Duncton Quest (128 page)

There was no leader, or at least no single mole in charge. Anarchy was the Westside way by then, and it had been a mob of moles coming out on a spring day to find trouble, just as the Marsh End moles had come in a group to find comfort and peace.

They took Tryfan down, harried him along as once he had been harried in Buckland, and in a communal chamber began to berate him and ask him questions.

Some guessed already that he was Tryfan, but others sought confirmation of it from his own mouth. And when he gave it, their mood turned even uglier and rage was in their eyes, and bitterness in their talons.

“You’re a bastard, Tryfan, and you’re going to regret you ever came back!”

“Tryfan is he, this scarred remnant?
The
Tryfan?”

“Your moles killed my mate when we came to Duncton,” said another, coming forward and hitting him several times.

But Tryfan struck not a single blow in reply, which seemed to enrage them more, and there went up a cry, “Snout him! Take him up to the Stone and snout him! Snout the bastard!” But even then, it is reliably said, Tryfan did not seek to fight or hurt another mole.

He was dragged up the slopes he had known so well as a pup, though never in his grimmest nightmares could he have imagined that this painful, brutal, progress to punishment would have been the way he came back to the Stone he most loved.

As he went, others in those tunnels heard the commotion and came to see what was happening, and a dreadful parody of Tryfan’s earlier progress to Barrow Vale now occurred as mole after mole joined the rabble chase, and he was pushed and shoved, up those beloved communal tunnels and then out on to the surface until he was dragged into the circle of trees about Duncton’s Stone.

There, long, long before, had his own father faced the talons of Rune and Mandrake’s henchmoles. There had he first met Boswell. There, in the shadow of that great Stone, had he and Boswell said farewell to Comfrey and set off for Uffington.

Now he lay before the Stone, and pain was on him once more. But they say that from the moment those grike Westsiders got him there they themselves grew nervous, each one holding back from hurting him more, yet all shouting for the snouting of him, and for his blood.

They say that Tryfan turned from them and faced the Stone, and began to speak to it. Then a hush came and they heard his words.

“I was never worthy,” he whispered, certain of his coming death, “yet I did the best I could. Let Spindle be safe. Let the others go free. Let these moles be forgiven for I understand their anger. Let nomole be hurt this day in consequence of my own suffering.” Then he added what nomole heard: “Boswell, I have failed you.”

There was silence about the circle of trees and he turned to face his murderers and stared upwards to see once more the sinewy grey-greens of the high rising branches of the beech trees there, whose buds were pointed, and whose leaves would soon be free. Sun caught them, spring was with them there, and he felt then a pity for mole and he did not want to die.

He looked at the circle of angry faces and saw the malevolence, which seemed continually to grow as others who had heard what was happening had come running to see him die. He looked slowly round that circle, whose collective voice muttered and whispered his death to come saying, “Snout him! Snout him!” and he knew then how that nameless mole in Buckland must have felt as he was marked to death by the grikes at the order of Eldrene Fescue.

He knew, and he remembered what he had done, and how the Stone had showed him how to touch that mole that he knew he was not alone.

Then Tryfan spoke out to that mob as they came closer for the kill saying, “Is there not one among you who can show pity on a mole before he dies, that he knows he is not alone? Of the Word or of the Stone, moles are but moles in the end. Is there not one?”

Then as the moles all about began to laugh and jeer at this last hopeless call, a voice spoke out among them and said, “Aye, there’s one, there’s one will take stance by you, Tryfan of Duncton. One will see you’re not alone.”

Then from out of the mob’s ranks broke a mole, weak looking and frail, a mole who suffered murrain. He came slowly forward, oblivious, it seemed, of his own weakness against the mob’s group strength, unafraid of the talons that were rearing up, unconcerned but with the mole he came forward to touch and give comfort to.

Tryfan saw him as a dream, and knew him not. Male, thin, broken, sore-ridden, not a mole he could remember.

Yet such was the mole’s quiet courage, such his resolution, that the mob fell back a little, and even more so when the mole took stance in front of Tryfan as if to protect him and turned to face them.

“Why ’tis Thrift!” cried one.

“You’re one of us, mate, stop acting daft!”

“Aye,” said Thrift, “I’m one of you and of the Word. But before that I’m mole, and never would I sleep easy to see this mole cut down. There’s others here saw what this mole did when first we came to Duncton Wood.

“Others here saw him save my life and risk his own in doing it. Others here know well enough what he did for me that day....”

Then, out of his suffering, Tryfan remembered a mole he had saved, with Smithills in the fighting, northeast of the cross-under. Saved to tell Henbane that if she wished to find the Duncton Moles she must find Silence. This mole? Time and disease changed the look of moles, but perhaps it did not change their hearts.

“There’s not a mole here could have stood alone against Tryfan of Duncton in his day, and I’ll warrant the scars you see across his face were made not by a single mole in fair fight but by a rabble such as you.”

