Duncton Found (112 page)

“I do not believe we can win this day. I do not think that if we give ourselves up we shall be allowed to survive. We can only hope that under cover of this ominous weather, and knowing the ground as we do, we can deal the grikes a blow on behalf of all moledom that they shall not forget.”

There was a great and terrible cheer at this.

“Yet one thing I shall ask of you!”

“Ask it, Squeezebelly!” several shouted.

“Then it is this. If the Stone decrees that most of us must fall before the talons of the Word it shall, surely, let some survive. Let such moles, whoever they are, be not ashamed to flee from Beechenhill as opportunities come. They shall have the task of going out to other systems and telling such followers as they can find what they have seen happen here in Beechenhill.

“I believe that one day the Stone will live again across moledom, and if we in this great system can pass on to others news of all that happened here – of our doubts, of our retreat to Castern, of how the Stone seemed to call us out again, of whatever aid we may bring to the Stone Mole – then other followers in other systems shall gain courage from it; and wisdom too. For surely violence is not the way and there shall be a day when a better way is found!

“Now, up and out we shall go, keeping together, having courage to bring our help to bear upon the barbed mole before our Stone. May we be given all the strength the Stone can give, and if we do wrong, may each of us be forgiven!”

With that, and a mighty shout, Squeezebelly led his moles out of that chamber, and up onto the surface to make their final return to Beechenhill from the northern side.

So hard had the downpour been at first that the surface of the Stone seemed surrounded by an aura of mist where the rain bounced off; so hard that the body of the henchmole hanging next to Beechen twisted and turned under its force, and his fur turned gleaming black.

Yet barely a guardmole moved, for the rain initially seemed good, seemed cool and cleansing, and its coming marked a sudden easing of the pressure in the air. They saw Wort stance up in the rain as if trying to combat its might against her body, and they saw her shouting against it, but heard her not for the rain was so loud and violent on the ground.

They saw the Stone Mole pull his head back and open his parched mouth as rain darkened his body and cleansed it, and then shone on him, and reflected the violent light in the sky above.

Down, down it came, in ever more powerful tranches until soon in places across the grass small rivulets began to flow, while lower down the slopes water began to gush out of tunnel entrances and moles and other creatures were forced to come running, blinking and closing their eyes against the violent fall, their paws and fur filthy with yellow mud.

The tunnels underground being flooded, there was no shelter from the rain there and the moles had to stay where they were, and if they moved at all it was to cluster together more and to stare at the Stone Mole, who seemed to command the very rain itself.

Heavier, and yet heavier it came, seeking to bow a mole’s snout down, thundering in his ears, stinging his body, squelching between his talons, splashing up violently into his face.

Yet there was an urge, an addictive urge, for everymole to keep his snout up and stare at the Stone Mole to whom the rain seemed to have brought a strange and awesome kind of life.

His head had arched further back, his mouth was open as if to quench his mortal thirst, and his free paw reached and turned and went up as if in benediction upon the eldrene Wort who stanced beneath, or upon the Stone, or perhaps upon them all.

Then with a sudden rush of wind and lightning in the sky the rain stopped, leaving everything and everymole chilled and dripping. Yet still barely a single mole moved.

They stared instead at something on the northern horizon, far, far beyond the Stone Mole, barely thicker at first than a stretch of taut barbed wire.

Yet it seemed to grow towards them, though how slow or fast none could quite tell.

“Look!”

One mole shouted it, but all saw, all were amazed.

For running, gathering towards them, seemingly carried by the driving wind and cloud itself a force of moles came, a great and commanding mole at their head.

“’Tis the moles of Beechenhill!” cried out Merrick then in surprise.’Tis Squeezebelly himself that leads them!”

As he said these words, the first winds of the new storm hit them. The eldrene Wort reared up again as if against the very storm itself and as the new and heavier rain began to fall into their eyes and faces, and the first shouts of the Beechenhill moles were heard, she cried out, “Tear down the Stone Mole. Kill him! Talon him! Make him die! Now does the Word put us to its greatest test! Tear him down and talon him!”

Her screamed words seemed to release an instinctive fear among the henchmoles, so they felt that if they did not do as she said they would all be lost.

But as they lunged forward to do Wort’s will, the great wave of Beechenhill moles also rushed forward with Squeezebelly’s roaring command in their ears: “Save him! In the Stone’s name, save the Stone Mole!”

The darkness of the heart of the storm came then, and rain turned the ground to mud beneath the frantic paws of moles of Word and Stone as they joined in a killing battle for possession of the Stone Mole.

While he, dying now, hung still and silent above them all, and the rain that was upon him washed his tears and blood into the soil of Beechenhill below. And darkness began to come.

