So, Merciful’s opinion of the Great Nudnik Drive was not given and certainly not sought. Whether she realized what was going on at all was a mystery. She simply went about her business as usual, resting and killing, asking for no one’s views, seeking no information.
Pedlar was in the middle of his contemplations. He had just decided that if his present role was anything to go by, then he quite enjoyed being ‘the One’, when a messenger came into the attic from below.
‘Something’s happening!’ cried Goingdownfast excitedly. ‘The nudniks have all left the House, but they haven’t gone further than the bottom of the garden. They’ve got all their pets with them. There’s another nudnik coming down the path, towards the House. It looks evil.’
Pedlar began to catch a trace of fear in Goingdownfast’s manner. A chill went through him. What did the other mouse mean by evil?
Goingdownfast was continuing in an agitated tone. ‘You see, the nudnik is dressed in black and carries a sort of cylinder thing on its back. There’s a tube coming from the cylinder with a blunt snout on the end of it. Then there’s the nudnik’s face – eyes—’
‘What about them?’ cried Treadlightly, obviously catching some of the fear herself.
‘They’re covered in these glass circles. I mean, the nudnik has got some sort of rubber mask on, with these glass covers, and a sort of thing to help it breathe.’
‘Just a minute, just a minute,’ said Pedlar. ‘I’m a Hedgerow mouse. I don’t know what all this means. You’re obviously scared about something. Have you seen this kind of creature before? Are there any legends?’
Treadlightly looked at him with a stricken face. ‘Are there any legends? Yes, there are! What Goingdownfast is describing is one of our worst nightmares. The Gas-maker. The mask is to stop the nudnik from dying of the gas he makes with his machine. We’re going to be gassed to death!’
At that moment Pedlar heard the cry going up all around the attic, throughout the House, as the racial memory of the Gas-maker rose bubbling to the conscious minds of mice.
‘Gas! The gas is coming!’
‘Quickly,’ said Pedlar, as if he had been programmed all his life for this very emergency. ‘We must all go down into Tunneller’s maze, below the House. It’s the one time she won’t attack us for being there.’
‘Yes!’ replied Treadlightly. ‘As quickly as possible.’
Mice streamed through, in and out of holes, in a sort of controlled panic. They flowed past the rooms, along attic rafters, across floors, behind skirting-boards. Kellog too had caught the general hue and cry and was making his silent way down to the labyrinth below the House. Everyone was heading for the nearest tunnel which connected with the maze. Every tribe had access to at least one passageway which led directly to Tunneller’s dominion and, depending on where they stood, each mouse knew the closest exit point.
Pedlar and Treadlightly were two of the last down the hallway hole and they witnessed the terrible Gas-maker entering the House through the front door, slamming it behind him. Pedlar paused for a moment in the hallway, looking up at the giant figure with its monstrous face of rubber and glass. The discs of glass glinted in the hallway light. The sound of heavy breathing was heard from inside the mask as the Gas-maker stood and surveyed the scene around him. Pedlar couldn’t take his eyes off the ugly tank of death on the nudnik’s back and the black-snouted nozzle through which the gas would come. The horrible apparition turned Pedlar’s head for a moment and he froze. Treadlightly nipped him out of his trance and he quickly followed her down to the cellar.
To say it was an orderly evacuation would be a lie, but it wasn’t an unrestrained hysterical retreat. There was fear in the air, urging mice to attempt the hole while someone else was halfway through, and occasionally there would be a clash of bodies, a few nips exchanged, but nothing serious enough to hamper the exodus as a whole.
Finally they were all through the hole and occupied the tunnels. Once inside there was a general murmuring rush to get to the middle of the maze. The exit hole into the garden had already been blocked by the Gas-maker, who had made a complete tour of the House before entering it. The Gas-maker knew its job. The plug it had left could be gnawed through, eventually, and old routes restored, but not in time for the mice to get out into the garden and reach complete safety while the gassing was in progress.
