Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  ‘Roaring owls,’ said Boswell obscurely.

  ‘Owls?’

  ‘Seen them myself. I came here down that embankment two nights ago. There’s a flat path at the top, wide as a mole’s system, and the roaring owls fly along just above it. You wait till night comes and you’ll see what I mean.’

  By this time the third mole, whom Bracken had driven away, had slunk back within earshot. He seemed to want to join in the discussion and nodded his head when Boswell was describing the owls.

  ‘Their gaze is so fierce that you can see it at night even down here. It’s like fire,’ he said, creeping over to them.

  ‘Fire?’ queried Bracken, who had never heard the word.

  ‘Like hot sun,’ said the other, ‘only it kills everything it touches.’

  As if this weren’t enough, they went on to explain that the channel they were in was plagued by carrion crows and the occasional kestrel, which dived and pecked at any creature, alive or dead, caught in it. They had taken a mole only hours before Bracken’s arrival, and constantly squabbled and pecked over a dead hare that lay further away down the channel.

  ‘There’s no cover here. You can’t burrow. And the stench of the roaring owls is enough to kill a mole,’ exclaimed Boswell.

  ‘And there’s no food—that’s why…’ The other mole didn’t finish; he didn’t want to remind Bracken of the circumstances of their first meeting.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Bracken, taking the initiative for the first time.

  ‘Mullion, from the Pasture system. It’s near Duncton Hill.’

  ‘I have heard of it,’ said Bracken irritably.

  ‘He hadn’t,’ said Mullion, pointing at Boswell.

  They talked for a while—Bracken was too tired to do much else—and kept well in to the side of the channel, using some plant debris as cover. It seemed that Mullion had come over the marshes a week before, when it was frozen, in search of a mole who had left the pastures. A friend of his, he said. As for Boswell, he had made his way along the path used by the roaring owls, nearly been hypnotised by them, and then slipped and tumbled headlong down the embankment, trying to escape crows one night. Bracken wanted to know much more about him and where he had come from and why, but this was not the moment to ask. The lack of food showed on them both, and the fact that Mullion had survived a full week said much for his basic strength.

  Bracken was aware that he had brought them both some kind of hope, though why he could not imagine.

  ‘We’ve both tried everything,’ said Boswell.

  ‘Why did you say a mole couldn’t do it by himself but might together with others?’ Bracken asked him.

  ‘No reason, just instinct. A mole like me only survives with others, you see.’ He looked at his crippled paw and shrugged. ‘Moles don’t often realise that two’s better than one.’

  ‘Or three’s better than two,’ said Mullion.

  ‘Quite,’ said Boswell.

  They looked at Bracken, waiting for him to speak, and for the first time in his life Bracken understood that he had to lead other moles. They were right; there was no time. With each passing hour he would grow weaker, as Mullion had done. Better get on with it.

  At that moment, as a reminder of the dangers they faced, the cawing above them of a crow, which hung as a shadow in the sky, shattered through the constant rumbling noise of the roaring owls as it lunged down towards where they crouched, its eyes peering down into the channel. Its claws hung loose, relaxed and deadly under its body as its harsh caw shot about them. Then it wheeled away again.

  ‘Right,’ said Bracken, ‘we’re getting out of here. There must be a way. I’m going to have a look around for myself. Don’t move—and don’t fight. I’ll be back and we’ll work something out.’

  They watched him creep off along the bottom of the wall, a look of hope in Mullion’s eyes and a look of confidence in Boswell’s.

  * * *

  The channel, which was about two hundred moleyards long, had few features. Its walls were smooth and impossible to climb; its floor was wet with drifts of sand where water had flooded in the past. At either end the channel was cut off abruptly by a deeper channel that appeared to flow from the marsh and on through the embankment by huge tunnels visible to Bracken but inaccessible because the water flow was too fast and furious, and now very nearly on a level with the channel he was in. Five pipes, like the one he had tumbled down, drained into it from the marsh, ten or twelve molefeet above the bottom of the channel, which sloped gently down from a central point either way to the bigger, lateral drainageways at the bottom. Water drained steadily down from the five pipes.

