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 other 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.
‘We shall cross here and rest until nightfall. I would have us reach Beechenhill at dawn, and the Ashbourne moles say that from here the journey is not so far.’
She did not talk to Beechen or Buckram, or look at them, nor say her prayers to the Word. She was like a driven mole, her eyes only on the journey ahead and the coming day. This time Beechen and Buckram were allowed to rest near each other, but not to talk. When they laid their bodies down they slept the restless sleep of the tired suffering.
Deep in the night Beechen was woken by a henchmole.
‘Eat,’ he said.
Beechen looked at him and saw it was that same henchmole who he had sensed had wanted to help them before.
‘Give it to my friend.’
‘He has already said the same, mole,’ whispered the henchmole with a half smile.
Beechen took the food and ate it and felt better for it.
‘Whatmole are you?’ he asked.
‘I know not any more,’ faltered the henchmole. And he wept.
Beechen reached a hurt paw to him.
‘Then you too have begun your journey, mole,’ he said gently.
‘You will die tomorrow,’ said the henchmole.
‘He will not die,’ rasped Buckram. ‘He shall never die.’
Another henchmole stirred at the sound of Buckram’s voice and a third came in and that was all that was said by the Stone Mole that night.
Before dawn came they left the Dove behind them and began the long climb into Beechenhill, following routes which their Ashbourne guides seemed to know. They saw little and remembered nothing but the endless painful struggle up the slopes. Except one thing: in the dark the henchmole who had spoken to them was able sometimes, under the guise of buffeting him, to help Beechen along.
First light, dragging, bloody steps; dawn, talon thrusts and pain; morning, and now this final climb, so slow, and the Stone rising ahead beyond the henchmoles’ swaying bodies, the sky cloudy and sheep’s wool fretting on the barbs of the wire that stretched across the field beyond the Stone.
‘Stop!’
They stopped, and were turned, and through their pain, nausea and fatigue, saw the eldrene Wort stanced proudly by the Stone, staring at them.
Her eyes were blank, her mouth was whispering prayers to the Word, one paw was raised in a parodic benediction over them, as if she were the Master himself; as if she were the incarnation of the Word.
Beechen tried to speak, to tell her not to be afraid, for it was plain to him that she was afraid of much, but even if words had come she wished not to hear them, or anything else he might say.
She nodded her head and a henchmole hit Beechen again, so that he slumped and slewed to one side, while to his right Buckram was hit as well, and fell likewise.
In that moment, as Buckram fell, Beechen knew fear. He saw the Stone and the spirit of the evil Word in the form of the mole who stanced before it. He heard the distant chuckle and rumble of angry henchmoles. He heard the rattle of Buckram’s breathing. All of this and a spiralling darkness in the morning clouds, and he knew fear.
Slowly, desperately, he tried to turn his head to see Buckram, but the grass, the hard earth, the whole of moledom perhaps, seemed against it. He felt a crushing blow to his left paw which made him roll and crush it more and he found himself staring into Buckram’s eyes.
‘Stone Mole,’ whispered Buckram, his mouth twisted and bloodied, his teeth broken now, ‘forgive me, I cannot stay with thee.’
A henchmole loomed over Buckram, and to Beechen, watching sideways on from where he lay helpless on the ground, it seemed the henchmole was part of the mounting dark cloud above, as if it had come down to wreak vengeance on stricken Buckram here before Beechenhill’s Stone.
‘You should not have spoken,’ said the angry cloud that was a mole.
Beechen saw the great taloned paw raised and saw the mole look towards the eldrene Wort, wait, nod his understanding of her command, and then bring down his paws one after another in two great thrusts into Buckram’s back, and then he moved and dealt a third blow, this time to Buckram’s neck.
For a moment Buckram’s mouth stretched wide in pain and he grunted deep and gutturally. The rear of his body seemed to twist and turn and then go limp and as blood poured down his side he strived to reach a paw to Beechen, and he said, ‘Forgive me. Be not afraid.’
And there, before Beechen’s gaze, in the shadow of the Stone, great Buckram died.
Then Beechen turned and tried terribly to stance up and all there heard him cry out to the Stone: ‘We are but mole and much afraid!’ He faltered, and fell sideways, and cried out again towards the Stone saying, ‘Father, you have made me but mole!’
