Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 11ii

Maddock shielded his eyes from the bright sun as the juddra wagon emerged from the deep shadows of the tunnel and into the wide open space of the Workshops' lower guild-yard. The guild-yard was easily large enough to park a hundred such wagons, and was normally a busy place, but as his eyes adjusted and he looked around, it seemed a lot quieter than usual. Facing the barbican-fort and its two dark gates were the tall square buildings of the Guild headquarters, their lines following the curve of the yard. Even though its tall double doors of decorated metal stood open, many of its windows were shuttered.

"Thanks!" Maddock called to the wagon's driver as he jumped down to the tightly set square stones which paved the entirety of the wide oval space.

The Engineer, who had been kind enough to offer him a seat on his wagon for the long climb through the barbican tunnel, lifted one thumb from the reins of his juddra in a wordless acknowledgment of the gratitude. Then he steered his train of wagons towards the office of the Guild stock-chief, set in the narrow curve of the yard's end. Opposite the stock-chief's offices, the guild-yard ended in a high curving wall punctured with two tall archways. From one of those archways the road, set with the same neat square stones as the yard itself, begin its long zig-zag climb up the slope of the Workshops, and a narrower road led down from the other to the juddra pens.

On a plinth in the centre of the yard stood the towering structure of the Engineer's clock, and Maddock made his way over to it, clambered up its high steps, and sat down. He had arranged to meet Dak at one o'clock, by fortress time, so had left the Enclosures at twelve, after the hour of Fortak had drawn to a close. It couldn't have taken him that long to make his way to the Workshops, so he reckoned he still had a little time to wait.

He looked up at the Engineer's clock, but he couldn't understand the complex system of rings and dials on the three faces of it. He could, with some concentration, read the time on the clock at the top of the battle-ground's observation tower, and on the smaller clock that stood in the centre of the Enclosures, but the Engineers used a different system of timekeeping, so he had no idea just how long his wait would be.

Timekeeping had never been so important on the farm, as the hours of the day had been dictated by the sun. When it came up, you got up and went to work, when it went down you went to bed. You ate a meal when you first woke up, one before you went to bed, and another somewhere in the middle of the day when your stomach told you it was hungry. At the fortress, Field-hands were expected to be able to tell the time, so he had started to learn, mostly with Dak's help, because Dak had always been good with numbers.

Maddock had not.

As well as time telling, numbers and sums were something else he considered to be fairly unimportant. In fact, it had only been a few years previously that he had started to fully understand the value of being able to add and multiply and take away, when his father had asked him the question 'If a man can't count, how will he know how much of his harvest the Order is taking from him?'.

After that, Maddock had concentrated harder on his sums. He was still only marginally good at them, still a complete dunce compared to Dak, who could calculate things with numbers as easily as she could breathe, but he knew enough to get by.

As he waited and watched the comings and goings of the guild-yard, he looked down at his hands and grimaced. Had they not already been thickly calloused by his labours during his previous life at the farm, they would probably have been covered in weeping blisters from his morning's work. High Madriel-master Sprak, as Maddock had found was usual, had been loath to give his Field-hands the time off for Glok's Ascension Day. The garrulous Master had consoled himself by ensuring that they had all been woken before first light, and had then worked them cruelly all morning. All the madriel, even the cubs, had been released to the great-bailey, and Master Sprak was not one to miss an opportunity to give the place a good cleaning.