Duncton Found

by Duncton Found (retail) (epub)

  ‘Then know that the Stone Mole, as moles call him, was born of a mole called Feverfew in Duncton Wood,’ responded Ghyll, ‘and his name was Beechen, and if he died – aye, I said if he died – then it was at Beechenhill. But first …

  So it was that the moles of the Marches first learnt of the Stone Mole, and of Beechenhill, and of those teachings that Ghyll had heard Harebell and Sleekit talk about when they returned to Beechenhill.

  Quietly he spoke, and with reverence, telling what he knew for fact, what was hearsay and what was his surmise. Through the evening he spoke, and halfway into the night, and he ended by telling them of that terrible night of death and the barbing by the Stone of Beechenhill.

  ‘Before then I was one of those who had come to believe that fighting was the way – and I a mole, as I’ve explained, who had come from a system where non-violence was the code. But years of pressure from the grikes at Beechenhill changed that, and I’m not proud of it.

  ‘Nor was Squeezebelly, I’m sure, as he led the charge on the grikes at the Beechenhill Stone. But is a mole to stance idly by while his own kin and ones he loves are killed? You answer me that, for I never have!

  ‘Yet I know this too: I’ve seen an extreme of violence that I never want to see again. As I crossed moledom from the north-east where Beechenhill lies, counting myself lucky I had escaped and fulfilling Squeezebelly’s hope that those who did would spread word of what they saw, I have felt the violence that still waits to erupt across moledom. There’s anger, there’s vengeance and there’s confusion. Perhaps violence must have its place.

  ‘But if you must fight, and I think you will, then moles of the Welsh Marches I beg you to do it swiftly, and to stop it soon. And when you stop it, stop it for good.’

  ‘Aye,’ cried out Caradoc, ‘that’s how a mole should speak!’

  And later, when Caradoc got Troedfach and Alder alone, he said, ‘Let me take Ghyll of Mallerstang to talk to the moles who wait so impatiently behind the lines. He’ll instil respect for the Stone Mole’s way in them.’

  ‘I had thought of it and so had Gareg,’ said Troedfach. ‘But you, Caradoc, what of you and the news he brought?’

  ‘What of me?’ said Caradoc sharply.

  ‘He said the Stone Mole was barbed to death,’ said Alder. ‘And you’ve always said …’

  Caradoc stared up at Caer Caradoc.

  ‘He’ll come,’ he said fiercely, ‘and I’ll be there to greet him when he does. He’ll come, see?’

  It was but a few days after this that the grikes began the assaults along the line that Gareg had so long ago predicted they would do, and the new war they had prepared for finally began.

  * * *

  The period and its events is rich in varied and often conflicting sources, but the two main accounts that cover what historians now regard as the final part of this long period of conflict5 agree on the basic facts.

  The first major assault on the Marches came in the south and was led by Clowder – though at the time that was not known by the Welsh moles. He had privily concluded a secret agreement with Ginnell and had left Buckland and the south-east in the paws of a group of eldrenes and travelled westward with a heavy guardmole force.

  A few days later a second attack, and one cleverly arranged to seem heavy and likely to be sustained, began on Caer Caradoc, no doubt to turn moles away from positions further north on that old line across the Marches in Gaelri’s territory which led towards Siabod itself, where the biggest attack of all was to be mounted.

  Clearly the grikes hoped, with good reason, that the Welsh moles, never well co-ordinated before, would split up their effort by reacting to each threat as it came, all the less effectively because of the need to protect their hard-won Caer Caradoc.

  Troedfach and Gareg had been so long prepared for this renewed war that when it came they were calm and efficient, and at first did nothing but put up the normal resistance and slow the attacks down. The swift messenger systems Gareg had established brought news fast, but it was not until some eight days after Clowder’s first attack, and when the moles of Merthyr in the south were beginning to weaken, that Troedfach made his move.

