House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  They listened, stupefied, to this briefing. Most of them had no desire to become soldiers, but had little choice. They were wishing they had chosen someone like Gytha Finewhiskers as their temporary leader. He might be a bit of a ponce, but he wasn’t full of this army crap. Plots were hatched there and then, to get rid of this maniac general whom Gorm-the-old had suggested as his replacement.

  Gorm himself, on the end of the last row because his coat was a shade of charcoal grey, listened with satisfaction. It would not be long before he would be offered his old place as chieftain of the tribe, he was sure of that. He could still beat most of them in single combat, but he didn’t want to have to fight his way back to the top. It would leave him scarred and bruised. Better to give them a dose of General Gunhild and then head a revolt against her at some later stage. In the meantime he needed to rest and recuperate from his wounds.

  All over the House, among the Deathshead, among the 13-K, tribal preparations and pep talks were taking place.

  ‘At least,’ said Ulf to his band in the lean-to woodshed, ‘my old pa isn’t going to be in charge for once. He’s just a ranker now in Gunhild’s storm-troopers. Serve the old devil right!’

  He said this, but running through Ulf’s real feelings was a deep vein of chagrin. Mice like Ulf are always able to do political U-turns and justify them. Now his father was disgraced, Ulf felt a burning desire to punish those who had been responsible for the old chieftain’s downfall. Gorm was family, after all.

  But ahead of them all lay the Great Trek. So that when their various meetings broke up, mice wandered through the House widdling on everything they could find, leaving their mark behind them. Some took comfort in the fact that they had, after all, fooled the nudniks. They might have got themselves into trouble doing so, but the nudniks had been duped. The nudniks were thick. They had always been thick and they would always remain thick. Only their hugeness made them worth a mention at all. They were big and thick.

  Now mice were quite different. Mice were normal size and very, very smart, the most daring mammals that walked on four legs.

  Those that only walked on two, well, ’nuff said.

  HALOUMI

  THE MICE SPENT THE LAST FEW MINUTES OF THEIR TIME in the House, yelling from the attic to the treehouse, telling Ulug Beg they were on their way to a new land. Whether she heard them, no-one knew. Perhaps the ancient crabbed mouse was no longer alive? If so, most mice preferred not to know. Ulug Beg was one of their shrines and if the antique creature was gone it would serve to make them more depressed. Only the scruffy new mouse who spoke dog and went by the strange name of Eh-he seemed anxious that Fallingoffthings should attempt the high-wire journey, but the balancing attic mouse wasn’t going to make the trip just for a stranger.

  The mice decided to use the maze exit to leave the House for the last time, rather than just walk out of the door. This was pure cussedness on their part. They wanted to tromp through Tunneller’s labyrinth and put her in her place. Pedlar did not entirely approve of the motive behind this exit, but he went along with it because he wanted to say goodbye to the shrew whom he had fought to a standstill.

  So, with an Outsider at their head, the mice bid farewell to their birthplace and home of their ancestors, and set forth in search of the Promised House. The shrew, who had heard the news of their departing on the grapevine, lay low-nose on the floor of the maze and watched them approach.

  Pedlar spoke to her.

  ‘Goodbye, Tunneller – we – er – we came this way to pay tribute to your generosity for lending us the maze when the Gas-maker came.’

  ‘Codswallop,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Pedlar said, uncomfortably. ‘I particularly wanted to say goodbye to you. We fought a hard match, until the sun was blood, and I shan’t forget you.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, only a little less shortly.

  Pedlar nodded and then led the others towards the moonlight. The mice filed past the bad-tempered Tunneller one by one, some of them smirking, but none of them daring to make a remark. Even the Deathshead were wary of the unpredictable and vicious nature of shrews. Finally, Gorm-the-old brought up the rear. He was the last in the line.

  As he passed, Tunneller said quietly, ‘And good blasted riddance.’

  ‘Same to you,’ said Gorm, not even looking at her, ‘with knobs on.’

  Thus the last connection with the House was broken.

  Once out in the garden, Pedlar led his nation towards the roadway. It was cold outside, with a sky swirling with faint stars. The breath of the mice came out in sprigs of steam and they hunched inside their pelts, hoping that Pedlar would find them warm holes for their rest periods. There was a crisp frost on the earth and the whitened grass stood stiff and keen. The animal highways through the grasses were clearly defined.

