The Carpet People

quite see . . . there’s fighting . . . hang on . . .’ He blinked. ‘It’s wights. Thousands and thousands of wights! They’re attacking the mouls!’
    Bane looked around at the defenders. ‘Then we’ve got one choice,’ he said. ‘Charge!’
    Caught between two armies, the mouls didn’t even have a million to one chance. And the wights fought like mad things . . . worse, they fought like sane things, with the very best weapons they’d been able to make, cutting and cutting. Like surgeons, Pismire said later. Or people who had found out that the best kind of future is one you make yourself.
    Afterwards, they found that Athan the wight had died in the fighting. But at least he hadn’t known he was going to. And wights talk to each other in strange ways, across the whole of the Carpet, and his new ideas had flashed like fire from wight to wight: you don’t have to accept it, you can change what’s going to happen.
    It was an idea that had never occurred to them before.
    *
    And then it was over.
    No one could find the Emperor. No one looked very hard. No one said anything, but somehow everyone assumed that Bane was in charge now.
    It doesn’t all stop with the fighting, Snibril thought. The end of the fighting is when the problems start, no matter if you’ve won or lost. There are thousands of people with one day’s food and no houses, and there’s still mouls out there – although I think they’ll be keeping away for a while. And the Empire’s in bits. And there’s still the High Gate Land to deal with.
    At least the question of food was easily settled. There were dead snargs everywhere. As Glurk said, there was no sense in letting them go to waste.
    Bane spent all day sitting in the ruins of the palace, listening to the crowds of people who filed past him, and occasionally giving orders. A squad was sent off to Jeopard, to bring back the rest of the Munrungs’ carts.
    Someone suggested that there ought to be a feast. Bane said, one day.
    And then they brought in Jornarileesh. He’d been badly injured by a spear, but Glurk’s snarg-gathering party had found him alive. They tried to drag him in front of Bane, but since he could hardly stand up there wasn’t much point.
    ‘There should be a trial,’ said Pismire, ‘according to ancient custom—’
    ‘And then kill it,’ said Glurk.
    ‘No time,’ said Bane. ‘Jornarileesh?’
    Despite his wounds, the moul raised his head proudly.
    ‘I will show you how a moul can die,’ he said.
    ‘We know that already,’ said Bane, matter-of-factly. ‘What I want to know is . . . why? Why attack us?’
    ‘We serve Fray! Fray hates life in the Carpet!’
    ‘Merely a natural phenomenon,’ murmured Pismire. ‘Bound to yield to scientific observation and deduction.’
    Jornarileesh growled at him.
    ‘Throw him in a cell somewhere,’ said Bane. ‘I haven’t got time to listen to him.’
    ‘I don’t think there are any cells,’ said Glurk.
    ‘Then get him to build a cell and then throw him in it.’
    ‘But we should kill him!’
    ‘No. You’ve been listening to Brocando too often,’ said Bane.
    Brocando bristled. ‘You know what he is! Why not kill—?’ he began, but he was interrupted.
    ‘Because it doesn’t matter what he is. It matters what we are.’
    They all looked around. Even Jornarileesh.
    It was me, thought Snibril. I didn’t realize I said it aloud. Oh, well. . .
    ‘That’s what matters,’ said Snibril. ‘That’s why Ware was built. Because people wanted to find better ways than fighting. And stop being afraid of the future.’
    ‘ We never joined the Empire!’ said Brocando.
    ‘When it was time to choose, whose side were you on?’ said Snibril. ‘Anyway, you were part of the Empire. You just didn’t know it. You spent so much time being proud of not being part of it that you ended up . . . well, being part of it. What would you do if the Empire didn’t exist? Go back to throwing people off rocks!’
    ‘I don’t throw people off rocks!’
    Jornarileesh’s head turned from one to the other in fascination.
    ‘Why did you stop?’ said Snibril.
    ‘Well – it just wasn’t the . . . never mind!’
    ‘These?’ said Jornarileesh, in astonishment. ‘These beat me? Weak stupid people arguing all the time?’
    ‘Amazing, isn’t it,’ said Bane. ‘Take him away and lock him up.’
    ‘I demand an honourable death!’
    ‘Listen to me,’ said Bane, and now the tone of his voice was like bronze. ‘I killed