‘Um,’ it said.
*
And ten minutes later . . .
A small group of Deftmenes were labouring in the vegetable lines between the hairs. They did not look happy or, for that matter, very well-fed. Several guards were watching them. Even from here, Snibril could see the long snouts.
Among the hairs was Jeopard itself.
It was built on a piece of grit. The actual city was a cluster of buildings at the very top; a spiral roadway wound several times around the grit between the city and the floor. It had a gate at the bottom, but that was just for show. No one could have got up that road if the people at the top didn’t want them to.
There was a movement in the dust, and Glurk crawled up beside Snibril.
‘The boy was right. There’s mouls and snargs everywhere,’ he said. ‘The whole place is crawling with them.’
‘They’ve got the city?’ said Snibril.
Glurk nodded. ‘That’s what comes of running around looking for treasure when he ought to have been at home, reigning,’ he said, disapprovingly.
‘Come on,’ said Snibril. ‘Let’s get back to the camp.’
The carts had been dragged into the undergrowth some way off, and people were on guard.
Pismire, Bane and Brocando were sitting in a semi-circle, watching the little boy drinking soup. He had a bottomless capacity for food but, in between mouthfuls, he’d answer Brocando’s questions in a very small voice.
‘My own brother!’ growled Brocando, as the others slipped into the camp. ‘But if you can’t trust your own family, who can you trust? Turn my back for a few days—’
‘A year,’ said Bane.
‘—and he calls himself king! I never did like Antiroc. Always skulking and muttering and not keen on sports.’
‘But how did mouls get into the city?’ said Snibril.
‘He let them in! Tell the man, Strephon!’
The boy was about seven years old, and looked terrified.
‘I . . . I . . . they were . . . everyone fought . . .’ he stuttered.
‘Come on! Come on! Out with it, lad!’
‘I think,’ said Bane, ‘that perhaps you ought to wander off for a minute or two, perhaps? He might find it easier to talk.’
‘I am his king!’
‘That’s what I mean. When they’re standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment. If you’d just, oh, go and inspect the guard or something . . . ?’
Brocando grumbled about this, but wandered off with Glurk and Snibril.
‘Huh. Brothers!’ he muttered. ‘Nothing but trouble, eh? Plotting and skulking and hanging around and usurping.’
Glurk felt he had to show solidarity with the unofficial association of older brothers.
‘Snibril never kept his room tidy, I know that,’ he said.
When they got back Strephon was wearing Bane’s helmet and looking a lot more cheerful. Bane sent him off with an instruction to do something dangerous.
‘If you want it in grown-up language,’ he said, ‘your brother took over the throne when you didn’t come back. He wasn’t very popular. There was quite a lot of fighting. So when a pack of mouls arrived one day – he invited them in.’
‘He wouldn’t!’ said Brocando.
‘He thought he could hire them as mercenaries, to fight for him. Well, they fought all right. They say he’s still king, although no one has seen him. The mouls do all the ruling. A lot of people ran away. The rest are slaves, more or less. Quarrying grit. Forced labour in the fields. That sort of thing.’
‘The mouls don’t look as if they’d be interested in vegetables,’ said Snibril.
‘They eat meat.’
Pismire had been sitting against one of the cartwheels, wrapped in the blanket; travel was not agreeing with him. They’d almost forgotten about him.
His words sunk in like rocks. In fact it wasn’t the words themselves that were disturbing. Everyone ate meat. But he gave the word a particular edge that suggested, not ordinary meat . . .
Brocando went white.
‘Do you mean—?’
‘They eat animals,’ said Pismire, looking more miserable than Snibril had ever seen him before. ‘Unfortunately, they consider everything that’s not a moul is an animal. Um. I don’t know how to say this ... do you know what the word “moul” means in moul language? Hmm? It means . . . True Human Beings.’
This sunk in, too.
‘We’ll attack tonight,’ said Brocando. ‘No one’s eating my subjects.’
‘Er,’ said Glurk.
‘Oh yes,’ said Bane. ‘Yes, indeed. Fine. Five thousand soldiers couldn’t attack Jeopard.’
