Yet though the tide of the Word was running strong with the new crusade, and had spread across moledom once more and threatened to engulf the Stone for ever more, one place succeeded in rising above it that notorious Longest Night. There the Stone shone bright and its followers found growing hope and faith in themselves. That place was Caer Caradoc.
Already by the morning that followed Longest Night Word messengers were hastening from Ginnell’s emplacements on the Marches, and the news they carried would not well please the new Master when it reached him.
To make sure he got it, some went to Cannock, others by the south-western route to Buckland, but the message was the same: ‘Master, Caer Caradoc is taken, grant me permission to re-take it with all the freedom for severity and punishment at our command.’
Meanwhile, Ginnell was fretting and furious, unable to take his eyes for very long from the prospect that dominated his north-western view: the arduous incline of Caer Caradoc.
‘Now, now we should attack,’ he muttered angrily to himself. ‘Now!’
Yet he dared not, for his orders expressly forbade him making any assault at all along the Marches, for fear that it would be premature and might lead to a uniting of the Welsh followers and an action that would take matters out of control and divert attention from Lucerne’s main aim, which was not war but utter subjugation, death of the very spirit of the Stone.
In this Ginnell shared the frustration of all commanders in the field, who see battles and wars lost because they cannot act when they know they must.
‘Sir, we must attack, we must!' said Haulke, one of his youngest commanders, and the best. ‘Each hour that passes means days, months and many more lives lost later.’
‘I cannot allow you to do it, Haulke, right though you may be. The Master is Master of the Word, to disobey his orders is a blasphemy for which we would all be culpable.’
‘But he’s only Master-elect, surely.’
‘He was Master-elect until last night, but then he was ordained. I warned you what I would have to do, Haulke. He is the Word’s representative on earth, and I know what his orders are, or were when I saw him and Clowder in Cannock.’
‘If he was here …’
‘He is not, Haulke. When I was in Cannock he made as clear as anymole could what his strategy was: no attacks. A single strike would be made for now, a mortal blow upon the Stone. The killing phase of the crusade comes later.’
Haulke stared disbelieving at the harsh profile of Caer Caradoc and said, ‘The Master is a bloody fool.’
‘Haulke, if you were not my best commander I would have you dismissed for that. But as it is …’ Ginnell turned his battle-wearied gaze towards the object of their argument, ‘I agree that not taking it is a folly beyond my wish to start imagining. But as for bloody fools, I shall pretend I did not hear what you said.’
‘Pretend what you damn well like, Ginnell Sir, but this failure will result in more dead to capture a position we could have taken without a struggle two days ago, and might have taken last night if those guardmoles had done what I damn well said.’
Haulke stormed off and stopped some way downslope, stared once more and then roared, ‘Shit! I’m looking at the biggest disaster in all the campaigns of the Word. If the Master …’ But guardmoles were listening, and Haulke thought better of saying in public what he had already said in private to Ginnell.
Which was just as well, for had he done so, Ginnell would have had to have him killed.
Their argument had started over what had seemed a trivial thing, though one whose origins they could not have known.
At the conclave called by Alder in Siabod in the autumn years it had been decided that while Alder attempted to reoccupy the lower slopes of Siabod, Troedfach of Tyn-y-Bedw would travel east and occupy deserted Caer Caradoc, more as a matter of caution and pride than anything else.
So it had been, and the moles of the Marches had left Siabod cheerily, with great Alder saying that when he had succeeded in dealing with the ‘little matter of the grikes in lower Siabod’ he would leave that system in the paws of young Gowre, and travel on to Caer Caradoc himself for old time’s sake – he felt he had started his Welsh campaign at Caer Caradoc and had a fancy to see the place again; and anyway, it was best to leave a mole like Gowre to do what he must alone, once he had been put in charge of Siabod itself.
Troedfach and Gareg of Merthyr, the best of the younger leaders, had travelled east together with Caradoc in their company, and by the time they neared the Marches once more Gareg had persuaded Troedfach to let him and a few moles take Caer Caradoc.