  They had to pass Stone’s privy on the way and were amazed when they got there to find it was gone. The young nudniks had torn it down and scattered the bits around the orchard. Stone was still there, looking a little bewildered. He should have been hibernating by this time, but the shock had kept him awake.

  ‘They took my hideaway,’ he said in a bemused voice to Pedlar. ‘They just came and smashed it down.’

  Pedlar surveyed the bare spot which had once held the monument in whose shadow Stone had long dwelt. The great edifice had been part of the scenery and the world looked quite different without it. The stink had gone too. Stone’s place wasn’t quite the same without the stink. The dormouse looked as if he had been picked up and transplanted to a foreign land.

  ‘You could come with us,’ said Pedlar. ‘On our journey to a better place.’

  Stone shook his head. ‘No, no. This is my place, here in the garden; anyway, I have to sleep the winter away.’ He seemed to buck up a little, and added, ‘I’m glad to see you’ve all come to your senses at last. Going back to Nature, eh? Jolly good! Nothing like fresh air. Out on the open road, eh?’ His eyes scanned the line of mice. ‘Good lord, just about everyone here. Everyone. Even grizzly old Gorm.’

  ‘Not so much of the grizzly if you don’t mind,’ growled Gorm.

  ‘And Little Prince,’ said Stone, shaking his head. ‘Little Prince here, and my privy gone – I don’t know what the world’s coming to…’

  The mice were taken aback and all started looking along the line, going, ‘Little Prince, what’s he talking about? Where? Where’s Little Prince?’ Little Prince himself followed suit, staring back and forth along the line with a puzzled expression on his dirty face, repeating over and over, ‘Never mind Little Prince – oteari wa doko dess ka?’ which, in the language of foxes, dogs and wolves, roughly translated means, Forget Little Prince – where’s Stone’s dunny box gone?

  Finally, everyone shrugged and Phart said, ‘Silly old sausage is goin’ senile.’

  Indeed it seemed this was true, for Stone had forgotten about the mice and was crooning, ‘Hello flowers, hello trees, hello grass… hail to thee happy phantoms.’

  So the line moved on, leaving the old dormouse to commune with Nature.

  They reached the roadway and crossed without incident, it being in the early hours of the morning. They entered the ditch and travelled along its iced-over bottom for quite a while, until Pedlar struck north over the barren fields. They kept to a furrow, in order to avoid being seen by owls. Progress was slow because there were frozen grains of corn on the ground and mice kept stopping to pick-eat. Finally, they reached the far side of the field and stopped for a rest.

  The world was very still, but they knew that out there on moonlit ways were foxes and stoats, weasels and badgers, all with hollow stomachs, prowling the Earth. These were the lean nights, when animals and birds were constantly hungry. Predators’ eyes were sharper, their ears keener, their noses whetted. The mice had to trust to luck and the gods to stay clear of roaming killers, or they could be taken in one bunch.

  A jack hare came by and eyed them curiously, probably wondering why so many mice were
gathered in one place. The mice in turn envied the hare its legs. He would be all right if he saw a fox. Hares could leave foxes standing. In fact they often stood up on their hind legs on seeing a fox in the distance and stared at the predator to let it know that they had seen it. Hi foxy, this is to let you know I know you’re there, so it’s not worth coming any closer. What the mice would have given to be able to run like the hare!

  Astrid curled up close with Iban, their reserve gone now that the hours of adversity were on them. No-one commented on their open togetherness, not even Skrang. Iban was secretly glad that he had come out of the closet. It meant that the blackmailing library does no longer had a hold over him. He just wanted to spend what last nights he had with his Astrid.

  ‘Come on, snuggle up,’ Astrid was urging him. ‘This frosty ground is damp and cold. Let’s have a quick nap. We’re neither of us sprightly youngsters any more. We’re not exactly eligible for the 13-K.’

  He did as he was told saying, ‘The 13-K are not exactly the youthful rebels they once were either. They’re shooting towards middle age now. In a while one of the sons of Ulf will decide his father is too conservative in his views and will go off and start a rebel gang in direct confrontation with his father’s rebel gang.’

