Tales of Engines & Demons: Volume 1

By Matt Parker

A story is never a single tale.

Templar Sorath Rourke has spent his life hunting down the demonic relics of an old war, and is no stranger to death, but he is starting to believe that his latest assignment will be the one that finally kills him. Sent to the besieged city of New Broker by the secretive Guild of Engineers, he discovers evidence of a deadly creation that threatens the safety of his homeland, and his own mortality is suddenly the least of his worries.

Meanwhile, Yosh Morrina, accomplished thief and fraudster, leaves the wealth and technology of the capital behind him to journey beneath a desert’s rising sands in search of his lost love. Despite the fragments of nightmare that plague his sleep, he has no idea just how deadly his search has already become.

The safety of the world rests on the actions of Rourke and Morrina. One of them is guided by duty and honour, the other by greed and love, but as they seek the fulfilment of their ambitions both of them will come to realise that they are not the men they believe themselves to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Parker
• Release date: May 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370766321

Matt Parker

Matt Parker is a stand-up comedian and mathematician. He writes about math for The Guardian, has a math column in The Telegraph, is a regular panelist on Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage, has appeared in and worked on Five Greatest on the Discovery Channel, and has performed his math stand-up routines in front of audiences of thousands.

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Tales of Engines & Demons

Volume 1

Matt Parker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2017 Matt Parker

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Tales

Rourke – Siege’s End

Demon Hunted

Lost Love – Introductions

Rourke – Deceitful Drunkard

A Long Ago Incident at Ryazan

Lost Love – Liaison

Rourke – Bloodhawks

Lost Love – Dreaming

Rourke – Shattered Demon

Lost Love – Memorial

The Charlatan

Rourke – Vomit & Fire

Lost Love – Discoveries

The Father, the Son, the Hallowed Uncle

Rourke – Three Axe Duel

Lost Love – Waiting

Rourke – Brutal Needlework

A Banquet of Corpse-gulls

Lost Love – Arrangements

Rourke – Human Properties

Lost Love – Betrayal

Rourke – Start Praying

Lost Love – Reunion

From an Absent God

Rourke – Honour’s End

The Next Generation of Trouble Makers

ROURKE

Siege’s End

‘Once upon a time there was a long and brutal war.’

Communicant Krome looked down at the line he’d just written on the otherwise empty sheet of paper, and sighed. He was a man of god, not a teller of tales, and he had no idea how stories were supposed to be written. That opening line seemed like a good one, but the problem he had was the fact that tales starting with ‘once upon a time’ were wont to end with a ‘happy ever after’, and the story he’d been ordered to inscribe did not, in actuality, have one of those.

Write me a story about the wars with the Predation, Grand-commander Morath had said. Write me a story about the demon scourge that came out of the west, and how it was defeated by the bravery and skill of the holy Orders of knighthood.

Communicant Krome set down his chamber pen, picked up the small metal box he had received from Engineer Drasneval that morning, and placed it in the centre of the circle of brightness being cast by the glow-light above his head. He triggered the box’s lock, opened it, and looked down at the thing inside.

He sighed again.

He had been told to write the story of the Predation wars, but the truth, as proven by the box’s contents, was that the wars had never really ended. Out in the world beyond the sleepy comfort of the Provinces, they were still being fought, but not by the knights of the Orders. Those doing the fighting were not the valiant and honourable heroes of old, but at that dangerous moment in time, they were the only heroes the Provinces had.

Communicant Krome closed the box, and then his eyes, to say a silent prayer to his god, because the world’s new heroes were going to need all the help they could get.

* * * * *

The exploding war-engine tore the ancient façade from the houses of the Crescent, and threw an expanding ball of fire across the park. The trees there had long since been burned to stumps, but the flames clung to their edges, while the burning marionettes of the engine’s crew staggered among them, before falling down and dying. Smoke from the burning city discoloured the sky, turning it from the cold blue of the fallows season to a flat grey, its surface scored by the pencil stroke thin lines of falling natha-bombs.

From his position high on the fortress’ battlements, Templar Rourke lowered his duo-noculars and reached inside his coat for his notebook and chamber pen. The city’s war-engines were indeed as decrepit as Warvitch’s initial assessment had suggested, and he would have to include that confirmation in his report. As his fingers found the edge of his notebook, a grinding rumble of collapsing masonry interrupted the explosive rhythm of the siege. Rourke lifted his duo-noculars to his eyes again, and focussed them on the city’s outer fortifications.

