“They would follow a mole with the power of the Word in her talons.”
“Then I and my henchmoles shall lead them.”
“But have you no fear of the Beechenhill moles?”
“The Word shall protect me as it protected our force against the might of the followers when we arrested the Stone Mole. They shall not dare fight us, though our numbers may be smaller.”
“When shall you act on the Word’s commandment?”
“This day, this hour, now! Henchmole, bring the Stone Mole and the mole Buckram here, and double the guard on them and command them to keep their snouts low lest others look in their eyes and are tempted.”
“Surely, eldrene, they are but moles....”
“Be warned, sideem Merrick, be warned. The Word has made its commandment to me of all moles for the good reason that it knows I have the strength to resist the enticements of this mole. Pay heed, for he is dangerous.”
“I shall stay and see him, eldrene Wort.”
“You must ready your own moles.”
“They shall be ready. Muster yours and your prisoners over at the North End of Ashbourne and ours will follow after your lead.”
“Then make haste to do it, for the Word’s judgement shall not tarry. If you would see the Stone Mole, see him even as we leave to take him to his Atonement before the Stone.”
Which, with some curiosity, and the satisfaction of knowing that the jumped-up arrogant Wort was doing precisely what he wanted, was what Merrick did.
There had been no difficulty in getting his guardmoles ready, none at all. For some weeks they had been hearing reports of others having the pleasure of striking against followers, and now they had the opportunity – under the guise, as he would need later to claim, of watching over mad Wort’s henchmoles – to strike against the most notorious system in all moledom. Oh yes, they were ready right enough, and willing, and very able.
So Merrick came with his orderly troops of moles to the North End and there saw Wort’s admittedly impressive henchmoles – an unsavoury, taciturn and mean-looking bunch – gathered round the two prisoners.
One was the large mole known as Buckram, scarred from disease and now evidently lacerated with wounds and blows from the rough treatment Merrick assumed he had been getting at the paws of Wort’s moles.
The other was harder to see, for he was close-guarded by the henchmoles.
“Be not tempted by his guise,” Wort whispered hoarsely at his flank, “for his innocence hides duplicity, and his seeming gentleness masks vileness.”
She passed him by and went on to the front of her moles and cried out, “The holy Word is with us this day and we shall be its talons and its teeth, its power and its purpose, and we shall wreak vengeance upon dread Beechenhill!”
There was a great cheer at this, mixed with laughter and the unpleasant sound of moles grunting their aggression.
“Holy Word guide us! Give us thy courage! Give us thy truth on this a mission for thy holy cause!”
The moles began to thrust at each other in their eagerness to leave and with more cheers and ugly roars they started to move, and the sideem Merrick looked curiously towards the prisoners.
He saw Buckram pushed and shoved and jeered at, and saw that great mole shrug off the blows with unexpected dignity and without retaliating. Then he saw him turn and try to reach back to the second mole, the one they called the Stone Mole.
Merrick pressed closer, and tried to see over or between the guards surrounding him.
“Come on! Move!” he heard a guard cry.
He saw a taloned paw thrust cruelly down, the group around the prisoner swayed, and then it moved. In that moment the guards separated and all too briefly Merrick saw the Stone Mole for the first time.
It was a moment that seemed to last forever, for he found that the mole’s eyes were fixed on him. He saw blood on the mole’s face, and wounds in his shoulders; he saw that movement caused him pain.
But it was the eyes that transfixed him, for though they showed suffering yet they shone like nothing the sideem Merrick had ever known or seen before; they shone with a love that seemed for him alone. They were love.
Quite involuntarily he reached forward saying, “But this mole...” But he knew not what he tried to say.
Then the moment was lost, the column moved on, and the prisoners were gone on the long march upslope towards Beechenhill.
“Come on, Sir!” one of his own moles shouted, easing him along. “Our moles are moving off!”
The sideem Merrick stared uncomprehendingly, for in his eyes he seemed still to see that gaze, and knew, knew terribly, that what they did was wrong, and worse than wrong.
“We must not...” he whispered.
“Too late now, Sir!” said the senior guardmole. “Look!”
On and on the guardmoles went past him, a column of darkness spewing out of Ashbourne to Beechenhill.
Merrick sighed, and followed on as well.
No. Nomole is true master of his destiny.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was as first light began on the cold day of the March equinox that the three watchers deputed by Squeezebelly to the Ilam end of Beechenhill, the most likely route for an invasion from Ashbourne, saw Wort’s henchmoles approaching through the grey shadows beneath Bunster Hill.
They knew exactly what to do. As one headed west to warn the watchers on the slopes overlooking Ilam itself and another went to make contact with watchers in the lower Dove Valley, the third calmly sent the waiting messengers to alert Squeezebelly.
Then he watched as morning light came, and he was able to confirm the scale of the attack, and be certain that this was not a mere skirmish or minor assault, but the massive invasion they had all expected for so long.