  The mood at Troedfach’s headquarters was serious, and moles like Caradoc and Alder found that suddenly there were a lot of new faces around, young moles trained by Gareg whose task was to co-ordinate what was to be one of the biggest and most astonishing campaigns in moledom’s history. Troedfach had talked of Wrekin’s ‘brilliance’ but he might well have talked of his own – or at least of his and Gareg’s together. It was the perfect partnership of the old campaigning mole of experience with a younger more imaginative commander.

  But significantly, it was to Caradoc that Troedfach first revealed his plans, feeling that the mole who had sustained them all for so long should be the first to know what they were going to try to achieve.

  ‘Caradoc, stance down here and listen. You want this new phase of the war to end quickly and finally and I think that I know how it will. But it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t tell you what we plan to do …’

  ‘Does Alder know?’

  ‘Aye, he’s given his advice.’

  ‘You military moles are thick as thieves.’

  Troedfach smiled.

  ‘Now listen, mole. You know that Caer Caradoc is under attack from the east and we’re defending it? Well, tonight we’re going to start weakening up there – not much, but enough to call the grikes’ bluff and make them commit more moles to the hill from their headquarters thinking they’ll win an easy prize.

  ‘Well, they will, for in three nights’ time, when we’ve “retreated” even more, we’re going to clear out altogether and give them the prize. Aye! And as we do we shall attack their headquarters in force and take it.

  ‘That will only be the beginning. Today orders have already gone out for all the moles along the Marches south of here to retreat in such a way as to encourage the attacking moles there to go after them, and extend their lines. They will be hurrying into the paws of half of Wales, paws very eager to say a brusque hello. These moles will stay along the Marches to make sure that the grikes do not occupy the void we’ve left behind, and to keep those on Caer Caradoc busy. We don’t want any minor raids disturbing things.

  ‘Meanwhile our moles here, or rather on the far side of Caer Caradoc as they then will be, will turn north up towards Gaelri’s patch, where I believe we will find Ginnell or Haulke or both. Gaelri’s moles will move to counterattack from the west as we come from the direction Ginnell will least expect – the east. That will be the critical part and on the speed with which we can achieve success much else will depend.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ asked Caradoc, a little dazed, for the prospect of giving Caer Caradoc to the grikes did not seem a cheerful one.

  ‘Why, mole, the grikes on Caer Caradoc will be urgently recalled, probably by Ginnell to the north, though possibly they’ll go south to the aid of those moles there, and you’ll have your system back again with not a military mole in sight. More seriously, Caradoc, we will have to decide later if we continue the attack on the grikes beyond the line, perhaps even heading an attack on the Master himself. We shall see. That’s the theory anyway, but I believe it is going to work.’

  ‘What of Siabod, which is where this war began?’

  "Tis secure under Gowre who has had reinforcements and knows what to expect – nothing! We shall see. We have assumed that Ginnell will not get through to Siabod. It’s on our front that the war will be won or lost, not in Siabod.’

  Caradoc fixed Troedfach with a gaze.

  ‘Remember ’tis for the Stone you fight: if you and Gareg never forget that, your moles will not either.’

  ‘I know it, Caradoc,’ said Troedfach, ‘and I believe it.’

  ‘Then may the Stone be with thee, Troedfach of Tyn-y-Bedw, and may the moles of the Marches and all of Wales remember your name with gratitude as the mole who brought them peace.’

  ‘As for you, Caradoc
,’ rejoined Troedfach, ‘you are advised to retreat from here for a time. It’s possible that this area will be attacked from Caer Caradoc.’

  ‘I’ll not move from sight of Caer Caradoc.’

  ‘No, mole, I didn’t really think you would.’

  ‘Is Alder going with you?’

  ‘No, he’s staying as your bodyguard, old mole.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Caradoc.

  * * *

  Of the extraordinary campaign that now ensued moles have been told enough in the past, and the outline is well known. In only two days Troedfach’s large and well disciplined force had taken the grikes’ headquarters south-east of Caer Caradoc and cut off the force that had been lured on to the hill.

