Duncton Rising (48 page)

But at the end, when they threatened him as a blasphemer and a “grike” he should not perhaps have hurled them bodily downslope off the last part of the Moors. They ended up shocked, badly bruised, strained, but worst of all with a pride sufficiently hurt that they took back to the Senior Brothers false stories of violence they had suffered from “moles of the Word”.

Had the Newborns left it at that, moledom might have heard no more about it, and Rooster and Hamble and their friends have stayed on the Moors and not strayed to the lower, greener and more wormful valleys to the west and south. But at the hint, false though it was, that there were still moles of the Word on the Moors, the Newborns sent out a punitive crusade of missionaries from Blagrove Slide and began a campaign of retribution for the imagined hurts the first four had suffered, in which isolated and harmless moles died, pups were taken, females left ravaged and alone. These were moles in small systems far from Rooster’s protection, for at first they attacked only on the northeastern fringes of the Moors. But emboldened by early success the Newborns made an incursion up the valley of the River Crowden and at Crowden itself, inhabited by then by a small number of unassuming moles, they subjected all they found to vile massacres as moles of the Word. Then all across the Moors a new fear went, and its victims turned to Rooster, who had saved them from Red Ratcher, to rid them of the curse of the Newborn moles.

So began the grim struggle through early March between Rooster and the Newborns, the first in which the Newborns found a foe worthy of the name; moles who fought back, and who rejected the Newborn sectarian faith not with words but with talons, asking nothing but that they be left in peace. This brief and bloody war on the Moors only ended when, after seeking to avoid a confrontation by retreat, which was against his nature, and attempts at negotiation led by the more conciliatory Hamble, Rooster was driven at last to stance his ground and lead his friends against the Newborns in the grim Battle of the Weign Stones.

Between them. Rooster and Hamble brilliantly routed the Newborns and killed a good many, the rest fleeing off the Moors back to the lowlands once more. But this time, sensing that it would not end there. Rooster led his band in pursuit and so began the bloody odyssey through eastern moledom to seek to end for ever the war the Newborns had begun. It was a local war that attracted the worst elements of the Newborns, including it is said the Brother Quail, not yet as powerful as he became, who here developed the bloody and cruel punishments and tortures which he later applied more sparingly through his Brother Inquisitors, and so gained power far beyond any authority vested in him by the Newborn creed.

Meanwhile, Rooster and the others were adjusting to the nature of the lowland territory they had invaded. It is hard for ordinary moles, reared to such things, to imagine the impact that the lowland vales of wormful plenty, of blossom, of warmer winds and clear waters of brooks and streams had on moles reared only to the bleak wormless wilderness of the Moors. To the taciturn Rooster, uniquely sensitive to form and shape, texture and sound, this was a kind of paradise. But it was one marred by the continued and to him inexplicable assaults of the Newborns, who harried them wherever they went, and never seemed to give up. “Teaching the Newborns a lesson’, which was all the “strategy” that Rooster and Hamble then really had, was proving far more difficult than they had thought.

But what made matters infinitely worse for Rooster was that it was there in the beautiful lowlands that he had his worst, most violent, and final argument with Lime. She had been as taken as he was by the gentleness of the landscapes they found themselves in, and her desire to have pups increased; she wanted to settle down, and be done with all fighting against the Newborns, and against Rooster.

“She simply wanted pups, like any female,” whispered Hamble to Weeth, expanding on a part of the tale that Rooster refused to talk about. “And then, tragically as it turned out, she
got
with pup.”

“Why tragic?” asked Weeth in surprise.

“Because she fatally chose to tell Rooster, for reasons of argument or vindictiveness, that they were not
his
pups. I have never in my life seen him so angry – which is, of course, just what Lime wanted. After that she could not get him to believe they
were
his, and I myself had to pull him off her or else I swear she would have been killed. First his father, then the mole he got with pup!”

“Can you be sure they were his?” said Weeth.

“I am sure,” said Hamble sadly. “She loved him as passionately as Privet had done, as all moles do. She taunted, she made foolish claims, but she would never have gone with another mole,
never!”

