Duncton Wood (31 page)

“Cairn, oh. Cairn,” she echoed in reply as they shifted caressingly into each other’s paws and fur and their bodies were full of the content of satisfied surrender.

Evil. It snouts out good as a stinking hellebore finds out the sun in the very darkest part of the wood where it grows.

Evil. It hides in the shadows near which innocents play in the light, taking a thousand forms, some as hideous as disease and most as subtle as snakes.

Evil. No better name for Rune, who could sniff out the scent of goodness and convert it to the stench of corrupted innocence.

Rune. He snouted out with dark knowledge that somewhere, away in the westside, there was something pure and good to get his bleak talons into, something to do with Rebecca, who had left Barrow Vale before he came back from Hulver’s tunnels and who had not returned to her own tunnels, according to the henchmole he had sent there to see. So Rune set off for the westside.

How did he know? Who can say why shadows pass their way? Except that a mole like Rune can always stick out a talon and find trouble – for a mole like him
is
trouble.

So secretly and shadowly Rune left Barrow Vale and set off for the westside, snout poking into tunnel after tunnel and burrow after burrow, not knowing exactly what he sought but knowing he would find it.

And find them he did, scenting her deliciousness in the shadows of the wood’s edge and then cutting back and forth along toward it like a fox quartering a wood. Until he found what he was snouting for – the entrance to a burrow from whose depths came the smell of Rebecca and the smell of a male. Rune smiled, stretched his talons, and started down boldly into the tunnel without any other thought than the pleasure of killing. There was only one mole in Duncton he was afraid of, and that was Mandrake.

Rebecca tensed the moment she smelled his odor, turning to face the burrow entrance, even before Cairn knew there was trouble.

“Is it another male?” asked Cairn quietly and calmly, coming to Rebecca’s side and then easing himself ahead of her nearer the entrance, where he could defend his right.

“No, it’s Rune. A Duncton elder. He’s dangerous. Cairn, and he’ll fight to kill.”

Cairn laughed out loud, just as Stonecrop, his brother, had laughed the several lifetimes before when they had all met out on the pastures. A deep laugh that mocked the sly odor of Rune’s coming.

Rune said nothing, but came to the burrow entrance slowly, his eyes taking in the size of the tunnel, the possibilities of blocking and turning, and the size of the entrance where Rebecca and her consort lay hiding from him. He liked a fight, especially one which he knew before he started that he was going to win.

It wasn’t hard to win a fight when a male was trapped in a temporary burrow with no room to move and all he, Rune, had to do was to power-thrust his talons into the darkness and feel the soft fur, or even better, the vulnerable snout of his opponent yield before him.

Yet Cairn laughed. He had been in just this position so many times with Stonecrop, who was a master of fighting, that he knew exactly what to do about it. Instead of pushing forward boldly into his opponent’s thrust as most males would have done, he fell back, pushing Rebecca behind him and keeping as far away from the entrance as possible. Rime’s shadow fell across it and, as fast as it did so. Rune plunged forward and round into the entrance, his talons shooting forward to where Cairn was reared up ready and waiting. They brushed his fur but went no farther. There was a momentary pause as Rune puzzled over the contact he had failed to make, and taking the advantage of it Cairn lunged forward into the fleshy part of Rune’s paw, a searing plunge of sharp talons that forced Rune to withdraw with a twist and a cry of pain.

As he did so, Cairn lunged forward, plunged out of the entrance with his left talon, straight into Rune’s left shoulder and narrowly missing his snout. The whole thing was done with such speed that Cairn was back in the burrow and crouched still and waiting before Rebecca knew what had happened. They could hear the sharp, hurt breathing of Rune in the tunnel beyond, as he fell silent and thought what to do.

Then all was movement, as Rebecca heard a growling and a snarl, saw a rush forward by Cairn, heard a hissing from Rune and the two moles were attacking each other at the entrance, the dark body of Rune now in full sight, the lighter fur of Cairn contrasting with his blackness. For a moment both fell back; but then Cairn lunged forward again and was out into the tunnel driving Rune back down it toward the entrance. “Be careful. Cairn,” called Rebecca desperately after him. “He’s not just a mole, he’s Rune. Be careful.”

