The Carpet People (4 page)

"Protein is where you find it. I will have a piece with no fat on it," said Pismire, stepping down from the Orkson cart.

Snibril saw the weariness in the old man's face. His herb bag lay beside him, almost empty. Pismire ate in silence for a while, and then wiped his mouth.

"He's as strong as a horse," he said in answer to their unspoken question. "The gods of all large amiable creatures must have been present at his birth, whether he believes in them or not. He'll still be weak, though, until the poison has completely gone. He should stay in bed for at least two days, so I told Bertha six. Then he'll fret and bully her into letting him up the day after tomorrow, and feel a lot better for having outwitted me. Positive thinking, that's the style."

He looked at Snibril. "What about you? You might not have escaped half so easily. Oh, I know it's useless to say all this," he added, catching Bane's grin, "but I wish that the people who sing about the deeds of heroes would think about the people who have to clear up after them."

He held up his herb bag. "And with this," he said. "Just different types of dust, a few useful plants. That's not medicine. That's just a way of keeping people amused while they're ill. We've lost such a lot."

"You said that before," said Snibril. "What have we lost?"

"Knowledge. Proper medicine. Books. Carpography. People get lazy. Empires, too. If you don't look after knowledge, it goes away. Look at this." He threw down what looked like a belt, made up of seven different coloured squares, linked together with thongs.

"That was made by wights. Go on ... ask me."

"I think I've heard them mentioned ... wights?" said Snibril obediently.

"You see? A tribe. In the old days. The tribe. The first Carpet people. The ones who crossed the Tiles and brought back fire. They quarried wood at the Woodwall. They found out how to melt varnish off achairleg. Don't see them so much nowadays, but they used to be around a lot, pushing these big varnish-boilers from tribe to tribe, it's amazing the stuff they could make out of it ... Anyway, they used to make these belts. Seven different substances, you see. Carpet hair, bronze from the High Gate Land, varnish, wood, dust, sugar and grit. Every wight had to make one."

"Why?"

"To prove they could. Mysticism. Of course, that was long ago. I haven't seen wights for years. And now their belts turn up as collars on these ... things. We've lost so much. We wrote too much down, and forgot it." He shook his head. "I'm going to have a nap. Wake me up when we leave." He wandered off to one of the carts and pulled a blanket over his head.

"What did he mean?" said Snibril.

"A nap." said Bane. "It's like a short sleep."

"I mean about writing down too much. Who wrote down too much? What does that mean?"

For the first time since Snibril had met him, Bane looked uncomfortable.

"That's up to him to tell you," he said. "Everyone has ... things they remember."

Snibril watched him patting Roland absently on the muzzle. Who was Bane, if it came to that? He seemed to generate a feeling that made it hard to ask. He looked like a wild man, but there was something about him ... It seemed to Snibril that if a pot that was about to boil over had arms and legs, that would be Bane. Every move he made was deliberate and careful, as if he'd rehearsed it beforehand. Snibril wasn't sure if Bane was a friend. He hoped so. He'd be a terrible enemy.

He lay back with the belt in his lap and thought of wights. Eventually he slept. At least, it seemed like sleep, but he thought that he could still hear the camp around him and see the outline of Burnt End across the clearing. But he wondered afterwards. It seemed like a dream. He saw, in a little blurred picture hanging in the smoke-scented air, the Carpet. He was flying through the hairs, well above the dust. It was night-time and very dark although, oddly enough, he could see quite clearly. He drifted over grazing herds, a group of hooded figures-wights!-pushing a cart, a sleeping village ... and then, as if he had been drawn to this spot, to a tiny figure walking among the hairs. As he drifted down towards it, it became a person, all in white. Everything about it was white. It turned and looked up at him, the first creature he had seen who seemed to know he was there ... and he sank towards those pale, watchful eyes ...

He woke suddenly, and the picture faded, while he sat up clutching the seven squares tightly in both hands.

A little later they broke camp, with Pismire driving the leading cart.

