Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“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 North 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.