‘You can assess its defences and later we’ll privily send moles up there and occupy it properly,’ said Troedfach. ‘No need to draw attention to ourselves or Ginnell will be up there in no time and our task will be hard. He’s no fool, that one: I know, I’ve been fighting him for years.’
So it might have worked out, but for the accident, unknown to the Welsh followers, of Ginnell’s absence in Cannock at that time. For Haulke had been left in charge and, as ambitious young commanders often are, he was critical of the command above him.
There had long been a tradition that neither side occupied Caer Caradoc. Because the Stones there were unattractive to more traditional moles of the Word, and because the Welsh moles of the Marches did not have the local molepower to garrison it, neither side had bothered with the place.
But staring up at it and in sole command, with that acquisitive abandon younger moles without responsibilities and a knowledge of the broader issues so often enjoy, Haulke decided that the traditional view was wrong.
He had therefore chosen an idle moment in early November to lead a few guardmoles up to Caer Caradoc and, finding not a solitary mole in sight, had there deployed them for a time. He called it ‘campaign practice’ and replaced the first patrol with another, knowing well that when Ginnell returned he could call his moles down once more and matters could go back to normal. On the other paw, he might just persuade Ginnell that he was right, and the occupation could remain in place. The more he thought about it and got to know the site, the more certain he became of Caer Caradoc’s importance.
Naturally, having no reason to think that Caer Caradoc was other than unoccupied, as it always had been, Gareg began to ascend its western slopes, guided by Caradoc himself, thinking of the climb merely as an opportunity to see an Ancient System that was unlikely – whatever old Caradoc might think – to be colonised again. They took four moles with them and proceeded slowly, for Caer Caradoc is rough and steep and not a place moles go up fast.
It was Caradoc, who knew and loved the place so well, who first sensed that something was not right. Initially he simply scented uneasily ahead, thinking not of mole but predator and scanned the skies, for kestrel hover there and raven have been known to stoop on moles. Then he slowed, narrowed his eyes and looked all about.
‘Something wrong?’ said Gareg, signalling to his well-trained moles to keep an especially low snout.
‘No, no,’ said Caradoc, ‘I’m just getting tired, see? ’Tis old fears of mine surfacing. There’s surely nomole here.’ But Gareg, cautious, experienced and respectful of hunches, called a halt and snouted at the rising slope above.
‘Tell me the way the ground lies on the top,’ he said. ‘’Tis more flat than sloping, though if there’s high ground it’s to the north where the Stones rise. The way we’re climbing will take us to the centre of the place.’
‘Any cover there?’
‘Not much, just grass.’
Gareg snouted about again.
‘So any moles on top would see and hear us?’
‘See – yes, but hear, that all depends. The wind can deafen a mole up there. As pups we used to make sure we were downwind on Caradoc, and not a mole can hear you come.’
‘If there were mole up there, occupying moles, where would they be?’
‘But –’
‘Just supposing, Caradoc. Just supposing.’
‘The Stones are near the high north end but the old system lies south of the Stones. There’s some shelter there they’d use.’
‘And routes?’
‘Central, like the one we’re using, and southern, but not to the north. Too steep, too dangerous. But why …?’
‘Because I am a cautious mole who has never yet been defeated by the grikes. One thing I know is this: if we have thought of occupying this place all of a sudden, then somemole of the Word has done the same. If you sense danger ahead then I shall proceed with care until I know we’re safe. Anyway, I like this kind of ground and the grikes generally don’t. Eh, lads?’
His guardmoles, all of whom had travelled from Merthyr in the south with him, nodded grimly. They were small, dark moles, and between themselves spoke their own soft-accented dialect.
‘We’ll contour round and take the north slope up, at its steepest point,’ he said finally. ‘The wind will carry sound away from the top, and scenting will be in our favour.’
‘Gareg …’ began Caradoc uneasily.
‘Do you want Caer Caradoc for the Stone one day?’
‘It is already of the Stone, mole,’ said Caradoc.
‘Aye, like that Avebury, like Duncton Wood. They were too. No, mole, I know ground like this. But if it’s heights you’re afraid of, stay by me and you’ll be safe enough.’
