Duncton Stone (78 page)

The other was a reunion with his son Squelch, which gave Quail almost pathetic delight. How he burbled and chuckled as at Snyde’s suggestion Squelch first revealed himself not visually but aurally, by singing.

“Oh, oh, oh,” cried Quail, panting and sobbing and exclaiming in glee, “it is my son, my beauty, my beloved Squelch! No other has a voice like his! Show yourself! Become!”

But Squelch, knowing his father liked to look forward to his pleasures and revel in the idea of them before actually enjoying them, let his beautiful and unforgettable falsetto voice play out of the darkness where he hid; whilst other singers there, well rehearsed, counterpointing his high notes with their low ones, provided the perfect accompaniment to the ritual executions of some Rollright followers.

“Oh, my dear!” exalted Quail, watching a mole die, and then another, and then a third, their heads crushed and battered against a Stone, their blood running darkly in the dusk. Squelch’s voice soared above their screams, and gave them a kind of sonority.

“Oh, stop torturing me, my love, my son, and
show
yourself!”

Eventually Squelch emerged, larger than when the two had last met, or wider, his paws like the fins of some fat chub stranded on a river-bank, his mouth gobbling at the air with every tiny effort that he made.

“Father!” he exclaimed, his eyes widening in horror at what he saw, and his sensitive snout recoiling in disgust as Quail opened his paws to him.

“Yes, yes, come here and kiss me, Squelch,” simpered Quail, offering up his rotten mouth to Squelch’s unwilling embrace.

“Father,” said Squelch, yielding to the kiss with feigned pleasure and delight, “it is so good to see you. How are you? Have your travels been hard?”

“I must not complain if the Stone puts pain into my body to try my spirit and test my resolve,” replied Quail, “and nor do I. I am better than I was. I am better.”

Squelch eyed Quail’s saccy parts, the drooping eyes whose cornea was now bulging and turning white and blind; he saw the downward fall of the mouth, sign of some internal breaking down, and the black stumps of teeth; he saw the tremor to the flanks, and the hollows and swellings; and he smelled the stench, which was like death itself.

“You look so well,” he said, “and now... now I am to accompany you to Duncton Wood! How nice! What fun we shall have along the way, how much to talk about!”

Squelch’s fat eyes flicked ruefully into the shadows behind Quail, from where Snyde watched, and Snyde’s cold black eyes blinked back in return, the quick opaque blink that lizards have.

“Fun,” he purred softly, “is what we all shall have.”

Perhaps they did have fun next day, trekking very slowly, for Quail was overcome with fatigue from the night before, and with excitement at the prospect ahead.

“Will it be soon that we see Duncton? Sooner than soon?”

Squelch giggled at his flank and said that sooner than soon was not soon enough for
him,
but yet they must wait. It was not too far.

“Too far is far too far,” responded Quail, and Squelch began to think he had never known his father in so playful a mood, nor known him to be
light.

They might have paused more than they did but that Snyde, to whom messengers constantly came and went from the rear of their party of moles, with grim news of how Thorne’s forces were pressing ever closer, harried them on whilst trying not to seem to.

“We shall enjoy this final part of the great journey, Snyde, we shall,” said Quail, stopping.

“All the more shall our enjoyment be when we get there,” said Squelch, urging him on an extra pace or two.

“We must...” began Snyde.

“What
must
the Elder Senior Brother and his son do, Brother Snyde?” asked Quail sharply.

“We must remember that the Stone grows impatient, Lord, even for the highest, even for you.”

“Does it? I think he’s right, son.”

“He usually is, Pa,” said Squelch familiarly.

They dawdled on and Snyde sent orders to Squilver to prepare a final stance that evening, for they would not make Duncton that same day, though Stone knows it was not far, not now...

The sky was black as night at times, with great storm-clouds looming up, and the jagged, ugly rumble and roar of thunder off to the right and left.

