Duncton Quest (5 page)

“Wake up, it is time now; time for us to go on.”

Boswell’s voice was normal again and the burrow filling with dawning light, but Tryfan still had difficulty emerging from the deep warm reveries into which his rest had sent him. The trees of Duncton and a past that seemed so long ago rose still about him, but fading now, drifting from his reach.

“B – Bos – Boswell,” he managed to say at last. “Will I return to Duncton Wood safeguarded?” Even as he spoke it his eyes were full of tears, for he suddenly missed the place where he had been born, missed it as if only at this moment, so long after leaving it, did he feel it had been taken from him.

“Well? Will I?”

Boswell stared at him, his bright eyes distantly troubled.

“You will have much to do before that. Before then you will return but only to recover yourself and those who may be with you. But yes, one day you will return finally to your home system, as each mole should.”

“Will you be there, Boswell?”

“I will always be there,” said Boswell quietly. “For I will be with you....”

“No, will
you
be there?”

“If you have faith in the Stone, and if you can see me, then I will be there.”

“You’re sad Boswell, and on all our journey you have never been that. Until... yesterday, by those snouted moles.”

“Our journey together is over now, so I am sad. A White Mole has feelings, you know.”

“I know,” said Tryfan. “Have I slept long?”

“Night has passed, day has come.”

“I wanted to keep awake. You were saying blessings and prayers that I should know.”

“Why should you know them?”

“If ever I am to become a scribemole....”

“Feed now, and groom,” said Boswell, refusing to respond to this at all, “and we will go.”

Then Tryfan was fully awake, never more so, full of energy, and, after due pause for a thanksgiving for the day to come, as Boswell had taught him, he rose and said, “Now, I suggest I go ahead for we cannot be sure whatmole may be here and whether they are friend or foe.”

“I have heard none,” said Boswell.

“H’m,” said Tryfan doubtfully, for Boswell being old was inclined to miss the subtler sounds and vibrations. In any case, there was confusing windsound now about the tunnels, whispers and echoes that might be mole, or might be dustfalls.

“You stay just behind and guide me by touch whether to go right or left, for you know these tunnels,” said Tryfan firmly. “We had better not risk talking.”

So, close as shadows, Tryfan began their advance into the Holy Burrows, not in triumph and celebration as he had always hoped, but in silence and with caution, lest there was danger for the mole whose protection he still felt was his task.

At first the tunnels seemed little different than those they had lately been following; a little wider perhaps, a little more worn. But soon they subtly changed, their walls being polished with great use and age, their floors shiny with the passage of a hundred thousand talons and there was about them an awesome sense of reverence and peace. Their pawfalls echoed softly ahead, and above them ran the air currents of a system designed in ages past by moles who knew how to set an entrance and make a turn so that a tunnel was in balance both with itself and the system of which it was a part. Though of
this
great skill Boswell had observed more than once that tunnels and systems, however cleverly they may be designed, are likely to be only as harmonious as the moles who make them.

They passed several passages off to right and left, the portals richly embossed and decorated in a way Tryfan had not observed before. There were, too, at regular intervals, slipways up to the surface, whose windsound was gently controlled by the earth and chalk above them. Once or twice they heard the soft stomp of sheep’s hooves above; and once the patter of rabbit. Each sound was well conveyed, as it should be in a well-made system, but with such precision that Tryfan could scarcely believe it.

The tunnels themselves were deserted and, as they had been throughout their progress on Uffington Hill, dust-covered. They came across only one roof-fall, and that a minor one.

Tryfan stopped finally only when he came to a major junction, turning to Boswell to whisper, “Which way here?”

“Left is the Chapter Burrow, right goes to the communal tunnels and the Holy Library,” Boswell replied. “Go left.”

The tunnel ahead was narrower than before, and dark, and some natural caution had Tryfan proceeding with special care. There was something about the air currents that suggested blockage ahead, or a mole lying in wait.

The tunnel turned ahead of them and they slowed, stopped, and listened. There was no sound, and the ground ahead was dusty and showed no tracks, but even so Tryfan raised a paw silently to indicate to Boswell that he intended going ahead alone, and then advanced, taking the tunnel’s turn carefully, ready for attack.

