The Carpet People

spaces between hairs so that they could only move by hacking their way through undergrowth that clawed and pricked them.
    Once, in a patch of thick orange hairs, something hurtled out of the tangled bushes and buried itself in a hair bole by Snibril’s head. It was a spear.
    Up in the hairs a shadow scampered, swinging to safety on a creeper while Deftmene arrows whined around it like hymetors. They never found out what it was, although it might have had something to do with the fact that, a little later, they found a city.
    It was not on any maps of the Carpet. For sometime they had been walking through its overgrown streets, not realizing they were streets, until they found the statues. Little blue dust flowers grew on them, and fluff had planted itself around them, but they still stood in the centre of their lost city. They had been four kings; wooden crowns were on their wooden heads and they each pointed with one arm to a different point of the compass. Ferns grew around their feet, and small creatures had made their homes in crooks of arms and folds of carven clothing.
    Around them, when you knew what you were looking for in the way the hairs grew and dust mounds were banked, was the city. Age hung upon it like smoke. Thick hairs grew in the ruins of buildings, dust had filled the streets. Creepers and tendrils had done their work, breaking down walls and venturing into hidden walls. Insects chirruped in broken archways. Hair pollen made the air sparkle.
    ‘Do you know this place?’ said Snibril.
    No one did. Even Athan had never heard of it.
    ‘Places can get lost,’ he said. ‘People leave. Hairs grow up. Roads are overgrown.’
    ‘By the look of those statues, they thought the place would last for ever,’ said Snibril.
    ‘It didn’t,’ said Athan, flatly.
    And now they’ve gone, thought Snibril. Orthere’s just a few left, hunting around in the remains of their city. No one knows who they were, or what they did. No one even remembers their name. That mustn’t happen to us.
    The wights weren’t talkative now. It must be like being blind, Snibril thought. We’re used to not knowing what’s going to happen . . .
    A couple of hours later they reached a Dumii road. It was white, made of split hairs laid edge to edge. Every few hundred yards there was a hair carved with a finger. All the fingers pointed to Ware.
    They rode along it a little way. Here and there the road had been broken when the Carpet had moved, and they had to take to the hairs to get around the break.
    That’s where they found the legion, or what was left of it. Dumii soldiers were sitting or lying amongst the hairs by the side of the road. Some of them were asleep. Others were wounded.
    He’d seen plenty of soldiers in Tregon Marus, but they had simply been on guard. These looked battered, their uniforms ragged and often bloodstained.
    They hardly bothered to look up as Snibril rode by. But the ones who did caught sight of the Deftmenes, and started nudging their colleagues. One or two even reached for their swords.
    There was muttering from the Deftmenes, too. They moved closer together, and eyed the Dumii suspiciously.
    Snibril turned in his saddle.
    ‘Don’t make any trouble,’ he snapped.
    ‘Why not?’ said a sullen voice from among the Deftmene ranks. ‘They’re Dumii!’
    ‘You’d prefer them to be mouls, would you?’
    He walked Roland over to a group of soldiers sitting on a fallen hair.
    ‘Where is your leader?’ he said.
    The Dumii looked him up and down. ‘Haven’t got one,’ he said. ‘General got killed.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘I expect you’re wondering who we are,’ said Snibril.
    ‘Too tired to wonder,’ said the soldier, leaning back against a hair.
    ‘Stand up straight!’
    For a moment Snibril wondered who had said that. Then he realized that it had been him.
    To his amazement, the soldier pulled himself upright.
    ‘Now take me to the highest-ranking officer!’ said Snibril. I mustn’t say ‘please’, he thought. I mustn’t give him a chance to think. He’s used to orders. It’s easier for him to obey orders than think.
    ‘Er . . . that’d be Sergeant Careus. If he’s still alive.’
    ‘Take me to him now !’
    The soldier looked past Snibril at the ragged army. His forehead wrinkled.
    ‘I shall talk to the sergeant!’ said Snibril. The soldier snapped back to attention.
    ‘Yessir. This way,’ he said.
    Snibril was led past groups of sullen soldiers to a heavy-set man