Duncton Tales

  Then, in a resigned yet thoughtful manner, he turned back to the two moles, and reaching them he raised his two great paws to touch them both in a way that was so gentle, so expressive of concern and determination, that he looked not like the clumsy youngster he often seemed to be, but a much older mole whose power of spirit and purpose made watching moles forget entirely that his head was misshapen, and his paws grotesque.

  So striking was this sense at that moment that Drumlin and Sedum drew instinctively closer to Samphire, and, indeed, their paws reached out to each other in such a way that they echoed that same triumvirate of shared concern they saw in their youngsters above them.

  “It is your Rooster who’s been sent,” whispered Drumlin, “and the power of the Creeds is with him …”

  “… and the Stone is with them all,” added Samphire, thinking perhaps that she must offer hope of the Stone’s trust in the other two, and not yet understanding Drumlin’s meaning.

  The Reap roared, ravens turned and scuttered high above, the clouds moved in the sky beyond, as Drumlin said, “My dear, there comes a time when a mole must trust another unreservedly, as I now, having heard what you have said, and seeing the love of mole and gentleness that abides in the son you have reared here in the Charnel, will trust you.

  “Let our youngsters play on, and seek out for themselves a way forward that may be perhaps for us all, as I try now to answer the questions you have raised about delving, and about the moles of the Charnel.”

  When Turrell had reached this moment in his account of Rooster’s life a tear had coursed down his face at the thought and memory of it; and a solitary tear coursed down Privet’s now.

  Blankly, she stared out beyond her outstretched paws, seeing not Chieveley Dale, but that former time in that place unvisited by her, where Rooster was born and raised, and where now a secret must be revealed … Yet even as she thought of it and its consequences there came a rough brutal shout from the Dale below and Privet was jolted back to reality by the renewed perils of the present moment.

  The shout she heard was from one of the grikes below her as he reared menacingly up from his cover to confront two moles, both young males, who had broken out of a hidden tunnel upslope of him and were now trying to make a run for it towards the forest, and the very place where Privet now stanced.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Privet stared in mounting horror as the two fleeing Chieveley moles struggled across the rough ground towards her, the huge grikes in close pursuit. Her heart beat painfully in her chest and she could not even catch her breath as she tried desperately to think what she should do.

  From where she stanced it was plain that the two moles were no match for their pursuers, either in speed or size, and to make matters worse other grikes were already running up from the lower slopes in response to the shout.

  It seemed to Privet that pursuers and pursued, racing upslope as they were, would all shortly converge on the very spot where she had until now laid watching and unseen. If the grikes had come alone she would simply have hidden until they were gone; and if the two Chieveley moles had not been seen, she would have attracted their attention in some quiet way and led them off unnoticed.

  But with them all coming together in the open, what was she to do? What could she do? Hide, and abandon the moles she and the others were committed to help? Or show herself, and risk capture and perhaps the lives of the very moles she wanted to save?

  Even had Privet been able to find a clear answer to these questions in so short a time, the situation suddenly changed again and she was faced by new dilemmas. For more Chieveley moles emerged from secret exits off to her left flank somewhere up near where her father had deployed himself, and were making a dash for the forest with grikes in pursuit of them as well.

  Privet glanced downslope to her right in the hope of seeing Hamble, and getting some guidance from him about what to do, but he was out of sight. Meanwhile, though the two Chieveley moles were much nearer now, their pace had slowed as they struggled to cross the rough ground adjacent to the forest, and she could see that their bodies were thin and wasted as if they had had too little food, and their eyes were wide with fear. Then one of them made the mistake of turning to look back and see how near the grikes were, and stumbled sideways with a hopeless cry as he did so. His companion paused, turned, saw how near the grikes were, and then rushed on desperately.

  It was then, wishing to give him encouragement and with no thought of her own safety or of the consequences of what she did, that Privet involuntarily stanced up to cry to the moles to try to press on to the cover of the trees. But the moment she rose out of the undergrowth she knew it was a mistake, and perhaps a fatal one. The approaching mole paused in alarm at what seemed the new threat ahead of him, the grikes pressed on ever faster behind, barely pausing in their stride as they looked up, decided that Privet was the enemy as well, and charged resolutely on.

  They caught up the mole who had stumbled and dealt him a disabling sideways talon thrust before they came on, the one in front pointing ahead first at her, and then at the fleeing mole as he grunted, “I’ll get ‘er, you get ’im.”

  To her credit Privet stayed still and upright on the spot from which she had risen from the undergrowth, not from the utter panic she might well have felt — in fact a deathly calm had overtaken her — but from a wise appreciation of the fact that if she was going to dodge the grike and have some chance of escape, she had best do it at the last possible moment, when, she hoped, he might have such momentum that he would carry on by her and straight into the bole of the dead tree near where she had stanced and towards which — surprised at her own coolness — she now backed.

  She saw the slower of the two moles tumble and lie still from the taloning he had suffered, she saw the second grike come on as the first passed by the faster of the moles and headed straight for her. Then, quite unexpectedly, she heard her father’s voice cry out from far upslope: This way! Now!”

