House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  Elfwin sighed. ‘Well, that’s nudniks for you. They’ll slosh water all over the kitchen floor, washing away precious crumbs, but they don’t add anything. They’re vermin, plain and simple.’

  Gorm’s eyes were alight with passion now. ‘But,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t it be glorious if we could drive them out of the House? If we concentrated all our efforts on harassing the nudniks, instead of fighting each other? We’ll have to think about it, hard. There must be a way of doing it.’

  ‘I thought of it!’ cried Ketil enthusiastically.

  ‘By accident,’ muttered Elfwin.

  ‘Yes, but I still thought of it.’

  ‘You get extra rations for that,’ said Gorm generously. ‘I’ll see to it myself. A mouse gets punished for his misdeeds, even when he doesn’t do them deliberately, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be rewarded when he does something good by accident, is there?’

  The Allthing agreed unanimously.

  I-kucheng spoke next. He’d come on a mission to establish peace and seemed instead to have bred revolution. All in the space of a few minutes. But if out of revolution came peace, he would have fulfilled his aim. His main concern now was that the energy which his peace initiative seemed to have unleashed should be controlled and channelled. ‘What you must do next, Gorm, is call an inter-tribal Allthing with your son, Ulf. And Frych-the-freckled. And perhaps also Whispersoft of the Invisibles. There must be a truce amongst the tribes, while these talks are going on.’

  ‘A truce, yes,’ growled Gorm, ‘but if any tribe starts any funny business, we’ll bite their…’

  ‘Think positive,’ hissed Skrang. ‘You must start out with a positive attitude.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ grumbled Gorm. ‘You make the arrangements, I-kucheng.’

  At that moment Astrid the high priestess came wandering in with a silly smirk on her face. This expression was instantly wiped clean when she saw the place behind the boiler was full of mice.

  Gorm growled at her, ‘Didn’t you hear me call the Allthing? Where have you been?’

  ‘I, er, just… around.’

  ‘Around where?’

  ‘I was on the pan shelf,’ Astrid explained. ‘Communing with my Shadows.’

  ‘You’re always on the pan shelf,’ snarled Gorm. ‘What’s the fascination with a few pots and pans these hours? Can’t you talk to your blasted Shadows somewhere else? If you start leaving droppings up there during the night, the nudniks will start putting poisoned powder down again. Do you want all our youngsters to be put in danger?’

  Astrid shook her head violently and waved her tail around in an embarrassed fashion. ‘Of course not, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you damn well should be,’ admonished Gorm. ‘Especially as you’ve missed something unique. We’ve been talking about getting rid of the pests in the House. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Pests?’ asked Astrid helplessly.

  ‘The nudniks,’ snapped Thorkils. ‘What else?’

  ‘Get rid of the nudniks?’ said Astrid. ‘I have to meditate.’

  She went into a trance immediately, there before their eyes. Unlike most of the library mice, Astrid was a genuine mystic, with real psychic powers. She could foresee – though not with any real clarity or depth – certain aspects of the future. Her vagueness was often unsatisfactory to Gorm, who liked his pictures to be absolutely clear and precise. Gorm was not good at interpreting things, especially prophecies.

  ‘Well?’ he yelled, breaking Astrid’s trance.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ she said, her eyes hollow and dark. ‘Don’t drive out the nudniks. Disaster will follow.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ cried Gorm. This was not the answer he wanted to hear at all.

  ‘There will be a great famine,’ whispered Astrid. ‘A plague will sweep through the House.’

  ‘Balderdash and poppycock!’ shouted Gorm.

  ‘Many will die, few will survive,’ finished Astrid.

  ‘What a load of codswallop,’ bawled Gorm. ‘You employ these people to give you a sensible forecast of the future and all they give you is doom and gloom. We’re going ahead with the plan, whatever this religious nut predicts.’

  Skrang said, ‘Do you really think we should? Remember the legend of the hallowed cheese? Astrid may be right. She usually is.’

  ‘Not this time,’ Gorm growled. ‘And that myth thing is daft – whoever heard of a mouse changing into a cat?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said I-kucheng. ‘Did you see her eyes?’ Once again he was wondering what he had spawned.

