Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  Yet the story that Brevis had to report was stark and to the point. The grikes had crossed the Thames to the north of Uffington and were rapidly taking over all the adjacent systems to it. It was easy for them to do so since most of the systems had been decimated by the plague.

  Whether or not they had used gentler methods of argument and persuasion to convert systems earlier in their campaigns he did not know, but their strength had become so great that they proceeded now with speed, efficiency and brutality. Most moles in a system were so cowed by moleyears of privation and disease that they did not argue when the grikes arrived, and those that did and refused to subject themselves to Atonement and Instruction in the Word were systematically starved, terrorised, broken and re-educated. The few that stood up to such treatment were snouted publicly or, in some cases where conditions were right, drowned by enforced burrowing in mud. In each case a system’s takeover was prefaced by some random snoutings, as if to show everymole that the grikes meant business.

  Brevis reported that the grikes were well-organised and disciplined. There was a system of guardmoles, elders and eldrenes – female elders. Their method was to take over a larger system and herd the remnants of smaller systems into it. Since almost every system had plague dead who had been left to rot where they died and their tunnels sealed off, the grikes had a policy of clearance carried out by “clearers”, usually diseased, demented or vagrant moles ostracised and feared by others. These lived apart in “congregations” and cleared out a system by taking corpses to the surface. The grikes used clearing as a punishment, knowing that many clearers soon died of plague or developed other diseases.

  Brevis, who, at great risk to himself, had infiltrated his home system of Buckland, and had even begun to receive instruction in the Word, had succeeded in establishing what the aims of the grikes were in coming to Uffington: nothing less than the destruction of faith in the Stone.

  And if Uffington had indeed unwittingly played host to grikes like Weed and Sleekit it was important that they did something now warned Brevis. Invasion was probably imminent....

  But incredibly, the ever-cautious Medlar insisted on a written report before elder scribemoles could consider what action to take... and only Spindle knew the full depth of Brevis’ anguish. To leave the Holy Burrows in defiance of the Holy Mole was one thing – indeed, Boswell himself had done it on occasion – but to lobby for action before an elder meeting and against a Holy Mole’s clear directive was another. So for two days and nights Brevis worked to scribe his report.

  Spindle later remembered the near desperation with which Brevis laboured, knowing that each extra moment that he took was another moment lost, each extra minute and each hour... and in the only brief time he took off, he had warned – indeed ordered – Spindle that if the grikes came he was to flee immediately, and if he was caught he must, however much he disliked doing so, pretend to reject faith in the Stone and accept the Word.

  The warning was just in time, and Brevis’ great fears fully justified. Up the northern slopes they came, across the western heights, through the eastward tunnels, by way of the southern vales; dark they were and silent, ferocious in their assault, efficient in their attack, ruthless in their killing. Few questions, little mercy, and their purposes quite clear: to find the original Book of the Word that was believed to be still in the Holy Burrows, to trace a mole called Boswell, and to so decimate Uffington that it could be a place of reverence no more.

  They used two poor tortured scribemoles to identify the other moles in their effort to find Boswell, moles who were reluctant at first to name their brothers but who did so when their eyes and ears and genitals were pierced with talons until those two screamed out that they might be put to death, so great was their pain and suffering. Oh yes, they were put to death all right: for those were the two who, so much later, Boswell and Tryfan had found hanging in a snouted death upon the barbed wire on the surface.

  A few, including Brevis and Spindle, escaped the first attack. Spindle was soon separated from the others, caught, and, when it was discovered he was not a scribemole yet knew the tunnels well, he was spared. As for Brevis and the others, they were undoubtedly caught and killed, for Spindle heard it braggingly spoken of by the grikes, of how the escapees had been found near the Blowing Stone and there savaged to death and left for owl fodder. (A fact which, sadly, Spindle was later to confirm, for he saw what remained of the bodies themselves, though so broken and eaten were they by then that he could not recognise them individually.)

