Duncton Stone (71 page)

He soon worked out that they had no facts at all on which to base the idea that Privet was at Amersham. It was merely a rumour, yet one which had more force than most since as they travelled along others joined them and they heard that moles from all directions were converging on a system that until then had been but a name to him. But as for where the rumour had come from, nomole knew nor even cared. Like moles fleeing a flood because others have told them of its coming, they seemed caught up in a journey with which they would not be satisfied until they reached its destination.

Their numbers increased as they drew closer to Amersham, and they overtook moles along the way, for many had grown tired, or were ill, or lame, or simply old and slow.

“She’s there all right,” moles said, “give us a paw and help us along the way. The Stone’ll bless you if you will.”

But there was no time to linger and help such moles: if they could not get there on their own four paws then it was a pity, but they must fend for themselves! So Rees found himself caught up in the same panic – there was no better word for it – as come a new dawn, they were off again.

It was near Chesham that he called a halt to his mad march with the mob to Amersham, as suddenly and impulsively as he had begun it. It was something to do with the scrabble to get on along the way, and the indifference shown to those who fell by the wayside. They had passed a couple of sick old males who had stanced down to rest, and had watched with something dangerously close to amusement as two younger moles, the old moles’ kin, had grown angry with their relatives and finally after much shouting and cursing had abandoned them, saying that they would find them on the way back.

“But it’s for us and our illness that we set off in the first place,” one of them cried out pathetically, his voice shaking, half with anger, half with tears.

Rees had gone on some way after that with growing self-disgust, thinking of those poor moles left behind, and reflecting on the fact that Hodder had turned back and helped
him
and perhaps he ought to do the same. But worthy thoughts are one thing, worthy action another, and Rees tramped on until dusk, his conscience wrestling with the sense that if he did not go on he might miss the only opportunity he would ever have to see Privet and the others again.

At dusk, when the company stopped to rest, he was silent and refused all food, his new-found friends wondering what was wrong. Then, peremptorily, he told them he had had enough, that they were all wrong to go on as they were, that there were better things in life than... than... Then, only feeling worse for his outburst, he turned back to retrace his steps and see if he could find the moles who had been left behind.

He never did. Sleep overcame him and he lay his head upon a grassy bank and took his rest where he was.

“Mole, mole!” a voice said waking him. “Are you ill? Can I help?”

It was an old female, one they had also passed earlier that day for she went but slowly, pausing frequently to catch her breath, which was raspy and troubled.

“
You
help
me
?” he exclaimed, feeling light and refreshed from his sleep, and thinking that the morning air felt good for the first time in days, “I should help you.”

He found her food; and he talked, and confessed to her his discomfort with himself.

She laughed in a wheezy, patient kind of way. “And what do they expect to gain when they find Privet? If she’s silent, as they say, she’ll not tell them anything at all. If she speaks, why, they’ll be disappointed in her!”

“So where are you going then, if not to Amersham as well?” he said.

“Me? I’m bound for Comfrey’s Stone, which lies some way east of here.”

He had heard of it – it was where Comfrey of Duncton Wood had died decades before, and for a time had been a place of pilgrimage.

“No more, of course, for moles soon forget such things. Whatmole remembers Comfrey now, but as a mole in a story of long ago?”

“Why are you going there, mole?”

“To touch it. To find a healing for my breathlessness. All the summer years I promised myself I would, but what with one thing and another, well, time’s slipped away. Autumn came, and the wind and rain, and I knew in my heart that I would not survive the winter unless I did something like this. So here I am, overtaken every day by moles bound for Amersham to find Privet.”

“I’ll come with you!” said Rees impulsively.

“Sleep on it, mole,” she said gently, and he thought that perhaps she preferred to travel alone.

He slept well and deeply the rest of that day and following night, and was only woken occasionally by the sound of travellers on the way, jostling and pushing and giving him the same looks of pity and contempt that
he
(he now realized) had given others who had stopped. The female was still there.

“I’d still like to help you on,” he said, “at least part of the way.”

“You don’t want to go with them?”

He shook his head and the decision was made: “No, I’m coming with you,” he said.

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was late October when Maple and the followers finally got within striking distance of Avebury. They had assembled their forces a little to the north-east on Barbury Hill, to regroup and recuperate from their arduous journey, and form a plan of attack.

Having travelled in three groups, partly to confuse the Newborns, but also to gather as much information and support along the way as they could, they were more powerful and better prepared than Maple and Ystwelyn had dared hope. Mole after mole had joined them, and here and there groups of Newborns had given up without a struggle. But in the main the Newborns they met had either offered immediate resistance, and very bloody some of the fighting had been, or they had retreated for a time only to return later in greater numbers. So the going had been tough, and the setbacks many. Both sides had lost moles, and certainly Maple had wounded followers to think about now as well – which was one reason why he had ordered the rest on Barbury Hill.

“When we go on,” he said confidently, “at least we can be sure those moles who cannot go with us will be safely out of the way, ready to join us when we press over the vales to Buckland. Meanwhile we shall wait for a few more to join us, and some of us can reconnoitre Avebury and decide on the best approach.”

In the days that followed a good many more moles joined them and proper plans were made.

“We have, I’m afraid, lost all chance of surprise,” observed Maple at a final council of war, “but our numbers are increasing and our spirits high, and in the hard molemonths of journeying past, and especially the past few days, we have shown that we are a match for the Newborns.”

