The Rat and Cage

A horn sounded, brash in the cold and still of an autumn evening, just as a lanky youth vaulted a hedge and sprinted over the stubble of a hay field. He ran with a determined but failing stride, an exhausted and desperate young man; teeth gritted, head down and face red, his breaths coming in ragged whoops. Now throwing himself bodily over a rough wall, his momentum took him down, headlong into a muddy and fast flowing stream. Then he was up again, thrashing the murky flow as he pushed hard for the other side.

As he scrambled up the other bank his back prickled, his subconscious telling him that one of the pursuing horsemen was now crossing the field and could see him as he ducked into the shadowy woodland bordering the river’s other bank.

Another horn sounded off to his right, bringing a wave of cold sweat and fear across his young face, and he veered to the left and leapt and bound over the scrub between dark yew trees. As he struggled and slid up the slope between the trees the lights of the Inn became visible, a glimmer of hope blinking through the morass of shadows and green branches.

God, was he in trouble.

The yews, he thought, must surely slow the horsemen. With this last hope he drove his failing muscles on, all pounding pain and stars in his eyes, until his adrenaline-soaked fear had propelled him out of the trees, across the dusty road and directly up to the Rat and Cage. He flew through the old wooden door and kicked it shut behind him before bolting for the stairs. Shouts and the drawing of a few illegal weapons accompanied his entrance, and he heard the keeper’s voice shouting.

‘Lennie Lartey, what the hell have you done now?’

When the door of the Rat and Cage flew open once again and bounced off the wall with a clatter the inn fell silent, and only the fire could be heard crackling and spitting in the hearth.

‘Where’s the boy?’ a grating and oddly accented voice asked from the shadows darkening the door. Lartey was fortunate that the trail of water he had left behind was obscured by spilled beer.

‘Well, I don’t know what you could be meaning there, sir,’ the keeper could be heard to reply, ‘but I can offer you a jug of ale for your weariness.’

Dark figures entered, so tall they ducked under the lintel. Tension poured into the room with them. Weapons were still in hand among the punters, but now concealed from the two heavily armoured Gov Cavalry soldiers. They wore heavy, dark-grey clothing and chain mail, over which chunks of dull carbon-steel plate armour were fastened with leather straps.

For now, the crowd’s fear held their hatred for these men in check, even when the first soldier grabbed the poor barkeeper, a rotund man by the name of Danny Brewster , by the neck and smashed his head off the bar with a thwack.

‘Well we’ll just have to burn the little fucker out then won’t we?’ he growled, pushing Brewster away.

Still no one moved.

That was, until Damian Bubb, Lartey’s best and only friend, pulled his new and very illegal flintlock pistol from inside his jacket and shot at the offending soldier. Almost immediately a wicked steel blade appeared in Brewster’s hand and was driven with a wrench against the same soldier’s chain mail shirt.

Bubb’s shot was poorly aimed, succeeding only in taking a hat off the head of a punter standing behind the guard, sending it spinning comically off to the back of the room. It was, however, the signal for absolute mayhem to descend upon the inn. The room exploded into violence, with several men hurling themselves at each of the two Cavalrymen, who moved with frightening speed and brutal efficiency as they fought back.

Although blows rained down on the two soldiers, they managed somehow to avoid or simply shrug off most, and dealt an appalling series of lethal counterblows with strange, jet-black knives which somehow hummed hungrily as they were engaged. The wooden floor quickly became slippery with blood and beer among overturned tables and stools as one half of the fight swept across the room towards the roaring fire in the old stone hearth. Here the Cavalryman who had spoken crashed to the floor among the mêlée, still fighting, and was buried in men intent on disabling him. His little black blade hummed an ominous tune all the while, slicing and maiming and dismembering with seemingly effortless ease; opening arteries and bone and muscle to the smoky air.

Now the troublemaker himself, Lennie Lartey, reappeared, still soaking but now brandishing a woodcutter’s axe. He slid across the bloody floor and swung it viciously at the other soldier still struggling by the door. The blow sparked off a steel plate, but shattered the man’s shoulder nonetheless, even through his armour.

‘Suck on that, bastard!’ screamed Lartey, but the Gov soldier had already spun to whip his good fist across Lartey’s face, smashing into his jaw and knocking him off his feet.

As he dragged himself up and spat out a tooth, it seemed his dead father’s face appeared among the stars in the red mist. He imagined he could hear him shout against the roar in his ears even as he reached down for the fallen axe.

He lurched forwards and swung it hard again at the thrashing soldier, feeling the big blade crunch deep through chain mail and into the man’s chest, taking him down with two of the locals, spluttering bright, pinkish blood from his mouth. The soldier’s gaze now locked on Lartey’s. Again the axe came down. This time it glanced off chest armour before biting with a loud crack deep into the Government man’s thigh. But still the man tried to fight. He managed to bring a tiny black pistol to bear on Lartey even as other men’s blows struck his bloody head and face.

 All the local people knew enough about Technology to fear that dull-looking little black Pistol, and although Lartey would never know whether he dived or simply slipped in the blood, he did very well indeed to avoid the blast which vaporised half the bar and blew a circular hole right through three walls to the outside.

The horse in the stable out back was not so lucky.

Damian Bubb meanwhile, had sat back down in the corner near the fire, close to the other momentous struggle. He was trying to reload the flintlock and had somehow been completely bypassed by the devastation, despite the fact that the first fallen Cavalryman was only about a yard away, still fighting with Brewster and his patrons, and still on the floor. Innkeeper Brewster was now in a bad way, having completely lost a hand, but their collective effort was slowly and tortuously bettering the soldier. The Cavalryman’s hair smouldered, ignited by its proximity to the blazing fire in the hearth.

Feeling some intense embarrassment at the result of his first wayward shot, Damian Bubb had been intent on making amends from point blank range, but had still not managed to prepare the flintlock. Seeing that the struggle was now in danger of enveloping him, Bubb realised that he had to act quickly.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ he shouted as he pushed the chair back and stood up, shoving the flintlock back into his belt, and then wilfully emptied his gunpowder bag directly over the bloody, smouldering Cavalryman.

The result was instantaneous, a loud pop of flame completely engulfing the soldier, blowing Bubb clean off his feet and punching Brewster backwards and right over the remnants of his own bar top.

Despite the percussion, over in the middle of the floor Lennie Lartey still somehow stood, swaying and suffering from appalling double vision. He could just about see that his own opponent was finally succumbing to the onslaught and lay prone as final blows from exhausted men took his life. Bubb’s impromptu bomb did prove to be the final straw, however, and Lartey’s dazed mind finally gave in, causing him to fall headlong to the floor, cracking his battered head off a stool on the way down.

