House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  For reasons best known to himself Gorm had decided that the meeting should take place in the chimney of the inglenook fire in the living-room. It was to be at midnight, when Eyeball would be sleeping upstairs on the end of one of the nudnik’s beds, well out of the way. Spitz always went out for the night and terrorized the garden. Much as Gorm might have wanted the conversation to end in a bloodbath, he didn’t want it to be his blood, dripping from the jaws of a cold-eyed killer.

  The chimney was warm, if a little sooty. The fire had been lit during the day, but by midnight consisted of warm grey ashes. It was not difficult to skirt the grate where the logs had been burning, to scramble up the sooty brickwork, to the ledges above.

  Skrang and Pedlar had travelled beneath the safety of the hot-water pipes leading to the radiators. From here they crossed the living-room floor, through the forest of tall furniture legs, using the canopy of the table-top and chair seats as cover.

  They reached the ledge where Gorm was waiting just as the Great Clock was chiming the midnight hour.

  Gorm sneered. ‘I thought we agreed we would meet alone? I see you’ve brought a bodyguard with you. Please note that I kept my word and came without any escort. But then I’m no coward.’

  Pedlar ignored this remark, coming to the point immediately. ‘What’s the problem? Why are you sending your assassin after me?’

  ‘Why don’t you just get right down to it? – no need to greet me or anything,’ growled Gorm sarcastically.

  ‘I haven’t got the time for niceties Gorm. You’re the aggressor here. Kindly tell me why.’

  Gorm’s eyes narrowed and he shuffled around in the soot. ‘Because I’ve found out your little game, Outsider, that’s why. I know that you’ve been having secret liaisons with the high priestess Astrid, and I’ll see you dead for it.’

  What followed was one of those rare moments when innocence communicates itself. Pedlar looked so genuinely puzzled that Gorm began to realize he was wide of the mark even before he’d finished speaking. As a result his accusation became more and more defensive. ‘Well, she said she was going with a yellow-neck, one who could take care of himself in a fight… From what she told me, it sounded like a stranger. At least, she said I would never guess who it was, so I knew it must be a mouse she thought I didn’t know.’

  ‘Or who didn’t normally share nests with other mice,’ said Skrang, interrupting.

  ‘What?’ said Gorm. ‘What do you know about this, Skrang?’

  ‘Not a great deal. I have my suspicions, but I’m not going to pass them on to you. One thing I do know, and that is that Pedlar has had nothing to do with Astrid. I mentioned his name to her the other night and there was absolutely no reaction from her whatsoever. Instead she kept asking me whether it was too late for her to become a Deathshead.’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted Gorm. ‘She was trying to put you off the scent!’

  ‘I don’t think so – in fact I’ll go so far as to say I’m positive she was not. Being a spiritual warrior, I am adept at discovering whether someone is telling the truth or not, simply by studying their eyes. For instance, I know that you did not come here alone tonight, even though you say you did.’

  ‘What?’ cried Gorm. ‘You call Gorm-the-old a liar?’

  ‘Will you continue to deny it, or do I have to expose you in front of Pedlar here?’

  Gorm shuffled around in the soot for a moment longer, his tail whipping this way and that, his brow lowered as if ready to charge. He must have had second thoughts, probably because he remembered he was dealing with a Deathshead, a warrior trained in the deadly martial arts. Skrang could deliver an Ik-to bite before Gorm was three paces into his famous charge. For a house mouse he was big and very fierce, but he relied on his bulk and ferociousness, not his speed. Pedlar saw the chieftain gradually relax and the tension go out of his frame.

  ‘Well,’ said Gorm at last. ‘I’m not going to stay around here to be insulted. But if you say the yellow-neck is innocent, Skrang, I’ll have to accept that, even though you’re a yellow-neck yourself. You Deathsheads are supposed to be impartial and completely unbiased. This yellow-neck here can leave us – me, that is – now.’

  ‘And you’ll call off your assassin?’ said Skrang.

  ‘I’ll call off Jarl Forkwhiskers,’ agreed Gorm with a growl.

  Skrang turned to Pedlar and looked at him quizzically.

  The Outsider had established his innocence by his silence and now it was time for him to speak: ‘I’m satisfied, though it would be nice to get an apology for being attacked. I could have been killed.’