Glurk lay inside, white and shaken but strong enough to curse colourfully every time they went over a bump. Sometimes Fray rumbled far off in the south.

Bane and Snibril, now wearing the belt around his waist, rode on ahead.

The Carpet was changing colour. That in itself was not strange. Around the Woodwall the hairs were dark green and grey, but west in Tregon Marus they were a light, dusty blue. Here the green was fading to yellow, and the hairs themselves were thicker and gnarled. Some bore fruit, large prickly balls that grew right out of the trunk of the hair.

Bane cut into one with his knife, and showed Snibril the thick sweet syrup.

Later they passed far under some kind of construction high in the hairs. Striped creatures peered down from their lofty fortress and hummed angrily as the carts passed beneath.

"They're hymetors," called out Pismire, while the noise thrummed above their heads. "Don't take any notice of them! They're peaceful enough if you leave them alone, but if they think you're after their honey they'll sting you!"

"Are they intelligent?" said Snibril.

"Together they are. Individually, they're stupid. Hah! The opposite of us, really. Incidentally, their stings are deadly."

After that no-one as much as looked at a syrup ball, and Bane spent a lot of time glancing upwards with one hand on his sword.

After a while they reached a place where two tracks crossed. A cairn of grit marked the crossroads. On the cairn, their packs at their feet, sat a man and a woman. They were ragged creatures; their clothes made Bane's clean tatters look like an Emperor's robe.

They were eating cheese. Both started to back away when Bane and Snibril approached, and then relaxed.

The man wanted to talk. Words seemed to have piled up inside him.

"Camus Cadmes is my name," he said. "I was a hair-cutter for the sawmill in Marus there. I suppose I'm still a hair-cutter now, too, if anyone wants to employ me. Hmm? Oh. I was out marking hairs for cutting and Lydia here had brought out my dinner and then there was this sort of heavy feeling and then-"

And then he'd got to a point where words weren't enough, and had to be replaced by arm-waving and a look of extreme terror.

"When we got back I don't think there was a yard of wall left standing. The houses just fell in on themselves. We did what we could but ... well, anyone who could just left. You can't rebuild from something like that. Then I heard the wolf things, and ... we ran."

He took the piece of meat that Snibril gave him and they ate it hungrily.

"Did no-one else escape?" said Snibril.

"Escape? From that? Maybe, those outside the walls. There was Barlen Corronson with us until yesterday. But he went after the syrup of those humming things, and they got him. Now we're going east. I've got family that way. I hope."

They gave them new clothes and full packs, and sent them on their way. The couple hurried off, almost as fearful of the Munrungs as they were of the other sudden terrors of the Carpet.

"Everyone ran," said Snibril. "We're all running away."

"Yes," said Bane looking down the west path with an odd expression. "Even these." He pointed, and there coming slowly up the path, was a heavy wagon drawn by a line of bent, plodding figures.

"Wights," said Bane. "Don't speak to them unless they speak first."

"I saw them last night in a dream ... " began Snibril.

Pismire showed no surprise. "You've got one of their belts. You know when you really work hard at something, you're really putting yourself into your work? They mean it."

Snibril slipped the belt from his tunic and, without quite knowing why he did it, slipped it into his pack.

Behind them the rest of the carts slowed down and drew to the side of the path.

The wight-drawn wagon rumbled on until it reached the cairn. Both parties looked across at the others. Then a small wight left the cart and walked across to Snibril and Bane. Close to, its robe could be seen to be, not just black, but covered in a crisscross of faint grey lines. The deep hood covered its face.

"Hello," said the wight.

"Hello," said Bane.

"Hello," nodded the wight again.

It stood there, and said nothing else.

"Do they understand language?" said Snibril.

"Probably," said Pismire. "They invented it."

Snibril felt its steady gaze from the hidden eyes. And he felt the hardness of the belt rubbing into his back, and shifted uneasily. The wight turned its gaze on Bane. "Tonight we eat the Feast of Bronze. You are invited. You will accept. Seven only. When the night-time fires are lit."

"We accept," said Bane, gravely.

