“Protect Privet?” replied Squilver, still managing to sound triumphant. “You’re too late. She gave herself up to the protection of the Elder Senior Brother to make obeisance to him, and to offer herself to him, as Thripp has done. You are too late to give her protection now!”
But now Squilver suddenly looked afraid, as a mole might well look who sees the great tide almost upon him that will sweep him aside for ever.
“Too late?” roared Rooster.
Squilver’s face showed anger and surprise, dismay and finally bewilderment, for what was advancing on him was more than he could ever have imagined; more than anymole could imagine.
“Yes, yes, too late,” he gabbled, his voice rising to a scream that it might be heard, that his message might be known, “the holy ordination of the Elder Senior Brother Quail by the anointing of the blood and the transmutation of the flesh of others into his has already begun.”
Then Squilver fell away and was lost for ever beneath the marching, taloned paws of time.
Chapter Forty
It had begun, the ritual of anointment had begun...
Yet not so late perhaps that Privet might not be saved; nor so late that moles were not already apaw in the tunnels of the Marsh End and High Wood before Rooster, Chervil and the others came into Duncton.
It was but a day and a half since Privet had so strangely come to the cross-under and been admitted as quietly and as easily as if she were a mole making an afternoon visit in answer to an invitation made long before. A lifetime of a day, ten lifetimes more of half a day, to Pumpkin and Hamble and the rebels in the High Wood who had heard from Sturne of her coming, and had been wondering since what they might do about it.
As long, too, had that day and a half been to Arvon and his covert group, who, ignoring all the advice of Hibbott that Privet might not wish to be rescued, and the later pleas of Arliss and Rees, who were quite sure that more killing to rescue her was not what she would want, had bravely and brilliantly entered Duncton by way of its marshy north end.
Moles knowing the history of both these groups and their indomitable courage and unswerving purpose in the cause of traditional worship of the Stone, will not doubt that they had done – no, they were doing their best to devise some means by which they might bypass the heavy guard that Squilver had placed about the Stone, to reach Privet and anymole-else who needed help.
Certainly Arvon, who knew the secrets of Pumpkin’s rebels in the High Wood as well as any mole then living, had no doubt at all of what Pumpkin and his friends would be up to.
“If only we can reach them, or let them know we are coming and that they can rely on us, then perhaps something positive may be made of this,” Arvon had said, when the decision to try to infiltrate Duncton had been agreed.
Of the ascent of the embankment north of the cross-under, of the killing and hiding of three guardmoles before they crept into the dangerous marshy ground that lies beyond the Marsh End, and of the bloody fight to enter the Marsh End itself, we need not here relate. We know of what Arvon was capable, and those with him, and we may be sure that having guessed that time would be against them they did not hesitate in what they did.
But Brother Inquisitor Fetter was no fool, and he had had time, plenty of time, in the molemonths of the autumn and since news of the arrival of Quail in Banbury, to prepare Duncton Wood against attack and invasion from any flank. More than that, Squilver had long since deployed some of his force to Duncton, and these guardmoles, added to those already in residence, were enough to create a ring of talons about the system’s edge, north, south, east and west, if not quite the marshy ground as well.
There is always a way in, as Arvon was in the habit of saying, but this time, there might not be a way beyond that.
For there were more than enough guardmoles to go round, which was why Fetter, determined as he was to be the one who had the honour of seeing Quail safely ordained and exalted into greatness before the Stone, had disposed so many moles about the High Wood.
So, bold and brave though Privet’s rescuers might be, the chances of any of them getting through, especially such a small force as Arvon’s, or so debilitated a one as Pumpkin’s, were slim.
News of the deaths caused by invaders on the northern end of the roaring owl embankment reached Fetter and Squilver soon enough for them to deploy more guardmoles down to that end of the Wood, so that even as Arvon’s party reached the Marsh End it was seen, ambushed, and decimated.