  On the embankment side there were a couple of evil-smelling pipes set into the wall and sloping up into the darkness of the embankment itself, their outlets low enough for Bracken to be able to snout out the fumes and stench that came from them. From the black stains running from them down the wall he guessed that they were unpleasant inside.

  The sense of exposure was quite frightening—nomole likes to be on unburrowable ground. As Bracken was thinking about what to do, he heard a shout behind him, and Mullion came running.

  ‘The water’s rising,’ he said. ‘It’s creeping up towards where we were from the other channel.’

  He was right. The thaw of the snow and ice on the marsh must have brought a rush of water into the bigger channels and now it was creeping quite steadily up towards them from either end of the channel.

  ‘Well, we can’t fly,’ said Bracken sardonically, ‘so we had better do something.’

  A check down the other end, where Bracken had been, confirmed that the level had risen even since he had last been there. The dead hare, which lay grotesquely huddled against the channel wall and smelt of death, began to flop and float about in the rising waters, while their channel began to grow wet and treacherous from the increasing outflow from the marsh drainage pipes leading into it.

  ‘What about those tunnels up into the embankment?’ Bracken said finally to them both.

  ‘It’s what I said,’ replied Boswell, ‘but Mullion says it’s not possible.’

  ‘Too steep and slippery, quite apart from the poisonous smell. You can’t even get started,’ said Mullion.

  The water crept nearer and they all moved up towards the centre of the channel. The walls seemed higher and more impassable with each second, almost leaning over and crushing down upon them.

  ‘What about swimming out?’ said Mullion.

  ‘Never swum in my life,’ said Bracken.

  ‘You’d learn quick enough,’ said Boswell. ‘Even I can do it. But the water in those channels is too fierce.’

  At the far end of the channel a massive white and grey gull dived squawking on the hare, which was now half submerged in water. There was a plash and splash as the gull’s claws swept the water, trying vainly to lift the hare out, and then it was up and away into the dull sky. A black beetle suddenly came crawling by in the sand, heading up the centre of the channel, as if it knew that the water was rising. Mullion took it for his own and crunched it nervously as they all thought what to do.

  Bracken went and took another look up into the round tunnel pipes into the embankment and then impatiently scrambled up into one of them. His back paws had almost disappeared before he came sliding out again and fell into a roll on the channel floor.

  ‘See what I mean?’ said Mullion. He was beginning to sound desperate.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Bracken. ‘You can get a grip if you stretch far enough ahead because I could feel that the tunnel has an edge across it—it’s not all smooth like the marsh one I came down.’ He climbed up again, Mullion nudging him up a little from behind and this time his whole body disappeared and he was gone.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Mullion, increasingly worried by the water at his paws.

  ‘Finding a way out, I expect,’ said Boswell calmly. Then he added for Mullion’s benefit, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems, you know. We can all swim if nece
ssary—though our chances would be low. But we’re not going to drown in the next five minutes.’

  There were shouts from the pipe and Bracken came slithering down backwards out of it, covered in mud. He hung for a moment from its edge, his back paws scrabbling for a hold on the smooth wall, and then fell the short distance to the channel floor.

  ‘Well, it’s possible,’ he said breathlessly. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere much because there’s no wind current and I can sense that it doesn’t. But at the very least we might—if we’re careful and if you do exactly what I say—avoid the water when it rises. There might even be some food up there—though how it would survive in that roaring-owl stench I don’t know.’

  The water began to rise towards their bellies and was now threatening to sweep them off their feet as Bracken quickly outlined his plan. The pipe was in sections, each unfortunately longer than the length of a mole. But where they joined there was a gap in the pipe large enough to sneak a talon or two in and hold a mole secure.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Bracken, ‘negotiating your way up to the next hold—that’s how I slipped the first time.’