The wight turned on his heel and strode back to the wagon. "Tonight?" said Pismire. "The Feast of Bronze? As if it was Feast of Sugar or Hair? Amazing. I thought they never invited strangers."

"Who's invited who?" growled someone from inside the cart. There was a stamping about, and Glurk's head poked through the curtains over the front.

"You know what I said about getting up ... " Pismire began, but since Glurk was already dressed there was very little he could do, except wink slyly at Bane and Snibril.

"Wights? I thought they were just a children's story," Glurk said, after it had been explained to him. "Still, it's a free meal. What's wrong with that? To tell the truth I don't know more'n a scrap about them, but I never heard of a bad wight."

"I'd hardly heard of wights at all until now," said Snibril.

"Ah, but you weren't alive when old Granddad was," said Glurk. "He told me he met one in the hairs once. He lent it his axe."

"Did he get it back?" said Pismire.

"No."

"That was a wight all right, then," said Pismire. "They tend to be too preoccupied to think about simple things."

"He said it was a good axe, too."

"There's no question of refusing to go," said Pismire.

"That's right," said Bane.

"But it's so easy to get things wrong. You know how sensitive they are. They've got all kinds of strange beliefs. You've got to know that, you two. Tell them, General."

"Well," said Bane, "seven's very important to them. Seven elements in the Carpet, seven colours-"

"Tell them about the Chays."

"I was coming to that ... seven Chays. They're like ... periods of time. But not regular ones. Sometimes they're short, sometimes they're long. Only the wights know how long. Remember the belt? Seven squares, and each represents a Chay. So the Chay of Salt, you see, is a time when people prosper and trade, and the Chay of Grit is when they build empires and walls ... am I going too fast?"

General? thought Snibril. That's what Pismire said. He wasn't thinking. And a general's a chief soldier ... and now they're all looking at me. None of them noticed!

"Hmm?" he said. He tried to recall what Bane had been saying. "Oh ... so tonight's Feast means we're in the Chay of Bronze, yes?"

"It means it's starting," said Pismire. "It's a time of war and destruction."

Glurk coughed. "How long does this last, then?"

"It'll last as long as the wights think it will. Don't ask me how they know. But tonight wights all over the Carpet will celebrate the Feast of Bronze. It's something to do with their memories."

"Sounds a bit unbelievable to me," said Glurk.

"Oh, yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't true."

"You certainly know a lot about them," said Snibril.

"I don't," said Pismire, simply. "You never know anything where wights are concerned. You remember tales, see things, pick up little bits of knowledge here and there, but you never know anything for certain."

"All right," said Glurk. He stood up on the driving-board of the cart. "We'll go. Don't see we can do nothing else, anyway. Bertha'll come, and Gurth, and, let's see ... yes, Damion Oddfoot. It strikes me that when a wight asks you to dinner you go, and that's it. In sevens."

They entered the wights' little camp sheepishly, keeping together.

Wights always travelled in numbers of seven, twenty-one or forty-nine. No-one knew what happened to any wights left over. Perhaps the other ones killed and ate them, suggested Glurk, who had taken a sort of ancestral dislike to axe-stealing wights. Pismire told him to shut up.

The oldest wight in the group was the Master. There were twenty-one in this group and Pismire, looking at their cart, pointed out the big varnish-boiler on top of it. Wights specialized in smelting the varnish that was mined at the Varnisholme, the giant pillar of red wood in the north known as achairleg in Dumii. Then they went from village to village, selling it. Varnish could be cast into a spear head, or a knife, or just about anything.

Snibril wondered how long would it be before anyone noticed he had shoved the belt back in his pack? But he wasn't going to give it up, he told himself. They'd be bound to want it back if they saw it.

There were seven fires, close together, and three wights around each. They looked identical. How do they tell one another apart, Snibril wondered?

"Oh, there's something else I forgot to tell you," said Pismire, as the wights busied themselves over their cooking pots. "They have perfect memories. Um. They remember everything. That's why they find it so hard to talk to ordinary people."

"I don't understand," said Snibril.