His view of the north gate was blocked by a cloud of thick dust. As he watched, it tumbled in twin waves along the city’s encircling wall. He took the tumult of masonry debris as a sign that a substantial section of the wall had fallen, and shifted his view to inspect the ground beyond it. Sure enough, the forward earthworks that Warlord Parus’ forces had spent the last few weeks digging were already beginning to fill with attackers. The closest trenches, parallel to the city walls, were too heavily buttressed to see into, their depths hidden from view, but he could see things pouring towards them along the feeder trenches. A chance shaft of weak sunlight pierced the overhead murk and flashed on sharpened blades, the polished domes of helmets, claw armour, and tail scythes.

The city’s war-engines should really have been directing their own natha-bombs onto those trenches, but Rourke suspected that New Broker’s defences were no longer being co-ordinated by anyone substantially qualified to undertake such a duty. That judgement was confirmed when he swung his noculars down to view the suspected breach, and saw the city’s defenders forming up in the surrounding streets. He tutted loudly and shook his head. The city may not have the foresight to drench the impending attack in natha-fire, but the enemy forces would not spare Broker’s defenders from the same fate.

The soldiers down there were lining themselves up for slaughter, and the bombs that would soon begin to fall on them would not be fired by antiquated war-engines leftover from the Predation wars. Rourke was sure of that fact because, on the day the enemy engines had appeared on the field, he’d studied them closely from the city walls and had confirmed Warvitch’s suspicions. Warlord Parus had rogue Engineers in his employ, and his war-engines were all newly built.

The broil of masonry dust soon cleared enough to reveal the breach in the wall; a savage V of emptiness where half its height had fallen. A ragged slope of stonework filled the road below it, leaving a two metre gap between its highest reach and the lowest point of the breach. Rourke guessed that the slope of rubble on the breach’s far side would reach a similar height.

The attacking forces would be bringing up siege ladders, and New Broker’s archers were already streaming along the wall from the safety of the northern gate’s fort in anticipation of that first wave of attack. It looked as though whoever was in command of the walls knew what they were doing, because he could see two units of spearmen, and another of swordsmen, climbing to the battlements to support the archers at the breach. If they held their nerve, there was a possibility that they would be able to hold out for a time, and if whoever was commanding the city’s war-engines got their act together…

His thoughts were distracted by a sudden movement at the rear of the attacker’s line. He swept his duo-noculars up to focus on its source.

By Fortak’s light!

Two grim shapes had climbed from the crevasse of the attacker’s rearmost trench. Four metres high at their shoulder, they loped across the earthworks, crossing trenches as though they were nothing more than pavement cracks. Riveted armour plates at their shoulders and backs slid back and forth as they moved. Their scaly hides beneath were slickly green in the sky’s shrouded sunlight, and venom dripped from their exposed fangs, to smoke on the churned earth between the trenches. They reached the first tumbled stones of masonry below the wall and began to climb.

It looked like Parus had run out of patience, and did not want to waste any more time in the capture of New Broker and its secrets. Rourke slipped his noculars into an inside pocket of his coat.

Time to go, he said, brushing grime from his elbows as he stood.

Pain cramped up his right hip, and he was forced to support himself against one of the battlements’ stone merlons until it had passed. He had been kneeling for far too long, and his aging body was rebelling. Limping until the pain in his muscles subsided, he made his way along the empty battlements of the fortress as, on the city walls below, the screaming began.

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.

Scurge nudged the clerk’s elbow with his foot, and the chamber-pen skittered across the page.

Scurge…

What you gonna do, clerk? Tell his lordship?

Scurge nodded to where Sir Burgess knelt; a dim shape at the limits of the firelight. The edges of the knight’s armour caught the orange glow, but the black material of his tabard absorbed it. The knight never took his armour off now. He fought in it, travelled in it, and slept in it, and as a result the man stank worse than Kreelipu’s breath.

Though the truth was that, after two turns of the Taqi moon trekking through the suffocating heat of the Cusp Jungle, they all stank. All except for Peemish, who would bathe in any stream or pool that they came across. The man should have known better after what had happened to Sir Burgess’s squire.

Scurge saw Peemish glance over at Sir Burgess, but the kneeling knight remained immobile, his head bent in prayer. The man was always praying. Scurge slung his axe from his shoulder and placed its blunt blade at the clerk’s neck.

I don’t know why we have to bother keeping you alive if all you do is scribble.

Manknowswherewegoing, said Kreelipu.