  ‘Are we taking him?!’ asked Mullion suddenly, looking at Boswell.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bracken coldly, in a voice that allowed no argument. His plan was that Mullion should go first, being biggest, and stretch forward to the hold Bracken had managed to reach. Then Boswell should follow, clambering up over Mullion to get a grip—a thought that seemed to annoy Mullion and amuse Boswell, who was the only one among them apparently quite unaffected by the position they faced. Then Mullion was to go to the next hold as Bracken joined Boswell, who would then go on up to Mullion again.

  ‘That’s the theory. Now let’s get on with it,’ said Bracken urgently, the water now almost lifting Boswell off his feet. ‘And remember you two—one slip and we’ll probably all go sliding down into this lot.’

  The pipe was far more slippery with mud and slime than Mullion expected and it took him several attempts even to get up into it, and then only with Bracken pushing, while Boswell in turn hung on to Bracken as the water steadily rose about them.

  ‘Come on!’ urged Bracken, giving Mullion a final heave from behind to help him stretch blindly into the darkness and fight his way up to the first hold. He got to it just as his back paws began to slide away from under him and hung there gasping for a few moments before bringing his other paw forward and getting a secure grip. The gap between the two sections of pipe was quite wide and the hold was good enough to let him rest for a little as his back paws found a better grip and he distributed his weight evenly. There was a thin trickle of muddy water running down the bottom of the pipe, getting into his snout and fur. The smell in the pipe went to his snout so powerfully that it disorientated him and made him feel nauseous. But he hung on—he wasn’t going to let a Duncton mole think Pasture moles were always quite so nervous as he had been before. Behind him he felt Boswell pulling tentatively at his back paw and then somehow levering himself along him with gasps and pants.

  ‘Just in time,’ said Boswell, joining him at the first hold. ‘The water was getting so dangerous that Bracken virtually threw me up.’

  Behind them they heard Bracken working his way up and then calling out: ‘On you go, Mullion, so I can come on up.’

  And on Mullion went, inch by slippery inch, paws constantly seeming about to slip out of control. Then up struggled Boswell again, even finding time to comment: ‘Not a nice place to live, this!’ The round tunnel was cold, wet and dark about them. Behind them they could hear Bracken talking himself on: ‘Now, if I put this one there, and this one here, then I’ll get a better grip and…’, a habit he had acquired from so many months alone in the Ancient System and one that, in moments of crisis, he was never to lose.

  The higher they went the steeper the pipe seemed to get and the more nervous each became as the consequences of a slip became increasingly serious. A mole slipping from this height would probably be so stunned in the fall that he would drown in the swirling water at the foot of the pipe.

  Here and there the gap between the pipes was quite wide and gave them points at which they could rest—for lying outstretched in the steep tunnel, hanging on only by talons, was very tiring.

  It was when they reached about the fifteenth stretch of pipe that Mullion suddenly, and without warning, slipped. He fell back on to Boswell without even getting a chance to cry out, and Boswell slipped back on to Bracken under his weight. For a moment Bracken felt his own grip going, the slimy, odorous tunnel suddenly witness to a desperate struggle to maintain a hold on life—but above him, Mullion managed to get a grip again and Boswell, his back paws bouncing all over Bracken’s snout, recovered himself as well.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bracken acidly.

  ‘Sorry,’ shouted Mullion down the pipe. He was feeling very weak, but really his performance so far was extraordinary for a mole who had been so weakened by starvation.

  A short while later, the pipe levelled off to a less steep slope and they were all able to have a rest. The water flow down it, however, was cold and dank and Boswell was beginning to shiver.

  ‘Well! Well!’ said Bracken, trying to keep up morale. ‘I wonder where we go from here!’ From the darkness far below them they could hear a splashing and rushing of water as if the channel where they had been was now as flooded as the ones at its end had been. It sounded a long way away, and nearer at hand they could hear the occasional drip of water, hollow and ringing through the pipe.