  But that was later. First Spindle and other clerics had to suffer the scrutiny and cruelty of the grikes, as they interrogated them all, killing some quite arbitrarily. Spindle himself pretended to simplicity and a willingness to believe in the Word, and he was spared. He was asked many questions about the Library and the location of other libraries if such existed. He knew of none and gave little away. Again and again he and other clerics were asked to look at the bodies and see if they could see the mole Boswell – and it took a long time before the grikes were convinced that long ago Boswell had left for Duncton Wood and had not been heard of for many a moleyear. The grikes were not forthcoming about why they wanted to find Boswell, but it was clear they wanted him alive.

  They seemed concerned, too, to find the copy of the Book of the Word which the Library was supposed to contain, but none knew of it, and it was not found. They seemed uninterested in anything else, for they were brutish, unsophisticated moles, intent only on killing.

  Yet a few days later, reported Spindle, other more senior moles arrived at the Holy Burrows, among them Weed himself and Sleekit, and others Spindle did not know or even see. These, it seemed, were displeased by the extent of the destruction of the Library and ordered recriminatory punishment. Weed’s personal guardmoles killed several of the grikes who had led the attack on Uffington. It seemed that Weed felt there might have been some purpose in keeping the Library intact.

  When those days of death and anarchy were over, the grikes, and the few clerics remaining alive, left Uffington to travel south-westward to Avebury. This they targeted as the next ancient system they had to take, leaving Siabod to the far west and Duncton to the east. Their intention, as Spindle discovered it, was to use Avebury as the centre from which to consolidate their gains in the west and then to return to Uffington for the Spring Solstice and ensure its final demise by celebrating dark rituals there before leaving it to a final abandonment.

  Whether the two remaining ancient systems of Siabod and Duncton Wood had been taken by the time Boswell and Tryfan reached Uffington, Spindle had no idea. But he had little doubt that in time they would be, unless a leader could be found among the believers in the Stone who could rally support and resistance among those who still had faith.

  This was Spindle’s terrible tale and when he had finished it he crouched in silence. Boswell had explained some of the import of what he had said but Tryfan, until now, had stayed silent, listening.

  “But your own escape,” he asked at last. “How did that happen?”

  Spindle grinned. “My apparent weakness and insignificance has advantages, one of which is that guardmoles and others do not think I will even try to escape. What is more, I knew these tunnels and those at Seven Barrows well, and it is possible, when large numbers of moles are on the move, to go unnoticed. So, quietly and I think unseen (for none came in pursuit), I left them.”

  “What did you do when they had gone?”

  “For days I did nothing,” said Spindle, his voice barely a whisper as he re-lived the shock of what he had seen. “There were one or two other survivors but they spoke not to me, nor I to them. Then they were gone. But I... I know not. I could only think to worship the Stone and, just as I did when I was a pup, I went down to the Stones near my home system of Seven Barrows and they gave me sanctuary. I asked for guidance. I passed Longest Night alone. I spoke what invocations I could and then I knew what I must do. Was I not a cleric of the Holy Burrows, was not my task there?”<
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  He stared at them both and they saw in his eyes the terrible courage he must have needed to do what he then did. Alone, afraid, without hope, he went back into the tunnels of Uffington and made his way past more tortured death than anymole should ever see, and reached the Library.

  “What did you there?” asked Boswell gently.

  “I began to gather what whole books remained and took them, one by one, down to Seven Barrows and there I have hid them lest the grikes destroy more on their return... and then, you see, I had... I had...” But he stopped and despite pressing from Tryfan would not say what he had been going to. Instead he continued, “It has taken me all these moleyears to do this task and I have done my best. Often have I prayed to the Stone for help, but when vagrants have come by I have not trusted them. You are the first... but you are too late! The Spring Solstice is almost on us and I fear the grikes will soon be back. This journey today was to have been my last, for there is not much more left that is complete. But when I heard you I thought... that you... I feared.”

