Duncton Rising (72 page)

“Heard you,” said Rooster with characteristic brevity. Privet only laughed and touched him in a gentle, familiar way to which Whillan responded with, of all things, a pang of possessive jealousy which took him by surprise.

“We’ll talk later, all of us,” said Privet. “Now, Maple, you’re in charge, so you had better get us to a place of safety.”

“Since it’s Longest Night nomole will expect us to travel far, and I daresay the Newborns will delay their full pursuit of us until the night
’s
rituals are done. They’ll start early, hoping to catch up with us. Therefore we will travel hard and fast tonight and tomorrow and not rest until we are satisfied we have found a place in which we can safely hide.”

Nomole disagreed, and with Maple in front and Whillan and Weeth taking up the rear, the party set off downslope once more. When they reached the bottom of the steep hillside Maple found a route that went north and south.

“We’ll go north,” he said, “for that’s not the way they’ll expect us to go.”

So north they went, and not one of them looked back.

PART V

Duncton Rising

Chapter Thirty-One

They travelled north along a river valley for a full two nights and a day with only the briefest of stops for food and sleep. Maple might have stopped earlier, but the area they passed through was well-populated and with so large a party it proved impossible to avoid other moles.

Some hid from them, a few accosted them and asked whither they were bound, but most simply stared blankly and did not encourage conversation.

“This looks like Newborn country to me,” observed Whillan. “You can be sure that news of our passing this way will get back soon enough to anymole out looking for us.”

“But with Longest Night just passed, and the Convocation on, perhaps they expect to see strangers about,” said Weeth.

“Maybe,” replied Maple dubiously. “But the time’s come now to find an obscurer route where none will see us, or if they do we can hope they are less likely to be under the Newborn influence.”

“And we do need to stop for a time,” added Privet quietly, “Rooster needs to rest.”

Rooster had said barely a word since leaving Caer Caradoc. He trekked with them unsteadily and with quite evident effort, but would not respond to word or touch. He simply stared ahead, or at the ground, or peered in a fretful way at his great paws. Only when Privet was near him did he seem at peace, and only alongflank her would he sleep.

“He’s tired and shocked,” said Privet, “and he needs a time of peace.”

But Whillan was not so sure. Indeed he was unhappy with the way matters stood, disliking Privet’s familiarity with Rooster, and feeling there was an untamed menace about him which might easily bring disaster to them all. Whillan felt there was truth in something he had said during his confession – that he was a mole who brought trouble to others.

To add to Whillan’s discomfort was the galling fact that Madoc seemed to show an inordinate concern for Rooster, helping Privet find food for him, and giving up what resting space she found if it seemed to make it easier for him. These and other little kindnesses Whillan felt to be unnecessary, even indulgent, to a mole whose injuries, whether physical or mental, were surely largely self-inflicted.

“You seem almost
angry
about it all,” commented Weeth, who was the only mole to whom Whillan felt able to express himself.

“Well, I know he’s been through a bad time...”

“Yes, he has.”

“And he might have been hurt...”

“It would seem so.”

“But Privet and Madoc are overdoing it, aren’t they?”

“If you think so,” said Weeth annoyingly.

“Well, what do
you
think?” demanded Whillan, exasperated.

“Ah! Me!” said Weeth. “I think you’re possibly fed up. Maybe that’s it.”

“With what?”

Weeth shrugged. “You may be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, come to think of it, in the right place at the wrong time.” Weeth laughed, pleased with this ambiguity. But Whillan saw nothing to laugh about.

Nor was Madoc more accommodating, and there seemed nothing left of that brief intimacy they had shared – as Whillan believed – during the break in the Convocation. Now she seemed to have eyes only for Privet and Rooster, and to answer Whillan’s few questions and attempts at conversation with a kind of cool aloofness he could not make sense of. It was all very difficult and beginning to cause Whillan to dislike Rooster very much indeed.

As dawn rose on their second morning out from Caer Caradoc Maple went ahead a little, and snouted at the air to left and right, while the others groomed and ate, and tried to rest. The valley had widened and the ground was undulating with signs of higher terrain to their left, the east, but nothing much on their right flank.

“But that’s the way we’ll go,” Maple decided. “Moles can easily disappear in a place with few features and fewer paths. What’s more, we’ve not been seen by mole since yesterday at dusk, so it will not be easy to trace us. I know you are all tired, but with luck and the Stone’s guidance we may by tonight or tomorrow at the latest find some anonymous place where we can hide up for a time.”

This prospect was enough to put new energy into their steps and they turned up off the valley plain to drier pasture fields and headed north-east in single file. The gentle rise was deceptive, and it was not long before the valley and its river was spread out below them to their left, and beyond it they could see the high rising ground of the Welsh Marches...

“... Which leads a mole in time to fabled Siabod, if he goes west far enough,” said Maple later, during a rest period. “In Gareg’s account of the wars against the Word he describes how on a clear day the snowy heights of Siabod itself may be seen from Caradoc.”

Whillan stared in imagination at this distant prospect and breathed in the winter air, his heart suddenly lighter. Travel, that’s what he must do, as Stour and Thripp had said, and as he himself had suggested to Madoc when they had talked at Caradoc. Aye, travel away from the constraints and pressures of other moles. It made a mole feel good to dream of it, even if duty and present tasks would surely always prevent it.

