“Forget yourself,” she said.
He tried, and found it was not hard. “Want to hurt you,” he rasped, his paws strong on her, and she curled her body into his, biting and scratching him to make him want to hurt her more.
“Then hurt me. Rooster, if you can,” she gasped, as she felt a strength in him greater by far than of any mole who had ever taken her before. “Do to me what you want to do.”
“Want to... hurt you!” he said again, as she felt his lust begin to mount, and the passion in his suddenly hard delving paws all urgent, potent, living; matching her lust, meeting her need, as she pushed at him, and bit at him and made him so angry that he roared, and turned, and took her to him as she screamed for more and more and more of his hurting, of what he wrongly felt was his destructive force.
“More,” she sighed, stronger than him in that at least, “more and more.”
“Yes,” said Rooster, and lost in her, he forgot himself.
When Rooster did not appear in their tunnels at dusk, nor later as night deepened and the fighting began again over on the eastern part of the system. Privet worried for him and wondered what she might do. Not for one moment did she think he might be with Lime, being now more concerned with the dreadful difficulties he was having over the fighting and his non-involvement with it. Some time in the night she could no longer bear tossing and turning and fretting, and went off to find him, or news of him.
She got none, or none that was direct. Instead she saw some injured moles near the defences, and heard that earlier there had been more vicious fighting and that Rooster had been seen just before that. There was something shifty in the way she was told this, as if her informant, a guard, knew something more; but more was not forthcoming. Nor did she suspect the real cause of his absence even then, for Hamble came by and it was plain from what he said that the Crowden system was in deeper jeopardy than he and other elders had previously thought.
“Unless we can muster a counter-attack on the Ratcher moles we are going to be driven further and further back into our system, and eventually we will be forced to yield to them,” he said.
But they had long since prepared plans for this eventuality, so used were they to the attacks of grikes, and there was a drill for retreat into inner tunnels and chambers from which it would be hard to flush them out. What was more, if such a retreat should ever happen, and it had only once in the distant past, there was a well-arranged system of escape through deep tunnels which not only evacuated females and pups and older moles up into an adjacent dough, but enabled the defenders to emerge in a position to ambush the incursive grikes from behind, when they would be in tunnels that were unfamiliar to them. This long-standing arrangement gave the Crowden moles their calm confidence, increased these days since Rooster and his delvers had improved the defences of these inner sanctums of retreat and escape.
“I’m not saying it’ll come to that later tonight, or tomorrow. Privet, but things are as hard as I remember them, and this mole Grear is working with Red Ratcher now and seems a sight more astute in his management of attacks than Red Ratcher himself. Since you’re here, I think you better go back to the inner tunnels and just make sure that everymole’s where they should be in case there is an incursion and we have to act quickly. Come to that, what are you doing here?”
“Have you seen Rooster?”
“Ah!” Hamble shook his head uneasily. If a guard had told him something he wasn’t saying. “He’s not fighting, if that’s what you mean. If he was, and giving us the leadership he could, then we wouldn’t be in the position we are!” He laughed affectionately. “He’s a mole I admire more as the days go by,” he continued. “It must be hard for him having moles like me making no bones of the fact that we think he’d be a fine fighter. But don’t worry, Privet, I’ve promised to keep him out of it and I shall, and if I weaken there’s always Hume hovering about like a mother watching over a pup. He’d rather die than see Rooster raise a paw to anymole. But dammit, it might be just the thing he needs.”
“So you don’t know where he is?”
“I must go. Privet,” said Hamble, and was gone as quickly as he could, but not so fast that Privet did not have time to see the hesitation in his eyes.
She went back to the inner tunnels, checked that all was well, and in the evening she went slowly back to her own chambers, half hoping as she reached them that Rooster would be there. But he was not, so where could he be?
