Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “And I missed you, mole, as Ystwelyn will testify. You have been at my flank from the beginning, and you will be there at the end. You shall not leave it again. But I needed you to go to Duncton, to see what you saw and bring back the reports you have. But there’s more, isn’t there?” He stared down at Weeth, his face troubled, his eyes attentive. “You have not told everything – but everything is what I need to know.”

  “There is more,” admitted Weeth, “but I can’t put a name to it.”

  “Try.”

  “The mole I told you we met...”

  “The traveller, Hyssop?”

  “Hibbott, he said his name was, but I don’t think his name matters much. Nor was he merely a traveller, and that may be the point. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Really, not a thing! My doughty companions couldn’t believe it, thought it was a show. But it wasn’t. He said there were more like him, many more.”

  “Travellers?”

  “No, pilgrims.”

  “Pilgrims,” whispered Maple, wondering, remembering Radish’s dismissive mention of them.

  “Yes, pilgrims, like we’ve heard of in medieval times.

  Hibbott said he was looking for Privet. Simple as that. He had seen too much, suffered too much perhaps, to care any more for Quail and the Newborns, or you, Maple, and the followers. He was somehow beyond us, and made me realize that Privet must be too. He was simply looking for her.”

  “He thinks she’s travelled this way, does he?”

  “On the contrary. He’s confident that he’s going to find her in Duncton Wood. He’s come this way to find Rooster. He’s hoping he’ll tell him how best to find Privet. Not where – he’s expecting her to be at the Duncton Stone – but how.”

  “How?” repeated Maple, puzzled.

  “And that poor female with Quail, the one I...”

  Maple and Ystwelyn nodded, dark looks on their faces. They had no need to have that part of Weeth’s account repeated. Downslope behind them some guardmoles broke into a soft Siabodian song of the kind such moles sing when they are preparing to set off on a march of destiny.

  “She was like Hibbott,” went on Weeth quietly, “and he made me think I was one of them too. All of us. There’s no time left, Maple, or hardly any at all.”

  “More like Hibbott, eh? More like the female? It’s what Radish put in my mind as well. And this is the final part of your report, the ‘special thing’?”

  Weeth nodded, a little unhappily; said like this it did not seem much.

  Maple stared at the stars and said, “A long time ago, in Duncton Wood, it was my privilege to guard Master Librarian Stour as he climbed the slopes up into the tunnels of the High Wood, away from the Newborns. I wanted to hurry him, but he took his own time, which taught me something of patience. He showed me an old dead tree-trunk and told me that it was where a party of moles sheltered from the fire that beset the System in Bracken’s day. Too tired to flee further they prayed for deliverance. The fire stopped but a pace or two from where they sheltered, and they survived.

  “Upslope, beyond that tree, the shady reaches of the High Wood stretch, and through them a mole may make his way to the Stone. We warriors are the flames, and the campaign we are just beginning is the fire: fire and flames which must know when to stop. So far, no further. We must know when to stop, remember that, for others may not. War is too often a fire that consumes the cause on whose behalf it is waged. Remember and be warned.”

  Maple fell silent again, frowning and thinking. Around them, in the night, on the slopes below where they stanced, moles were gathering under the stars, but Maple and Ystwelyn and Weeth saw them not. Nor did they hear any longer the singing, nor see the mole that came upslope towards them from out of the crowd.

  For Maple’s words had been more than his own, more than himself, more...

  “And the pilgrims?” he whispered, trying to reach back to himself again; trying to pull himself down from the soaring night sky.

  “Are allmole,” cried out a deep voice. “Are you, Maple. You, Weeth. You, Ystwelyn. Won’t forget, not any of us. Is delved into our heart, this time coming.”

  It was Rooster’s voice rising up out of the darkness; he had come among the followers, and learning that Maple and the other two were conferring out in the open, had led the commanders, and their subordinates, and many more beside up after him. Hardly leading at all, but just being followed, in silence, slowly, up into the night to where Maple was.

  When he was level with Weeth he turned, the light of the risen moon across the fur of his back, like the rough grass of a high moor at night. Stow was a little behind him, and many others crowded up to be near.