Then the henchmole who had killed Buckram came and stanced over Beechen and raised his bloody, taloned paw and turned once more to Wort.
Wort stared, and, most terribly, she smiled.
‘Not yet,’ she said, ‘the holy Word would not have him die so easily.’
‘Shall we snout him then?’
It might have been any of them that gathered there who asked it. It might have been all of moledom that spoke it, so loud did it seem across Beechenhill.
Shall we snout him?
‘Now?’
‘No,’ murmured Wort, ‘not yet.’
Then she stanced up, and came forward, and peered down into his eyes and reached out a paw as if to touch him, but she would not, or dared not.
‘I do not hate you or anymole, Wort,’ said Beechen feebly.
Then, for the first and only time, the eldrene Wort struck him, her paw and talons across his wounded face.
As his head fell back further on the grass she stared at her paw and saw his blood on it and a look of disgust and horror came to her face.
‘Now, eldrene?’ grinned the henchmole.
She seemed to want to say, ‘Yes’, but then she whispered, ‘It is temptation to want him dead, the temptation of pity to put him from his misery. Yet cruelty too, for he might yet redeem himself before the Word. So … kill him not yet. The Word will have its vengeance of him and choose its own time.’
Then, she wiped her paw hard and harder on her flank as she sought to clean it of the Stone Mole’s blood. But she seemed to fail in that and turned off downslope to where other moles were coming, led by sideem Merrick. And Merrick looked uneasy.
And well he might.
He saw the eldrene Wort coming towards him spattered in blood. He saw that behind her by the Stone the big mole Buckram now lay dead. He saw a cluster of blood-lusty henchmoles gathered about that other mole, the mole with eyes that were like talons of light into a mole’s heart. He saw that that mole was beginning to die.
And beyond it all were stretching barbed wires of a fence, black against the strangely mounting sky, taut in the heavy tense air. Merrick felt oppressed.
‘And where are the Beechenhill moles, sideem?’ said Wort. Her eyes were wild and her mouth a little open with her quick, sighing breathing, almost as if she had just been pleasured by a male. Merrick felt afraid of her, and of all of this.
‘We think they have hidden underground just to the north-west.’
‘All of them?’
He nodded abstractedly. ‘Yes, yes, all of them.’
‘Then it is your duty to the Word to flush them out.’
He laughed, a little out of control. Some grass by the Stone was touched by a freshening wind and suddenly moved. His head felt pressured and strange.
‘They might be got out, eldrene Wort, if we knew exactly where they were, had a moleyear to do it and could find a way of attacking them in a probably inaccessible place. But they cannot escape, of that we are sure. They are probably in the Castern Chambers, of which we know a little from information extracted over the moleyears from watchers we have captured. It won’t help us get at them, but at least the lower exit routes are covered, and I presume they cannot hide forever.’
Wort looked disgruntled for a moment, but then her face cleared.
‘The Word shall find a way of bringing them to us. The Word is all-powerful and will not be frustrated for long. Perhaps they will guess that we are avenging the Word through the Stone Mole, whom they value so highly, and will vainly seek to save him from his salvation in the talons of the Word.’
Merrick looked at the mole who lay injured and suffering before the Stone, and at his dead companion nearby.
‘He looks no danger to anymole,’ he said. ‘But if he is, then he should be killed forthwith.’
The truth was that Merrick felt pity for the mole, and did not want his death drawn out. A quick death would mean he could forget this troublesome mole, and more easily blame Wort for this invasion of an empty system. The more the affair dragged on the more he was concerned that the Master, presumptuously summoned by Wort in Ashbourne, might end up here in Beechenhill, and then Word knows what punishments might be meted out. Yet having come, he would make the best of what had happened, and perhaps in the end the retreat of the Beechenhill moles played into his paws. Of course, if they could get their paws on Henbane, the Master would forgive their transgressions in coming here in the first place; he would forgive them everything.
Yet as Merrick weighed up these possibilities his eyes drifted involuntarily once more, as did his mind, towards the mole who lay beside his dead companion staring at the Stone. Indeed, Merrick found he could not keep his eyes off the mole, for there was something about him that seemed to make everything there, even Wort herself, seem secondary to his presence. Not just visibly but mentally too. Merrick had the uncomfortable feeling that his convoluted thoughts, his sideem thoughts, were, in this mole’s presence, utterly inconsequential.