‘That’s true,’ said Brocando. ‘So we—’
‘Er,’ said Glurk.
‘Yes?’ said Brocando.
The chieftain appeared to have something on his mind. ‘I’ve heard one or two references just recently to “we”,’ he said. ‘I just want to get this sorted out? No offence. As a reward for rescuing you, we’re now going to attack this city that no amount of Dumii soldiers could capture and fight a lot of mouls? You want my tribe, which hasn’t got a home now, to save your city for you, even though this is impossible? Have I got it right, yes?’
‘Good man!’ said Brocando. ‘I knew we could depend on you! I shall need half a dozen stout-hearted men!’
‘I think I can let you have one astonished one,’ said Glurk.
‘We’ve got to help,’ said Snibril. ‘Everyone’s too tired to run away. Anyway, what will happen if we don’t? Sooner or later we’ve got to fight these things. It might as well be here.’
‘Outnumbered!’ said Bane. ‘And you’re not soldiers!’
‘No,’ said Glurk. ‘We’re hunters.’
‘Well done!’ said Brocando.
Glurk nudged Snibril. ‘Have we just volunteered for practically certain death?’ he said.
‘I think we may have, yes.’
‘This kinging is amazing,’ said Glurk. ‘If we get out of this, I think I’m going to try to learn it.’
Night came. A blue badger, hunting early, nearly blundered into the line of would-be invaders and waddled off hurriedly.
There was a whispered argument going on among the Deftmenes. Some of them wanted to sing as they went into battle, which was a tradition. Brocando kept pointing out that they were going into battle secretly, but one or two diehard traditionalists were holding out for the right to sing peaceful songs, which would – they said – totally confuse the enemy. In the end Brocando won by playing the king, and threatening to have everyone who disagreed with him put to death. Glurk was impressed.
When it began to seem to Snibril that the dark Carpet had no ending they reached the road again and, ahead of them, torches burning along its walls, was the city of Jeopard.
Chapter 9
The wights built Jeopard. They brought red wood and sparkling varnish from achairleg to pave its streets; from the Hearthlands they led great caravans of the rare jet, to be made into domes and cornices, and cinder and ash for bricks and mortar; at the distant High Gate Land of the Vortgorns they traded their varnish wares for beaten bronze, for doors and pillars; salt and sugar, in great white crystals, were dragged between the hairs by teams of sweating horses, for walls and roofs. And they brought different coloured hairs from all parts of the Carpet. Some became planks and rafters, but most they planted around the city.
Everywhere there were gardens. In the evening light it looked peaceful, but they had to lie low twice when moul cavalry went past on the road.
‘In my city, too,’ said Brocando.
‘You’ve got a plan, I hope,’ said Bane.
‘There’s another way into the city,’ said Brocando.
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Didn’t you?’ said Brocando. ‘Amazing. All that trouble to build a secret passage and we forgot to tell the Emperor. Remind me to send him a note. Turn right into that little hidden track there.’
‘What track?’
Brocando grinned. ‘Good, isn’t it,’ he said.
It looked like an animal path. It wound round and about the hairs. The dust bushes were much thicker here.
‘Planted,’ said Brocando.
Eventually, when it was almost dark, they reached a small glade with another ruined temple in it.
‘Temples don’t last long around here, do they,’ said Snibril, looking around at the crowding hairs. Here and there were more statues, half covered in dust.
‘This one was built to look ruined,’ said Brocando. ‘By the wights. For one of my ancestors. The one over there, with the bird’s nest on his head and his arm raised—’ He hesitated. ‘And you’re a Dumii, and I’ve brought you to the secret place,’ he said. ‘I should have you blindfolded.’
‘No,’ said Bane. ‘You want me to fight for you, then I’m wearing no blindfold.’
‘But one day you might come back with an army.’
‘I’m sorry you think so,’ said Bane stonily.
‘As me, I don’t,’ said Brocando. ‘As a king, I have to think so.’
‘Ha!’
‘This is stupid,’ said Snibril. ‘Why bother with a blindfold?’