The currents of air above him were confused, and whatever was blocking the tunnel seemed near. Gathering his courage together Tryfan advanced rapidly round the turn to where the tunnel straightened and stopped quite still, unable at first to make sense of the grim sight before him. There was the portal that led into the great Chapter Burrow, but beneath it, turning, broken, wretched, crouched... or lay, the remains of a long-dead mole. But more than that: from the disposition of the body, from the fact that the skull – “head” was too generous a word for so perished a thing – lay some way from the trunk, and one of the back paws was some way to the other side. The mole had not simply been killed: it had been ripped apart.

From the fur, which was well preserved on one side, it was obvious that the mole had been very old, and whatever mole had killed him had done it cruelly with a ripping blow to the belly and others that had severed the head and paw. Boswell came softly along behind Tryfan to observe the scene for himself.

And there was worse. Beyond this mole, who seemed to have been retreating into the Chapter Burrow, Tryfan and Boswell saw more, piled into grotesque attitudes of violent death, and two against a far wall appeared to have been taloned where they crouched.

Boswell said nothing, but stared at these horrific sights, reaching out instinctively to touch Tryfan, as if, in that touch, there was affirmation that moledom was not only filled with cruelty and death but held life and goodness as well.

Then they heard a sound: a sudden running, the hint of talons scampering on dusty chalk, and they froze and waited, but it did not occur again.

“Rabbit? Vole?” said Boswell, adding almost light-heartedly, “irreverent as ever they were!” It was almost as if, the shock of the murdered scribemoles before him, he was trying to ignore it.

“Ssh!” whispered Tryfan, alert and listening. Then, when the distant sounds had ceased, he whispered urgently, his voice shocked, “What’s happened here? What is all this?” He moved forward and pointed wearily to yet another body, barely aware that Boswell did not seem surprised.

“It is of the Stone,” said Boswell cryptically.

They turned out of the Chapter Burrow and started back the way they had come and then on to find the tunnels leading to the Holy Library, advancing down them cautiously lest they find other bodies. But their caution, and reserve, did not last long for soon they did find others, and from now on, wherever they went, they seemed to find the bodies of murdered scribemoles. Whatever and however the massacre had taken place it has been ruthless and sudden. There seemed to have been little attempt to escape.

So widespread was the evidence of death that soon both began to get used to it. Perhaps fortunately the bodies were now dried and odourless, though here and there near entrances was evidence of predation from outside. Stoat or weasel, perhaps.

More than that, there was recent life about, for they could see that the floor had been recently crossed, and recrossed. A mole, or moles, and they had dragged something through the tunnels, though nothing as big as a mole’s body which, in the circumstances, might have been logical. But the only talon marks they found were of solitary moles, vagrants probably, who must have made their way into the system in the recent past.

“They are still here, somewhere,” said Tryfan, “for these are fresh tracks. But at least the talon marks are those of a weak mole or moles.”

Boswell agreed. And, more relaxed, said, “Let us go to the Library itself now, though I doubt after this that there will be much to see. Perhaps, though, we can recover something of the books there....”

“Nomole would dare damage such relics,” declared Tryfan, shoulders hunching for a fight.

“We might have said nomole would touch scribemoles. But moles have. Moledom is not changing, Tryfan. It has changed.”

At Boswell’s direction Tryfan, still cautious, led the way out of the main complex of tunnels and the communal burrows to the one that he said led off to the Library. As he turned into it he stopped suddenly and pointed. The tracks they had observed earlier were very recent here, and there was scent of life.

With Tryfan taking the lead and hunched ready for mortal fight if such was necessary, they advanced down the tunnel, the air heavy with tension. It was a rougher tunnel than some of the others, more ancient, and with the tension was mixed a deep awe, for Tryfan knew that at last he was near the fabled Library of the Holy Burrows, the greatest repository of records and folios in the whole of moledom. This was the very intellectual heart of the scribemole’s life, from down here all the greatest scribings were said to have come, or been done, through the long ages of mole.

