Rooster stared; the water drove up towards where he was, right over him, and he pushed upslope to fall and flounder amongst his friends, so that for a moment he thought they were all going to be drowned. But no sooner had he struggled to hold his stancing than he was buffeted half off balance by the water’s return as it rushed back downslope, and he found himself struggling to help others hold their place, and not be swept past him downslope into the raging torrent of the Reap.
The moment passed, the water eased, and all were safe. He turned in hope that he might yet help his friends upon the Span, turned to hear a growling, cracking roar, turned to see the Span’s highest point shudder and twist, crack and break, and then, a sight that mocked the earth’s great strength, he saw the Span begin to slide and fall, water crashing over it as it collapsed down into the raging Reap.
Once more water rushed up towards him, once more he was forced to hold his place and help others do the same, once more the flow came back again, this time pushing him downslope as Samphire screamed behind him. Only with resolution did he hold himself, every muscle straining as the water drove on by and cascaded down to where the Span had been and thundered over into the gorge below.
He raised his head and looked in numbed disbelief across the gap, and saw that on the far side water rushed over the gorge’s edge as it did below where he now stanced. He looked desperately for his friends in the broken water, but saw only jags of protruding rock, and tumbling waves, and wild nothingness. Gone, gone into that horror that flowed angrily past, gone. All gone.
A scream, feint in the water’s roar. A strange, muted, bellowed shout. Desperately his eyes searched the water and the rocks, and he rose, ready even then to try to go to the aid of whatever mole it was that called. Then he saw them, not down in the gorge itself, but clinging on to the edge of the far side, the back of a great mole, the left paw of a great mole, reaching, heaving, pulling, whilst its right paw held on for dear life, life that was most dear to it.
It was Humlock who clung and Glee he held, his strength pulling them now up on to the bank with one paw, his blind mute love driving him on far past the point where mere brute force would have failed him. How small she was, how hard to see amongst all that white water that still cascaded over them; but he had her, and held her, and with those strange bellowings he heaved her up to safety through the dying waters of the flood, and pulled himself to safety as well.
Only then did the Charnel moles above them see where they were and that they were safe, and several helpers came timidly down and took the half-drowned Glee in their paws.
Then Humlock turned and snouted out across the impassable gorge, stancing up as Rooster did, two friends, two great moles, who for a moment of terrible despair seemed to reach across a void nomole could ever hope to cross again. Rooster opened his mouth in a silent cry, and raised his paws, but it was Glee who screamed on one side and Drumlin and Sedum from the other, before Glee shook herself free of the protection of those who held her to go back to Humlock’s flank and stance with him and stare and reach to mothers and a friend they could surely never reach again.
It was Humlock who turned first, perhaps sensing a resurgence of the Reap’s torrent, and he reached out and took Glee towards the Charnel’s entrance upslope among the scree. The last thing Rooster saw before the returning wind threw spray across the gorge and obscured all view, was Glee, eyes wild, mouth open in grief, and a thin white paw raised in a solitary gesture of farewell and benediction towards him: he to go on into life now on their behalf as well, and they to stay for ever where they had been born, never to know what might have been.
Then they were lost in the driving spray, and when it passed on by all Rooster could see were the wet grey rocks of the Charnel’s surface, the ragged tufts of vegetation, and looming over them all the great dark cliffs which had been the boundary of his puphood, and was now the prison of his dearest friends.
Yet one more thing occurred before he turned away from his loss, and he ever after believed it to be significant. Samphire had often told him of the raven that had stooped down into the gorge on the day she had taken him M the Reap’s edge to hurl him in at Red Ratcher’s command. Now another stooped down, a great ragged thing that turned and twisted in the violent wind and hovered for a time over where the Span had been, unaware it seemed of the danger it was in, or defying it.
Then a great fountain of spray rose up and was driven by the wind on to it, and for a moment it was lost in white. Yet it seemed undaunted, for the water fell away and the raven opened its bedraggled wings and sent forth a dark raucous cry, before wheeling round into the wind and over the Charnel once more. It rose slowly up the cliff’s face, higher and higher, gyring sometimes in the eddies there most purposefully before, with a last thrust, it powered its way above the cliff’s highest edge, turned for a moment as if to survey the Charnel Clough a final time, and then was gone across the unseen Moor.
As Rooster turned blindly from his grief to find Samphire and begin the now reluctant flight from all he knew, he heard her cry out to him to beware, and come quick, come now, or it would be too late. Was it the waters she feared, or that he would turn back and hurl himself into the gorge for loss of the friends who were his life, his limbs, his normality? Or was there something more in her cry than that?
Certainly some warning note made him instinctively stiffen his body as if for assault as he looked up, and was brought immediately to an appalled stop by what stanced directly in his path.
For there reared a great mole, his taloned paws outstretched, and as Rooster stared at him it seemed he saw the embodiment of the wild elements that had seemed to bring such disaster so early in their escape. The mole was massive, his fur as rough and dark as Rooster’s own, and russet in places just as his was; his face too was furrowed and lined, like Rooster’s. Only his eyes were different. They were piggish and deep-set and rimmed in red, ignorant and cruel.
