Duncton Stone (66 page)

“Set Thorne against Quail...” pondered Noakes, unused to such strategies.

“It’s an old trick,” said a Siabod mole, almost dismissively. A lesser mole than Noakes might have thought from their silences, and their monosyllabic conversation, that they resented his presence, but he had confidence in himself, and had proved his worth again and again. The difference between him and them was that he did not look Siabodian, being smaller and more delicate of snout, and so did not look alien in those parts.

His willingness to go forth alone and lure some unsuspecting Newborn guard into conversation, and lead him astray to where others could take him, or to distract his attention long enough so that they all might pass, greatly impressed. So did his enthusiastic accounts of Duncton’s lore and history, and Avebury’s too, gained in the long winter years when Fieldfare and Spurling had made the nights seem short with their tales of the systems and moles they loved.

It was a different world he showed to Arvon and his friends, and a gentler one, and he was sensitive enough to understand that their gruff ways and silences were not malevolent or dismissive but the shy and diffident behaviour of brave warriors, led out of their own land for the cause of liberty and worship of the Stone in the old ways for which they were willing to lay down their lives.

As for roughness, and their sometimes brutal behaviour with each other, Noakes did not confuse it with lack of thought or sensitivity. He heard their talk of Moel Siabod, and their deep songs, and their longing to be home. He envied them in his own turn, for the community he came from in the south had no such powerful sense of communion and support as they showed each other.

So each learned from the other, and if, on occasion, as now, Noakes displayed a certain innocence about tactics that were second nature to Arvon and the others, nomole really minded. Each to his own, and Noakes would come into his own once more.

So Arvon’s intention was to set Thorne’s forces against Quail’s, and to do that he needed information, and fast. Within two days of parting from Weeth he had led his force north to Gaydon, which lies roughly halfway between Leamington and Banbury. Here he established a headquarters in the murky shadows of a derelict piece of ground that lies beneath the huge raised roaring owl way that dominates those parts: the same indeed which, were a mole foolish or brave enough to risk the fumes and constant blinding gazes of the roaring owls for so long, leads southwards to the very edge of Duncton Wood itself.

It was the kind of location favoured by Arvon, who thought nothing of the danger and noisome fumes of such a place if it gave him advantage of both communication and defence.

“Here we shall not easily be found, or, if we are, not easily caught. Four of you...” – and here he paw-picked four of his most reliable guardmoles – “shall go north and discover what you can of Thorne’s strength and intentions. Cluniac, you will go with them, but be obedient and subordinate. Help them as far as you are able, follow orders, act as messenger if need be, and learn what you can.”

Cluniac nodded silently, his eyes grim, but grateful for such an opportunity.

“Four more of you shall go back south, using the roaring owl way, as far as Banbury. I want information on all the places where we may quickly gain access to it and so escape the fields and two-foot places below. Others of you...”

He issued his orders quickly and clearly, and not a mole there had not a task to do, all important, all of potential value to the rest.

“Be back before night falls three days from now, there is no more time than that. Noakes, you will stay here with me. I wish to learn what I can from you of southern moledom, and to teach you something in return – for I have noticed that your roaring owl way skills are lacking.”

Arvon raised a solid paw towards the way that towered above them, and from which ominous roars and rattles, flashes and yellow gazes of light came forth over their heads.

Noakes had always avoided such places, preferring quieter, more natural ways as far from two-foots and roaring owls as possible, and now he looked reluctantly above.

“You must learn all you can, for in times of need such routes can provide a mole with the advantage of surprise and speed, unpleasant and debilitating though we all know them to be. You mole...” Here he pointed to one of their number who had been wounded in an encounter with Newborns a few days before. “Stay here with us and wait. You others without an immediate task, explore hereabout for a day or two in twos and see what information you can find. Anything may be useful. Now, go to it, and good luck!”

“Arvon! Mole!”

Two days had passed and some of those who had gone to reconnoitre were back and had discovered the presence and strength of Newborns to the north and south.

Arvon heard their reports one by one, asked questions as he needed to, waited for the sleepers to awake, and ascertained that only four moles were missing – the group that had gone north into what was believed to be Thorne’s territory.

“Wake me when they get back,” said Arvon finally, it now being past midnight. It was plain enough that he had absolute confidence that they
would
get back safely.

“
Those
moles don’t get taken by surprise,” said one of the Siabod guards, and Noakes did not doubt it.

Nor were they. At some grey pre-dawn hour Noakes was woken from deep slumber in the communal chamber they all shared by the sound of moles arriving. It was the northern group, and one was wounded, or at least limping.

“It’s nothing that some sleep and rest won’t cure,” Noakes heard him say. “We had a little argument with some Newborns.”

The next day Arvon’s forces gathered together again, as rough-looking but comradely a group of moles as Noakes ever remembered being in company with. Arvon did not waste time on niceties. The reports were all in and the position was alarmingly clear: Thorne’s forces were far larger and more disciplined than they had expected, and the rumours of Chervil’s involvement were true. How the four moles had gained their information Noakes dreaded to think, but he pitied the Newborns who had crossed the followers’ path.