‘Temptation,’ said Wort, her eyes sharp upon him. ‘You are suffering the first temptation that the Stone Mole’s cunning creates in moles’ hearts. I see it in your eyes, sideem Merrick, you are thinking nothing else matters, that only this mole matters. I too was so tempted, but conquered it with the Word’s help.’
Conquered it! thought Merrick with an inward laugh. Mole, you are obsessed by Beechen of Duncton Wood!
Wort said, ‘Now pray with me, mole, and help save yourself: holy Word, I feel the temptation of the Stone thrusting its talons in my heart, I feel the caressing of the Stone upon my flanks, I feel a false ecstasy that makes me forget thy glory and power and my loyalty to thee. Help me, Word, help me!’
Merrick found himself mouthing this prayer, but even then thinking of the Stone Mole, and finding his eyes drawn to him even more.
‘I do not understand,’ he whispered.
Which is the beginning of all understanding.
The hours were dragging slowly in the Castern Chambers and were not helped by the growing sense, gained from a darkening of what sky they could see and a heaviness in the air, that outside and above a storm was coming.
An air of dejection had come over the moles. They lay still and so far as any of them talked it was to wonder if, and when, one of the watchers might get through with news of what was happening in Beechenhill.
But one mole was not still, but stanced up and staring all about, twitching with nerves: grubby Holm.
He had been nervous from the first moment they had entered the limestone tunnels, and grown more so as they had gone deeper in. He had tried at one point to turn back but Sleekit had stopped him, and now she crouched near him talking to him softly, trying to get him to tell her what was wrong.
He was stanced nearly upright, snout whiffling and sniffling at the damp air, and looking extremely unhappy as he had done from the first.
‘You can tell me, Holm, and I won’t tell anymole else unless you want me to. What’s wrong?’
He turned his head sharply towards her, opened his mouth to speak, frowned, narrowed his eyes, widened them, breathed in and out several times, and just when she thought he was once again going to say nothing, said, ‘Wrong? Everything’s wrong. We can’t stay here. Can’t. Mustn’t. Won’t.’
‘Why not?’ she said, hoping that he might be soothed by talking.
He would not say immediately, but stanced tensely and getting tenser until he spoke again.
‘Explore, Sleekit, you and me,’ he said.
So they did, Holm leading her here and there through the chambers, pushing his snout up even the smallest and dampest clefts in the limestone, going everywhere.
‘No. No, no, no,’ was all he said.
They went eventually to the higher chamber where Harebell and the others were and this he did not like either, having to paddle through the water of an underground stream to get there.
‘No, no, no,’ he muttered urgently to himself.
‘No what, Holm?’ said Harebell, smiling. Being with pup had made her calm, and the pups were clearly showing. She was stanced close by Henbane, and not so far above, but out of reach, a fissure opened to the sky. They could see the day was darker than it had been.
‘Holm doesn’t like the Castern Chambers,’ said Sleekit.
‘Why not? Is it the cockroaches?’ asked Harebell.
Holm shook his head.
‘Do you?’ he said unexpectedly, darting a look at Henbane.
‘No,’ said Henbane quietly, ‘I don’t.’
‘She’s from Whern. Mayweed told me about Whern. Water’s the worry here, not the food.’
‘Water?’ said Harebell, puzzled.
‘I think by water Holm means floods,’ said Henbane.
‘Oh!’ said Sleekit looking around. ‘Oh dear.’
Holm had been with Tryfan and Mayweed when the tunnel had collapsed and so many moles were drowned.
‘Is it flooding you fear?’ said Sleekit.
Holm stared at her, nodded his head, and his wide eyes filled with tears.
‘Once is enough,’ he said.
‘I doubt if they’d flood here,’ said Henbane. Then she lowered her voice and said, ‘I did think about it when we came but really the risk is small, less than facing the guardmoles on the surface. But I did not mention it because moles panic so easily.’
‘Floods,’ said Holm.
‘Holm, if I tell Squeezebelly, would that satisfy you?’
‘Getting out would satisfy me,’ said Holm, ‘but telling’s a start.’
On their return Squeezebelly listened to what they had to say, but said talking about it would hurt morale, and that he had been down here when it was wet above and the water levels did not rise.
‘Depends, that does, doesn’t it?’ said Holm. ‘Holm knows his water. Let’s leave now.’
Squeezebelly smiled and shook his head.