Damian Bubb himself, his whole face black with powder burns, managed to sit up and pat out his smouldering fringe and moustache, just as he noticed one sooty hand and then another cauterised, bloody stump appear from the behind the remains of the bar. The rest soon followed, to form a blackened, bleeding and vaguely Brewster-shaped apparition. The eyes stared balefully out at him.

‘Eh... sorry,’ said Bubb.

Room with a View

Although still tall by normal standards, Awn Loley had never been as tall or athletic as most in the Ruling Caste. Generally speaking, she had always been considered something of a misfit and, although she had learned to hide it well, the truth was she still harboured a rebellious streak a mile wide.

Early in childhood she had come to the realisation that to continue riling her tutors and testing her Conditioning would lead her to disappear. Her natural intelligence taught her early on to play a dangerous game of deceit, slowly convincing sceptical tutors and Officers that her cleverness could be put to good use in the control of Technology. She had worked out at a remarkably early age that to do anything else would be to follow in the footsteps of all the others who had, for one reason or another, not quite made the mark. To follow them out the door one day, and never be seen again.

 Blue speckled eyes looked up sharply from the screen as her Coordinating Officer appeared through the dull steel doorway.

She exited the Crime Reports she had accessed.

The merest twitch of her bobbed-style, jet-black hair was the only clue to her guilt as she returned to her work in preparing one of the Tanks for an engagement. Her almond-shaped face became obscured by hair as she looked down, leaving just a prominent chin and button nose visible to her visitor.

Officer Winters always felt uneasy around Awn Loley but could never really work out why. He secretly found her very attractive which definitely contributed to his discomfort and she was just a bit too bloody smart for her own good.

Somehow though, there was more to it than that.

‘Early in again Loley, you’ll be after the Governor’s job at this rate.’

 What was going on there, he though to himself. Should he be suspicious?

‘Speaking of whom, you’d better move your arse today with Tank 14. His Lordship is raging about something apparently, and he wants it out of the Hanger tomorrow before first light to go crush some skulls.’

Loley looked up.

‘There is a problem there, sir. Tank 14 does not seem keen on another engagement at all; I think it thinks we’re taking advantage of its good nature, sir.’ She cringed inwardly, berating herself for her flippant answer and waited for the worst.

Winters blood-shot eyes goggled.

‘What? Don’t get bloody smart, Loley…. what about Tank 5 then? Get it sorted, or you’ll be explaining yourself to His Lordship the Governor. Good nature? My arse! It’s a machine!’

‘Yes sir.’ She stopped. She then fought a brief battle with herself and lost. ‘But… it thinks.’

‘What?!! What the hell are you talking about?’ roared Winters, with a generous portion of  spittle.

‘Its just that…That’ll be why….eh…that’s why the likes of yourself, eh…important Officers, could never find the time to persuade it to be a good little Tank, sir,’ she said in a flurry of words, again wincing inwardly.

She got away with it this time. Winters wasn’t quite sure if this it had been an insult or not, but was aware that as usual, he’d somehow lost the upper ground in the conversation. He leaned until his face was close to Lowley’s.

‘Just get it done little girl, or I’ll make sure you cop the blame’ he breathed.

Awn Loley looked away.

‘Yes sir’.

No point in winding the bastard up and besides, his breath stank like shit. He looked at her for a second, a big blotchy face below dark, greasy hair and callous-looking eyes. Then he abruptly pulled away, and as he strode off purposefully to hassle somebody else she went back into the Crime Reports.

She secretly loved to read the stories of insurgence and acts of defiance which were happening all over Bartrop with increasing frequency. Her new level of responsibility had given her access to the Crime Reports and, biased or not, they had really opened her eyes. Awn Loley had always felt a strong affinity with the Populace. They were living real lives, or would be if the Government could let them get on with it.

God, we’re going backwards here.

Her kind were mired deep in age-old Traditions, and the whole system simply would not be without their infamous Technology. Awesome weapons of war; truly ancient machines so advanced that no one had a clue how they worked or why they kept on working; the Tanks and the Flyers, compact but terrifyingly fast and destructive, which just menaced the whole nation into submission. Many of had apparently abruptly ceased to function over a period spanning many hundreds of years, and indeed Flyers were rarely heard of these days, but the Technology’s fearsome reputation was a big factor in the continuation of the status quo.

At least the Populace, the ordinary folk, were productive and resourceful. Loley admired their courage in the face of enormous odds. She longed to live as they did, servants to the system just as she was, but out there with the wild things she seldom saw and free to roam if they dared. They had families, a mother and father, something she had only a vague concept of but was fascinated by all the same. She new that families were close, that they were willing to die for each other just through a natural instinct she did not know how to feel. The ruling caste were not born from the womb.

Loley knew what a mother was of course, what it meant she could only guess. She also knew about the concept of love, but was pretty sure she had never loved.

Sighing, she stood and stretched, feeling the fine wool of her uniform tighten over her curves. She began making her way across the steel floor, following a worn and polished route which meandered around old, defunct work stations. To either side the metal was blackened and tarnished, unused in an age.

She walked towards the huge south window set in its massive rusting frame. The view from up here, the 101^st floor, made her heart ache, even through the thick, scarred and weathered glass. Two miles away Bartrop City, the nation’s capital, sprawled away amid a thousand plumes of smoke until it met the sea, where numerous boats sailed to and from the docks. The Isle of Cares, one of Bartrop’s notorious Contamination hotspots, rose from the sea off to the left, many miles to the southwest, and looked wild and beautiful, deceptively innocuous. Below her the short grass and gravel of the compound stretched to the Perimeter fence with its accompanying ditches. Roads from west and east, and from Bartrop, met in front of the tall wire gates where she could see the small figures of Guards standing far below. She stood in the window, a tiny figure framed near the top of a vast, rotting steel tower stained with huge red streaks of rust.

She would prepare the Tank as requested; it was absolutely vital that her loyalty was not questioned.

Never mind, she thought, my time will come.
A Rock and a Hard Place

The deep rumble and thud of many horses’ hooves began to permeate through the tress. The woods had a deadening effect, and at first it was more a feeling than a sound, muted and subdued by trees laden with autumn foliage and a forest floor thick with the rot of eons. The sound grew quickly though, announcing the return of the first sizeable war party assembled by the Tribes of Oram to strike at Government soldiers in living memory.  

 Well, almost.

 Niambh a Sathe stood waiting, old, grey and frail, and still remembered another time, when the Oram warriors had been numbered in thousands.