‘It’s important,’ said Brocando, sulkily.
‘You’ve got to trust one another sooner or later. Who are you going to trust instead? You’re men of honour, aren’t you?’ said Snibril.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Brocando.
‘Then make it simple!’
He realized he had shouted. Even Glurk was surprised.
‘Well, it’s no time to argue,’ said Snibril, calming down a bit.
Brocando nodded. ‘Yes. Very well. Maybe. I’m sure he’s an honourable man. Pull Broc’s arm.’
‘What?’ said Bane.
‘Behind you. On the statue. Pull the arm,’ said Brocando.
Bane shrugged, and reached for the arm.
‘First time a Dumii’s ever shaken a Deftmene’s hand,’ he said. ‘I wonder what it’ll lead to—’
There was a grinding noise, somewhere under their feet. A slab in the temple floor slid aside, showing a flight of steps.
‘It’ll lead to the palace,’ said Brocando, grinning.
They stared into the square of darkness.
Finally Glurk said: ‘You don’t mean . . . into the Underlay?’
‘Yes!’
‘But . . . but . . . there’s terrible things down there!’
‘Just stories for children,’ said Brocando. ‘Nothing to be frightened of down there.’
He trotted down the steps. Bane went to follow him, and then looked back at the Munrungs.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Well . . .’ said Snibril. What shall I say? Creatures from ancient tales live down there: thunorgs, the horrible delvers, and shadows without number or names. Strange things gnawing at the roots of the Carpet. The souls of the dead. Everything bad. Everything you get . . . frightened by, when you’re small.
He looked around at the other tribesmen. They had moved closer together.
He thought: at times like this, we all have to forget old things.
‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said, in what he hoped was a voice full of leadership. ‘Come on, lads. Last one in’s a—’
‘Never mind about the last one,’ muttered a voice somewhere towards the back of the group. ‘We want to see what happens to the first one.’
Snibril tripped at the bottom of the stairs and landed on a pile of soft dust. Brocando was lighting a torch, taken from a rack of them on one wall of the little cave. One by one the band shuffled down. Brocando moved another lever and the statue trundled back over the hole, leaving them crowded shoulder to shoulder in the red-lit cave.
‘All here?’ said Brocando, and without waiting for a reply he ducked into a tiny crevice and was gone.
Nearly as bad as discovering all your worst fears are coming true, Snibril thought, is finding out that they’re not.
The walls showed up brown in the torchlight, and were covered with tiny hairs that glittered as the light passed them. Sometimes they crossed the entrances to other tunnels. But there were no monsters, no sudden teeth . . .
The path began to slope down and suddenly the light from Brocando’s torch dimmed. Snibril started before he realized that they were entering a cavern under the carpet, with walls so far away that the light was not reflected from them. They passed through many great caverns, the path narrowing and spiralling up around great columns of hair, so that they had to cling to stay on it. Sometimes the light sparkled on a distant wall. While they were edging along one place where the path narrowed almost to nothingness, and cold air rushed up from the depths below, Snibril slipped. Bane, who was next in line, reached out with great presence of mind and grabbed him by the hair just as he was about to totter into the darkness. But the torch slipped from his hands. They peered over the edge to watch it become a spark, then a speck and finally wink out. Something shifted in the dark depths of Underlay, and they heard it scuttle heavily away.
‘What was that?’ said Snibril.
‘Probably a silverfish,’ said Brocando. ‘They’ve got teeth bigger than a man, you know. And dozens of legs.’
‘I thought you said there was nothing to be afraid of down here!’ shouted Glurk.
‘Well?’ said Brocando, looking surprised. ‘Who’s afraid of them?’
Anything else in the depths below would hardly have seen them, little specks inching along the roots of the hairs. Eventually Brocando called a halt on the edge of another abyss. There was a narrow bridge stretching across it, and Snibril could just make out a door on the far side.
The king held up the torch and said: ‘We are right underneath the rock now.’
The roof of the cavern was gently curved towards its centre, bowed under the great weight above it.