‘No, no, but we’ll keep a weather eye open, Holm. In fact, would you do that for us?’
Holm nodded, pleased to be asked, and left them.
‘He’s not usually wrong about such things,’ said Sleekit.
‘If we have to go up on the surface we shall all die,’ said Squeezebelly wearily. ‘It’s as simple as that. Now, let’s see how we can pass the rest of this first day and the coming night … If there’s any sign of a real storm we’ll get moles to the higher places, Sleekit.’
The ‘sign’ was coming.
At the Stone the wind, which had grown persistent by midday, died off again in the afternoon, and the previously noticeable heaviness to the air came back threefold.
Merrick had gone off to lead the searches for the hidden Beechenhill moles and left the eldrene Wort in possession of the Stone. She had been still and praying for an hour or more, and Beechen half conscious and limp, when she suddenly stared up abstractedly at the Stone, then at the Stone Mole, and then back to the Stone again. Then she turned and looked behind him to the wire fence.
‘Henchmole,’ she said softly.
‘Eldrene?’
‘Barb him on the wire.’
‘Eldrene?’
‘The Word has spoken to me at last. Barb him.’
‘To die?’
‘To die slow.’
‘He is weak.’
‘It shall be fitting that he lasts a full night and at least until this time tomorrow.’
‘He may not.’
‘The Word shall decide.’
One of the other henchmoles came forward and whispered to their leader who listened, nodded, and turned back to Wort.
‘Eldrene, we … we have not eaten since dawn.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Wort sharply and frowning. ‘Barb him now, and leave two watching him. The rest may eat.’ She glanced down at Beechen, and then immediately looked back at the henchmoles.
‘Do it now,’ she said, turning quickly away towards the Stone and beginning to mutter her prayers again.
It was a scene to which the others there seemed indifferent, but then such moments of punishment and torture upon followers had been repeated too many times in the moleyears past to attract much interest. A snouting was always worth watching, of course, but a barbing … The only interest was predicting when the mole would die. The weakest-looking often lasted the longest.
Two of the henchmoles grabbed Beechen under the paws and dragged his limp body towards the taut wire. They stared up at the barbs appraisingly and chose one which was angled upwards. Some of the barbs were corroded and there was the smell of sheep’s urine about, and a piece of fleece fretted nearby on the wire.
The two dragging Beechen looked towards the leader for directions.
‘Which paw?’ said one. Back paws killed quicker, front paws made it more difficult to get the victim on.
‘Front paw left. She wants him living for a time and facing this way. High up. We don’t want it ripping through like with that Rollright mole we did.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
They pulled him to a position directly under the fence and looked up again at the barbs above. Beechen was conscious now, but he seemed not to understand what was happening to him.
‘Nearer the post where the wire’s higher,’ they were commanded. ‘When he’s up we want his back paws clear of the ground and giving him no support.’
It was not as easy as a snouting, and Beechen was heavier than they expected, and so only at the third attempt and with a heave and shove and a helping paw from their leader did they get him in the right position. Now Beechen seemed to understand what they were doing and he was looking about as if for help.
He did not struggle, but as they pushed him up in the air and got his paw where they wanted it he gazed at the Stone and began to pray.
Then with one reaching up to hold his left paw in place, the other two girdled the lower half of his body with their paws and pulled him suddenly and violently down so that the barb caught his flesh and then drove sickeningly among the strong sinews and bones of his paw.
He let out a terrible cry at this, and again when they cruelly let him go and his body swung briefly back and forth and up and down with the rebounding of the wire, until it was still. He groaned, the immediate pain over, and his body hung angled and strange. Only the longer talons of his right back paw touched the ground. His upper right paw seemed to strive to reach over and try to gain a purchase on the wire to lift himself off it, but the effort was futile and the henchmoles evidently knew it, for they had already turned away.
‘You two stay here, we’ll relieve you when we’ve had food,’ said the leader.
Looking irritable and disgruntled the two henchmoles stanced down. Neither of them looked at Beechen, not even when after a short time he began to groan with pain, his mouth half open, his eyes staring terribly at the Stone.
Nor did Wort look back at him. But as his groans came to her she began to speak her muttered prayers more loudly, as if to drown out the sounds he made.
And so, in the midst of an almost indifferent world, with the muttering of the alien prayers of Wort his only litany, with nomole of his own to watch over him, with no light of sun nor light of hope to shine upon him, Beechen’s suffering on the barb before the Stone of Beechenhill began.