She watched with wizened, judicious brown eyes as the group thundered into the clearing, fatigued and dirty, the horses foaming and winded from a long, hard run. She was small, shrunken with age, but retained a proud bearing and had once been very beautiful.

The men waved and greeted loved ones, dismounting wearily, before quickly withdrawing under the shadow of a great beech tree to converse conspirationally.

Urgent things are afoot, she decided with a wry smile.

Among the men were her two beloved grandsons. Anke, her late daughter’s son, was a grown man but still youthful to her eyes, highly respected amongst his peers, and was increasingly being seen to take a leading role among the tribe. She was very proud of him.

Utin, on the other hand had all the makings of an Arcana, a serious man who was very connected with the life and spirits of the forest. She was very proud of him too.

As soon as they had learned that another Government force was coming Anke had argued vociferously that they must strike a blow. Each time, the Cavalry came a little deeper into the great forest and this time the people would be found.

‘War is coming’ he had declared to the doubters, ‘whether we like it or not.’

He had argued that they could perhaps leave to hide on the Isle of Cares, the one place that the Ruling Caste and their Cavalry were known to avoid. This was radical and unpopular thinking: the stories of that place, perhaps brought back by the traders who ventured there only rarely under the power of sail, were enough to scare all but the foolhardy away. Contamination. An alien word to these people, a word of the Ruling Caste. In addition, although they avoided it, the Government forces had in the past also tried to make sure that no community ever sprang up there by razing it to the ground from the air with a Flyer.

The war party had been lead by an old war-like chief from another tribe by the name of Thamast Unst, an imposing and gruff man with great experience of battle.

How times have changed, reflected Niambh. Unst and a handful of others were all that remained of the neighbouring River Tribe of Oram, and he had been a sworn enemy of her people in the past. He was a huge man, still strong despite his years, with long, wild, white hair, and a dark, leathery face, bearded and creased with numerous lines and scars. He had a flat, misshapen nose, squint and broken, and huge eyebrows which shaded fierce blue eyes. He was notoriously fearless in battle, and stories told round the camp fires of the Hill Tribe in the past had whispered of some mysterious immortality.

Niambh would have none of that.

Still, he was a formidable warrior who had survived many more brushes with death than he should have. During her lifetime the tribes had all too often clashed and skirmished with each other as competition for their diminishing lands increased, despite Niambh and others advocating compromise and diplomacy. She had been a strong, unremitting voice for peace and common sense among the Hill Tribe’s elders, but had still seen bitter disputes develop, and endured the wasteful death of too many people.

Things were very different now. Their neighbouring tribes had been all but obliterated in recent years by the resurgent Ruling Caste under their new Governor, in new campaigns to stamp out the peoples’ independence and bring them to heel as tax payers and assets. This encroachment had reached through most of Oram and now loomed ominously over her own people, deep in the massive forests. Priorities changed. The pitiful remains of their neighbouring tribes, former bitter rivals and allies by turn to the territory and treasures of the forest, were now welcomed with great pity and sorrow to the fold.

Many of the warriors and hunters were preparing to leave, a compact fighting force of about thirty, mostly men and from the other tribes, battle-hardened and led by Unst. They, it was decided, would continue to take the fight to the Government patrols, making gorilla raids and haunting the forests like dark wraiths, to spread fear and rumour among their bitter enemy. These were heartbroken people, defeated but fuelled by hatred, with only revenge in their minds. The remnants of the families would go with the Hill Tribe to find a safe haven.

‘So are we threatened?’ Niambh a Sathe shouted.

They all looked over. Anke Maas Lowit smiled at the interruption despite himself. He was a tall, strong man in his late thirties with serious brown eyes and long dark hair, half tied back in the customary fashion to keep it off his angular face, normally clean-shaven but showing a dark growth of stubble. Like them all he wore skins and furs. A bow and quiver were slung over his shoulder and an axe from his belt.

‘Yes my Lady, but it’ll be some days before they can get here,’ he called back, leading his horse towards her. ‘When they crossed the river two days ago we killed more than a few and sent them scurrying back, though they’ve taken some of us too Lady Niambh, I’m sorry.’ The smile had gone now.

‘Well they’ll be baying for blood now Anke, so you’d better get everyone moving right now.’

The other men had gathered themselves and said their farewells, heading North into the gloom of the forest, sombre and silent, with sad glances and waves to those left behind as they departed.

Maas Lowit watched them leave, his eyes betraying his sadness, before he sighed and turned back to his Grandmother.

‘I promise you they would still have two days travel Lady, and we left them a few nasty surprises.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Anke! You have done very well, I’m sure, but you’ve got these people’s welfare to consider and its not Cavalry we should be worried about. They’ll send a Tank now, you know they will.’

Lowit handed his horse’s reigns to a willing young helper and then turned, looking from her sad, brown eyes to the crowd who had gathered. Everyone’s eyes were now upon him: kids, mothers, hunters; even the horses and the dogs seemed to be looking at him.

Were they really expecting him to lead them? He took a deep breath.

‘Right!’ he shouted to them all, ‘get everything packed, we’re moving east and south! If they send a Tank we die, and I don’t intend to wait and find out, so we have to run from them. Now.’

For a second all the people, even, it seemed to him, the horses and the dogs, stood looking at him and he was in fear of mortal embarrassment. Then they all simultaneously burst into action, striking camp and preparing belongings.

 Amid the bustle, Anke Maas Lowit caught sight of Samira Skandali, her beautiful sea-green eyes watching him, framed by sandy locks of hair. He definitely felt something for that girl, and was all too aware of how hard life had been to her. He smiled.

Tearing his gaze away he leant down until he was level with a different pair of eyes; Niambh a Sathe’s old brown eyes, wrinkled but beautiful still.

He whispered: ‘Grandma, please don’t call me a fool in front of people, they will laugh behind my back!’

She looked at him.

‘It’s when they’re laughing in your face you should worry!’ and he felt her delicate breath against his face as she herself laughed at him.

So the people of the Hill Tribe of Oram fled. Moving as an organised and mobile unit, they kept between the rolling hills and used the secret paths through the woods. They travelled fast and tirelessly, comfortable on foot or on horseback, with the main body of the people surrounded at a distance by a number of scouts on horseback and on foot, watching out for them all from the higher ground.

