Duncton Quest

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Authors: William Horwood
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slopes they came, across the western heights, through the eastward tunnels, by way of the southern vales; dark they were and silent, ferocious in their assault, efficient in their attack, ruthless in their killing. Few questions, little mercy, and their purposes quite clear: to find the original Book of the Word that was believed to be still in the Holy Burrows, to trace a mole called Boswell, and to so decimate Uffington that it could be a place of reverence no more.
    They used two poor tortured scribemoles to identify the other moles in their effort to find Boswell, moles who were reluctant at first to name their brothers but who did so when their eyes and ears and genitals were pierced with talons until those two screamed out that they might be put to death, so great was their pain and suffering. Oh yes, they were put to death all right: for those were the two who, so much later, Boswell and Tryfan had found hanging in a snouted death upon the barbed wire on the surface.
    A few, including Brevis and Spindle, escaped the first attack. Spindle was soon separated from the others, caught, and, when it was discovered he was not a scribemole yet knew the tunnels well, he was spared. As for Brevis and the others, they were undoubtedly caught and killed, for Spindle heard it braggingly spoken of by the grikes, of how the escapees had been found near the Blowing Stone and there savaged to death and left for owl fodder. (A fact which, sadly, Spindle was later to confirm, for he saw what remained of the bodies themselves, though so broken and eaten were they by then that he could not recognise them individually.)
    But that was later. First Spindle and other clerics had to suffer the scrutiny and cruelty of the grikes, as they interrogated them all, killing some quite arbitrarily. Spindle himself pretended to simplicity and a willingness to believe in the Word, and he was spared. He was asked many questions about the Library and the location of other libraries if such existed. He knew of none and gave little away. Again and again he and other clerics were asked to look at the bodies and see if they could see the mole Boswell – and it took a long time before the grikes were convinced that long ago Boswell had left for Duncton Wood and had not been heard of for many a moleyear. The grikes were not forthcoming about why they wanted to find Boswell, but it was clear they wanted him alive.
    They seemed concerned, too, to find the copy of the Book of the Word which the Library was supposed to contain, but none knew of it, and it was not found. They seemed uninterested in anything else, for they were brutish, unsophisticated moles, intent only on killing.
    Yet a few days later, reported Spindle, other more senior moles arrived at the Holy Burrows, among them Weed himself and Sleekit, and others Spindle did not know or even see. These, it seemed, were displeased by the extent of the destruction of the Library and ordered recriminatory punishment. Weed’s personal guardmoles killed several of the grikes who had led the attack on Uffington. It seemed that Weed felt there might have been some purpose in keeping the Library intact.
    When those days of death and anarchy were over, the grikes, and the few clerics remaining alive, left Uffington to travel south-westward to Avebury. This they targeted as the next ancient system they had to take, leaving Siabod to the far west and Duncton to the east. Their intention, as Spindle discovered it, was to use Avebury as the centre from which to consolidate their gains in the west and then to return to Uffington for the Spring Solstice and ensure its final demise by celebrating dark rituals there before leaving it to a final abandonment.
    Whether the two remaining ancient systems of Siabod and Duncton Wood had been taken by the time Boswell and Tryfan reached Uffington, Spindle had no idea. But he had little doubt that in time they would be, unless a leader could be found among the believers in the Stone

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