  Gorm muttered, ‘No-one gets apologies out of me. It was a mistake and that’s that. If you want an apology, you’ll have to take it out on this…’ and Gorm thrust his grizzly face forward aggressively.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Pedlar. ‘With the Great Nudnik Drive almost upon us, we all have more important things to think about now. No more petty personal battles! Speaking of which, haven’t you settled your differences with your son yet?’

  ‘The 13-K,’ Gorm answered, ‘have not settled their differences with me.’

  ‘Well, someone ought to persuade them to join the Revolution.’

  ‘How about you?’ crowed Gorm, sensing a chance to trap this upstart Outsider at last, or reveal him as a coward.

  Pedlar stared at the chieftain with unblinking eyes.

  ‘All right,’ he said carefully. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll come to the kitchen soon and you can let me into the lean-to woodshed.’

  ‘Right!’ snapped Gorm, trying to grasp it as a victory, but finding his sense of conquest slipping away from him.

  ‘Come,’ said Skrang to Pedlar. ‘It’s time we left.’

  Pedlar and Skrang left Gorm, who was muttering, ‘If it wasn’t the Outsider, who was it? Astrid is making me look a fool. She’ll be sorry for this.’

  ‘That was very brave of you,’ said Skrang to Pedlar, when they were out of earshot. ‘Are you sure you want to meet with Ulf and his motley crew? I’ve tried persuading them, you know, I got absolutely nowhere.’

  ‘Someone’s got to drag them into this thing. It’s got to be unanimous,’ replied Pedlar grimly. ‘I’m determined they shall be with us when Old Man’s Beard is on the Hedgerow.’

  When the pair were a short way from the inglenook fire, but hidden from view behind the table leg, Skrang stopped and motioned for Pedlar to be quiet. A nudnik had dropped a cotton reel on the floor by a chair and Skrang motioned for Pedlar to creep up and hide behind it. ‘Go up there, and watch,’ she whispered. She nodded towards the fireplace. Pedlar did as he was told, lying flat on his body behind the cotton reel.

  Peering around the side, Pedlar could see Gorm-the-old was standing there, staring out into the room. The chieftain of the Savage Tribe suddenly turned and called, ‘You can all come out now. They’ve gone.’

  From the walls of the chimney appeared several lumps of soot shaped like mice. They were coughing and spluttering, spitting out ash. Pedlar could see the whites of their eyes, and the pinks of their mouths as they blew down their noses and cleared their throats.

  ‘Hakon, Tostig, Ketil and Skuli,’ muttered Skrang, ‘but I can’t quite make out the fifth one, can you?’

  The two hidden yellow-necks were soon rewarded as to the identity of the fifth mouse when this lump of soot spoke to Gorm in a high whining voice.

  ‘Can I go home now, yer honour, please? I got soot in every orifice – up me nose, in me ears, in me mouth—’ he shifted his hind legs uncomfortably and flicked his tail ‘—and in other places too…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ growled Gorm, irritably. ‘Get out of my sight, you slug.’

  ‘I only come to visit,’ cried Phart. ‘An’ I get dragged into taking a barf in soot. I mean, I’m not even a Savage, I’m a Stinkhorn.’

  ‘You served the nation, you should be proud,’ Skuli told him.

  ‘I couldn’t give a gnat’s bum for the nation,’ shouted Phart, already halfway across the living-roo
m, trailing black pawprints across a white rug. Within a moment he was through the Miglan Hole and presumably on his way down to the cellar.

  Pedlar watched all this activity, half tempted to shout out and reveal his presence, but he decided that it would be better not to antagonize the leader of the Savages any more than necessary. Gorm was incorrigible and was never going to change, so there was no point in provoking him. Instead, he sneaked back to where Skrang was waiting for him.

  On the way back to the attics, Skrang collected I-kucheng from the Rajang Hole. Pedlar was not allowed to go with her and remained outside the nudnik bedroom, so that the hole would stay a secret of the Deathshead. When he finally saw the old mouse, being led by Skrang, Pedlar was shocked. I-kucheng had suddenly become very old and appeared to be almost blind. He hung on to the end of Skrang’s tail, following her slowly and stiffly.