The group was around a hundred strong and made up mostly of families -  women, children and the elderly in the main, alongside a disproportionately small, and dwindling group of men. Many men had lost their lives in skirmishes with other tribes in days long past, or more recently in facing the Government patrols. Some had also left with Thamast Unst’s group of gorilla fighters, feeling the need to fight for their hereditary lands against the relentless encroachment of the Government into the forests. Most of the grown men in the group had family, or were young still and served as scouts or hunters, and there were also several of the younger women who made fine scouts, possessed of fine horsemanship as all in the tribe were.

The main body of the group formed a line two or three abreast depending on the terrain, and Maas Lowit walked alongside his friend and cousin Utin Sathe the Medicine man.

The decision had been made to head southeast, towards the coast, where the scrublands and rocky outcrops were hard and wild. It was a calculated risk, gambling their continuing freedom against a more risky and difficult way of life in the Badlands, with the possibility hanging over them that a further attempted move to the Island might be necessary.

Of course, the reason why the Badlands were left well alone lay in their proximity to the coast and the headland that looked out onto the island. The Contamination there was known to affect the beasts and plants, even in the Badlands, and if anyone lived on the Isle of Cares they were a mystery, just rumours and stories, with those who it was said resided there known to be occasionally persecuted, pummelled from the air by a Flyer.

As the shadows lengthened, Anke Maas Lowit and the Medicine man Utin Sathe, who were together leading the main body of tribe, became increasingly uneasy. Sathe in particular seemed very agitated.

Utin Sathe was shorter than his cousin Maas Lowit, and had dark speckled tattoos all down the left side of his face. His skin was dark, darker than anyone’s in the tribe, and he wore his hair shorter, jet black and unkempt, and had various feathers, bones, jewellery and piercings adorning his clothing and person. His eyes were also jet black and often had an unsettling effect on those who looked into them.

They had forded a river and entered thick woodland, passing through dark arches of some ancient stonework engulfed in Ivy and overhanging branches. The cover was ideal, but an uncanny silence had descended on the forest and Sathe had felt the hairs on his body stand on end. Knowing that Utin Sathe had instincts for these things which were themselves uncanny, Maas Lowit was alarmed enough to lead the tribe rapidly up to higher ground, to a point where their path met another at a crossroads, and there he ordered people to find what cover they could, and for those who were able to take up defensive positions in the surrounding cover. After twenty minutes the scouts, one by one, had all returned.

All except Niclo.        

‘Where the hell is he?’ said a worried Maas Lowit. ‘Trust Niclo to be the one that bloody disappears, his mother’s going to skin me if he’s come to harm.’

He glanced round nervously to see if Niclo’s mother, his half sister, was aware of the problem. He couldn’t see her.

Sathe murmured into his ear.

‘I’m worried for him Anke, there is something out there…. I don’t like this at all.’ His voice sounded weak and shaky with anxiety.

As Maas Lowit turned to look at his friend he realised he had never seen him so badly frightened. Sathe stared out eastwards up one of the paths that joined their own, his dark face somehow deathly pale and his fingers and voice shaking as he pulled the charm he wore round his neck from his furs and began an incantation.

All eyes seemed now to be fixed on the shadowy east path and sure enough, they soon heard a horse approaching at full gallop. In time the rider appeared over a rise two hundred yards away and they recognised Niclo. It seemed he saw them too and he began screaming and waving his bow over his head as he sped towards them. The initial relief felt by all at his appearance now turned to shock as they saw that something was following him. Something big.

They watched in horror as a nightmare shadow loomed menacingly behind the fleeing rider. It was huge and lightening quick.

Rapidly gaining on its speeding prey, it suddenly reared impossibly tall, terribly threatening, onto its hind legs as if preparing to strike.

Most of the assembled tribe were simply frozen in terror at the sight but some were able to loose arrows, which sped towards the beast but had no perceptible effect. The whites of the horse's panic-stricken eyes shone through the gloom, now only fifty yards away, as Niclo strained forward over its neck. Hooves thumped staccato on the path like a heart racing, and snorts of breath betrayed the extreme exertion of the horse, so desperate to escape.

The great beast caught them easily. With a scything swipe of an arm that ended in one huge sickle-like talon, it somehow took both the horse’s rear legs clean off at the hip. There was an audible thump as the devastating blow landed. The monster then skidded to a halt in a cloud of dirt, watching its prey hit the ground hard.

Niclo was thrown clear over his horse's head and hit the ground rolling, until he tumbled limply to a halt. The rest of his crippled horse bounced and rolled along the dirt track until it too slid to a stop. It spewed blood from the remnants of its hindquarters and twitched in shock. They had stopped barely five yards from Utin Sathe and Maas Lowit at the front of the tribe.

The giant seemed able to move and stand either on all fours or upright on two legs. It now raised itself again to its full height on its hind legs, which bent back in the middle like a horse’s and ended in big, gnarly hooves. It stood fully three times the height of a man and had long arms; disproportionately long, hanging almost to the ground - the effect made more pronounced by its hunched posture.

A couple of arrows were stuck in its torso, evidence of the accuracy of the shots fired earlier; one complete with feathered end and one now just a broken shaft.  It appeared oblivious to them.

Most strikingly, it somehow carried some traces of humanity in its face and hands, and wore matted bear furs as clothing. Fierce blue eyes burned out from a large, moon-like face, distorted but nonetheless unmistakeably humanesque, below a mop of messy reddish hair. It stood eyeing them menacingly, swinging one of its great talloned arms from side to side like some lethal pendulum.

‘The Feeg…’ Sathe managed to whisper, as he held out the charm in his shaking hand.

‘For God’s sake.........nobody shoot it,’ Lowit managed to say, voice quavering, ‘I think it would kill us all.’

A strong, musty stench filled the air. The Feeg looked into their eyes, before leaning forward and sweeping up the dying horse over its shoulder, splattering blood down its back. It then looked down at the prone figure of Niclo, lying crumpled in the undergrowth beside the path, until old Niambh a Sathe abruptly came forward on her horse. She approached it fearlessly, and it bent its great head down curiously towards her as she approached, and stopped the swinging talon.

‘I know you,’ she said looking up into its big blue eyes. ‘You have met me before.....a long time ago. You may take the horse....’ she gestured at the maimed animal slung over its back and then turned towards Niclo, ‘but please spare me my great-grandson.’

Mustering all his courage Maas Lowit now started towards his fallen nephew as Niambh bowed her head before the Feeg and backed slowly away. As Maas Lowit went to help the stricken scout, the Feeg lurched suddenly towards Utin Sathe the Medicine man, and then, more slowly now, held out a big hand along with its huge bloodied blade where a forefinger should have been. The great curved claw folded upwards until it rested pearlescent along the beast’s forearm, now out of the way and leaving the remainder of a very large and stubby hand.

