The Carpet People (13 page)

"We've got lots of choice," said Pismire. "It's just that we've got to choose to go to Ware."

Glurk saddled up Acretongue. "Interesting times ahead," he said gloomily.

Bane took a last look around the sugar clearing.

"She's here ... somewhere," he said.

"Everywhere," said Pismire. "Everywhere there's a choice to be made."

There was a faraway look in Bane's eyes. "What must it be like," he said, "to know everything that could happen?"

"Terrible," said Pismire. "Now, come along. Bane? I said come on ... "

Snibril had led the search, after the storm. They'd sifted through the rubble of the place. They'd gone down into Underlay, roped together, and shouted out the names of those who were lost. They'd found nothing.

But as Pismire would have pointed out, finding nothing was better than finding ... something.

Then they'd discovered the tracks in the distant clearing. Lots of creatures had come up. It seemed to Snibril that there had been someone else following them, someone who had lain low for a while in the bushes ... but everything was covered with dust shaken down by the storm, and it was hard to be sure. The tracks, such as they were, led south.

The Munrungs had helped Brocando's people rebuild walls and things, even though the rock itself was now visibly leaning over. And, as someone said, if Fray came again at least they now knew how to get into Underlay. Nothing would get them there.

Snibril thought about this as he rode Roland through the hairs, looking for any more tracks.

We can always go into Underlay, he thought. We can stop being people. We can just grub around in the dark.

The Deftmenes think that no enemy is too big to fight, but we never even see Fray.

The Dumii don't think like that. They think that if an enemy is too big, you should find a smaller enemy.

Maybe Pismire is right. We can't stop Fray. But at least we can stop being frightened of Fray.

"I'm going to Ware," he told the tribe that evening. They looked at him in horror. Technically, Glurk was still chief ... if he was alive. If he wasn't, then Snibril was chief. Glurk's children were all too young. No-one wanted to lose another chief.

"You can't leave us," said Dodor Flint, who was the tribe's shoemaker. "You're the leader."

"Ware's important," said Snibril. "We'd just be simple hunters if it wasn't for the Empire."

The Munrungs looked at one another.

"We are simple hunters," said Flint.

"Yes, but at least we know we are," said Snibril. "Anyway, we've got more complicated."

"That's true," said Crooly Wulf, who was nearly as old as Pismire. "People don't hit one another over the head with clubs as much as they did when I was a boy. There's more arguing."

"That doesn't mean we're better people!" said Flint.

Crooly Wulf rubbed his head. "I dunno," he said. "People are taller now. They don't groan so much, either."

"Huh! But the Deftmenes don't have anything to do with the Dumii," said Flint. "And they manage."

"They fight them," said Snibril, simply. "It's amazing how things rub off, even when you fight people. Ideas like ... like not just killing people all the time, that sort of thing."

A Deftmene put up his hand.

"That's true," he said. "The king always used to throw people off the rock in the old days."

"He still does," said another Deftmene.

"Yes, but he doesn't laugh about it so much. And he says he's doing it for their own good."

"See?" said Snibril desperately. "The Dumii have an effect. Even if you're their enemy. I'm going south. Perhaps I can find the others. Perhaps the Empire can help us."

"Yes, but you're our leader-" Flint began again.

"Then I'm going to lead!" snapped Snibril. "Who else is coming?"

Some of the younger Munrungs raised their hands.

A Deftmene stood up. "Will there be fighting against impossible odds?" he said.

"Probably," said Snibril.

"Right! Count us in!" A lot of Deftmenes nodded. Another one said: "And will we get a chance to fight to the death?"

"You might get a chance to fight to the enemy's death," said Snibril.

"Is that as good?"

"Better."

"Right, then. We're with you!"

In the end three hundred and fifty Deftmenes and fifty Munrungs volunteered to go. On the Rock their families would be as safe as anywhere in the Carpet, they agreed, but someone had to stay. Anything could happen.

Four hundred, thought Snibril. Who knows how many we're going to face?

On the other hand, since we don't know how many we're going to face, four hundred might be just enough.

Always choose a bigger enemy. It makes him easier to hit.

We must go to Ware, It's where we all began, in a way. It's where people first realized that there may be a better way of doing things than hitting one another on the head.

It was two days later.

In a grove of red hairs on the borders of the blue land seven wights were fighting mouls. It was unheard of for wights to be attacked.

They never carried weapons, apart from the ones they were making for sale.

This moul pack was large, and led by a chieftain more cunning and wily than most. What he wanted was more weapons. Wights looked easy prey.

He was beginning to regret this decision.

The wights didn't carry weapons, but they did carry tools. And a hammer is a weapon, if you hit a head instead of a nail. They were standing around their big varnish-boiler and fighting back-hammering back, and using varnish ladles as clubs, and bits of burning hair as crude spears.

But they were outnumbered. And they were all going to die. They knew it.

There was someone watching who knew it too.

Culaina the thunorg watched from deep in the hairs. It would be impossible to describe how a thunorg sees things. It would be like trying to explain the stars to a fish. How can it be said that she watched the fight a million times, all at the same instant, and every time the wights lost?

It's the wrong description. But it will have to do.

But among all the outcomes there was just one, as alone as a pearl on a seashore of black sand, that was different.

She turned without moving, and concentrated on it-

The hairs erupted people. The mouls turned to fight, but suddenly they were between two enemies.

The Deftmenes and the Munrungs had found an unbeatable fighting method. The tall Munrungs stood behind the small Deftmenes and fought over the top of them; no enemy had much of a chance on two levels at once.

It was a short fight, and a terribly effective one.

After a few minutes, the remaining mouls ran for it. Some of the new attackers broke away to follow them.