Suddenly the hushed and tense silence was broken in a way so dramatic and unexpected that it had them stopping still immediately and crouching low, looking at each other in surprise. For, at first distantly and then rather louder, came the welling sound of pawsteps accompanied by voices. It was so unexpected that for a moment they could not tell from where it came, but then it clarified, the echoes much less, the sound dying for a moment, and they knew it came from the tunnel ahead, where the Library lay.

Then louder again and frightening, the sound of talon tread, of paws marching, and a roaring as of many voices. Tryfan immediately hunched back protectively with Boswell behind him, pushing him almost into the wall and looking behind to consider their best line of retreat.

“If I was alone, Boswell, I might go quietly ahead and see what I can see,” whispered Tryfan. “One mole always moves better than two. But my task is still to get you to a place of safety. It’s no good unnecessarily —”

As he spoke the approaching sounds grew louder still and Tryfan began to try to herd Boswell away as if he were a family of pups.

But Boswell was not moving. Not that Tryfan expected him to show fear – he seemed to have forgotten how to feel such a thing decades ago – but at least he might have a sensible concern for his own life.

“The sounds have not actually materialised, have they?” he said calmly. “In fact they seem to be dying away again. Strange that!”

Tryfan looked at him quizzically, and more so because he was smiling slightly.

Then, thinking swiftly, and looking much calmer himself, Tryfan said, “Fine, then we’ll pretend to retreat!” and with that he thumped his paws and rattled his talons on the tunnel floor, even shouting out in a fading kind of voice: “Come on, let’s get out of here.” And then they froze into silence to see what happened.

Ahead of them the tunnel turned out of sight, the turn demarcated by an abutment of flint. Beyond it, Boswell had said, was the final few feet of tunnel to the Library portals.

There was silence for a few moments, and then, briefly, a final roaring of rushing moles and warlike voices all of which came to an abrupt stop and once more did not materialise. A long silence followed, in which Tryfan hardly dared breathe. Then, beyond the tunnel turn there was the slightest movement, so slight indeed that it was evident only from a marginal change of the air current over their backs from the top of the tunnel.

Then there was the shuffle of timid talon on chalk. Then a sigh and cough, rather nervous. Then a muttering by mole, solitary mole, very solitary mole indeed, and a gulping sound as of timid, solitary, nervous mole summoning up courage to move down the tunnel towards them.

Tryfan began to move forward himself, so smoothly and with such grace that he was like a fox in the final moments of taking static prey. The shuffling head became bolder and a voice said, “Better take a look old fellow. Come on, just round the corner. Just to check they’ve gone.”

Tryfan stopped still, only feet from the turn. The shuffling approached. They heard breathing, nervous and short. Then a humming as of a mole trying to make himself believe there is nothing to be afraid of.

Then round that flint came a whisker, then a snout. Rather a thin one, rather long.

Then the voice again, preceded by a sniffing and a snouting. “Mole was here. I can smell mole. Good smell that. Gone now.”

Then the snout came forward again and beneath it a thin paw of weak talons. Tryfan had shrunk back into the wall of the tunnel to take advantage of the great flint’s shadow. Boswell was further back, his already pale and now very dusty coat making him hard to see.

Then the mole’s head and upper part of his body came into view, a weak-looking thin-looking mole doing his very best to be bold and resolute.

“Gone they have and good riddance. Up to no good. Bet they were scared.” Sniff sniff. “But it’s good to smell mole. Mmm. Wait! May come back! Gone but may return. Well, old fellow, you’d better do one more.”

The mole disappeared back around the corner, or at least his front half did, and there was a brief scratching of talons and, to Tryfan’s astonishment, the threatening sound of an army of moles surged up again before suddenly dying away and the mole muttering irritably to himself: “Oh bother, I’ve broken my talon!”

Tryfan advanced round the corner and saw the mole beside an extraordinary scribing on the wall, down which presumably he had dragged his talons and produced the sound.

“Greetings!” said Tryfan calmly.