They proceeded exactly as Gareg had suggested, though it took them much longer than they had expected. Only when they reached the very top of the north end, climbing between great buttresses of rock, did they stop. There they were so sheltered that the wind was all gone, but Caradoc had warned them what to expect. Suddenly, in a matter of a few paces, they rose out of the wind-shadow into the wind itself and it seemed set on blowing them off their paws, roaring in their ears and parting their fur.
To talk they had to shout, and Gareg did not want that so they proceeded in single file and in hunched silence until they reached the most northerly of the Stones and, breathless, eased thankfully into its shelter.
It was immediately plain that Gareg’s caution had been wise, for mole paw-prints old and new covered the muddy ground about the Stone. Gareg’s moles knew their job well and quickly deployed themselves to right and left while Gareg himself crept carefully around the Stone, with Caradoc just behind him.
There, not far downslope of them, stanced two grikes, eating and having one of those fierce and cheerful arguments males who know each other well sometimes enjoy; while yet further off, one on either side of a narrow strip of land at that end of Caer Caradoc, watched two more. The wind blew from the south and so sound and scent favoured the followers and unless they were unlucky there was no likelihood the grikes would see them.
One of Gareg’s moles crept down to him.
‘We can take them any time we like. From this upslope position and against the wind they’ll not know we’re on them until they feel our talons plunge, and then it’ll be too late.’
Gareg nodded, and agreed it was tempting. Very. He looked about him for the first time, relaxed, and said, ‘This is a place and a half – why, all moledom lies at our paws!’ It was true enough, for the country spread out east and west and north of them, while to the south Caer Caradoc itself ran, its great Stones and rock outcrops giving way to the shallow slopes of grassy, heather-bound fell which much of it comprises.
‘Shall we take them, Sir?’
Some inner instinct cautioned Gareg against it. If they took the grikes now then others would quickly be on to them and then it would depend on who had the biggest force …
Even as he pondered it there occurred one of those shifts of circumstance that force moles to act so quickly that only through experience, nerve, and a sound grasp of tactics can they hope to gain advantage from it.
They heard a good-natured roar from one of the eating moles below them, their argument suddenly erupted into a mock fight, one buffeted the other and chased him straight upslope towards where Gareg and the others stanced in hiding.
Some strategists who have analysed the long and tragic campaigns between moles of the Word and Stone go so far as to say that the decision Gareg of Merthyr was forced to make in the few moments he then had was more critical than any other single decision a commander ever made. In that moment he showed the command and decisiveness that was later to be so much needed by the forces of the Stone.
Most moles would have said there were but two choices: to wait their moment and emerge fighting, or to turn and flee, hoping surprise and superior speed would take them safely out of harm’s way downslope.
But there was a third option, and it depended on Gareg’s extraordinary analysis of the implications of either course of action, and his appreciation, as he stanced there, of the strategic potential and its importance for morale that Caer Caradoc had for the moles of the Stone. If Caer Caradoc was to be taken, it was best done in the way and at a time that suited moles of the Stone, not hastily in a skirmish, which if they won it – and Gareg had no doubt they could – would force the grikes to reoccupy from their strong base, while moles of the Stone would have to defend a position they were not yet ready to. Better to bide their time and choose their moment well. Yet if they were seen – whether fighting or fleeing – the grikes would know they had an interest in the place, and either take it back in force, or occupy it and make it impregnable.
These were the thoughts the young mole had and with no more time at paw he gave the riskiest command a mole could at such a juncture.
‘Freeze!’ he cried. ‘Freeze!’
His own moles were obedient to his word. Caradoc, not being a fighting mole, was inclined to protest but as the two great guardmoles all unawares rushed nearer he saw the sense in Gareg’s order. The slightest movement would be seen.
Up came the guardmoles, turned, joked, played, so close that the breathless moles of the Stone could smell their sweat, then closer still. Why, one seemed to pause and look straight at Caradoc but he stanced as still as ice and the mole saw him not. Were they made invisible as some have said? Perhaps. Gareg never thought so, but only said that if there was ever a time he believed the Stone loved him personally, it was then.
Tiring of their play the grikes turned and went back downslope, and as soon as they were out of the line of Gareg’s and the other moles’ vision he ordered the retreat, and not until they were far down the steep northern slope did they dare breathe again.
