrape, to hide in. There they waited, letting night fall deeper, and washing that the stars and moon were not so bright out on the surface, or those parts of it which they could glimpse from the only entrance near where they were hiding, up which they occasionally poked their snouts and peered about.
“Dangerous to go out or try going further in this gloom – best to lie low here,” said Maple. “It may not be very heroic, but whatmole can be heroic when he’s no idea what’s apaw or where he is? My instinct tells me the best thing is just to he low and stay unnoticed.”
So they stayed where they were, confident that none had seen them or could possibly know where to look.
“We might as well settle down till daylight,” said Whillan sleepily. “Whatmole’s going to come barging in here now?” He looked complacently about the nondescript chamber, and peered out through its ill-made portal to the side tunnel, or rather side-side tunnel, off which it had been delved.
It was perhaps midnight when Maple roused Whillan and whispered urgently, “For Stone’s sake, listen!”
It was the grunting sounds of struggle and strife, and swearing voices, then one scream followed by another, suddenly smothered. There was silence for a short time, then commands for moles to move, and the sound of another struggle, short and desperate, and the grunts of pain, as of a mole talon-thrust into silence.
Maple went to the portal, peered carefully out and then scented the air. “It’s heavy with fear,” he said quietly.
Suddenly there were more cries, the sound of running paws on the surface above, the desperate rasping breath of a mole trying to escape. Then the thud of heavier paws and above their heads a cry of “No!” as a mole fought for his life against heavier opposition, and lost.
Then the dragging of a body, the sound fading once more, and guardmoles saying, “That was a bugger, that one!” Murder was apaw.
“We should do something,” said Whillan, impetuously moving forward towards the portal.
But Maple’s paw restrained him and he shook his head. “A mole does not start a fight against enemies whose disposition he does not know, on ground with which he is unfamiliar. We have come here to survive, Whillan, that we may be fit to fulfil the Stone’s task when we know what it is. Our time to help others will come soon enough.”
There was another cry in the night, further away this time, and off to the west, and more sounds of continuing struggle.
“Aye, we stay exactly where we are!” said Maple grimly.
Whillan nodded and lowered his snout as if to try to blot out the sound of whatever murder, or hurt, or evil was being done that night in the tunnels everywhere about them. He did not doubt that what Maple said was right, but that did not stop him feeling the guilt and frustration of a sensitive mole who fears that terrible things are apaw and he is powerless to stop them. The sounds went on, and on, and did not fade or cease before Whillan’s eyes grew drowsy and he slept once more, only to be woken yet again by Maple.
“Mole’s coming, just one by himself by the sound of it.”
“Maybe he needs our help,” said Whillan hopefully.
All was enshadowed and quiet, and by the hesitant sound of his paws and slow progress it seemed that the mole was not at all sure of himself. But sniffing about he was, and his approach towards where they lay hidden had an erratic but inexorable quality. Had he sounded more determined, and had he been more than one. Maple might have been inclined to make a dash for it, or suggest they stance up ready to defend themselves. But it seemed best to stay absolutely still and do nothing in the hope that he would go on by their chamber, and, perhaps, even by-pass the tunnel it was in.
But no, he came on slowly through the dark, still hesitant, until they could hear his breathing, which sounded shallow and nervous and was punctuated by mutters such as “Here perhaps? No... then just down here...”
Until at last a short, bewhiskered snout appeared at the portal near which they hid and a voice said, “I can scent mole, big mole, two moles, Duncton moles. Yes?”
For a time that seemed eternal Maple and Whillan stayed just where they were, not breathing, utterly still, hoping the mole would go away, too frightened to try to flush them out more than he had already. But then he said, “I know you’re there. At least I think I know and so I better come in and prove I’m right.”
“All right, mole, what is it you want?” said Maple heavily out of the darkness. He was careful not to sound aggressive, for this was probably some doddery Newborn guard and they might still escape his attentions by claiming they had become lost and then, on the way back, giving him the slip.
“Ah!” said the mole with satisfaction. “I thought there were moles here. You are the two Duncton moles?”
“We are,” said Whillan.
“Maple and Whillan, one big, one average.”
“That’s us,” said Maple, coming out where he could be seen.
“Well, you did the right thing tonight-skulking off out of the way. You’re to come with me. I waited until the best time.”
“What do you mean you waited?”
“I followed you, more or less,” said the mole, who was elderly, and certainly doddery. “You did the sensible thing and found a place to stance down for the night out of harm’s way. I missed your last move, and then I got stuck while all that... that vileness... went on, which was why I had to search for you. Harm’s the word this night! There’s been bloody murder all about. Half the visitors if not more are dead, and the rest made malleable.”
Rather disconcertingly he let forth a little laugh, as old moles sometimes do who have lived long enough to feel free to laugh at things others don’t need to understand.
“Half...?” began Whillan.
“If not more. The ones they could not rely on. There’ll be other survivors than you no doubt, but not many. But I suppose you have a lot of questions and all that sort of thing, and though I quite understand I am somewhat tired myself and this is not the moment. I’m an archivist, not a guard or active kind of mole. But duty calls and I have been sent. I didn’t want to get caught up in anything! Nomole expects archivists to do anything much, and how right they are. Anyway, please come with me.”
“Where to?” said Whillan quietly, taking over the task of interrogation from Maple, who had less patience for such thing
s. The mole felt all right to him.
“You’re the Whillan one, are you?” said the mole with a sigh.
“The Whillan one” nodded.
“Well, it’s Privet. The Elder Senior Brother —”
“What about Privet?” asked Whillan as firmly and calmly as he could. “Which brother?”
“He wants you to be ready to receive her, as it were. He thinks it would be better if you were together.”
“But —”
“Please don’t vex me with questions!” said the old mole testily. “This really is not my sort of thing, but he can’t trust just anymole these days. Follow me and say nothing, and if I appear to say strange things to any Newborn guards we come across kindly refrain from the Duncton habit of questioning. He simply feels that you had best be in the right place at the right time. Now...”
Whillan turned to Maple and they looked questioningly at each other.
“Where are we going?” asked Maple, always cautious.
“To the Stones,” said the mole. “It is unfortunately a bright night now: but all the better to light up evil with, eh?” He let out one of his little laughs again, and without further words hobbled away into the tunnels, turning suddenly northward with them both following closely behind. If he was up to no good, or intended them harm, reflected Whillan, then the Newborns must be busy indeed this night if this vague, weak old mole was all they could spare.
“How far?” asked Whillan.
“So far, so good,” said the mole, who perhaps had not heard the question. Adding before they had time to make sense of what he had said something which made even less sense, but gave a certain solemnity to the occasion: “For some.” And then that laugh again as he added yet another afterthought: “There’s a long way to go for you, I should think.”
Then they were off again, as silent and unnoticed as shadows down a rough-hewn tunnel, stancing still when they heard moles nearby, turning quickly left or right to avoid trouble ahead, and then slipping up into the grass on the surface when there was no other way to go.