Duncton Stone (72 page)

But not quite so “general” that it was not well managed; the followers were delayed, their attention was successfully diverted by small counter-attacks, and a great many Newborns got clean away, before Avebury was over-run.

It’s almost as if they planned not to fight to the last,” observed Maple with concern. “Are they saving their strength for Buckland?”

Maple’s triumph was further muddied by the grim discovery that the Newborns had had time enough to maim or kill a good many moles within the system – some being their own guardmoles who must have incurred their displeasure, others being followers for whom, presumably, they had no further use. The sight of these dead and dying moles was not one that anymole wished to see, and Weeth hoped that Spurling might be spared it and the dead moles cleared away or sealed up before he was allowed into the heart of the system.

But that was not his wish and Maple respected it. Spurling went about the tunnels in which he had been raised, dry-eyed and white of snout, keeping his feelings to himself. Only when he came across the bodies of two former friends, moles who might well have collaborated but with whom he had run and played in happier puppish days, did his emotions betray themselves in anger, tears, and grief.

“Not just for them, but for allmole, for a generation lost, for what might have been...”

Then as dusk fell a worse horror came upon them, and one that turned the partial triumph of Avebury into a kind of tragedy. The wounded had been treated and the dead disposed of as seemed fitting, and the few prisoners made safe, when a mole stumbled into the system from the west. He was badly cut about the face and shoulders, and his paws were torn by briars and caked with mud and grime, and he was so exhausted he could hardly speak. His eyes spoke of the horror he had witnessed far more plainly than any words he said.

“It is Barbury Hill,” he said. “Newborns came. Dozens of em. We were overwhelmed. All gone, all dead, and I, I ran and somehow got away. There were too many for us guards, too many. I heard their cries as I ran...”

He broke down, unable to say more, but already Ystwelyn was issuing orders for volunteers to go back the long way to Barbury Hill and investigate. If it were true it meant... well, a mole dreaded to think what it meant – that the Newborns had planned such an attack, for those who had fled Avebury could not have perpetrated such an outrage. It meant that the defences left by Maple had not been good enough. It meant failure of a kind...

“It means,” said Maple a day later, when a large contingent of the followers made their way back to Barbury Hill, Ystwelyn having been left behind to conclude matters at Avebury and establish a garrison that would not be so easily over-run, “that it will be almost impossible to prevent our forces from retaliating against the Newborns in kind.”

The hill was littered with the slain, moles hacked down where they had vainly tried to defend themselves against a force superior in number, and vengeful in spirit. The victims had been the old, the wounded, the harmless ones, and those left behind to defend them. Two or three were found alive, though seriously wounded, left not out of mercy but omission: the Newborns had simply missed them in the litter of bodies across the ground, and in the temporary tunnels. Such reports as these were able to corroborate the account of the one who had reached Avebury to raise the alarm, adding only what had happened after he had escaped, which was the systematic killing, sometimes most cruelly, of those who were wounded.

“But they never came into the tunnel where I lay,” explained one, “not after their first visit there.” He was the only survivor of thirty recuperating moles.

“I watched ’em at it, and they were methodical, believe you me,” said another. “Stone knows why they didn’t come for me. I’spect they couldn’t see I was alive in that heap of dead. But I was, I was...”

“Let’s go and get the bastards, sir. Let’s
do
it!” cried out a rough young follower from the Wolds.

He was speaking to Stow, the veteran Woldian leader, but Maple overheard the remark, and saw how it fuelled an ugly flame of rage and hatred amongst the followers, as sudden and dangerous as a spontaneous fire through sun-dried moorland grass.

Indeed, there was nothing he or Stow could do to stop the shouting and surge of moles about them, asking, no, demanding revenge for the cowardly killings of Barbury Hill. It was the very thing that Maple and his fellow commanders had struggled to avoid through all the moleyears of summer, for it might destroy all credibility for the followers’ cause.