They journeyed on, feeling freer and safer by the moment as they went on over rolling ground, and the valley and with it all sense of Caer Caradoc disappeared behind them.

That night Maple allowed them to have a long sleep for the first time since leaving, though each of them but Rooster had to take a turn keeping watch. They all found it hard keeping their eyes open, but the nearest they came to danger was the sound of an owl giving a quick night call, and the short sharp bark of a fox.

By dawn all were rested and Maple felt it prudent to move on once again, the more so because the weather was showing signs of becoming colder and calmer. If frost came finding food would be harder as the worms burrowed deeper underground.

“We’ll need a safe haven for a few days,” said Madoc, “so that Rooster can recover more and we can get some proper rest. All this travelling and broken sleep is not good for a mole!”

“That’s exactly what I’m looking for, Madoc!” said Maple appreciatively, his great paw on hers for a moment before they led the others off. “Now, come on, we’ve not had time to talk. Tell me something about your life as a Newborn female.”

They chattered on, laughing occasionally, all of which, and the familiarity that preceded it, Whillan noted with annoyance and dismay, for despite his moody silences of the last three days he felt in some disconcerting way that Madoc, while not exactly
his
friend, had less cause to be Maple’s.

“But anyway, it doesn’t matter!” he told himself, kicking at the ground disagreeably and not looking ahead to where Maple and Madoc went along together oblivious of his jealousy, “because as soon as I can I’m going to leave them all and set off on my own. After all, nomole here needs me! Once Privet and Rooster are somewhere safe I’ll have fulfilled my task. Weeth will go with Maple to get involved in assisting in the fight against the Newborns, and as for Madoc, she might stay with Privet or even go with Maple. Anyway, it’s no concern of mine, thank the Stone!”

With such hollow words of self-comfort as these (and many more), and thoughts of places he might visit like Siabod, or Beechenhill where the Stone Mole died, or even fabled Whern in the north, Whillan contrived to pass the morning without speaking to them at all. And yet... as the day wore on his jealousy gave way to something more: a restlessness, a sense of being ill at ease, as if something was happening which he could not fully understand. It was like an irritation on the flank which a mole cannot quite locate, nor get rid of; or some half-forgotten task reminding him that it needs to be done and done
now!

In mid-afternoon they came to a point where the route offered them two alternatives – one was to the west, and up a steep slope into a great wood which rose above them, not unlike the prospect of Duncton Wood from the southeast; the other was directly north, and looked as if it undulated for a while and then might go downslope again.

They all gathered around Maple while he pondered which way to go.

“We’ll go west,” he said finally, “because while it may be a harder route for tired moles to take, it also seems less likely others will follow us that way.”

He set off and all the others followed him but Whillan, who had turned suddenly to the north and was snouting at the air.

“Come on, mole!” called out Maple.

But Whillan did not move, seeming almost transfixed to the ground, and so still that he looked odd.

“What’s wrong, my dear?” called Privet, who knew him best of all.

“North,” he whispered, half turning to her for a moment, his face full of concern. “We must go north. I feel a need to.”

The others looked mildly irritated, and Weeth seemed bored. Only Rooster appeared to really listen to the worry in Whillan’s voice, and raising his paw to the others to still and quieten them, he moved a little way towards Whillan.

“What need?” he growled. Whillan turned again, and looked at Rooster with real concern on his face, his animosity and jealousy not showing at all.

“Don’t know,” he said, almost to himself. “Like... like a nagging kind of thing. Like
... I don’t know.
”

“Need,” said Rooster, coming closer still to Whillan; “I know.”

The others were utterly quiet, watching the strange sight of two moles they had all sensed were distanced from each other suddenly involved in a dialogue that was almost private, almost in a language all its own.

Whillan stared north again, searching the sky and the land, increasingly restless, his front paws fretting. Rooster loomed behind him, rough, patient, warm, understanding.

“You don’t know!” Whillan cried out impulsively, wheeling round on him. “You can’t!”

“Do,” said Rooster unperturbed. “You feel need. Don’t know what from. Don’t know why. Something forgotten trying to find its way back again.”

“Yes,” said Whillan subsiding, and nodding his head, “like that.”

“What to think? What do we do?” asked Rooster, scratching his head.

“Go north,” said Whillan. “It will make the need feel easier... but I don’t know why.”

“North!” declared Rooster, turning back to the others. “North is best “cos Whillan knows.”

Maple sighed and shook his head.

“I’m not going to argue with anymole about it!” he said cheerfully. “If you two think north is right, then let’s go north. We’ll find somewhere to lose ourselves quick enough.”

But Whillan, having cast a quick and grateful glance at Rooster, was already up and off along the northward path, still restless, still snouting out ahead in search of he knew not what, with the others having now to follow his lead.

“It’s getting colder by the moment!” said Madoc sometime later, eyeing the clear chill sky above them with concern. Anymole could tell that a spell of very cold weather was on the way, and that by the following morning, exposed ground such as they were crossing now would be too hard to tunnel for shelter and food.