‘Stone,’ he whispered, ‘take Buckram to thy Silence, and be my companion now.’
Then from over the fells beyond the fence, flying obliquely to the Stone and some way from it, a pair of mallard flew, birds far out of their territory and habitat. Like dark forms they rushed out of the northern sky and the henchmoles watched them as they went by, not far above the fence, and then southward into the better light. For a moment the head and neck of the drake glossed green, all bright and beautiful, and then they were lost over the fields below and among distant trees.
‘Watch it, mate!’ whispered one of the henchmoles. ‘The eldrene’s coming to.’
Slowly Wort turned to face them as they stanced up to seem more on duty, and slower still her eyes lifted up to stare at the Stone Mole. Then with the Stone behind her, and the glorious bright sky in the distance beyond she approached him where he hung.
‘Holy Word,’ she whispered, ‘mother and father of us all, bring thy understanding to him, bring him the words of renunciation of the Stone, bring him the wounding vengeance of the Word’s talons, that he feels the evil drained from him as his blood drains from these wounds he has. Thrust thy avenging judgement into him as the barb is thrust now into his flesh and bones, let him feel his pain as the searing of thy great might. Holy Word, our mother and our father, be mother and father to this evil mole that is humbled before you now; holy Word ’
Beechen’s eyes, filled though they were with his growing pain and despair, looked down on her, and then at the Stone.
‘Forgive her, Stone, for she is full of fear. Help her, Stone, to see thy light through me. Guide her, Stone, towards thy Silence, which she longs to …’
But Beechen’s prayer ended in a terrible cry, for the henchmole, to silence him, mounted up and struck the wire on which he hung, and his body swung and his own weight pulled against his paw and racked the sinews and muscles of his shoulder.
‘No!’ said Wort fiercely, her mouth curling and trembling with anger, her eyes wide in what some might indeed have called fear. ‘Let the Word be his judge and tormentor now.’
She stared at Beechen, hatred in her eyes, and, never taking them from his face, she whispered, ‘Holy Word, now is the hour of my trial, now is my greatest temptation, give me strength before the evil urge to pity that mounts up about this mole, give me words to fight him, give me power to meet his word.’
Beechen stared at her, and his eyes softened.
‘See the light that rises in the sky behind you, mole. It is the coming light of the Stone you fear to love.’
The henchmoles looked at each other and backed away as if they felt they were caught between two moles that fought and either of which might kill them in the war.
‘Word, great Word, maker of us all, bring down thy soaring darkness upon him soon, bring down thy fierceness, that we may know thy power.’
Then suddenly Beechen cried out so violently that the wire stirred, and even as he spoke his pain added force to what he said so that it seemed to come from the great and ugly clouds behind.
‘It is thine own darkness you see, mole!’
As he spoke the words ‘thine own darkness’ the sky behind him broke open from its highest point down to the distant ground itself in a great and jagged line of lightning that lit the faces of Wort and the henchmoles and seemed to reach a sense of their growing fear into the very air where they were.
Again he cried ‘Thine own darkness!’ and the words seemed to gather about the eldrene Wort and become the cracking burst of thunder that crashed down upon them, as the roof of a great chamber of rock might fall upon a group of moles.
As it died away the maddened eldrene Wort shouted, ‘Temptation of the Word! I shall not suffer these vile effusions to corrupt my heart.’ Then screaming out her words, her mouth distorted and her breath sharp and painful between each word, ‘I have faced thee all my life, all the filth and infection that thou art, and the Word strengthens me against …’
‘Love her, Stone,’ the Stone Mole whispered quietly, ‘and be my companion now.’
The sky darkened above them, the air was heavy at their ears and eyes and mouths, the henchmoles retreated still more as their companions emerged from the ground to stare aghast as Wort retreated too, to stance between the Stone and the barbed mole, from where she screamed her curses on him.
The sky to the south grew brighter than before, but about them now a strange, leaden light seemed carried on a driven breeze, now warm, now cold, and the leading henchmole whispered urgent instructions.
‘Get others here, summon guardmoles, I like this not. We shall take this mole …’
Even as he spoke, the sky above the Stone Mole, dark a moment before, seemed to open up as clouds parted and great light shone beyond, and the light on the ground seemed more lurid still.