  Was it intended to distract the grike about to charge her down, or was it to help the fleeing moles who were striving to reach the forest where her father had been? She did not know, but in some wonder she found that events which until that moment before had been overtaking her with their speed, now seemed suddenly to slow so much that she had time to think about such things, and others too. In this new slowed-down world, in which the great grike looming over her appeared to have paws and talons that were merely floating lazily through the air, she had time to glance to her left flank once more in the hope that Hamble had made an appearance at last, but still he was not there.

  Then, too, she was able to turn in time to see her father Sward rush out into the open on the slopes above and signal to more Chieveley moles which way to go. She watched the grikes pursuing them falter for a moment, even as she turned back once more to see the grike who was intent upon harming her slow fractionally in such a way that she knew how and where to place her paws and then how to move, such that his talon lunge missed her and he crashed on by, hitting the tree with a roar of rage.

  These things happened like a living dream, as did her father’s move out from the forest edge into a greater danger even than the one she faced, as the moles he was trying to help passed him by and took cover in the forest, and he was left alone to face the grikes.

  “It’s what he intends” she whispered to herself in this strange, sluggish, muted and unemotional world in which she found herself. “It’s what he wants.”

  But then the likely consequence of her father’s appearance in the open jolted her back to reality, and the world speeded up again, and danger and panic were upon her. The second grike approached and his paws began to crash down towards her; there was an ugly roar of shouting; the stricken mole on the slope before her cried out in pain; the other, so near her now, had stopped still in terror.

  All this, and her paws and body continued to obey that guidance they had received from her calm self a moment before. She instinctively moved to one side eve
n as the grikes before and behind tried to strike her. For a terrifying moment she saw them both, ugly and threatening, before the second pulled back his talons with a contemptuous sneer and nodded towards the first, as if to say that Privet was his victim.

  Then as he turned back to attend to the two Chieveley moles, Privet turned from him to face the larger of the two grikes alone. He had recovered from his crash into the tree and now stanced staring down at her, frightening in his power and the ruthlessness of his purpose. With a cruel smile he raised his talons in a slow deliberate way and Privet saw death coming upon her, and it was ugly, and frightening, and terrible, and it gripped her whole body as if a cruel paw had come out of the sky and taken hold of her and was squeezing whatever calm she had felt right out of her, and leaving her in death’s sickening company.

  Again the world receded to mute slowness, but now she was the victim and this time it was her limbs, her talons, her mind that could not seem to respond with speed or purpose, or do anything at all. As she saw the sharp talons begin to fall she knew it was the last thing she would ever see.

  Yet even as they began to drive down towards her snout they too slowed and stilled, and as she dared look from them to the grike’s face, she saw his expression change from murderous anger to one of puzzled surprise. The look of surprise changed as quickly to one of mortal pain, dark and deep, and his eyes bulged, then rolled as she saw loom over him a mole she knew, though never in this way before: angry, ruthless, strong. Before she could even speak his name he pulled back the talons of his right paw from the grike’s back into which they had lunged with such effect, and brought down his left paw sideways in a thrust that not only ripped open the grike’s flanks and exposed the white bones of his ribs, but served to throw him to one side too.

  Hamble had come, and he was a youngster no more. The blood of killing was on his paws and a terrible look of controlled and deadly intent was in his eyes — more formidable by far than the grike’s cruel smile, for it was intelligent, and thinking, and purposeful. Hamble the warrior had been born.

  Without pausing to speak or acknowledge her or what he did, his fur red and wet with the grike’s blood, Hamble trampled over his victim’s flanks and snout and surged past Privet to charge down upon the second grike. As Privet turned to follow all of this she felt a strange shudder at her side and saw the grike’s talons at her flank, stretched out and shaking as he gasped his last and died.

  But now her attention was taken by the brutal sight of two great moles, Hamble and the second grike, beginning what was evidently a fight to the death. They were locked in a straining, grunting brawl of talons and snouts, bared teeth and sweating fur, falling now this way towards Privet, now that way away from her.

  Nearby the uninjured Chieveley mole had recovered his senses enough to turn back to his hurt friend, and was huddled over him, watching the fight one moment, and the next the other grikes across the open space who had earlier been coming after him as well, but now had veered off upslope where Sward had been, and where a greater number of the Chieveley moles were escaping still.

  The scene was like a rough sea of death, with wave on wave of moles, rushing one way and another, fighting, screaming, fleeing. Then, as Hamble fought on bloodily, the sea shifted once again and with a pounding of paws from above where her father had been, several grikes, having killed or lost the moles they had been pursuing, were now charging down to rescue the one that Hamble fought.

  Panic had already rooted Privet to the spot when, from some place beyond them, among a melee of other grikes, her father rose into view and cried out, “Run, my dear! Run now!”’

  Even as he did so he disappeared once more under the murderous paws of the grikes who had surrounded him and she stared, numb with horror and unable to move at all. But then behind her Hamble cried out, “Do it, Privet, do as he says. Run!”

  She turned back to him and saw him make a death thrust into the second grike’s snout and eyes and, with blood all over his flanks and paws, though whether his own or that of the grike he had defeated she could not tell, he rushed towards her and beyond to head off the new threat of the oncoming grikes.

