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.
Chapter 15
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.
Chapter 16
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 gon
e, 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.
‘Why not?’ said a sullen voice from among the Deftmene ranks. ‘They’re Dumii!’
‘You’d prefer them to be mouls, would you?’
He walked Roland over to a group of soldiers sitting on a fallen hair.
‘Where is your leader?’ he said.
The Dumii looked him up and down. ‘Haven’t got one,’ he said. ‘General got killed.’
There was a pause.
‘I expect you’re wondering who we are,’ said Snibril.
‘Too tired to wonder,’ said the soldier, leaning back against a hair.
‘Stand up straight!’
For a moment Snibril wondered who had said that. Then he realized that it had been him.
To his amazement, the soldier pulled himself upright.
‘Now take me to the highest-ranking officer!’ said Snibril. I mustn’t say ‘please’, he thought. I mustn’t give him a chance to think. He’s used to orders. It’s easier for him to obey orders than think.
‘Er . . . that’d be Sergeant Careus. If he’s still alive.’
‘Take me to him now!’
The soldier looked past Snibril at the ragged army. His forehead wrinkled.
‘I shall talk to the sergeant!’ said Snibril. The soldier snapped back to attention.
‘Yessir. This way,’ he said.
Snibril was led past groups of sullen soldiers to a heavy-set man who was sitting on the ground. One arm was in a sling, and his face was pale. He didn’t seem to be bothered about who Snibril actually was. He was feeling low enough to accept anyone who seemed to know what they were doing.
‘Sergeant Careus, Fifteenth Legion,’ he said. ‘Or what’s left of it. We were called back to Ware urgently from Ultima Marus, but when we were on the road—’
‘—there was a storm—’ said Snibril automatically.
‘And then afterwards—’
‘—you were attacked by mouls mounted on snargs,’ said Snibril.
‘Yes. Time and again. How did you know this?’
‘I’m good at guessing,’ said Snibril. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘About three hundred able-bodied, and a lot of wounded.’
‘I know a safe city where your wounded can be taken. It’s only two days’ easy march, if we spare some soldiers to escort them.’
‘We’ll need too many,’ said the sergeant. ‘There’ll be mouls everywhere.’
‘Not where we’ve been,’ said Snibril quietly. ‘Not any more. And the rest of us will go with you to Ware.’
The sergeant looked down at the dust, thinking. ‘I won’t say we don’t need everyone we can get,’ he said. ‘Where’s this paradise, then?’
‘Jeopard,’ said Snibril.
‘You must be mad!’
At that moment there was a roar from the road. Both of them hurried back, to where there was now a huge pushing crowd of Dumii and Deftmenes, with the Munrungs trying to keep them apart. Snibril pushed his way through and found a Deftmene and a soldier rollng over and over on the road, punching at one another.
Snibril watched them for a moment, and then flung his spear on the ground.
‘Stop that!’ he shouted. ‘You’re soldiers! You’re not supposed to fight!’
Even the two combatants stopped to work that one out.
‘I don’t understand you!’ Snibril shouted. His voice echoed off the hairs. ‘There’s enemies all around us, and you just attack each other! Why?’
‘They’re closer,’ said a voice from the Dumii ranks.
‘He called me dirty!’ said the Deftmene who had been fighting.
‘Well, you are,’ said Snibril. ‘So’s he. We all are. Now get up—’
He stopped. All the Dumii were looking past him, to Athan and the wights, and Snibril heard the whispering start.
‘They’ve got wights with them . . . fighting!’
He looked at Athan, who looked miserable. Snibril sidled over to him.
‘Don’t let them know you can’t remember this future,’ he said.
‘They know the future! And they’re on his side!’
‘Why should we fight for them if they treat us like that?’ said a Deftmene. Snibril spun around and picked up the astonished warrior by his collar.
‘You’re not fighting for them! You’re fighting for yourselves!’
The Deftmene was shaken, but not afraid. ‘We’ve always fought for ourselves,’ he said. ‘And we were never Counted!’
‘No, but the Empire was all around you, wasn’t it, keeping you safe! The Dumii kept the peace over half the Carpet! All around you! Kept you safe!’
‘They never did!’
‘Think about it! There’s Dumii towns all around you! When they defended themselves, they were defending you! They fought for real so that you could fight them for fun!’
Snibril was shaking with anger.
There was silence.
He put the Deftmene down.
‘I’m going to Ware,’ he said. ‘Anyone else wants to come, it’s up to them ...’
No one left, except for a small group who were going to accompany the wounded back to Jeopard. Two of the wights went with them. The Dumii felt a lot better with wights around. They seemed to think that wights only went where it was safe. That’s what they’d do . . .
The rest of them marched on down the road. Snibril found that he was in command; the Munrungs wanted to follow him, the Deftmenes were beginning to think that anyone who could lose their temper that badly was probably a king, and the Dumii – well, the Dumii soldiers followed Sergeant Careus, and Sergeant Careus was riding alongside Snibril. Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants – the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.
The sergeant half turned in his saddle and looked back at the Deftmenes
‘Nice to have cavalry on our side again,’ he said. ‘Even if they’re still shorter than infantry. I’ve fought against them a couple of times. Tough little ba . . . people. That was under Baneus. He respected ’em. He left ’em alone. They didn’t like that back in Ware, but he always said it’s worth keeping a few enemies around. You know. To practise on. I think he quite liked ’em. Odd little ba . . . chaps.’
‘Baneus,’ said Snibril, cautiously. ‘Yes. Er. Whatever happened to him? Did he do something terrible?’
‘You know him?’
‘I’ve . . . heard of him,’ said Snibril carefully.
‘He killed someone. An assassin. The way I heard it, someone was trying to kill the young Emperor during his coronation. Hiding behind
a pillar with a bow. Baneus spotted him and threw his sword at him. Got him just in time. Killed him grit dead. Arrow missed Targon by inches. Funny thing is, Baneus hated Targon. He was always in trouble. He said Emperors shouldn’t be hereditary, but elected just like they used to be. A stickler for honesty, was the General. Oh, there were always rows. But after that, he had to be banished, of course.’
‘Why of course?’ said Snibril.
‘No one is allowed to draw a sword within fifty paces of the Emperor,’ said the Sergeant.
‘But he saved his life!’
‘Yes, but you’ve got to have rules, otherwise where would we be?’ said Sergeant Careus.
‘But—’
‘Afterwards the Emperor had the law changed and they sent someone after the General.’
‘Did he ever find him?’
‘I think so. He was sent back tied to his horse with an apple in his mouth. I think the General was a bit upset.’
The Deftmenes are mad and the Dumii are sane, thought Snibril, and that’s just the same as being mad except that it’s quieter. If only you could mix them together, you’d end up with normal people. Just like me.
‘We could do with him now, and that’s a fact,’ said the sergeant.
‘Yes,’ said Snibril. ‘Um. What do I do now? We’ll have to camp tonight. I mean, I don’t know what sort of orders you’re supposed to give.’
The sergeant looked at him kindly.
‘You say, “Make camp here”,’ he said.
Chapter 17
A scattering of campfires speckled the darkness. It was the second night of the journey of all four races. No one had killed anyone yet.
Snibril and the sergeant had made sure that there was at least one Munrung at each campfire, as referees.
‘I wish we could get some more wights fighting,’ said Careus. ‘I watched one of them using a bow just now, when the lads were practising. I mean, when have they ever used a bow before? He just looked at it for a while, then put an arrow in the centre of the target. Just like that.’
‘Just as well they don’t fight, then,’ said Snibril. ‘Maybe it’s best to leave it to people who aren’t so good at it. What’s the plan?’
The Carpet People Page 11