“NO!” The tone was deep, angry – and familiar.
She turned, strove to see, then crawled further back into the shadow of a peat hag, expecting that at any moment his paw would take her once again; none touched her, while struggle and raging filled the space about her. As the pain in her haunches lessened her vision cleared; she tried to focus her eyes, succeeded at last, and saw Ratcher, snarling, staring, talons out, his body hunched against a foe far greater than himself.
“No!” she had time to cry in vain as the full horror of the scene became clear to her – a horror greater than the obscene death she had been about to die. She saw Rooster rampant. Rooster with his great paws raised high above Ratcher’s head, the talons pointed and ready to strike the life from those red eyes for ever.
“NOOOO!” she cried, knowing it was too late.
The Master of the Delve’s delving paw descended, talons out, and before her gaze it seemed to travel so slowly that she saw, or seemed to see, every detail of its strike, and to hear every slow moment of Rooster’s blood-lust roar. Ratcher’s head shot back as the thrusting talons burst into it, and smashed it; then the bloodied paw rose again and struck down where Ratcher’s head was already rent, his eyes already smashed and dead.
“NOOO!” roared Rooster, and his strike went into that vile old body and burst its bag of fleshy fur and blood and bone. Rooster’s paws and face and shoulders were turned red with his father’s life before he raised the body up and hurled it out across the Moors. Then he reared and turned, and found himself staring at four great grikes who now faced him, amongst them his brother Grear.
In the numbed and silent world from which Privet watched the tragedy unfolding before her, it seemed to her that the outcome of the fight was inevitable, and events moved forward with the same slow unstoppable power of the black storm she and Rooster had once watched crossing the Moors near Hilbert’s Top. Perhaps the quartet of huge moles who now advanced upon him did not think quite the same thing, but they must have felt a certain trepidation arising from what had just happened, unknown to Privet, and from the bloody evidence that Rooster had just hurled from him with such power and disgust.
Moments before all had seemed well to Grear, and normal enough – if normal it was that the air around their stronghold was filled with the whimpers of the tortured Crowden guard and the screams of the pathetic female Ratcher was in the act of ravaging; but then, the grikes of Ratcher’s clan liked that kind of thing.
Then came warning shouts, and what seemed a rampage of moles, led not by one of the normal Crowden lot, with lighter, smoother fur, but by a mole who looked like one of the Ratcher clan – grike, dark-furred and savage. The posted guards had been taken and killed, and then the second line of defence, and on this charging force had come, more powerful and resolute than any the grikes had ever met.
So sudden was the attack, so total the surprise, that when Rooster grabbed the nearest mole by the throat and said, “Where is she?” not only did the mole point the way to Red Ratcher without demur, but the others stayed rooted to the spot. The Crowden moles turned on Ratcher’s mob, inspired by the power of Rooster’s bold example, and began, without more ado, to beat them into submission. Rooster went on regardless of his safety, sensing that he had no time to lose.
He had found his way amongst the peat hags, rounded a corner, and there seen Privet bent and trapped, her back bowed beneath Red Ratcher’s vile force as the evil mole began to have his way with her. Nothing could have contained Rooster then – not moles, not training, nor any sense that in terms of his Mastership he was destroying all. Perhaps if the moles concerned had not been Privet and Red Ratcher, if the act he sought to stop had not been so cruelly obscene, he might have held himself back.
The truth was that Rooster launched himself upon his father with awesome might, like a mole who had been held back too long from something he had desired to do all his adult life. So he had gone forward, taken his father’s life in a few appalling blows, and stained his heart with the blood of patricide.
Meanwhile, Privet crawled to one side and began to understand what was apaw, whilst Grear and three of his strongest clan-brothers, recovering from the shock of surprise, broke free of the Crowden moles and rushed round to the defence of Ratcher himself.
“Too late,” whispered Rooster, eyeing them. Before the maddened, ruthless sight of him three of the four began to quail. Only Grear himself did not, for he saw his father dead, and the blood fresh upon his murderer’s paws, a mole he had seen before, and now recognized.