 To his credit, Sathe, who was surely the most terrified of anyone, continued to hold up his talisman, although the accompanying chant now petered out to a whisper. The beast’s hand reached further until the fingers, huge but markedly human by comparison with its great talon, reached the talisman and then closed round the piece and pulled. Sathe, who by now was silent, opened his own hand and felt the leather thong snap from his neck as he let his most treasured, sacred possession go.

The Feeg straightened and held the charm up, regarding it curiously for a moment before looking down at the people below, scanning them threateningly. Apparently satisfied, it looked heavenwards, let out one piercing scream that echoed eerily through the woods, then abruptly turned and launched itself, horse and all, into the forest, effortlessly vaulting Lowit and Niclo at the side of the road. It quickly disappeared into the gloom, until they could only hear its feet pounding the soft loam of the forest floor, receding. Then it was gone.

It left behind it only deep clawed holes in the ground, the torn legs from Niclo’s poor horse and a deeply shocked, but very, very relieved, Hill Tribe of Oram.

A Sharp Exit

Lennie Lartey and Damian Bubb had always been trouble. Lartey had been made an orphan at the age of six by a vicious and spiteful Gov Sergeant, who he had later discovered went by the name of Mors. Various people had taken pity on the boy over the years, but his uncontrollable behaviour had all too often meant he bit the hand that fed him. His utter lack of any social skills whatsoever, and his dark, brooding demeanour meant that as he grew older people became too wary of him to want much contact. He had done odd jobs for folk from time to time in exchange for food and lodgings, but had come to rely more and more on wild foods and often slept rough. He had grown to be a tall, wiry young man with long, straggly brown hair and a gaunt and slightly cruel face. Dark, fathomless eyes looked out at the world with perpetual disdain from under heavy brows. Smiles were rare, gifting the lucky recipient with a display of discoloured, uneven and bad teeth. The recent addition of a vivid bruise on his cheek and a short, patchy beard completed the dishevelled appearance. His clothes were a combination of old cotton farm clothes and skins, which he interchanged with furs depending on the season.

Damian Bubb’s dysfunctional family had ensured that the pair spent most of their childhoods together, running wild, fighting and generally making a nuisance of themselves. He was the youngest of six, five of whom were boys, and had come along very late (the word ‘mistake’ had been much in use among local gossip-mongers). Later, his father’s ill health had taken its toll on his mother and her ability to cope. While the older boys had been out working for the Farm, young Damian had been largely ignored, and as he grew older, was also largely absent without leave. He had developed a more than slightly worrying obsession with fire, and latterly with the strictly illegal art of gunpowder and firearms. Several ‘incidents’ involving respectively the fireplace in the house, the hay barn and one of the pigs, had not encouraged his poor mother to insist on him being around. In stark contrast to Lartey, he was quite short and of fairly stocky build, and had a very fair, if somewhat rough complexion. Laughter lines round his eyes were offset by hard, icy-blue eyes and a worn, pitted face, which belied his eighteen youthful years. A scruffy blond moustache accompanied a tuft protruding from his chin, and was designed to set off the ridiculous feathered hat which sat, battered and misshapen on his yellowish mop of hair. Both hat and facial hair showed recent signs of singeing.

To the people of Quinten Farm, that huge collective of many farmsteads covering hundreds of square miles, Lennie Lartey and Damian Bubb were notorious - the proverbial gruesome twosome, and the incident at the Rat and Cage had been the final straw. The villagers of Quinten itself new that retribution was coming, and despite their hatred of the Government, many bitterly resented Bubb and Lartey for bringing it upon them.

So, after a meeting in the village square early one morning, the pair had been told to leave Quinten Farm within the hour. They had time to collect some essential belongings, beg some food and, in Bubb’s case say farewell to his poor mother, before they made a sullen departure from the village square. They were on foot, as neither owned a horse, and looked for the most part like a couple of tramps as they trotted off up the main track heading west.

They walked for several miles lost in dark thoughts, along a dusty and rutted dirt road bordered by fields of stubble and copses of trees cloaked in autumn colours; auburn reds, browns and golds. Twice they passed farm hands working in neighbouring fields, who stood impassively like scarecrows and watched them go by. Lartey would look behind him afterwards and see them still staring, as if draining every last vestige of a break from their drudgery.

Later, when they saw movement on the road ahead, they both instinctively ducked into the hedgerow, but soon unhid and continued onwards when it became apparent that it was naught but an old man on a hay cart, pulled by large, but an equally worn-out looking horse. They stood aside to let the aging apparition through but the man, who they now recognised as Old-Man Moffat, reigned in his cart and hailed them.

‘Well I’ll be damned, if it ain’t Bubb and Lartey,’ he chuckled throatily, ‘Thought you two might be for the chop!’ He laughed again. ‘Finally thrown you out I see….. you had it coming, mind!’

Lartey was the first to dredge up a response from his black mood.

‘On your way old man, before I steal your horse and cart, and leave you for the crows. I would have knocked you off already if I didn’t think the poor beast had suffered enough.’

‘Ha ha! Suffered she has too, and me with her, young Lartey. But if you’re heading west be warned, was all I meant to say. There’s bad soldiers coming, I hear. And there’s many a rumour that there’s plenty more trouble brewing further out West, too. You mark my words!’ he said, before giving his horse’s reins a shake, and rattling off up the road.

‘Trouble’s his bloody middle name!’ shouted Bubb after the receding wagon, before laughing hysterically to himself, and punching Lartey heavily on the shoulder. A brief scuffle broke out then between the two, which only old Moffat was around to witness. He peered back over his shoulder and shook his old head.

‘Wish them luck, Twiglet’, he said to his horse, ‘I think they’re going to need it’.

Somehow, the meeting with the old trader and the ensuing fight had cheered the pair considerably, and they walked off into the crisp, sunny autumn’s day with some renewed vigour and squabbling. The road continued for many miles through flat farmland and patches of woodland, but they could see the land rise up a days walk into the west and they knew that the farmland would soon enough give way to the moors and heath.

‘Where are we actually going, by the way?’ said Bubb, stopping abruptly on the road.

Lartey sighed.

‘I dunno mate, just anywhere but the Quinten farm’

‘If we keep on this road, we’ll end up in Bartrop. I’m not sure we’d actually stay alive for very long there. Having said that, it might be interesting having a go.’

‘Aye well, we’ve got to get there first without being caught, let’s not forget. We’re travelling without any official business, we have no goods to trade, we’re probably on wanted posters by now and if I know you, there’s half a ton of firearms paraphernalia tucked away in that pack.’ Lartey seemed to hesitate before continuing: ‘Not to mention the fact that I’m carrying one of those bastard’s knives.’