‘ … down. We shall take the bugger off the barb and kill him now. I like this not.’
‘You shall not!’ commanded the eldrene Wort, turning from her stance and rushing over to him to thrust her snout within inches of his own, her eyes red and fierce. ‘Now, mole, is the temptation, now is our test. See this mole, see the darkening sky, see the corrupting Stone that helps him not!’
‘I see trouble,’ said the henchmole. ‘Let’s end it now.’
‘I am empowered by the Master himself, and if you touch this mole you shall be blaspheming in that act. This is the temptation, this the corruption. In him does the Word do battle with the Stone, in him shall we find proof of the Word’s might.’
‘We’ll get others here,’ said the henchmole, ‘let us at least do that.’
‘Aye! Get others here! Get everymole here that you can. Let them witness this mole’s suffering and death, let them see what the Word shall show them!’
She turned from him as the sky above darkened again, and whirled and turned about them.
‘Here now, in vile Beechenhill, last bastion, here shall the Stone finally be broken and scattered, and we moles of the Word are privileged to witness it. Watch, listen, see that I am right!’
There was something so powerful in the way she spoke, so fierce and passionate in the stances she made, that nomole there could have gainsaid her.
The most the henchmoles could do was to whisper again that others should be brought here, as if whatever was taking place should be guarded rather than witnessed. Among all the henchmoles there had come a palpable sense of foreboding, and they looked at one another fearfully as the dark wind whipped at the thistles and grass around them; and they looked up at the Stone and the hanging mole opposite it with undisguised apprehension. The sense of unease they gave off was increased by the fact that they were normally strong moles, fierce moles, not prone to fears and doubts. To such moles as these, fear itself is frightening and often masked by anger, and anger overtook them now. They went up to where Beechen hung and began to shout and jeer at him while Wort, who had returned to her stance between the Stone and Beechen, encouraged them.
‘Cry out your hatred of him, expel it from yourselves upon him, disgorge the temptation he creates inside you back upon him, let your hatred be your strength, my moles. Hate him and purge yourselves of evil.’
As she spoke the moles gathered about her, and like a pack of creatures from the darkness of past times they bayed and roared at Beechen, and willed the Word to take him, and the northern darkness that mounted once more behind him to engulf him in its mighty paws.
And Beechen was engulfed, lost in the sterile darkness that they were, lost in their cries of hate, alone and lost; lost in the sense of his own fear.
‘Oh Stone,’ he cried, ‘bring comfort to me now, let me know that thy light shall be seen and my life not lost in vain.’
The henchmoles thought it was of physical pain he spoke, not understanding that Beechen’s agony was of the spirit and the mind.
‘Comfort he wants, is it?’ said one.
‘Relief from his suffering? He can have that!’ said another.
Then, laughing, they turned to the corpse of Buckram and several of them dragged it towards the spot above which Beechen hung.
One put his shoulder under Beechen’s rear and eased him up a little as the others laid the broken, bloodied body of Buckram beneath him. They let him go so that he gave the appearance of half standing on his friend’s broken back.
‘There’s comfort!’ they shouted.
‘There’s relief!’ they jeered.
‘Dear me!’ mocked one. ‘Haven’t you got the strength to raise yourself from off the barb? Stone not being friendly to you today?’ It was true enough that had he had the strength Beechen might have raised himself and freed his paw.
There was more laughter among the henchmoles, and vile Wort whispered and prayed and said her incantations to the Word, the very mouth of evil.
Then tiring of the sight of him half propped on Buckram’s body two of them ran forward and with a sudden shove pushed Buckram from under him. The effect of this on Beechen was very cruel, for his body and the wire listed over for a moment and then, as all support was taken from him, his full weight was borne by his paw once more.
There was a crack and tear, then Beechen screamed and his left back paw began to shake and his mouth opened into a cry of pain so terrible that it seemed to sear the dark sky.
His suffering was so plain that even that rabble was struck into silence as they stared at him, a kind of fascinated morbid awe in their eyes and about their mouths.
Out of that silence, the first agony of the new pain receding, Beechen whispered, ‘Stone, comfort me, and show me a sign of thy love that I may have strength to forgive them.’
