Terry Pratchett: The Carpet People

The two of them made their way to the carts. It was less than a day since Fray had come. But what a day ...

Arguments, mostly. The richer Munrungs hadn't wanted to leave, especially since no-one had a clear idea of where they would go. And Pismire had gone off somewhere, on business of his own.

Then, in the middle of the morning, they had heard snarg cries in the south. Someone saw shadows gliding among the hairs. Someone else said he saw eyes peering over the stockade.

After that, the arguments stopped. The Munrungs were used to travelling, as people suddenly pointed out. They moved around every year or so, to better hunting grounds. They'd been planning this move for months, probably. It wasn't as if they were running away, everyone said. No-one could say they were running away. They were walking away. Quite slowly.

Before mid-afternoon the area inside the stockade was filled with carts, cows and people carrying furniture. Now the bustle was over, and they all waited for Glurk. His cart was the finest, a family heirloom, with a curved roof covered with furs. It needed four ponies to pull it; huts were things you built to last a year or so, but carts were what you handed down to your grandchildren.

Behind it a string of pack ponies, laden with the Orkson wealth in furs, waited patiently. Then came the lesser carts, none as rich as the Orkson cart, though some almost equalled it. After them came the poorer handcarts, and the families that could only afford one pony and one-third shares in a cow. And last came the people on foot. It seemed to Snibril that those who carried all their personal goods in one hand looked a bit more cheerful than those who were leaving half theirs behind.

Now they needed Pismire. Where was he?

"Isn't he here?" said Glurk. "Well, he knows we're going. He'll be along. I don't think he'd expect us to wait."

"I'm going on ahead to find him," said Snibril shortly.

Glurk opened his mouth to warn his brother and then thought better of it.

"Well, tell him we'll be moving along towards Burnt End, along the old tracks," he said. "Easy place to defend tonight, if it comes to it."

Glurk waited until the last straggler had left the stockade, and then dragged the gate across. Anyone could get in through the broken walls, but Glurk still felt that the gates should be shut. That was more ... proper. It suggested that they might come back one day.

Snibril was trotting up the road ahead of the procession. He rode the white horse, a little inexpertly, but with determination. The horse had been named Roland, after an uncle. No-one questioned his right to name it, or to own it. The Munrungs, on the whole, agreed with Dumii laws, but finders-keepers was one of the oldest laws of all.

A little way on he turned off the road, and soon the dazzling white wooden cliff of the Woodwall rose above the hairs. Roland's hooves made no sound on the thick dust that lay about, and the Carpet closed in. Snibril felt the great immensity of it all around him stretching far beyond the furthermost limits of the Empire. And if the Dumii road might lead to distant places, where might this old track lead?

He sat and watched it sometimes, on quiet nights. The Munrungs moved around a lot, but always in the same area. The road was always around, somewhere. Pismire talked about places like the Rug, the Hearth and the Edge. Faraway places with strange-sounding names. Pismire had been everywhere, seen things Snibril would never see. He told good stories.

Several times Snibril thought he heard other hooves nearby. Or were they black paws? Roland must have heard them too, for he trotted along smartly, always on the edge of a canter.

Dust had drifted up between the hairs here, forming deep mounds where herbs and ferns grew thickly and made the air heavy with their scent. The path seemed to grow drowsy, and wound aimlessly among the dust mounds for a while. It opened out into a clearing right by the south face of the Woodwall.

It had dropped from the sky, many years before. It was a day's march long, and a good hour's walk wide. Half of it had been burned-unimaginably burned. Pismire said there had been one or two others, elsewhere in the far reaches of the Carpet, but he used the Dumii word: matchstick.

Pismire lived in a shack near the old wood quarry. There were a few pots lying around the door. Some thin half-wild goats skipped out of the way as Roland trotted into the clearing. Pismire was not there. Nor was his little pony.

But a freshly-tanned snarg skin was hanging by the cave. And someone was lying on a heap of ferns by a small fire, with his hat pulled down over his face. It was a high hat that might once have been blue, but time had turned it into a shapeless felt bag about the colour of smoke.

His clothes looked as though they had gathered themselves round him for warmth. A tattered brown cloak was rolled under his head as a pillow.

Snibril left Roland in the shade of the hairs and drew his knife. He crept towards the sleeper and made to raise his hat brim with the knifepoint.

There was a blur of activity. It ended with Snibril flat on his back, his own knife pressed to his throat, the stranger's tanned face inches from his own.

The eyes opened. He's just waking up, Snibril thought through his terror. He started moving while he was still asleep!

"Mmm? Oh, a Munrung," said the stranger, half to himself. "Harmless!" He stood up.

Snibril forgot to be frightened in his haste to be offended.

"Harmless!"

"Well, by comparison to things like that," said the stranger, indicating the skin. "Pismire said one of you might show up."

"Where is he?"

"Gone off to Tregon Marus. He should be back soon."

"Who are you?"

"I like the name Bane."

He was clean-shaven, unusual in anyone but young Dumii boys, and his red-gold hair was bound up in a plait down his back. Although in some ways he did not appear much older than Snibril himself, his face was hard and lined except for his grin. At his belt hung a fierce-looking short sword, and there was a spear beside his pack.

"I was following mouls," he said, and saw the blankness in Snibril's face. "Creatures. From the Unswept Regions, originally. Nasty pieces of work. They ride around on these things."

He indicated the skin again.

"Weren't you afraid of the eyes?"

Bane laughed, and picked up his spear.

Then Pismire was with them, the rangy figure riding into the clearing, long legs almost touching the ground on either side of his pony. The old man showed no surprise that Snibril was there.

"Tregon Marus has fallen," he said slowly. Bane groaned.

"I mean fallen," said Pismire. "Destroyed. The temples, the walls, everything. And snargs everywhere in the ruins. Fray has crushed the town. It was at the epicentre-right underneath," he went on wearily. "It has been a long, horrible day. Where've the tribe gone? Burnt End? Good enough. Very defensible situation. Come on."

Bane had a small pony, grazing among the hairs. They set off, keeping close to the wooden cliff.

"But what is Fray?" said Snibril. "I remember you telling stories about old times ... but that was long ago. Some kind of monster. Not something real."

"The mouls worship it," said Bane. "I'm ... something of an expert."

Snibril looked puzzled. The Munrungs didn't have gods. Life was complicated enough as it was.

"I have theories," said Pismire. "I've read some old books. Never mind about the stories. They're just metaphors."

"Interesting lies," translated Bane.

"More like ... ways of telling things without having to do much explaining. Fray is some kind of force. There were people who used to know more, I think. There were old stories about old cities that suddenly vanished. Just legends, now. Oh, dear. So much gets forgotten. Written down and then lost."