Duncton Stone

  The chamber taken, the Siabod moles did not delay in striking straight up and out on to the surface to attack and scatter the Newborns there into a panic. Their orders had not been to pursue and nor did they. So surprised were the Newborns, convinced perhaps that the system had been overrun from within, that they fled after their fellow guardmoles, spreading panic and confusion as they went.

  Upslope, by the brook, Ystwelyn watched the coming attack turn into a melee of moles not knowing if they were in pursuit or pursued, and timed his counter-attack perfectly. Rarely has a force in seeming retreat become so suddenly a force assaulting, and of the two or three Newborns who survived that part of the struggle none ever forgot, or was able to recall without a shudder, the sight of those great followers turning back from flight, to charge them down, and kill their colleagues where they stanced in surprise and disorder.

  Meanwhile, in the chamber by the seal-up, Maple established his stronghold with ruthless speed and determination. There was only one surface exit, and this was quickly secured, with moles on the surface above already summoning back those who had gone outside. Of the two portals that led further into the system one was plainly more significant than the other. The smaller was stationed with two guards, but it was through the larger, and down the tunnel beyond that an advance party went, killing several moles either sheltering there, confused, or coming to see what was going on.

  Maple did not advance further until he was satisfied that the moles who had gone out on the surface were safely back in – and left some by that exit against the possibility that other Newborns might try to retreat into the chamber, not realizing it had been taken over. Only then did he order the advance, steadily and methodically, through the tunnels towards the centre of Buckland, and hopefully to Sapient himself.

  It was now that the heaviest and most critical fighting took place, for the Newborns were not defeated yet, but fell back to well-made positions planned long since by Turling himself, against just such an invasion as this or, perhaps, internal mutiny.

  Across the system at Carswell Copse, Stow now sensed a weakening in the opposition, subtle yet significant, and began to push his hard-stretched moles to their utmost, to take precisely the advantage that Maple had guessed he would. Nomole knows quite when this great mole received the injuries that proved fatal to him, but most agree that sometime in that critical struggle old Stow, the greatest warrior that the Wolds ever produced, loyal to the Stone and his leader Maple, saw that his tired force was wavering once more.

  “On, and on, and on again!” he is said to have cried out, pulling back the waverers and leading a fresher group through. On and on he fought, despite injury to face and flank; on and on, in the name of the Stone, on beyond duty, on beyond courage, for now he knew he must lead his moles and so help others elsewhere, fighting, as he guessed, for their lives.

  “On, on!” he cried, weakening, falling, sinking, fading. “On...”

  And on past him the Woldian moles went, forcing passage through, driving the Newborns before them, turning them, putting fear and panic into them, defeating them until the tunnel ahead was clearing, and the last of the opposition fleeing or falling, as the western flank of Buckland became the first to yield to the followers’ zeal and force.

  While to the north, when the sun reached its zenith, the moles who had been under Maella began their indomitable struggle to make their own way through. Mole after mole fell there, yet still they fought on, as the Siabodians took the surface route as directed by Maple, and fought a local fight such as all great battles know.

  All but three of Ystwelyn’s best died securing the first turn of the tide in the Buckland Marsh tunnels, but then it was those three who led the others on, wild and terrible, wounded yet unstoppable. Where the followers had died before now the Newborns fell, retreating in a haze of blood and fear, turning from a scourge they could hold back no more, fleeing into the dark tunnels of Buckland behind them, with nowhere else to go.

  Did Ystwelyn sense the loss of those seven great warriors to the north of him? Did he sense that now, now, now was the time when Maple needed him to advance across the Slopeside? Did he know?

  For Maple was in sudden retreat, driven back by a resurgence of the Newborn force, not knowing that the surge came not from courage and good leadership, but from retreat elsewhere which forced the Newborn moles back through the centre, back, back towards the Slopeside, and up against his force.

  For a moment he must have thought his end had come: retreating, battered, his warriors wounded and grim about him as they struggled to resist the torrent of guardmoles that now raised their talons upon them as the Newborns streamed suddenly back down through the surface exit.