“I believe you, Hamble, I believe you!” said Weeth, surprised at his passion about the matter after so many mole-years. “What happened to her?”

“A female changes when she is with pup, and for the first time in her life Lime had others to think of but herself. I think, too, she saw in the lowland vales a gentleness and beauty that showed her a new way of living. She grew disgusted by the violence of the struggle with the Newborns, and with the mole she felt that Rooster had become. Then too she envied her sister Privet, you know, and often talked wistfully of the journey I had led Privet to the start of, to Beechenhill and, as she imagined – and as has been proved right by your account – to Duncton Wood.

“One day at the beginning of April, after her last argument with Rooster, she simply slipped away. For all the searches that we made, and the roaring and rage that Rooster showed, we did not find her, and she did not come back. I have known other moles of our group do the same, I have been tempted to do it myself – to slip away, to change a name, to become anonymous. Well, that is what Lime did.”

Weeth looked searchingly at Hamble, a clever mole experienced in subtleties studying a simple warrior whose nature was not devious or clever, only loyal, and honest, and good.

“You know more about it than you’re saying,” said Weeth.

Hamble was silent for a long time. Moles came and went. Across the chamber Rooster stirred and stared and frowned, and dozed. Afternoon came. Weeth waited patiently, and watched Hamble’s face.

“Aye,” sighed Hamble at last, “I know something. I said she confided in me sometimes, and so she did. She, talked to me the day before she left. “I’ve changed, Hamble,” says she. “The fight’s gone from me. These pups
are
Rooster’s, but by the Stone I don’t want him to raise them, to influence them as Red Ratcher influenced him. I don’t want their lives to be fugitive and violent like his and mine have been. I want something better for them than we have had, or we can give.”

“That’s what she said and next day she was gone. Slipped away to anonymity to raise those pups, the pups of a Master of the Delve, where he would never be able to see them, or touch them.”

“At the beginning of April, you say?” said Weeth, with a strange look in his eye and a wondering tone to his voice, and a glance about the chamber, from Hamble to Rooster, and from Rooster to the darkest shadows.

“Aye, that’s when she went. We saw no more of her, and I wasn’t going to tell Rooster all I knew. In a way I agreed with her – best let her have her pups where none knew who their father was, and would never know. I have often thought of her, and prayed to the Stone that she had her way.”

“At the beginning of April,” mused Weeth again.

“Aye, what of it?”

“’Tis nothing,” said Weeth hastily, though clearly it was. “But Rooster, what did he feel about it all?”

“Remorse. Loss. Grief He went into a kind of mourning. His life was blighted and I think that if he had not had about him moles who loved him he would have gone mad. Indeed, he did go mad for a time, and it was then that we turned away from the conflict with the Newborns and travelled north until we found ourselves in blessed Beechenhill. High, well made, a place of legend and holiness to us Moorish moles, a place of sanctuary. There were but a few moles there, and the remnants of a library, and the Newborns left us well alone – glad to be rid of us no doubt.

“All through those summer years Rooster tried to find himself. I think he tried to begin delving again, but the spirit had gone from him and he felt cursed. One after another he had lost moles he loved – Glee and Humlock, Samphire, Privet, the Charnel moles like Hume who did not long survive the journey from the Moors, and finally Lime, and with her, as he came to realize, his own pups, the pups he would never know.

“Rooster feels things deeper than most moles I know, and has the courage to turn towards his dark feelings and face them in the desert that he has made in his heart. Had he allowed himself to do what his paws longed to do, which was to delve, I believe he might have put all his shame and guilt and anger – misplaced though it mostly was – out of himself and into delvings. But he believed he had broken the vows against violence he had made as a delver in the Charnel, and had no right to do the one thing that might have given him release from the dark torments of remorse. Of all his friends only I was left, and these few companions here. How could I leave him, unhappy though I was, and lonely too? Do you think I did not want a mate? Do you think I felt happy to have as my task the tending of a half-mad Master of the Delve?”