“Charnel mole,” hissed Grear, raising his not inconsiderable paws to the same level as Rooster’s, whilst looking to right and left and inspiring his friends to stand firm. Four against one was surely number enough to take any mole.
Privet, the only independent witness of what happened next, felt that her sense that the outcome was inevitable had as much to do with the tragedy implicit in Rooster discovering his taste for violence and so taking a path he could surely never retrace with his delving spirit intact, as with who would win or lose. Her cry of “No!” was but the whisper of dry grass in the wake of passing storm-winds.
Rooster’s eyes narrowed in those fateful moments, his paws gyrated as they did before a delve, his head turned a little to one side as if he were divining the nature” of the moles he faced, and then, just as he had on Hilbert’s Top when he had decided on the right delve to make, he moved – suddenly, swiftly, powerfully, and with a killing ruthlessness that struck fear in all those near. He hunched forward, lowered his snout, pulled his right paw back and began to power it forward again, talons extended to the full.
Into Grear’s chest he struck, so fiercely that the violent expulsion of air from his lungs was heard by everymole there. It was Grear’s last breath and it ended with his head shooting back in agony before his mouth filled with blood and phlegm, and his eyes stared for an instant of horror, at the sky, and saw no more.
The blow was so powerful that it shook even Rooster’s great body, and for a moment his back paws rose from the ground. Then as they touched earth again, and the dead Grear shot back into the advance of one of the others. Rooster powered a left paw-thrust into the face of the next mole along the line that had been advancing upon him.
That mole did not die then, but he did not live for long thereafter, and suddenly all was in disarray and Rooster was triumphant over the moles about him, who retreated into the talons of the Crowden moles who had come from behind.
No words can adequately describe the frightening power of what those moles witnessed, and its effect was the same on Crowden and Ratcher mole alike: all stopped, all stared, all were in utter awe. They had seen come among them a mole of such strength and resolute purpose that before him they could be neither friend nor foe, but followers all.
Then Rooster began to give commands, and took over the position they had assaulted, and changed for ever the face of the endless strife of Ratcher and Crowden mole across the Moors.
We who follow the tale of Duncton Wood and the moles who strive for the peace of the Stone’s Silence, and the Light of its wisdom and love, will wish to turn from this dark, fell scene; in disgust perhaps, in shock certainly, in hope always, that despite all the Stone will find a way back to Light and love. Therefore let us turn our snouts to one mole in that savage madness that followed Rooster’s turning towards the way of violence he had resisted so long, and follow him.
Hamble, good Hamble, strong Hamble, witness to it all, and mole enough to keep his head, he’ll be our guide. He realized in those fearful moments that whilst nomole could have kept Rooster from the path of violence of which Lime had been a conduit, but his grim past the true creator, there was something he might do for good.
Privet lay ravaged and half broken, quite forgotten in the carnage of the fighting that Rooster now led. Hamble went to her, placed a paw at her shoulder, and whispered urgently, “You come with me. Now. No whimpering, no crying, no questioning. Come. I must get you out of here!”
&
nbsp; “Must... stop Rooster.”
For a moment she even tried, rising to her paws and reaching out to him, but at her first touch he turned on her with a look of chilling indifference.
“Not you,” he said. It was utter, and final, dismissal.
Yet still she tried... and at her second touch he even raised a huge paw at her; then, sensing not the horror of what he did but its irrelevance, he turned from her and moved away.
Again she ran to him, and this time the watching moles thought she would die. He reached down to her, raised her up, and seemed about to hurl her after the dead body of his father. Instead he dropped her at Hamble’s paws.
“I do not want to see this mole again,” he growled, turning away a final time.
“Come,” said Hamble gently, leading her away.
So in the confusion of battle and change, one good deed was done, and Privet found a protector and guide away from what, a mole might argue, she herself had caused. Perhaps. For now, judgement is better left aside as we give our support to Hamble, who kept his head and saw the one ray of light that still shone in that Moorish scene. What it meant he did not know, but it was to do with Privet, and with the future, and it was not long going to stay alight in this grim place.