“You’re talking big, powerful and well led,” said one of the four. “They’re impressive, and they’re only a day or two from moving south. Our understanding is that they intend to bypass Quail and get to Duncton before he does. They want to make him fight for it so they’re not seen as the aggressors.”

Thorne, it seemed, was well informed, for the story that the moles who had gone south had gathered was that Quail too was imminently moving – also to Duncton Wood.

“Vicious lot of bastards, they really are,” came the report. “I wouldn’t call them disciplined, and from the account we’ve heard, Thorne would have no trouble with them in a location like Banbury. Well, I mean, the defences aren’t bloody well there, are they?”

There was a general deprecating murmur and shaking of heads.

“Anything else?” asked Arvon, looking about.

More shaking of heads, and a general sense that every-mole knew what needed to be done.

“Well, then, lads, it’s going to be risky but I think we know what we’ve got to do.”

And as Noakes listened, and heard what Arvon proposed, he wondered if wars had always been like this – not great armies of moles moving as one, but smaller groups, working together, knowing what their objectives were and how to achieve them.

“... the point is that nomole on either side must ever know who we are, or even that
we
were there at all. We go in where we’ve got to, and we come out; go in again and come out again. Get caught and you’re on the other side, and Stone help you! Don’t get caught!”

Noakes looked about and thought that it would take twenty Newborns to catch any one of the moles stanced about him.

“And you, Noakes, you go with...” and suddenly Noakes’ heart was pounding. He was part of it. He was one of them... no, one of
these
!

“You, Cluniac, you’ll stay with me, mole, for you’re not up to much fighting yet, and I’m not sure you should be.”

Noakes exchanged a glance with Cluniac, a mole he had got to know and like. He was surprised at the gentleness in Arvon’s deep voice, and his obvious concern for the Duncton mole.

“So you all know what you’ve to do. Any questions?”

“The meeting place afterwards, sir...”

“Aye, we’ll have the usual arrangement: one central place at the end of operations, and a secondary location for stragglers. Here will do – say the second night from now. We’ll leave a couple of moles behind to pick up stragglers. The rest of us will travel south to a location not far from Duncton called Cuddesdon – Noakes here knows of it, and Cluniac, though neither have been to it. But it’s well enough known to be easy to find, even for anymole that gets separated. It’s from there that we’ll be mounting any operation we may have to make into Duncton Wood itself. It’s to the south-east and useful for the cross-under into the Wood, which you all know.”

“Aye, sir,” they said, nodding their heads and beginning to break up into the groups they would be working in.

“And lads...” growled Arvon right at the end, his voice commanding instant attention, “I swear to you by the Holy Stones of Tryfan that after we’ve set paw in Duncton Wood once more, and seen that all is as it should be –
and
we shall,
and
it will be – then those of you who long as I do for the clean air of Siabod will set paw for home.”

There was a cheer, but a quiet one of moles who sensed that a time of destiny was upon them and that for some of them perhaps it would be their last chance to serve the Stone, for theirs would be a final sacrifice. But for others – and whatmole could say who they would be? – there would be life beyond the coming conflicts, and a chance to return to Siabod and see their kin and their home system once more, and remember the days when they were led by a great mole to do great things. Somemole began singing, and soon all joined in...

Moles of Siabod,

At the break of dawn

Arise...

Siabod arise,

Spawner of warriors.

I have watched over you,

Though I am not only yours...

“Though you are not only watching over me...” whispered Hibbott that same dawn, far to the west, high in the Wolds.

He invoked, he prayed and he hoped, and though his words may finally have been different from those of Arvon and his friends caught now so perilously between the Newborn forces of Thorne and Quail, yet their intention was similar: to invoke the Stone’s help for deeds yet to be done. For Arvon and the others it concerned war, for Hibbott a pilgrimage to peace.

“Though you are not only watching over me, Stone, give me the sense that you are with me. Yesterday I was witness to a dreadful thing, and now my heart is heavy. What can I, a solitary pilgrim, usefully do at such a time as this?”

The “dreadful thing” Hibbott had seen, and of which his is the only eye-witness account, was the followers’ exodus from Bourton at the start of their great Crusade against the Newborns. From this we may reasonably surmise that his own departure from the Wolds the following morning coincided with that secret and dramatic scene near Banbury when Arvon briefed his force for an operation designed to bring Thorne against Quail, and so make time for the followers in the south. Let us repeat part of Hibbott’s account of the followers’ departure from the Wolds.

“Tired from my exertions over the days past to find the Master of the Delve, more familiarly known as Rooster of Charnel Clough, and strangely affected by my conversation with him when I did so, I began to weaken in my resolve to get a good start on my onward journey. Then, my paws already heavy, and my eyes unable to stare long at the stars to gain inspiration from them without closing towards sleep, I heard a deep chanting of moles from Bourton, the system at whose edge I had found Rooster.