The Carpet People

‘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 roadmight 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 woodquarry. 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 thestranger, 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,