“Come on, mole,” said Hamble urgently, “I’m taking you far from here.”
“But...” cried Privet, her paws scrabbling to keep up with him as he almost dragged her through his own ranks and out of the Ratcher stronghold towards Crowden’s defences again, past scenes of murder and fighting, warding off moles with talon-thrusts of his own. But as they reached the first tunnel he suddenly balked at following that way.
“No! No more! You’ll not be safe now, not if my guess of what’s to come is right. Rooster’s made his choice and nomole will change it. But my father promised to get you out of here and away from the Moors, and now I shall fulfill that promise. But after that, Privet, you’ll be on your own. And may the Stone help you!”
He turned south towards Shining Clough, the way up on to the Moors that led to the Weign Stones, though Privet had never ventured there. On and on he drove her through the day, on and on into dusk.
“I can’t go on,” she whimpered finally.
“Then sleep,” he snarled, hurling her into a temporary scrape. “And say nothing. What you have done —”
“But I —”
“You had a look of triumph on your face, Privet, when Rooster killed Grear. I saw it. You looked like Lime, you looked like the Eldrene Wort must once have done. You looked like nomole that I ever want to know.”
She stared at him aghast, unable to speak, for she sensed something of the truth of what he said.
“I was confused...” she tried to say.
“Shut up. Privet, and sleep. For when you wake I shall continue to take you on until I can be discharged of my responsibility for you.”
“Hamble,” she said, trying to win something of him back to her, “you’re not yourself either. You’re not the mole I know —”
“Sleep!” he thundered, buffeting her into weeping dark tears, a hurt huddle of a mole who in the short space of that nightmare night and day had begun to lose all, even dignity.
On, on they went the next day, up and up into the Moors, and on the following day they reached the Weign Stones. Near these Hamble left her crying and went to the Stones and stanced quietly, staring bleakly about.
“The Eldrene Wort scribed her Testimony here,” he said. “For you! Ha! Some mole you’ve turned out to be.”
“Rooster went with Lime. He —”
“He craved you, my dear, and all you could make him seem to think was that his desire was to hurt, not love. You know what he said to me before... before he charged upon the Ratcher moles? He said, ‘I didn’t know that she wanted me like that. It felt violent, what I did to Lime, but it was like delving, it was another way of being one with her. But it was Privet I loved.’”
“Let me go back to him...”
Hamble shook his head. “My dear, all, all has changed. He thinks now he has taken Lime he must have her always. He feels responsible.”
“And Lime?”
Hamble laughed aloud. “She doesn’t know what she’s done! I’ll warrant she’s going to find that her night-time of pleasuring with Rooster will turn into a lifetime of discovering she’s barely worth a single hair of the mole your timidity let her steal from you. But now he’ll not let her go! Oh no. Privet, you’ll not be wanted there.”
Poor Privet wept uncontrollably, but Hamble stared at her with little sympathy for a time, until his eyes softened.
“But then,” he muttered, more to himself than her, “I’ve got a feeling this was the way it was meant to be. The Stone’s in this, all of it. When I saw you where you had crawled away from Ratcher, I saw something beyond all this. I saw a fight, a hope, a dream, and Stone help us all but it’s dependent on you. That’s why I’m taking you out of here.”
“Where to?” she whispered.
“I’ve no idea. Privet, but when I get there I’ll know it well enough. But if you’ve a prayer to say before the Stones, now’s your chance, because we’re going on shortly, however tired you may be.”
Privet went to the Stones, and tried to be still and think of what to do. She felt angry, confused, upset, jealous still, and lost; and worse, she felt if she had known differently she would have been able to act more judiciously.
“Did you feel like this?” she whispered, directing her thoughts to Wort. “I feel perhaps you did... only more than I do, because your life...”
