It was in July that suddenly and quite unexpectedly the breakthrough at Caer Caradoc came. Just when Troedfach and Gareg were beginning to have difficulty keeping the morale of their secret army of moles up, one of the small volunteer patrols that had crossed the line came back in June with real news for a change, and not just rumour. Sensational news that would change everything for them all the moment it was heard.
Better still, they brought with them a mole who knew the news was true, or most of it at least. He had been there.
The leader of the patrol, his eyes alight with excitement, told Gareg, ‘Sir, you’re going to want everymole in the Marches to hear this mole’s story. It’s not all good, and it’s not all bad, but it makes a mole’s talons itch for action!’ A meeting with Troedfach, Caradoc and Alder was quickly arranged, and then all the senior commanders nearby, and many others were hastily summoned, and the mole came to speak to them: a mole we know …
‘Ghyll’s the name, and I am of Mallerstang in the north,’ he said clearly, eyeing the moles carefully. ‘I don’t know much about you here except that you’re of the Stone, and the war you’ve waged has gone on for many a year.’
‘That’s true, at any rate!’ said Troedfach with a smile. ‘A whole lifetime in some cases.’
Ghyll nodded and said quietly, ‘Where does a mole begin? From what the patrol that picked me up tell me, you’ve been cut off from what’s happening in moledom and not much has filtered through.’
‘Not much,’ said Gareg. ‘That’s why we sent out patrols.’
‘You don’t even know about the Stone Mole then?’
They shook their heads, and went very quiet indeed.
‘Well,’ said Ghyll, ‘I’d better begin with him because I’ve a feeling he’s where it all begins, and where it all may end.’
‘And did he come then, the Stone Mole?’ said Caradoc.
There wasn’t a mole there but Ghyll who did not understand how important Caradoc’s question was to him.
Ghyll looked at him in that clear, direct way the Mallerstang moles had, and he seemed to sense something of Caradoc’s faith and trust.
‘Greetings, mole,’ he said, lowering his snout respectfully.
‘My name’s Caradoc of Caer Caradoc,’ said Caradoc formally, pleased to be well greeted, ‘and I’ve waited all my life for the news you bring this day.’
‘And I!’ said Alder.
‘Aye, and all of us here!’ said Troedfach.
Ghyll was moved by their faith and eagerness and he said, ‘Then moles of the Marches, I’ll tell you this: your wait has not been in vain. I have seen the Stone Mole with my own eyes.’
There was a clamour of questions, and Ghyll raised his paw and the hubbub slowly quietened. But most remarkably it was not the moles’ eagerness to know that truly quietened them, but something about the way Ghyll stanced, and the look of faith in his eye. A hush fell.
‘The Stone Mole is dead,’ said Ghyll. ‘I saw him barbed by the moles of the Word with my own eyes. But the Stone Mole lives, and shall live in everymole’s heart.’
‘Tell us your tale, mole,’ said Caradoc in a compelling voice, ‘and tell us it slow. From its beginning to its ending as you would tell it to youngsters on a Midsummer night, for are we not pups who must learn the Stone Mole’s ways? We must know of his coming, and of his ministry among us, and of his end.’
‘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 hatred 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.
We may imagine the miserable inability of Drule to deal with the military crisis that faced him after Lucerne and Terce had vanished and when the Welsh moles appeared, and all without Clowder nearby to help. We can guess the difficulties Slighe faced as the structure of reports and counter-checks that Lucerne had made ground to a total halt.
Under those two Cannock ceased to work. Yet there, panicking, arguing, even murdering perhaps, the sideem and the guardmoles rushed; and there they had to wait their fate as, inexorably, the Welsh moles approached nearer to them and, to make matters worse, Gareg took a force of moles round to the eastern side of Cannock and prevented a retreat.
Then, just as at a single blow Troedfach had stopped the fighting on the Marches by ruthless killing, so in Cannock he desired to destroy the hierarchy of the Word. Nomole knows how many died, or what moles they were, but after Cannock if a Keeper lived he did not speak his rank; and if a sideem lived he lied to survive. In Cannock, as in Cefn-Mawr, few prisoners were taken.
