Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 5i

I'm dedicating this chapter to ammmmanda, yet another perceptive reader that has recently joined the E & D story. I know that a few of you will already be familiar with her writing, but for those poor unfortunates among you who are not, please give Twisted Kingdoms a look. Amanda's heroine is no sword wielding dragon killers, but she is no less brave, and you will be captivated by her as she faces the world's many adversities.

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The earth of the plains was dry. The long grasses rolled away to every horizon; a rippling expanse of pale yellow. The only variance in the colour was in the thick wiry leaves of the solitary, low-spreading, cherossa trees, and the scattered clumps of flower grass. Even those, in the high summer months, were barely more than brittle stems and brown pods, tight closed and waiting for the rains.

Engineer Tomova sat in the high saddle of the juddra and gently guided the lumbering creature along the road that pointed straight at the northern horizon. Maddock, with Dak beside him, watched the landscape move slowly by from the double seat behind the Engineer. He was quickly coming to the conclusion that it would have been quicker to walk. The low rise that marked the lip of the valley where Dredar lay was still far away, the wavering outlines of the farm's watchtowers, tiny and stick like.

The occasional madriel would raise its head on one side of the road or the other, and once a lone female prowled to the road's edge and stood between two of its guiding ascension markers, her eyes bright as she watched them pass.

The juddra plodded on, indefatigable and uncaring of the beast's threat.

When they did finally reach the farm's outskirts and crested the final hill, the whole strip of the valley was laid out below them like a map; a deep swath of green in the dryness of the surrounding plains. The road that they had been following from Klinberg wound down among the valley's field terraces, where it crossed the river by a simple stone bridge. On the bridge's far side, a magnificent cherossa tree grew in the centre of the farm's square, where some wagons were being loaded. Two masdon stood by the side of the river, cooling their hooved feet in the water and occasionally dipping their heavy heads down to drink.

To the east of the square, amidst the domed oast houses where the kernik seeds were dried, stood the building that housed the water engine, and beyond its dam lay the kernik orchard itself. The scene there looked idyllic enough, as the young men, women and children of the farm paddled their small coracles from the jetties, out to the trees where they tethered them and clambered up into their branches. Maddock knew, though, how hard their work was. It was humid beneath the trees, and their bark was rough. Anyone climbing among those branches would end the day with arms and legs scratched and grazed. Worse still was the sap that oozed from the tree as the seed pods were broken away, which would cover their hands in a sticky tar that could not be washed away in the cold water of the orchard. Only at the end of the day could the stuff be removed by a brisk scrubbing with hot water and washing salt, which would leave the workers' hands red and raw.

Maddock watched as one of the pickers, the sack slung across his back full with seed pods, rowed his coracle to the wooden pier that wound among the thick trunks of the kernik trees on stone piles, to where a boy with a hand cart waited.

"Is it not beautiful, father?" said Dak.

"Too quiet for me," said Engineer Tomova. "But I can see why your mother was loving the place."