A strange peace began to come to her, and tiredness, and a curious sense of warmth. Through it all she sensed that Hamble loved her, deep enough to care, and wisely enough to see that only time might heal what had happened, and that she was a mole who should go on a journey, just as Wort had done and advised her to do in her Testimony: a long and lonely journey at the end of which, if she had faith, if she was true to herself and the Stone’s Silence, those dreams she had had of Rooster, of peace, of pups, of normality, might one day come true.
She turned from the Stones to Hamble, and smiled wanly. “I love you, Hamble,” she said. “And I love Rooster!”
“Funny way of showing it,” he grumbled, putting a paw to her. She cried, and he held her for a time.
“Come,” he said, “I’ll see you as far as I can along the way, until I’m sure you’re clear of Ratcher’s lot, or rather, Rooster’s lot, as I have a feeling we may all soon become.”
“He is still a Master of the Delve,” she said, “whatever he may do, and however far he may seek to run from it.”
“Come on, mole, put it behind you. Let others sort out their own lives while the Stone leads you on yours.”
So on they went for several days, up into Bleaklow Moor, and thence by way of Whillan Clough into the High Peak and fabled Kinder Scout.
“No place for moles!” said Hamble, surveying the awesome, desolate scene.
“You’re not going to leave me here!” said Privet, smiling.
“I’ll know when,” he said.
On, on to the south, until a dusk came when the bleak heather gave way to pasture, and the air was warm and scented with flowers and hay, and lights shone across the sky, and the horizon was low and blue. They slept, close, and when they woke they saw a sight they had never seen; green grass stretching to greener valleys, distant trees, colours of lower land.
“It’s moledom,” whispered Privet in a voice shaky with emotion, and fear of the unknown that lay ahead.
“Aye,” said Hamble, “’tis where I always wanted to go. But this...”
“This is where you’re going to leave me, isn’t it?”
He nodded gravely.
“Come with me, Hamble, you and I have always been friends and understood each other. Please come...” She took his paw as if to lead him into the future that stretched below them.
He stanced still and shook his head. “I must go back into the Moors, my dear. I want to c
ome with you, but my ta. sk is there. Rooster’s a mole needs others at his flank, to help and perhaps to guide. He has a task, and it is a great one, but others must be with him. I feel... close to him. As close to him as to you. And anyway, I’ve got to watch over Crowden for a time, and the moles who choose to live there, including your sister Lime.”
He looked back upslope towards the dark Moors and a shadow of apprehension crossed his face; Privet’s too, as she looked south, at the long, unknown way she must soon begin to travel alone.
“You go for all of us. Privet, all of us moles trapped on the Moors. Find a way to lead us out of there, out of our darkness. Seek out moles and places who will take you further on your journey. Travel for me, for Rooster, for Hume, even for Lime. Find a way to tell us what we should do, and where we should go.”
“I’m frightened, Hamble,” Privet said.
“You went out to Chieveley Dale, you were lost, and yet you found a way back. Go now. Privet, seek the task the Stone has set for you, and it will lead you back in some way to us. To me. Even one day to Rooster, who loves you.”
“And to the Master of the Delve?”
“Aye, the light I saw that made me bring you here was strong enough to show the way even to a Master of the Delve.”
“Hold me, Hamble, so close, so tight, that I shall never forget the way you feel, the way you are. Hold me, my dear.”
So there the two friends embraced one last long time, the future and task of one leading northward to the Moors once more; but for the other, southward into moledom, and a new liberty.
“Go,” he whispered.
But she shook her head. “You go first,” she whispered, “and don’t look back. Look after yourself, Hamble, and see that Lime is protected too. Tell her that I think no ill of her. I hope one day I shall see her or hers again. And guard Rooster, that he may return to me one day, as I to him, safeguarded, and as we were meant to be.”
Then Hamble turned from her, and climbed slowly back up into the Moors, until he was gone and out of sight.
Only then did Privet turn from what had been her life, to face the light of the sun, and to find what liberty moledom held for one who had lost all but faith in the Stone, and the courage to pursue it.