  ‘I don’t think this tunnel goes anywhere, but we can try,’ said Bracken. The next few sections were easy, though Bracken stayed carefully behind, watching over their progress—he knew how weak they both were. But then there was a hopeless shout from Mullion: ‘I can’t go on—it’s almost vertical now.’ And it was. The pipes twisted upwards and offered no further holds.

  ‘We’ll just have to burrow out from here, then,’ said Boswell, picking with his good paw at the earth and grit that lay between two sections of the pipe near which they were crouched. But it was Bracken who had to do it and it proved a long, slow job, partly because the embankment was made of hard-packed soil with all sorts of obstacles like pieces of square rock which he had to burrow round, but also because he was so very tired. He seemed barely to have stopped moving since his escape from the Ancient System back in Duncton four days before. But he tried to put that out of his mind, for he knew his chances of ever returning to Duncton were now slim, even supposing he wanted to.

  It took him over two hours before a pawthrust broke through the surface of the embankment. He emerged tentatively; Boswell had warned him of the steepness of the slope, and there were the roaring owls to beware of.

  Night had fallen and the first thing he saw—and it made him retreat into the tunnel—was the glare of a roaring owl’s eyes racing towards him out of the darkness, and the growing crescendo of its rumbling flight. The noise was so loud that it stunned him and the stench was many times more nauseating than that in the tunnel. It made his eyes water and his snout ache. And below there was the roar of running water.

  He retreated down into the tunnel.

  ‘Well, we can get out, but it’s so dangerous there that we had better work out what to do before we start,’ he said.

  ‘There is little you can do except move as fast as possible,’ said Boswell. ‘From what I’ve seen, we’ll have to cross the owl paths and head off along their edge to the west. We’ll be very exposed—not only to the roaring owls but to crows and other predators that may be about.’

  ‘At night, up here?’ queried Mullion.

  ‘Death hangs in the air at any time,’ said Boswell. ‘With luck we’ll be able to get off the path by the way I originally came and there’ll be food to find when we get there. But whatever you do, do not look directly into the eyes of a roaring owl, as it will instantly hypnotise you.’

  The climb up the burrowed tunnel was no problem, since it was small enough for them to flex their limbs
against the sides, but once out on to the wet slope they were in continual danger. The passing owls were snout-shatteringly loud, and each one left its wave of noisome smells which so disorientated them that they nearly lost their grip more than once. Indeed, Bracken, used as he was to the clear air of Duncton Hill, started to faint and had not Boswell, at risk to himself, put his paw hard against Bracken’s back, he might easily have slipped back down into the wet running darkness from which they were trying to escape.

  Thus, slowly and dangerously, they climbed a mountain whose top they were afraid of reaching. When they got there it was far worse than either Bracken or Mullion could ever have imagined. The noise, the stench, the flashing owl gazes! They all kept their snouts down and their eyes averted for fear of being transfixed by the owls’ gaze—but even so, they could see the light of the owl eyes flashing and shooting on the grubby wet grass that grew on top of the embankment, and the ground continually trembled with their passing.

  ‘Whatever you do, and whatever happens, do not look round at the roaring owls,’ repeated Boswell. ‘Once they have transfixed you with their gaze, they will crush you with their talons. ’

  The owls passed intermittently from both directions—the ones on the nearer path going one way and on the further path the other. The three moles waited for a lull before looking up and across—but it was too murky to see much and their snouts were so upset by the fumes and vibrations that they could not snout out much either. Bracken felt a lassitude growing over him. His will to move was fading. He wanted to crouch down and sleep. He wanted… until Boswell nudged him. ‘Come on, we must move. They are so powerful they can confuse you and put you to sleep without even touching you. Come on!’

  It was suddenly Boswell who was leading them, for he seemed to have the power to fight the weakness this terrible place put into a mole.