  Several grike senior commanders were taken, including Haulke himself. It was then that Troedfach learnt that the mole Clowder was in charge of the southern campaign of the grikes, and that his force represented a considerable addition to what the grikes already had deployed along the front.

  But though tempted to send more of his own moles south he kept to his plan and moved immediately north with Gareg for the assault on, as he had correctly thought, the force led by Ginnell. These were the critical hours, when Welsh moles in the south retreated before a larger force than they had expected, and the outcome in the north was unknown.

  But at the bloody battle that was waged in the north for four days over difficult waterlogged ground at Cefn-Mawr, the main northern force of the grikes was all but wiped out. Less by skill, perhaps, than by the sheer number of moles that had been so brilliantly mustered, and by their ferocity. Nor did Troedfach hesitate to order that all grikes caught be killed and his action there, though often criticised, effectively destroyed the grike strength along the northern Marches.

  While in the west, the Siabod moles under Gowre, seeing the grikes forces retreating east to support the failing forces of Ginnell, went in pursuit, and at Corwen caught up with most of them. The Corwen massacre – or plain ‘Corwen’ as moles of those parts know it – was a vile and dishonourable act against a retreating force, though Gowre himself did not order it, and was what Caradoc had warned so often against.

  The struggles to the south were more drawn out but effectively ended when Clowder himself retreated as news of the Master’s disappearance and rumours of his death reached him. He hurried north, and began his infamous attempt to win the Mastership, which reached its notorious climax at Whern the following December.

  These general facts are well known, and the victory of the moles of the Welsh Marches is usually taken to have been when, one late August day, the grikes now besieged on Caer Caradoc did not retreat, but yielded to two old, brave moles of the Stone: Alder and Caradoc.

  Overtures had been made, the grikes had refused to surrender, so Alder and Caradoc decided to try to stop more bloodshed on their own initiative. Up they slowly went, knowing that the chance was high they would be killed.

  Perhaps lesser moles might have been, but those two had strength in their grizzled paws and wise eyes, and peacefulness, and the grikes recognised them for what they were.

  ‘Not one of you shall be harmed, I pledge that upon the Stone itself,’ said Caradoc. ‘You’ll be prisoners for a time, until our campaign is over, and I’ve a grim feeling you’ll be safer as prisoners than roaming the countryside. After that you can go home.’

  ‘Yonder’s my home,’ growled a grike, pointing southeast to the slopes below the hill. ‘I may be of grike stock but my father was stationed here before me and I was born of a local mole. Where shall my home be now, eh, mole?’

  Then, in a memorable gesture, Caradoc said, ‘Mole we may not be kin by blood but by birthplace we are, for the place you point to is as near to where we stance now as my own birthplace is.’

  Then he put a paw to that grike’s shoulder, and pointed out the slopes to the north-east where he had been born.

  ‘What’s your name, mole?’

  ‘Clee,’ said the grike.

  ‘When peace comes, Clee, and it will come, you climb this hill again and I’ll give a welcome your good sense and faith in our justice this day deserves.’

  ‘That’s well said for a mole of the Stone,’ said Clee. ‘What’s your name, mole?’

  ‘Caradoc of Caer Caradoc,’ said the old mole proudly.

  ‘Then by the Word, Caradoc, I’m not ashamed to yield to you. But if the day comes when I climb this hill again I’ll expect you to yield to me for a day, just for old time’s sake, mole to mole!’ Clee laughed, a great, rough grike laugh, and Caradoc looked at Alder, and Alder at Caradoc, and they laughed as well.

  ‘It shall be so, Clee.’

  * * *

  But it was at Cefn-Mawr in the north Marches, when the Welsh moles discovered their true strength, that the war and its direction really changed. Not for the first time in moledom’s sometimes bloody history, a force of moles, well-led locally, won a battle and then a local war, and suddenly all looked different.

  What had seemed established and permanent forever was suddenly seen as vulnerable, its weaknesses exposed. For from the few captives taken at Cefn-Mawr, Troedfach and Gareg discovered that the Master Lucerne was in all probability dead, Clowder’s force was stuck in the obscure south Marches, and contained, and no other coherent force ruled moles but a bunch of sideem and eldrene, each with their own patch to scheme over.