Yet even so, with half his force dead, and the rest, including himself, wounded, Arvon broke through and made his escape into the narrow dank tunnels of the Marsh End; here he was forced to lie low through the night that followed, as moles hunted for them, quartered the tunnels where they had gone to ground, and waited for the dawn.
The same dawn which saw the coming of Thorne’s army; and dawn of the same day that saw the arrival of Rooster on the valeside above the cross-under, and when Maple led his army, and the pilgrim force that followed it, up out of the south to the cross-under.
Trapped, hunted, desperate, the weakening Arvon led his few moles on, and as the skies darkened that day he broke out again. More died, his force was smaller, his hopes decreasing, but out into the tunnels of the Eastside he went, whilst his pursuers, fooled for a time, headed for the Westside. Yet what could so few hope to do against so many, knowing not where Privet was, nor what the Newborns intended?
But Stone help the mole who tried to get in their way...
“Talk, bastard. Where would followers be? Eh? Talk!”
The Stone did not help the hapless guardmole who had fallen into Arvon’s paws, and now lay helpless in the tunnel he had been patrolling, his companion already dead and he faced by talons not poised to kill him, but to cause him pain.
“Don’t know. None left alive in the main system. Honest, honestttttschhh!” His scream would have been heard had it not been muffled by Arvon himself. The dark side of warriorship.
“Only followers are in the High Wood. Rebels, starving. Dead probably.”
“Where’s Quail?”
“The Elder...?”
“Quail?”
The guardmole began to cry. All moles will if hurt enough.
“Everymole’s up by the Stone. Brother Inquisitor’s prepared it. Thripp —”
“Thripp?”
The mole’s eyes widened, a talon began to turn and then stopped and was withdrawn; the mole breathed easier, broken now, eager, desperate to say what little he knew.
“Thripp’s been kept up there for three days now. Waiting for the coming of the Eld... the... of Quail. They’ll all be there.”
They kept the mole alive, and with them: he might be useful. Then, through that day, slowly, silently, secretly, Arvon began the long journey by shadow and by stealth, by the secluded root and the ruined portals of tunnels fit only for diseased stoats and voles, up the Slopes towards the Stone.
“We’ll be too late...”
“Try going faster and we’ll be too dead,” said one of his Siabodian friends, wry and ironic even in this, their most dangerous hour.
Pumpkin and Hamble had no idea that anymole other than themselves might be trying to reach the Stone to help Privet, if she was there. Dreadfully isolated since the departure of Weeth, Arvon and the others, the territory available to them ever more encroached upon and watched over by the Newborns, it had sometimes seemed that it was faith not food that sustained them.
Sometime in October, as the weather grew colder and insect life declined towards winter somnolence, the mole-months of semi-starvation began to take their toll, and some of them began to die. Already by then the twenty or so moles who had originally fled with Pumpkin had dropped to only twelve in all, with three lost to the Newborns and seen no more, and the rest dying from natural causes, if stress and weight-loss, and an abandonment of hope, be deemed “natural” in a system that ought to be wormful for allmole, and was blessed by the presence of the Stone.
For his part Pumpkin was
always the first to do without and to offer what little food he had to others more needful of it than himself. The first, too, to say that but for Hamble’s coming, and the advice and training he had given on survival, they would all by now be lost. Now, even Hamble looked gaunt and weak, and sometimes felt listless and unable to summon up the energy to inspire others as he had when he first came.
Yet, such was the inner spirit of this suffering refugee community of Duncton moles, in whom the last vestiges of the Duncton spirit might be said to survive, that when one was down, another found strength to be the source of inspiration. The female Elynor, mother of Cluniac, was one who would raise her spirits and those of others when Hamble or Pumpkin, or both of them, were low.
“Now, now, we’re not defeated yet. We’ll... we’ll sing a song! We’ll tell a tale!”
“We’ll have two worms each this evening!” rasped one old male, grinning toothlessly, and chuckling feebly to himself at the thought of it.
“You shall!” Elynor might say, and that mole did, once at least. For she deputed everymole to search and search again, to take little risks if need be, to find those extra worms, that the old mole’s fancy might come true.