Not that the followers would lose the war against the Newborns, of that Maple was certain, but they would lose a greater war, which was being fought not
against
anymole at all, however sectarian and cruel they might be, but
for
liberty and tolerance and for the Stone, which is to say for allmoles’ hearts and spirits.

“No, no, no!” roared Maple, cuffing one mole to shut him up, buffeting another who was becoming hysterical, and felling a third who had actually raised his paws to him, so deep were his anger and need to see the Newborns punished for the suffering they had caused.

He talked to them, and so did Stow, but they did not want to listen, and he knew for the first time how it felt to be disliked by his own force.

“If you’ll not lead us against them now there’s many a mole will know what to do,” moles growled and threatened, though with some misgivings, for the sight of Maple angry, and ready to settle accounts with anymole who so openly challenged his authority was formidable, even frightening.

“But the disgruntlement remains,” he told Ystwelyn and other commanders a day or two later, when their forces had regrouped, and some of the outward anger at the Barbury massacre had subsided. “They will be hard to contain, and I greatly fear there will be incidents of revenge which we will not know about unless we keep a close eye upon our forces. Therefore, we will not advance upon Buckland as we had planned.”

“But sir...!”

“You can’t...!”

“I can’t answer for my...”

And even Ystwelyn’s voice was joined to all the others in protest at Maple’s decision. Worse, to Maple, was that Ystwelyn finally counselled that it would be sensible to let some of the followers go after Newborns to “mete out to them what they did to us! It helps calm things down a bit, and we should turn a blind eye to it.”

Maple listened to them all in silence, and for the first time in his generalship understood the isolation a leader sometimes feels, and the strength of will he must have if he is to pursue the course of action he judges right. He could only be grateful for small mercies, for dependable Stow, who alone among the senior commanders remembered well how Privet had talked to them of the true nature of peace and Silence on her passage through the Wolds on the way to Caer Caradoc. He stanced solidly by Maple in his opposition to revenge attacks; and Weeth, he was always there.

Many historians have said, and rightly so, that it was in those dark hours and days, when almost singlepawedly Maple held back the followers from setting forth to hunt down and kill any Newborn they could find, that his greatness began to show itself. As he had in the Wolds when similar demands for revenge had surfaced, he went tirelessly now from troop to troop of followers, persuading, ordering, warning.

Weeth was at his flank, Stow nearby, and Ystwelyn was temporarily sanctioned for failing to be clearer in his condemnation of those who wanted to satisfy their need for revenge. This was done indirectly, so that Ystwelyn did not lose face, for while Maple took personal control of the Siabod moles, the Welsh leader was sent forth with followers absolutely loyal to Stow, ostensibly to round up any Newborns around Avebury and to check out the positions of the main body that had escaped.

Nor did Maple hesitate to include with Ystwelyn’s force two moles who had been with him from the beginning, and whose common sense and faith in the Stone he trusted absolutely: Furrow and his mate Myrtle. These went along partly to advise on any crossing of two-foot ways the followers came upon, but also to report back to Maple any indiscretions.

“They’re spies!” roared Ystwelyn, when he learned of Maple’s intentions.

“Aye, they may be,” said Maple, “and if one hair of a Newborn’s fur is touched gratuitously, and without proper arraignment and trial, I shall know of it. You failed me at Barbury Hill, Ystwelyn, and I must know I can trust thee again.”

Perhaps he used the traditional “thee” to indicate how much he cared for Ystwelyn, and how hard he found it that the two comrades were in disagreement.

“I warn you, Maple of Duncton, you will not be able to contain the anger of the followers for ever. It is better that you let them loose on a few Newborns now than try to stop them doing what such moles have done from time immemorial.”

“Enough, Ystwelyn of Siabod.”

“No, Maple, hear me, for I am your friend.”

“A friend who has disappointed.”

“Mole,” said Ystwelyn more reasonably, “let me stay with you now. Accept my apology. You cannot hold back my forces —”

“They are the Stone’s forces!”

