The Carpet People

CHAPTER 15

It was two days later.

In a grove of red hairs on the borders of the blue land seven wights were fighting mouls. It was unheard of for wights to be attacked.

They never carried weapons, apart from the ones they were making for sale.

This moul pack was large, and led by a chieftain more cunning and wily than most. What he wanted was more weapons. Wights looked easy prey.

He was beginning to regret this decision.

The wights didn't carry weapons, but they did carry tools. And a hammer is a weapon, if you hit a head instead of a nail. They were standing around their big varnish-boiler and fighting back-hammering back, and using varnish ladles as clubs, and bits of burning hair as crude spears.

But they were outnumbered. And they were all going to die. They knew it.

There was someone watching who knew it too.

Culaina the thunorg watched from deep in the hairs. It would be impossible to describe how a thunorg sees things. It would be like trying to explain the stars to a fish. How can it be said that she watched the fight a million times, all at the same instant, and every time the wights lost?

It's the wrong description. But it will have to do.

But among all the outcomes there was just one, as alone as a pearl on a seashore of black sand, that was different.

She turned without moving, and concentrated on it-

The hairs erupted people. The mouls turned to fight, but suddenly they were between two enemies.

The Deftmenes and the Munrungs had found an unbeatable fighting method. The tall Munrungs stood behind the small Deftmenes and fought over the top of them; no enemy had much of a chance on two levels at once.

It was a short fight, and a terribly effective one.

After a few minutes, the remaining mouls ran for it. Some of the new attackers broke away to follow them.

And then it was over-in this pearl-on-a-seashore time, when someone whose whole life was a choice had been close enough to choose.

Athan the kilnmaster, leader of this band, looked up with horror as a white horse trotted through the lines of his rescuers. There was a small figure riding it.

"How can this be! We were supposed to die!" he said. "All of us!"

"Did you want to?" said Snibril, dismounting.

"Want? Want? That doesn't come into it," said Athan, throwing down his hammer. From out in the hairs came the screech of a moul.

"You changed things," said Athan. "And now terrible things will happen-"

"They don't have to," said Snibril, calmly. "Nothing has to happen. You can let things happen. But that's not the same. We're going to Ware. There's Munrungs and Deftmenes and a few other refugees we picked up along the way. Why not come?"

Athan looked shocked and angry. "Us? Wights!? Fighting?"

"You were fighting just now."

"Yes, but we knew we would lose," said Athan.

"How about fighting and hoping you'll win?" said Snibril. He turned as a Munrung approached, carrying a wight.

"Our Geridan is dead, and one of the Deftmenes," said the Munrung. "And one of the wights. But this one's still alive ... just."

"That is Derna," said Athan. "My ... daughter. She should be dead. In a way ... she must be dead ... "

"We have some medicines," said Snibril quietly. "Or we could bury her now, if that's what you want ... "

He looked expectantly at the kilnmaster, who had gone white.

"No," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Good. Because we wouldn't have done it anyway," said Snibril briskly. "And then you'll come with us."

"But I don't ... know ... what will happen next," said the wight. "I can't remember!"

"You joined us and went to Ware," said Snibril.

"I can't remember what's going to happen?"

"You joined us," Snibril repeated.

Relief flooded across Athan's face. Suddenly he looked frantically happy, like a child who has been given a new toy. "Did I?" he said.

"Why not?" said Snibril. "It must be better than being dead."

"But this ... this is thunorg thinking," said Athan. "The future is The Future, not ... not ... " he hesitated, baffled," ... not ... perhaps ... really? The future can be all different things-?"

"Pick your own," said Snibril.

"But destiny-"

"That's something you make up as you go along," said Snibril. "I've been finding that out."

He looked up at a faint sound, faint enough not to be heard except by someone who was a hunter and whose life depended on noticing tiny noises. For a moment he thought he saw a pale figure in the shadows, smiling at him. Then it vanished.

Geridan was buried among the hairs with the Deftmene noble Parleon, son of Leondo, killed by a snarg, and the wight who had died.

The remaining wights huddled amongst themselves, and Snibril could hear them arguing. But he knew he'd won. They hadn't got a future any more. They had to have the one he'd given Athan. They weren't used to making them for themselves.

They cast the last of the hot varnish into swords and spearheads, and piled them up so that the ragged army could help themselves and when the army left they went too, leaving the cart alone and cold.

A million times the wights lost, and were killed. But that was somewhere else, in a world that might have been. And now they were alive. And that's known as History, which is only written by the living.