How slowly the time passed as she lay and tossed to and fro, thinking of all the possibilities, turning them over, dismissing them, recalling them, worrying at them, on into the deepest, darkest part of the night when vague possibilities become probabilities, suspicions develop into dark certainties, and a mole’s silliest fears seem to change into oncoming nightmares. Suddenly Privet recalled Hamble’s hesitation, and the guard’s reluctance to talk, and having decided they were withholding something they knew, she quickly convinced herself that she knew what it was, and that its name was Lime.
Lime! Yes! That was undoubtedly it! He was with her now.
Privet was wide awake immediately, her heart thumping with the implications; Lime and Rooster, all this time together and out of sight! Had not Hamble warned her that somemole, some female, might seek Rooster out and steal him from her? He had not mentioned Lime but then he would not have done; he too had once desired her, and perhaps had his reasons not to name her.
By now, having convinced herself that something was apaw between Lime and Rooster this very night. Privet was up and stanced by the portal of her tunnels wondering what, if anything, she could do.
“But I haven’t warned Lime about what Hamble said, of the need to be especially careful, and I must! Now!” That it might have waited until morning did not occur to her, nor that the true reason she wanted to go to Lime’s burrow there and then was nothing to do with her sister’s safety, and all to do with satisfying herself that her suspicions were untrue. That they might be true did not occur to her, as without more ado she hurried along the communal tunnels and turned into the less familiar ways that led to Lime s burrow. Nightmares live in fearful imagining rather than stark reality. It was simply a matter of satisfying herself that her fears were groundless; then she could go back to her burrow and sleep. Yes... it would be for the best.
So on she hurried, ever faster, thinking only of how weak her words would sound on waking Lime at such an hour of the night – or dawn rather, for day was breaking now, and the light from the entrances she passed made the tunnel seem a gloomy, still place. Whilst out on the surface above all was silent, the fighting over for now; everything silent, but for the patter of Privet’s busy paws, and the thumping of her heart.
She stopped, and nearly turned back, suddenly painfully aware of her true reason for coming here, and feeling it unworthy to have such thoughts. It was almost day, and when she next saw Rooster she could try to break through the embarrassments and barriers, tell him she loved him, reach out to him, and soon, during the coming afternoon and night perhaps, they could retreat to the privacy of their tunnels and... make love. As other moles. Hamble had been right – it was time.
Thinking these more cheerful thoughts she turned away, and would have gone back; but just then, coming down the still tunnels, she heard – what? Lime’s voice? A nightmare become reality?
It was Lime’s voice. And what it asked was, “More...”
Silence, rustles, a deep chuckle or perhaps a groan.
“More, my love...” said Lime again.
Privet’s heart seemed to stop utterly for a moment, but then as she crept forward towards those sounds of love it started such a thumping barrage in her chest that others might almost have heard it beat.
“Want more,” Privet heard Rooster say. Agony, anger, violent thoughts were Privet’s now.
Then, “Yessss...” in Lime’s voice, and the beginning of a cry of ecstasy, and a strange groaning roar which must be, was. Rooster.
Privet crept on, driven by the terrib
le need to be sure, even though she knew already from the sounds of love alone, on and on until she came to a side tunnel whence the gasping, violent passionate sounds of love came forth.
Drawn in by the inexorable need to be sure, to witness, to see, she ducked under Lime’s portal and went to the entrance of the chamber where they were. Grey the light, loud and violent their gasps, and then, when she went near and stanced boldly and looked, she saw a sight nomole should see: her beloved taking another in his great grasp and giving her all, as she takes all, and taking her all as she in turn gives it, and more.
“More!”
Limbs, fur, snouts, opened mouths, gasps, moans, stressing, sliding, insinuating talons that caressed, and held, in forms and shapes that made two bodies one – grotesque and most horrible to the watcher who stood apart.
A nightmare then, fears come alive, jealous thoughts confronted with the naked, savage truth. Then worse still, she saw that the heaving corporeal coupling that she watched, watched her. It had a pair of opening eyes. As Privet froze in horror, part of that writhing thrusting body took shape and meaning; eyes gazed at her, wide, surprised, and then, more terribly still, triumphant.