In Cannock the grikes’ power died. In Cannock the Word died. In Cannock Whern itself lost its hold on moles’ hearts and minds.
And Drule? And Slighe?
Oh, them?
We know their fate.
It seems that when the last killing in Cannock was done, and the Welsh moles were finishing clearing out the system and picking off the last moles hiding there, they heard a cry, a subterranean cry.
Then from out of a deep and fetid tunnel, like a creature from a lost vile world, a mole staggered up bringing with him one other mole, a female, who looked all but dead.
Those who first discovered them were aghast at what they saw, but the more living of the two, the male, seemed to roar at them and threaten them in a voice that was no more than a rasping croak, and with a body that was nearly broken. His face and flanks were hollowed out with hunger, his paws and body had wounds that had congealed and yet been torn again as if he had been in a fight for days.
His companion, if that’s what a mole could call so ghastly, broken a thing as she seemed then, lay motionless, her eyes swollen and closed, her body nothing more than ragged fur half hanging off her bones.
The Welsh moles recoiled from them in horror, and uncertain what to do summoned senior commanders to the place. But though these tried to approach they were threatened more, and the male cried out at them, such sounds as he made at first making no sense at all.
It was not until Troedfach himself came to the mole that any sense was made of what he said. All that was plain was that anymole who touched the weak mole he had carried out would have to kill him first. Yet when they retreated he still whispered on.
‘I think he wants to know what moles we are,’ said one of the Welsh moles.
‘We’re from Caer Caradoc, we’re …’
‘We’re of the Stone,’ said Troedfach, suddenly understanding. ‘We’re of the Stone.’
The mole stanced down and turned to his companion, and seemed to whisper to her, to comfort her.
‘Bring them food,’ said Troedfach softly, ‘bring them good worms. This mole is not threatening us. He is defending himself, and his companion too, and I think he has had to do so for a very long time.’
The worms were brought and Troedfach told all the others there to leave. He placed a worm before the mole, who stared at it in disbelief and suddenly grabbed it, guarded it, and with one paw poised to defend it, to the very death it seemed, he chewed some of the worm and then fed it slowly to the female.
Troedfach guessed that the scene he saw was one that had been enacted many times before, and that somewhere below them where the mole had been was a place nomole should ever have to go. He put more worms before the mole and watched as he fed the female again and then, finally, took food for himself. His stance, though still feeble, grew stronger.
‘Mole, I am Troedfach of Tyn-y-Bedw, commander of the Welsh Marches. I am of the Stone. Cannock is no longer of the Word. Cannock is free and you are free as well. You shall not be harmed more. What is your name?’
The mole did not reply, but turned instead to his companion, and Troedfach heard him whisper again and again, ‘Betony, did you hear that? Did you hear? He’s of the Stone. We’re safe now, we’re safe. Betony, we’re all right now …’
‘Mole, what is your name?’ asked Troedfach.
The mole looked at him with strong, proud eyes and said, ‘I am Wharfe of Beechenhill and I too am of the Stone.’
‘What is this place from which you come?’
‘The Sumps,’ said Wharfe.
‘Are there others like you in the tunnels below?’
‘Only a few are left, but we must try to get them out.’
He tried to stance up as if to lead Troedfach towards the tunnel but he was too weak and fell back again.
‘I’ll send moles in.’
‘Tell them to beware of mud, and if they find moles to say they are of the Stone or otherwise they may be killed. The others must be dead by now.’
‘What others?’
‘Grikes who fled down there, but we killed them in the end. As for Drule and Slighe, they were still alive when I last saw them. I doubt that they survived.’
As moles went down Wharfe told how Drule and Slighe and a few other grikes had come down into the Sumps, though Wharfe did not realise then it was to hide from the Welsh moles.
Their coming was preceded by weeks in which the moles in the Sumps had been abandoned, and amid scenes of utter horror most had slowly died. But Wharfe had fought and killed for worms the grikes brought down, and these he fed to Betony and himself and they had managed to survive. They stayed clear of the anarchy that began when the Welsh moles approached Cannock and some of the guardmoles, and Drule and Slighe as well, fled down to the Sumps in the hope they would be thought prisoners and set free.