In the central chamber of the labyrinth was Tunneller, just as afraid of the gas as the mice were. She sat there, very still, while the mice milled around her. Normally of course she would be screaming at them, telling them if they didn’t get out she’d tear their skins from their backs, but not today. Today she simply lay as if stupefied, waiting with the rest of them for the gassing to begin.
Kellog, too, had retreated somewhere down one of the many branches of the maze. He lay in a space on his own.
A general peace settled over the whole scene, in which few mice spoke. They simply lay like Tunneller, waiting for death to pass over, waiting to see if it was to be a holocaust, or whether the luck of Megator-Megator would be with them on this occasion. Mostly the mice were gathered in tribes: the Bookeaters clustered around Frych-the-freckled; the 13-K around Ulf and Drenchie; the Savages close to Gorm-the-old; the Invisibles next to Whispersoft; the Deathshead and Stinkhorns on their own in a corner.
When the silence was at its deepest, Gorm muttered to Tunneller, ‘I’m told that the Outsider, the yellow-neck Pedlar, beat you to a standstill in a fair fight.’
‘That’s true,’ murmured Tunneller.
Gorm grunted.
Apart from this one quiet exchange, nothing was said.
Everyone knew when the Gas-maker was in the cellar. They felt it, instinctively. Everyone could picture the pig-snout nozzle stalking through the cellar, belching gas in a thick cloud. Each one of them imagined the gas creeping through the maze, finding its way through the round and oval passages, seeking out the mice. Survival depended on the strength of the backdraught. Despite the plugged exit hole, air came in through other areas, through tiny cracks and nail-holes from the outside world. This cool air wafted through the labyrinth, forming into a draught. If it was powerful enough, it could keep the gas from reaching the middle of the maze.
They waited.
They waited.
There came a moment when those on the outer edge could smell the gas, faintly, and knew it was very close. There was a general shuffling movement, which was probably caused by Phart and Flegm trying to edge their way towards the middle, but it soon settled.
They waited.
They waited.
Then came the time when they knew the danger must be over, and a great soughing went through the maze. The gas had not reached them. It still lingered in the passageways of the labyrinth, but by now the Gas-maker must have passed on. There would be no more gas coming down the tunnels. The backdraught had been strong enough to prevent a massacre.
Treadlightly nuzzled into Pedlar’s neck and all around there was a general murmur as mice began to speak to their neighbours, some from rival tribes, in quiet whispers pregnant with relief. There was a feeling of joy and triumph in the air. Even Gorm did not growl or snarl when he spoke to those around him, saying that deliverance had been theirs.
It was necessary to remain where they were for some quite considerable time. When the mice heard the nudniks banging about in the House above them, they gave it another two or three good long hours to allow the gas in the corners to disperse. During that time, Ulf and Drenchie gnawed away at the plug in the garden hole and though they didn’t widen it enough to allow passage for a mouse, they did produce a small hole through which a wind whistled down the tunnels and blew away the remnants of the deadly gas.
Finally, they all filed away, back through the hole into the cellar, with Phart shouting, ‘This way, this way through Stinkhorn territory – we don’t mind you usin’ our cellar at times like this, do we Flegm? Just think of it as our gift to the mouse nation as a whole…’
‘Sh
ut your gob,’ snarled Gorm as he passed the cellar mouse.
The mice were not all able to pour through the hallway and up the stairs and along the landing, as they had done on their way down, because the House was once more full of nudniks. Not to mention the fact that Eyeball and Spitz were around somewhere. So they had to make their way back in ones and twos, dashing from shadow to shadow, until they were safely in a hole leading to the interior of the walls.
Once back in their nest, Pedlar said to Treadlightly, ‘I’m glad that’s over. Do they ever do it twice in a row?’
‘Not to anyone’s knowledge.’
Each knew that they had just taken part in an incident that would go down in the long annals of mouse memory, to be passed on from one generation to the next: no doubt receiving with each new telling more and more embellishments, until heroes and heroines arose out of the dust of mouse minds, doing what had never been done before, turning facts into fiction, and history into mythology.
