The Engineer ReConditioned

by Neal Asher

  “This scum offers insult to our Lady,” he said with vehemence. Cheydar thought he acted the part well. He looked to the officer, whose eyes never wavered from the tip of Dagon’s sword. Though his hand was at the short sword in his belt, he made no move to draw it.

  “This scum should be made to pay, then,” said Cheydar.

  The officer watched. He was thin-faced and had the wiry toughness of a trained fighter. He did not draw. He knew his chances. Dagon stepped forward a little way and ritualistically spat on his boots.

  “My choice, then,” said the officer. This was what he was waiting for, Cheydar realised. “The time I chose is one hour from now, the place I chose is the street outside, and I chose air guns as the weapons of combat.”

  Cheydar nodded to himself; a sensible choice. Dagon had demonstrated his speed with the sword.

  “So be it,” said Dagon, and sheathed his sword in one smooth motion. As he did this hands strayed to the hilts of short swords. Cheydar smiled and raised the barrel of his gun. Hands drew back. Dagon nodded and stepped past him. They moved to the table where Dagon dispensed with his swords and took up his gun. The priest soldiers tramped from the tavern. Cheydar saw that Eric was grinning.

  “What amuses you, boy?” he asked.

  “Dagon’s weapon—it has five shots. It is a repeater.”

  Cheydar nodded in confirmation when he saw the weapon, then he felt misgivings.

  “You and David, keep your weapons gassed and cover the others. There may be some objection.” Cheydar knew that in air gun duels it was often not the first shot that counted and that the winner was he who could reload the fastest and have more time to aim for the second shot. Dagon would not have to reload and could probably fire off all four of his remaining shots while the officer reloaded. The officer’s men might consider this an infraction of the rules.

  The sun was poised above the coach house and Linx was making its second daily journey across the sky, but this time was partially in silhouette and looked like a hole punched there. Dagon walked out across the worn ground and stood midway between the coach house and a titanothere fence. The fat official from the coach house stood a few yards to one side of him and fidgeted nervously; adjudicators were often shot by accident and he had not wanted the task. From where he stood Cheydar directed Eric and David to move away from him to the far ends of the veranda and be ready. He noted that over by the other end of the coach house a three-wheeled phaeton was being hitched to the backs of two patient cud-chewing titanotheres. Perhaps they could get this over with and be quickly on their way. He turned his attention to the right as the officer stepped out of a building just beyond the coach house and began walking towards Dagon. Six other priest soldiers walked out behind him and moved off in different directions. That could be taken two ways, either they were setting themselves for attack, or they were just covering their officer’s back. The officer walked, his air gun held one-handed at his side, until he came face to face with Dagon. The fat official approached.

  “Standard procedure,” he said distastefully. “Stand back to back with your weapons held as you wish, then start walking at my count. I will count to ten then shout ‘now’. You turn and fire at that shout, not before.” He backed away quickly as Dagon and the officer turned their backs to each other. “One, two, three…” The count seemed to take no time at all. He reached ten and the officer turned and fired. Dagon staggered forward. “Bastard,” said Cheydar. There had been no ‘now’ and the official was unlikely to object. There was a silence as Dagon regained his balance. The officer dropped his expended cylinder and was putting in a new dart when Dagon turned, and holding his gun one-handed up to his shoulder, took careful aim, and fired. The dart cracked against the officer’s gun and ricocheted up into his jaw. He stepped back making a keening sound, his cheek hanging off in a flap and his side teeth exposed in a bloody grin. He put another cylinder in his gun. Dagon fired again and there was the hollow fleshy thump indicative of a chest hit. The officer keeled over and lay coughing blood. Dagon walked up to him, watched him for a moment, then walked towards Cheydar. Cheydar watched the soldiers, then glanced aside as the official stepped up to him.

  “Your phaeton is ready,” he said, his face deliberately clear of expression. “I suggest you get in it now and leave.”

  Cheydar nodded in agreement and turned his attention to Dagon.

  “Are you hit?”

  “Yes.”

  Cheydar looked at his left arm. Blood was trickling from his fingertips. “How bad?”

  “The bone is broken. The dart is still in me.”

  Cheydar nodded to the interior of the tavern. “We will deal with it now.”