“By the sideem,” said Tryfan in a low voice.

“You hear that, mob?” cried out Thrift. “These scars are sideem scars and yet he survived. So, those of you who remember what he did for me who wish to kill him now come forward and kill me first!”

As he said this Tryfan came forward and mole of the Word and mole of the Stone crouched side by side. But nomole came forward, and the mob was outfaced. Some backed away, some came forward and touched Thrift as a mark of respect, some seemed to pretend they were not even there, but most quietly left and afterwards barely remembered anything of that brave and dreadful scene but the Stone that rose up behind the two moles and caught the sky’s spring light in its depths.

Then Thrift said, “Mole, that’s twice I’ve met you, and twice I’ve stared death in the face in your presence. You make a mole nervous!”

Tryfan smiled.

“Then may our third meeting be more auspicious than these first two, Thrift. And I have a feeling it will be.”

“It’ll have to be quick for I’ve not long to go,” replied Thrift bravely. Tryfan saw that it was so, for Thrift’s murrain was badly advanced though his sight was still good.

Then the two moles made their way back down the slopes and were joined by the Marshenders led by Spindle.

“Well, Spindle, you missed the fun for once,” said Tryfan lightly, “That was one way to welcome the spring!” And others laughed when they heard it, and passed it on, and that day the moles of Duncton Wood knew they had a brave mole in their midst and one they could trust; one who faced all moles equally and meant no harm to any of them.

“Spindle, tell the moles of the Marsh End to take their courage in their paws and mix with the Westsiders – now while moles are confused and uncertain. Now is the lime before moles retreat back behind the barriers they made. Tell them! It is the final preparation. It is! The last thing we must do. Tell them, and insist on it.”

Which, with Hay’s help, Spindle did, and from that day the moles of Duncton started the slow communal healing that was needed before they might become one again.

But quite what Tryfan meant by the words “final preparation” Spindle did not at that moment guess, and nor in the days ahead would Tryfan explain. As spring advanced mole met mole at Barrow Vale, and mole began to wander free again, even up to the Stone itself.

But though in this way fear left the system, despair was left behind. Despair at the pointlessness and great sadness of a spring for moles without pups in a world busy with every other creature’s young. Despair and a kind of madness as females wandered searching for what their bodies could not find. For that Tryfan knew no remedy except to pray, and not all moles were so minded.

While to those who, like Hay or Teasel or ailing Thrift, and many others who cared to ask, Tryfan could only say that somewhere in moledom soon the Stone Mole would make himself known, and then a Silence that would help each system face its troubles would be found.

Yet finally, perhaps, it was too much to hope that moles would have the same faith Tryfan had, or the same long patience.

As the days of April lengthened and bluebells replaced the aconite in swathes across the wood, and those beech buds Tryfan thought he had seen for the last time opened into spring-green leaf, the first flush of meeting between moles who had long been isolated died away. The system remained gloomy and abnormal. Moles seemed irritated and sometimes tempers flared.

The atmosphere was not helped by the fact that down by the cross-under the grikes seemed to be suddenly more active and watchful. Those moles who made a habit of going that way to see what was apaw, as Hay sometimes did, reported many more moles there and an influx of youngish ascetic ones: sideem.

Few moles had come into the system in the past molemonths and now the only ones that did were diseased females, no males at all. Those outcasts who tried to talk to the grikes got short shrift and none knew what was happening.

But occasionally a female came in who was articulate and from one of them they learnt that Duncton was being much watched by sideem who had come to prevent the arrival of the Stone Mole.

“Where is he? What his identity?” Tryfan and others naturally asked.

But the female knew not, only that the sideem seemed to be expecting him and that it would be impossible for him to pass through their lines without discovery.

So now excitement replaced the gloom, and foreboding the hope, and Duncton was a place of gossip and doubt, as well as the home of many moles too ill or too disconsolate with life itself to care....

It was when Skint and Smithills reached Rollright that the rumours of change they had picked up so frequently along the way came into focus.

They contacted Holm there and heard from him, and then from Rampion herself, of Tryfan’s passage through. Skint felt, as Holm had, a mixture of relief and concern, and the information only increased his desire to reach Duncton Wood where, he was now sure, Tryfan would be.

But the grikes were heavy on the ground, and Holm had guessed the reason why. Ever since the second showing of the Stone Mole’s star, orders seem to have gone out to search for a leader among the followers. Certainly after several moleyears of a more relaxed regime, eldrenes in every system Skint and Smithills had come across were putting pressure on known followers, and ensuring that all moles abided by the Word.

At Rollright, and no doubt other similarly important systems, these pressures were especially severe, and while followers were being watched as if in hope of finding the Stone Mole, there was no violence or snoutings because, rumour had it, the Siabod rising had taken hold, grike reinforcements had been sent and violence of the old kind might provoke a reaction among followers which would be hard to contain.