Squeezebelly had had time since the return of Harebell and Harrow to get the arguments out of the way, and whatever lingering doubts there had been about evacuation were dispelled when one of the followers in Ashbourne had been able to get through the lines and brought news of the appalling atrocities that had been committed against followers across moledom in the name of the Word at the order of Lucerne.
There seemed little doubt that the grikes would try to commit such a massacre in Beechenhill, which put even more pressure on those moles – still the majority – who followed Squeezebelly’s lead in wanting to commit no violence.
But their informant had said one thing which, ironically, had made Squeezebelly think that there might after all have been another way. He had overheard the sideem Merrick and others talking, and discovered that the strikes had been made only after the same “friendly discussions” that he had agreed to so reluctantly in Beechenhill. From these the sideem in the different systems had gained sufficient knowledge of the followers’ numbers and locations to enable the strikes to be mounted very accurately, and by surprise.
“So there has been no organised resistance by followers at all?”
“None, so far as I’ve heard. The grikes were simply killing groups and communities of moles who were not expecting to be attacked and had no time to organise themselves.”
“A mole might wonder how the followers would have fared if they had been organised and led, as the grikes were,” mused Squeezebelly, who, though philosophically a believer in non-violence, was by temperament stubborn and disinclined to go down without a fight.
“They would have fared better,” agreed the follower, “but be in no doubt about the numbers massing in Ashbourne now. They are surely too great for your community here to resist for long.”
“I am in no doubt that we must leave,” Squeezebelly sadly told the last meeting of their community, “yet what might followers have done if they had been organised and held on to a resolution of purpose rooted in faith! But one thing at least we may feel cheered by: there is no report of the Siabod moles failing, and perhaps there will always be a stronghold of followers there and in the famous Welsh Marches.”
It was a thought, an overly optimistic
thought perhaps, that he repeated again that March day when the message had come through from the Ilam end of the beginning of the invasion and the last main group of moles in Beechenhill made their pre-arranged mustering at the Stone.
They looked back downslope towards Ilam and saw where the force of the grikes were coming.
“If they could be once turned,” said Squeezebelly, “and moles stanced up against them, what strength would they have to resist? Moles brought up on fear, and an ethos that conquers fear with might, do not always know what to do when their defences are broken.” Squeezebelly shook his head and sighed.
Then he said, “We are too isolated to resist them, too separate from our brothers and sisters in other systems, as we long have been. Perhaps we should have tried to join forces with others but... that would have been hard to control and would have ended with a meeting of talons with talons and it is not my way nor, more important, the Stone’s. Nor, I may add, from what Sleekit has told us, and she should know, is it the Stone Mole’s. The view that Tryfan expressed here so many years ago, that the only way is non-violence, remains the only way.”
“And how it will ever return our system to us, let alone save our lives in the weeks and months ahead, I don’t know!” said Bramble.
“The Stone shall show us,” said Squeezebelly. “And though the Stone Mole be taken I am not yet so downhearted that I do not believe he will find a way for followers to carry the Stone’s faith forward once more. Let us be glad that our waiting is over and the critical time come. Let us be alert, and positive, and faithful to the Stone. Let us listen with all our hearts in the days and nights ahead. The Stone Mole has come, and now must his hour be.”
Squeezebelly had agreed that a few moles would stay secreted in the system as watchers, willing to risk their lives to see what happened when the grikes came, and filter back their information to the Castern Chambers as and when they could.
For these moles Squeezebelly said a blessing by the Stone, and a final prayer for the Stone Mole. Then they turned north-west underground to make their way to their hiding place.
Yet despite the ominous circumstances there was a sense of guarded excitement among the moles that Squeezebelly led out of Beechenhill. Most moles knew the Castern Chambers by name, but very few had ever been there, for their precise location and the route into them had been a well kept secret for generations.
These tall limestone caverns, formed over the millennia by the drip and run of water dissolving the limestone, are not directly accessible from the surface that lies above them. The routes to them are all underground, and so full of changing twists and sudden turns, not to mention tunnels that split continuously, that a mole is easily lost among them.
Nor do they at first look promising, for so deep and sterile are they that there seems no promise of food or life ahead. Whatever mole first found and explored them must have been an optimist indeed! Yet they repay the journey and the risks, for once past the mazy entrance tunnels, the darkness and the confusing echoes, and through the fords and subterranean streams, a mole comes to the great chambers themselves, and finds them open to the sky through fissures above which, on the surface, the limestone outcrops.
Through these fissures light streams down to the chamber floors so far below, and where there is light there is life: bats above and, among other things, cockroaches feeding on their dung below. Hundreds of thousands of them.
There too is water, dripping and flowing underground, and strange white-green etiolated plants, among which white creatures crawl. Here, if driven to it – and the Beechenhill moles had been – moles could find food of a kind and hide for days and months, their lair unknown to moles above; and easily defended against moles able to find them underground.
This was Squeezebelly’s secret retreat, and it was to here that he now brought the last group of moles to join those already there. He did not expect to find them full of cheer, and they were not. Yet this pale subterranean place, with cockroaches for worms, and frail plants instead of grass, was better than a cruel death at the talons of grikes.