  ‘You don’t have to like it,’ said Thorkils rudely. ‘It’s up to Gorm.’

  Gorm set his expression into hard determination. ‘We’re going ahead,’ he said firmly.

  Gorm-the-old was a legend in his own time and the story of his rise to power was told to every new infant of the Savage Tribe, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Now he was placing that legend on the line.

  GIETOST

  Gorm had been born one of a litter of seven, but his appetite for his mother’s milk soon whittled that down to three. His brothers Hakon and Tostig were the only survivors in the battle for the teats. Though the three brothers started more or less equal in weight and size, by the time they were ready to go on to solid foods, Gorm was easily the most vicious, brutal and ruthless member of the trio. The other two simply followed his lead and where he went they went too.

  Gorm had two main concerns in life: his own unlimited ambition and the welfare of his mother. He had killed his own father while still a growing mouse because his father had dared to fight with his mother over a piece of cheese. Gorm ripped him open and left him dead in the dust, while his brothers looked on. Such an act of barbarism was unusual even amongst the Savages.

  ‘Nobody hurts my mother,’ Gorm had said.

  Thereafter the mild but doting mother of this terrible mouse encouraged Gorm in his dreams of leading the tribe, even though Gorm’s father had been a lowly warrior mouse with no rank. When Gorm openly confessed his aspirations to the tribe’s chieftain at the time, Olaf-the-ugly, that mouse laughed and called Gorm ‘old before his time’. Thereafter Gorm became known as Gorm-the-old, a title of which he was proud.

  Gorm-the-old was rapidly promoted as his prowess in battle became a byword in the Savage Tribe. He seemed invincible. Always at the forefront of any fighting, he lay about him with skilful and fierce abandon, so that very soon even the sound of his name was feared. In this way he made himself the natural successor to Olaf-the-ugly when that old chieftain was found dead. There were those among Olaf’s kin who perpetrated the rumour that he had been assassinated by Gorm’s henchmen as they sought to live under the rule of Olaf’s son – Harald-the-less-ugly. But Gorm had his warriors suppress most of this camp. He himself dispatched Harald in a bloody claw-to-claw combat. The remaining dissenters joined Gorm’s own army, but forever afterwards there was a certain brooding rebel element in the Savage Tribe, which was only kept down by Gorm’s reign of terror.

  The new chieftain set about consolidating his position by raising his mother to the position of most-high-priestess, and his brothers to senior ranks in the army. When his mother died, Gorm abolished the post of most-high-priestess and the position below that, high priestess, became the most senior post in the spiritual temple of the great god Assundoon. This was Astrid’s role.

  Thus did Gorm-the-old’s rise to power go from fact to legend in his own lifetime. And it was later writ within mouse history that this empowerment must have been destined to take place when it did, because it coincided with the arrival of the Outsider who was to lead them all to the Hour of Change. With new blood reigning in the Savage Tribe, the old traditions of these kitchen dwellers no longer held sway, and everything was in place for the coming of a new era.

  WENSLEYDALE

  OUT IN THE HEDGEROW THE RHYTHMS OF LIFE HAD been in tune with the Earth, but the rhythms of life in the House were independent of the Earth, separated fr
om it. The House had its own pulse, which beat out of time with the Earth. Pedlar sensed this, during his periods of meditation in the library, and it concerned him. Anything out of tune with the rest of the planet had nothing greater than itself to help regulate its rhythms, or realign itself when disharmony threatened.

  It was a dangerous isolation.

  Pedlar was not altogether happy in the library. One couldn’t survive properly on a diet of books. He had held long conversations about this with Iago, the gourmet of the Bookeater Tribe. Iago had patiently explained to Pedlar which were the tastiest, the best, the most nutritious books.

  ‘Remain suspicious of glossy paper. Colourful though it might appear to the uninformed eye, it has a tendency to clog the intestines. Treat with wary regard crisp paper with strong black lines of insects – many a mouse has been poisoned by unsavoury paper. Stay clear of books with pictures of cheeses in them. I’ve known mice driven crazy by such pictures. It usually results in eating too much paper, in the hope that the pictures might contain some of the qualities of real cheese, and then in the death of the mouse. If you find a book like that, it’s best not to look.

