Ystwelyn was entrusted with leading the surface attack across the Slopeside, whilst to the north, in Buckland Marsh, Commander Maella gathered her forces for the crucial assault she would lead. Stow was given the task of holding reserves at Carswell Copse, ready to attack direct into the system, or to reinforce the assaults down at the Marsh, or up by the Slopeside.
Whilst between them all young fit moles waited in twos, to back each other up, ready to race with the orders for the assaults to begin, or with news after them, as had been preordained.
In all the annals of moledom’s wars and battles, few episodes are more dramatic, exciting, and uncertain as that which began with the charge of Ystwelyn’s Siabod moles across the Slopeside meadows at moonrise the following night. It is a pity that no scribemole like Snyde was then resident in Buckland to record the sequence of events over the following nights and days, as first one attack and then another savaged the Newborn defences.
As it is we have but fragmentary accounts by survivors on both sides to show how Sapient, directing operations from a chamber deep in the heart of Buckland, though closer to the Slopeside than might have been expected, utilized his own well-trained messengers to keep track of events, and calculate his responses.
There is no doubt that he was well organized, and that his force was so deeply dug in that conventional attacks along the established lines could not have succeeded before too many were killed to continue them. The Newborns’ line of communications, their clever use of chambers for reinforcements and respite, their ability to service attacks on all three fronts, and the fanaticism of their warriors, would certainly have defeated their opponents’ best efforts in the end, though out on open ground advantage might have favoured the followers.
But historians piecing together the evidence from within have now no doubt that by the second night of the attack Sapient’s force was just beginning to be over-stretched. On the northern front, above the Marsh, two followers’ lives were lost to every one of the Newborns, but the Newborns in that quarter were beginning to tire.
On the Carswell Copse side, Stow’s brave moles were an equal match to those within and the fighting was steady, and deadly, with the followers beginning to make ground by the third dawn of the battle. On that flank Sapient could not afford to withdraw one mole, though he was beginning to need more elsewhere; yet even had he had any to add they would not have helped, for the followers had broken through to narrower tunnels where “more” did not mean “more effective”. Here it was a matter of one to one, and it was beginning to be plain that the followers were courageous beyond mere bravery, and disciplined in a way the fanatical Newborns never were.
But it was across the Slopeside that the most interesting, and in the early and middle stages of the battle, the most decisive fighting raged, for here the Siabod moles finally came into their own. Used to the surface tactics necessary on their own home ground, where the earth is often too wet and acid to tunnel, they understood the flank and the falaise, the redoubt and the hidden bluff, and though attacking across ground whose features they did not know, their expertise put a pressure on the Newborns they had never experienced before.
More than that, Ystwelyn understood well the Siabodian tactic of the false retreat when, his moles pretending to be yielding, Newborns were lured out of secure positions on to open ground, and attacked where they could less easily defend themselves. In this way the followers were able to make effective inroads into the Newborn position and force them to retreat into their deep tunnels. But this meant, as Ystwelyn well knew, that with moles confined below ground it would be too dangerous to signal that the attack out of the Slopeside tunnels begin. Indeed, so concerned was Ystwelyn by the deadlock that was developing that he sent a messenger into the Slopeside requesting Maple to come out and judge matters for himself.
Maple was tired from the tension of his long and secret confinement in dreadful conditions below ground, but he and Ystwelyn sensed that a difficult decision would have to be made. With dawn light rising across the misty fields, and bodies lying where they had fallen, Maple silently reviewed the situation, moving from position to position, asking questions as he needed to, and then moving on.
Nomole, perhaps not even Ystwelyn, could have helped him then in the choices he had to make, and he knew it to be the moment which all great commanders face, when finally hard decisions must be made, risks taken, orders given, and many lives, and perhaps the future of moledom itself, left to what unfolds.
“Well, mole?” growled Ystwelyn, eyes narrowed with concentration and fatigue.
“We wait. I sent Weeth himself across to Stow earlier today, for Weeth is more reliable than a messenger in discussing the situation with a taciturn mole like old Stow. But news should come soon from Buckland Marsh.”
They waited as a cold sun rose; Ystwelyn urged his force to maintain the pressure, giving not one hair’s breadth of ground, yet not regaining any. Maple seldom spoke, knowing that if Weeth on one paw or the messenger on the other, or both indeed, did not appear before long, he must make a decision with incomplete knowledge.
It was mid-morning when he rose from the dug-out in which he hid, and sighed, and looked about.
“He’s coming, sir, a messenger mole up from the Marsh...”
The news was dire. Maella herself had been killed during the night – “It was chance, sir, and not a sign of our weakness, but matters are critical now and the followers there cannot hold on long before they must retreat and regroup. Such a loss has hit them hard.”
“But you told them...”
“I told them you would wish them to fight to the very end and not give up a mite of ground.”
“Aye, mole, and you told them right.”
The youngster seemed about to collapse, so tired was he, his fur flecked with mud, sweat and blood, his eyes wild with the stress and dismay of all he had witnessed.