“Not two each,” declared Elynor that same evening, “but two for you, mole, and with all our love.”
“For me?” whispered the old mole, staring at the two thin, sour worms that were all that could be found, yet seemed a feast to him. “No, no, not for me, I couldn’t eat so much!”
“You eat ’em, and tell us how good they are!” declared Hamble, who until then had been low for days past, but whose spirit revived to see such real communion.
“Those worms have your name scribed on them!” said Pumpkin.
“Well, you ought to know, seeing as you’re a library aide and knows about such things!” said the mole. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll eat them as best I may and what’s left can be shared out between you all, for a wise mole accepts a gift in the spirit in which it’s given.”
He ate, and truly, not one who watched him felt envy or greed or disappointment when he ate the lot, and slept afterwards as he might have done when a pup after the feast of Longest Night.
“Bless him,” said Elynor.
“Bless us all,” responded Pumpkin, “and may the Stone continue to give us such blessings, and the strength to do right, to be strong, and to have faith that one day all will be well in Duncton Wood once more. And may the Stone give its protection to all those we love: Maple, who is fighting for us; Weeth, his friend, who so courageously came here to see us – may he be safe; Cluniac, Elynor’s son and the mole who saved my life; and that mole Noakes, who came to us from Seven Barrows where Fieldfare helps refugees survive as we are here, Stone be with both of them; and Privet and all the moles she loves.
“And Whillan, her son, in whose life as you all know I have faith. Wherever he is, whether in the Silence as most moles say, or somewhere in moledom, safe and struggling, as I believe... Stone, give him strength.”
So Pumpkin had prayed that night when their hard-pressed community found extra food for one of their own; and so he had often prayed before, and since.
In all that time, with the exception of Cluniac, none had guessed the vital role that Sturne had played in giving Pumpkin the information he needed to lead his friends from one peripheral tunnel to another, or to bid them lie low and still for a search would be on for several days yet; or to say that it would be unwise to go worm-hunting after dark out on the pastures, for that area was under special scrutiny.
If any guessed that he had such a source of information, none declared it, and nor did any ever question him when he said, even when much danger was about, “Well, I think I’ll just pop up to the surface to contemplate the stars and have a little time alone.”
“My dear, I wish you wouldn’t go,” Elynor might sometimes say.
Pumpkin would only smile at her, as he did at Hamble, or any other mole who tried to stop him. Then he would say, “This is our system, our High Wood, not theirs, and I will assert my right to be free in it, if only for a little time, and at night, and in shadows.”
This was the nearest Pumpkin ever came to a lie, and even then it was half true, for he was asserting his right, and he did pause and contemplate the better past, and what he hoped would be the better time to come. But then he would creep away surreptitiously to make a rendezvous with Sturne, and learn what he could that might help towards their continuing survival.
Then, at the end of October, after many previous failures to reach their meeting-place near the library because so many guardmole patrols were about, Pumpkin succeeded in seeing Sturne again, and heard for the first time that Thripp had been “delivered” to Duncton Wood and was now being kept up in the Slopes nearest to the Stone, and that Elder Senior Brother Quail was expected very soon.
“Keep going, Pumpkin,” urged Sturne, “for now all must surely change. I have heard that Quail’s forces are in disarray since Brother Commander Sapient went hurrying south following Avebury’s fall to Maple.”
“Avebury! No longer in Newborns’ paws! Blest be! Oh, blest be, Sturne!” cried out Pumpkin, so far unable to contain himself that he threw his paws about the chilly exterior of Sturne and... well... embraced him.
“Yes, yes, that may be, that may be, Pumpkin!” said Sturne, always most discomfited by such demonstrations of emotion. “But over-excitement is not going to help.”
“Joy, not excitement!” interjected Pumpkin.