  “It would be better if we left,” said Dagon.

  “Don’t be foolish. If there is to be a fight later on today or tomorrow I do not want you weak from blood loss. We deal with it now.”

  Dagon looked at him with evident surprise then smiled. “You are right. You are absolutely right,” he said. Cheydar wondered why he took such delight in being wrong, but dispelled the thought when Dagon staggered as they entered the tavern and he stepped to support him. Suen rushed to help once they were inside.

  “Sheda, get my things,” she said. They sat Dagon in a chair and Eric stood guard at the door. “Sheda! Damn, where is that girl?” Cheydar looked around then continued to cut away Dagon’s shirt. He took a look at the wound then went to his own pack and removed a field-surgery kit. Suen walked to a back door and looked out. “Sheda!” Cheydar put a tourniquet around the top of Dagon’s arm then tossed powder on the split below.

  “That should deaden it some,” he said. “I have to get the dart out.” He cleaned a pair of surgical pliers in alcohol and a pair of spatulas that he handed to Suen. “When I say, hold open the wound with these.” They waited a short time until the powder did its work, then at Cheydar’s instruction Suen pushed the spatulas into the split and opened it wide. The dart was imbedded in broken bone. Cheydar got the pliers on it, but had to shove his fingers in the wound so one end of the break did not get pulled out as he tugged at the dart. Dagon turned to look at him with a sickly grin on his face, then he fainted. Cheydar stitched his wound and splinted his arm while he lay unconscious on the floor.

  “Now we have to get him to the phaeton. Where is David?” Cheydar turned to Eric, who looked momentarily guilty before removing a fold of paper from his tunic and handing it over. Cheydar unfolded the note and read it. He was angry for a moment then guilty to feel relieved. He handed the note to Suen. She read the note then suddenly looked very angry. Cheydar waited for the explosion, as Dagon regained consciousness and struggled to sit upright. Cheydar squatted to help him.

  “What’s going on?” Dagon asked Suen.

  “David and Sheda have gone. They’ve taken or are taking a barge to Elmarch.”

  “We have time to stop them,” said Suen, screwing up the note.

  “Why?” asked Dagon.

  “Why!” Suen all but screeched. “She is my daughter. She is just a little girl!” Dagon gave her such a look of contempt it was almost a blow. She stepped back. “That little girl has been lying with David since I joined you, and probably long before. She’s found love, or infatuation if you will, and you want her at your side to go and die with you below a death post.”

  “I am not going to die,” said Suen, quietly, almost whispering.

  “Then you can find them in Elmarch sometime after. They will be safer there.” Dagon staggered to his feet. Suen stared at him, probably knowing him to be right but loath to agree. She turned away as Cheydar and Eric began to collect up their things.

  “I blame you for this,” she snarled at Cheydar. He nodded acquiescence and continued with what he was doing. Suen abruptly sat down and began crying into her hands. Cheydar reached out to touch her shoulder and she knocked his hand away. As they loaded the phaeton she made no objection. She boarded without a word.

  It took four days to reach the last coach house before No
rth wood and during the four stops on the way for the feeding of the titanothere they mostly stayed inside the capacious phaeton and ate cold food. For a day Dagon ran a fever, but this was quickly dealt with by drugs bought at their first stop. No one followed. Perhaps the soldiers were embarrassed by the cowardly duelling tactics of their officer, or frightened by the way he was dispatched. At the last coach house they bought supplies and set out afoot along one of the many paths into the Wilder.

  “Perhaps we should have hired a guide,” said Cheydar as the trees closed around them. He preferred to be out in the open. Too much that was unexpected could come upon them in this place. There were dangerous creatures in the Wilder and dangerous men. He unhooked his airgun, dart pack and blades, and handed them to Eric to free himself of iron before checking their course. He laid the compass on the map, turned the map, grunted his satisfaction then put map and compass away. His son returned to him his weapons. They continued.

  “We’ll be at the coast by the evening,” said Cheydar. No-one felt inclined to reply to him. The forest brought its own silence that it seemed should not be disturbed by rude human chatter. Suen had had very little to say since her daughter had run away. Perhaps, Cheydar thought, she was beginning to realise what was most important. He had. He was glad David had gone and only sad that Eric had not gone with him. The two of them had not yet sworn any oath to Tarrin’s family and it was not necessary for them to serve to the limit; death.