By then poor Caradoc’s ragged fur was wet with sweat and strain, and he was shaking his head and saying, ‘I never thought that not fighting would be more of a strain than fighting, but so it seems to be.’
This secret retreat had been the preface to what must have been one of the most clandestine occupations of an important site in all mole history. For the moment Troedfach heard Gareg’s report he too saw the implications and approved what Gareg had done.
‘Aye, we must make them think we have no interest in the place and then build up our forces until we have the strength to take it quickly and hold it so strongly that the grikes will not risk taking it back.’
‘Longest Night,’ said Caradoc without hesitation. ‘That’ll be the time they’ll least expect us to occupy it. Plenty of time for us to build up our forces until then.’
‘Aye and meanwhile we recce the place and establish the best way of taking it over,’ said Gareg. Troedfach nodded and growled, ‘You make me feel old, Gareg. When I was your age I would have stayed where I was and fought it out, but now it’s all feints and shadows and calculation. I wish I were younger than I am. How differently I’d do things!
‘But be patient with me over this for it will take until Longest Night at least to get all the moles we’ll need from other parts. We do not want to weaken ourselves just north and south of here.’
Troedfach’s watchers reported every grike movement from that day on, and naturally could not understand the inexplicable withdrawal of moles from its heights soon after the first incident. They were not privy to the fact that Ginnell was back from Cannock, and Haulke had felt it prudent to withdraw his patrols.
Meanwhile, well hidden and without even the moles themselves knowing the reason, forces were brought in from Troedfach’s system to the south, and Gaelri’s to the north. The decision was made to persuade Alder to delay the occupation of the lower Siabod slopes lest that action encourage more activity and movement along the western front and delay the arrival of Troedfach’s reinforcements. But even without that precaution Ginnell still put pressure on along the line, and slowed Troedfach’s movement of moles up so that even the day before Longest Night moles were still not assembled in numbers, or quite near enough, to complete the rapid assault Gareg proposed.
‘Well, we’ll hurry them, mole,’ promised Troedfach, ‘for I agree that it would be a good time to reoccupy Caer Caradoc in the name of the Stone. Should have done it moleyears ago.’
But that same day, all unknown to Gareg, Haulke at last prevailed on Ginnell to let him occupy Caer Caradoc. His own spies had seen the moles of the Stone showing an interest in the place and he used the dubious argument that if the deed was done before Longest Night and the Master’s ordination – in short, while Lucerne was still ‘merely’ Master-elect – it could not be said to be breaking the Word’s law. Then, too, there was a certain satisfaction in taking an Ancient System of the Stone at Longest Night, even if it was a disregarded one.
‘Should have done it years ago!’ said Ginnell, in unknowing echo of his great adversary. ‘But you’ve got only until the moon begins to wane on Longest Night, for that’s when Lucerne’s to be ordained. After that, if you’ve not occupied the place you’ll retreat. Understand?’
‘Yes Sir!’ Haulke had cried out.
But what instincts drive fighting moles to know where to be, and when? How was it that a day before Longest Night Gareg was moved to take an especially strong patrol up the northern incline to the very top? Was it ‘just to have a final look’ as he said? On such hunches the outcome of fighting moles’ lives depend.
Why, too, that same day, did Haulke suddenly get concerned about what seemed a simple unopposed occupation, and decide to bring forward by half a day his massive occupation of the top, approaching from the south-eastern side? Nomole can say, but so it was.
And so it was, too, that at dusk of the last night before Longest Night there took place the first of what moles have come to call the Battles of the Caradoc Stones.
Gareg ascended to the Stones shortly before the light began to fade, and decided to do the one thing he himself had not done ever since he first mooted the best way to take Caer Caradoc, and crossed past the Stone to look at the flat, exposed slopes of the central part of the place.
Then, just as chance had so nearly permitted the grikes to know he was there, so now chance beckoned him and brought him to the very edge of Caer Caradoc’s southeastern edge as Haulke’s force of many moles confidently ascended towards the very top.