“How goes it, sir?”
“You have come back in time to see us win,” said Maple, and he said it loud enough that others heard, and the Siabod moles looked at each other, and nodded, and readied themselves to stay their ground and do what their leaders bid.
“Come on, Weeth! Come on!” Maple muttered to himself. “For I cannot hold out longer. Yet I need to know...”
Weeth arrived just after that, as surreptitiously as ever, evading even Ystwelyn’s tired guards and appearing amongst them as if he were on some summer jaunt. But his words were anything but jaunty.
“Not good. Stow reckons he can hold the morning out, but the Newborns seem to have found a second wind – or a third or fourth – and have begun to gain a little ground. He can hold them, but not for long now unless there is a change.”
“A change,” muttered Maple with sudden resolution, “aye, there’ll be a change. Ystwelyn, bring me ten of the freshest warriors you’ve got.”
“Ten is too many to take out from here, Maple.”
“Ten it must be, and fear not, Ystwelyn, they will see action before the afternoon comes – and so will you. Weeth, wait here with me. You, mole, what’s your name?” Here he beckoned over the mole who had just come up from Buckland Marsh.
“Radley, sir, of Radley,” he said as ten grim-faced Siabod moles appeared, and though they may have been fresh it was a relative word, for all looked tired, all bloodied, all caked with mud. But all, to a mole, looked as if they would do all that might be asked of them.
“Now listen, Radley of Radley, and listen well, for much may depend on those tired paws of yours, much. You know the safe way back to the Marsh, for you’ve just come that way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maple pointed a paw at the pale, struggling sun which by now had risen some way above the wintry horizon, though not yet as high as it would that day.
“Get back down to the Marsh before the sun is at its highest.”
“But, sir —”
“Can you do it, mole?”
“If these Siabod moles can, a mole of Radley can as well!”
said the youngster boldly.
Maple nodded approvingly. “So, lead them there, and take them to the commander in charge and tell him to strike as hard as ever he can by tunnel with his present force as midday comes and the sun reaches its highest point. Tell whatever mole is in command to direct these ten Siabod warriors to the surface entrance or entrances he thinks most vulnerable. At that kind of attack they are supreme. And tell him to have faith, for as I am Maple of Duncton, before the sun has fallen far from its zenith today, so shall the Newborns begin to retreat. Whatever happens, they must continue pushing on, to the very last mole they must push!”
“But how do you know they’ll retreat, sir?” whispered Radley, reasonably enough.
Maple put a rough paw to the youngster’s shoulder and smiling, said, “Yours is not to question why, mole, but since you have I’ll tell. Because the Newborns shall retreat, and we shall advance!”
“Yes, sir!” said Radley, faintly. In such a mood Maple seemed a force as inevitable as time itself.
“As for the rest, it is best you don’t know – less known, least told to the enemy. Now, can you make it?”
“If I was alone I could, sir, but together with snail-paced Siabodians, well!”
It was well and boldly said, just as the Siabodians liked, and Radley led them off, suffering a buffet or two for his impudence, and winning approving glances too.
“At midday, sir!” were their final words, and they were gone.
Weeth raised his paws in alarm. “Don’t look at me, if you’re looking for a mole to make trek back to Stow. For one thing, I’m not shifting from your flank, and for another I’m too tired to go anywhere else – until midday!”
“No need for that: Stow will hold his own, and he’ll know to advance when the Newborns begin to falter. Now listen, Ystwelyn; just before midday, and Stone help us if that sun gets more obscure, you retreat —”
“Retreat?”
“Aye, mole, and I mean retreat. Do so after putting up a push that looks like your last and best. Affect disunity and disarray. Retreat up towards Harrowdown, and slow enough for the Newborns to catch you by that stream beyond the meadows – or rather to catch you just as you have crossed it.”
“And as we do you’ll...?”
“Aye, we’ll attack within at your signal that the Newborns are emerging, and only then. For Sapient must already believe he’s winning on two fronts and we shall make him think he’s winning on all three, which, for a time he will be.”
“And what if...?” began Ystwelyn.
“There is no ‘what if’!” said Maple savagely. “If the Newborns scent victory, which I believe they already do, they will lose discipline. They will!”
“They must,” said Ystwelyn quietly.
“Well,” growled Maple, “we shall hope they will, for if they do not we shall all be trapped within, and without we shall be divided. But I can sense in my paws that this is the right way, and this the right hour.”
“Then, mole,” said Ystwelyn with a grin, “that is enough for me!”
“Go to it then, and may the Stone be with us all.”
Maple and Weeth returned immediately to the Slopeside tunnels where a couple of Siabodians were waiting patiently to guide them back to the others, to lead this most covert and most dangerous part of the operation. They knew already what to expect within the Slopeside, having survived two days in silence down there before emerging to debate strategy with Ystwelyn, and they did not relish going back again.
“You’ve advanced no further than the point we reached before?” asked Maple worriedly.
