The Carpet People (10 page)

"But we can't leave Gl-ow! Oh. Yes. Of course. Yes, I see. You're right." Brocando's voice suddenly took on the kind of excited conspiratorial tone that would have made anyone smell a rat who didn't already smell like a moul. "All three of us. Yes. You've definitely got all three of us. How well can you see in the dark, incidentally? Probably not one-hundred-per-cent, eh?"

Oh, no, Pismire thought. How can they not get suspicious after that?

"Ow!" said Gormaleesh.

"Moul scum," said Bane. "When I get out I'll-"

There was the sound of a slap in the darkness.

"When you get out," said Gormaleesh, "you will do exactly as I say. Bring them along."

Well done, thought Pismire. Bane can count fast as well.

They were marched in shuffling single file for quite a short time. They must have been close to a way up to the surface. Pismire felt his hands guided to a ladder. We're going up and out, he thought. If Glurk wakes up, how will he know?

He climbed a few steps, and then let himself drop again.

"Ow! My leg! Ow!" The noise echoed around the caves of Underlay.

"What is the matter with your leg, old man?" said Gormaleesh.

"Nothing," said Pismire, and climbed back up the ladder.

And if Glurk hasn't heard that, we're done for.

It was already night on the surface.

They'd climbed out into a clearing, a long way from Jeopard. It seemed to be a gathering place for the surviving mouls from the city. The prisoners were tied up with leather thongs and thrown down by a bush. Nearby, a pack of snargs eyed them hungrily.

The mouls were talking in their own language, occasionally turning to look at the prisoners.

"Can you understand them?" said Pismire.

"Very crudely," said Bane. "They're taking us somewhere. Called ... gargatass, if that means anything."

"That's their word for the High Gate Land, I think," said Pismire. "Where the Vortgorns live."

"Them? They're our mortal enemies," said Brocando.

"I thought the Dumii were your mortal enemies," said Pismire.

"We like to have several mortal enemies at one time," said Brocando. "Just in case we run out."

Pismire took no notice. He was lying a little apart from the other two, and could see behind the snarg pack. In the glow of the moul's campfire he could just make out a guard lounging by the little overgrown entrance to Underlay, with his snarg tethered to a dust bush.

An arm was slowly growing out of the bush behind the unsuspecting moul. It stopped a few inches above his head, and carefully removed his helmet. The moul turned, and met a fist coming the other way. The arm caught him before he fell and dragged him into the bush ...

A moment later the hand appeared by the snarg, and started untethering it. It looked up, and with horror Pismire saw its eyes narrow. Before it could growl, though, the hand bunched up into a knotted fist and smacked it smartly between the eyes. He heard the creature give a little sigh, and saw it fall over slowly. Before it reached the ground the tether tightened and tugged it into the bush.

Pismire didn't know why, but he felt sure that everything was going to be all right.

Or, at least, more all right than it was now.

All that night they journeyed south. Most of the pack were mounted on their snargs, though the prisoners and their guards had to run along in the middle of the jostling bodies. Dawn came. The hairs around had changed from deep purple to red again.

The next days merged for the prisoners into one continuous blur of running feet and moul voices. The hairs changed from crimson to orange, from orange to black. Feet blistered and bled, and minds were muddled by the constant pounding. Twice they crossed white Dumii roads, late at night, when no-one was abroad, and passed by sleeping villages like shadows.

And then there was a place ... above the Carpet.

The hairs were bent almost double under the weight of the High Gate Land of the Vortgorns. First it was a glimmer between the hairs. An hour later it loomed above them, the largest thing Pismire had ever seen. He had read about it, back in the old days, but the descriptions in the books had not got it right at all. You needed bigger words than "big".

It looked the largest thing there could ever be. The Carpet was big, but the Carpet was ... everything. It didn't count. It was too big to have a size.

But the High Gate Land was small enough to be really huge.

It looked quite near even from a long way off. And it shone.

It was bronze. All the metal in the Carpet came from there. Snibril knew that much. The Vortgorns had to trade it with the wights for food. Nothing grew on the High Gate Land.

