He came to the system over the open fields, unopposed by owl or Pasture mole, a thunderstorm that rained down blood. He cast his shadow on the wood long before he reached it, for the adult males shuddered and shook in advance of his coming, gathering first at Barrow Vale and then going in twos and threes down the tunnels to the Westside, where the pastures are.
They saw him in the setting sun one spring evening, his silhouette growing bigger and more threatening as the sun set. They scuffed and stamped in the tunnels, running this way and that, crying out in fear and upset, half attacking each other before turning to face a mole whose very size made their muscles grow weak.
Saying nothing, he slowly advanced on them all, his great head hunched forward, his snout like a huge talon, his shoulders like yew trunks.
The first that came to him he hardly seemed to touch, yet down he fell, not only dead but torn to death; the second died of a talon thrust so powerful that it seemed to start at his snout and end at his tail; the third turned to run even before he attacked, but too late. A mighty lunge from Mandrake caught him too, and he lay screaming, his black fur savaged open, red blood glistening. And as Mandrake passed by, he coldly crushed his snout and left him there arced out in a bloody, searing, ruthless death. Then they backed before him this way and that, chattering in fear, running away, taking to surface routes in their fright.
So Mandrake entered the Duncton Westside, resistance by the toughest moles in the system crushed, and made straight for Barrow Vale. There, he roared and smote the walls so that all the system would know from the shuddering vibrations that he had come. ‘My name is Mandrake,’ he roared, ‘Mandrake! Let anymole that opposes me come forward now.’ But the three bravest were dead and not one single mole more stirred. Then he cried out in a strange, harsh tongue the language of Siabod, which lay far to the northwest and was a system of which no Duncton mole had ever even heard at that time.
‘Mandrake Siabod wyf i, a wynebodd Gelert Helgi Cwmoerddrws a’i anwybyddu. Wynebais Gerrig Castell y Gwynt a’u gwatwar. Gadewch i unrhyw wadd a feddylio nad yw’n fofni wynebu’m crafangau nawr.’ Whatever it meant, its intent was clear. It was a threat, and one no Duncton mole dared answer.
He had come at mating time, a full cycle of seasons before Rebecca’s maturing and Bracken’s birth, and he travelled to all parts of the system, killing male after male to take their females. Even the males that refused to fight, or tried to run clear, he killed. Fighting is one thing, killing another, and no mating time in Duncton was ever so overcast as that. And when it was over and the warmer days of May came on, he brooded here and there—now over to the Westside, now down to the Marsh End. He said barely a word throughout this terrible time, a brooding, silent curse upon anymole whose territory he moved into. Many were the empty burrows that he found, still warm from the moles who had left in haste to avoid facing him. Only mothers with young remained, watching terrified as he stared at them from a burrow entrance, his head massive and his eyes as black as night, staring at their children. But these, at least, he didn’t harm.
He became an elder without asking or being asked, after killing an elder in a mating fight and taking his place.
He said nothing at the first elder meeting he attended, merely staring at the others, who conducted the business in a hurried hush with furtive glances in his direction. Only two males showed any reaction other than fear at the meeting: Hulver greeted him formally and then ignored him, refusing to be hurried or harried by the others into doing his part of the business any faster, while Rune, ever conscious of where he might find advancement, made ingratiating comments like, ‘We would all agree that it would be a privilege if he that is new, and welcome, among us might give us his view.’ To which Mandrake said absolutely nothing.
In May he attended his second elder meeting, again saying not a word. But at his third, in June, when plans for the Midsummer trek to the Stone were being debated, he made his first move.
There were now grave doubts among some of the younger elders as to whether the Midsummer trek was worthwhile; Burrhead, in particular, argued that the known presence of more owls up on the hill, combined with the scarcity of worms that year and the many changes that had come over the system (they all knew that he was referring to the many deaths that had overtaken them following Mandrake’s arrival), were all factors that made the Midsummer trek of doubtful value. Rune agreed, adding that the trek was merely a sentimental throwback to the past when ‘aims were different from what they are now and there was a greater need to keep the system together by a show of unity such as the trek represented’.
