Duncton Quest (102 page)

“What is this place?” asked Tryfan, as Spindle looked doubtfully about, and Mayweed narrowed his eyes and peered into the shadows there.

“Kilnsey,” said Skint. “The start of where the grike moles breed. Ahead across the river Wharfe you see Whern rise.”

“But it is not so dark and miserable looking a place as I thought!” said Spindle.

“Aye, it has a beauty of its own,” said Smithills looking up, as they all did, at where the evening light was cast across the flanks of Whern, and lit up pale the limestone scarps that run its length.

“Pretty enough by some lights! Lethal by others!” warned Skint.

Certainly, beyond those lines of pale rock the moors rose grim, steepening off into a sombre distance. As the moles stared at the great scene the air grew cold about them, for Kilnsey casts a shadow black as night as evening comes.

“Your business, mole?” said a voice, and a grike appeared out of the scree and grass. “Speak quick, scarper, or get killed.”

“Snub-snouted, Sir, we go —”

“Him, not you, I spoke to,” said the grike. He gave the impression of strength and confidence, and he had a sneer to his voice. It was clear that others waited near him, and suddenly those gullies all about seemed the last place a mole of the Stone should be.

“We come to Whern in peace,” said Tryfan.

“Tryfan are you?”

Tryfan nodded and the grike came and thrust his snout into Tryfan’s face and stared at him in satisfaction.

“Took you a bloody long time, however you’ve come. Been waiting for you, and I don’t like to wait, nor do my friends. We don’t like it one little bit, you scum of the Stone!” He spat a gob of cuddled worm among them as dark snouts appeared all about, and eyes stared malevolently as if expecting a reaction from Tryfan. He made none.

Instead he said a brief farewell to Skint and Smithills and saw them safely away. Then, when they had gone, he stared one last time after them feeling a great sadness and shadow on his heart and turned back to the grikes.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Spindle.

“Shut up, move, and ask no questions. You’ll find out if you’ve the strength to climb that far.”

Then they followed a grike ahead while the others circled around behind saying “Move it, scum!” and taloning them to make them travel faster.

While below them, Skint and Smithills watched them disappear into the long shadows of Whern.

“Don’t like it, Skint,” said Smithills with a shudder.

“Those moles have courage, but they may need help,” said Skint. “But not the help that talons give, not here. We’ll stand by for their return in case they need us. But they’ll need something else.”

“What then, mate?”

“Don’t know, Smithills,” said Skint, staring north where Tryfan and the others had gone. “Stone knows!”

Smithills grinned, but even on his kind, lined, generous face the grin was a sad one.

“We should try something,
anything
,”
said Smithills.

“Praying,” said Skint sharply.

“Come off it, you never prayed in your miserable life.”

“Well... I’m going to now,” said Skint angrily, and before he betrayed the emotion he felt at that moment, which had him close to tears, he turned from his old friend and hurried back down the way they had come; and Smithills lumbered after him.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Whern had loomed so dangerous and grim in the minds of Tryfan, Spindle and Mayweed for so long that it would have been suprising if, as they set off with the guardmole grikes towards its north-west flank, they had not felt an awesome dread descend upon them. And they did.

The sense of grand darkness which Whern gave out was increased by the fact that as they left Kilnsey to cross the river Wharfe by a twofoot way, the light began to fade and the colours slowly to drain from the approaching trees and rocks.

Above them in the gathering gloom hung the rising terraces of limestone which ran north as well, defining the Wharfe’s course below, and rising out beyond sight towards the high mass of Whern itself. These terraces – the first of which they began to climb towards – seemed almost luminous in the dusk, full of crannies and hollows in which a nervous mole might imagine all manner of ill-natured creatures to exist.

From open pasture they climbed to overgrown scree among which old stunted trees grew, and there was life of the kind moles avoid: owls, roosting rooks, and bats. Somewhere an old badger scratched; while far below, in the pastures, cows moaned in the valley mist and their shapes loomed above its low thin veil like rubbish surfacing across a river’s reach by evening light.

The leading grike set a fast pace and seemed disgruntled that not one of them complained. But to them, who had travelled so far and climbed hill and dale and crossed the Dark Peak, and now wished finally to confront whatever it was that Whern would face them with, his pace was not fast enough.

Mayweed looked here and snouted there as he always did, and more than once was reprimanded by the otherwise silent grikes and told not to wander. Tryfan took the pace easily, moving with strength and grace and feeling fitter than he ever had. Even Spindle, whose gait was ever awkward and untidy, had no difficulty keeping up, so that the only moles who were breathing heavily, and pausing now and then to get their breath, were the grikes, from which Tryfan concluded that this was not a route they often took.

Eventually they reached the first of the terraces. It rose palely above them, and they saw that there were many faults and clefts in its sheer edge, many places a mole might hide; and many routes inside.

Tryfan had the feeling that they were on the edge of a system vast and strange, and that even the guardmoles felt it, looking nervously about them and then up at the limestone scar.

“Where are we cutting through?” asked one eventually.

“North Flats,” said the leader.

The first one nodded briefly. Silence reigned and after a brief pause they pressed on.

They passed a point where a spring came out from just below the scar and gushed down to the Wharfe far below. Above that the ground was very dry, and the only sound of waterflow was downslope of them.