Only because he’s got the map. Maybe we should relieve him of the burden, and that clever little leading device of his with it.

And are you capable of interpreting the map and reading the device, Scurge?

The grin left Scurge’s face as he raised his head to peer across the clearing. Sir Burgess stood, the edges of his ungreased armour issuing a pitched scraping. When the man turned, his eyes glinted in the firelight; twin sparks in the harrowed shadows of their sockets. His hair was lank and fell down over his worn features, and the mark of Fortak emblazoned on his tabard was similarly dulled, from bright orange to mud brown.

The man was a wreck, and Scurge wasn’t about to show any signs of being intimidated.

Reckon I could read this here map, he said. And it don’t take a genius to work out which way is west. This skinny streak of piss don’t have to come back alive for us to get the reward.

I believe that his mistress would see things differently. Besides, it is not the reward I am interested in.

Sir Burgess stepped forward into the firelight, and Scurge straightened up, removing his axe from Peemish’s neck to rest it on his own shoulder again.

No. It ain’t, is it?

MorefoolyouKreelipuwantssparklies.

The knight glanced at Kreelipu with undisguised distaste.

My desire in the purpose of this mission goes beyond the acquisition of wealth.

Scurge went to the log he had been sitting on, and swung his axe to thud back into the ground beside it. Then he glared at Sir Burgess. The man was a self-righteous git; typical of the pious idiots who made up the holy Orders of knighthood. His kind had served their purpose well enough two hundred years or so before, when the Predation and their demons had descended on the Provinces, but now he was just a relic.

The Orders had done their job, defeated the Predation, and then retired to their fortresses to guard the borders of what was left of the Provinces, but not all of them were content to sit around on their arses doing nothing. Knights like Sir Burgess could always be found around the lands that the wars had turned to shit, looking for evil to smite and rights to wrong and all that dross. Scurge spat on the ground, and slumped back down onto the damp log.

What do you care about more, Sir Berk? he said. Rescuing the girl or killing the demon?

Both goals are of equal importance to me.

Don’t reckon it’s a demon anyways. There’s no one alive no more that’s ever seen one. The thing we’re hunting’s probably just some shit eating swamp sponge.

Peemish had started writing again, but he stopped briefly to chuckle to himself.

Something funny, clerk?

It was that last statement of yours that was the cause of my amusement.

Which one?

I was referring to your assertion that no one alive has ever seen a demon.

What’s so funny about that?

Well, you see, if any living person had ever seen a demon, then they would doubtless not remain in a state of being alive for very long, so your logic of the lack of demonic sightings being proof that there are no demons left in the world is wholly flawed.

HahegotyouthereScurge.

Shut it, arse face!

Enough!

Sir Burgess had been standing close to the fire, seemingly oblivious to the stinging smoke that twisted from its damp wood, but he suddenly turned his hollow gaze on Scurge.

I have heard enough of your language this night! We will reach our goal tomorrow, and sleep is needed if we wish to have success. Both of you; go to your rest. Scurge met the knight’s gaze, and then spat into the fire. Peemish wrote a few more words before closing his hand-ledger. Kreelipu will take first watch.

Sir Burgess turned and went back to the blanket he had laid on the ground, his helmet and his sword lying beside it.

KreelipuwilltakefirstwatchKreelipuwilltakefirstwatchKreelipualwaystakesfirstwatch.

Still muttering to himself, Kreelipu swung from his perch in the tree and clambered upwards, until his green tinged fur disappeared into the canopy above. Peemish lay down on the far side of the fire and bundled himself up in his blanket.

Scurge grunted, pulled his axe from the ground again and lay down beside the log, cradling the weapon in his arms. His stomach was still bloated from hunger and whitestep. The sooner this business was done, and he was out of the company of these knob-wads, the better. He grimaced as he watched the filthy fire. Maybe he should wait for his watch to come around, then slit all their throats and take the map for himself. More reward for him then.

In the darkness of the jungle beyond the firelight, something screamed. It was the scream of something dying, and doing it in brutal agony by the sounds of it.

Then again, thought Scurge, maybe killing his companions could wait until after they had rescued the girl and got out of this shit stinking jungle. After that… Well, after that was another matter.

He closed his eyes.

Despite the constant screeching and skittering in the surrounding darkness, it didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

* * * * *

The mist thickened the already rank air at the bottom of the slope. Sir Burgess was standing still, ignoring the grey tendrils that covered the ground and the surrounding jungle. The man had his helmet on, so it was impossible for Scurge to tell what he was thinking. He could have been asleep for all he knew.

