Duncton Wood (34 page)

How quiet they both were, and how content. She tended for a while to his scratches and wounds, especially the one he had received on his face as he had nm out of the tunnel after Rune. What special attention she gave to that one! What sighings and caresses, what entwinings and delights, what peaceful rest and waking dreams! How close they were!

“Rebecca, Rebecca!”

“Cairn my love, my wildflower.”

They smiled and laughed and giggled to be so near, fur once more mingling with fur, and haunch soft against haunch. For a while they even mock-fought, until Cairn’s wound got scratched again and he surrendered in defeat to his Rebecca, and she licked and tended to him once more. Then they slept again, the sweet sleep of love satisfied.

“Been in a fight, have you Rune?” Mandrake asked the question with good humor, for after the confrontation with the owl face in Hulver’s tunnels he had felt weary, and in no mood to deal with the sycophantic mumblings of the henchmoles, so was glad to see Rune back again from wherever he had been.

When he entered the elder burrow where Mandrake was crouched, Rune had placed himself carefully out of the shadows where his wounds and scratches might be clearly seen. He had done so wearily and in seeming pain, his snout low but making a consciously brave effort to look cheerful.

“Not exactly a fight, Mandrake, but it is of no matter. I hope.”

“Mmm?” Mandrake’s growl indicated that he wanted to know more.

“It’s nothing,” said Rune. “At least, I hope it’s nothing.”

He paused to give time for the doubt to sink into Mandrake’s mind and then said lightly, “Well! Everything’s quiet in Barrow Vale. That’s something!”

“Where have you been. Rune?” asked Mandrake, his curiosity now successfully aroused.

Rune sighed, licked his wounds, scratched, twisted and turned, coughed, put a brave smile onto his shadowy face, sighed again, and finally said: “Do you know where Rebecca is at the moment?”

“No. Where?” asked Mandrake, puzzlement taking over from curiosity.

“Ah! I thought... nothing. I must be wrong.”

Mandrake got up and came closer to Rune. “What did you think?” he asked more intensely.

Rune demurred. Then he said, “At any rate if there is anywhere in the system where danger and treachery can have least effect it is in the westside. Most of the henchmoles come from there. Very loyal to you and the system.”

“Danger? Treachery?” There was a hint of irritation in Mandrake’s voice, a touch of anger.

“We must always be prepared for them, you have taught me that.” Rune stopped again and Mandrake waited for him to go on. Eventually he did, but deliberately onto another subject.

“Autumn is starting. Mandrake. A time of change. But what a summer! You must have been proud of Rebecca, then.”

“Proud?”

“Such innocence, in the summer. Such warmth, when the sun was shining. So beautiful, then. She’s not here in Barrow Vale now?”

“Should she be?”

“She was. After she left her burrows a few days ago. But perhaps she’s gone back there now, and I’m wrong.”

“Wrong? What is that you’re saying, Rune? Come on, out with it.”

“Fears are not always founded in fact. They are best left unspoken until they are known to be true. And then a mole may root out danger and treachery.”

“Treachery? Rebecca? What is that you mean?” Mandrake was becoming angry, though not exactly with Rune himself, since no mole had been more loyal to him.

“What mole did you light?” persisted Mandrake.

“A mole I hope that Rebecca has not met,” replied Rune, adding quickly “but we will soon know... if Rebecca is back in her tunnels, I mean. I did not want to worry you about fears which, though black as shadows, may yet be groundless. You have other things to worry about and I am ever concerned to keep such smaller worries from you.” Rune scratched himself again and smiled weakly at Mandrake, grimacing as if in pain.

“What mole?” asked Mandrake.

“A pasture mole,” said Rune.

“You killed him?” asked Mandrake.

“I wish I had. But there was more than one. Perhaps I killed one of them.” He paused as if he were thinking and Mandrake waited impatiently for him to go on. Finally, he did.

“We must be more wary of the pasture moles, for they are getting subtler in their ways of attack, subtler than they once were. You know what I think. Mandrake?”

Involuntarily Mandrake came closer, thinking that at last Rune would say what was on his mind.

“I think that a pasture mole likes nothing more than to take a Duncton female, the younger and more innocent the better, and to have her for his own, hard haunch hard into soft young haunch. To take her in the safety of the wood’s edge and to leave her to litter in shameful secrecy a brood of squawling pasture pups in the heart of Duncton Wood.”