Rooster stared into the eyes of his own father.
Even so many moleyears later, when Rooster reached this part of his tale as he told it to Privet up in Hilbert’s Top, he had seemed to regress to the moment he described. He had reared up, he had raised his talons, and as he stared ahead it was not the blank wall of their communal chamber he saw, and nor was it before the presence of Privet that his breathing grew more rapid as his great chest heaved and he sought to control himself.
“Wanted to hurt him,” he gasped, “wanted to kill him. Want to!”
It was not lost on Privet that he spoke this last in the present, nor, now he had explained how essential to his training was the idea of not harming life ever, did she find it hard to understand the terrible conflict she saw in him there before her eyes.
“He could hurt, I couldn’t. He could kill, I can’t. Hated him. He hurt Samphire. It was like he was the Reap. He was the waters down the Creed that broke the Span. He was all darkness to me. Want to hurt him. Could have killed him. He was first evil I knew. He is darkness in my Dark Sound.”
But he had not attacked his father, and thereby his anger had stayed alive, and grown, and deepened, and Privet saw he was still savage with it.
“Samphire saw I would hurt him and cried out to me to behave as a Master must. Didn’t …” Rooster bowed his head and began to slump down in their chamber at the memory of it. “Didn’t want to be Master, don’t want to be Master, “cos then I can’t be mole. Not fair. Want to be mole. Want to be me. He was him. He made me. Then I saw the me in him. Same, same, same …”
Rooster cried like a pup at the remembered agony of seeing from whatmole he had come, and of wanting to kill Red Ratcher who had made him, of knowing he could, and yet of knowing he must not even try, not even think of it, but behave ‘as a Master should’.
That, Privet saw, was his agony, that the Stone had played a cruel trick upon him, putting the spirit of a Master of the Delve into the body of a fighting, killing mole. This was the tragedy only Gaunt had seen at first, and which, in the short time he kne
w was left to him, he had tried to train poor Rooster to contain and triumph over.
“Didn’t want to tell you this, not today of days,” said Rooster, “tonight of nights. Wanted peace.”
Privet smiled, and went to him and touched him and held him as in the past days she had learned to dare to do. That there was passion between them none knowing their story could doubt, but they had turned from it before, as being too frightening and too like ‘hurting’, as Rooster put it, and though their touches were deep and full of trust they had not again become physically passionate. Time and the Stone would tell them when if it ever did. So now Privet held him and shook her head at his regret for talking as he had that night.
For it was Longest Night, the first Rooster had shared with another mole, a normal mole, and had he not found the courage to talk they would have long since eaten the food that Privet had prepared, and spoken the quiet rituals she had learned in Crowden, the like of which he had never shared.
“Would like to eat, would like the prayers,” he said. “Will you still?”
She nodded silently, feeling her love for him great about them both.
“Will,” she said.
And so she did, there in their chamber, and then up on the surface amongst the icy rocks near the Top, quiet beneath the stars before she spoke the prayers all moles repeat that night, which speak of darkness past, and the light to come with the new cycle of seasons whose turning begins that Night of nights.
“What do we do now?” he said when it was done.
“We go down to where we live. We tell tales. We sing. And if there were more of us we would dance.”
“Dance?” said Rooster, wondering what that was.
She laughed at his disquiet as she danced a little about him, as once, so long ago it seemed, her friend Hamble had tried to make her do. Dance!” she said.
He shook his great head. “Will tell you to the end now,” he said.
“Tonight? Below?”
He nodded.
“But won’t you at least try to dance afterwards?” she said.
He raised his head to the sky and stared at the stars. He raised a paw and looked at its silhouette and saw how, as he moved it, some stars disappeared, and others came into sight again.
“Afterwards I’ll make a delve.”
“What of, my dear?” she asked.
His paw came down and fretted at the icy ground. His face furrowed into deep black lines. His eyes were lost in dark shadows as he stared at her.
“What of? Not sure, but it’s strong. It’s good. It’s … it’s … it’s for us, Privet. A delve to help us. Nearly can do that now.”
To help us what?” she said. These days she dared press him, for now he would respond.
His voice grew almost gentle, and his touch nearly casual. “Powerful this delving need. To help us be, be always one day.”
“Be always one day!” She wondered if Masters of the Delve were always so inarticulate as Rooster. For the sake of moles who had loved them, as she knew she loved him, she prayed they were not. How could a thing ‘be always one day’?
“Come on,” she said, tugging at his paw. The best bit of Longest Night is after the prayers and rituals.”
Together they moved among the starlit rocks of the Top towards the entrance to their tunnels, and had others seen how they crossed the shining icy ground they might almost have said that Rooster and Privet danced.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was not only Red Ratcher that Rooster found himself facing, but a good number of Ratcher’s clan as well, which meant that among them, though he did not know it, were some of his brothers, all older, all as big as … all much like himself.
Great though his instinct to attack was, his training was greater still, but had he been alone or even out of sight of Samphire and Hume and the others of the Charnel, who stared at him now in dismay, for they guessed what was in his mind, he might well have tried to kill his father.
