Duncton Rising (80 page)

The worm-rich part of Duncton moles call the Westside ends where the ground steepens towards the High Wood into an area of fewer trees and patchy undergrowth called the Slopes. It was a place Pumpkin knew very well, for his own modest tunnels lay at the upper part of the Slopes very near where the High Wood proper begins. In certain wind conditions, and these obtained that voracious winter night, the Slopes were filled with an awesome roaring sound, like storm waves driven on to a treacherous shore. Even the pluckiest mole was inclined to feel intimidated by this terrifying noise, though it was caused by nothing more sinister than the wind catching the highest branches of the great and ancient beech trees of the High Wood itself.

This roaring came upon them now, and it was all Pumpkin could do to be heard above it, and persuade his weak and faltering group of moles not to worry and press on.

“It’s nothing – nothing at all. This is the final part of our trek and if we can only make it before dawn...”

But that how seemed unlikely, because for every mole that remained fit and strong, there was one and a half who needed help and encouragement as they struggled slowly upslope from root to root, from bramble to windswept trunk. The sky above had lost the dark of deepest night, and began now to take on the earliest hues of dawn: streaky greys, glowering mauves and sudden voids of blackness once again.

“Come on!” cried out Pumpkin, suddenly afraid that the Newborns had already discovered their disappearance, made some quick deductions, and sent guardmoles upslope to find out what they could. “Keep on going, for we’ve not
so
far to go!”

“How far?” asked somemole desperately, for the slope ahead was steep, and the dawning light made it look endless, with no Stone in prospect at all.

“Not
too
far!” responded poor Pumpkin, wondering how much longer he could keep them going.

“You can do it, every one of you!” cried out Elynor, who like Pumpkin sensed the group was close to giving up, or at least going to ground until it had recovered sufficient strength to continue.

“Yes!” said bold young Cluniac. “Come on, all —”

But he did not quite finish before a cry of alarm from one of the other youngsters brought the party to a sudden halt.

“Look!” warned the mole, pointing ahead of them through the grey light to where two confident-looking Newborn guardmoles stanced solidly in their way.

Pumpkin and Elynor went boldly forward without a moment’s hesitation, while Cluniac instinctively marshalled the others behind them in some kind of defensive position.

“And where are you going?” one of the guardmoles demanded.

“To the Stone!” said Pumpkin as fiercely as he could – and it
was
fierce, because he had not come so far to be turned back at the last moment.

“You’re not going further,” said the other guardmole, raising his voice against the roaring of the Wood.

“Oh really!” said Elynor, as angry as Pumpkin, but secretly as alarmed.

“That’s right,” said the first guardmole, his eyes dark and ruthless in the way Newborns manage so well. It was the ruthlessness a mole has when he thinks he is in the right. Like the other he came forward, and Pumpkin could sense his party, even Elynor, begin to falter. It would need little more now to undermine their resolve and he knew there was not much he could do or say. Indeed, a wave of tiredness and despair was coming over him as he felt even himself weakening before the Newborns’ assurance. So, they must have realized some moles had fled, and sent out patrols, just as he had feared. He heard whispering behind him as some of the older ones asked what was apaw, and others tried to explain.

But then the second of the guards, perhaps less experienced and not quite seeing that the moles were rapidly weakening, said in what he hoped was a commanding way, “The Stone does not wish you to go further! Return downslope to the safety of your burrows.”

“The Stone does not wish?” cried out one of the oldest moles there, quivering with rage. “And whatmole are
you
to judge what the Stone may wish or not, eh? You tell me that!”

“Aye,” chorused several more, pressing forward until they all crowded round Pumpkin and Elynor.

“A young whipper-snapper like
you
telling
us
what the Stone thinks!” continued the redoubtable mole. “Get out of my way or grey though my fur is I’ll
push
you out of the way. Nomole tells us where to worship, and we in Duncton are fed up with all you so-called Newborns.”

“Or
when
to worship, come to that!” shouted another.

“Aye, well said! Clear off you two!”

“Go on, get lost!”