Privet stared into Lime’s eyes, and Lime found perverse pleasure in being seen, as Rooster mounted her and entered her again and roared out his pleasure, not knowing he was watched. Then, worse yet, Lime’s eyes flickered with her mounting pleasures, and slowly closed as she yielded up to what Rooster gave her, yet had never given Privet; and Lime turned to him, and ignoring Privet, encouraged him with touch and teeth and writhing limbs.
“More!” she screamed.
Then Privet turned from the hateful, sickening sight, turned blindly away and ran for the dawning light of the surface, to escape from the suffocation of the chambers and tunnels and what she had seen, which was the end for her.
Numb, blind, broken, wild, filled with the hopeless desire to rip what she had seen from mind and memory.
where it burned and tormented her, she broke out on to the surface, and floundered eastward, towards where the Ratcher moles were encamped. Perhaps she screamed; perhaps she cried. Whatever sound she made, any watching mole on either side would have heard her, and known of her coming. Indeed, a Crowden guardmole turned to repel what he thought was an assault from behind as Librarian Privet, running wild and maddened, charged upon him along the way that led amongst Rooster’s dark delvings and out of the defences and then beyond to the mortal danger of Ratcher’s lines.
“You can’t!” he cried as she ran past, pushing him with violent strength. “They’re nearby, they’ve got another of our moles! You can’t!”
She reached the delvings before he could stop her, and raising her paws to them curled her talons and scored viciously down and then across, making the worst Dark Sound anymole had ever heard, made more dreadful still by her savage laughter, which mocked the sound and chased it into echoes of hatred and betrayal.
“Tell Rooster where I’ve gone,” she cried out to the guard with a wild laugh, “you’ll find him having Lime,” before running on and out through the last exit, to the exposed ground beyond and the besieging grikes.
They caught her easily enough – indeed, so careless was she, so desperate to escape the pain that Crowden represented for her now, that she welcomed the cautious advance of the first grike that saw her, and minded not his rough handling, and the way he pushed and shoved her into the area in which they had established themselves. She saw crude scrapes, a place where moles had groomed and defecated, and a low peaty bank on which two grikes lay wounded, one grey of snout and near death, the other with a limb that had been broken. All seemed no more than a dream, and she was, so far, quite unafraid. Moles stared at her intrigued, and if she saw lust and amusement in their eyes, she did not care.
“Take me to Red Ratcher,” she said, wincing at the strong hold the grike had on her.
Moles gathered about her; some prodded her lewdly, others stared, cold and malevolent, and all had the rancid smell of ungroomed bodies.
“Take her to Grear,” said a senior-looking mole. “He’ll know what to do with her.”
There were more crude laughs, and comments about how skinny she was, how small, how pointed her snout. If this was a Crowden female no wonder the Crowden males were failing...
Perhaps it was only then she began to feel afraid. Anger had carried her this far but now, as she was hustled along, she realized she had come to a place from which she would not escape. She heard a scream, turned a comer, and saw a mole laid out on his back; over him another loomed, raised his taloned paw and then thumped down hard into the tender parts between the mole’s pale, soft belly and left hindpaw.
It was a Crowden mole being tortured, screaming and jabbering, as grikes stanced about him, staring and bored, watching as the biggest of them questioned him. Some did not even watch, but ate worms carelessly; one even dozed. She knew even before he turned that the torturer was Grear. She recognized his rough fur with its russet tinge, and the great back, and the power; it might almost have been a slightly smaller version of Rooster she stared at. One last moment of defiance made her stance proud as Grear turned round to look at her, but then she saw his eyes, cold, hard, and pitiless, and she was struck still with fear, and the horror of where she was and what she had done.
Grear stared at her for a moment, turned back to what he was doing, and said to his victim, “The defences, mole, we want to know what you can tell us and then we might stop.”
