Read Online The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

small shelled creatures that dwelt in dust holes, and wondered if Jeopard was as good as Brocando made out because if it was, it looked as though they’d better stop eating and drinking right now so as to leave room for the feasts they were going to have.
    The track began to turn into a road, not a great white road like the Dumii built, but a neatly laid track of thick planks on a bank of dust. On eitherside the hairs grew thinner, and Snibril noticed many stumps. That was not all. No Munrung ever planted a seed. They liked vegetables when they could get them, and knew what grew where and which hairs dropped seeds that could be eaten, but except for Pismire’s private herb garden everything that grew around them grew wild. The reason was quite obvious, to a Munrung: if you planted something you had to stop and watch it grow, fight off the animals and any hungry neighbour that happened to be passing, and generally spend your time, as Glurk put it, hanging around. Vegetables to a Munrung were something to give the meat a bit of a special taste.
    But in the blue land of Jabonya, around the little city of Jeopard, the Deftmenes had turned the Carpet into a garden. There were hairs there that even Pismire had not seen before, not the great sturdy trunks that crowded the rest of the Carpet, but delicate stems, their branches laden with fruit. Dust had been carefully banked up beneath them to make soil for all sorts of shrubs and vegetables. The travellers were shown ripe purple groads, that tasted of pepper and ginger, and big Master Mushrooms that could be dried and stored for years and still kept their delicate flavour. Even the track had been raised above the gardens, and small shrublike hairs grew along its borderin a low hedge. It was an ordered land.
    ‘I never noticed that it looked like this,’ said Bane.
    ‘It certainly looks better without Dumii armies camped on it,’ said Brocando.
    ‘The men under my command were always instructed to treat the country with respect.’
    ‘Others were less respectful.’
    ‘Where are the people?’ asked Glurk. ‘I’ll grant you that a nice baked root goes down well, but all this didn’t grow by being whistled at. You’re always having to hang about poking at the ground, when you’re a farmer.’
    There were no people. The fruit hung heavy in the bushes along the roadside, but there were none to pick it, except the Munrung children, who did it very well. But there was no one else.
    Snibril took up his spear. This was like hunting. You learned about the different kinds of silence.
    There was the silence made by something frightened, in fear of its life. There was the silence made by small creatures, being still. There was the silence made by big creatures, waiting to pounce on small creatures. Sometimes there was the silence made by no one being there. And there was a very sharp, hot kind of silence made by someone there – watching.
    Bane had drawn his sword. Snibril thought:soldiers learn about silences, too.
    They looked at one another.
    ‘Shall we leave the carts here?’ said Snibril.
    ‘Safer to stick together. Don’t divide forces unnecessarily. First rule of tactics.’
    The carts moved on, slowly, with everyone watching the hairs.
    ‘The bushes just up on the right there,’ Bane said, without moving his head.
    ‘I think so, too,’ said Snibril.
    ‘They’re in there watching us.’
    ‘Just one, I think,’ said Snibril.
    ‘I could put a spear into it from here, no trouble,’ said Glurk.
    ‘No. We might want to ask it questions afterwards,’ said Bane. ‘We’ll circle around it on either side.’
    Snibril crept towards the bush around one side of a hair. He could see it moving slightly. Bane was on the other side of it and Glurk, who could walk very quietly for such a big man, appeared as if by some kind of magic in front of it, with his spear raised.
    ‘Ready?’
    ‘Ready.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Bane took hold of a dust frond, and tugged.
    A small child