The Carpet Makers (25 page)

Cheun ate faster. He had to get back to the other men keeping watch on the mountain above. They were hungry, too, and were waiting for his return.

From the corner of his eye he saw old Soleun set aside his cracked bowl and give a fleeting smile as he drew his hand across his belly—an old habit, just as though he were actually full and satisfied. Cheun gave him only a cursory glance. He knew what was coming next.

“The heavens were not always dark,” Soleun began to recite with the thin voice of old age. “Darkness did not always oppress mankind when the night fell. Once, unimaginable ages ago, so long ago that the rain has long since washed all the mountains that were then young to the sea—at that time, there were stars at night in the firmament.”

The children loved these old men’s tales. Cheun made a dismissive face. It was reason enough to seek a warrior’s death, just in order to escape becoming childish in old age.

“Stars … Even after all this time, our language has kept a word for them,” Soleun continued thoughtfully. “Though no living eye has ever seen a star, we know from the traditions of our ancestors that a star is a small, fine point of light in the night sky. And thousands and thousands of these stars covered the heavens. Back then, the vault of heaven at night was a gloriously glittering fabric of light, like precious jewelry set with diamonds large and small. Then the enemies came. They came from another world to ours and extinguished the stars. Since that time, the night sky has been dark and afflicts our souls.”

The words of the old man and the reverent solemnity of his recitation unleashed something in Cheun that caused a shiver at the back of his neck, and he was immediately annoyed with himself.

“Since that day, the enemies have hunted us. Step by step, they drive us before them, kill us, and make our world uninhabitable. No one knows why. They drive us out and extend the Gray Land, farther and farther still. On the outside, they appear to be humans like us, but they are the servants of the Evil One. They are not just
our
enemies, but the enemies of Life itself, for they intend to cover the whole world someday with the Gray Land, so that nothing else remains … nothing but the Gray Land and the palace at its center, called the Palace of Tears. But we know that the enemies serve the Evil One, so we know, too, that they are doomed to destruction in the end. Evil does not exist by itself. The enemies may taste victory, but they will be destroyed and will pass into oblivion. We may taste death, but we will live eternally. All these horrors will end one day. Someday the stars will shine again. And when we see the stars again, we will be redeemed.”

At these words, the children raised their faces to the dark heavens and shuddered at the oppressive emptiness above them. The eyes of the adults remained gloomily fixed on the ground, and their breath appeared like fog in the light of the little fire.

Someday. Nobody knew when that would be. By then, the rain would probably wash these surrounding mountains to the sea, as well.

Although he had not yet emptied his bowl, Cheun stood up with an angry start. Impolitely, he passed the bowl to the woman beside him and walked from the circle into the darkness.

Here he could see nothing at all. He had to feel his way forward, up the mountain on a path he had memorized during the day. Every sound was important. He noted every small change in the echo made by his footsteps. The path was steep and dangerous.

He was out of breath when he reached the lookout camp, which the men had set up on the opposite face of the mountain ridge. Someone greeted him with a slap on his shoulder. Cheun reached for the hand and recognized Onnen, the tribe’s leader.

“Cheun! How do things look below? Are the old men reassuring themselves again with their fairy tales?”

Cheun gave a violent snort. He could sense the presence of the other men, could hear the sound of their breathing and their movements. There was fear in the air, and rage—impotent despair at having no defense against the enemy.

“Soleun is telling the old legends. He says we just have to wait until the enemies are destroyed by their own wickedness.”

There were scattered laughs from the darkness, short and hard, like barking. The slight breeze up here blew gently but bitter cold, and it began to sting Cheun’s face. His nostrils seemed to freeze from the inside and go numb.

“Has anything happened on the border?” Cheun asked into the impenetrable night.

“No,” someone said.

Cheun crept forward until he could see down into the plain. The other light was there, the light of the enemy. An almost imperceptible dark blue rim of light defined the course of the fortified border. The light was so diffuse that no details could be seen, only the angular silhouettes of colossal machines that had drawn up along the boundary.