  She twitched her whiskers in amusement.

  ‘You’re probably right. Funny old world, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s just that nothing’s new,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ called Pedlar after no time at all, ‘on your feet everyone. There’s a wood in front of us which we need to reach the centre of before daybreak. Woods mean foxes, stoats and badgers – owls too, probably. But not many hawks. Most hawks don’t like to fly amongst trees.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’ snarled Gorm sarcastically. ‘We don’t have to worry then. Just a few dozen savage predators – but we don’t need to concern ourselves about hawks. That’s wonderful!’

  In another corner of the group, Phart was climbing wearily to his feet. He had walked more in the last two hours than he had done in his whole life. He was out of condition and sore in several places. His muscles ached, his bones felt deeply rheumatoid, and his chest heaved when he started walking again. It was not so much himself that he worried about however, but his companion.

  Flegm remained on the ground when the others had got to their feet and had begun shambling off after Pedlar.

  ‘Come on,’ cried Phart, ‘we’ll get left behind.’

  ‘I can’t go on,’ wheezed Flegm. ‘S’been too many nights of booze, Phart.’ A tear squeezed out of the corner of Flegm’s eye. ‘I can’t make it.’

  ‘Course you can, you oaf,’ exhorted Phart, feeling scared.

  Gorm-the-old, taking up the rear of the column, shouted.

  ‘Come on, you motley cellar mice, catch up! I’m not going to be responsible for you.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ shouted Phart, glad to have someone to be angry with. ‘Keep your pelt on – we’re comin’.’

  He turned again to his companion, stretched out on the frosty turf. Please, Flegm,’ he pleaded. ‘You got to.’ As he spoke he looked over his shoulder in desperation at the disappearing column of mice.

  ‘I ain’t got to do nuffink but lay here till me bones freezes solid,’ came the response.

  ‘Look you!’ shouted Phart, in a final bid to get his companion on his feet. ‘You get up or I’ll go an’ get Iban to Ik-to bite you.’

  This had the effect of Flegm heaving himself to his feet. Flegm hated pain. He was in a sorry state, Phart could see that. When he eventually got his legs moving, they wobbled precariously, as if they were about to collapse at any moment. It brought a lump to Phart’s throat.

  ‘You’ll be all right, mate. You see. I’ll get Pedlar to stop again in a bit, to give you some more rest. Come on, we got to catch up now…’

  He looked ahead at the dark, forbidding wood.

  Gorm actually came back and growled at them, then rushed off back to the line. Phart encouraged his tribe to hurry themselves, to get those four paws going, to set their eyes on the distant horizon and push forward.

  ‘Push forward,’ grumbled Flegm as they approached the first tree. ‘Push forward? I couldn’t push a spr—’

  ‘A what?’ asked Phart, turning.

  He was never to learn what spr— meant and puzzled over it for hours afterwards. It was the one thing that kept him busy and helped him through his grief in those lonely hours without his friend Flegm. Sprocket? Spring? Sprout? Sprinkler?

  For Flegm had vanished from the Earth.

  ‘What?’ cried Phart again, this time instinctively looking up.

  Across the face of the moon a ragged-winged owl was moving in silent flight. In its talons was something small and pathetic, with a dangling tail, and dangling legs. The irony of it was that the predator looked a lot like Merciful.

  Phart panicked and ran towards the front of the column, passing astonished mice labouring up steep banks where the wild thyme grew.

  ‘Pedlar!’ he called, gasping for breath. ‘Pedlar, Pedlar, we gotta stop, we gotta stop. An owl’s gone and took Flegm. We got to go back…’

  The column halted as Pedlar came back down the line to meet the stricken Phart.

  ‘Stop?’ he said. ‘But what can we do, Phart? If an owl has truly taken Flegm, I’m very sorry for it, but we must go on. It won’t do any good to turn back now.’

  ‘But…?’ cried Phart, wildly. ‘It’s gone an’ took Flegm. We got to…’

  He stopped and looked at Pedlar beseechingly.

  ‘We’ve got to what, Phart?’ asked Pedlar kindly.