  “And yet you sought to defend the Library by yourself,” said Tryfan with considerable respect in his voice.

  “It was my task,” said Spindle.

  “But there was more, was there not?” said Boswell strangely.

  “I don’t know what you mean!” said Spindle rather too quickly and looking much afraid.

  “You were going to talk of it just now,” said Boswell gently, “but fear stopped you.”

  “I – I – “whispered Spindle, his flanks trembling, his eyes wild with fear and dread.

  “You need not have been afraid of us,” said Tryfan.

  “It isn’t you,” said Spindle, his voice almost hysterical now. “It isn’t you, it’s them. I can’t. Not again. I can’t....”

  Then Boswell smiled and touched Spindle once more, and took his paws, and as the Library filled with peace and light Tryfan remembered Boswell’s words when they had first met Spindle. “This is a mole of very great courage and strength.” And he remembered, too, the sense he had had that his own life would be bound up with Spindle’s and as Spindle had trembled so now did Tryfan, for he felt his real task was beginning, and that it was great and difficult, and he might not have the strength or faith for it.

  “You have not told us all, have you Spindle?” said Boswell, his wise old eyes intense upon poor Spindle, who, for his reply, could only bleakly shake his head.

  “Not all,” he whispered.

  “Tell us,” said Boswell.

  “I – I – “began Spindle once more, his suffering almost palpable about them.

  “He said I mustn’t tell anymole, not anymole at all, not until... I mustn’t, I mustn’t, I mustn’t!’ And as his voice rose towards hysteria again – as if by shouting repetition he might drown out Boswell’s query, and even his gaze – Boswell reached his paw under the fold of skin beneath his flank and slowly took out the Stillstone he carried there and placed it on the ground among the three of them.

  Tryfan, who had not seen the Stillstone since Boswell had taken it up from beneath the Duncton Stone so many moleyears before, gazed on it in awe. For his part, Spindle seemed struck speechless with fright, but it was clear that he knew what it was. But to any other mole watching, their response might at first have seemed strange, for the stone was nothing at all, barely more than a pebble, smooth in parts, rough in others.

  But then from it there began to emanate a light, and then around it a sound of such beauty that a mole who had faith would know he was hearing, or beginning to hear, the sound of Silence.

  “Take it up again!” cried out Tryfan.

  “Hide it!” said Spindle.

  But Boswell only looked from one to another, as if – as Tryfan already feared – they were both involved in whatever it was that Spindle was so reluctant to talk about. Then Boswell turned his gaze on the frightened mole and said in a voice that seemed to vibrate down the tunnels of history, and beyond them to an undecided and uncertain future yet to come, a voice of awesome power, “Thy task is great, Spindle, and in time thy name will be honoured for what thou hast already done, and still must seek to do. But now thy own long agony of struggle and loneliness is truly over, your burden will be shared and taken on by others beyond the realm of Uffington, to those who must choose for themselves if moledom is to be a place of darkness and dark sound, or Silence and light.

  “So now, brave Spindle, most worthy mole, tell us what it was you really saved.”

  For a moment more Spindle said nothing as the light of the Stillstone of Silence played around them. Then he whispered, “Take it up again, Boswell, only thou must see it, hide it from us...” and Boswell did so. Spindle turned to Tryfan, as if it was to Tryfan that he had to answer the question, and said, “I would rather show you than tell you.”

  “Then show us,” Tryfan found himself saying, as if he was in charge, and old Boswell, whose disciple and protector he had been for so long, was moving aside for him to be master now.

  “I shall,” said Spindle, “yes, yes, I shall...” and there was relief in his voice as, the light of the Stillstone fading around them, the cleric mole turned from the ruined Library asking them to follow him, that he might show them what it was that he had saved.