  Now were those four followers he had placed there needed, fighting and struggling in a tiring, wearying, dreadful talon-to-talon fight to the very end. Newborn after Newborn fell until they tangled and obstructed each other, trying to rush forth and overwhelm the four moles who stanced their ground, shoulder to shoulder, one for all and all of everymole of them.

  In the midst, assaulted as it seemed from all sides, Maple must have thought the battle lost when suddenly Newborns tore in at him from the second smaller portal and he had only two followers to hold it, except...

  “Mole! Here, miscreant, face us!”

  And Maple turned, with only Weeth left at his flank, and there, at the broken seal-up into the Slopeside, having gained access by Stone knows what covert way, stanced the brooding malevolent form of a formidable mole.

  “Sapient!” roared Maple.

  “Yes,” hissed Sapient. His yellow eyes were venomous, he was smeared with the blood of everymole but himself, flanked by his own evil bodyguards, laughing, mad, filled with the lust for power and for blood. Or death.

  “Kill him, my moles, and the battle shall be ours,” he cried.

  No warrior could come to great Maple’s aid as he stanced facing the mole who would be tyrant of the south, and if not that, would take anymole with him into death. Maple knew then that the critical day had become the critical hour, and the critical hour the moment, and the moment was now. He raised his paws, roaring as he had bid the other followers do, and charged Sapient.

  What if two huge guardmoles stanced in his way? They reeled back before the speed and power of his blows as all the rage and tension of the long campaign found its expression in them.

  What if from somewhere else another Newborn broke through and charged Maple’s flank? Weeth felled him, and did not dally over killing him, nor from raising his bloody talons once more and rushing to his master’s flank.

  What if there were three more guardmoles between Maple and now fearful Sapient, his eyes widening, his retreat back through the seal-up beginning, and taking him all unknowing not into clear space, but straight into that pile of rotted death? Maple cared not, his bloody intent now only to kill the mole who led the Buckland brood, and whose death would signal the liberation of all the south!

  Maple raised his paws, the world still about him, his wounds of no consequence, and first one guardmole and then another fell before his brutal blows. And the third, the foulest and the cruellest of Sapient’s guards? What of him?

  He knew fear at last, he saw death, and he turned and tried to flee and Maple felled him from behind and wounded him, and he crawled away into the darkness of the Slopeside to die alone.

  It was the crux, the moment when all turned. Behind him, inspired by his example, Maple’s forces began to make ground once more, ever more swiftly. All fell before them, away into the foul recesses of Buckland, away to the defeat of the Newborns, and the victory of the followers.

  While from the surface, Ystwelyn himself was the first to break through the last faltering lines and rush down into the chamber where Maple fought, scattering the last of the Newborns, in time to see Maple raise his paws over the unrepentant form of Sapient, who had slipped into the inert pile of bones and skin and dried-up flesh, from which he struggled to stance upright as Maple’s paws bor
e down upon him.

  “No, mole, let him live!”

  But Maple saw only evil before him, and felt the dread and dangerous power of revenge in his own paws.

  “No, sir, leave him,” cried out Weeth, struggling to bring Maple to his senses and being hurled backwards for his pains. It was better that Sapient survived.

  “Noooo!”

  Perhaps it was Weeth’s voice that let out that final cry.

  Or Ystwelyn’s, too late to stop Maple doing what he should not do.

  Or Sapient’s own voice, as the talons of revenge and righteousness drove down upon him, into his face and eyes, blinding him and crushing him back down, down into that inert yet not quite lifeless matter they earlier sought so hard to avoid and that was now his final resting-place.

  Down into decay and the odour, pungent as death, of nettles amidst the blood. Aye, the fresh scent of nettles.

  “Noooo!” And it was Maple’s voice at last, staring at the bloodied, torn fur above his right paw where Sapient had tried to fend off his killing blow and where now, foul, wriggling, all opaque white, shiny and with stinging, questing jaws set in pointed, darting heads, talon worms attacked.

