While between them all went the moles who in some ways, as Maple often said, were the bravest and most unsung of all – young males and females, swift of paw and quick of mind, who acted as messengers and journeymoles and kept communication between the groups alive. Maple himself, Ystwelyn and the others, moved between these four main groups, appearing and disappearing without warning, always seeming to know when and where they were needed, keeping morale high, watching their moment, and slowly and steadily, almost without the Newborns realizing it, expanding their territory.
And what of Rooster, Master of the Delve? At the suggestion of Maple, and with some gentle persuasion by Weeth, he was put into the care of the moles under Stow, who undertook to hide him high in the Wolds in some place only those closest to Stow could locate.
“I’ve talked it through with him,” Stow told Maple before the forces went their separate ways, “and I’ve an idea of the sort of place he’s looking for. Mind, how long he’ll agree to stay with us is another matter, but I think he’s got it into his head at last that there’ll be Newborns sent out to kill him once Quail knows he’s alive. Don’t you worry, Maple, the moles of the Wold won’t let you or Rooster down. It’s an honour to watch over that mole.” For so matter-of-fact and stolid a mole, Stow sounded almost fervent.
So the forces under Maple were divided for safety’s sake, and the better to confuse and extend the Newborns, and make them wonder quite where the followers were, and when their next assault on a major Newborn-held system would be.
“Do you know, Maple?” asked Ystwelyn in the quiet days that followed the departure of Stow and all the others.
Maple smiled enigmatically.
“Do you, sir?” asked Weeth, when he and Maple were alone.
“Aye, I do,” said Maple, “I know the place, but I don’t know when. Now listen, Weeth, there’s a task I have for you and it will be dangerous, but you’re the mole to do it.”
“A task!” declared Weeth, with just a little less than his usual enthusiasm. There was an air about the way Maple said this that was even more serious than usual.
“And this time it’s one for which I’m going to insist that Arvon and a few tough moles accompany you.”
“Arvon!” repeated Weeth. Oh dear, this sounded like a dangerous task rather than an enjoyable venture. “Will he not be needed here? I’m so much better working alone.”
“He’ll be needed rather more where you’ll be going, if only to get you in and out alive. He’ll be the military muscle and enterprise, you’ll be the negotiator.”
Weeth grinned feebly. It sounded as if real responsibility was coming his way, and he did not like it.
“To where,” he said carefully, “do you wish me to go?”
“I have discussed the matter at length with Ystwelyn,” said Maple, “and we are agreed that it is time a visit was paid to Duncton Wood.”
“Ah!” said Weeth in a thin voice, and with a thinner grin. “When do I start?” His voice and his grin were both fading fast.
“Today.”
PART III
Dissenters
Chapter Twenty-One
As Weeth set off on one of the most perilous assignments of his eventful life, another mole was coming to the end of the most dangerous of his: Noakes and his two companions from Seven Barrows had not only reached Duncton, but had infiltrated the High Wood, and now he was wondering what to do next.
Not that it had been easy reaching Duncton Wood, or sneaking past the Newborn guardmoles posted in well-organized positions by the cross-under at the bottom of the south-east slopes. But that done, and with Fieldfare’s detailed description of the topography of Duncton in mind, they took a direct route up to the High Wood, and hid themselves in one of its obscurer corners, impressed by the ancient, soaring beech trees, and the awesome quiet they imposed on the floor of the Wood beneath them.
Noakes’ leadership throughout the journey had been exemplary – bold, resourceful, and energetic, and his companions, both as young as he, had until now regarded their task as adventure rather than risk. But now they were in the hushed High Wood of moledom’s most renowned system, with Newborn patrols no doubt nearby, a certain sobriety descended upon them, and they wondered quite where they went from here.
Noakes himself had long since dismissed any notion of bold pretence, such as arriving at the Library with some concocted story that he was a visiting mole seeking guidance on scribing and scholarship; bright and clever he might be, but he did not know the first folio of a text from its last, nor its bottom from its top, and that ruse would not work.
Nor was he prepared to risk his life or that of his companions pretending to be Newborn. This trick had worked for them several times, but in a system long since in the thrall of Brother Inquisitors it was unlikely to succeed. No, the strategy he decided to adopt was one demanding nerve, and a degree of perspicacity, not to mention patience.
“We know where the Duncton Stone is because Fieldfare told us,” he said, peering through the soaring trees in a westward direction and thinking that he had never in his life felt himself to be in such a holy kind of place. “Well, my plan is this: I’m going to find the Stone this evening under cover of half-light, and there I’ll wait until a mole appears to pray before it, as surely somemole will. I shall watch him, and I shall decide whether or not he’s a follower. For one thing we do know is that the Newborns are afraid of the Stone and see it as a force they’ve got to appease, rather than a grace that’s on their side. So, I shall wait, and trust that a mole will come along who can guide me to this great mole Pumpkin, wherever he may be.”
“It’s risky, Noakes,” said one of his friends.
Noakes shrugged and grinned, scratching his glossy flank.
