Duncton Stone (82 page)

Silence. A nod. Two moles had long since been deputed for the task, because of their powerful paws and excavating skills, along with a third, a smaller friend of theirs well taught in the art of structures and defences, and good at detecting weakness in a wall. It was perhaps the most quiet and delicate moment in a battle that had now continued for six days, and was about to enter its bloodiest and most desperate phase.

The two bigger moles stanced back while the smaller one ran a paw softly over the seal-up, and then listened at different parts of it. He snouted at it, high and low, first to one side and then the other, and finally with supreme gentleness he touched a place in its upper-right-paw part and nodded at the nearest of his two friends, who came forward, talons raised to strike. Then the small mole touched a second place, lower down and on the far side, and nodded at the other to be prepared.

Finally, as quietly as he could, he scraped at an area in the central part of the seal-up where loose soil fell away and revealed a boulder twice the size of a mole’s head.

“Strike twice where I’ve shown you, and that’ll weaken the wall. Then go for this stone, get it out, and the whole bleeding lot will come down, so get clear. Then we can go through.”

His instructions quite clear, he pulled away to let the bigger moles do their destructive work.

“Wait until you hear another mole beyond,” whispered Maple, “for their surprise will cause more panic. And if they’re still there when we break through
let them
go, if they’ve got a mind to flee. Their panic will be worth more to us than their immediate death. And finally...”

“Yes, sir?” said one of the Siabod moles.

“Roar! When you get through, that is.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Right, off you go!”

The big moles struck the wall twice each, just as they had been shown, and then they hauled the boulder out of position. For a moment the seal-up held but then, just as had been predicted, with a great roar, amid clouds of dust and grime, it collapsed towards them. A hole appeared through the murk and beyond the chamber stretched, smaller than they had imagined, and lighter than the tunnel they had been in. Stanced there were two moles transfixed and terrified.

One fled; the other, to his credit, made a vain attempt to fight. He was taloned at once, the first bloody death of the many that followed in the next hour. With a roar Maple’s force charged into the chamber and struck down the few moles about the place, meeting resistance only for a moment or two from three guardmoles near a portal.

The chamber taken, the Siabod moles did not delay in striking straight up and out on to the surface to attack and scatter the Newborns there into a panic. Their orders had not been to pursue and nor did they. So surprised were the Newborns, convinced perhaps that the system had been overrun from within, that they fled after their fellow guardmoles, spreading panic and confusion as they went.

Upslope, by the brook, Ystwelyn watched the coming attack turn into a melee of moles not knowing if they were in pursuit or pursued, and timed his counter-attack perfectly. Rarely has a force in seeming retreat become so suddenly a force assaulting, and of the two or three Newborns who survived that part of the struggle none ever forgot, or was able to recall without a shudder, the sight of those great followers turning back from flight, to charge them down, and kill their colleagues where they stanced in surprise and disorder.

Meanwhile, in the chamber by the seal-up, Maple established his stronghold with ruthless speed and determination. There was only one surface exit, and this was quickly secured, with moles on the surface above already summoning back those who had gone outside. Of the two portals that led further into the system one was plainly more significant than the other. The smaller was stationed with two guards, but it was through the larger, and down the tunnel beyond that an advance party went, killing several moles either sheltering there, confused, or coming to see what was going on.

Maple did not advance further until he was satisfied that the moles who had gone out on the surface were safely back in – and left some by that exit against the possibility that other Newborns might try to retreat into the chamber, not realizing it had been taken over. Only then did he order the advance, steadily and methodically, through the tunnels towards the centre of Buckland, and hopefully to Sapient himself.

It was now that the heaviest and most critical fighting took place, for the Newborns were not defeated yet, but fell back to well-made positions planned long since by Turling himself, against just such an invasion as this or, perhaps, internal mutiny.

Across the system at Carswell Copse, Stow now sensed a weakening in the opposition, subtle yet significant, and began to push his hard-stretched moles to their utmost, to take precisely the advantage that Maple had guessed he would. Nomole knows quite when this great mole received the injuries that proved fatal to him, but most agree that sometime in that critical struggle old Stow, the greatest warrior that the Wolds ever produced, loyal to the Stone and his leader Maple, saw that his tired force was wavering once more.