  “No...” whispered Weeth, seeking to brush the vile things out and off, and watching aghast. As he pulled Maple back, Sapient’s dead, blood-red head came up, opened its dead mouth, and was alive with the dangerous creatures. While there, in Maple’s wound, not deep but perhaps fatal now, the shiny tails of several talon worms wriggled and were gone as they seared their way into his living flesh. They had found a prey in which to incubate; they had found a new and better home.

  “’Tis nothing,” whispered Maple later, the victory complete. “I... feel... nothing.”

  Nothing but occasional light, stinging pains inside, and a mortal fear of worms that eat so slowly deep within, like shame, or guilt, or the sense of moral worthlessness.

  “I should not have... I should not have killed him, Weeth,” he whispered late that night.

  “Master, nomole blames you. Sapient deserved to die.”

  “But he should have been judged,” said Maple. “But I killed him myself, and none but me. By the Stone am I judged for killing in revenge. The worms live in me now, inside me, Weeth. I should have let him live and had him publicly arraigned. I should..!”

  Sounds of celebration came into the chamber where they stanced, Ystwelyn silent, sad, grief-stricken for the comrades he had lost.

  Yet Weeth was right: it was a famous victory. Few Newborns survived, not because, as Maple had feared, they were murdered in cold blood by a vengeful force, but because, more terribly perhaps, in their panic they had fled from west and north, from east and south, into Buckland’s communal chamber, fled and panicked, pushed and crushed, and there, too terrible to contemplate, occurred the largest massing of them.

  Crushed, suffocated, maddened by panic, the southern Newborn army died, killing itself in its own tunnels in a last frenzy of fear. Yet what mole should care? Once the fighting was finished, and moles investigated, they found horrors beyond imagining inside the Newborn cells – moles nearly starved to death; moles blinded; moles forced to kill and cannibalize their fellow captives to live.

  Yet such Newborn prisoners, living and sane, as were taken at Buckland, the wounded Maple ordered be set free, and they wandered off across those bloody fields, and were lost forever to moledom’s memory. Lost and known no more.

  Whilst on those fields, many followers lay dead and were never identified. Whilst others were dead, and known. Spurling, who would have been Fieldfare’s mate, died uttering her beloved name. And brave Furrow, he died, defending Myrtle who lived, proud to tell the tale. And two senior commanders, Whindrell and Runnel, the latter the lifelong friend of Stow, they bled their lives away in the fields of victory.

  Aye, and brave Noakes, younger than most, yet a mole who had given a lifetime of bravery and service to the followers’ cause. Somewhere in the tunnels he was lost, and fought a final battle on his own, against what odds nomole can know, and died unknown and never found.

  Two days passed, and the victors barely moved, but to wander those red fields and search the dykes, to find what friends they could, or listen to the grim, grey wind, and wish they heard more than silence on its breath. They heard no voices that they knew; nor any laughter from friends who would never laugh, or cry, again.

  Just the desolation.

  They heard the last plaints of lapwings, and the croak of rook and crow; they knew only loss, and wondered why victory caused such pain.

  This, they blankly knew, was the Battle of Buckland.

  These, they saw, were the rotten fruits of victory.

  Those were the days and the hours that Weeth, and Maple, and Ystwelyn and many more, swore nomole must ever glorify, nor praise, nor ever let moledom forget.

  Until, on the third day, Maple, his wound sore but healing, the stinging internal pains dying into a new and deeper pain, the guilt of what he had done invisible to all but himself, and Weeth, and Ystwelyn: great Maple, destroyer Maple, triumphant Maple, led them away.

  But as he looked back one final time to the fields where the Newborns had been crushed and vanquished, and where now rooks flew and darted down to feed on the dead, Maple said, “In what we did in Buckland there is no sound of Silence. There is no Light. There will be no Book of Silence found in this war that we fought.”