SAGE DERBY
THE ALLTHING WAS HELD LIKE ALL INTER-TRIBAL ALL things in the nerve centre of the House, the cupboard-under. It was of course conducted by Gorm-the-old. Every tribe was represented by at least three members. Pedlar the Outsider felt that the Revolution was in crisis and he had come resolved to assess any next step. Gorm opened proceedings in his usual gruff way.
‘We seem to be getting nowhere fast,’ he said. ‘The fire should have got rid of them, but it didn’t. And whilst the attempted gassing was turned into a great mouse victory, it didn’t advance our cause. I therefore welcome any suggestions—’ he paused to give the Stinkhorns a look, ‘—any sensible suggestions – for proceeding with the Revolution. We’ve tried gas explosions, fires, floods and various organized gnawings. Nothing has been bad enough to drive the nudniks from the House permanently. What next?’
‘Magic,’ said Frych-the-freckled. ‘Necromancy,’ she continued. ‘Hocus-pocus, voodoo – all the more intense divisions of wizardry. Gruffydd Greentooth is an excellent practitioner of the more dubious forms of sorcery, and no doubt could conjure a vast array of wizard-weaponry with which to subdue the nudnik population of the House.’
‘Interpreter?’ growled Gorm.
‘Things that go bump in the night,’ explained Skrang.
Gorm nodded. ‘Well, we can try that, though I’ve never had much time for all that mystical gobbledegook. What else? Whispersoft – what about a contribution from the Invisibles?’
‘We’ve been doing the best we can,’ said Whispersoft in his booming voice. ‘We could try another flood by gnawing through the plug to the water tank, but Kellog won’t like it very much. That tank is his personal lake and he takes exception to us messing around with it. He’s already sworn to get Goingdownfast.’
Gorm grunted. ‘So we’re left with the magic stuff, are we? So be it. But if magic should fail, we’ll have to bring in Ulug Beg. Is Fallingoffthings willing to go along the clothesline and fetch the sage to us on her back?’
Fallingoffthings was at the meeting and spoke for herself. ‘It’s a dangerous operation, piggy-backing along a clothesline, but if I have to do it, I will.’
‘Has anyone else got anything to offer?’ asked Gorm.
Astrid went high-nose and Gorm groaned.
Astrid said, ‘You probably know what I’m going to tell you, because I’ve said it all before, but I feel it’s my duty to keep warning you. If you persist with trying to drive the nudniks out, there’ll be terror in the mouse nation. I see – see terrible times ahead. Bleak times. I hear pathetic screams of mice in great distress, and no-one to come to their aid. I see the gaunt faces, the wispy tails, the hollow eyes. I hear mothers weeping for their young. I see mouse turning against mouse. There will be pestilence and poverty, fear and hatred, starvation and death. There will be wailing in the nests of mice. There will be anguish and grief.’
‘Fine,’ said Gorm, yawning. ‘Anybody else? Good. In that case, we try the magic first and if that fails, we bring in Ulug Beg.’
The meeting broke up and mice went their various ways back to their tribes.
Interested in what the Bookeaters were going to do, with their magic, Pedlar told Treadlightly that he was going to visit the library on his way back to the attics.
She was less interested in magic than he was.
‘I’ll see you back at the nest,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget where you live.’
‘I won’t.’
Pedlar took the Gwenllian Hole and made his way through the floors and walls to the library. Since the truce, security had relaxed in the library and the guards no longer stopped people going in and out. In fact the hole that Pedlar entered was unguarded, the sentry having wandered off somewhere in search of a good book to eat.
Pedlar was always impressed by his first sight of the library after being away for a long while. All around him were thousands of books, of all sizes, all colours, and many odours.
But it was walking beneath them that made Pedlar feel insignificant, humble, for they were like great pillars, holding up the universe. Some of them were so massive that if they fell they would squash a hundred mice. Yet because he had once lived among them, Pedlar was also able to see them as food and sustenance.
The tensions of living under Revolution had not allowed for much in the way of a normal life and Pedlar was glad to meet up and exchange news with some of the mice he knew: Rhodri, Nesta and Ethil. Others he called to in passing: Owain and Mefyn. Cadwallon was now a martyr of course, his bones revered, but Marredud was around, and Hywel-the-bad. There were mice from other tribes there as well. Gytha Finewhiskers from the Savages, Phart from the Stinkhorns. Even Gunhild had crept in at the back and stood quietly watching, one eye on the Savages present. Many had come to watch the great magic show.