“On, and on, and on again!” he is said to have cried out, pulling back the waverers and leading a fresher group through. On and on he fought, despite injury to face and flank; on and on, in the name of the Stone, on beyond duty, on beyond courage, for now he knew he must lead his moles and so help others elsewhere, fighting, as he guessed, for their lives.

“On, on!” he cried, weakening, falling, sinking, fading. “On...”

And on past him the Woldian moles went, forcing passage through, driving the Newborns before them, turning them, putting fear and panic into them, defeating them until the tunnel ahead was clearing, and the last of the opposition fleeing or falling, as the western flank of Buckland became the first to yield to the followers’ zeal and force.

While to the north, when the sun reached its zenith, the moles who had been under Maella began their indomitable struggle to make their own way through. Mole after mole fell there, yet still they fought on, as the Siabodians took the surface route as directed by Maple, and fought a local fight such as all great battles know.

All but three of Ystwelyn’s best died securing the first turn of the tide in the Buckland Marsh tunnels, but then it was those three who led the others on, wild and terrible, wounded yet unstoppable. Where the followers had died before now the Newborns fell, retreating in a haze of blood and fear, turning from a scourge they could hold back no more, fleeing into the dark tunnels of Buckland behind them, with nowhere else to go.

Did Ystwelyn sense the loss of those seven great warriors to the north of him? Did he sense that now, now,
now
was the time when Maple needed him to advance across the Slopeside? Did he know?

For Maple was in sudden retreat, driven back by a resurgence of the Newborn force, not knowing that the surge came not from courage and good leadership, but from retreat elsewhere which forced the Newborn moles back through the centre, back, back towards the Slopeside, and up against
his
force.

For a moment he must have thought his end had come: retreating, battered, his warriors wounded and grim about him as they struggled to resist the torrent of guardmoles that now raised their talons upon them as the Newborns streamed suddenly back down through the surface exit.

Now were those four followers he had placed there needed, fighting and struggling in a tiring, wearying, dreadful talon-to-talon fight to the very end. Newborn after Newborn fell until they tangled and obstructed each other, trying to rush forth and overwhelm the four moles who stanced their ground, shoulder to shoulder, one for all and all of everymole of them.

In the midst, assaulted as it seemed from all sides, Maple must have thought the battle lost when suddenly Newborns tore in at him from the second smaller portal and he had only two followers to hold it, except...

“Mole! Here, miscreant, face us!”

And Maple turned, with only Weeth left at his flank, and there, at the broken seal-up into the Slopeside, having gained access by Stone knows what covert way, stanced the brooding malevolent form of a formidable mole.

“Sapient!” roared Maple.

“Yes,” hissed Sapient. His yellow eyes were venomous, he was smeared with the blood of everymole but himself, flanked by his own evil bodyguards, laughing, mad, filled with the lust for power and for blood. Or death.

“Kill him, my moles, and the battle shall be ours,” he cried.

No warrior could come to great Maple’s aid as he stanced facing the mole who would be tyrant of the south, and if not that, would take anymole with him into death. Maple knew then that the critical day had become the critical hour, and the critical hour the moment, and the moment was now. He raised his paws, roaring as he had bid the other followers do, and charged Sapient.

What if two huge guardmoles stanced in his way? They reeled back before the speed and power of his blows as all the rage and tension of the long campaign found its expression in them.

What if from somewhere else another Newborn broke through and charged Maple’s flank? Weeth felled him, and did not dally over killing him, nor from raising his bloody talons once more and rushing to his master’s flank.

What if there were three more guardmoles between Maple and now fearful Sapient, his eyes widening, his retreat back through the seal-up beginning, and taking him all unknowing not into clear space, but straight into that pile of rotted death? Maple cared not, his bloody intent now only to kill the mole who led the Buckland brood, and whose death would signal the liberation of all the south!