  ‘Hello, I-kucheng,’ said Pedlar. ‘How are you?’

  The old mouse turned his head towards the sound. ‘Oh, quite well, quite well. Who is that?’

  ‘It’s Pedlar, the Outsider,’ said Skrang.

  ‘Oh, Pedlar. I see, yes, yes of course.’ There was a short pause, then, ‘Do I know a Pedlar? Never mind, I’m not too old to learn new faces, I hope. Pedlar. Strange name.’

  Pedlar thought it was sad that the great brain of the old mouse was reduced to such a state and he mentioned this quietly to Skrang.

  Skrang said, ‘He’s going deaf and blind, but his brain still has bursts of great energy. Don’t worry about him. He’ll last a lot longer than any of us, you wait and see.’

  Pedlar did not pursue the matter further. He could tell that Skrang would not allow herself to believe that I-kucheng was going to die soon. She had invested her whole life in the old spiritual warrior and Pedlar was afraid that once I-kucheng had gone, Skrang would go into a decline herself.

  There was one mouse, however, who wished he could do just that. Iban was just about as wretched as any mouse could be. He knew that Gorm was determined to find out who was stealing his high priestess, Astrid, and had threatened to kill the culprit. Now Iban was not personally afraid of Gorm: being a spiritual warrior he was not afraid of anyone. However, being in the wrong, he knew he might not defend himself if attacked by a self-righteous Gorm-the-old. He knew he would just stand and take the bites, without retaliating, because he was the sinner and deserved punishment.

  Finally, Iban decided the only honourable way out was suicide. He had to kill himself. Since he was a Deathshead, it needed to be certain death. He didn’t want to end up like Thorkils Threelegs for the rest of his life. So his decision was to seek death by the claws and teeth of Eyeball. Nothing was more certain than the weapons of the world’s most efficient killer. If anyone could end his miserable life at a single stroke, it was the terrible queen of cats, Eyeball.

  Iban entered the living-room through the open doorway. In a chair by the fire was a folded nudnik, peering at a magazine. Another nudnik was standing almost in the inglenook, poking the coals with an iron rod. A third was arranging flowers in a vase high up on the sideboard: she was humming to herself. There was soft music playing, coming from a wireless standing on the small table. It was a jigging type of tune, except that Iban did not feel like jigging, unless it was the kind one did when one’s neck was caught under a snap-wire trap.

  A fourth nudnik entered the room and slammed the door behind it. The massive oblong of timber crashed into its square hole causing an enormous wind to riffle Iban’s fur. Iban shook his head. It always amazed him when nudniks displayed their tremendous strength with shows like shutting the door. It would have taken a hundred mice to move that massive piece of lumber just a few inches.

  The new nudnik opened its mouth and boomed something, causing other nudniks to boom in response. They seemed to need to do this. It appeared to give them comfort.

  Iban inspected the room further.

  On the carpet by the first nudnik’s feet was Witless, fast asleep and snoring. On the windowsill, lying on the bottom edge of the pretty lace curtain, was the terrible shape of Eyeball.

  She too had her eyes closed and appeared to be sleeping, but Iban knew that cats never really slept. There could be a thousand discordant sounds in the air, all ignored, but the one sound in a thousand – the chink of a cat dish, the scratch of a mouse, the rustle of a flea-powder packet, the creak of a cat basket being carried into the room – any of these would have those eyes flying open, like shutters on strong springs, and the cat ready to run or pounce. Cats were instant creatures, their thoughts electric. They could seem, and probably were, totally relaxed one second, yet could become flashing, slashing, lithe and lissome creatures the next.

  Iban ran boldly towards the windowsill and sat, high-nose, beneath it, studying his enemy.

  Eyeball was not a large cat, but still she was awesome. Beneath that soft fur was a heart of thorns. There was not a seed of compassion in her breast. Iban watched the fur rising and falling gently and wondered that the great god Yo had ever thought to put such a cold nerveless mind in such fluffy wrappings.

  Pulling all his courage together, Iban drew a claw across the lino, causing the faintest of scratching sounds.

  The cat’s eyes flew open.