He took a few steps backwards, away from the decrepit knight, and peered up the slope again.

Where’ve those pair of turds got to? Sir Burgess made no reply. We should have all gone.

Our comrades will make better speed.

Scurge scowled. He knew the real reason the knight had sent Kreelipu and Peemish on alone. His festering knee was probably playing up again, and he didn’t want the trouble of climbing the slope if it was going to be another dead way.

That sodding clerk had better be right this time.

Have patience with the man. The map you stole is not the best.

Scurge’s hand tightened on the handle of the knife at his belt.

That’s the thanks I get for risking my cocking neck!

I would hardly call sneaking into the bedroom of a drunken acolyte as taking a risk.

Scurge glared at Sir Burgess’ back, and imagined the pleasure he would feel when he finally got the chance to bury his axe between the pious sod’s shoulder blades.

The clerk’s mistress had better live up to her side of the deal, that’s all I can say.

Be assured that she will. Peemish claims that she cares greatly for her daughter’s safety.

Not enough to stop her husband selling her to the Brotherhood in the first place.

I assume it was an event that she could not prevent.

Scurge grimaced, and glanced back up the slope.

The girl’s probably been eaten by now.

The Sladin moon has not completed its passage. We still have time.

A branch cracked somewhere in the veiling mist. Scurge reached for his axe, but it was Peemish who emerged out of the greyness.

I have found it! he whispered, his excitement barely contained as he pointed back up the slope.

Where is Kreelipu? asked Sir Burgess.

He is back up there. Keeping watch.

And the girl?

She is there! She still lives!

Let us go then.

The knight began to climb the slope, his armour grating and his movements stiff as he negotiated the jungle’s low branches and entwining vines. Scurge scowled at the noise, and then followed, consoling himself with the knowledge that he would soon be out of the pompous git’s stinking company.

* * * * *

Scurge noticed the change in the jungle as they pushed their way through the final slick wall of leaves and prickling vegetation. The screeching, whirring and sighing that pervaded the surrounding damp undergrowth must have been fading while they climbed the slope, but once they stood together on the basin’s edge the silence before them was absolute.

He had never been one for poetic observations, but for once the scene before him caused his brain to work hard to make sense of it. It was as though a vast round space had been hollowed out of the jungle’s foliage. Its bottom was flattened by layers of half rotten leaves, but the surrounding jungle curved upwards and over, held back by arching metal ribs, interlaced with twisted angular struts. The metal was dark and mossy, wrapped in vines and crawling plants, and sunlight pierced through the structure in misty shafts that lit the jungle floor.

There she is! whispered Peemish, pointing to the basin’s far side.

The girl was hanging with her head drooping to her chest, her arms stretched above her and her wrists tightly bound. The rope that secured them was tied to a piece of dark metal that protruded from the curved wall. Hand-lights had been strapped to stakes in a circle about her, and their rippling light was pale in the vaporous shafts of sunlight. The light played over the girl’s arms, and on her naked legs where they showed beneath the rag she had been clothed in, making them seem pallid and ashen.

Scurge unslung his axe and peered around the basin’s space.

Brotherhood’s probably long gone. Too shit scared to be around here once the moon rises.

Sir Burgess was once more standing unmoving, and his manner might have seemed calm if it wasn’t for the laboured breathing that Scurge could hear echoing inside his helm.

Where’s shit breath? Scurge asked.

Peemish pointed upwards to the curving foliage above the girl, but Scurge could see no sign of Kreelipu. He wasn’t surprised. Hiding was the thing the piss poor critter did best. He had better be ready with his knives. That’s all Scurge was bothered about.

So what’s the plan, Sir Berk? The knight did not move, but his breathing had slowed. You think the big bad beastie might be away?

There is only one way we can find that out.

The knight drew his sword and stepped down into the silent basin. Scurge grinned and watched him go. Peemish was still standing beside him, studying the girl on the basin’s far side.

You'd better stay here, clerk. Out of our sodding way. Watch carefully now, see how a real man earns his pay, and try not to crap yourself.

Scurge followed Sir Burgess down into the basin, smiling at the sound of Peemish’s tutted objection. The ground beneath his feet felt spongy with accumulated humus, but nothing grew in its pungent depths, and the way down was easy. Ahead of him, Sir Burgess was making his way cautiously towards the girl, who didn’t stir,