  “Stow came to find me, but had been found already. Was coming, have come, and soon will go. Time now for us all. Some by low ways, some by high, all turning their snout to the same place in the end. Maple said ‘pilgrim’. Small word, big thing. One of us and all of us. Like river flowing. Maple said ‘flames’ and he said ‘fire’. You are the flames and together you are the fire. Must burn bright and hot; must do your great work.

  “Then river will flow on, like always, mostly forgotten. Pilgrims are the river. See? Drops of water, nothing by themselves. But together!”

  Rooster raised his paws into the sky and his huge twisted talons glinted and seemed like moving stars.

  “Most times that river of faith flows unheard, unseen, silent, deep. But sometimes it rises, deepens, flooding, pushing to change course. Now is happening, is that. Now! Fire. Water. And rock. Can run from fire. Can swim for a time in water. But rock! Can’t avoid it, we can’t. Fire will go over rock but won’t hurt it. Rock will be there when fire gone. Rock is there where river flows. Rock will force it a new way. Rock will show that way. Then river will flow on and rock will be forgotten or submerged.”

  He laughed suddenly, deeply, wildly, the sound huge and mysterious as the night sky itself.

  “Privet is that rock. She stances waiting for the river to flow her way. She will force it a new way. She will not be hurt by fire and flames. Today, a mole came. One of many. Hibbott, but name unimportant. He doesn’t care. Privet sent him.”

  There was a mutter of surprise among the awestruck moles who listened to Rooster’s words.

  “He didn’t know she sent him but she did. He thought I would tell him how to find her, but he told me. He came and I knew time had come. Time in Wolds over for us all. Privet needs us, is ready for us, and we will go our ways until we come together as we should. She will be there and us she will need. Each one of us; the pilgrims, the warriors, even delvers like me. Follow Maple. He knows the way back to the Duncton Stone. Only way, his way. Follow him.”

  “But you’re coming with us, Rooster,” cried out one of the listeners from the darkness below.

  Rooster shook his head. “Delvers delve, don’t fight. Now Privet needs me. Privet beginning to die. Time beginning to be short. That mole Hibbott who came has set off already, gone into the dark night, not waiting till day comes. I will follow.”

  “But Rooster...” It was Weeth, trying to talk quietly, but so still and silent was the night that all heard his words and understood the plea in them. For mole-months past Stow and his guardmoles had watched over Rooster precisely to keep him alive until the day when the campaign against the Newborns could begin. And now...

  Rooster shook his head. “Jumped in a river once. Got out alive. Am jumping in a greater river now and will get out alive again!”

  There was a ripple of laughter at his good humour, and his unassailable courage.

  “No, no, Weeth. Will go my way. You will go yours. All the same.”

  “But you should have moles to protect you—”

  “Have!” declared Rooster and produced at his left flank, almost by magic it seemed, for nomole had noticed him before, a mole.

  Young, but not as young as he once was; small, but not as small as he had been; diffident, but not as diffident as before.

  “Is Frogbit,” said Rooster
with a grin. “Have trained him well. He’s a delver. He’s all I need! Now, I go!”

  Which Rooster did, without another word, his assistant Frogbit silent at his flank, down among the followers, who parted to let them through.

  Maple stared after them – still as stone, Weeth wanted to say, but dared not. Very still indeed.

  “When do we begin, sir?” called out a voice, breaking the silence.

  “On the morrow, mole; on the morrow. But for now let’s hear that song we heard before, a song of campaigning I think it was, Ystwelyn?”

  “Aye, a Siabod song, but one for all of us.”

  It was better than a speech, better perhaps than a prayer, and as one by one the followers on Bourton Hill began that song, loud and long enough for Rooster and Frogbit to hear it far along their night-bound way, allmole knew that here was the beginning of a long march into history that would not, could not, must not, end until it reached the Duncton Stone. But of those that so boldly set off, how many would be there at the end?