Even as he spoke one of the henchmoles, the one who had given him food in the night on the journey there, detached himself slowly from the group and went forward towards the Stone Mole. Thinking that he had found a new torment for their victim the others watched him with amusement, but instead, when he reached the hanging body of Beechen, he turned to them and said quietly, ‘Finish it now. He’s suffered enough. Finish it.’ And so it might have been, for several others there seemed suddenly to feel the same.
But detecting the twin dangers of pity and weakness in the hearts of her henchmoles, the eldrene Wort screamed, ‘See the face of temptation! See the corrupted mole! See the new enemy!’
‘He’s suffered enough,’ said the henchmole again, his voice beginning to break with emotion.
The eldrene’s words were enough to put fear into the hearts of those who might have agreed with him and he found pitiless eyes staring at him.
‘Don’t be a fool, mole,’ said the leader among them, seeing a new danger now.
But the mole turned suddenly from them and whispered, ‘Forgive them, mole, for they are weak and know you not.’
‘Mole!’ warned the leader once again.
One of the others laughed and with a jeer said, ‘Forgive us! Why not lift the bastard off the barb if you like him so much? The Stone will help you and the Word might just forgive you.’
Once more the mole spoke, saying, ‘Forgive me.’ He gently put his paws about Beechen and tried to raise him up. But he had not the strength and his struggles only caused Beechen more pain.
‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ whispered the henchmole as Beechen’s blood coursed down his body and fell upon the mole’s paws.
‘Thou art forgiven,’ said Beechen, ‘the light of the Stone shall be thine. Look, mole!’
And the mole turned from his vain labour and looked with wonder in his eyes beyond the jeering henchmoles, beyond the Stone, and saw the clouds all filled with a light so bright that it was across his face, and upon the Stone Mole where he hung.
‘Snout this mole!’ cried Wort. ‘He has blasphemed, he has the blood of a blasphemer’s forgiveness upon him! Snout him!’
Then there was madness, and the rise of paws and talons, and a forgiven mole was raised up towards the northern sky and then that mole’s snout was brought down hard upon the barb.
Even as this happened Beechen said, ‘Stone, let thy light and peace be with him … ’ Then Beechen cried out the terrible bubbling scream as of a snouted mole and received to his own body the pain of the henchmole who died at the moment he was snouted, and hung at Beechen’s side.
It was a moment that struck terror into those executing the snouting, who jumped back from the dead mole as if they themselves had been hurt, and seemed almost to cower from the scream of pain that came from the Stone Mole.
Though it was still afternoon, such was the ghastly shifting light about the environs of the Stone that it might have been any time, spring or autumn, summer or winter, when the sky and earth appears out of order with itself and clouds and wind and light seem fraught and confused.
Out of this unnatural gloom, henchmoles and groups of Merrick’s guardmoles returned empty pawed, drifting from across the fields, frustrated of their prey, disgruntled at the lack of mole to hurt, their expectations of violence utterly thwarted by the disappearance of the Beechenhill moles.
It was known that Squeezebelly and the rest were not far to the north-west, but were safely sequestered in tunnels and chambers which, those who had tried to go there confirmed, nomole could safely attack.
But by now the rumour had gone about that perhaps the guardmoles should not be there at all, that they were on a mission which was not approved or ordained by the Master. And worse: the Master himself was coming, if not to Beechenhill then to Ashbourne. Now was added to this news of the strange and ominous happenings associated with the barbing of the Stone Mole, and the sense that if they were to be anywhere here it was not near the Stone.
Perhaps fortunately, Merrick had established a firm discipline in Ashbourne and the large gathering of moles about the place now was under the eyes of forceful and respected guardmoles, themselves as aware as any of the risk to themselves should the Master appear.
For the most part, therefore, the guardmoles settled down some way from the Stone, and left the tormenting of the mole on the wire to the henchmoles. If there was any sport to be had at all it was to watch and hear the violent ramblings of the eldrene Wort by the Stone, who seemed to be trying to invoke the wrath of the Word upon the barbed mole, though why it was hard to see since the mole seemed all but dead.
This sullen, dreary scene was made the stranger by the looming of heavy air as the afternoon wore on, accompanied by the fearsome sight of the clouds above them swirling and turning violently above a land from which all wind had fled.
A few moles sought comfort in the tunnels below, but there the air was heavier still and such worms as they found were limp and sweating, and made a mole ill to look at. It was a day to endure, an afternoon in which a mole dozed in fits and starts and nightmares, and shuddered awake again.