Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 3ii

Tahlia heard the sound of distant voices and she opened her eyes to see a strip of bright blue in front of her. The scent of wood and grass filled her nose. The blue strip slowly resolved itself into the cloudless sky between the barns, seen upside down as she lay on her back.

She must have fallen asleep.

She remembered eating the kernik seeds and some hunks of bread, and then lying down in the long grass between the barns and listening to the gentle swishing of the scythes as they cut the swathes of long grass in the surrounding karabok-field. She was sure she had only closed her eyes for a second, but could tell that time had moved on by the difference in the shadows and the change in the quality of sound in the field.

She sat up, peered out between the barns, and saw that the boys and girls had stopped their work. The men with the scythes had also stopped and were looking with interest at something that Tahlia could not see, so she crawled closer to get a better look. A madriel had arrived, and its young rider was talking with the Herd-master.

'There is definitely something exciting going on,' thought Tahlia as she watched the brief exchange.

After the boy had finished talking with the Herd-master, he turned his madriel and left. The children began to put their tools away on the cart, which was half stacked with bound grass, and then the Herd-master led them away in the direction of the Enclosures.

Whatever the excitement had been, it looked as though it was over so she crawled back between the two barns to see what food she had left to eat. She pulled the second kernik seed pod from her pouch that was lying on the floor and wondered if she should save it to give to her mother, as she knew she liked them just as much as Tahlia did herself.

She held up the seed pod and frowned.

"Oh dear," she sighed. "Mother!"

She took a quick look at the lengthening shadows, jumped to her feet, and ran.

* * * * *

Grifford had to walk fast to keep up with Master Tzarren's long stride as he followed him through the grassland of the hub.

"Master Tzarren?" said Grifford as they rounded the base of the cliff on which the Workshops' barbican-fort stood.

"Yes, Squire Grifford?"

"When is the war going to start?"

Lance-master Tzarren stopped and grinned back at him humourlessly.

"Why, boy? Are you afraid you might miss it?"

"No. There is going to be a war though, is there not?"

Master Tzarren continued to smile as he turned and looked up at the towering cliffs above them, whose surface had been cut and fashioned by the tools of the Engineers, rendering them un-scalable. From the ground, the barbican-fort could only be partially seen as a foreshortened stone edifice behind its murder-bore studded buttresses that projected threateningly over the gate at the cliff's base. The gate itself could not be seen beyond the high wedge of stone and earth that protected it from bombardment.

"There may be a war, or there may not," said the High Lance-master. "At the moment, all that is happening is a lot of great men moving their troops from fort to fighting camp and back again, and waiting to see what the other side will do."

"But why? I do not understand."

Master Tzarren was still looking up at the Workshops' defences, and Grifford followed his gaze. The barbican-fort of the Engineers filled the whole width of the cliff face, between one towering shield-bastion and another. From where they stood, the bastions and their corona-towers effectively blocked the view of the fortress' main bulk. All he could see of it were the battlements that overlooked the Workshops, and the highest reaches of the keep, rising behind and tapering gracelessly upwards to the distant watch-spire at its summit, far up in the cloudless sky.