  They walked all morning and most of the afternoon through thick deciduous woodland. Great oaks, chestnuts, nettle elms, and the like, towering all around them. The nettle elms were bare, but the oaks still held onto the Autumn leaves other trees were in the process of shedding. The ground was swamped with leaves in shades of red and gold, and every breeze brought more of them kiting down. Through this colourful layer pushed fungi in bright poisonous colours and colours the same as the leaves. Dagon collected some of the latter in a cloth bag he hung at his belt. Eric and Cheydar, not knowing which fungi might be edible confined themselves to picking up sweet chestnuts, and walnuts. Suen just tramped along.

  “Let us take a break now,” said Cheydar, in the afternoon. “The last four days have been wearing. Here at least we can relax some. Here.” He gestured to an area clear of briers below an ancient walnut tree. Suen nodded to him and slumped down on a pile of leaves by the trunk. “Take yourself off,” said Cheydar to Eric, while looking at his mistress. “Bring us some fresh meat. I’ll light the fire.” Dagon and Cheydar cleared a space in the leaves and collected together a pile of the ample fallen wood. Cheydar waved Dagon away as he built a fire. Dagon went to sit by Suen.

  “You have to let them go some time,” the warrior said.

  Cheydar glanced over, seeing Suen looking up at the tree from where she lay with her cropped golden hair on the leaves, blending with them. He felt something twist in his stomach; concentrated on the conversation.

  “I don’t need your comfort,” she told Dagon.

  “But you do, and I think it would comfort you to know that David carries with him enough money for them both to live in comfort in Elmarch for a year or even more.” He looked at her with mild eyes.

  She sat upright. “You?”

  “I gave him the money.”

  “You knew then,” she said, angry now.

  “Yes.”

  “You could have said something.”

  “I could have, but I did not see their choice as foolish.” Suen just glared at him. He continued, “I think Sheda hoped you would follow, that you would abandon this meaningless quest.” Smoke wafted into Cheydar’s face as his fire caught; made his eyes water.

  “It is not meaningless,” said Suen.

  “What meaning then does it have?”

  Cheydar left the fire to its own devices and joined them, squatting down on his heels. Suen reached into her pack and removed her husband’s book. She shook it at them as she spoke.

  “My husband recorded here that there is a breach in the fence two miles in from the coast. Only a few miles North East of this there is a building in the forest. In that building are the Proctors.” Dagon looked thoughtful for a moment. “What makes you think the breach is still there?”

  “Why should it not be?”

  Dagon grimaced. “What would you intend should you reach this building?”

  “I will wake the Proctors and lead them back through the breach.”

  “Why should they go with you? Why should they even wake for you?”

  “They will. I’m not interested in argument, Dagon. I did not ask you to join us. You said when you first joined us that you believed the Owner to be returning for an accounting and that his Proctors would once again walk the world, yet you show no signs of this belief. I am going there. Cheydar will follow me because I know he would not obey me if I ordered him not to. Eric should perhaps return…” She looked at Cheydar, then returned her attention to Dagon. “You do not have to come, yet you are, that’s your choice. Kindly stop trying to dissuade me from the choices I have made.” Dagon bowed his head, “I apologise. You are correct. I do not have the right to make other people’s choices for them, even should those choices kill.”

  Suen turned her face from him. “Here is Eric.” Eric came back to the fire with four squirrels, skinned and gutted, hanging on a stick. He was grinning like a maniac. He had been enjoying himself. Cheydar thought it unlikely he would be able to send this son away. He took a pan out of his pack and tipped in a little water. They dined on squirrels broiled with mushrooms and sweet chestnuts. They ate walnuts while they waited for the squirrels to cook, as there were plenty on the ground, then they sat around the fire talking of anything but Proctors and the Owner. It was pointless moving on, as darkness was gathering the forest close about them. Dagon took first watch.

  Waking to take his watch, Eric saw that Dagon had apparently not moved all night. So that is it, he thought, remembering footprints in frost. He wondered how any man could be possessed of such a stillness.

  “You have not moved all your watch,” Eric said to him.

