Duncton Found (111 page)

Out of this unnatural gloom, henchmoles and groups of Merrick’s guardmoles returned empty pawed, drifting from across the fields, frustrated of their prey, disgruntled at the lack of mole to hurt, their expectations of violence utterly thwarted by the disappearance of the Beechenhill moles.

It was known that Squeezebelly and the rest were not far to the north-west, but were safely sequestered in tunnels and chambers which, those who had tried to go there confirmed, nomole could safely attack.

But by now the rumour had gone about that perhaps the guardmoles should not be there at all, that they were on a mission which was not approved or ordained by the Master. And worse: the Master himself was coming, if not to Beechenhill then to Ashbourne. Now was added to this news of the strange and ominous happenings associated with the barbing of the Stone Mole, and the sense that if they were to be anywhere here it was not near the Stone.

Perhaps fortunately, Merrick had established a firm discipline in Ashbourne and the large gathering of moles about the place now was under the eyes of forceful and respected guardmoles, themselves as aware as any of the risk to themselves should the Master appear.

For the most part, therefore, the guardmoles settled down some way from the Stone, and left the tormenting of the mole on the wire to the henchmoles. If there was any sport to be had at all it was to watch and hear the violent ramblings of the eldrene Wort by the Stone, who seemed to be trying to invoke the wrath of the Word upon the barbed mole, though why it was hard to see since the mole seemed all but dead.

This sullen, dreary scene was made the stranger by the looming of heavy air as the afternoon wore on, accompanied by the fearsome sight of the clouds above them swirling and turning violently above a land from which all wind had fled.

A few moles sought comfort in the tunnels below, but there the air was heavier still and such worms as they found were limp and sweating, and made a mole ill to look at. It was a day to endure, an afternoon in which a mole dozed in fits and starts and nightmares, and shuddered awake again.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Yet even in a place of such spiritual dereliction as Beechenhill had become that afternoon, courage and hope may still be found.

Among the brooding guardmoles there came privily, by routes surreptitious, yet still exposed should a grike have looked the wrong way, one of those brave watchers Squeezebelly had left secreted within the system.

The watcher had learnt a little of what had been going on, and guessed that a mole was being tormented near the Stone, but more he knew not. Yet something in the heavy atmosphere, and something about the sense of waiting in the system, gave him courage to venture forth, and the Stone guided his paws and took him by degrees to that part of the system beyond the wire fence where few grikes had gone.

How near to the Stone Mole he went we cannot tell, but near enough it seems to sense that the barbed mole was more than mole.

He stared aghast, uncertain what he saw, or what moles hung there, knowing only that one was alive, and about him there was strange light. He watched, which was his task, and listened, and sensing deep suffering, he prayed.

The hanging mole, the one alive, stirred in the morbid light, and half turned the watcher’s way, and the watcher saw a staring eye, and the eye looked gently and was full of care. The watcher knew he looked upon a holy mole.

Tray not for the Stone Mole but for these lost moles who torment themselves through him,” he heard Beechen say, and knew it was the Stone Mole he saw hanging there. Then the Stone Mole turned back again and cried out as best he could, “Stone, what more can I do here? What more?”

“Renounce the Stone,” the watcher heard a female whisper, “and yield thyself to the peace and discipline of the Word and we shall let thee live.”

The Stone Mole was silent a long time, and then he stirred and said in a rasping voice filled with pain, “Grant that my thirst is satisfied, grant it to me, father.”

The watcher heard the female reply, “Aye, mole, thy thirst shall be satisfied but only by the Word...” Her voice faded as the air was suddenly heavier still and then with a cracking roar the skies opened up with a thundering downpour of rain.

In the first moments of its beginning the watcher turned back underground knowing he must go to the Castern Chambers and tell Squeezebelly what he had seen. The deluge was so great that when he reached the tunnels he was deafened by the rain above, and as he ran on he saw that in places the walls were darkening with wet and great drips were coming down. On he went, and quicker, as Squeezebelly had trained him to, for hanging there by the Stone his system loved was the Stone Mole, and he needed aid.

On and on he went, the sound of his racing paws matching the drumming of the deluge coming from above.

But even as the watcher ran frantically on, the image of the hanging Stone Mole before him all the time, the rain brought havoc into the Castern Chambers, and the worst fears of Holm came true.

Holm had felt the air grow heavier as the afternoon wore on, and again and again had urged Squeezebelly to get them out. The great mole had resisted that, but agreed to evacuate his moles from the deep moister chambers, though that meant they had become short of space and even more irritable, whilst separating them still further from the elderly moles and pregnant females who stayed on in the small and most distant chamber because it was the driest of them all.

“No, no, no!” Holm said again and again. “Out, out, out!”

Yet when the rain first began there had been no change at all in the water in the chambers – the streams flowed the same, the lakes’ levels were unaltered, and all that got wet were the white-green plants underneath the roof fissures, where water fell from outside.

This seemed to prove Squeezebelly’s point, and the moles stayed where they were, though because of Holm’s insistence none yet returned to the deeper and more comfortable chambers, except for one who volunteered to go down through the tunnels and ensure that the elderly moles and pregnant females were dry and safe.

They were, and the little stream that separated them off was quite unaffected by the rain outside. But then a new noise came, and the chambers were filled with a frightening roaring and raging of approaching sound.

“Sir! Out! All of us!” shouted Holm, and his conviction communicated itself to the others.