And as the little group found its courage and its voice once more. Pumpkin raised his front paws and most boldly pushed the Newborns out of the way. If there was a moment in that night when Pumpkin sensed that the Duncton spirit was beginning to rise from the darkness into which the Newborns had cast it down, that was it.

“There’ll be more guards here soon,” said the first of the Newborns, grudgingly retreating to let the group past.

“They’re coming already,” said the second with evident satisfaction.

“Go on, keep on moving!” urged Cluniac suddenly from the rear. There was something in his voice that made Pumpkin steal a glance back downslope. There, to his horror, he saw three Newborn guards coming rapidly towards them, and he knew that their chances of escape to freedom were diminishing by the moment. And yet, the Stone Clearing was not so far upslope now if they could only just...

“Keep on going!” commanded Pumpkin, “and keep together. Look neither to the right nor left, and ignore the Newborns. Go... for the Stone is with us, and will guide us and see us safeguarded!” Such was the certainty and faith in his voice that everymole there was carried on rapidly, upward and forwards among the great trees of the High Wood.

“I’m going to the rear to be with Cluniac,” Pumpkin whispered to Elynor, “so you must keep them together, and moving.” He dropped back, saw that the Newborns were not far behind now, fell in with Cluniac and together the two brave moles pushed and shoved the party from behind, knowing if they once stopped it would be the end.

The Newborns lost no time in closing in on the hurrying group, reaching Pumpkin and Cluniac first and telling them to halt. One or two went so far as to reach out a restraining paw to the moles, but none dared yet physically stop them. As they entered among the great trees of the High Wood, the light of dawn advanced to reveal a troubled, windswept scene, and a path littered with broken twigs and branches, and patches of sleety snow. A strange, nearly silent tussle developed between the two groups; the followers hurried on, panic in their breasts but anger and faith in their hearts, while the Newborns pressed ever closer, trying to detach first one mole, then another, from the group.

“Keep close!” urged the more able moles, “look ahead! Don’t answer them...”

“It will be all the better for you if you stop now,” said one Newborn, his voice gentler than before.

“Where do you think you’ll get to anyway?” asked another belligerently, shoving at Elynor.

Ignoring him, and pressing even closer to her friends, she said, “The Stone’s getting nearer, can’t you feel it?”

She spoke almost as if they were static, holding off the forces of evil, while the Stone was rushing to their rescue, and there was a sense in which this was indeed true, and is always true. The Stone and its Silence wait but for a mole to open his heart, and then its grace comes rushing in with the power of flood-water through a gap in a river-bank that has held fast too long.

Then, only moments later, there was a lightening amongst the trees ahead which signalled the Stone Clearing itself where the trees encircle the Stone at, as one scribemole has aptly put it, “a respectful distance”.

There was only one problem – a Newborn, and a large one, stanced athwart their path, his paws raised and his talons extended. For a terrible moment Pumpkin thought it was Brother Barre himself, but as they approached he saw it was not. Even so, with Newborns at their flanks and this extra one ahead their plight had worsened once again.

But the party had gained a volition of its own and ancient though some of its members were they continued their flight straight at the mole; not aggressively so much as inevitably, as if there was nowhere else for them to go and they would certainly not be stopping. Not that Pumpkin now had any great expectation of this heroic charge, for though he had plenty of faith he could not see how even the Stone, in its infinite wisdom, could find any escape for them here. They would reach the Stone Clearing, and then what? Be scattered on through the High Wood to be chased, harried and assaulted by the Newborns? Or simply put their rumps to the Stone and make a last fight of it as others had in past times, usually at the cost of their lives. No, Pumpkin could not see...

Except, as they neared the solitary mole, Pumpkin did see something, or rather somemole. There, off the path, obscured by roots and the wind-pulled stalks of dog’s mercury, was the very last mole he expected to see: Sturne. His expression seemed one of entreaty, or possibly warning. For a moment Pumpkin faltered, thinking that Sturne had taken this terrible risk of discovery because there was an ambush ahead of which he had forewarning.