“Life’s risky, but I say to myself, if a mole’s not safe by the Duncton Stone, where is he safe! As for you two, you stay here and you don’t move until I get back. Dig yourselves in; use this deep litter of beech leaves to cover your tracks. Resist the temptation to burrow deep, for somewhere beneath here, as Fieldfare has warned us, are the tunnels of the Ancient System of Duncton Wood and they are protected by Dark Sound. Nomole knows we’re here, and nomole’s going to find you. As for me, if I’m not back within three days – though I will be, I assure you of that! – then you must decide on a course of action for yourselves.”
“Can’t we come with you?”
“You could do, and maybe you should do, but instinct says that this is a task for one mole alone. Trust me, it’ll be all right.”
Which they willingly did, not because they were themselves afraid to accompany him, but because so far he had been proved right in most of the decisions he had made, and where he was wrong he had shown the quickness of thought and the resourcefulness to escape and survive. But even moles like Noakes, upon whom the stars usually seem to shine, could be wrong, and he was wrong this time. As he set off towards the Stone, a grey and grizzled shadow with sharp eyes and a doubting snout separated itself from the roots of an imposing beech tree nearby, and followed him silently.
Meanwhile, as his companions dug in so they would not be observed, they were being carefully watched by another shadow, this one grey-black and younger than the first: a shadow so close that it could hear their every word; a shadow that was trying to decide if these infiltrators were followers or very clever Newborns.
In normal circumstances Noakes’ plan would have been a reasonable one, but these were abnormal times and he could not know that a secret and extraordinary battle was being fought across the deserted spaces of the High Wood. The aggressors were a group of well-trained Newborn guardmoles, operating out of the system’s Library under the direct leadership of Brother Inquisitor Fetter. Their quarry were the moles who had escaped Barrow Vale under Pumpkin’s leadership back in December, who, bolstered by the timely arrival of Hamble, now eked out a dangerous existence in the Ancient System itself, harried by Newborns above and Dark Sound below.
Twenty moles had originally e
scaped, including Pumpkin himself and these along with Hamble made twenty-one. But of these five had since died – four elderly moles had succumbed to the privations of their new life, and a younger one had been killed in a fight with Newborn guards near the Stone. Two more had been caught and were believed to be alive down in the Marsh End, where after a period of torture both had been broken and given away the numbers and general position of their besieged friends up in the High Wood.
One other mole deserves mention: Sturne, still Acting Master of the Library and the only Duncton follower successfully fooling the Newborns into thinking he was one of them. Not that Brother Inquisitor Fetter did not have his suspicions – but then, they were suspicious of everymole. The worms of suspicion were their daily food. But Sturne’s bibliographical expertise was so great, and his manner so convincingly hostile towards the followers, that he had survived with the Inquisitors’ confidence in him intact.
Not that he had done so without enormous cost to himself. Desperately alone, publicly subscribing to views he detested, forced to be involved in Newborn rituals whose words and symbolism were an affront to his very being and beliefs, Acting Master Sturne had suffered during his lonely struggle for the Stone – a Task Master Librarian Stour had set for him, which now only Pumpkin in all the world knew of though Cluniac had guessed much of the truth.
But nothing had caused him more anguish and suffering than being forced to witness the torturing of the two followers caught by Newborns after their escape to the Ancient System. One was young, the other middle-aged, both with a life ahead; it might have been easier had the two been old; they might perhaps have not survived their ill-treatment so long. Being made to watch their torture in the bloodstained chambers of the Marsh End was a test, and a terrible one, for however much a mole may be justified in hiding his true affiliations he cannot but feel guilt when he is unable to intervene to prevent deliberate cruelty to an innocent mole.
In truth, had Sturne believed his intervention would have had even the smallest chance of success he would have tried it, but he knew otherwise; and it was no comfort to him to know that his brave actions since the Newborn takeover had saved lives, including all those presently hiding with Pumpkin in the Ancient System.
He had to watch as the two moles were harried and hurt in turn; after being cruelly beaten they were blinded and their snouts slowly crushed. Finally, the agony too great, they had betrayed their own kin and friends. It was then that Sturne, for the first time in his life, had allowed a tear to trickle down his face.
“So you feel sympathy. Acting Master Sturne?” whispered the ever-watchful Fetter.
Sturne had long since decided that where the Brother Inquisitors were concerned attack was the best defence: “Sympathy?” he cried out, wiping the tear away. “I feel rage that such scum as these are allowed to live. What is Newborn justice if the Snake is allowed to survive in a body, however broken? Do you think that Snake is dead because these two foul moles have finally told the truth about their fellow conspirators against the Stone in the High Wood? Yes, I weep to see such sinfulness still living in the world!”
“Well, Acting Master! Well! Passion at last, from the least passionate mole I have ever met!” said Fetter. “You have feelings after all, it seems. But if that is a plea for these moles to be executed in the name of the Stone then you do not understand the subtleties of punishment. They will suffer more if they live, and that is good, for it may mean the Snake in their hearts will die and we will have saved two more moles for the Stone. And, by confessing as they have, they have won the right to live. So your plea must be ignored – but it is appreciated.”