And then it was over-in this pearl-on-a-seashore time, when someone whose whole life was a choice had been close enough to choose.

Athan the kilnmaster, leader of this band, looked up with horror as a white horse trotted through the lines of his rescuers. There was a small figure riding it.

"How can this be! We were supposed to die!" he said. "All of us!"

"Did you want to?" said Snibril, dismounting.

"Want? Want? That doesn't come into it," said Athan, throwing down his hammer. From out in the hairs came the screech of a moul.

"You changed things," said Athan. "And now terrible things will happen-"

"They don't have to," said Snibril, calmly. "Nothing has to happen. You can let things happen. But that's not the same. We're going to Ware. There's Munrungs and Deftmenes and a few other refugees we picked up along the way. Why not come?"

Athan looked shocked and angry. "Us? Wights!? Fighting?"

"You were fighting just now."

"Yes, but we knew we would lose," said Athan.

"How about fighting and hoping you'll win?" said Snibril. He turned as a Munrung approached, carrying a wight.

"Our Geridan is dead, and one of the Deftmenes," said the Munrung. "And one of the wights. But this one's still alive ... just."

"That is Derna," said Athan. "My ... daughter. She should be dead. In a way ... she must be dead ... "

"We have some medicines," said Snibril quietly. "Or we could bury her now, if that's what you want ... "

He looked expectantly at the kilnmaster, who had gone white.

"No," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Good. Because we wouldn't have done it anyway," said Snibril briskly. "And then you'll come with us."

"But I don't ... know ... what will happen next," said the wight. "I can't remember!"

"You joined us and went to Ware," said Snibril.

"I can't remember what's going to happen?"

"You joined us," Snibril repeated.

Relief flooded across Athan's face. Suddenly he looked frantically happy, like a child who has been given a new toy. "Did I?" he said.

"Why not?" said Snibril. "It must be better than being dead."

"But this ... this is thunorg thinking," said Athan. "The future is The Future, not ... not ... " he hesitated, baffled," ... not ... perhaps ... really? The future can be all different things-?"

"Pick your own," said Snibril.

"But destiny-"

"That's something you make up as you go along," said Snibril. "I've been finding that out."

He looked up at a faint sound, faint enough not to be heard except by someone who was a hunter and whose life depended on noticing tiny noises. For a moment he thought he saw a pale figure in the shadows, smiling at him. Then it vanished.

Geridan was buried among the hairs with the Deftmene noble Parleon, son of Leondo, killed by a snarg, and the wight who had died.

The remaining wights huddled amongst themselves, and Snibril could hear them arguing. But he knew he'd won. They hadn't got a future any more. They had to have the one he'd given Athan. They weren't used to making them for themselves.

They cast the last of the hot varnish into swords and spearheads, and piled them up so that the ragged army could help themselves and when the army left they went too, leaving the cart alone and cold.

A million times the wights lost, and were killed. But that was somewhere else, in a world that might have been. And now they were alive. And that's known as History, which is only written by the living.

They went by narrow tracks that wound in and out of overgrown thickets. In some places enormous hairs had fallen over the path. Dust and fluff grew thickly, choking the spaces between hairs so that they could only move by hacking their way through undergrowth that clawed and pricked them.

Once, in a patch of thick orange hairs, something hurtled out of the tangled bushes and buried itself in a hair bole by Snibril's head. It was a spear.

Up in the hairs a shadow scampered, swinging to safety on a creeper while Deftmene arrows whined around it like hymetors. They never found out what it was, although it might have had something to do with the fact that, a little later, they found a city.

It was not on any maps of the Carpet. For some time they had been walking through its overgrown streets, not realizing they were streets, until they found the statues. Little blue dust flowers grew on them, and fluff had planted itself around them, but they still stood in the centre of their lost city. They had been four kings; wooden crowns were on their wooden heads and they each pointed with one arm to a different point of the compass. Ferns grew around their feet, and small creatures had made their homes in crooks of arms and folds of carven clothing.

Around them, when you knew what you were looking for in the way the hairs grew and dust mounds were banked, was the city. Age hung upon it like smoke. Thick hairs grew in the ruins of buildings, dust had filled the streets. Creepers and tendrils had done their work, breaking down walls and venturing into hidden walls. Insects chirruped in broken archways. Hair pollen made the air sparkle.

"Do you know this place?" said Snibril.

No-one did. Even Athan had never heard of it.

"Places can get lost," he said. "People leave. Hairs grow up. Roads are overgrown."

"By the look of those statues, they thought the place would last for ever," said Snibril.

"It didn't," said Athan, flatly.

And now they've gone, thought Snibril. Or there's just a few left, hunting around in the remains of their city. No-one knows who they were, or what they did. No-one even remembers their name. That mustn't happen to us.

The wights weren't talkative now. It must be like being blind, Snibril thought. We're used to not knowing what's going to happen ...

A couple of hours later they reached a Dumii road. It was white, made of split hairs laid edge to edge. Every few hundred yards there was a hair carved with a finger. All the fingers pointed to Ware.

They rode along it a little way. Here and there the road had been broken when the Carpet had moved, and they had to take to the hairs to get around the break.

That's where they found the legion, or what was left of it. Dumii soldiers were sitting or lying amongst the hairs by the side of the road. Some of them were asleep. Others were wounded.

He'd seen plenty of soldiers in Tregon Marus, but they had simply been on guard. These looked battered, their uniforms ragged and often bloodstained.

They hardly bothered to look up as Snibril rode by. But the ones who did caught sight of the Deftmenes, and started nudging their colleagues. One or two even reached for their swords.

There was muttering from the Deftmenes, too. They moved closer together, and eyed the Dumii suspiciously.

Snibril turned in his saddle.

"Don't make any trouble," he snapped.