“Aye, and the Newborns would say the same! By the Stone, Maple, you know as well as I that the Newborns they are likely to catch and, yes, rough up and hurt a bit, deserve that and more for what they have done.”

“There is a greater principle involved, my friend,” said Maple quietly, “and one taught by Master Librarian Stour, and by Privet as well: finally we must meet talons with peace and love. Finally, we must stance down before our enemies and let
them
decide to cease the war. If we allow our moles to take revenge now we put back the day when strife stops because both sides will it; not out of weakness and surrender, but out of strength and desire.

“Now, mole, go as I have bid you, take prisoner what Newborns you find. Let them be brought back to Barbury Hill unmolested and in safety. They shall be arraigned and judged in truth and justice. If any be guilty of massacre they shall be punished; but those that are guiltless of that shall not be punished for it. Our followers will witness this, and see the worth of it.”

“And what of Buckland, to which we should long since have gone if we were to have taken advantage of the initiative we gained?” asked Ystwelyn. “Don’t you think the Newborns will have retreated there and made it impregnable? They’re not fools, Maple: they will have learned from their complaisance at Avebury.”

Maple shrugged indifferently. “No doubt they will have done so. But then our followers should have shown themselves more worthy and ready to continue the campaign in a proper spirit. They did not, and you did not, and others like you. Stow alone among the commanders, along with Weeth, stanced loyally at my flank! Why, there were more just moles among the ordinary warriors than among my so-called senior command!”

“Like Furrow? Like Myrtle?” said Ystwelyn ironically.

“Aye, mole, like them. Do not mock them, learn from them, for if you do then all the Siabod moles will follow your example. So go to it, mole! And meanwhile, I shall take what risks I must among moles who seem dangerously close to putting their loyalty to you before their loyalty to the Stone!”

Ystwelyn left him, muttering, irritable, yet chastened and prepared to do as he had been bid; though a wave of bitter anger and humiliation spread through the Siabodian moles at news of the dressing-down Maple had given him.

It was a testing time, and Maple did not scruple to stance up to Ystwelyn’s loyal followers, challenging them, talking to them, daring them to defy him; but not one did.

So it was that though Maple gained Avebury, he gave away the initiative to the Newborns on a point of principle and risked a heavy toll of life in the future if he was to regain it.

Several Newborns
were
brought back unmolested to Barbury Hill to be tried for the crimes committed there, and two of them were found guilty and sentenced to death, the execution carried out by four moles, each from different commands, so that no individual could be described as executioner. The moles acquitted were led away, and at Maple’s orders removed back to Avebury, partly for their own protection, partly to demonstrate that the followers under Maple could dispense justice fairly and without favour, however much disliked the accused might be. They were grim times, and dangerous ones, when at any moment the seething discontent and anger that Maple had worked so hard to control and redirect could have surfaced like a foul boil on the face of an ailing mole, and despoiled everything.

But it did not happen, and Maple found his position immeasurably strengthened, along with the followers’ pride and discipline, for now they knew that if anymole erred towards undisciplined revenge, or cruelty towards Newborns rather than simple force of talons to win the war, there would be trouble for them all.

“Yet I still fear it will happen, Maple!” warned Ystwelyn a little later, reinstated in his position as Maple’s deputy, his respect for the mole he served greater than ever before.

“Aye, it will I suppose. But at least our followers know how extreme the penalty will be for any who tries to mete out unjust punishments. But enough of that! We have dallied long enough, and lost much ground. Now we make trek for Buckland, and for what I fear will be the hardest struggle of our lives!”

Buckland! The name of that loathed system went through the ranks of the followers like a sharp talon in a mole’s flank, and if they had once felt excitement at the prospect it was muted now, and they were cautious, for none doubted that the struggle would be difficult and bloody, and that the mole who led them would expect the highest standards of discipline and conduct – and woe betide the mole who, however great the provocation, disobeyed orders and yielded to impulses of hatred and revenge.