“Well, yes, of course... joy...” said Sturne, the word so unfamiliar to him that he could hardly get his mouth round its soft and happy sound. I had forgotten that it is so long since we were able to meet that you did not know about Avebury. Fetter is naturally very worried indeed. He sees it as a threat to his hope that he will be host to Quail here, and honoured in some way. Having heard that Senior Brother Skua is out of favour with Quail, perhaps Fetter is hoping that he will be promoted.”
“Ah...” said Pumpkin, never much interested in such intrigues.
“Suffice it to say, much is changing and we need to keep in touch. Therefore, I shall strive to be...” and here they made a further arrangement which, though dangerous, was a feasible way of getting information daily to Pumpkin if something of significance happened. So it was that when at the beginning of November something of the gravest significance happened, Pumpkin knew about it that same day.
“I haven’t got long,” whispered Sturne from out of the gloom of the ruined side tunnel that was their meeting-place.
“What’s apaw, Sturne? There seem to be more guardmoles about than ever, and though we’ve tried to get to the Stone since I last saw you, it has been quite impossible. Is Thripp still there?”
“He is. But it’s Privet...”
Pumpkin’s heart sank, and the world began to darken, for it must be bad news.
“Mole, Pumpkin,” said Sturne, coming forward to give support to his lifelong friend, “she’s alive. She’s here. She’s —”
“Here in Duncton?” gasped Pumpkin, the tunnel swimming darkly about him once more.
Sturne held on to him, surprised at how thin he was, how old he seemed.
“What have they done to you?” he whispered, as Pumpkin came round for the second time. “May the Stone bring such evil to an end soon. Yes, mole, she’s in Duncton Wood. In the High Wood.”
“Here in the High Wood?” repeated Pumpkin faintly. “I must go to her!”
“You’ll do no such thing, mole. They’ve taken her to the Stone, and I fear the worst, for Quail now is here as well.”
“Quail...?” whispered Pumpkin; all this news was too much to take in.
“Aye,” said Sturne grimly, “Quail himself, Stone help us. And Snyde, and all their brood of hangers-on and evildoers, and guardmoles whose talons drip with the blood of innocents. Now listen. Small and weak though the few moles you lead are, they are all Privet has, along with myself. I do not know what we can hope to achieve against such numb
ers of malevolent moles as Quail commands, but we must do something. We have a little time, a day or two perhaps, for Quail is ill and was tired from his journey and must rest. Snyde is anxious that he looks his best for his ritual before the Stone.”
“Snyde’s here too? It sounds as if every evil mole in moledom has descended upon us. Hmm... Well, even if we could, we must try to do nothing by force,” said Pumpkin without hesitation, “for that is not Privet’s way, and nor was it the Master Librarian’s.”
“No, mole, it was not,” agreed Sturne. “But what other means we have at our disposal I do not know.”
“Faith, moral strength, purpose of will, liberty of thought,” whispered Pumpkin, “these are all that are left to us. But they are everything, I think, if only we had a mole strong enough and wise enough to lead us. But...”
“You, Pumpkin, you are that mole.”
“Me?” said Pumpkin, always surprised when anymole dubbed him leader, or even wise, for humility was his second name.
Sturne nodded. “For myself I can promise only this, Pumpkin. I will not raise my paws in aggression against anymole, not even Quail himself. But I shall get as close to Privet as I can, and if any try to harm her I shall put myself in the way of their talons.”
Pumpkin looked at Sturne, and regretted that nomole-else heard his words, or saw what courage and purpose his friend showed.
“Now, you had better go back to the rebels. I know no more than I have told you – except that it would seem that Quail is planning some ritual or other before the Stone, involving himself, and for this he may need to consult not only Snyde, but me as well. So I may be able to delay things a little.”
“The more time the better, Sturne, that we may have space to find something we can do.”
Few communal debates in moledom’s long past can have been more touching, nor more significant in its moral history, than that between the hard-pressed and physically weak followers who had hidden so long around the tunnels of the High Wood, about what they might do to help Privet. Let there be no doubt in anymole’s mind that old and starved though many of these moles were, there was no lack of desire to be up and away across to the Stone, whatever the consequences.