But Cairn was not a defensive fighter and Rune’s retreat gave him the false impression that this was a fight to be easily won. When he heard Rebecca’s voice. Cairn laughed and drove forcibly forward. But Rune, too, Was strengthened by its sound.

Rune saw that the mole he was fighting was young but strong, and no fool, and that it would be cunning, not strength, that defeated him. And for Rune, what was worse and increased his hatred of this mole still more than the fact that he seemed to be Rebecca’s mate was that he was a pasture mole. The fresh cropped-grass scent on Cairn sickened Rune, used as he was to the rotting of leaf mold in the shadow of the wood in which he habitually slunk.

So Rune backed slowly away, avoiding the worst of the blows that the young pasture mole powerfully directed at him, as he worked toward the maneuver that would allow him to inflict the fatal talon thrust that he had made his speciality.

Cairn pressed on, impressed by Rune’s ability to avoid his fastest and most dangerous blows and to, use the tunnel to prevent him from getting round and under him; warned, too, by the way Rune seemed to keep even his snarls under control.

For a moment, almost experimentally. Cairn relaxed in the face of his opponent’s retreat and immediately, without a moment’s hesitation and with no sign of the fear that a mole might mistakenly have thought would go with his retreat. Rune came in with a talon thrust which twisted and tore into Cairn’s cheek, drawing blood onto his face fur, on which a thin trickle wound down to his snout.

The thrust brought a sudden stillness to both moles as each looked to find a move that would bring the opportunity for real damage to the other.

It was Rune who broke the deadlock. He suddenly turned and thrust back out of the tunnel to the surface, the start of the maneuver he had used many times before as a preface to defeating a mole who seemed stronger than he. With a snarling roar. Cairn lunged after his retreating form as Rebecca, who saw the back of him disappearing out to the surface, called urgently, “Be careful, he’s
Rune.”
She could have made no other word sound so black.

Her warning was right, for Rune knew that in the moment that a mole runs up toward the surface he instinctively hesitates to enter out onto it because he is about to lose the protection of the tunnel’s darkness. In that moment of hesitation, another mole, one waiting as

Rune did now, with his talons poised for the kill by the entrance, can thrust back down into the tunnel on the mole who is coming out, and with luck administer a fatal snout-blow.

Rune’s ploy might well have worked but for the chance that the mole he happened to be fighting had fought so many times with Stonecrop, whose prowess as a fighter was almost a legend in the pastures. The trick Rune was trying was an old one and Cairn’s rapid pursuit, powered forward by his back paws so that his front paws could be protectively outstretched, was the answer Stonecrop had devised to it.

Neither mole won this round of fight. Cairn was caught by Rune’s downward thrust as he came charging out, though only on the arm and shoulder, while Rune suffered a wound to his face. Then, on the surface, unrestricted by tunnel or burrow, the two moles rolled into thrusting clinch after cutting lunge, back paws scratching and kicking, front talons trying to plunge a fatal wound.

About them the sky became overshadowed by the threat of a storm, and instead of the light being bright it was, for a morning, almost gloomy dark. While far beyond the trees in whose stormy shade they now fought, the first great drops of rain of a storm started to fall, sporadic at first, but then growing more heavy and persistent.

It was the same rain into which, far off to the east on the slopes, Bracken was at that very moment setting off from Rue’s new burrows for the Stone, which loomed, like the storm itself, over all the moles in Duncton Wood.

As the rain started to fall heavily on them both. Rune sensed that Cairn was the stronger and not much less the cunning, either. Rune might be lucky to find a fatal thrust. His speed might win the day. But he would have to be lucky, and the luck might not run his way, and anyway – why take a risk in killing a mole when there was a much surer way of doing it? There was another mole in Duncton much stronger than either of them who would relish the chance to kill Rebecca’s mate – the more so if he came from the pastures.

So Rune’s dark mind raced as he parried and thrust Cairn’s blows, while the rain fell ever more thickly through the open trees of the wood’s edge onto their fur, mingling with their wounds and blood and obscuring their sight and sense of each other.