The plan that had so long been in the making now seemed on the very brink of foundering even before the occupation of the moles of the Stone had began. So many assembling, so many almost ready, but most too far off to deploy with speed.
Gareg watched the moles below approaching and assessed the position rapidly. His own force of eight moles looked pitifully small against the many coming up towards him, and yet … and yet his had the advantage of height, surprise and, surely, purpose. Perhaps if Longest Night had not been almost on them Gareg would have retreated, but he looked balefully around, saw the Stones and Caer Caradoc which courageous Caradoc had so long argued for, and summoned his moles to him.
‘We are eight and they are many, many more. You all know me well, and know that I am not a mole to hesitate.’ They nodded, and one or two who had not already peered down at the advancing moles went and did so and came back looking dour. Then he continued: ‘Yet here and now I do not know what to do. To retreat is the sensible thing, and we shall be safe, but we shall never reoccupy Caer Cardoc. If we stance firm and fight all we can hope for is to hold them off until Troedfach can be informed and gets moles up here, but even then I doubt if we’re enough to hold these moles off for long. If they get over the steep edge here then I fear our chances of survival are low.
‘I shall not issue an order but ask you to agree to this: if all of us say we stance, then all shall do so. But if only one of you declines, all of us will leave, and that one who decides against shall not be harshly judged, but respected for courage to retreat and we shall follow. So, all or none of us. Which is it to be?’
There was no sound then but that of wind in heather, and among the distant Stones.
Gareg looked at each mole one by one. He knew them all, and well: five were of Merthyr, and close to him, the other three were Troedfach’s and strong moles. Only one of them was younger than Gareg.
Some nodded their agreement immediately, others more slowly, and the last, the wise fighter Brecon, went and looked again and came back and said, ‘If we stance here and do it we’ll be bloody fools and chances are we’ll die. But if we live then it’s heroes that we’ll be, and after so many grubby years scurrying about being a hero will suit me well. As for retreating, if we do it we’ll never know what might have been and I’d not like that. Aye, I’m for it. Eight of us can kill four times as many grikes.’
‘Seven of us,’ said Gareg, ‘for I’m ordering one of you down to warn Troedfach. You, mole, you’ll go.’ He pointed to the youngest and waved away his protest. ‘Go on, mole, you’re the fastest of us, and we’ll promise not to finish them all off before you get back.’
Then quickly, with dusk falling, those brave seven were deployed by Gareg in such positions that each supported the other well, and had room to move back and forth along the top so that the grikes coming up would find it hard to tell how many were there.
They gave no warning of their defence but, knowing that surprise would demoralise the grikes, killed the first guardmole as he unsuspectingly came over the ridge’s top, and then the next and then a third.
Those were the easiest deaths. For the grikes retreated, reformed, and began to mount a determined assault on what they naturally assumed was a heavy force of followers. But Gareg had chosen his ground well, and there was something about the looming Stones as night fell that worried the grikes and slowed them down.
On and on into the night went the fight, bloody, violent, a struggle to the death. Only when three of Gareg’s moles had died did the first grike succeed in coming over the edge. Even then, most cleverly, using every hollow and shelter they could find, Gareg’s moles, all wounded, all tired, succeeded in confusing the grikes and making them think there were many more defending than there were.
Only as dawn light came did the stark truth become plain to the astonished grikes – their adversaries numbered only four, and all were wounded, all retreating up the rising ground north towards the Stones.
If Haulke had brought up all his moles at first there would have been no contest. If his moles had not been fooled into thinking that the position was held by many more moles than it was, then he might have pushed much harder much sooner. If Troedfach could have been reached sooner than he was …
So many ifs.
But by dawn the battle was all but lost, and Haulke, seeing now how few were against his moles, himself advanced to the very front and shouted out his terms. He was, like Ginnell, a mole who respected other fighters.
‘Surrender now and you’ll get away alive but if you don’t …’
‘Aye, and if we don’t?’ cried out Gareg, emerging from behind the greatest of the Stones and staring down at where so many moles were ranged against him, their bodies cut, their looks murderous, their numbers too great to resist for more than seconds now.
For a long moment Haulke looked at the mole who had resisted his might for so long.