As this image hung between them, a henchmole poked his snout through the entrance into the elder burrow in which Mandrake and Rune were talking and, seeing that they were silent, whispered: “Rune, sir. Rune! She is not there!”

“Who is not where?” thundered Mandrake, putting the frustration he felt at Rune’s careful vagueness onto the henchmole, who stumbled and stuttered and looked desperately at Rune for help.

Rune merely lowered Ms snout and shook his head sadly.

“Well?” demanded Mandrake of the henchmole.

“Er – well – it’s Rebecca. She’s not in her tunnels.”

“Where is she, then?” roared Mandrake.

“I... we... don’t know, Mandrake, sir,” whispered the henchmole.

“Rune?” Mandrake turned aggressively back to Rune.

“This was what I feared. This was what I hoped could not be true. Ah, Rebecca!”

“Get out,” shouted Mandrake at the henchmole. Then, turning to Rune, he said “You had better start at the beginning. Rune.”

“There is not much more to say now. Mandrake. Only things to do.... But you know why Rebecca came to Barrow Vale?”

“Why?”

“September is a time of change. Leaves may be a delicate green in June, but by September they decay. Some-moles mate in September... somemoles like it, want it... then. Or
now,
I should say.”

“Mating... Rebecca... now...” The elements were beginning to combine into swirling red and black poison in Mandrake’s mind.

“On the wood’s edge, near the pastures,” went on Rune, adding hastily, but deliberately not hastily enough, an explanation of what he meant: “That’s where I’ve been. Fighting pasture moles who had taken a Duncton female into their darkness and done to her what she allowed them to do. Treachery and danger.”

“You mean Rebecca?” asked Mandrake, enraged but fascinated at the same time. With each word that Rune now spoke a picture of his Rebecca, his daughter Rebecca, his untouched child, hardened on the edge of his mind where no mole at first likes to look, but to which a jealous mole may easily be drawn. A picture of fur and darkness, of moving haunches and talon scratches on backs, of moist snouts long and pointing and open mouths, and white teeth and sensual smiles in the dark of a forbidden burrow. And his Rebecca among them. His daughter!

“Rebecca? With pasture moles? I hope not,” said Rune. “I’m certain she couldn’t,” he added, but with too little conviction to satisfy Mandrake.

Rune’s plans ran deep, deeper perhaps than even he realized. He recognized Mandrake’s jealousy for Rebecca because he had felt something of it himself, though being cold and cerebral his was the jealousy of nonpossession rather than of blood right and lust, as Mandrake’s was. He thought of Rebecca and Cairn, and his eyes had the black glitter of the owl face in Hulver’s tunnels, for evil takes its greatest pleasure in tearing the innocence and happiness from the face of joy.

“Did you see her there?” demanded Mandrake, now shaking with anger and the need for action.

“I heard a female there, taking her pleasure with a mole or moles. A Duncton female from the scent. Thrusting her open haunches to a male, or males, from the pastures. She was there... but whether or not it was Rebecca I cannot be sure.”

“Rebecca?”

“Perhaps it was another female, but I cannot be certain,” said Rune.

His Rebecca. His child. Her haunches open to another male.... Mandrake shook with the thought of it until finally he shouted the words that Rune most wanted to hear. “Take me there and let me see!”

Yet even then Rune pretended to hesitate. “Perhaps it is but a mistake, a silliness on my part. It was raining, a heavy storm; the senses play tricks in such weather. I may be very wrong and no mole would wish harm on a mole such as Rebecca, sweet Rebecca, less than I.”

“Take me there,” ordered Mandrake with a terrible coldness in his voice that warmed Rune’s heart.

Night-time, and Rebecca and her Cairn slept on. Night-time, and the urgent pounding of Mandrake’s heavy pawsteps grew nearer and nearer to the wood’s edge. Night-time, and up in the black and barkless wastes of a dead elm, the yellow eyes of an owl stared down and down at the wood floor beneath, talons itching round the branch they clasped as it waited for the sight and smell of prey.