“But you loved him,” said Weeth quietly, his eyes glancing to Rooster once more, all dark, and rough, and fearsome, and most courageously alone.

“Yes, I loved him,” said Hamble, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But Stone knows that through the years I have also longed for a different life. I wanted female company, a true companion to share my tunnels, aye, and to raise our young. But what females would share a life with a fool who before all else puts a vision that the mole he follows and helps is a Master of the Delve? None that I ever met! Yes, I loved him, and love him still, just as Privet loved him. But I have also warned him long since that fighting and death is not to be our way any more. Of that I was tired, and that was surely not his proper way. I was the only one left he trusted, or respected, and I felt that gave me the responsibility to nurture as best I could this mystery that was – that is – his continuing burden, the delving arts. Since Beechenhill he has known that I will not tolerate killing in the way we killed the Newborns during our war with them, justified though most of it seemed at the time. Defend himself if he must, but if ever I see him kill another mole when there’s a better way to achieve his end then he’s lost the truest friend he’ll ever have.

“There must be another way than killing, though
I
cannot tell you what it is. If a mole threatens me with death, or my kin or my friends, then I would kill to save myself or them. But not Rooster’s way, which is passionate and violent, and sometimes unnecessary. No, not that way.”

“So how come you are here in Caradoc, and imprisoned?”

“Ah, yes,” growled Hamble, “this was against our better judgement. But emissaries came from the Newborns, claiming to be from Thripp himself indeed, suggesting that the librarians in Beechenhill – a timid couple of elderly moles – might venture here as delegates. I suggested that we ourselves might come if we were given safe passage, and though Rooster was reluctant, well, I persuaded him. But when we came close to Caradoc we were led
here
on some pretext or another.”

“You were fooled,” observed Weeth quietly.

“Aye, even moles of the Moors can be fooled,” said Hamble. “They have told us little, but that our lives might be in danger if we venture up on to Caer Caradoc itself, because of the Newborns we killed those moleyears ago up in the Moors. We could have put up a struggle, I suppose, but as I’ve said, I wanted things more peaceable. Now —”

“Now,” said Weeth, “I would say you – we – are in considerable danger. Oh yes, I scent Newborn treachery here. We’ll have to get out, and this night if we can.”

“You said there is a way...”

“I did! But it all depends on the right mole coming. But of that I am quietly confident, since I have begun to think in recent days that the Stone is in all of this, more deeply than a pragmatic mole like me would normally concede. As a matter of fact, in one particular regard your tale rather confirms it.”

“Which is?”

“Ah, no, I prefer to remain silent upon
that.
It is but a faint and unconfirmed possibility, and as such I had best keep it to myself.”

“What is?”

But Weeth would say no more, turning back instead to the possibility of escape. “Now, listen. There’s likely to be only one way and one chance of getting out of here, and you had better face the fact, Hamble, that moles may die in the attempt. But if we stance here long enough we’ll die anyway. This is what I suggest you do, and you had better first find a mole resolute enough to be agreeable to doing something most unpleasant and risky and —”

“
I’ll
do it if it will help get us safely out of here,” said Hamble stoutly.

“You had better wait and hear what it is,” said Weeth with a grin.

And when Hamble had, he was still resolved to be the volunteer, though once he had told Rooster the plan, and those others with them had fully understood what their roles might be, not a mole there including Rooster himself but volunteered for the “unpleasant” task that Weeth had warned Hamble must be done. But in the end, as often before in such matters, Hamble had his way. One by one, with feigned casualness, the moles assembled near the portal, Hamble nearest of all but for Weeth himself, who having conceived the plan now positioned himself where he could see out into the chamber beyond, ready to take the slim chance he was looking for if it should offer itself, and signal to the others to act as he had told them to.

Early evening had come, dusk was settling in, and the moles did their best to laugh and banter as they had before. One persuaded their captors to let him out and up to the surface to groom, and he was able to confirm the number and disposition of the guards, who most ominously were now more numerous than before, and looking grim indeed.