  ‘We – got – to – help – him,’ cried Phart, breaking down in front of everyone.

  Gorm came up from the rear. ‘What’s up?’ he snarled.

  ‘Flegm’s been took by an owl,’ bawled Phart.

  ‘Give the bleeder gut-ache, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Gorm. ‘Anyway, so what are we stopped for? Can’t do anything about it now, can we? Let’s get moving. This place is dangerous enough without standing out here waiting to be picked off by owls. Come on you lot, get these lines going. You’re supposed to be the leader of this lot, Pedlar, whatever your name is. Let’s have a bit of leadership.’

  Thus the first member of the expedition was lost to the predators of the wild. Phart stumbled along with the rest of the column once it started moving, but he was never quite the same again. His bombast had been quashed, his bluster had been quelled. The only friend he had in the world was now making slow progress through the belly of an owl. There would be a final burp, a cough, and then what remained of the Great and Honourable Flegm would come shooting out of the owl’s throat in the form of a pellet of fur and bones.

  Pedlar felt a sense of loss too. It was not that he had been over-fond of Flegm, but every member of the expedition was his responsibility. He was the pathfinder. He felt he should in some way have prevented the tragedy. Still, he told himself, there would be more deaths before the end was in sight. You couldn’t take a few dozen mice through the wilderness without losing one or two before the end of the journey. Pedlar posted four scouts after this, two ahead and on either side of the column, and two in similar positions at the rear.

  Inside the wood the terrain was much easier to travel. It was mossy and bouncy underfoot, there were a few nibbles in the way of old seeds and nuts lying around. There were also the remains of autumn fungi and some crab apples. You could dash for holes under the roots and in the trunks of trees if you felt threatened at all. Pedlar quite liked woods in a way, though in his old Hedgerow he had had the best of both worlds. It had been like living in a long narrow wood with a cool ditch and water on one side and open fields full of food on the other.

  ‘Scatter!’ yelled one of the scouts. ‘Fox!’

  Fortunately they were crossing the roots of a big oak at the time. Its massive roots were exposed and there were holes underneath them. The mice dashed down these, only to find wild mice already there. Sinc
e there was plenty of room, it did not seem unreasonable that the wild wood mice should allow the travellers to stay until the danger had gone. The residents however appeared to object quite strongly. Their conversation was conducted in the dark.

  ‘What the hell do you lot want? Get out!’ cried a large wood mouse.

  Pedlar said, ‘We’re sheltering from a fox – a vixen I think. We’ll leave just as soon as she does.’

  ‘You’ll leave now or there’ll be trouble,’ said the brash wood mouse. Pedlar could almost hear his whiskers bristling.

  ‘Listen,’ shouted Treadlightly, ‘we outnumber you five to one at least. I should think the Savage Tribe could settle your hash on their own.’

  ‘The Savage Tribe?’ repeated the wood mouse, as if he didn’t quite like the sound of that name. ‘Who the hell are they?’

  Gunhild snarled, ‘We’re the Savage Tribe, and we’ll rip you from whiskers to tail if you mess with us.’

  ‘Oh, will you?’ shouted another resident, but in a voice which showed she was none too sure of herself.

  ‘Yes,’ boomed Whispersoft, ‘and when the Savages have finished with you, the Invisibles will eat what’s left of you.’

  ‘That’s if the Deathshead don’t Ik-to bite you first,’ called Skrang.

  ‘And afterwards,’ shouted Ulf, ‘the 13-K Gang will use your pelts to line their nests.’

  ‘If the Bookeaters don’t require them for use in their magic spells,’ cried Frych-the-freckled.

  ‘Quite unnecessary,’ growled Gorm. ‘Why, me and Phart will take the lot of them on, just the two of us, and stamp them into the turf, won’t we Phart?’

  ‘Too right, mate,’ Phart confirmed. ‘Fink you’re a load of hard nuts? I’ve seen tougher things come out of me nose than you lot.’

  Phart was almost his old self again, siding with the strong, taking advantage of the weak, being thoroughly obnoxious.

  After this tirade had ended there was silence in the network of holes. It seemed the residents no longer wished to complain about their temporary visitors. All there was to worry about now was the fox.