Cheun remembered the first time he had seen this sight as a child. Before then, the border had been an endless, inconspicuous wire fence that killed everyone who came too close to it with a lightning bolt and whose flickering blue light glimmered at night like an ever-present threat. Then one day the machines arrived—slowly, like great beasts of gray steel. An endless column lined up side by side, one next to the other, until the front of moving machines finally stretched from horizon to horizon.

He had stood there at first and waited to see what would happen next. His tribe had not waited; they had packed up their few possessions and fled. But from a distance, he had continued to watch: men arrived and dismantled the fence. And as young as he was, Cheun still understood that they were clearing the way for the Gray Land, for the enemy who wanted to kill them all, even though they had done nothing to him.

And so it went, on and on. Again and again they had to flee, ever farther north, where it became ever colder and the food ever scarcer. Sometimes they had to fight other tribes whose territories they had entered in their flight from the enemy. And now they had reached the edge of the rocky Northern Massif. Now, the only path led into murderously cold, infertile desolation where they would die between the bare cliffs and steep chasms.

“What do you think, Cheun?” Onnen asked suddenly beside him.

Cheun jumped. He had been absorbed in his thoughts and memories and had not heard the clan chief approaching.

“I don’t know where we can run now,” he explained. “The only way left to us leads into the stony wasteland and, beyond that, the eternal ice. It makes no difference what we do—we can only choose a quick death or a slow one.”

“And what do you choose?”

“I choose to fight.”

Onnen was silent for a while. “I had planned to move on toward the sunrise, when it became necessary. If the reports are true, there are warm valleys there with fertile soil and many well-nourished animals. But it would be a long trek, and we would still need the next harvest in order to survive the journey. Their attack is coming too early. The enemies will move in the next few days and destroy our last fields down below, and if we’re still there when they come, they will kill us.”

“Then there’s no other way but to flee and leave the old ones and the weakest behind,” Cheun observed. During one escape, he had had to leave his sick mother behind and, from a great distance, had seen her hut disappear in a blast of fire from the enemy.

“I have another plan,” said Onnen. “We could try to stop them.”

Suddenly, Cheun was not sure whether this was just a bad dream. Stop them? What was the clan chief saying? None of their weapons was capable of inflicting even a scratch on the enemy’s steel behemoths.

“What are you thinking?”

“I want to kill one of them and take his weapons,” Onnen said calmly. “Our weapons are capable of nothing against the machines, but if we fire their own weapons against them, maybe we have a chance.”

It must be a dream. A nightmare. “Onnen, there are thousands of machines. Even if we could destroy one of them, it wouldn’t change anything—”

“But if we take one and use it to attack the others … that would change things!”

“They’re too powerful, Onnen. Destroy one, and a hundred others take its place.”

The voice of the chief was suddenly sharp and impatient. “Didn’t you say you choose to fight, Cheun?”

Cheun didn’t reply.

“Now is our only chance to act,” Onnen declared. He put his arm around Cheun’s shoulder, and though he could not see it, Cheun imagined that the chief was pointing down to the plain, to the border. “They’ve taken down the fence that throws lightning bolts, and their machines are far enough apart for a man to slip between them. And look carefully—there is very little light between some of them. We can sneak up under cover of darkness, penetrate the Gray Land, and attack from behind—they won’t expect that for sure. We’ll wait until one of them is alone and kill him with an arrow.”

Cheun had to admit that Onnen had thought this plan through. During the daytime, they had often seen single individuals walking behind the row of mobile machines. The Gray Land offered no hiding places, but that would not be necessary as long as it was dark. The enemies would not be expecting an attack from that direction, and because the machines sat in the pale blue light, it would be possible to see the enemy without being seen themselves.

And it was better to die in battle than on a sickbed.

“I’m with you,” said Cheun.

Onnen slapped him on the shoulder, pleased and also relieved. “I knew it.”

Now that the daring venture had been decided on, they didn’t hesitate for a moment. Onnen gathered the men around him and explained again what they would do. He designated one of the youngest as the sentry who would remain behind. He had them inspect the few weapons they possessed—stone axes, spears, bows and arrows—and then they began their descent to the fields.

