Tales of Engines & Demons - Volume 1 **SAMPLE**

Demon Hunted

"By Terra's tits, I'm hungry!"

Scurge pulled open the flap of his back-sack again, and peered hopefully inside.

There was still nothing in there apart from the half crushed bags of smoked whitestep. The stuff was a delicacy in the Provinces, and Scurge had thought he'd struck it lucky when they'd come across the farmhouse, stuck up in its arse-crack valley in the hills above the jungle. Spending the five days since then eating little else but the fragrant fungus had soon changed his mind. It was fine for the good knights and ladies of the Orders to eat, sliced thin on a wafer of bread, but eating vast chunks of it had soon bunged up his insides, and the thought of eating any more of the stuff made his stomach twist violently.

From where he hung in the tree across the fire from Scurge, Kreelipu grinned, his too large teeth catching the orange flame-light.

"Stillgotmolusmeat."

"We killed that molus a week ago, you fart brained scrounger!"

Scurge closed his back-sack with a grunt of disgust. Kreelipu scratched at the filthy fur on the back of his ear, his face folded in a look of stupid concentration.

"Youthinkweshouldleaveitanotherweek?"

"No, I don't think we should leave it another week you shit wit! If you keep it any longer the maggoty stuff will crawl away on its own!"

A loud tutting came from the other end of the fire pit.

Scurge turned away from Kreelipu's stupid expression to look at the third member of their group. Peemish was writing. The scrawny little clerk had his hand-ledger on his knees, angled towards the fire so that he could see as he scribbled with his chamber pen. His hand-light had died two days before, its valve, when it was turned, doing nothing more than making the liquid behind its lens ripple sluggishly.

Scurge continued to glare at Peemish in silence, though in truth there was no silence. There never was in the jungle. The sound of things clicking and buzzing and screeching in the damply dense vegetation that surrounded them was a constant reminder that he was a long way from the civilised city of his birth. As he watched the clerk, Scurge let his fiercest expression fall over his face, because pretty soon Peemish would realise he was being watched and would look up, and Scurge wanted to make sure that he would have the arse vomit scared out of him when he did.

Peemish didn't notice, and continued writing.

Scurge felt his mask of promised violence twitch, and he reached down and pulled his axe out of the ground. He ran his thumb along its edge and found that it was becoming blunt from chopping too much damp firewood. He scowled in annoyance, but it didn't really matter. His axe didn't have to be sharp for what he had in mind. He stood and walked behind the clerk, who remained oblivious to his presence. From his position in the tree, Kreelipu grinned.

"Always scribbling, aren't you, clerk." At the sound of his savage voice, Peemish stopped writing. "Scribbling and tutting." Scurge rested his axe on his shoulder. "Scribbling and tutting." Peemish remained frozen, his chamber-pen poised at the end of the last neat line he had written. "It's like our company's not good enough for you or something," Scurge went on.

"Your company causes me no discord," said Peemish, still not moving. "I have been in much worse."

"But what's with all this scribbling then? You ain't stopped since we set out from Balboa."

"I am chronicling our journey. It is how we preserve events."

"Seems like a waste of time to me."