  Ystwelyn’s forecast of Arvon’s intentions following the raid on Banbury was so near the mark that historians have subsequently argued that he must have known of them, and that Weeth’s reported ignorance of Arvon’s plans must be a mistake. But such moles, more used to the solitary life of script and scholarship, unused to the deep dependence and understanding of each other that kin and comrades discover in the trials and stress of war, cannot imagine how close such moles as Ystwelyn and Arvon had long been, nor how each might learn to think as the other did.

  Nor do such historians, looking too often for the glamour of action to dramatize their tale, quite recognize the depth of foresight and genius that Maple of Duncton displayed in those difficult and dangerous days. It is, in fact, more than likely that he had already conceived an outline of the strategy that Arvon in one place, and he and Ystwelyn in another, now began to put into action.

  Certainly there had been some prior agreement that when Arvon’s work was done, and if events dictated it, he should not slow things down or make himself unavailable to the followers by rushing back to the Wolds in the hope of catching up with Maple and the others there.

  No, it seems likely that Maple had long since understood that if there was to be a military climax or turning-point in the struggle between followers and Newborn it would be at or near Duncton Wood. From there the followers’ inspiration had always come, to there, surely, the Newborns must finally go and triumph if they were to crush for ever the followers’ spirit across moledom.

  Aye, a ruined Duncton, its ways and moles destroyed for ever whilst its Stone’s shelter and support were subverted to dogmatic rituals and bloody rites – such must now be the Newborn aim, the final dreadful outcome of the process begun so many years before with such brilliance and mistaken idealistic zeal by Thripp of Blagrove Slide.

  Maple, then, had long since predicted that Duncton would be where all finally came to a head, and the last battle between the forces of dogma and of tolerance be fought, and had left no doubt in the doughty Arvon’s mind that this would be so.

  Thus it was not so difficult as historians have seemed to think to explain Ystwelyn’s accurate prediction of what Arvon would do.

  In one respect only was he wrong...

  After Arvon had parted from Weeth, and sent him hurrying back to the Wolds, he and his band of paw-picked warriors headed north. They travelled fast, for the intelligence they had gained from their recent rough interrogations of Newborn guards who had been unfortunate enough to cross their path, indicated that as senior a pack of Newborn commanders was gathered in Council at Banbury as had likely sullied the slopes of moledom before.

  “They’ll not stay together longer than they have to!” Arvon had told his friends. “Such moles as Brother Commander Sapient are always looking over their own shoulder to see whatmole is trying to usurp them, and he’ll not want to stay long from his power-base at Avebury. If he’s the mole I think he is he’ll have taken one look at Quail and decided the best place to be is as far as possible from him, with as large a force of loyal moles as he can muster: which means Avebury. That being so, our task now is to keep him and his like hereabout.”

  “But doesn’t that make Quail stronger? Sapient brought a large force of his own when he came to Banbury.”

  It was Noakes who spoke, for Arvon had been so impressed by his fieldcraft that he had taken him in as part of his force, though a somewhat independent part. Noakes was nobody’s mole but his own, and in that he was more in the Duncton tradition than Siabodian, from where most of Arvon’s group came.

  “Well, maybe it does, in a way. But I’m asking myself what Maple and Ystwelyn will decide to do when Weeth gets to the Wolds and tells them all he knows. And I think, in fact I’m as certain as I can be, that they’ll see the presence of Brother Commanders like Sapient and Turling in Banbury as the perfect opportunity to travel south and wreak what havoc they can.”

  “But if that’s what is going to happen,” said Noakes boldly, “the south is where I want to be. It’s my home territory, I’ve travelled it, I know it —”

  “I am well aware of that,” growled Arvon, silencing Noakes with a frown. He liked Noakes – secretly he envied him his spirit – but he did not have quite the taciturn discipline of a Siabod mole. “You’ll be needed, mole, needed badly. But we’ll not be dallying in these parts long – just long enough to set Thorne and Quail against each other and keep the Newborn Brother Commanders so busy chasing their tails here that they do not return south quite yet, or further occupy Duncton Wood immediately and make things even harder for Maple when he turns back towards there.”

  “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!”