Even in the darkness, they found the path. Fingers felt for protruding rocks and the stumps of dead branches, for dusty moss and clefts in the stone. Feet shuffled along, feeling their way across the scree to locate footholds, steps, and rock ledges. Every man knew when he had to duck and where he had to take care not to plunge headlong from the mountain.

Cheun felt violent rage igniting in his heart and stoking his battle lust. He had often suppressed his hate for the enemies because it was so painful to admit his inferiority—his absolute impotence—to himself. Just the idea, that it might be possible to inflict a wound on this vastly superior enemy, opened the floodgates of a lifetime’s pent-up hate and filled him with unrelenting energy.

They had come from another world to kill and to destroy, and if there had ever been a reason, it had been forgotten ages ago. And what would happen when they someday completed their senseless work, when they had killed everyone and had covered the whole planet with their gray stone? Maybe, Cheun thought, maybe things would all unfold differently than the legends prophesied. Maybe they had to annihilate their enemies in order to see the stars again.

Finally, he felt the parched grass of the plain against his legs. His mouth was dry, and he knew the others felt the same. Nobody spoke a word.

They marched toward the blue glow—over dry, rustling bunches of grass, through the treacherous snapping of cripplewood thickets, and through fields of new crops that would never ripen. Blackness surrounded them, except in the direction of the dark blue shimmer, which stretched like a seam from one end of the world to the other. Except for the sound of their steps and their breathing, everything was silent. All animals, even the smallest rodents and insects, fled away from the Gray Land border. They alone were marching toward it.

When they had put the fields behind them, Onnen stopped the warrior band.

“We must consider carefully how to proceed,” he whispered. “I think it’s best to split up into groups of two. Each pair will search out a different gap, and we will meet again over there in the Gray Land. And we’ll go in turns, not all at once. Or does anyone have a better suggestion?”

No one spoke. Hands groped through the dark, silently dividing the men into pairs.

“Now—go!” the clan leader rasped.

The first pair slipped away. After a while, the silhouettes of the two young warriors became visible against the border light. In front of the enemy vehicles, they appeared unexpectedly small and fragile, and only now, seeing this contrast, did Cheun realize how enormous the machines were—gigantic, gloomy metal mountains on armored wheels.

Involuntarily he shook his head. The enemies really were servants of the Evil One—yes, and they were more powerful. Their strength was boundless. They were the victors and would remain the victors forever.

No hope remained but for an honorable death. At least that would bring freedom from endless fleeing and hopeless suffering.

Two bangs cut through the frosty night air like cracks of a whip, and the waiting group jumped. Horrified, they watched as the two warriors collapsed, their arms jerking about as they fell.

“Halt!” Onnen called out to stop the second pair that had already headed off.

They stood there motionless and waited. Nothing happened; everything was still.

We have to think of another way,” Onnan whispered finally. “There seems to be no way through, even though the fence is gone. We have to think of something else.”

Cheun reached out his hand and touched Onnen’s arm. “It’s no use, Onnen. If we can’t penetrate the Gray Land, we can’t accomplish anything.”

“I refuse to just give up!” Onnen hissed angrily. “We have to think of something—”

Suddenly, the air was filled with a deep, rumbling sound that slowly grew louder, a sound like distant thunder. Cheun spun around once and tried to identify the source of the noise. It sounded dangerous.

“The attack,” someone whispered. “It’s starting.”

“They’ve never advanced during the night,” Onnen insisted stubbornly.

A high-pitched whirring joined in, like a gigantic swarm of insects coming relentlessly closer. Now Cheun was sure that it emanated from the chain of massive vehicles. It grew ever louder and shriller.

“It is!” he said. “It’s the machines.”

Then light flooded over them, unbearably bright after the total darkness, overwhelming in its reach from horizon to horizon. It struck their unprepared eyes so unexpectedly that it seemed brighter than the sun, brighter than a hundred suns. Cheun pressed his clenched fists to his closed eyes, and light still penetrated his eyelids, as though it were being pressed into his head, and it hurt. Then the ground shook beneath his feet, and he knew what it meant: the enemy’s machines had begun their onslaught, rolling toward them, unstoppable.