  Pointing to the two moles whose emergence had first started this time of terror, Hamble cried out, “For Stone’s sake, Privet, run! Run to the stream with them! Runnnnnn …!”

  Then he was lost in battle once again as she, freed by his voice from the spot to which she had seemed for ever rooted in her fear, ran stumbling downslope in the wake of the two moles, towards the stream, away from all of it. She did not look back as the sounds of renewed fighting, cries and grunts, bloody thuds and gasps, came after her as if the noises themselves were enemies which sought to blot her out. On, on and on again she ran, the rough ground rushing up towards her, the two Chieveley moles struggling on ahead, her gasping breath an agony and a fainting darkness overtaking her and blotting out all the madness and the terror until all was gone from her but the struggle to escape.

  Of the rest of that day, or the night that followed, or even of the days and nights that followed them, Privet afterwards remembered little more than brief and terrible glimpses of horror and feelings of loss.

  She lost track of the two moles she had fled with, and hid somewhere by the stream to which Hamble had ordered her to run. She remembered emerging from a dark place to a deserted vale, and searching in vain for Hamble, for her father, for anymole at all. She came to believe she had found her father with some of the Chieveley moles, and a few grikes, all dead and half eaten by the rooks.

  But Hamble, he had gone; and the tunnels of the Dale had been ruined. She woke from her nightmare slowly to the aching reality that she was alone and all but lost, with nomole to help her but herself, and the wide Moors to cross if ever she was to reach Crowden again.

  Days of wandering and aching, days and nights of sleepless wondering, of shock, of being too numb to be afraid that the grikes might come; or so lost that if they came it might be preferable to being so alone. Days when the mists on the surrounding Moors lowered ever more, and the air gained the chill of approaching winter.

  Until a day came when she awoke refreshed, free of her nightmare at last, and knowing that all that past was in retreat — not conquered but repressed to a place deep within where she could control it, and for a time forget. A day when a wintry sun shone down in the Dale where she wandered, and up on the Tops above, and Privet saw that the mists were gone.

  It was then that she saw Hilbert’s Top for the first time, its sides steep and dark with exposed millstone grit, and she felt the weight of the past, and of the past days, drop off her, as if it was all long ago, and she free of it. Her father … was no more. Hamble … was beyond her reach now, but the Stone would protect him, and all of this and these events were part of a pattern greater than she could comprehend or seek to control.

  For now the fresh autumn wind was in her fur, and the sun warm on her face, and before her rose Hilbert’s Top, the place to which she knew from all she had been told was where the mole they had set out to find had gone into retreat.

  “Rooster must be up there!” she declared to herself, feeling that he was all that mattered now, and her whole life had been leading towards finding him. Thereafter … She could not guess and did not even care to try, as she set off to climb up the slopes towards the Top, and leave her past behind.

  “Rooster,” she whispered to herself as she went, as if speaking his name, and thinking again of the remarkable story that lay behind his coming to Chieveley Dale and his later retreat to the heights above, might make it the more likely that he would be waiting for her up there when she reached Hilbert’s Top herself.

  Rooster’s mother Samphire could scarcely have imagined what story it was that Drumlin and Sedum were to tell her, that day in May when the three moles had shared their confidences. Nor that its outcome would be a visit to see a place, and meet moles, unlike any other in all of moledom.

  “But first, my dear,” Drumlin began, “I must tell y
ou of the great task whose challenge and hoped-for outcome has given meaning to the lives of so many generations of the moles of the Charnel over the centuries since our forebears were first outcast here. You already know of Hilbert …”

  “Little beyond the fact that it is the name of that part of the Moors which rises to form the eastern boundary of the Dale where I was raised,” said Samphire. “There were rumours that there were ancient delvings up on the Top, and that a mole called Hilbert had lived there, but of the delving arts or that he was the last Master of the Delve, we knew nothing.”

  “So!” declared Drumlin after a pause in which her face expressed surprise followed by sudden understanding. “So, the Stone must have intended that his history was forgotten in these parts, all the better to preserve the secrets that he left behind. I had better begin at the beginning then, though what I shall tell you is known to every adult Charnel mole, for it is our earliest heritage, and provides us with such pride as we may have, and such purpose as we may follow — a purpose far nobler, far greater, than the narrow confines of this dark, beset place might suggest to you. The youngsters ought to hear it too!”

  “Even Rooster?” questioned Sedum suddenly.

  “Especially him,” said Drumlin shortly, “for isn’t he as much a Charnel mole as any other, seeing as he was brought here at birth, and lives as near to the Creeds as it’s safe for mole to get? And have I not the sense that he is the one for whom our generations of ancestors and ourselves have waited for so long?”

  Drumlin called to Glee to stop what she and the others were at and all come on down, since she was about to tell a tale they ought to hear.

  So down they came, though not without some delay, for Humlock did not understand, and seemed determined to stay where he was, hunched in that drear way of his over the delving Rooster had made but could not communicate. But at last he turned and came down between his two friends, and all three stanced down near Samphire to hear of the great events of which Drumlin wished to speak.