‘What happened to them?’ asked Troedfach. ‘Were they killed?’
Wharfe shook his head.
‘They put them in the Lower Sumps,’ he said matter-of-factly, but as he named that place Betony recoiled and shivered and it was a long time before Wharfe could settle her again.
The patrol Troedfach had sent to the Sumps returned, bringing out nine moles alive, each but the ghastly shadow of a mole, each driven to the edge of sanity by what they had experienced.
As for Drule and Slighe, the patrol found them alive all right, but there was nothing they could do but watch them go to a ghastly death. It was the senior member of the patrol who described their end.
‘We were taken down to the Lower Sumps by one of the survivors and he showed us a slimy, muddy pit and said that weeks past, when it rained heavily, the ways down into there had crumbled and fallen in. Off it was a tunnel, a black tunnel with no light which we were told led on to the many damp burrows and cells where prisoners were sometimes confined.
‘The pit was full of seeping mud that was slowly rising up towards the tunnel entrance, and into this mud Drule and Slighe had been thrown along with several of the grikes. These had all fought for their lives, trying to use each other to climb up out of the pit. When we arrived only Drule and Slighe still lived, the latter huddled in the tunnel entrance where he had retreated, while huge Drule, having killed all others there, was trying to find a way out of the rising mud.
‘There was no helping him, for a mole could not reach that far down. What was worse was that their struggles had churned the mud and made it worse and as we watched, slowly, very slowly, it surged and turned revealing bodies in its sticky depths among which Drule floundered and cried out in fear. More and more we saw him driven back towards the tunnel out of which Slighe now attempted to come as he realised that if he stayed there and the mud rose higher he would be sealed into that fetid roaring darkness. But Drule would not let him out. He crashed his talons on him and pushed him screaming back inside.
‘We watched helplessly as Drule was driven back to the tunnel as the mud rose. We saw him push Slighe into the darkness as he himself sought the hopeless refuge the tunnel gave.
‘Nomole can describe the horror we felt as he desperately tried to push the mud’s sticky, suffocating mass back from the tunnel entrance. The last we saw was a paw pushing helplessly at the mud before he retreated into darkness forever, the mud very slowly but relentlessly pursuing him and Slighe into those dreadful depths.’
Such is all we know of the end of Drule and Slighe. Of their final end, in claustrophobic darkness, pursued by suffocating mud, nomole will ever know, nor be able to guess how many days it was they survived down there. There was dripping water enough perhaps for drinking, but we can contemplate only with horror what the last survivor among them, Drule probably, was forced to use as food …
The Welsh moles stayed on in Cannock for some time more and in that time the moles from the Sumps were able to recover. Some might never fully have done so, but Wharfe and Betony had better luck than most, or greater faith perhaps.
Then some days after the fights were all over two moles came to Cannock, saying that they had heard there were survivors from the Sumps and asking if certain friends of theirs might be among them. There were many such in those days, many moles coming and going and few noticed those two as they were led through the Cannock tunnels to see the survivors.
One was but a small and modest mole, and grubby too, the other a quiet female …
‘Holm,’ said Quince, ‘do you really think that Wharfe … ?’
He could not know. After all the struggles they had had since their escape from the Manifold Valley, and a long period of waiting near dangerous Cannock in the hope of better times coming in the wake of the Stone Mole’s passing, it seemed unlikely that Wharfe had survived – if he had ever got here, for even that they did not know.
‘The survivors?’ said one of the Welsh moles kindly. ‘Aye, there are a few living in warm burrows up this way … you go on and see if the moles you want are there. ’ He pointed to a pleasant but small tunnel. Not many survivors there!
‘Is that all the moles who lived?’
‘Aye, that’s all, Miss.’
Quince stared at the clean tunnel, and scented its good air. At one or two of the entrances she could see a paw or a flank moving.
‘Holm, I dare not go, I daren’t. Will you?’
‘I don’t know what Wharfe looks like.’
