“Ask the worms, don’t ask me. I don’t go gallivantin’ about the countryside like you youngsters do.” With that he really did leave, and Mullion came back to the others.
“Hear that? Sounds like the four pasture moles I mentioned have been here before us. I wonder who stayed behind?”
They found the Nuneham Stone with no difficulty – all the tunnels seemed to lead to it. It was wide and bulbous in shape, much less tall than the Duncton Stone, and stood on a bluff of deep green pasture grass overlooking a slow and meandering river that lay below, beyond several fields of lush green pasture. Patches of blue creeping speedwell, a few early dandelions and the darker leaves of young bugle shoots grew among the grass by the Stone, whose general appearance disappointed Bracken. He had expected something much more impressive.
“Each Stone is different,” explained Boswell, “and they can all teach you something. Try to spend some time in silence by any Stone you come to before examining it too closely – that way you may get to know it faster.”
Bracken complied – he trusted Boswell’s advice on anything to do with the Stone – and since it was late afternoon, and the surface felt safe, he was willing to crouch for a while in the open. From beyond the Stone he could hear the sound of chaffinch, yellowhammer and blackbirds busy in some hedge he could not see, and to the mixed sound of their warbles, notes and songs, he let himself listen to the Nuneham Stone. It seemed a friendly, peaceful place.
Mullion. however, could not crouch still and had no desire to. He wanted to go searching for the fighting mole, and also to see if he was right and that the pasture moles had indeed been there.
It was only when evening started drawing in, bringing with it the risk of predators, that Bracken and Boswell returned to the tunnels and pressed on beyond the Stone,, calling out for Mullion, who had disappeared.
The tunnels were like those in the pastures by Duncton Wood, sparse, long and straight, with relatively few burrows or side runs, but the impression they gave was very different. For one thing, the soil was richer and darker, and having an element of sand or gravel in it from some distant past when the river had deposited its alluvium this high up the valley side, it tended to soften and slide in places, giving the tunnels a discarded air. There was an untidy litter on some of the tunnel floors while what burrow entrances there were were untidy and unkempt.
Once or twice they heard and saw moles nearby, but there was no feeling of hostility or even curiosity about them, and they, too, seemed to be coming and going rather than stopping still.
“There aren’t even any pup cries up here,” observed Bracken to Boswell. “In fact, I haven’t seen or smelled a female yet.”
Boswell was content to follow Bracken, whose instincts in route-finding he trusted absolutely, and so they wandered from tunnel to tunnel, generally slightly uphill, occasionally calling out for Mullion, though they knew that they could always meet him back at the Stone again.
Being April, the nights were still cold and as nightfall began outside, a chill settled down into the tunnel. They had some food and then decided to press on uphill to any outer limit the tunnels might have, and there to sleep.
But then, as they advanced, Bracken began to grow restless, feeling that he was going somewhere definite, though where, he had no idea. He scurried on forward, only occasionally stopping to look around and check that Boswell was behind him and to let him catch up.
“Have you noticed that the tunnel is suddenly getting tidier and neater?” asked Boswell, limping forward to where Bracken was waiting for him on one of these slopes. “Somemole’s cleared the litter and shored up some of these crumbling walls,” he added.
And as he spoke, there was a heavy tread in the tunnel ahead of them which stopped someway beyond in the darkness.
“Whatmole is there?” asked a strong, deep voice from the depths behind. It was neither friendly nor hostile.
They pressed forward until they came to a big central chamber in which several routes met, on the far side of which crouched a very powerful-looking mole. He was slim compared with a Duncton mole and his fur was light. He was enormously muscular and strong – the kind of mole whose size only tells when a normal mole goes near him, and whichever way he stands he seems to feel dwarfed.
His face fur was thick and dark-silvery, his eyes full of self-confidence. Bracken noticed that his back paws were unusually large and that he crouched full square on the ground, giving the impression that he was ready to spring into action at any moment.
“Whatmoles are you?” he repeated.
