Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People

Snibril murmured something, and looked around him. The camp was as peaceful as a camp could be, which was to say the early dawn was filled with noises and shouts, and the sounds of people. And they were cheerful sounds, with a note of defiance.

The attack had been beaten off. For a moment with first light glimmering in the hairs, the Munrungs felt in the mood to take on Fray and all his snargs. Some, like Bane, who never seemed to sleep, had stayed up by their fires, and early breakfasts were being cooked.

Without saying a word Bane raked a bundle out of the ashes. Warm smells rose from it. "Haunch of snarg, baked in its own juices," he said, slitting the burnt outer crust. "I killed the owner myself, I'm pleased to say."

"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.