Quince smiled.
‘You knew Tryfan, didn’t you?’
Holm nodded.
‘When Squeezebelly told me the truth of Wharfe and Harebell’s parentage, he said that Wharfe looked much like Tryfan.’
‘I’ll look,’ said Holm.
She watched him go down the tunnel, peering into each burrow in turn. Her heart beat hard and she barely seemed to breathe as one by one he turned back to her and shook his head.
One by one Holm went, and saw moles thin and gaunt. Some whispered to themselves, some stared, some lay fast asleep.
But then he came to one burrow where two moles were. He saw the female first for she was facing towards the burrow entrance. She smiled at him.
Then the male slowly turned to face him. He was gaunt as well, but his body was big, his shoulders broad and his paws and talons were large. He had the bearing of one who had suffered and survived and still retained the good spirit that he had always had; and as his gaze fell on him, Holm saw his eyes were like Tryfan’s.
Holm stared, stanced up as he usually did at such moments which were always so difficult for him, looked round the burrow for inspiration and said, ‘Quince has come.’
Quince saw Holm pause at another burrow, almost the last indeed, she saw him stare, she saw him stance up and look desperate and she saw him speak.
Then a mole came out of the burrow, and he turned towards her, and she knew him not from his thin flanks, or his scarred shoulders, but from his gait and his gaze. Her Wharfe was still alive.
‘Wharfe!’ she said as he came to her. And his great paws were on her shoulders, and for a time they spoke no words.
‘Betony?’ she said at last.
‘She’s here.’
‘Harebell?’ he asked, but even as she shook her head he seemed to know the answer.
‘Bramble?’ he asked.
‘No, my dear, we understand that few in Beechenhill survived.’
They held each other in silence some time more before he said, ‘Come and meet Betony now, but be warned she has suffered much and is very frail.’
‘Then Beechenhill will help her recover, for soon we must go home.’
Then with cries of pleasure, and tears as well, those moles came together once again and what had been their little group was, as moledom itself was, not the same as it was before, yet not altogether lost.
It was Gareg who suggested what they might do.
‘Troedfach has asked me to take some moles from Cannock and travel north as far as Whern, just to be sure that there are no moles of the Word still wishing to impose themselves on moles who do not want them. They can believe what they like provided they don’t try to bend others to their will. Anyway, that’s for me to worry about, but these are troubled times and you might like our protection for the journey back to Beechenhill if you’re willing to go back now after what has happened.’
They nodded their agreement.
‘Also,’ continued Gareg, ‘you can tell me a lot about moledom that I don’t know. We’re cut off in Wales, see, and when I go home I’d like to know more than I did.’
‘Like what, mole?’ said Wharfe cautiously.
‘Places; moles; incidents. I’ve heard so much about moles like Lucerne and Henbane, Tryfan and Beechen of Duncton and as you come from Beechenhill you must know something about all that. It seems to have been a kind of centre for the Stone.’
‘But hasn’t he told you whatmole he is?’ said Quince, surprised.
Wharfe put a restraining paw on hers and smiled.
‘Who is he?’ said Gareg.
‘I’ll tell you about that on the way to Beechenhill,’ said Wharfe. ‘Not afterwards, mind, because we’re going to have our work cut out and you …’
‘Me?’
‘Well, mole, you’ll not be coming back from Whern. Didn’t you know? Giants live up there!’
Gareg laughed.
‘Aye, like giants named Troedfach come out of Wales!’
It was soon after this that Troedfach, leaving only a small garrison at Cannock, said farewell to Gareg for a time and turned his great and disciplined force back towards its homeland. Then Gareg was set to leave.
Many farewells were made then, and many tears were shed. The whole of moledom seemed to be on the move, but Holm was not a mole to enjoy saying goodbyes and, knowing that, Quince held him close for a time and would not let him go.
She told him how much he meant to her, and how much he had achieved, and that he had fulfilled every task the Stone had set him.
‘What will you do now, Holm?’ she asked as she said the last goodbye.
He stanced up, he stared, then he waved in a southerly direction and grinned happily and said, ‘I’m going home!’