Then Cairn charged on Rune once more, stronger and more confident now that he was out in the open, and caught him terribly on the haunch. In that moment. Rune decided that, for the time being, he had had enough. He would retreat into the wood, slowly enough to lure Cairn on with him, and take him slowly and surely toward the haunts of the westside where this pasture mole might be killed; and if not there, then lure him even to Mandrake, whose talons would take pleasure in doing the deed and who would surely give Rune credit for bringing this mole to him.

Rune ran back, turned and snarled, and ran back some more into the wood, making Cairn follow as he pursued the bloodlust that told him to kill this dark and vicious Duncton mole, and made him forget Rebecca in the tunnel behind him.

As they retreated into the rain and dark of the wood, she emerged from the tunnel entrance and listened to their noise slowly die away. She wanted to chase after them and join Cairn in his assault on Rune. But in a mating fight, which surely this was, it wasn’t for a female to do more than wait. But everything in Rebecca told her to chase after them, to help her Cairn; yet she stayed, hesitating by the entrance in the rain, confused by the sudden attack, hoping that at any moment Cairn would come back with the blood of Rune On his talons.

But as the storm clouds burgeoned and grew heavier over the pastures and wood, darkening everything with its steady rain. Cairn followed the retreating Rune deeper and deeper into the wood, leaving Rebecca crouched and desolate and quite alone.

Each minute that passed left Rebecca more miserable and lost. The sound of the rain seemed to confuse her and drain her of strength, and she had no idea what had happened, where her mate might be or whether or not he might be injured. Once she advanced out into the rain, toward the way they had gone, and called out “Cairn, Cairn...,” but she could only hear rain and see wet foliage and undergrowth. Then she crept back into the burrow to wait some more.

At last she grew fearful for Cairn and this made her fearful for herself. For if he had been defeated, then

Rune might come back and find her there. But surely her Cairn could not have been defeated? But perhaps he had been, and she should have tried...

So, for the first time in her life, questions and worries of life and death began to darken Rebecca’s mind. The truth was that so much had happened to her so happily in the previous twenty-four molehours that the sudden appearance out of a dark sky of Rune had shocked her into being confused and upset. To have had taken from her so violently the very thing she had been seeking for so many molemonths left her frightened and insecure and doubting the very impulse for life and joy that had brought her so trustingly over to the pastures in the first place. Now the deafening rain seemed the mirror of her torrent of fears.

Until at last, panicked by the threat of Rune’s possible return, she took to the surface again, though uncertain where to go. She turned at first toward the westside but stopped for fear that Rune, if he was coming back, would come that way. She hesitated before the pastures, for without Cairn and Stonecrop to accompany her there, they seemed dangerous; the more so because a great herd of cattle, which had silently drifted up the pastures through the day, now stood silent and massive beyond the fence, their hooves dirty from the mud that was forming there.

Miserably she turned yet again, this time toward the slopes to the south – but what could she find there but more desolation and emptiness? Everywhere seemed hopeless now that her mate was gone.

Such a time may come suddenly to anymole, in any place, at any time. When suddenly the sun’s light is gone and all falls gloomy and dark and each drop of rain that thunders to the ground seems reminder that a mole is forever alone, seeming forever lost. But though the sun is gone, there is an unseen light that may seem far off and dim, and whose rays may touch the heart and not the mind. Yet such a light, vague and hard to make out though it is, may draw a mole forward far, far more powerfully than any sun.

And such a light drew her now, up along the wood’s edge on the western side of the slopes, higher and higher up the hill, where the oaks thinned away to tall beeches, which even in the rain gave the wood a lighter, loftier look. Each massive beech she passed seemed to will her on as it stood, solid and powerful, the green lichen covering its base almost luminescent in the shady light of a darkening afternoon that had taken over from a gloomy morning. She hardly knew where she was going, or that she was going, and when she wandered in her desolation from the path that led her higher and higher, the massive trees seemed to sway her back toward the light that perhaps they could see far more clearly than she could that day. Higher and higher, until the wood’s floor leveled off and she swung in from the pastures toward a great clearing that drummed with the sound of rain. At its center stood a Stone, enwrapped by the roots of a tree. The Stone itself.’ And on the west side of the clearing, crouched so still that he might almost have been a part of the wood, was a mole, shiny with rain, smaller than Cairn, who faced away from her as he looked out through the trees to the west.