Mandrake and Rune finally broke out onto the surface of the wood, near the pasture, just before dawn, when the only sound is the distant squeal of a field mouse or bank vole taken by a tawny owl. At such a moment only troubles wake a mole and make him toss and turn in his half-sleep; only a cold wind disturbs the wood floor and makes a bramble thorn rasp against its own hard stem; only a cold moon casts a light, though even that is fading as the moon sinks down beyond the distant vales.

Cairn stirred. He knew that his time with Rebecca was almost up. Rebecca moved even closer, even more content. She had mated and she would litter. She knew it with sweet certainty. But she knew that Cairn, her love, was restless and that dawn was coming. He wanted to return now to his own system to find the tunnels he felt safe in and talk again to his brother, Stonecrop.

Rebecca and he had come together in joy but both wanted to part now, as mated moles eventually must. Rebecca sighed, nuzzling him close and smiling, for she was thinking of the pups he had given her, while Cairn smiled to think of Rebecca with her pups, tumbling and playing with them, suckling them to her body, against whose soft warmth he now lay.

Close by, and getting closer, massive Mandrake and Rune crept along the edge, Rune pretending to snout his way there with difficulty, though knowing very well exactly where he was leading Mandrake.

“Here,” hissed Rune.

“Where?” demanded Mandrake.

“There.” Rune pointed, his talon indicating the entrance to Rebecca’s temporary burrow, the disturbed earth rough and shadowy around it in the dim, cold light.

Meanwhile, for Rebecca and Cairn the minutes that had once seemed hours now turned to seconds as their time together sped by. Soon it would be dawn and they would part. They began to talk the sweet goodbyes of lovers, but as they did so, there was a snarl and a roar and it seemed as if the tunnel outside their burrow was filled with the movement of a thousand predators. It was Mandrake who, remembering what Rune had told him, or seemed to have told him, had broken the sullen stillness of the last of the night and moved hugely into the tunnel leading to the burrow with his talons ready to kill, and kill powerfully, anymole, male or female, that showed its snout.

Moments after this sudden disturbance, and as Cairn instinctively turned with his talons to the burrow entrance, there came the scent that Rebecca knew too well and which made her cry out in fear. The odor of Mandrake. It was strong and aggressive and angry, and it put fear into the heart of even Cairn, who waited now a second time to defend his right to Rebecca. But this time he did not laugh, and when Rebecca started to tell him who it was, he pushed her back and away, for he knew he would need all his concentration to survive this fight.

Somewhere farther down the tunnel there was movement and they heard the deep rasping voice of Mandrake saying “Stay out on the surface. Rune, for this is my task. I will kill them myself.”

Rebecca wanted to run out past Cairn, to protect him from the terror that was coming and that such a mole as he could surely never imagine could exist. But if he could not have imagined it before, he knew it now, for even his bold young heart sickened at the smell of Mandrake’s rage and quailed before the sight of Mandrake’s mighty talons lunging suddenly through the murk of the tunnel and straight toward his snout. That would have been as far as most moles ever got with Mandrake. But not Cairn, for he was powerful and very quick and had fought enough times on his own account to know how to avoid the first lunges of a fight without becoming impaled upon the second.

Cairn did not even strike a blow before he retreated into the burrow and crouched, appalled by the sight he had seen approaching him as Mandrake’s smoldering size seemed to fill the tunnel before him.

Mandrake crouched for a moment in silence beyond the entrance, looking at them both, surprised at Cairn’s size. But though Cairn was bigger even than Burrhead, who was the biggest Duncton mole next to Mandrake, he was not as big as Mandrake himself.

Cairn snarled, his great shoulders flexed and ready, as Rebecca whispered urgently to him from the end of the burrow where his movement bad forced her: “Run if you can, my love, for no mole has ever defeated him and none ever will. Oh, run, my Cairn!”

If Cairn had not already mated with Rebecca he would have fought to the death there and then, and died. But he
had
mated and their time was over, and more than anything else, more now even than Rebecca, he wanted to be back in the fresh air of the pastures, where he would not be surrounded by alien scents and evil moles.

“If I escape,” he said to Rebecca without looking at her, for his every sense was concentrated on the burrow entrance through which Mandrake was wondering how to pass without exposing his snout too much, “I will return and we will mate again.” He spoke the words quite clearly so that Mandrake would hear them, for he hoped they would enrage Mandrake enough for him to move carelessly and give him the chance he needed to give Mandrake a wounding thrust with his talons.