All this Sturne knew well enough, just as he knew too that the tortured moles both wished to die. Had they not both screamed out for death? And yet... but moments later they were past all thresholds of pain and into the saving grace of numbness, of confusion, or near-madness, and their agony was less. Time would diminish it further.
In that world they had no protectors but the one who was forced to watch their distress; Sturne himself And he, suffering with them, prayed to the Stone that it alone would decide their fate, and no mole.
“Stone, if they live, grant that I may be allowed to watch over them. Stone...” Then another tear had come, more painful to Sturne than a whole flood of tears to any other mole.
No wonder his chill eyes were colder now, no wonder the icy etchings of his face were deeper; no wonder the severe furrows of his brow and the hard downturn of his mouth were ever more intimidating. After the torture, even Brother Inquisitors Fetter and Law were half-afraid of him, and let him alone in the vast and echoing chambers of the Library, once so busy and productive, empty now except for the guardmoles who lingered there, hoping to catch sight or sound of the rebels they knew were hiding in the Ancient System nearby.
Spring had come across Duncton as elsewhere, and there in the Library, among its texts and shelves, vast walls and deep tunnels hushing the joyful sound of bird and mammal from the surface above, Sturne had begun the most dangerous and most important part of his work: liaising with the hidden force that Pumpkin and Hamble now led in the long-lost tunnels beneath the High Wood.
Never for a moment had the Inquisitors suspected that Sturne of all moles was working with the followers hiding in the Ancient System, rather than against them. Never for a moment had anymole questioned the advice Sturne gave about the tunnels, or doubted that the map of them he had forged, claiming it as Mayweed’s own original, was anything but genuine. * It is a measure of Sturne’s extraordinary courage that he knew what would happen to him, slowly, down in that bloodstained chamber in the Marsh End, if his collusion with the followers was ever discovered.
* See The Duncton Chronicles for mention of the possible existence of this map, made by Mayweed, one of the greatest route-finders moledom has ever known.
Meanwhile, despite these enormous pressures, it was Sturne who brilliantly misdirected the campaign of Fetter’s guardmoles to bring out into the open the moles they sought. Against the few disasters – the death of the young mole in a skirmish at the Stone, the capture and torture of the two already mentioned, must be set the success with which the rest of the rebels eluded capture and detection. The revelations of the tortured moles proved worthless, for the rebels had already flown from the tunnels where they were reported to be hiding and all the guardmoles’ best efforts produced nothing.
Where then were the rebels? And how did they achieve their success? Most accounts have made their exploits heroic, and have much romanticized their bravery, the more so that many were elderly, and all knew the fate that awaited them if they were captured.
The truth is that from the time of their going to ground until the coming of Noakes that June, they lived a scurrying, fearful kind of life, with no contact with the outside world (except briefly with Sturne through Pumpkin, who had to keep his source of help secret), with little food (the Ancient System’s tunnels are notoriously wormless) and, most seriously, without sufficient water for most of May (when Duncton suffered an unseasonable drought).
All this in tunnels beset by the Dark Sound and other horrors that past Masters of the Delve had carved and etched into the dark and gloomy walls and chambers, leaving traps and devices whose insidious tensions could turn moles half-mad with fear and desolation. These delvings seemed designed primarily to protect the Stone itself, and only the truly innocent and pure in heart, or morally powerful, or profoundly faithful, could long survive them. But the longer the rebels were forced to live among them the more they came to see that as well as the Stone, which lay on the west side of the Ancient System, the Dark Sound seemed also to protect the very centre of the High Wood. Several of the more venturesome rebels did their best to enter that forbidding place, but none got far and all reported that so far as they could tell the tunnels there were now ruinous and root-filled, and surely beyond the ken of mole.
Pumpkin had early on decided against saying anything to anymole, excepting Sturne hims
elf, about the strange and frightening experience he and Cluniac had suffered in early spring when they had tried to venture through immediate dangers to whatever lay beyond.
That something did lie beyond he had no doubt, and it filled him with awe and disquiet. That the tunnels there were the source of much of the Dark Sound that echoed almost continuously through the Ancient System, he was sure, and so were his rebel colleagues. But more than that, and what suspicions he had, he did not say, and nor did anymole-else ask him. As the molemonths of summer passed by the rebels ceased talking about the Dark Sound, or its source, and a conspiracy of silence about it developed; only tearful glances, or the occasional muttered reference about “not going that way betrayed their unease. Certain tunnels, certain filled-in portals, were avoided, and the rebels created routes that minimized their exposure to these disturbing places, and the sound they seemed to provoke.
Often the sense of this unknown and unexplained place, lost now to mole, was oppressive, and many was the time one or other of the rebels sought to escape the gloom and doom of their refuge, or refused to travel even into those tunnels that had been explored, riddled as they constantly were by the sounds of danger.
Meanwhile Pumpkin and Hamble inspired them to control their fears and to survive, the former feeding their collective memory of what Duncton had once been and might be again if only they could show the will to survive, while the latter’s stories of the mounting danger of the Newborns in the outside world left them in no doubt where their duty lay. Cold, starvation, boredom, fear, hopelessness, despair – such were the enemies these brave moles faced in that nightmare time of isolation and exclusion.