Bubb gaped at him for a moment.

‘You sneaky shite!’ he shouted, ‘Let’s see it then!’

So they stopped there in the middle of the road and examined the Cavalryman’s little black knife. It seemed not to reflect even slightly the late afternoon’s sun, despite feeling utterly smooth and polished. Its edge was, as might be expected, easily sharp enough to shave with, and showed no damage from the fight in the inn. It lay on Lartey’s outstretched palm, shaped like some sinister arrowhead, a thick rounded handle becoming a nasty little diamond shaped blade.

‘I’m really not sure I even want it’ he said, ‘but then I think, hey, if they’re that bloody lethal I’d rather I was holding one too when they come for me.’

‘Amen to that, but it doesn’t seem to be anything all that special, you know? The way those two soldiers were carving folk up in the Rat and Cage, you’d have to think there was something else going on with these things. There must be, man! You saw the way they just went through anything like butter: skin, leather, bone, whatever!’

‘Well, its Tech stuff I guess, but how the hell do you make that work?’

‘Fuck knows…’

There was a pause.

‘What did you just call me?’

Another scuffle ensued, and so they continued.

Later, as the sun set before them, and gold turned to deep blood-orange, they had reason to thank the dry weather that had kept the dirt road dry. A haze of dust in the distance like a swarm through the glow had them diving in alarm once again for the hedgerow bordering the road. On realising how thinned the hedge was by the late season, they lay in a dry ditch that bordered the field. With the hedge now between them and the road, and the ditched filled with surprisingly comfortable leaves, they rustled themselves down as far as they could and waited.

They did not have long to wait. Four Gov Cavalrymen approached at some speed, hooves thudding and clattering on the rutted and stony road. Their fine steeds were breathing hard and foaming with sweat, but showed no signs of fatigue in their powerful advance. To the alarm of Bubb and Lartey in the ditch, the group were led by two big hunting dogs, all teeth and fur, which soon made a beeline for the hedge near where they lay. There, the fearsome beasts began barking and snuffling back and forth, tracking the scent of the hiding fugitives effortlessly towards where they lay.

One of the dogs stuck its broad head through a gap in the hedge and looked balefully right into Bubb’s eyes. It seemed unsure for a second exactly what it was that it was looking at, but realisation seemed to dawn with a rising of the hackles on its neck and a drawing back of its drool-covered upper chops to reveal some very long, and very sharp teeth.

Oh my God, this is it, he thought.

But, as lady luck would have it, the Cavalrymen were most definitely in a hurry to get somewhere, because just as the dog began to lunge forward towards Larty’s own hairy face, the horses simply thundered past and the poor beast was whipped on its protruding behind by one of the passing riders. It yelped and extracted its head in a flash from the hole in the hedge, and then ran off after its masters, who could be heard calling and shouting. It spared a pointed, hungry glare in the direction from whence it came as it bounded off after the horses, leaving a little silver trail of drool in the dust.

It took quite a while for either of the two ditch-fairing travellers to move from their leafy hiding place, long enough for the rumble of the Cavalry troop to have diminished into the distance, until barely a vibration remained in the still evening air.

‘Shit, I think I’ve shit myself.’ whispered Bubb.

‘Shut up. Just for once, just shut up,’ Lartey hissed as he turned on his companion, ‘That was almost curtains, that time. We are going to fucking die if we don’t start being just a little bit more careful. Do you understand?’

‘Oh, listen to it! Its you that got us into this bloody mess in the first place, trying to wiretrap those soldiers in Quinten. Halfwit!’

‘Yeah I know, but I’m serious. I don’t have a lot to live for Bubb. I think all I’m living for, all I really want if I’m being honest, is to do some damage to those bastards before I die. That’s all I want. That’s what’s keeping me going!’ He sighed then, and added: ‘And, surprise though it may seem after what’s happened, I do actually mean to stay alive long enough to see it happen.’

Bubb glared at him.

‘Well, Lennie me old pal, why didn’t you just say so?’ he said as he raised himself onto his hands and knees in the ditch revealing all the leaves and soil sticking to his clothes. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’

He sighed, stood up shakily and dusted his silly, olive-green cape down.

‘And here was me thinking you just had a good, old-fashioned bloody death wish.’

That incident did indeed encourage them to have a little more care, and they took to travelling parallel to the road and through the fields, on a course that always kept them near some rough cover. The going was far slower though, as their path zigzagged severely and the ploughed earth or scrub often required care and concentration to negotiate. The gently rolling terrain was still vaguely familiar to them but it was becoming less so, especially as the light was by now fading fast, so the decision was made to set up camp. They found a tree-filled gully through which ran a rushing, white stream, and searched along the steeply sloping banks, grabbing branches and trunks for support, until they found a flat spot not too close to the water.

To Damian Bubb and more especially Lennie Lartey, this sort of thing was second nature. By the time Bubb had collected enough fuel and kindling for a fire, Lartey had built a simple lean-to shelter, roofed with young hazel branches and covered with ferns. The floor he lined with anything dry and vaguely soft - great armfuls of leaves, ferns and grass – because he knew the clear weather meant a cold night. The more that he could insulate then from the warmth-sapping earth, the better chance they had of a good night’s sleep.

With so much dry tinder and kindling around, the fire was blazing in minutes. There had been a minor incident when Bubb’s ridiculous woolly cape started smouldering, and Lartey, fearing his companion’s powder stash might go up, took matters into his own hands with a pan full of water. That the water in the pan was almost boiling had seemed at the time the lesser of two evils, but it took a long time afterwards to persuade Bubb from threatening to burn him with a flaming brand from the fire.

So, as light fell they sat before a warm fire cooking beans and bacon, their faces lit and flickering with the flames. Being below the lip of the gully, they had little fear of their fire being seen and were able to relax as they ate from their sooty black pots and drank from the cool, clear water of the stream.

Later the pair could be seen staring reflectively into the embers, faces just a warm orange glow through the trees, deep in thought but somehow content, as is often the way after a hard days travelling. Knowing they had a warm, secure place to sleep and feeling the heat of their meal in their guts, the apprehension drained from their bodies.

Meeting of Minds

Awn Loley knew a lot about the Tanks. She understood them, that’s why she was given so much responsibility for preparing them and the freedom to use the associated systems.

Oh, she feared them too. Like anyone who knew anything about them at all, she recognised the massive, dark and brooding potential they possessed.