But before Bracken could reply, his manner, until now quite neutral, suddenly changed. His big snout came forward toward Bracken and sniffed at him, his front paws pushed powerfully into the chamber floor as his eyes narrowed and his tail started to twitch angrily. There was a deep growling from his throat as, very slowly, he drew himself up to his full height.
Bracken stopped quite still, his mind racing after reasons for this sudden hostility. Not finding any but being unwilling to argue, he backed away toward the entrance through which they had come, pushing Boswell protectively behind him. Better to have it out verbally from a position in which it was possible to retreat.
“I said whatmoles are you and where are you from?” repeated the mole, more angry by the second.
“I am Bracken of...”
“Duncton Wood?” roared the mole inquisitorially. “From Duncton Wood are you?”
He came powerfully toward Bracken, his size seeming to double with each forward step he took. And before Bracken could even say a word or raise his talons to defend himself, the mole was on to him and had thrust a paw just behind his shoulder and with one massive heave pulled him round into the center of the chamber. For a moment the mole looked back at Boswell, snouted at him and then turned away dismissively, back to Bracken again.
“I would know your smell anywhere,” he thundered, bringing down a massive talon blow in such a way that it did not seriously injure Bracken but cut across his shoulder and hurled him backward several steps. His power and speed were extraordinary and Bracken was still desperately trying to think what was happening before the mole brought his left paw swinging round and tore a talon’s cut along his flank. As Bracken staggered back gasping and frightened, a line of blood appearing on his fur, he watched as behind the great mole Boswell hobbled forward bravely to strike uselessly at the mole with one paw. With a terrible backward kick he sent his back paw shattering into Boswell’s face and he fell back against the wall behind and slumped across the entrance they had come in by.
Despite his shock and cuts, this sight of Boswell, who he knew had never harmed anymole in his life, being knocked unconscious, brought to Bracken the kind of rage he had felt overtake him when he had first confronted Mullion in the channel beyond the marsh.
He raised his talons, stepped hack to give himself more room, and then lunged forward toward the mole’s eyes and snout with all his power. He missed wildly, however. When he got there, the great mole moved easily out of his path, leaving his talons stabbing at the air, while the mole laughed cruelly at him. And then grew serious.
“What’s it feel like, Duncton mole? What’s it feel like?” he roared.
Bracken charged again, but this time the great mole simply leaned up and backward and Bracken could not even reach his face with his talons. He tried bringing them down on the mole’s shoulders but he simply stepped sideways, letting Bracken fall vulnerably forward, carried by the force of his own futile blow.
By now Bracken was gasping for breath, and frightened, as he looked desperately around the burrow for his adversary. The mole was now behind him, talons loose and relaxed, mocking him in his inability even to hit him.
Then he said “Is this what you’re trying to do?” and lunged a blow forward that caught Bracken powerfully below his shoulder and made him sound a deep grunt of pain, the sound of a mole who knows that a few more such blows will mean death.
“Or this?” said the mole, suddenly swinging round and kicking him so hard that for a moment it seemed that the chamber was collapsing about him as he fell back against the wall where Boswell still lay, now groaning and beginning to stir.
Bracken tried to move but couldn’t. A thousand painful weights seemed to be dragging each limb down. The great mole started toward him, talons out, and a look in his eyes such as Bracken had only once seen in anymole’s, and that was Mandrake’s as he came toward him in the Chamber of Dark Sound.
He tried to pull himself up, but even his head would not move as he wanted it to, seeming to slur to one side with a mouth that hung open and gasping with pain. The mole came nearer, the talons of one paw rising. He was saying something but there was such pain in Bracken’s head that he could not hear – only see the mouthings of accusation, and recognize the word “Duncton Duncton,” and then, as talons rose over him, he knew with terrible certainty that he and Boswell were going to die. His head turned uselessly to look at Boswell, by the entrance, still lying where he had been thrown by the mole’s kick. Bracken tried to speak, tried to say “Why?” – tried to push his body back into the wall, through the wall, out of the chamber to escape the talons, the fear like a root round his throat.