But then Sturne mouthed something and waved his paws about urgently, which Pumpkin interpreted as meaning, “Whatever you do, don’t stop. Go on! The Stone will provide!” Then he retreated into the undergrowth, and was gone.

“Humph!” thought Pumpkin,
“that
promise has been offered us all night.”

But there was nothing more for it but to be bold and face it out, and as the mole ahead stanced his ground, and the party began to slow. Pumpkin once more urged them on, raising his paws and shouting with a certain mild ferocity – which was the most fearsome he could be. The others followed him, and the mole ahead lost his resolution and moved to one side.

As they burst into the Clearing the Stone at least was easy to make out, since it seemed to have gathered to itself such light as there was, and the great tree behind it swayed and shook in an intimidating, powerful way.

“To the Stone!” cried Pumpkin, pausing to shepherd his charges past him. It was only then, as he turned to follow them, that he was able to take in the disturbing scene which their sudden arrival had interrupted.

There were four Newborns already in the Clearing which, with the one they had passed on the path, and the five who had been pursuing them, made ten in all. All strong, all young, all determined, and all, presumably, trained in the arts of intimidation and fighting, not to mention killing.

Even as Pumpkin surveyed the grim scene, other Newborns arrived, among them Brother Inquisitor Fetter himself, and a furious-looking Barre, while already at the Stone was a huddle of five or six moles, all tired and abject, self-evidently a few followers who lived in isolation; Elynor’s warnings of the need to escape that night must have reached them, it seemed.

Their story was not hard to guess. The Newborns had intercepted them, found out about the “escape” and brought them on up here to await the arrival of the others. It seemed certain too that a Newborn or two had gone down to Barrow Vale to report this blasphemy – as no doubt it would be perceived – and even now reinforcements would be on the way. All for naught then! And yet there had been that cryptic look on Sturne’s face; had it been a warning after all?

“Oh dear!” thought Pumpkin as he joined his friends and felt the fight going out of them as the Newborns now massed opposite them in the Clearing. “Oh dear!”

To fight or not to fight? That was the unpleasant question Pumpkin pondered as his new friends gathered pathetically about him and he realized that though their numbers were greater for the moment, they would not be so for long, and they stood little chance of success. Even if fighting was their way, which it was not, what injuries would it mean? What deaths?

Yet how affecting were the mute pleas of the old moles who now reached out to him! They had given of their last strength this night in their brave trek to the Stone through savage blizzard winds, not to harm others but simply to protect their right to live and worship as they wished. They had wanted to march to freedom and all they had found was this grim dawn of failure and despair.

If it had been just a little before that Pumpkin had first sensed Duncton’s spirit rising to its own defence, it was only now that he felt something more: there were other followers out and about that night, at that very moment, all across moledom, and they were urging Pumpkin and his friends to have courage, and faith, and purpose.

“Yes!” said Pumpkin to himself, looking at the moles who now clustered about Elynor, Cluniac and himself so pitifully as the Newborns began a slow advance, “yes, I am certain of it. We are not alone tonight.”

Then he cried aloud his private thoughts: “We are not alone, moles, others stance with us, here and now. Aye, my good friends, my fellow followers, all across moledom this night are those who hear our call for help, and stance now with us, and touch the Stone with paw, with faith, with hope and add their courage to our own, who are beset and endangered by evil!”

One or two of the Newborns laughed at these words, but the followers with Pumpkin did not. There was something new in the library aide’s voice, something so potent that many of them instinctively looked round and up at the Stone as if in some way it might confirm his words. They were not disappointed. It rose into the dawning light, and against the strange racing sky, and seemed to express the very spirit of what he said. Some of them touched it, others reached their paws to him, and all found their strength and faith renewed, as he himself seemed to have been renewed.

They could not know that even as these surges of confidence came to him, so too did doubts, and he groaned silently to himself, “But Stone, I’m only a library aide, I really don’t know
what
to do...”

A gust of wind shook the trees around them, and drove down into the Clearing scattered leaves and snow on the ground that separated the followers round the Stone from the Newborns.