  Chapter Four

  The journey to Seven Barrows was long and tortuous, and all underground. Spindle led them in silence most of the way, only talking to give them directions round some difficult obstruction, or over awkward roots.

  After an initial run of rising tunnels, the route was gently downhill, running with the dip of the chalk and retaining for a while that same airiness and majesty of light which characterised the tunnels in the heart of the Holy Burrows. Then they changed as the chalk dipped away beneath them and they continued on into the darker, moister overlay of clay with flints. In places they passed beneath woodland, for the tunnels were bounded by the roots of gnarled oak and beech, and the roots carried down into the tunnels that same windsound of the cold north wind which, it seemed to Tryfan, he had been battling against for long years past.

  They had set out in late afternoon, just as a murky dusk had begun to fall, and when darkness came two hours later they stopped. Spindle found them food, which they ate in tired silence, and then they slept, the wind a dull roar overhead. When dawn came, and as the tunnels began to fill with light, they groomed, ate some food, and then set off once more.

  Boswell chose to take up the rear, and though the pace was quite fast he seemed to have no trouble keeping up with them. Every time Tryfan looked round protectively to check he was all right, Boswell was limping steadily along just a little way behind, nodding and smiling at them to continue as they were. Of the three of them, he seemed the least worried and most relaxed.

  Spindle went steadily on, and it seemed extraordinary to Tryfan that so paltry looking a mole had managed to carry books from the Library along a difficult route like this day after day, all by himself and without much hope that the task would be successful. It was obvious that Spindle had qualities of strength and endurance along with his obvious intelligence and resourcefulness which made him a mole worth knowing. But more than that, thought Tryfan, who had seen so few moles these past years, he liked him: there might be something comic about Spindle’s awkward, slightly nervous gait, but he was likeable, and in his own serious way a caring mole.

  This feeling of liking and respect mingled now with growing curiosity as to what it was that Spindle was going to reveal to them, a curiosity the greater because Tryfan sensed that Boswell himself in some way already suspected what it was. At the same time, as the tunnels moved once more into a rising strata of chalk, though of a more friable kind than that which caps Uffington Hill, there came to Tryfan the strong feeling that they were now moving towards a Stone, for the ground had that nearly imperceptible vibration or hum which a Stone always gives it. Then Spindle stopped, and Tryfan saw that the tunnel forked to right and left.

  “Down there,” explained Spindle pointing l
eftward, “leads to the system of Seven Barrows itself; this way leads to the Stones.” His face was suddenly clear of worry and doubt, and he looked like a mole who was glad to be on his home ground once more, among familiar tunnels that bring back memories in which, for better or worse, his security lies.

  “Shall I tell you what happened? Now? Here?” he asked Boswell doubtfully.

  “You decide,” said Boswell, who did not seem much interested. Ever since they had met Spindle, Boswell seemed to prefer the two of them to make decisions, as if he desired that what happened should remain beyond his control or influence: it was for Tryfan and Spindle to make their own minds up about what they did, where they went, and what their tasks might be.

  “Well,” began Spindle hesitantly, “maybe it would be best... Yes! I shall show you the Stones first and then I’ll show you... yes that’s best.”

  He turned into the right-paw tunnel, went along it for a while and then took a slip route up to the surface to a sight that Tryfan never afterwards forgot. For the early morning had advanced just far enough to bring the day to that point of change when the long reaches of night were forgotten, and the dawn is past, but the light of the sun is bright enough only to hint at the beauty in the grass and trees that the full light of day will bring. Indeed, its light among the dewdrops gives the sense that the best, the very best, is yet to come.

  But there was about that particular morning far more. For though a chill north wind still blew, now, after so very long, there was the hint that spring was nearby, not far over the horizon, and it quickened a mole’s heart to know it, and made him desirous to stretch the chill of the winter out of his shoulders and flanks, and to shake the lingering cold from his paws and snout, and think of the good things to come as March ends and April begins, bringing with it the yet warmer promise of the month of May to come.