"On Epen Ny," said Pismire, under his breath, while the party stopped for a brief rest under the very walls of the Land. Brocando had immediately fallen asleep. He had shorter legs than everyone else.

"What?" said Brocando, waking up.

"That's the battle cry of the Vortgorns," said Pismire. "Lots of people remembered it, but not for very long. It was often the last thing they heard. On Epen Ny. It's written on the Land. Huge metal letters. I've seen pictures. It'd take you all day just to walk around one letter."

"Who wrote them?" said Brocando, eyeing the guards.

"The Vortgorns think it was done by Fray," said Pismire. "Superstition, of course. There's probably some natural explanation. The Vortgorns used to say there's letters under the Land, too. They dug tunnels and found them. Some of them say ... " he concentrated " ... I ZABETH II. The Vortgorns seem to think that's very important."

"Giant letters can't just grow by themselves," said Brocando.

"They might. Who knows?"

They looked up at the Land. Around the base of it ran a road. It was wider than a Dumii road, yet in the shadow of that looming wall it looked thinner than a thread.

"Anyone know much about the Vortgorns?" said

Pismire. "I've read about them, but I don't remember ever seeing one."

"Like the Dumii, but without their well-known flair and excitement," said Brocando.

"Thank you," said Bane gravely.

"Well, living on metal all the time must give you a very sombre and mystical view of life," said Pismire.

"Whose side are they on?" said Brocando.

"Sides? Their own, I suppose, just like everyone else."

The mouls milled around aimlessly, waiting for something.

"I suppose we're waiting to get up there," said Brocando, "but how?"

"Dumii patrols have been all round the Land and found no way in," said Bane.

Pismire, who was squinting upwards, said: "Ah. But I think this remarkable mechanism is the secret."

High above them was a speck on the wall. Slowly it grew bigger, became a wide platform sliding down the bronze. They could see heads peering over the side of it.

When it landed beside the pack Pismire saw that it was a simple square made of hair planks with a railing around them. Four bronze chains, one from each corner, rose up into the mists. A man stood at each corner. Each one was as tall as Bane. They wore helmets and body armour of beaten bronze, and carried by their sides long bronze swords. Their shields were bronze, round like the High Gate Land itself, and their hair was the colour of the metal. They had short square beards, and grey eyes that stared calmly ahead of them. Too much metal, Pismire thought. It enters the soul.

"Er," Brocando whispered, as they were pushed forward on to the platform, "you haven't, er, seen or heard anyone, as it were, following us? Someone, such as it might be, your chief? The big fellow?"

"Not a sign since we left Underlay," said Pismire. "I've been watching and listening very carefully."

"Oh, dear."

"Oh, no. That's good news. It means he's out there somewhere. If I had seen or heard anything, I'd know it wasn't Glurk. He's a hunter, you see."

"Good point. Ow!" A whip stung Brocando's legs as the mouls led their nervous mounts on to the planks.

When the last one was aboard one of the bronze guards took a trumpet from his belt and blew one note. The chains around them shook and rattled as they took up the slack and then, with a creaking, the platform swung off the ground and up towards the Land.

Pismire had been forced up against one of the railings by the press of animals, and so it was that he saw a shadow detach itself from the dust bush by the base of the wall and dash for the rising platform, trying to find a handhold on the underside.

He saw it leap; but at that moment the platform swung, and he could not see the shadow again.

Up rose the entrance to the Land, through swirling fogs, and then he realized he was looking out over the Carpet. Beneath him the tips of the hairs gleamed in the mist. It made him dizzy, so he tried to take his mind off things by giving the others a short lecture.

"The Deftmenes say that this Land fell out of the above many years ago. The Vortgorns were just another small tribe that lived nearby. They climbed it, too, and hardly ever come down."

"Then why are mouls in the Land?"

"I'd rather not think about it," said Pismire. "The Vortgorns may be a bit dull, but I've never understood them to be evil."