Maple raised his paws, the world still about him, his wounds of no consequence, and first one guardmole and then another fell before his brutal blows. And the third, the foulest and the cruellest of Sapient’s guards? What of him?

He knew fear at last, he saw death, and he turned and tried to flee and Maple felled him from behind and wounded him, and he crawled away into the darkness of the Slopeside to die alone.

It was the crux, the moment when all turned. Behind him, inspired by his example, Maple’s forces began to make ground once more, ever more swiftly. All fell before them, away into the foul recesses of Buckland, away to the defeat of the Newborns, and the victory of the followers.

While from the surface, Ystwelyn himself was the first to break through the last faltering lines and rush down into the chamber where Maple fought, scattering the last of the Newborns, in time to see Maple raise his paws over the unrepentant form of Sapient, who had slipped into the inert pile of bones and skin and dried-up flesh, from which he struggled to stance upright as Maple’s paws bore down upon him.

“No, mole, let
him
live!”

But Maple saw only evil before him, and felt the dread and dangerous power of revenge in his own paws.

“No, sir, leave him,” cried out Weeth, struggling to bring Maple to his senses and being hurled backwards for his pains. It was better that Sapient survived.

“Noooo!”

Perhaps it was Weeth’s voice that let out that final cry.

Or Ystwelyn’s, too late to stop Maple doing what he should not do.

Or Sapient’s own voice, as the talons of revenge and righteousness drove down upon him, into his face and eyes, blinding him and crushing him back down, down into that inert yet not quite lifeless matter they earlier sought so hard to avoid and that was now his final resting-place.

Down into decay and the odour, pungent as death, of nettles amidst the blood. Aye, the fresh scent of nettles.

“Noooo!” And it was Maple’s voice at last, staring at the bloodied, torn fur above his right paw where Sapient had tried to fend off his killing blow and where now, foul, wriggling, all opaque white, shiny and with stinging, questing jaws set in pointed, darting heads, talon worms attacked.

“No...” whispered Weeth, seeking to brush the vile things out and off, and watching aghast. As he pulled Maple back, Sapient’s dead, blood-red head came up, opened its dead mouth, and was alive with the dangerous creatures. While there, in Maple’s wound, not deep but perhaps fatal now, the shiny tails of several talon worms wriggled and were gone as they seared their way into his living flesh. They had found a prey in which to incubate; they had found a new and better home.

“’Tis nothing,” whispered Maple later, the victory complete. “I... feel... nothing.”

Nothing but occasional light, stinging pains inside, and a mortal fear of worms that eat so slowly deep within, like shame, or guilt, or the sense of moral worthlessness.

“I should not have... I should not have killed him, Weeth,” he whispered late that night.

“Master, nomole blames you. Sapient deserved to die.”

“But he should have been judged,” said Maple. “But I killed him myself, and none but me. By the Stone am I judged for killing in revenge. The worms live in me now, inside me, Weeth. I should have let him live and had him publicly arraigned. I should..!”

Sounds of celebration came into the chamber where they stanced, Ystwelyn silent, sad, grief-stricken for the comrades he had lost.

Yet Weeth was right: it
was
a famous victory. Few Newborns survived, not because, as Maple had feared, they were murdered in cold blood by a vengeful force, but because, more terribly perhaps, in their panic they had fled from west and north, from east and south, into Buckland’s communal chamber, fled and panicked, pushed and crushed, and there, too terrible to contemplate, occurred the largest massing of them.

Crushed, suffocated, maddened by panic, the southern Newborn army died, killing itself in its own tunnels in a last frenzy of fear. Yet what mole should care? Once the fighting was finished, and moles investigated, they found horrors beyond imagining inside the Newborn cells – moles nearly starved to death; moles blinded; moles forced to kill and cannibalize their fellow captives to live.

Yet such Newborn prisoners, living and sane, as were taken at Buckland, the wounded Maple ordered be set free, and they wandered off across those bloody fields, and were lost forever to moledom’s memory. Lost and known no more.