“Soon we shall see it,” insinuated Snyde, urging them on a few steps more, up the muddy slopes of Begbroke Hill. Strangely it was not the way a journeymole would have gone, but Snyde calculated that the sight of Duncton Wood across the Thames Valley might encourage them.

They puffed and panted, moaned and whinged, but finally, eager as weasels but slow as snails, they crested a rise and there before them across the vale, only a little further than it seemed, rose Duncton.

“Bliss,” said Quail, and Squelch sang the most wistful of songs, which spoke of a great journey undertaken and now almost complete, and all the life that had been left behind to get where they were going.

“It is dark and impressive,” said Quail, and well he might. This was no springtime view of a great wood in bud, nor summer scene of trees rising beyond the river vale; nor even wild and colourful autumn, for all the leaves had flown. This was Duncton from the north, with winter all but come, black and leafless, yet not so black now as the huge sky mounting up behind.

“See!” said Quail.

“Listen!” said Squelch.

And a flash of lightning diffused by cloud was followed by the roll of far-off thunder. But no rain fell, and no wind blew and all was ominous.

“All to come, all to come,” said Quail. “Let’s go on!”

“It seems far,” said Squelch, puffing and sweating from the climb, despite the cold.

“We will follow the roaring owl way that runs to our left paw,” explained Snyde, “and will use the cross-under that lies south-east of the hill. Fetter’s guardmoles will be there to welcome us and see us safely in.”

“Not so far as we have come,” said Quail, pressing on.

Squelch sighed and did not sing, but followed on. And somewhere then, along the way, they saw the first of many pilgrims, in ones and twos, in little groups, going the same way as they did, though pushed to one side by the guardmoles so Quail’s party could pass.

“And who are they?” asked Quail.

“They have come to see you, Master, in praise and adoration,” said Snyde, eyes filled with hatred, for he knew they came in Privet’s name.

“They are in the way,” said Squelch, “but I suppose there are too many to kill.”

That evening, but an hour or two’s fast trek to the north of where the party finally halted from sheer exhaustion, Squilver turned his forces to face north again at Begbroke, just where the main party had paused earlier that day. Thorne’s advance guard began the attack as the first rains came, and a close and desperate battle was engaged.

“We need more moles!” cried a commander on Thorne’s side, but it might have been Squilver’s cry. He had sent his wearier force southward to be with Quail and now he held what ground he could, hoping that darkness and rain would bring respite.

They did, and in that he was lucky. Reviled by Thorne though he had been, sneered at by those on the Crusade Council who had expected the “Supreme” Brother Commander to fail much earlier on, Squilver’s defence of Begbroke was as fine an achievement on a small scale as there has ever been. Outnumbered by far fitter moles, staunch in his defence, Squilver, and a thunderstorm, gained time.

Then with bodies all about, and under cover of night, Squilver gave the order to retreat: silently, carefully, himself among the last, away downslope to the roaring owl way, and then in the pawsteps of the Elder Senior Brother’s party.

“Now, away...” he said, sliding and slipping in the mud and down towards Yarnton, “and may the Stone grant this rain stays heavy.”

It did, only stopping at the first glimmer of a bedraggled dawn when Thorne’s advance guards saw that the positions they had been watching were occupied now by dead moles, positioned to seem alive. Dead, wet, deserted positions, Squilver’s last legacy of a brutal battle.

“Come on!” a commander roared, and the charge down towards Yarnton began.

“Go on!” urged Squilver as he caught up with Snyde. “We must go on! Only get him to Duncton and they’ll not easily get us out again. But if they catch us here we’re lost.”

Quail was dragged out of sleep, and Squelch out of somnolence, and both were urged and pushed, chivvied and chased, hurried and harried along.

“The Worm and the Snake come fast behind, even here, even now!” cried Snyde.

“Thorne?”

“Aye, him. And Chervil. And Rolt.”

“Then we must not let them take us at the last!” said Quail, doing his best to hurry his aching limbs.

“Must, Master?” whispered Snyde with a thin smile.

“You are jocular, Brother,” panted Quail, “you joke.”