But then the talons stopped, the mole’s head turned away to look at the entrance near where Boswell lay and then at something beyond it. The mole’s motion slowed to stillness and a look of surprise came on his face and his body started to turn aggressively toward the entrance when, through it, there came a snout, then a face, and then the front half of a mole; an old mole, a frail mole, a mole whose coat was wrinkled with age and whose movement were hardly movement at all.
Sound returned to Bracken’s ears.
“So there’s another one of you!” roared the big mole.
The old mole half smiled; he turned toward where Bracken and Boswell lay and was suddenly there between them and the big mole, crouching down and facing him.
“Then three of you can die,” shouted the big mole.
moving suddenly forward again. How does a mole remember something impossible but which he has seen happen? He remembers it as a dream.
So it was a dream to Bracken as the great mole lunged toward them and the wrinkled old mole moved forward and away, perhaps lunging gently with one paw and the great mole was suddenly falling backward, wheeling round and back against the far wall of the chamber. Then the old mole was in the middle of the chamber, crouched quiet again and the attacker coming forward with a massive lunge of both paws.
In Bracken’s dream the old mole stepped, or rather seemed to float, to one side and with the softest of flicks of one of his back paws sent the great mole shuddering into the side wall of the chamber. A dream, but a dream with sounds. For Bracken could hear the pained gasping of the great mole and. the scrabbling of its paws as it tried to right itself and staggered round for a third attempt. But even as it drew itself ready, the old mole, whose smile never seemed to leave his face and whose eyes stayed clear and calm, stepped forward slowly as if time had stood still especially for him, and gave the big mole the gentlest of blows with his left paw, which made him fall back into unconsciousness, as if he had been struck by some massive storm-torn oak branch.
The dream seemed to continue. As Bracken watched, still half conscious, he heard a fifth mole slowly enter the chamber on his left. He turned his throbbing head toward it and there he saw Mullion standing open-mouthed, taking in the scene before him. Bracken could almost hear Mullion’s thoughts think themselves.
Three moles lying around the chamber walls as if swept aside by a raging storm and in the center an old mole crouched still and peaceful, aged paws stretched harmlessly before him, snout settling down comfortably onto them. Impossible! Mullion was thinking.
Oh no, it’s not, thought Bracken. And then, Oh no, you don’t as Mullion started angrily toward the old mole. But he got up, turned his snout to Mullion, seemed suddenly more powerful than anything Bracken had ever seen in his life, and without so much as a flexing talon, brought Mullion to a respectful halt.
The dream ended. To his right Bracken saw the big mole stirring and heard him groan and gasp. To his left he felt Boswell’s paw, against which he had fallen, moving as the mole from Uffington slowly came to. He felt himself stretching aching and pained as he righted himself back to his paws, and turned to look at the old mole again.
“It would be a courtesy if you told me your names,” said the old mole in a kindly, wise voice.
“Mullion, of the pasture system,” said Mullion, awed and respectful.
“Bracken of Duncton,” said Bracken. The old mole turned to look at him, nodded gently and said nothing. He turned to the big mole at the side of the chamber, who raised his snout, shook it, and said “My name is Stonecrop, also of the pasture system.”
At this, both Bracken and Mullion started with surprise. Stonecrop! thought Bracken. Stonecrop. Brother of Cairn. Known to Rebecca. So
that
was why...
“Stonecrop!” said Mullion delightedly, but with the old mole so much in command he did not dare move.
The old mole smiled and turned to Boswell who, instead of saying his name, got up slowly and moved out into the chamber before him.
“My name is Boswell of Uffington,” he said, lowering his snout respectfully to the old mole.
“May the blessings of the Stone be with you, as they must have been to have brought you safely so far from the Holy Burrows,” the old mole said to him. “And may they be with the rest of you. My name is Medlar of the North and it would be better if there were no fighting in these tunnels – not at any rate by moles such as yourselves who are prey to ignorance and fear.” He said this severely, as a father might to a recalcitrant youngster.
Then he turned to Mullion and said gently, “I think you have come to learn how to fight, but I tell you, your nature is not that of a fighter but a friend. Anymole that counts you as a friend will be stronger by far than if he stood alone.”