‘ … And if you don’t, and try to retreat down the northern slope, we’ll have you all dead.’
No good crying ‘freeze’ now! Yet to his enemies it seemed that Gareg was about to give an order, for he half turned and spoke to one of the three who still stanced with him.
‘Well?’ roared Haulke.
‘We are protected by the Stones!’ cried Gareg.
‘Protected by shit!’ shouted Haulke. ‘Take them!’
Gareg came forward and with an ancient shout seemed to call a Welsh curse of the Stone upon the grikes. As Haulke and his moles hunched forward to climb up the slope and take Gareg and the others, there occurred that which even the moles of the Word never forgot.
For out of the dark dawn sky behind Gareg loomed a great mole, and at his flanks others, and then all about the Stones, and they came past Gareg, and the great mole took command by giving the oldest command of them all.
‘Charge!’ thundered Troedfach. ‘And kill!’
Aye, up the night-dark slopes they had come guided by Caradoc to the very point where Troedfach had rightly guessed they must retreat. And out of the dawn they charged.
Yet Haulke, a great commander in the making too, did not panic. He and his moles retreated quickly, back and back again to the edge where they had first encountered Gareg, even to those positions that Gareg had until then used so effectively.
‘We’ve until the moon’s wane!’ cried Haulke, and so the bigger, even bloodier battle began. Through the day it went, the followers outnumbered yet fighting with the Stones behind them, and mightily. On and on, using those few reinforcements they had at the best moments, retreating deliberately to counterattack again, on and on that day.
Until dusk came once more, and Caer Caradoc was littered with dead, and the followers were in retreat again. Yet on they fought, into Longest Night as the moon rose and each felt that even to raise a paw to strike again was beyond his strength, yet raise his talons he did.
Disarray, mayhem, brutal fighting. The moon rose over it, on and on until at last it seemed that even Troedfach’s intervention had not been enough and the battle was swinging back Haulke’s way once again.
But, as it seemed to the followers, a miracle happened.
‘Retreat! Retreat!’
‘The buggers are retreating!’ cried Gareg in astonishment.
‘Ginnell says retreat!’ and with that strange cry, Haulke and all his moles were gone and in Caer Caradoc the Word lost the night.
Troedfach did not hesitate one second. He entrenched his exhausted moles quickly, he sent messengers down and ordered a further advance up into Caer Caradoc the moment reinforcements arrived which, before dawn, they began to do.
Dawn came, the dead lay untouched, the wounded moaned their agonies untended. Entrench! Position! Deploy!
‘Get our moles up here. Fast!’
Haulke’s spies saw them do it. Haulke’s spies said they could see that Troedfach’s position was still insecure.
‘Sir, we can still take Caer Caradoc, but we must move now, now.’
It was then that Ginnell had finally forbidden it, and yielded up Caer Caradoc to a force which at that time he might have destroyed, but soon, if it was increased and well deployed, a grike force five times as strong would find difficult to displace.
‘But Sir …!’ cried Haulke, coming back and trying one last time.
‘No!’ said Ginnell, ‘it is too late.’
And by the end of the first day after Longest Night it was.
Thus did the first Battle of the Caradoc Stones come to an end, and a stirring tale it is, often told by moles of the Stone to keep their beleaguered spirits up. For what a contrast it is to the tragedy that befell the moles of Tryfan in Duncton that same night. Yet, when all is said, a mole must think and ask: whatmole did right? Tryfan, who did not raise a single talon to defend himself, or encourage others to do so? Or Gareg and Troedfach? Which of them was closer to the Stone? Which most in the spirit of the Stone Mole’s teaching?
What might a mole lose if he kills others to save himself? What does a mole gain if he saves his enemy yet lets himself and his own be killed? Which is the way to Silence?
These questions old Caradoc asked himself as he wandered among the bodies strewn across the ground he loved.
‘Not like this,’ he whispered and wept. ‘Not like this, Stone. Bring peace to this place and send thy Stone Mole that I may know thy peace will stay. Grant it to an old mole who has faith in thee, Stone.’
The wind took his words, and blew them about the Stones, and then out across moledom’s darkened land.