  She stared for the minutest part of a second, almost unable to believe what she saw: a mouse sitting high-nose, looking up at her as if waiting to be chastised for doing something naughty. Then she sprang, claws bristling, with but a single word escaping her lips.

  ‘Mourir!’

  For Iban, time slowed down to become almost motionless. The great shape of daggered fur seemed to part with the windowsill reluctantly. Iban waited for death to descend. He had made his peace with his god, and he was ready to depart this life.

  Unfortunately for both creatures, for the one who wanted to die and the one who wanted to kill, chance intervened. As the cat’s hind legs left the windowsill, they left with claws exposed: an array of terrifying weapons ready to plunge into Iban’s breast. Several of these curved spikes snagged on the hem of the lace curtain.

  When the cat was some way down, with the curtain stretched to its full limit, there was a ripping sound. Virtually the whole lace curtain tore away from the window and descended with the Burmese blue, trailing behind Eyeball like a ghost coming to the rescue of the sacrificial offering. This ghost seemed to wrap itself around the cat on landing, causing the creature to rip and tear at the netting with great ferocity and blinding speed. The more the feline creature struggled, spat and screamed, the tighter it became caught in the wispy folds of the curtain.

  ‘Un piège!’ shrieked the hapless animal. ‘Un piège!’

  Iban, confused and frightened, attempted to decipher the cat’s babblings about the trap she now found herself in.

  Then from the other side of the room came pandemonium. The nudniks, bless their delayed-action brains, had suddenly realized something was happening. There were shouts and yells, screams and curses. Witless, seeing one of his two mortal enemies trapped and helpless, bounded across the room. For an old hound he moved remarkably swiftly. His slobbery old jaws opened wide and he bit the cat firmly on the rump, a look of sheer joy in his eyes. There were more cries from the nudniks. Eyeball screamed what must have been dire threats at Witless, who made the most of the opportunity and bit her again.

  One of the nudniks had grabbed a broom and started to beat Witless around the head with it. Iban felt the wind of the weapon as it swept past him to strike Witless. Witless wisely moved after the first stroke and the second and third strokes caught Eyeball across the back. The cat was incensed at this and gave out an ear-splitting yell.

  ‘Assassiner!’

  The second nudnik bent down and tried to release the cat from its entanglements, only to be bitten and scratched for its trouble. The nudnik retreated with a little cry, blood trickling from its hand. Witless, no doubt thinking that Eyeball had now turned her allies into enemies, crept forward for another bite, only to be whacked around the head
again.

  More nudniks entered the room from other parts of the House, among them the Headhunter. A distressing cacophony filled the air. The wounded nudnik was led away by bovine comforters: two fat nudniks from the kitchen. The Headhunter seemed very interested in the way the cat was bound and kept pushing to the front to study her. Iban could see in the Headhunter’s eyes a definite desire to boil the cat and feed it to Little Prince.

  Witless was still looking on in glee, making occasional forays to the front through the assorted legs, but was wise enough not to attack again.

  It was plain that the chaos would continue for some time to come.

  Iban crept away, mortified at the disorder he had caused, and slipped through the door unhindered.

  He went straight from the living-room to the Gwenllian Hole and from there he made his way to a passage which would lead down to Tunneller’s domain. He intended to go out into the garden and offer himself to a passing kestrel, or perhaps await the exit of Merciful from her hole in the eaves.

  On the way, he passed the dark shape of Kellog, hurrying to pick up his daily tribute from the Savage Tribe.

  ‘Kill me!’ cried Iban, standing in the rat’s way.

  ‘Damn mice,’ grumbled Kellog, barging Iban aside with his broad shoulder. ‘I’m in no mood for jokes.’

  Then the ship rat was gone, having melted into the black, dusty spaces beneath the floorboards. Iban picked himself up, covered in dust and cobwebs, and sighed. He continued his journey down to the maze.

  Once in the maze he followed the route to the centre of the labyrinth, having been many times before. Suddenly he found his way barred by Tunneller.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ asked the gatekeeper.

  ‘I – um – Outside,’ said Iban.

  ‘Not without paying me you don’t,’ said the terrible shrew.

  Iban faltered. He had forgotten about the toll. Having no cheese on him he could not pass Tunneller. She had never been known to break her rule. No cheese, no way, she was fond of telling the mice.