If Ratcher had been alone he might well have succeeded too, for Red Ratcher had aged, and he was, as Samphire had predicted should he see them there, both surprised and afraid of what had so suddenly appeared from the Charnel side. Rooster’s evident anger and lack of fear of him helped too, for fearlessness is a most fearsome thing to a mole who rules by fear and Ratcher was not used to the kind of disgust and frowning disdain that Rooster showed him as he pushed past and joined his mother.
“Well!” said Ratcher, not recognizing his own likeness in Rooster or guessing who he might be. “Damn me, but it’s Samphire herself, came back from the diseased dead. Ha!”
“With the diseased dead,” mocked one of the largest of Ratcher’s sons. Ratcher came closer, sneering and peering, and some of his aides grouped close behind. He stared intently at his former mate.
Thin, ugly, old,” he said, spitting out each word at Samphire through yellow stumpy teeth, and grinning in a half-mad way. “That’s what you are. When I had you, you were worth having. Now you’re disgusting.”
“And diseased,” said Samphire, finding her courage to be bold and approaching him. “Like all my friends.”
Ratcher backed away.
“We can force the buggers into the Reap,” said the mole who had spoken before.
Samphire stared at him and wondered if it was one of her sons. Most of the Clan stanced like ancient rocks, dark and forbidding and slow. Had she been of them once? Had this disgusting mole ‘loved’ her? Had she suckled these great things?
“We go,” said Rooster firmly, and Hume, recognizing the moment was right and they still held the advantage of surprise, herded the others together and turned the way Samphire had already pointed out as leading from Charnel Clough.
“I said we can drown the filthy scum in the Reap,” said the mole who had spoken before.
“Shut up, Grear,” snarled Ratcher, turning round dubiously and thrusting a stubby paw without warning straight at Grear’s eyes. The big mole seemed used to this treatment, for he ducked quickly, rose up again, and thrust out an insolent paw in response, pushing the stolid Ratcher off balance.
A fight might then have ensued which would have taken them all down a path they could not return from, but in the midst of their angry exchange two grubby females appeared suddenly from a portal some way across the Reapside shouting about flooding and needing help.
The clan moles turned as one and deserted the escapers to go to the rescue of their kin, except for Red Ratcher and Grear; the one because he was old and slow and the other because alone of all the moles he seemed to understand that the sudden emergence of moles from across the Span might have implications the clan should deal with. But the cries for help increased and could not be ignored. Red Ratcher swore, and Grear stanced hesitating, looking first at Rooster and Samphire and the others, then back the way he should go.
Suddenly he came forward powerfully, raised a paw towards Rooster, who did not flinch, and then, so swiftly it was over and he was gone before they saw what he had done, he spitefully talon-thrust Samphire in the flank, hard and deadly.
“Mother?” he said, in a voice of utter hatred and contempt.
Red Ratcher looked surprised, his pig eyes widened, and then he laughed, a vile mocking laugh, before clapping Grear on the shoulder and turning towards where the others had gone, leaving Samphire half-collapsed among her friends. Only Hume’s firm paw on Rooster’s shoulder prevented him from chasing after the two moles.
“Come!” said Samphire urgently, her voice full of pain as she clutched where she had been taloned. “We must go before they return. Now is our chance.”
“Aye, Samphire,” began Hume, worried for her.
“Leave them be, Rooster,” said Samphire. “You’ll find worse provocations than that in moledom when we get to it. Now, moles, the Stone has given us a chance and we shall take it.”
Rooster stared with shock and dislike at the retreating rumps of his brother, as he now knew Grear to be, and his father.
“I go last!
” he declared, herding the rest ahead of him down the narrow path that led out of the Reapside, and none there doubted that whatever his training, if the Ratcher clan came after them Rooster would be happy to break his vows and use his talons on them; nor did any doubt, which was comforting, that Rooster would win the struggle too.
But they were not followed, nor did they see the Ratcher moles again that day. They went on steadily down the Clough led by Samphire, despite the blood that came from her wound. Down through the narrow gorge, with the crashing Reap off to their left flank and all their lives left behind in that shadowed lost place which just occasionally, they turned back to look up at, and shuddered.
Until at last the Clough opened out, and for the first time for all but Samphire the moles saw a view that was not confined by sheer cliffs, and crashing water, nor made hazy by driving spray. A view across a valley, with hints of green and the reflections of flooding water, and beyond, further than they could have imagined eyes could ever see, a clearing October sky that arced across a great wide world which they had heard was moledom, and was theirs.
For a short time they paused and caught their breath as Hume attended to Samphire’s injury; though the blood had stopped flowing, she felt a deeper pain that augured ill.
“You must rest, my dear!” said Hume, as Rooster stanced by, fretting and worried, and angry.
“No, I shall not rest until I have led you all to Chieveley Dale,” she said, eyeing the way ahead. She snouted about a little, and finally decided the course to take. “It’s a long way for moles like us who have never travelled far, but we’ll get there! The sooner we start the more likely we are to stay clear of Ratcher’s lot. Now, give me your support, Rooster, and the rest of you follow me!”