Gruffydd Greentooth was sitting high-nose on the shelf containing the black leather-covered books. He had already eaten some pages out of a tome which he said was all about magic. He had ruminated on the paper cud in order to digest the spells which would now be regurgitated.
‘How does he know which book to choose?’ whispered Pedlar to Nesta, as they formed a circle around the magician.
‘Certain pictures. If you get nudniks in pointy hats, that’s a magic book. Or nudnik skulls. Things like that. You can tell.’
‘Oh.’
Gruffydd Greentooth’s eyes glazed over and he began chanting in a monotonous voice.
‘Spell for pain in the bowels and in the fatty part of the abdomen – when you see a dung beetle on the ground throwing up the earth, seize him and the heap with both hands and say three times ipso, skipso, facto, frum. Then throw away the beetle, but keep any dung you may find, put it in a tobacco pouch, and sleep with it under your pillow at night.’
Pedlar was very impressed by this show of magic, because he hardly understood a word Gruffydd was saying. Before he had much time to think about it further, Gruffydd came out with another equally impressive chant.
‘To cure the gout and make better a terrible flatulence – take the blood of a snail, tie it up in a linen cloth, and make of it a wick for a lamp; give it to any sufferer and tell them to light the wick. Thereafter will they be able to walk without pain and will cease to break wind.’
Pedlar felt a vibration go through him on hearing the words of this chant. He could feel the magic in the air. It was a gruesome, weird, unearthly spell that Gruffydd Greentooth had regurgitated. If this did not drive the nudniks from the House, nothing would. Certainly, Pedlar reflected, if he had been on the sharp end of that spell, he would have fled back to his Hedgerow in no time flat.
To help Gruffydd with his formidable task of driving out the nudniks with magic spells, several young mice (under the tuition of Frych-the-freckled) danced around the shelves, flailing each other with their tails and singing in high voices about the coming of winter. Some of them overdid it and fell over, gibbering in a strange tongue. This was a show Pedlar had seen several times during his stay in the library. It was an infectious
profession, that of sorcery, and seemed to grip all in the vicinity of the magicians and their helpers.
‘Achtung!’ shrieked one young mouse, who had obviously been chewing on the wrong book. ‘Marschieren!’
Gunhild, standing a little way away from Pedlar, seemed most impressed by this young mouse. ‘Achtung!’ she muttered to herself. She liked the crisp sound of this word. It was smart and precise: a word which made one stiffen to attention.
Pedlar watched her do a self-conscious little trot beside the young revolutionary, who was now shouting, ‘March or die, march or die. The French Foreign Legion for ever!’
‘Any more?’ asked Gunhild of the youngster.
‘CHARGE!’ screamed the mouse, encouraged by his audience of one.
Pedlar watched as Gunhild followed the fellow all the way to the end of the shelf, where he suddenly fell over and began foaming at the mouth. Pedlar shook his head and made his way to an exit hole.
Once back at the nest, he was questioned by Treadlightly about the magicking and whether it would work or not.
‘I don’t know,’ said Pedlar, ‘but it was most impressive. I’m always amazed by these long words the library mice come out with. I just wish we knew what they meant.’ And as he pondered the matter he began to feel drowsy.
In a moment he was fast asleep.
While Treadlightly and Pedlar were curled into each other like two little furry commas, their tails draped over one another, a mouse crept by the opening to their nest. He glanced in and saw the pair and was envious of their contentment. Then he hurried on, towards the water tank.
It was Timorous, on his way to another assignation with Kellog among the rafters.
Kellog had just been to collect his daily tribute from the kitchen mice. His massive bulk was lying outside his mighty nest: a dark beast, gorging, melding with the shadows. He was the dark lord of the attics and soon he would be free to roam the whole House, pillaging and destroying as he pleased. First on his agenda was the death of Goingdownfast.
House of Tribes Page 25