  “That is true,” said Dagon. “The leaves create too much noise.”

  “How can you be so still?”

  “It comes from inside.”

  Eric did not understand, but was not prepared to admit this. He saw that Dagon had his arm out of its sling.

  “You can move your arm?”

  “It is healing quickly. This is a good body.”

  Eric watched him walking back to the embers of the camp-fire. He is deliberately mysterious, he thought, to make us think he is more than we reckon…or is he deliberately mysterious to cover that there is something strange about him? Eric blinked in the darkness. It was all too complicated. Morning brought a thick fog into the trees that coated everything with well-defined ice crystals and brought leaves tumbling down ungently. The fire was roaring up well with the extra wood Cheydar had thrown on it and he kept it within sight as he patrolled, his air gun charged and ready to come up against his shoulder. It would be too easy to get lost in this, and he definitely did not want to be lost now. The chuckling bark came again, to his left this time. Whatever it was it could be circling around to get at the others. He hurried back to the fire. When he got there he saw the other three were awake.

  “What is it?” Eric asked.

  “Hyeanadon,” Dagon supplied. He tossed his air gun to Eric then drew his sword. Eric looked at him with surprise. “Our darts will not stop it if it decides it is hungry enough to attack us.” He glanced at Suen who was staring at him white faced. “You take Eric’s gun.” He turned to Cheydar. “I know, I’m sorry, but I know about these creatures and I doubt you’ve encountered one.”

  “Your other sword,” said Cheydar, holding out his hand. His own blade was a short stabbing blade used in combat with an armoured opponent. He would use that as well as the sword Dagon handed over. It was light. Just holding it gave Cheydar a surge of confidence. It was so very very sharp.

  “Le
t’s move,” he said, taking up his pack. “We cannot stay here all day.” He led the way back onto the path, sliced a leaf in half as it fell in front of him. Confidence died as the two halves reached the ground and Eric fired one shot. The huge creature made a yipping growling sound, its teeth clashing over where the dart had struck it, then it disappeared into the fog. That sound was answered by chuckling barks from two different directions.

  “They hunt in packs,” said Dagon.

  “Really,” said Cheydar, studying the sword he held and wishing he was somewhere else. Eric loaded another dart. He looked no less scared than the rest of them. Of course Cheydar had heard of such creatures. It made him cringe to think of how he let his son go hunting squirrels.

  “Remember, they are only animals,” said Dagon.

  “That’s a comfort,” said Cheydar. How long had those teeth been? Two inches, three inches? And how high at the shoulder had the creature been? Higher than his own head at least.

  “Shoot for the eyes, cut for the legs,” said Dagon.

  “Yes, of course.”

  The fog seemed to grow thicker as the morning progressed, and frost formed on loose clothing. Cheydar was thankful for Autumn leaves as the hyaenadons could not attack in silence. Any other time of the year and they would have been dead long since. One hyaenodon would make a noisy growling feint while another tried to sneak up on them. Every time it was the noise of the leaves that gave it away. The leaves also told them that the creatures were still with them all the time between attacks. Two attacks were driven off, steel darts smacking against rock-hard skulls. On the third attack the hyaenodon kept coming. Cheydar dropped his air gun and braced himself with the sword held two-handed before him. The hyaenodon came in a snarling charge, its shoulders and head thick with the blood of its dart wounds. Eric pumped darts into it and it was half blinded by the time it reached them. Dagon strode to meet it, stepped neatly to one side and cut across with full force, his whole body in the cut. A ton of hyaenodon went past him nose down in the leaves, its left forelimb clinging by a sliver of flesh and skin. Cheydar struck down with his blade and it carved meat from the creature’s face but did not penetrate bone. Its huge jaws clashed at him as it struggled to right itself. Dagon’s sword went in through its side, twisted, came out on a fountain of blood. Cheydar stepped around, hacked down on its neck. Three hacks it look to reach a spine he could not sever. The stink of the creature’s vomit and excrement thickened the air. Cheydar drew his short sword to drive between vertebrae, then turned as Dagon bounded past him. Another of the creatures was coming from the other side and only Eric faced it. Cheydar felt his stomach clench. Eric had perhaps one shot to fire. He was dead.