The mole was crying now, huddled, bloody, shaking, and trying vainly to protect his softer parts and face and snout from the talons poised over him. Grear ordered another to carry on the vile work and turned back to her.
“Well?” His voice was deep.
“We found this mole —”
“A female?” Light glistened in Grear’s eye. He reached a bloody paw to her, played roughly with her face, and then caressed her flanks appraisingly.
“Take her to my father. She’s too small for me. Ask him not to kill her for when he’s done she’ll talk. Explain that to him or otherwise he’ll do what he usually does with females and kill her in the act.” He hunched forward and down towards her like a shadow from the sky. “What do you know, mole? Eh?”
“Nothing,” faltered Privet, her mind a blank.
He laughed. “They all know “nothing” until asked the right way.”
The Crowden mole nearby uttered a heartrending, hopeless cry as he suffered another talon-thrust; it was the cry of one abandoned, even by the Stone, and echoed what Privet was beginning to feel in her heart.
He knew nothing until we asked him the right questions, then the answers started coming,” said Grear calmly. “Now? He has nothing left but the need to scream and, perhaps, to draw out his fellows from behind their strange defences to seek to rescue him. He is our bait. And you...” Grear’s eyes narrowed. “You may be our pleasure. But my father had best have you first, or he’ll object.”
He turned away.
“You missed a treat there, Grear!” she heard a mole say ironically as she was led away.
“A small treat,” said Grear, laughing, “yet... strange she should come.”
Numb, numb, numb. Privet’s feelings in the time that followed – an endless time of brute sound and mole, of odours and cries, of stares and vile touches, and a world that shook because she could not stop shivering. She slept, she woke to a mole hitting her, she slept again. Then she was dragged to a quieter place, where a vile old mole brooded and stared at her with cruel lust and then turned on her with such savagery that her world began to turn blank and dark.
Chapter Ten
Privet regained consciousness to the violent grip of talons at her face. Unable to move, shocked and in pain, she struggled to open her eyes, only to be half blinded by sun. Then the red-eyed face of the vile mole blocked light out as it came close and stared at her.
“What’s yer name, mole?”
“Privet.”
His teeth w
ere yellow, and the stench of his fetid breath made her retch; his eyes were the most evil she had ever seen; his face had Rooster’s furrows and shadows, and in his fur was that same russet tinge. She had seen Rooster in Grear; now he loomed over her in the form of Red Ratcher.
“Scared?”
She nodded.
He grinned malevolently. “I would be,” he said. He turned on the two moles who stanced nearby, watching. “Bugger off.”
She stared immobile and mute and watched his paw, rough and gnarled, reach out even before the others had gone. It grasped her flank, its talons curled painfully into her flesh, it groped and gripped at her and his huge ugly head was near, and his breath hot and vile on her face and clustering in her snout like filth.
“Is this dying?” she asked herself, as he slowly drew her more and more tightly to him, “is this the dark and fearful way of death?”
She screamed as sudden pain was like a talon in her, hard and piercing, and her eyes filled with tears that felt like blood.
He made a sound of sorts, a filthy guttural baying sound, and his breath and teeth and moist tongue were at her face and then shifting to her back, and she knew he was going to take her then and there, going to hurt her like Rooster hurt Lime only that was not hurt, that was... The pain again, deep and mortal, pain a mole cannot forget, and then he laughed, and bit her back; his great paws slid down her flanks on either side and his full weight was on her, at her haunches, crushing her, and the pain was pushing deep at her, terrible, and she was drowning in a sea of dark, wild, forbidding agony, screaming as she sank into a humiliation that she had never known a mole could suffer, nor another create.
“NOOOO!” But it was not her voice.
Ratcher’s movement over her stopped, and she felt his paws hasten and scrabble from her, and the pain withdrew. She was buffeted aside by a violent blow across her head, and the clouds about her grew darker still; the voice she had heard began shouting and screaming in rage.