But she had never actually seen one. They spoke to her often as she prepared them for their infrequent, murderous sorties, but she had never actually seen one with her own eyes. Loley’s mind had formulated its own picture of them, born of their dark communications as she negotiated with them and cajoled them into taking and accepting a new Pilot. Her mind painted them as huge shadows, sulking in darkened hangars, or flitting across the land, booming their anger and violence to the world.

Rumours and the occasional supposedly first hand description had helped her build her picture. Stories of them appearing as if from thin air and then ‘jumping’ away again in an instant were rife, and it was fairly common knowledge that you could kiss goodbye to anyone, or anything, that occupied the space that a tank decided to jump into. Trees, buildings, rocks, hillsides, people, animals, anything at all.

The Pilots, she understood, were only good for one trip. She had nightmares wondering who, or what they were. Her assumption was that they directed the tanks somehow, choosing where they went and what they destroyed, and then they presumably died and had to be removed to make way for the next in line.

Tank 5 was her favourite, if that was possible, and seemed somehow to emanate a much more benign presence than the others. In the face of this was the undoubted truth that the damn thing had often been called upon to kill and destroy, which it did with frightening simplicity, but she never felt the sense of aggression and hatred which seeped into her mind from all the others. Somehow she felt she connected with this one, almost in an emotional sense, as if she almost felt sorry for it. In return, it would only respond to her – no one else had any success coaxing it out at all. This strange connection frightened the hell out of her but also intrigued her in equal measure.

Tank 5 simply pined for her attention. Every minute of every day while it lay dormant in the empty, pitch-black of its hangar it sought her voice trickling through the ether into its mind. When she spoke it drank upon her words like they were pure, cold, sparkling water in its parched desert of loneliness. It simply adored her, and that was why she got results. Loley didn’t actually consider the Tanks to be alive, but she sure as hell knew they were intelligent, an abomination of some ancient technology which had gone horrifically far too far down an avenue she shuddered to even think about.

With the other three Tanks which were awake, she always had less success, often none at all. They were all different, but all the others made her skin crawl, such were the depths of their malign hatred, bitterness and despair.

Most of the Tanks were dead though, never giving even a glimmer of response to anyone who had ever tried to wake them. Of these, tales recorded that some had been active at one time, often long, long ago, but for many there was simply no record at all of them ever having been active.

Time to get ready again Tank 5, she thought.

Somewhere in a big concrete hangar hundreds of feet below a giant shadow shivered.

TIRED

KILL

FOR YOU

YES

…that was easy, she thought to herself. Almost too easy.

FOR YOU

DON’T GO

Have to go! People to see, places to go. Busy bee, she said, removing the headset and standing up from the desk.

LAST TIME, came the reply.

She stopped dead. Tank 5 had never said that before. She was astonished, and worried what it might mean. Surely it wasn’t going to become dead and unresponsive now, the way others had. Her position could be on the line here, her usefulness to the system.

She didn’t even notice she wasn’t wearing the headset any more.

She had returned later to her desk to continue her frustrating work on Tank 14, but all her prompts were met with a distinctly brooding silence and before long she gave up and switched over to check out the latest Crime Reports.

The headset filled her head with news and pictures: she learned that further acts of defiance in Bartrop City had been hammered down by a troop of Government Cavalry, with the loss of 84 more insurgents and two more Cavalrymen - a grain store had been looted which had led to a riot as a starving crowd fought for their share. Pictures pushed into her mind showing the old store surrounded by pieces of broken timber from its busted walls; and bodies, clothes and other detritus of people, all lying on and covered in a mixture of grain, blood, dirt and splinters.

She learned also that a force into Oram had been ambushed by one of the tribes there with remarkable success. The Tribe involved were now being hunted down and were all to be killed, or captured and brought to the Complex at Bartrop. Here, she knew, they would be humiliated and tortured in the front square which looked down onto the City, then strung up as an example, or dragged off to one of the annexes where they would disappear inside. None would ever come back out.

            The final report showed sketches of two fugitives wanted for their involvement with the slaughter of two Cavalrymen in an Inn called the Rat and Cage in Quinten Farm. They were a likely-looking pair: one dark, scruffy and serious; the other rough and light of complexion and sporting a ridiculous hat-and-facial-growth combination. The report told her that the Inn, apparently already badly damaged, had been razed to the ground as punishment, and several of the men had been hung. A group of the children had also been taken back to Bartrop as penance for the deaths of the Cavalrymen. She shuddered. That was an horrendous thing to do, and where were they being taken? This, apparently, was in punishment for the loss of one Pistol and one Knife belonging to the soldiers.

That was a surprise. Although Loley had never actually used these Technology weapons, she had trained on their use and knew just how lethal they were. She felt a shiver of excitement at the thought that there might be some out there among the Populace. But would they be able to work out how to use them? Even if they could, she wasn’t sure either weapon could work with anyone other than one of the Ruling Caste. The thought was intriguing nevertheless.

Exiting the system and removing her headset, she was deep in thought as she meandered her way between the old workstations towards the stairwell. What had once been a fire exit was now the main route to and from the ground. The old lift on the other side of the room was an enigma to Loley, she had never seen through the steel doors and had no idea how it had worked, just a vague understanding that it had once been a hell of a lot quicker than walking down 101 flights of stairs. The stairwell was all steel too, a dead, echoing spiral of tarnished metal that seemed to amplify her steps as she began the tiresome daily ritual of making her way down to leave the building. Still, it was better than coming up.

Ancient, yellowish windows afforded her a decreasingly dramatic view west across the Government Complex as she worked her way down, out over annexes and squares, barracks and, towards the far side, the Palace. Its dark, complex spires thrust at the sky and surrounded the grandeur of the Dome: a hulking megalith of masonry. Beyond this were dark forests stretching west and upwards almost as far as the eye could see, only broken by the road which cut its way through from the city, and becoming increasing sparse as the ground rose to the northwest, rising towards the dramatic, snow-covered mountains in the North. To the southwest she could see the forest give way in the distance, many miles away, to the badlands that faced out towards Isle of Cares.

When she finally reached the ground floor she emerged into the reception hall: a wide, dilapidated room brightly lit from outside through more huge, yellowish windows. The Gov Soldier on duty at the entrance smirked at her as she approached and went to smack her behind as she passed, but was thwarted by a deft block of her left hand. Her eyes smouldered as she exited the building and descended the steps.