In Duncton Wood, as night fell at the Stone, the madness that had seemed to be with Mistle for several days past began at last to reach a climax of violence and distress. She screamed and cried as if trying to reach out to something she could not touch and Romney, though tired with watching over her for so long, only stopped her from dashing herself against the Stone by exerting all his strength. Instead, she began to sob, “No, no, no, no,” into that dreadful night.

Minutes or hours later, he did not know which, she went quiet, her eyes open as she watched through the long night, her body trembling, and her pain terrible to see.

“Yes,” she whispered, utterly beyond comforting, “yes, my dear, I am with you before the Stone, I am here.”

When Romney tried to speak to her she only stirred and turned, as a mole stirs when another seeks to wake it from deep sleep, its brow puckering, its paws feebly seeking to push the disturbance away.

“He will come back,” said Romney through his tears.

“Yes, my love, I am here,” she whispered.

“He will come back, Mistle.”

“No, I shall not go. No, no...” she whimpered then, “my love is dying.”

“Your love lives still, the mole you love will come back home to you one day,” Romney whispered again and again; when she said “No”, he whispered it more, on and on, his faith confronting her despair.

“Stone, help me help her,” he said. “Mistle, he will come back to you.”

Above them in the still clear night the first new beech buds trembled, while below the flowers reached up towards the sky, and had there been light a mole might have seen that the promise of spring was already bright across the wood. But there was none, all was dark, the promise was not seen.

“My love....”

“He will come back,” said faithful, loving Romney. “One day he will, one day....”

On through the night he whispered it, and whatever other comforts he could find as well, holding poor Mistle close, and watching and hoping that when dawn came it would bring respite.

Sometime in that long night of violence across Beechenhill the Stone Mole cried out, “Father, let them know thy Silence now! Father, let them be still at last!”

But they were not still. Madness had gripped them all, a madness that drove them on through rain and storm, through pain and fear, thrusting their talons at anymole that moved, a madness of slaughter in the driven dark in which mole of the Stone and mole of the Word could not tell each other apart, and yet killed on. It was a night of screams lost in the wind, a night when taloned paws grasped the heads of fatigued moles and thrust them at the wire’s barbs; a night of utter shame.

Nomole knows what dread deeds were done in the name of Word and Stone, nor truly why it was that such a bloody mayhem as that was fought around the body of a near-dead mole. Yet so it was, and so history must record it.

And dawn revealed the dead.

Squeezebelly, slumped still near the Stone, with the blood of many a mole of the Word upon his paws. His son Bramble dead nearby. No sign of Skelder though, lost perhaps among that throng of fighting moles who seemed to roll downslope from the Stone and lay there now, all dead, just spread about like leaves in a wet autumn. He might be there.

And yet... look close beneath the Stone. Wort lives, bloodied yet not badly wounded, staring where the Stone Mole still hangs, motionless but alive. Look closer yet: her eyes are full of tears and though she whispers still, her prayers of obsession and hate are all quite spent; her tears are tears of compassion, her words are words of pity.

Sleekit lives, but only because grubby Holm, grubbier than ever, had the sense to stay close by her, and when she fell and would have been killed, slumped on top of her and stayed there shivering. They live.

But then a pile of dead. A mass of dead. A field of muddied, bloody dead; and along the wire, contorted silhouettes against the coming dawn, moles hang; of Stone, of Word, whatmole knows?

Most are dead, yet some are alive, some groan. Beneath them Merrick lies staring at where the Stone Mole hangs, still unwon by either side. Merrick stares, but his eyes are sightless now.

So he does not see the Stone Mole stir, nor hear his rattling agony, or see where his left paw has pulled still further out, and bone and sinew have ripped apart. One touch of wind, one turn of his body, and he’ll be off that barb.

Tears are dried now on his worn, hurt face and, as Merrick stares but does not see, Wort stirs, stances up and comes to where the Stone Mole hangs.

She reaches up, but by herself she cannot lift the Stone Mole off. She looks up and sees Holm there.

Holm looks at her, and knows her, and is not afraid.

“Help me,” she says, and he comes.

He strives to girdle the Stone Mole’s lower half with his paws, and she reaches up and does the same, and then with a heave they lift him sideways off the hook and gently set him down.

The scene is desolate and slow. The moles are moles of moledom now, nomole knows the Stone, none the Word. Moles groan and stir all across Beechenhill. Sleekit stirs, stares, sees, and stances up. She is the third to reach the Stone Mole, the first to stretch out a paw and touch his face. His eyes are open from their pain and look on she who was there almost from his birth. His eyes smile on her and are sad.

“Turn me towards the Stone,” he says.

They help him face that way and he says, “Go to the Stone and touch it, and pray that what I pray the Stone may grant.”

“Beechen....”

“Do it, Sleekit.” She goes.

“Stone Mole....”

“Do it now for me, good Holm.” And he goes.

“Mole.

“Eldrene Wort, I love thee, open up thy heart now to the Stone for all the darkness of the Word is almost gone from thee.”