  But more than that, within days of the Cefn-Mawr victory, moles began appearing at the Welsh moles’ quarters. Followers and well-wishers, of course, but moles of the Word as well, who said that for too long they had suffered the rules and restrictions of the Word and were changing their faith …

  The Word and its weakness was indeed exposed. But Troedfach was not impressed: all that Alder had told him over the years suggested that the moles of the Stone had been equally fickle and weak when Henbane had come down from the north against them. Perhaps the Stone Mole was needed to give moles the strength they lacked in themselves.

  Nevertheless, if the Word’s power had still been at Whern Troedfach would not have thought to advance much more. But when he learned it was at Cannock, which was not too far off at all … ! If his forces were able to take that as well then the Word would be well broken. It seemed, too, that on the way, there were systems that needed to be liberated of the Word …

  In this way, what had begun as a campaign now became a crusade that in its early enthusiastic weeks was only just controlled by Gareg and Troedfach, but controlled it was. Gradually, methodically, they journeyed east and south, splitting first into two groups and then into four, and meeting little or no opposition at all except in some of the bigger systems and that desultory.

  What surprised Troedfach was the ready disloyalty of the moles of the Word to the Word itself. It was as if the rumours of Lucerne’s death, and the failure of Whern to provide a successor who could bring the moles of the Word together had caused faith in the faith itself to die.

  ‘We have the Stone, Gareg, and that is always there. But the Word seems to need a Master or a Mistress to give it strength, and failing that it looks an empty thing. Remember the Word started with Scirpus, a mole, not with the Stone.

  ‘We shall continue to advance on Cannock, and perhaps we’ll find tougher opposition there, but after that our real task will be to turn our moles back. Victory is a heady thing, and freedom to kill across these vales may become more alluring than the rough Welsh hills.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gareg grimly. ‘I’ve had to discipline some of my own moles harshly to stop them running wild. Caradoc was right to warn us as he did.’

  Yet there was something more abroad than mere failure of the Word, something that a military mole like Troedfach was not able easily to understand, for he had never lived under the thrall of the Word, nor seen the corrupting years of eldrene rule; nor known the snouting of his kin and the stealing of his pups.

  Such things make moles harbour hate, and though they may live for years without their masters knowing what they feel, the hat
red thrives with each fresh injustice. Take away restraint and the evil pus of that hatred spews out and vile killing starts.

  This was the force that now threatened to unleash itself where the Welsh moles went; this was the dark side of the smiles of the moles who suddenly emerged into the daylight of freedom once more. And, some might say, this was the beginning of the new Word. Aye, revenge is often how it starts; freedom spawns its own failure.

  This danger was very real, but thus far Troedfach’s restraint, and Gareg’s good example, hindered it.

  A sense of these truths must have begun to come to Troedfach before the battle at Cannock, for sensing that his moles were fast becoming marauders, he re-formed the groups of four from two, with himself and Gareg in supreme command. More than that, he personally spoke to all the commanders under him, and had Gareg do the same, and told them that if Cannock was a victory then it would be the final one. After that the fighting must end, and moles of these parts must find their own way. Whatever happened now, the Welsh moles had proved that they could defend their own, and it would be many a moleyear before any force ever tried to attack Wales and Siabod again. This restraint marks Troedfach out for greatness, and did much to set the tone for moles of the Stone for a time.

  Yet Troedfach could still be ruthless if he felt it justified, and in Cannock, most infamously perhaps, his moles were violent for a final time. To that place all the sideem and Keepers who could get there had fled, and so too had many of the guardmoles from the systems in the Midlands, which explains why so many had fallen so fast.

  Troedfach had learned that Drule and Slighe had been deputed by Lucerne to be in charge of Cannock before his ill-fated journey to Beechenhill. These two, at least, he no doubt hoped to take, though he would not have had the respect for them he had for Ginnell and Haulke, who both survived the war.