“Out, out!” they cried and but for Squeezebelly’s mighty shout and command to keep calm they might have panicked and rushed for the exits. This was not like Beechenhill moles at all, but there was something in the oppressive air, something unsettling and violent, and even Sleekit, as calm and disciplined a mole as could be found, felt it now.

But one thing the roaring did was to make Squeezebelly determined to get Harebell and the others back through to them now, and accordingly he deputed two trusted moles to go down to fetch them, along with Sleekit and Harrow, who wanted to be with Harebell, and Holm as well, since he would stay calmer if he did something.

The distance was not far, but it was downslope and each step they took the roaring seemed to grow louder, and the air, previously quite still, was rushing and almost gale force against them at some tunnel turns.

When they came to the greatest of the chambers, the one at the far side of which, through a short tunnel, the others were hiding, they heard and then saw a new flow of water. It was a rushing, threshing fall into the lake from a fault that had been dry before, and it was plain that the lake was rising and inexorably spreading out and flooding the chamber.

At first they tried to skirt it but this took too long and so they splashed their way across what had formerly been a dry floor. The silently moving water’s edge was a mass of fleeing cockroaches, each scrabbling over others in their efforts to escape, and many already engulfed by water and swimming; and some drowning.

Up the short tunnel they went, the roaring ever louder and the sense of imminent flooding greater still, and up into the chamber where Harebell and the others were hiding. There a scene of horror met their eyes.

The stream they had formerly been able to ford so easily was now a torrent rushing by and threatening soon to overflow the eroded channel in which it ran. Beyond, though now unreachable, the chamber was dry enough but where seven or eight moles had been there were now twenty. Grike guardmoles had fought their way in and attacked the Beechenhill moles. Squeezebelly’s plans had gone more than awry: they had failed.

Such future as Beechenhill had was taken now, and with it Harebell, whom they could see rounded up against a wall with others there, including Quince.

Harrow stanced by the torrent of water and cried out his rage and loss as he watched Harebell being pushed from the chamber and out of sight. The helplessness of the watching moles was made worse by the fact that the guardmoles did not hear them against the noise, and worse still as they were forced to stand by as the grikes rounded on the elderly males who had been separated off from the females and now horribly taloned them down towards the rushing, sucking water of the swollen stream. They shouted, they cried out, and then, more terribly still, the seeming loss of Harebell, followed by this cold murder of moles, became too much for Harrow.

As Holm, who knew water better than any mole, cried “No!” and tried to stop him, a madness of anger or loss gripped Harrow and, heaving little Holm off, he dived into the water in a wild, hopeless bid to reach the other side and... and what? What could he have done? This was but the first of the madness seen in the hours just begun.

Harrow’s front paws made only one stroke and then half a second before his body was grabbed and turned in the water, and half sucked down, and then rushed along hard into a rock. They saw him struggle for a moment, they saw his snout gasp up and a paw reach feebly out, and then he was gone from them forever into the dark, sucking place into which the torrent flowed.

Grikes on the far side saw them, and gesticulated and jeered, as Holm and Sleekit and the other two were forced to watch those old Beechenhill moles taloned into the stream that had just taken Harrow.

Numbed now with shock, Sleekit took command of the abortive expedition and, turning them round, ordered them all back the way they had come. Back they went into the great chamber, and found its floor was all wet now and the air was thick with cockroaches seeking to escape the water yet unable to fly far. Through it all the moles half splashed and half swam until they reached the far side, where they paused and looked back and saw water gushing out of the tunnel from which they had just escaped. On, on through a nightmare of flooding, Holm leading now, and Sleekit behind, the place littered, crawling, slimy with dying and drowned creatures which the flood had driven from their subterranean lairs.

They arrived back at the high chambers to find that Squeezebelly and the others had all but given up hope that they were alive. Already half the moles had been got out to the tunnels nearer the surface, and Squeezebelly was overseeing the evacuation of the rest.

His joy at their return was immediately destroyed by the desperate news they brought: Harrow lost, moles murdered, Harebell, Quince and the others, including Henbane, taken....

While their own relief to have reached Squeezebelly again was overtaken by the news a watcher had brought of the barbing by the Stone of a mole who might be, who surely was, from all that the watcher said, the Stone Mole himself.

There was wildness now in Squeezebelly’s eye, the same Sleekit and Holm had seen already so fatally overtake Harrow. At his flank Bramble and Skelder and other such moles were angry and working towards a fight, and it was plain that if Squeezebelly did not lead them out against the grikes they would take themselves there anyway.

But he was not reluctant now, nor doubtful, but rather looked as if the care of years had gone from him and he was ready to do what he must have wished to do long before.

He got the moles together in a chamber along the way, with every tunnel off it packed with his system’s moles. Though there was no rain for now on the surface, here below the tunnels were wet and dripping.

“Harebell and the other females with pup have been taken,” Squeezebelly shouted, “and no doubt if we go in search of them up Castern way we shall be ambushed and taken or killed ourselves.

“Our better chance is to attack the grikes in the very centre of Beechenhill: at the Stone. We know they are there because we have news of a desecration before our Stone, news that suggests that the Stone Mole himself is being barbed there even now.” The moles were hushed at this, and angry too.

“For long I have resisted the temptation to fight the grikes, for reasons you well know. Others here have argued in favour of war and today I put my support behind them. I cannot any more resist their call to fight and if I must go by myself I shall. I pray that one day a mole shall come to this place who knows better than I the non-violent way. But I do not, and that way has nearly led to the loss of us all, for surely we would have died here in the Castern Chambers but for the warnings by Holm.