Duncton Stone (65 page)

“He thinks she’s travelled this way, does he?”

“On the contrary. He’s confident that he’s going to find her in Duncton Wood. He’s come this way to find Rooster. He’s hoping he’ll tell him how best to find Privet. Not where – he’s expecting her to be at the Duncton Stone – but
how
.”

“How?” repeated Maple, puzzled.

“And that poor female with Quail, the one I...”

Maple and Ystwelyn nodded, dark looks on their faces. They had no need to have that part of Weeth’s account repeated. Downslope behind them some guardmoles broke into a soft Siabodian song of the kind such moles sing when they are preparing to set off on a march of destiny.

“She was like Hibbott,” went on Weeth quietly, “and he made me think I was one of them too. All of us. There’s no time left, Maple, or hardly any at all.”

“More like Hibbott, eh? More like the female? It’s what Radish put in my mind as well. And this is the final part of your report, the ‘special thing’?”

Weeth nodded, a little unhappily; said like this it did not seem much.

Maple stared at the stars and said, “A long time ago, in Duncton Wood, it was my privilege to guard Master Librarian Stour as he climbed the slopes up into the tunnels of the High Wood, away from the Newborns. I wanted to hurry him, but he took his own time, which taught me something of patience. He showed me an old dead tree-trunk and told me that it was where a party of moles sheltered from the fire that beset the System in Bracken’s day. Too tired to flee further they prayed for deliverance. The fire stopped but a pace or two from where they sheltered, and they survived.

“Upslope, beyond that tree, the shady reaches of the High Wood stretch, and through them a mole may make his way to the Stone. We warriors are the flames, and the campaign we are just beginning is the fire: fire and flames which must know when to stop. So far, no further. We
must
know when to stop, remember that, for others may not. War is too often a fire that consumes the cause on whose behalf it is waged. Remember and be warned.”

Maple fell silent again, frowning and thinking. Around them, in the night, on the slopes below where they stanced, moles were gathering under the stars, but Maple and Ystwelyn and Weeth saw them not. Nor did they hear any longer the singing, nor see the mole that came upslope towards them from out of the crowd.

For Maple’s words had been more than his own, more than himself, more...

“And the pilgrims?” he whispered, trying to reach back to himself again; trying to pull himself down from the soaring night sky.

“Are allmole,” cried out a deep voice. “Are you, Maple. You, Weeth. You, Ystwelyn. Won’t forget, not any of us. Is delved into our heart, this time coming.”

It was Rooster’s voice rising up out of the darkness; he had come among the followers, and learning that Maple and the other two were conferring out in the open, had led the commanders, and their subordinates, and many more beside up after him. Hardly leading at all, but just being followed, in silence, slowly, up into the night to where Maple was.

When he was level with Weeth he turned, the light of the risen moon across the fur of his back, like the rough grass of a high moor at night. Stow was a little behind him, and many others crowded up to be near.

“Stow came to find me, but had been found already. Was coming, have come, and soon will go. Time now for us all. Some by low ways, some by high, all turning their snout to the same place in the end. Maple said ‘pilgrim’. Small word, big thing. One of us and all of us. Like river flowing. Maple said ‘flames’ and he said ‘fire’. You are the flames and together you are the fire. Must burn bright and hot; must do your great work.

“Then river will flow on, like always, mostly forgotten. Pilgrims are the river. See? Drops of water, nothing by themselves. But together!”

Rooster raised his paws into the sky and his huge twisted talons glinted and seemed like moving stars.

“Most times that river of faith flows unheard, unseen, silent, deep. But sometimes it rises, deepens, flooding, pushing to change course. Now is happening, is that. Now! Fire. Water. And rock. Can run from fire. Can swim for a time in water. But rock! Can’t avoid it, we can’t. Fire will go over rock but won’t hurt it. Rock will be there when fire gone. Rock is there where river flows. Rock will force it a new way. Rock will show that way. Then river will flow on and rock will be forgotten or submerged.”

He laughed suddenly, deeply, wildly, the sound huge and mysterious as the night sky itself.

“Privet is that rock. She stances waiting for the river to flow her way. She will force it a new way. She will not be hurt by fire and flames. Today, a mole came. One of many. Hibbott, but name unimportant. He doesn’t care. Privet sent him.”

There was a mutter of surprise among the awestruck moles who listened to Rooster’s words.

“He didn’t know she sent him but she did. He thought I would tell him how to find her, but he told me. He came and I knew time had come. Time in Wolds over for us all. Privet needs us, is ready for us, and we will go our ways until we come together as we should. She will be there and us she will need. Each one of us; the pilgrims, the warriors, even delvers like me. Follow Maple. He knows the way back to the Duncton Stone. Only way, his way. Follow him.”

“But you’re coming with us, Rooster,” cried out one of the listeners from the darkness below.

Rooster shook his head. “Delvers delve, don’t fight. Now Privet needs me. Privet beginning to die. Time beginning to be short. That mole Hibbott who came has set off already, gone into the dark night, not waiting till day comes. I will follow.”

“But Rooster...” It was Weeth, trying to talk quietly, but so still and silent was the night that all heard his words and understood the plea in them. For mole-months past Stow and his guardmoles had watched over Rooster precisely to keep him alive until the day when the campaign against the Newborns could begin. And now...

Rooster shook his head. “Jumped in a river once. Got out alive. Am jumping in a greater river now and will get out alive again!”