  ‘Now, a nice leather cover is so much more satisfying than a cardboard one. Remember my maxim: “Old and soft, rather than stiff and fresh.” Pages with the consistency of blotting paper are by far the most agreeable, but failing that look for books with these dead earwigs on the front or spine…’

  And Iago drew these marks in the dust with his claw: CLASSICS.

  ‘Books which have the following squashed spiders on the front are easily digestible, but have little nutritious value and are prone to give one dysentery…’

  And Iago drew these marks in the dust with his claw: BESTSELLER.

  ‘If quantity is what you want, rather than quality, then books with these symbols should be sought, but beware of serious after-effects in the form of constipation.’

  And he drew these marks in the dust with his claw: NON-FICTION.

  ‘There are those too, with spiky insects that stick in your throat, groups of insects of inconsiderate length that give you worms, great rounded spiders without anything inside, obscure small ants with too much acid – all thrown together in a recipe which turns out to be disappointing once on the tongue and amongst the taste buds. Such works bear these particular combinations somewhere on their tasteless dust jackets.’

  And he drew these marks in the dust with his claw: LITERARY NOVEL.

  ‘What one would really like,’ said Iago, ‘is fully formed insects, insects with all their legs, insects that seem recently squashed yet taste as if they have matured between the covers as long as a good cheese. I dream of a book containing combinations of these insects on nice digestible unpretentious paper, making no claims to being anything but an amusing meal with a mild aftertaste – but alas,’ he finished with a sigh, ‘I haven’t yet found it.’

  So Pedlar was left unsatisfied, whichever paper he ate.

  It was true that occasionally a nudnik came into the library with food, but there was such a battle for the scraps afterwards it was a wonder there weren’t more injuries. The whole colony lived on the edge of existence.

  The Bookeaters also appeared to live on the edge of madness. Being so close to starvation all the time, they tended to get hallucinations and feverish dreams, which they called magic. Half the time they were out of their heads, chanting and moaning strange litanies the meanings of which were obscure to say the least. Several times Pedlar had been roused from a deep sleep by a blood-curdling scream, and had rushed to the edge of his shelf expecting to witness some horrible disembowelling, only to find a mouse wandering around with its eyes glazed, crying, ‘A vision! A vision!’

  And every so often, Frych-the-freckled would address her tribe on momentous matters, sometimes while still suckling her babies.

  ‘Bookeaters,’ she had said that very morning, ‘I’ve assembled you en masse because of what is about to transpire. Gorm-the-old has transmitted a desire to parlay with your nominative leader. Now we all perceive the lack of couth in the Savage Tribe, especially in its chieftain whose stumbling methods of communication are inordinately unrefined. However, my sensitive social filters are very adept at devulgarizing the crude and so I shall meet with Gorm and listen to his proposals, for at the very heart of his recommendations is the possibility of unlimited cheese.’

  An excited murmur went round the room as soon as the word most likely to stir mice had been mentioned.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ whispered Pedlar to Owain and Mefyn who were sitting high-nose, next to him on the shelf.

  Owain frowned, as if to silence Pedlar, but Mefyn replied, ‘Gorm-the-old has asked to speak with Frych.’

  Pedlar was surprised. ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Well, it might not sound like much to an Outsider,’ sniffed Owain, getting in on the conversation now that his leader had finished her address, ‘but to us it’s a very consequential thing for the leaders of two different tribes to visit each other.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that exactly,’ said Pedlar, ‘though what you say is interesting. What I actually meant was, is that all Frych said? She used so many long words and went on for so long I felt she must have conveyed – you’ve got me at it now – she must have meant a great deal more than just that.’

  ‘No,’ said Mefyn. ‘That was the gist.’

  ‘Oh. Anyway, the Savage Tribe and the Bookeaters are going to discuss something, is that it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I wonder what?’ asked Pedlar.