‘You are the only people apart from the kings of Jeopard to see this,’ Brocando went on. ‘After the secret passage was dug, Broc had all the workers personally put to death to stop the secret escaping.’
‘Oh? That’s part of kinging, too, is it?’ said Glurk.
‘It used to be,’ said Brocando. ‘Not any more, of course.’
‘Hah!’ said Bane.
When they had crossed the bridge Brocando pushed the little wooden door open, revealing a spiral staircase lit by green light filtering down from a tiny circle of light. It was a long climb up the winding staircase, which was so narrow that the boots of the ones in front tangled with the hands of the ones behind, and the torches made flickering shadows of giant warriors against the walls. Ghostly as it was, Snibril welcomed it. He hated the darkness under the Carpet.
Before it reached the circle of green light the stairway opened on to a little landing, just big enough to hold them all. There was another door in the wall.
‘Where—?’ Glurk began.
Brocando shook his head and put his finger to his lips.
There were voices on the other side of the door.
Chapter 10
There were three voices, so loud that they could only be a metre or so from the hidden door.
Snibril tried to imagine faces. One voice was thin and whiny, already raised in complaint.
‘Another hundred? But you took fifty only a few days ago!’
‘And now we need another hundred,’ said a soft voice that made Snibril’s hair prickle. ‘I advise you to sign this paper, your majesty, and my guards will gather together this hundred and be gone. They will not be slaves. Just . . . assistants.’
‘I don’t know why you don’t just take them,’ said the first voice sulkily.
‘But you are the king,’ said the second voice. ‘It must be right, if the king says so. Everything signed and proper.’
Snibril thought he could hear Bane grinning in the darkness.
‘But no one ever comes back,’ said First Voice.
The third voice was like a rumble. ‘They like it so much i
n our lands we just cannot persuade them to return,’ it said.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said First Voice.
‘That does not really matter,’ said Second Voice. ‘Sign!’
‘No! I will not! I am king . . .’
‘And you think that I, who made you king, can’t . . . unmake you?’ said Second Voice. ‘Your majesty,’ it added.
‘I’ll report you to Jornarileesh! I’ll tell on you!’ said First Voice, but he did not sound very confident.
‘Jornarileesh! You think they care what is done here?’ Second Voice purred. ‘Sign! Or perhaps Gorash here can find some other use for your hands?’
‘Yeah,’ said Third Voice. ‘A necklace.’
Brocando turned to face the others, while the voices on the other side of the door alternately threatened and whined.
‘That’s my brother,’ he said. ‘Such as he is. Here’s the plan. We rush in, and we kill as many mouls as possible.’
‘You think that’s a clever plan?’ said Bane.
‘Sounds sensible to me,’ said Glurk.
‘But there’s hundreds in the city, aren’t there?’ said Bane.
‘My people will rise up and overthrow them,’ hissed Brocando.
‘Have they got any weapons, then?’ said Bane.
‘No, but the mouls have. So they’ll start by getting their weapons off them,’ said Brocando placidly.
Bane groaned. ‘We’re all going to die,’ he said. ‘This isn’t tactics. This is just making-it-up-as-you-go-along.’
‘Let’s start now, then,’ said Brocando. He put his foot against the door and pushed. It moved a fraction, and then stopped.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Snibril.
‘There’s something on the other side,’ hissed Brocando. ‘There shouldn’t be. Everyone give me a hand here.’
They put their shoulders to it. It resisted for a moment, and then flew open. There was a shriek. For a second the hall was motionless.
Snibril saw a throne lying on the floor. It had blocked the door. Now it lay halfway down the steps and a thin Deftmene was struggling underneath it, making pathetic little noises. Beyond it two mouls were standing, staring at the open doorway. One was big, wide-shouldered, with a pale face almost hidden in his leather helmet. He held a coiled whip in one great paw. Voice Three, Snibril thought. He even looks as though he should be called Gorash. Beside him stood a thin moul wearing a long black cloak and a grin like a wolf that’s just had dinner. Voice Two, said Snibril to himself. He looks like he ought to have a name with a lot of esses in it – something you can hiss.
Carpet People Page 6