  Then Maple led a silent army of moles away from Buckland, and across the vales towards the south-east, not to seek victory, but to ask forgiveness at the Duncton Stone.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Hibbott was glad to leave the frenetic atmosphere around the cross-under by Duncton Wood, and head instead for Cuddesdon. Naturally he knew of its venerable past, and how a religious community had been established there a century before.

  No doubt, too, he had heard from other travellers that the place was of little account to the Newborns, and it was therefore likely to be a safe, as well as an interesting, sanctuary for a short time. Perhaps, in his innocence, Hibbott believed that he might return to the cross-under after a few days and find, miraculously, entry no longer obstructed by guardmoles.

  However it was, off he went. He seems to have made good time for a middle-aged mole, reaching Cuddesdon somewhat before dusk and clambering up its slopes quite openly, so that if anymole was about he might be easily seen.

  As it happened a mole was very much about, and that was Purvey, the sole surviving brother of the massacre first reported by Chater a long time before, and the same who had welcomed Hamble on his arrival from Caradoc, before he ventured on into Duncton Wood.

  Hibbott introduced himself and explained that he had come simply to see a system that had in its time been a famous centre for study and contemplation, and any relics and texts that might be there, adding, “... or old tunnels, and chambers and suchlike, which a pilgrim like me is always curious to see.”

  “Old tunnels? Old chambers?” said Purvey dismissively.

  “There are a few, I suppose, but hardly worth mentioning. The library chamber is the only thing worth preserving, though even that needs improvement. I had rather thought you had come to see our new tunnels, and new chambers.”

  “I was not aware...” began Hibbott, eyeing Purvey’s weedy stature and very much doubting whether such a mole could even think of creating anything new at all. He looked about the bleak slopes of Cuddesdon and wondered if solitude and isolation had affected the mole’s mind, and given him delusions of grandeur.

  “But I’m always happy to see anything new, if you want to show me that is,” he said.

  Purvey was only too eager to show him, then and there, before Hibbott even had time to get the grit and grime out of his talons and find some food. Which Hibbott, gentle mole that he was, yielded to without complaint.

  Delusion it certainly seemed to be, for he was led over a rutted, ruined surface, and past caved-in tunnels and chambers which spoke of the former glories of Cuddesdon of which he had
heard, but promised nothing new at all.

  “Not here, not here, mole,” said Purvey, hurrying him past part of a tunnel and a glimpse of a subterranean arch which he would have liked to explore further, “there’s nothing worth seeing down there. No, it’s all this way, on the south side, here.”

  They mounted a slight slope, turned a bend amongst some bedraggled undergrowth, and there came into view a sloping area of ground across which, to Hibbott’s astonishment, spread a whole host of recently delved mounds of soil and rock particles. It looked as if an army of moles had been at work.

  “This way,” said Purvey, beaming with proprietorial pride.

  Hibbott was led underground by way of a subtle slipway, from whose depths he heard the softest and most pleasant of wind-sound, like the running of a distant brook in summer. The lighting was varied and surprising, taking him from light of day into near-darkness and then, almost before he knew it, round a corner into light again to a wide, arched tunnel, of a style and solidity he had never seen before.

  “We thought this would be the entrance into the first of the chambers,” said Purvey, hurrying busily forward, talking almost like a mole with a new mate in the process of creating a new burrow ahead of a spring birthing, and not a religious brother whom Hibbott had taken to be celibate.

  When Hibbott went through the portal at the far end of the tunnel he found himself in a deeply delved chamber, full of light and shade, whose subtle lines and curves took a mole’s eye on and on and then around, and all the way back again. The wind-sound was still gentle, balanced, and whispered of tunnels and chambers beyond, one way and another, and peacefulness. It all made Hibbott want to stance down and contemplate.

  “It is remarkable,” said Hibbott, stopping and looking about appreciatively. “When did you...?”

  “Me? I do nothing! I provide them with food and a place to rest, and they delve. Don’t talk much, mind, which is a shame, even when they’re not delving.”