  Owain sniffed. ‘I expect they’ll tell us when they feel we ought to know.’

  ‘You trust these leaders do you?’ Pedlar said, failing to disguise the scepticism in his tone.

  Mefyn looked shocked. ‘Of course we do! The reason they’re leaders is because of their intellectual superiority, isn’t it? They comprehend what we ordinary mice are unable to grasp, until of course it is simplified and put into our sort of language.’

  Owain added, ‘Our leaders have a spiritual depth to them which is far greater than ours. They can interpret the intricate pathways of mouse logic. That’s why they’re in charge.’

  Pedlar wondered if he should keep quiet, but found himself quite unable to do so.

  ‘Well, I’ve only been here a short while, you understand, but I rather thought that Gorm got to be leader of the Savage Tribe because he’s a ruthless, greedy, power-loving tyrant…’

  ‘He does have a certain lack of ruth, I’ll grant you,’ agreed Mefyn.

  ‘…and Frych-the-freckled is leader of the Bookeaters because she threatens to dissolve any opposition with dark and deadly magic?’

  ‘Frych can sizzle a mouse at fifty feet with just a look, that’s perfectly true,’ agreed Owain.

  ‘So,’ said Pedlar, ‘where does all this intellectual superiority, spiritual depth and inner knowledge of the workings of the universe stuff come into it?’

  Mefyn looked unhappy. ‘You have to believe they’re better than the average mouse, don’t you? Otherwise, well, it would be Brute Force and Ignorance leading us to our destiny.’

  Pedlar said no more in reply to this. He could see how upset the other two mice were getting. They were not willing to have the whole fabric of their political system unpicked in front of them. Mefyn was right, thought Pedlar, you have to believe you’re being guided by the Good and Honest, the Intelligent and Wise, or you get the sensation that the world is not founded on order after all, but on chaos. Once you come to that conclusion, with the added knowledge that you can’t influence it at all, there’s nothing much to hold it all together.

  Out in the Hedgerow, Pedlar had lived pretty much by his own wits. Now he was having to live by other mice’s wits. Not only that: the other mice in question were themselves following mice who – it seemed to Pedlar – hadn’t got an inkling of what was going on or what to do themselves. The noseless leading the noseless. It seemed to Pedlar – though he would be the first to admit
that he was new to it all – that the very worst people were running the show. There were bright mice around. There were Cadwallon and Ethil, both quite capable mice, with a lot of common sense. But it seemed you never got a Cadwallon or an Ethil as chief of a tribe, because they hadn’t got the ambition, the arrogance, the ruthlessness actually required to drive them to the top positions.

  It seemed you had to be dense and callous to make it to the highest positions of mousedom.

  Pedlar sighed. It was all beyond him. He was as useless as the rest of them when it came down to it, when it came to changing things. The only difference between him and Mefyn or Owain, was that he knew it was all a mess, and they believed that everything was under control.

  He spent a desultory hour wandering the shelves of the library, tasting this and that book, even trying a cover or two here and there. Nothing really pared away the hunger which gnawed his insides. His stomach was a hollow place with an animal inside it, trying to get out.

  Iago stopped him again, on the third shelf, and made a few more suggestions. But Pedlar was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Iago was full of technical jargon and professional mystique, but no genuine information. He continued to roam over the tops of the books, traversing the hills and valleys created by the rise and fall of different spines. The ink insects on them were of interest to him only when they looked fresh and tasty.

  Halfway through the next hour a nudnik came into the library and the whole colony waited patiently to see if any food would follow this creature. However, it just sat and turned the pages of its book, staring into the insect markings.

  After a while, Pedlar confessed, ‘I’m so hungry this hour, I could eat a dog.’

  A mouse called Gwladys, sitting high-nose beside him, said, ‘It would taste awful.’

  ‘Yes, it would, wouldn’t it? Look at that great lump of a nudnik, sitting all folded up. Strange creatures, aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re just so dense,’ said Gwladys. ‘I mean, they’ve got a lot of flesh and bone, but their brain is the size of a dust mote. It’s a wonder they haven’t become extinct.’