The platform ground on up the wall until, suddenly, it stopped. Before them was a bronze gate, built on top of the wall. Just above it heavy gantries carried the pulleys that raised and lowered the platform. They were plated with bronze, and studded with spikes. The gateway was spiked, and the portcullis in it was tipped with more spikes. Beneath them, far beneath, lay the Carpet.

"They like their privacy, these people," remarked Bane.

Behind him Gormaleesh hissed. "Look your last at your precious Carpet. You will not see it again."

"Ah. Melodrama," said Pismire.

"So you think-" Gormaleesh began.

The last word ended on a yelp. Brocando had sunk his teeth into the moul's leg.

Whimpering with pain and rage Gormaleesh picked up the Deftmene king and rushed with him to the edge of the platform, raising him over his head.

Then he lowered his arms, and smiled. "No," he said slowly. "No. Why? Soon you will wish that I had thrown you over. Throwing you over now would be mercy. And I don't feel merciful ... "

He dropped the trembling Brocando by the others just as the portcullis rose.

"I wasn't shaking," said Brocando. "It's just a bit chilly up here."

The mouls marched on to the High Gate Land. Pismire saw a broad metal plateau, with what looked like hills in the distance. On either side as they marched were cages, with thick bars. They contained snargs. There were small brown snargs from the Woodwall lands, red snargs from the west, and black snargs with overlong teeth.

Whatever their colour, they all had one thought in mind. They hurled themselves at their bars as the prisoners passed.

On they went, and there were compounds where snargs were being broken in and trained. Further, and there were more cages, bigger than those of the snargs. They contained ... strange creatures.

They were huge. They had fat barrel bodies with ridiculous small wings, and long thin necks tipped with heads that wobbled slowly round as they passed. At the other end they had a stubby little tail. Their legs didn't look thick enough to support them. Oh, they were thick-but something that big ought to have legs as thick as giant hairs.

One of the creatures poked its head through the bars and looked down at Pismire. Its eyes were large but bright and oddly intelligent, and topped by enormous bushy brows.

"A pone," he said. "A pone! From the utter east, where the very fringes of the Carpet touch the Floor. The biggest things in the Carpet. Oh, if we had a few of those at our command-"

"I think perhaps they are under the command of the mouls," said Bane.

The pone watched him pass.

They reached the angular metal hills and went through a dark archway. Inside they were handed over to other, swarthier, mouls.

There was a maze of tunnels that echoed with the chip-chip of hammers, but these they passed, going deeper, until they came to a dimly-lit hall lined with doors. One was opened, and they were thrown inside.

As they struggled on the dank floor Gormaleesh's grinning face appeared at the bars, lit red in the torchlight of the dungeons. "Enjoy the hospitality of our dungeons while you may. Soon you'll go to the mines. There you will not sleep. But you'll be safe from Fray!"

"Why do they talk like that?" said Pismire. "Melodrama. I'm amazed he doesn't go 'har-har-har'."

"Gormaleesh!" said Bane.

The moul reappeared. "Yes, lowly scum?" he said.

"Lowly scum," said Pismire. "Imagination of a loaf of bread, that one."

"When we get out of here I'm going to find you and kill you," said Bane, in quite normal conversational tones. "I thought I ought to tell you now. I wouldn't want you to say afterwards that you hadn't been warned."

Gormaleesh stepped back; and then said, "Your threats I treat with scorn. Har-har-har!"

Pismire nodded happily. "Knew he would, sooner or later," he said to himself.

They lay in the darkness, listening to the distant knocking of the hammers.

"So these are the mines," said Brocando, "where my people have been taken. Mining metal."

"Everyone's people, by the sound of it," said Pismire.

He lay staring at the dark, wondering about Glurk. He could have imagined the shadow. And Snibril ... well, perhaps he did get out before the roof fell in ...

They were roughly woken by the prodding of a spear.

Two mouls were standing in the doorway, grinning down at them. "These three for the mines, eh?"

"Aye," came a growl from outside. Pismire's ears pricked.

"That one's a bit small, and that one's an old codger. Still, use up the old ones first, eh?"