Eventually even the sound of the spring they had seen fell away and was gone. Then the shrubs and trees they had been among thinned to nothing, and they found themselves on exposed grassland. The cliffs line seemed to break up, and all about them were scars and castellations of limestone, shining mauve with the last of the western light. Across the valley they saw the distant gaze of a roaring owl and watched it run far below them, until it was gone, though whether into ground mist or trees was impossible to say. Two footlights twinkled on over the dale and dusk drew in.

A tawny owl called sharply nearby and they heard the scrape of claw on a dead branch. Somewhere far above dry rocks fell, rebounded, and the echoes seemed to sound forever across the dale.

They sheltered then, among some scree, and food was found. Whichever way they looked a grike had taken stance in shadow and seemed to stare impassively at them. But the strangest thing was this: the ground seemed reverberant with sound, so distant that at first they did not notice it. But as night fell and the grikes dozed, the sound seemed clearer and it came from out of the limestone cliffs above them. It was not specific or identifiable, but rather a dull roaring made of many things, running water perhaps, and echoes.

Morning came, and the ground was dew-sodden, and a mole could not move without tangling a spider’s web in his talons, and water dripping from his snout. But sun came and the ground steamed, the sky was a rich blue.

As they were west-facing, the scars were not in sunlight, and the air beneath was cold; but on the far side of the vale the sun struck hard at the limestone scars that were twins to the ones they were ascending, while in the valley below white mist slowly cleared.

But as “cutting through” turned out to mean climbing, they soon found themselves back in the sun and looking down on the way they had come. It was a strange landscape made of grass and limestone, chasms in the rock, deep clefts through which a mole scrabbled, paws cut by the sharp frost-shattered fragments, snout bruised by the steep slope ahead.

It felt like a landscape in which death hid waiting to be discovered. In one place they found a scatter of rabbits’ skulls, in another the torn and dried wing of a rook; in a third was the rotting carcass of a sheep and in a fourth a dying hedgehog, its snout pale and its flanks shivering.

Only Mayweed seemed content, always peering about him, snouting at the rock and its welcoming fissures which ran into darkness, and turning back sometimes to check the way they had come.

“Wondering Sir,” he managed to whisper to Tryfan that morning, “humble me is excited by this. My paws tingle with magnificent expectation. Mayweed makes the observation that it is not Whern that a mole should fear but the moles who live here!”

“Shut up and move on, you little turd,” said one of the grikes, buffeting Mayweed. They were probably an unpleasant, taciturn lot in any case, but as they climbed higher they grew increasingly irritable and, as it seemed to Tryfan, scared.

“Who’s liaising?” said one as they reached a terrace of turf with yet another cliff of limestone ahead.

“Lathe of Arncliffe,” said the leader.

“Shit,” said one of the grikes. “Him I don’t need.”

“You’re a silly bugger —”

“I may be, but him I
don’t
need right now. I’ll lie low when —”

“Lie where you like, mole. The Word will always know. Lie how you like, lie as you like, the Word will tell the truth!”

The voice was smug and cold, and it was hard at first to say where it came from. Behind them? In front? They all froze.

“Here, fools!”

The mole was there, ahead of them, his head seeming to peer from the limestone cliff itself. Grey fur, aquiline face, cold grey eyes, and a mouth that seemed to sneer. Then it was gone, and there was a quick touch of talon on rock and the mole reappeared nearby.

“Lathe,” said the mole to Tryfan.

“Tryfan of Duncton.”

“Dismiss,” Lathe said to the grikes.

“But Lathe, Sir, there’s three of them and....”

Lathe smiled thinly, showing his obvious contempt for them.

“These are southern moles, they have come a long way and I doubt that they intend to flee or harm a humble mole like me. So leave us now and....” He waited long enough for the grikes to think that he had forgotten what one of them had said before saying, “You!”

“Me, Sir?”

“You, Sir. Here.” The mole who had mentioned his dread of Lathe came near. Though he was big he trembled. Tryfan noticed that Lathe’s muscles flexed. There was something vile about the power he wielded, and it was made worse by the fact that he evidently wished to demonstrate it to the strangers.

“So, you don’t ‘need’ me ‘right now’ as you put it.”

“I didn’t —”

“We know why, don’t we?”

There was a lifetime – no, centuries – of judgement and punishment in those words and the “we” had all the nauseous piety of the strong over the misdemeaning weak. Despite his size the grike looked wan and frightened.

“Yes,” he agreed, lowering his snout.

“Thrust or confession, mole?” asked Lathe.

“Thrust,” muttered the grike.

“So be it,” said Lathe. He darted a quick glance at the three of them, as if to make sure they were watching. Then he talon-thrust at the grike’s shoulder with astonishing power and grace, so fast that the blow seemed over before it had begun. Yet the grike spun back with a cry, and blood poured from a shoulder wound.

“May you be at peace with the Word, mole. Now go!” said Lathe dismissing them all. Then he turned to lead Tryfan and his two friends through the portal of limestone he had emerged from, and as he went Tryfan saw a scatter of blood from the talon-thrust spotting and dripping on the limestone cliff. Tryfan shuddered, and felt that it might be a long time before he and Spindle saw the light of a good day again.