“I do, I do,” said Snyde, trotting along as well.

“Squelch!”

“Father?”

“Stir and shift, for now our pilgrimage is nearly done and our triumph complete. The Snake is behind, but too far to take us, the Stone ahead.”

“Stir!” muttered Squelch, padding fatly along. “Shift! I stir and you stink! I shift and still you stink!”

“What?” cried out Quail over his shoulder, for he had not heard clearly.

“I come!” said Squelch, peering at the steep embankment of the roaring owl way on his left-paw side and then ahead for signs of a cross-under, wondering how far it was now.

“We
must
hurry, sir,” said Squilver, coming alongside, and shoving some vagrant moles out of the way, for the path was crowded now and the guardmoles could not contain all the pilgrims who went the way they did.

“We
are flying
,” puffed Squelch. “Are they far behind?”

“Within sight, sir,” said Squilver, lying only slightly, and marvelling that so grossly fat a mole could move at all. And through all their ranks something almost like panic spread as mighty and minion alike sped or waddled, trotted or tripped, ever more breathless, as behind them the Worm and the Snake loomed, and before them, spread in solid ranks just as Squilver had ordered two days before, stanced lines of guardmole, ready to herd them through the cross-under if only they could reach it, and thence into the safety of Duncton Wood.

It was in the cross-under itself that Brother Inquisitor Fetter waited, his finest hour nigh. A mud-spattered messenger had come racing in a little earlier from the knoll on which Fetter had placed him, to report that the Elder Senior Brother’s party was in sight at last.

Now Fetter fretted, moving restlessly back and forth, avoiding the puddles on the concrete of the cross-under’s floor; eyeing the rook that perched impatiently on the parapet above, watching over the slopes of the pastures that led up to the High Wood; listening to the sound of the roaring owls that raced by unseen above.

Guards stanced discreetly some way off, for Snyde had ordered that there should be only himself to welcome the Elder Senior Brother: he would be tired, formalities could come later, rituals later still. Meanwhile, at least the pilgrims who had crowded at the cross-under for days past had been cleared back somewhat. Some had died in the struggle, and their bodies had been tidied away at Fetter’s insistence.

His restlessness now was that of a mole who has waited a lifetime for what is about to happen and is so confident of its outcome and the praise that will follow that he is eager to get on with it. Not that his bitter face and inquisitorial eyes betrayed these emotions, though if friends who knew him well had been close enough, which they were not, they might have detected some marginal softening in his face, some slight cheerful glistening to his thin snout.

He looked here and there just a mite suspiciously, as if something might still go wrong, though all preparations for the Elder Senior Brother’s coming had been double checked, and checked again. He knew if it did what it would be, though...

“I have planned for it! I have prepared. I hope they try!”

What he had meant when he had said this the day before to his subordinates, he referred to again now as he repeated it to himself; the “threat” of the wretched followers led by the miscreant Pumpkin, and incarcerated up in the tunnels of the High Wood.

Incarcerated was the word, since with the help of extra forces sent by Supreme Commander Squilver himself, Fetter had virtually every leaf and surface root in the High Wood, every known tunnel entrance and many that were simply suspected, watched, patrolled, guarded, and overseen.

The rebels were dying anyway, that was plain. Bodies of emaciated moles had been found. Three more caught, too weak even for torture. Should have fattened them up before hauling them down to the Marsh End to face the talons of truth. Hmmph!

“It would be a pleasure if they tried anything,” he had said; and he thought it again now, going forward impatiently and peering round the edge of the far wall of the cross-under to see if Quail’s party was in sight at last. There was movement... it was but the guardmoles... something was happening... nearly, now...

Fetter allowed himself the final luxury of easing back into the darkest part of the cross-under, sniffing and scenting about, and then wandering over to the Duncton side and peering up towards the High Wood. Always compelling was that great wall of trees, as leafless now as they had been the full cycle of seasons ago when he had come here. The pinnacle of his career as Inquisitor, this posting. Hard work, but now the reward...