“No, sir. We did as you asked and just kept our ears open and our paws still, and we went no further.”
“Well, we’re going further now, Stone help us all, but with luck we’ll not have to wait so long that we get contaminated by whatever filthy disease is down there. Now, lead us on.” And down into the mazy tunnels of the Slopeside they went, to right and left, past dark dens of long-forgotten death, through the still and fetid air of tunnels whose best future would be that they were destroyed for ever.
It seemed to Maple that they took a long time to reach the chamber before the seal-up, where he had earlier ordained that the Slopeside force would wait, and in such diffused light they had no way of knowing how near to midday it was.
“Have you heard anymole above?” he asked.
“Nothing unusual, sir, just the same comings and goings as before.”
“Well, you’ll be hearing some more goings than previously, “he said, drawing the force about him and briefing them thoroughly on what had been agreed. “The only thing we can do until we get Ystwelyn’s signal is to clear the way for the break through the seal-up, not a task I willingly delegate to anymole.”
As usual everymole there volunteered for the grim duty, and Maple selected four as randomly as he could.
“Move as few of the bodies as you need for us to get round them with access to the seal-up, and only you four go down initially... and you, Noakes, oversee them.”
It was no sooner said than they went off to get on with it, reporting back a little later that the job had not been too bad – and no sign of infestation, nor any odour of nettles, or anything else.
“Just bodies, sir, and old ones. I’ve seen worse, though Stone knows why anymole would leave them to starve there and why they didn’t try —”
“To escape?” Maple shrugged. Fear? Weakness? Despair?
There was a dragging over the surface above them, and cries, and the patter of pawsteps back and forth, and shouts and orders, and a deep voice, perhaps of Ystwelyn himself. The “retreat” seemed to have begun. Maple deputed two of the moles back to the seal-up to discover what could be heard in the chamber beyond.
Time, slow time, passed. More sounds above. The rush of pawsteps from the chamber beyond. Silence, stealthy and suspicious. Then: thump! thump!
“Not enough,” growled Maple, “there’ll be more to the signal than that.”
But he ordered his force to begin to advance in readiness along the tunnel towards the seal-up – out of the chamber, around the bend beyond it, edging past the filthy debris of the roof-fall that had given them such a shock two days before; then on to the seal-up itself, the clearers’ work well done. No mess, no smell, no talon worms, just the corpses to one side, and the seal-up rising beyond.
The tension mounted, the sounds beyond faded.
“They’re on the surface, sir, more than before... wait... more coming...”
The drag of moles’ flanks along the other side of the seal-up, slow and careful, cautious as squirrels. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
The signal had come, midday must be past, elsewhere the attacks must now be well under way and here...
“Can’t hear a bloody thing from the other side, sir, or hardly anything,” whispered a mole who had made himself chief listener. “Most of them seem to have surfaced.”
Maple nodded and signalled through the gloom for more to advance, until the tunnel was full of moles, but for a small circle of space around the pile of bodies.
Silence. A nod. Two moles had long since been deputed for the task, because of their powerful paws and excavating skills, along with a third, a smaller friend of theirs well taught in the art of structures and defences, and good at detecting weakness in a wall. It was perhaps the most quiet and delicate moment in a battle that had now continued for six days, and was about to enter its bloodiest and most desperate phase.
The two bigger moles stanced back while the smaller one ran a paw softly over the seal-up, and then listened at different parts of it. He snouted at it, high and low, first to one side and then the other, and finally with supreme gentleness he touched a place in its upper-right-paw part and nodded at the nearest of his two friends, who came forward, talons raised to strike. Then the small mole touched a second place, lower down and on the far side, and nodded at the other to be prepared.
Finally, as quietly as he could, he scraped at an area in the centra
l part of the seal-up where loose soil fell away and revealed a boulder twice the size of a mole’s head.
“Strike twice where I’ve shown you, and that’ll weaken the wall. Then go for this stone, get it out, and the whole bleeding lot will come down, so get clear. Then we can go through.”
His instructions quite clear, he pulled away to let the bigger moles do their destructive work.
“Wait until you hear another mole beyond,” whispered Maple, “for their surprise will cause more panic. And if they’re still there when we break through let them go, if they’ve got a mind to flee. Their panic will be worth more to us than their immediate death. And finally...”
“Yes, sir?” said one of the Siabod moles.
“Roar! When you get through, that is.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Right, off you go!”
The big moles struck the wall twice each, just as they had been shown, and then they hauled the boulder out of position. For a moment the seal-up held but then, just as had been predicted, with a great roar, amid clouds of dust and grime, it collapsed towards them. A hole appeared through the murk and beyond the chamber stretched, smaller than they had imagined, and lighter than the tunnel they had been in. Stanced there were two moles transfixed and terrified.
One fled; the other, to his credit, made a vain attempt to fight. He was taloned at once, the first bloody death of the many that followed in the next hour. With a roar Maple’s force charged into the chamber and struck down the few moles about the place, meeting resistance only for a moment or two from three guardmoles near a portal.
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