There was a grim nodding of heads, but little more, for the Newborns had proved to be rough and dogged fighters who gave little quarter, and showed no mercy to those they caught. But if they hoped that torturing and killing prisoners, or snouting them along barbed fences where they knew the followers would find them, would deter Maple’s forces, they were badly mistaken. Such tactics might terrorize and subdue small isolated communities, but the followers under Maple were made of sterner stuff, and these crude devices served only to harden their resolve. Of more concern was that some elements amongst the followers became vengeful once more towards the Newborns, so much so that Maple had to discipline them harshly, and warn what he would do if he found any further retaliation.

“We are for freedom and tolerance, and if we do to the Newborns what they do to us we do not help our cause. We fight only as hard as we need to, to win, and after that we think of the peace to come.”

They were noble words, and none doubted that Maple would stance by them, but it was hard for moles
not
to want revenge in kind, who heard the screams of their friends as they died in agony across the vales, and later found their corpses hanging along the way in postures so twisted and distorted, and with mutilations so vile, that none could doubt the suffering they had endured before they died.

Maple did not underestimate the difficulties of taking a system such as Avebury, which had by now been so long occupied by the Newborns that its defences were well developed. But his knowledge of past wars and battles was great, and the experience of moles like Ystwelyn considerable, and he had the inestimable advantage of disciplined and motivated moles who would do as they were ordered, and fight to the end.

“Also, moles who have been in occupation of a system so long become lax, and forget how it might be if they were attacked,” he said the night before the assault. One other advantage he had, and it was one he had planned for carefully, and fully prepared. He had four moles who knew Avebury well. Two were Newborn guards, captured in recent days, who had been “turned” to inform to save their lives. These had been caught and interrogated separately, and the information they gave was consistent. Areas of doubt remained, but broadly Maple and his subordinates had as good an idea of the disposition of Avebury’s tunnels and defences as anymole then alive.

The other two moles were followers who had lived in Avebury and escaped from the Newborns. One had made his way to the Wolds, and had long since told Maple and the others all he knew, and been ready to guide them as best he was able when it came to an attack.

The second was none other than Spurling, the brave refugee from Avebury and later Buckland, and latterly leader, along with Fieldfare, of the rebels hiding out at Seven Barrows. It had been Weeth’s idea to make his way to Uffington and find some former Avebury moles, having heard from Noakes before the two had gone their separate ways after the raid on Banbury that there were moles aplenty at Seven Barrows just waiting to get their talons on the Newborns.

Weeth had wanted to take a younger mole than Spurling, who was old and slow, but for one thing it was plain that he had clear memories of Avebury and particularly of the complex tunnels about its library, and for another he was determined to go. Most touchingly, Fieldfare wanted to go with him, but that Weeth would not allow. He knew from what he saw, and from what Noakes had told him, that she was effectively joint leader with Spurling of the rebels, and Maple had made clear to him that her greatest usefulness would be helping with any future relief of Duncton Wood, not in bloody campaigns across the southern vales for which she was ill-fitted.

Weeth had witnessed few things so touching as Spurling’s farewell from Fieldfare, and the way that, a little reluctantly perhaps, she agreed that when he came back – “as surely I will, madam, for I love you like no other mole I have ever known!” – she would be his mate till death did them part!

“Tears, madam, are in my eyes,” said Weeth as he made his own farewell to Fieldfare, who was every bit as remarkable and doughty a female, and worthy to have been Chater’s mate, as he had expected. “I see that Spurling loves you, even if your own love is less passionate than his!”

“There’ll only ever be one Chater for me!” said Fieldfare. “But if it helps Spurling keep on going I’ll welcome him into my burrow on his return, for I’ve never known a truer, or nobler, or braver mole than him, and that’s a fact!”

So Weeth was the agent of their parting, and had some explaining to do when it was but an elderly mole, and one somewhat slow of paw, whom he brought to Barbury Hill to add what extra information he could to that already collected by Maple through the other three informers.

But Spurling soon proved his worth, filling in details of tunnels and old ways about Avebury that the two Newborns did not seem to know, and even more important, as it proved, giving a full account of the disposition of the famous ring of Stones that lies on one side of the system. More than this, he knew a good deal about Buckland as well.

“You wait till I get my paws on those... those... those
wicked
moles!” he exclaimed excitedly, his ascetic face animated for once as he waved his thin front paws aggressively about in front of him.

“We want no heroics, Spurling!” Maple warned sternly. “You leave the fighting to moles younger than yourself. In fact, you’ll stay close behind me, with Weeth to keep his eyes on you, and when we need your help we’ll ask for it!”

Of the brilliance of Maple’s attack on Avebury, which began the following day in rain, and came in waves from three different directions, many moles have since scribed.

Though the Newborns must have long expected it, yet they were taken by surprise – not just by the swiftness of it, and by the resolution of the followers, but by the way in which the attack came first on one side of the system, then another, and then a third, with no indication until too late that the main assault was a surface one, through the maze of Stones the Newborns feared so much, which brought the followers rushing headlong down into the very heart of Avebury.

The system was in follower paws by mid-afternoon, and though in two or three places the fighting had been fierce, the loss of life was not nearly as great as Maple had feared, for panic seemed to have overtaken the Newborns as they rushed hither and thither trying to decide where the real attack was coming from, and then, as often happens where forces are ill-disciplined, a general flight had ensued.