That at least was the theory, but Squeezebelly knew well that the practice might be different. Having got his reluctant community that far, the problem would be to keep them from getting too fractious and unhappy there.
In truth, even as he arrived he himself felt depressed, as if coming here was slinking away from the responsibilities above. Yet he could think of no other way to see that his moles survived, unless it be through violent and hopeless resistance. And yet... was not that better than this? He smiled and made his greetings as cheerfully as he could, but in his heart was dismay as he looked about the high enclosing walls, and at the distant fissures to the sky above.
There was a general air of dejection, and almost immediately moles began to say that they hoped there might be news from the watchers soon.
“Soon enough,” said Squeezebelly noncommittally. He could see that moles like Bramble and Skelder, who had been vocal in their reluctance to come, were already priming themselves to complain. Well, he would deal with that.
He went the rounds of the moles, most of whom had explored the interconnected chambers already and, as moles will, found a space they liked to settle in. Sentries and patrols were long since deployed at the different entrances and all there seemed to do was wait.
He spoke to them as a whole – or rather in each main chambered grouping they had made – and was careful to lower their expectations, and tell them that it might be a day or more before they had any news of what the grikes had done in empty Beechenhill.
“Swear, I should think!” said one senior mole.
“Bugger off, I hope,” said another, “’cos then we can all go back tomorrow and forget this place.”
“Hear, hear!” cried several with feeling. Well, thought Squeezebelly, for now they’re manageable.
The older moles and females with pup, including Harebell, were in a higher, drier chamber a little way beyond the main ones, through one of the innumerable tunnels in the place. It was warmer, and lighter, and seemed safe enough. Henbane was there and Quince was in charge. The only surface exit, as complex as the rest, was guarded by two moles and so narrow that they thought it would be impossible for grikes to come in that way.
So now the deed was done, the evacuation complete and there they were, subdued, waiting for nomole knew what, and with Squeezebelly, who had worked so hard to get them there, beginning to think that this, surely, was not where they should be at all....
“Stone Mole... Beechen!”
“No talking! Any more trouble and it’ll be your snout next time.”
Tears welled up in brave Buckram’s eyes as he sought so vainly to give comfort to Beechen behind him as slowly, painfully, they climbed the final slopes to the Stone of Beechenhill.
“Buckram,” whispered Beechen, “Buc...” trying to reassure his friend ahead. But another talon came down upon his flank, already red raw from the talonings he had had and he was thrust forward again.
“Go on, you bastard, nearly there now before your precious Stone,” a guardmole snarled at Beechen.
Another heavy talon drove into him, pushing him forward up the slope and he grunted with the pain of it. He stared at the grass, new green mingling with old brown, and another blow came into him and a wave of pain exploded in his back and his limbs and stumbled his weakening body on.
Until they had got to Ashbourne the henchmoles had not touched them, though they had given them too little food, and not let them drink. It seemed they knew about such things, and how to make a mole suffer without taloning him too much.
But then, in Ashbourne, the mood of their captors had turned ugly and wild, and the eldrene Wort had come and spoken to them, words of the Word, words of threat, and Beechen had tried to touch her, for she was a mole who needed that almost more than anymole he had ever known.
She had shied away and cursed him, and told the henchmoles to “subdue” him and they had asked if that meant the o
ther bastard too and she said yes.
So then the talonings had started, not heavy but persistent, drawing blood and weakening them by the hurt and continual pain.
The eldrene Wort had come to them in the night and asked Beechen one last time to renounce, but he would not, and nor would Buckram. Then she had gone and they had been kept awake by more talonings, and the first direct threats that they would soon die. Then the first mention of Beechenhill.
“Stone Mole...” Buckram had whispered.
“Shut up, you,” said the henchmole, and a pawful of talons went into Buckram’s face and for the first and only time he had risen up with his full strength and thrown three of them off.
Beechen had had to watch as they beat him for such insolence. Prayers did not take the pain away.
Then they had been dragged from the place they had been kept in and brought to the surface close-guarded by so many moles they could barely see each other. They had set off north from Ashbourne, and as they went moles had come to stare.
Some said, “What moles are they?”
When the henchmoles said, “Moles of the Stone being taken to suffer the vengeance of the Word,” those watching laughed and said, “Kill them well!”
Their progress had been slower than the henchmoles wanted, and so they had begun to buffet and talon them to hurry them up.
At Broadlow, Buckram was unable to go on for a time, and they let him stance still there, and gave them something to drink and eat at last.
“Let him eat my food, let him drink my drink,” Beechen said to one of the henchmoles.
“I cannot,” said the henchmole, frowning and unhappy.
“What is thy name?”
“Mole, I cannot,” said the henchmole thickly, turning from them and letting others guard them for a time.
The next part of the journey, to the slopes by Thorpe Cloud where moles can cross the River Dove, was yet slower, and Wort ordered that the talonings cease.
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