Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 27i

The central-courtyard was still set in its morning chill. Tahlia stood watching the scene below from the pemtagrin door step as another of the merchants' carts was driven through the barbican gateway. They were not the giant lumbering juddra wagons used by the Engineers, nor were they the masdon carts of the farmers, but were smaller vehicles, pulled by zule and grenkep. There were at least ten of the carts parked in the courtyard now, and all were surrounded by activity as they were unloaded by their crews.

It was the first day of the tourney recess, and the merchants, who had previously been restricted to plying their wares within the confines of the Encampment, had been permitted to enter Klinberg's walls, bringing with them a selection of their merchandise to the hall of petitioners. The fortress still slumbered after its excesses of the recess feast the previous evening, and it seemed that the central-courtyard was the only place to be awake as crates and boxes were unpacked, along with baskets of clothing and cylinders of fine cloth. Tahlia looked critically at the long bolts of cloth because they were partly the reason she was there. She had been summoned to meet her mother to help choose material for their new dresses, which were going to be made for her brother's ceremony of welcome at Tourney's end.

The merchants, all richly dressed and equally richly mannered, had already entered the keep to prepare their place in the hall, leaving the unloading of their wares to their Trade Proctors, whose authority stood clearly out in the bustle of the courtyard. They were the people whose job was not to lift and carry, but whose presence assured that things were lifted and carried with due diligence, and that their transport suffered no interference. They all had a hint of suppressed brutality about them, and though they were by no means thuggish, they did all look, to Tahlia's eye, somewhat wild and uncivilised.

One, a very tall woman with dark skin and a contrast of white hair piled upon her head and pinned together with long spikes of bone, wore armour fashioned from the hide of some thick skinned beast. Another seemed to do little by way of encouraging the men under his charge in their labours. Though he was short and narrow shouldered, and had the look of a good natured farmer about him, they hurried about their business, heads down, intent on their tasks. The man, in his turn, leant against the wheel of one of the waiting carts, smoking a long pipe, seemingly oblivious to the fearful deference about him.

Tahlia watched as a member of one of the carts' crew pulled a bale of grass from the rear of his vehicle and threw it down in front of the two zule harnessed between its shafts. They bent their heads eagerly and began pulling apart the wrapping of dried grass with their long mandibles, reaching for the moist, half rotted, vegetation inside, while their thick segmented tails curled and beat at the ground in anticipation of their meal.

A bellow of laughter echoed across the courtyard. One of the merchants' carts had stopped beneath the shadow of the open depot gate, and Jerrus, the loud voiced and large bellied senior clerk, was sitting on a packing box nearby, evidently sharing a joke with the cart's driver. Tahlia jumped down the steps into the courtyard's bustle to see if there was anything interesting going on. She did, after all, have some time before she had to meet her mother.

When she reached the cart, Jerrus had climbed onto its loading step and was leaning against its tailgate. One of his clerks stood by the rear wheel, hand-ledger and chamber pen in hand.

"I have the order here, chief," he was saying. "Pantler Heb placed it himself."

"And a good eye for quality has our Head Pantler," said Jerrus, grinning. "Look at these kolto husks. Have you ever seen any the colour of these?"

Tahlia stood on tip toe to better see between the lattice woodwork of the cart's side, and found it filled with round stone jars, each stoppered with solid gum bungs and painted in exotic colourful designs. Jerrus had unstopped one of the jars and had pulled out a rounded shard of something; strangely ridged with a deep red sheen on the outside.