There was a ripple of laughter at his good humour, and his unassailable courage.

“No, no, Weeth. Will go my way. You will go yours. All the same.”

“But you should have moles to protect you—”

“Have!” declared Rooster and produced at his left flank, almost by magic it seemed, for nomole had noticed him before, a mole.

Young, but not as young as he once was; small, but not as small as he had been; diffident, but not as diffident as before.

“Is Frogbit,” said Rooster with a grin. “Have trained him well. He’s a delver. He’s all I need! Now, I go!”

Which Rooster did, without another word, his assistant Frogbit silent at his flank, down among the followers, who parted to let them through.

Maple stared after them – still as stone, Weeth wanted to say, but dared not. Very still indeed.

“When do
we
begin, sir?” called out a voice, breaking the silence.

“On the morrow, mole; on the morrow. But for now let’s hear that song we heard before, a song of campaigning I think it was, Ystwelyn?”

“Aye, a Siabod song, but one for all of us.”

It was better than a speech, better perhaps than a prayer, and as one by one the followers on Bourton Hill began that song, loud and long enough for Rooster and Frogbit to hear it far along their night-bound way, allmole knew that here was the beginning of a long march into history that would not, could not,
must
not, end until it reached the Duncton Stone. But of those that so boldly set off, how many would be there at the end?

Ystwelyn’s forecast of Arvon’s intentions following the raid on Banbury was so near the mark that historians have subsequently argued that he must have known of them, and that Weeth’s reported ignorance of Arvon’s plans must be a mistake. But such moles, more used to the solitary life of script and scholarship, unused to the deep dependence and understanding of each other that kin and comrades discover in the trials and stress of war, cannot imagine how close such moles as Ystwelyn and Arvon had long been, nor how each might learn to think as the other did.

Nor do such historians, looking too often for the glamour of action to dramatize their tale, quite recognize the depth of foresight and genius that Maple of Duncton displayed in those difficult and dangerous days. It is, in fact, more than likely that he had already conceived an outline of the strategy that Arvon in one place, and he and Ystwelyn in another, now began to put into action.

Certainly there had been some prior agreement that when Arvon’s work was done, and if events dictated it, he should not slow things down or make himself unavailable to the followers by rushing back to the Wolds in the hope of catching up with Maple and the others there.

No, it seems likely that Maple had long since understood that if there was to be a military climax or turning-point in the struggle between followers and Newborn it would be at or near Duncton Wood. From there the followers’ inspiration had always come, to there, surely, the Newborns must finally go and triumph if they were to crush for ever the followers’ spirit across moledom.

Aye, a ruined Duncton, its ways and moles destroyed for ever whilst its Stone’s shelter and support were subverted to dogmatic rituals and bloody rites – such must now be the Newborn aim, the final dreadful outcome of the process begun so many years before with such brilliance and mistaken idealistic zeal by Thripp of Blagrove Slide.

Maple, then, had long since predicted that Duncton would be where all finally came to a head, and the last battle between the forces of dogma and of tolerance be fought, and had left no doubt in the doughty Arvon’s mind that this would be so.

Thus it was not so difficult as historians have seemed to think to explain Ystwelyn’s accurate prediction of what Arvon would do.

In one respect only was he wrong...

After Arvon had parted from Weeth, and sent him hurrying back to the Wolds, he and his band of paw-picked warriors headed north. They travelled fast, for the intelligence they had gained from their recent rough interrogations of Newborn guards who had been unfortunate enough to cross their path, indicated that as senior a pack of Newborn commanders was gathered in Council at Banbury as had likely sullied the slopes of moledom before.

“They’ll not stay together longer than they have to!” Arvon had told his friends. “Such moles as Brother Commander Sapient are always looking over their own shoulder to see whatmole is trying to usurp them, and he’ll not want to stay long from his power-base at Avebury. If he’s the mole I think he is he’ll have taken one look at Quail and decided the best place to be is as far as possible from him, with as large a force of loyal moles as he can muster: which means Avebury. That being so, our task now is to keep him and his like hereabout.”

“But doesn’t that make Quail stronger? Sapient brought a large force of his own when he came to Banbury.”

It was Noakes who spoke, for Arvon had been so impressed by his fieldcraft that he had taken him in as part of his force, though a somewhat independent part. Noakes was nobody’s mole but his own, and in that he was more in the Duncton tradition than Siabodian, from where most of Arvon’s group came.

“Well, maybe it does, in a way. But I’m asking myself what Maple and Ystwelyn will decide to do when Weeth gets to the Wolds and tells them all he knows. And I think, in fact I’m as certain as I can be, that they’ll see the presence of Brother Commanders like Sapient and Turling in Banbury as the perfect opportunity to travel south and wreak what havoc they can.”

“But if that’s what is going to happen,” said Noakes boldly, “the south is where I want to be. It’s my home territory, I’ve travelled it, I know it —”

“I am well aware of that,” growled Arvon, silencing Noakes with a frown. He liked Noakes – secretly he envied him his spirit – but he did not have quite the taciturn discipline of a Siabod mole. “You’ll be needed, mole, needed badly. But we’ll not be dallying in these parts long – just long enough to set Thorne and Quail against each other and keep the Newborn Brother Commanders so busy chasing their tails here that they do not return south quite yet, or further occupy Duncton Wood immediately and make things even harder for Maple when he turns back towards there.”