The steps took her down to a pitted and stained concrete path which ran across the grass for some hundred yards then joined the main avenue through the Complex. Groups of mounted Gov Cavalry moved here and there on the main avenue and a supply cart rumbled and clattered along the hard, rutted concrete. Two more of the great rusting steel edifices similar to the one she had just left loomed on each side, the three forming a diagonal line across a great rectangular quadrangle of short grass. Their great height, some 120 floors straining towards the sky, always gave her the impression they were leaning in towards each other, and given their antiquity she had often wondered if perhaps they actually were.

As she walked towards the main avenue heading north, she faced a stables and a collection of annexes, barracks and out-buildings. All the buildings were dilapidated and indeed several had been abandoned. Off to her left towards the west end of the Complex she could see the low rounded roofs of the hangars, and she shuddered at the thought of all those Tanks sitting brooding in ominous silence.

At the stables she met Daiseybell, her beloved brown and white pony, and patted its neck comfortingly before hauling herself up and onto its back and setting off for home.

Fingers and Thumbs

The Feeg had returned to his den and half leapt, half climbed high up the towering cedar tree around which his home was built, before dumping the dead horse in his larder up in the forest canopy. The horse had two roe deer and a half-eaten boar for company on the rough platform, all of which were pretty fresh. Meat didn’t lie for long in the Feeg’s larder.

He sliced off a rear leg from the remains of the boar, just a snack. His big, curved fore-claw cut cleanly through the ligaments and sinews of the shoulder joint, and then he simply stepped off the platform. A moment later he thudded onto the forest floor beside his ramshackle den of branches and skins, before sweeping aside the hide which made his door. Inside there was one long bed which consisted of a thick pile of brushes, ferns and grass, and a thousand objects of every imaginable size, shape and subject. Sticks and stones and broken bones and pretty rocks and interesting pieces of wood and little skulls and large skulls and pieces of metal and all manner of obscure, nameless things.

He sat in a corner and pulled out the talisman which the man from the tribe had given him, holding it up towards the sunlight permeating the den. It revolved back and forth as it hung from his huge hand and he grinned a big toothy grin as he examined the pretty little stone with its wrap of strange feathers. Sitting there for a good while, occasionally munching absently on his boar’s leg and murmuring to himself, he stared at his new find and chewed contentedly between bites. He smiled broadly to himself time and time again, each time revealing big, stubby teeth, arranged unevenly between gaps in his broad mouth like little yellow standing stones. And the smile would be reflected in his eyes too, their corners creasing in delight. To anyone brave enough or stupid enough to be watching, he would have been a picture of happiness. A huge, ugly, monstrous picture of happiness.

Later he tried to repair the leather thong which had snapped when he had received the charm, clumsy fingers trying time after time to make a knot in the leather. The great sickle claws which were the forefingers of each hand only hampered his remaining digits and made worse his fumbling.

Later still, as the evening came and the shadows lengthened on the forest floor, he finally, finally succeeded in making a knot in the thong and rose triumphantly to his full towering height, eyes heavenwards and holding the talisman high, high above his head at the end of one elongated, almost telescopic arm. He released a piercing scream of joy out into the depths of the forest and, smiling broadly now, he tried to pull it over his head to emulate the man who had worn it.

But try as he might he could not manage. That leather thong, which had hung so loosely on the man, was never going to be even nearly long enough. It barely encircled the crown of his huge, round head as his big, grubby fingers tugged and pulled with increasing desperation, trying to force it down over his mop of russet brown hair.

His face now became a picture of abject frustration and unhappiness, his mouth falling precipitously and deep lines creasing his forehead. He moaned pitifully to himself, still tugging vainly on the thong before abruptly giving up, his whole body language collapsing down to become such a miserable picture of distress that it looked almost as if he might slump to the ground. Frustration began to boil in his body, building and building until his face darkened red and he roared his frustration to the sky. He leapt onto all fours and sprang off into the woods, still screaming his anguish at the world and lashing out at tree after tree with massive fore-claws, shattering trunks, boughs and branches among great clouds of splinters. Birds scattered chaotically, shrieking in fright as he bounded off into the trees, accompanied by the thump of heavy blows and the loud crack of breaking wood. The destruction continued unabated as he circled loudly round the den before reappearing in the small clearing and slowing to a stop, with his furs and hair strewn with splinters and autumn leaves and great clouds of steam puffing from his nostrils.

Motes of evening sunshine beamed gold through the trees onto the clearing, catching little particles still settling in the air and illuminating his gigantic hunched form as, sitting down with a heavy sigh, he began the awkward task of untying his knot.

Paradise Lost

Meanwhile, Anke Maas Lowit had continued, leading the Hill Tribe on their way south, following former highways of great antiquity now almost entirely covered and enveloped in loamy soil and undergrowth. These ancient byways among the hills had often become animal trails through the forest and were in places so overgrown with stunted trees and brambles that they travellers often found it easier to cut off the road and travel through the forest itself.

Here and there on the road they would encounter the remnants of buildings, sometimes groups of buildings, their roofs long gone and the trees and plants that sprouted from their ancient walls slowly, remorselessly reducing those that still stood to rubble. These fascinating vestiges of the past were a source of great curiosity to the tribe and there was much quiet speculation on their purpose and the lives of their long-gone communities. The people of Oram were used to a simple life in the forests and many had never even seen stone or concrete buildings.

They stopped to rest at one collection of buildings where other relics of the past remained, visible now as lumps and small mounds in the undergrowth. Obscure objects, too big or worthless to be stolen along with the rest many hundreds of years ago, still lay, covered in a layer of grass or loam just like the floors and walls of the buildings themselves. Rusting remnants of old machinery frightened the children and fascinated the adults alike, but drew a crowd like obscure sculptures.

The tumbledown remains of a graveyard among the trees near the settlement found Utin Sathe sitting in deep reflection, still not recovered from his encounter with the Feeg but finding peace among the moss covered stones.

‘I don’t believe it meant us any harm’ said a tired old female voice behind him. The voice made Sathe jump; he had not heard old Niambh approach.

‘It is an abomination, Grandma. It is not from nature, yet it lives and thinks. It is terrifying, like a monster from a fairy tale…. but you are right, it could have killed us all very easily if it had wanted to. Why did it take my charm?’

‘It’s a powerful charm Utin, and it will go where it will. But remember, your father lost it too, and it stayed lost until you found it. Perhaps it will return to the tribe again one day, to you or your son or grandson.’

Sathe looked up at the old, grey and almost shrunken elder, into those old brown eyes that told of an intellect undiminished by time. To him she had always seemed the embodiment of wisdom.

‘You spoke to the Feeg, Grandma. You told it you had met it before. We’ve all heard of it, in bedtime stories and tales of footprints seen and giants hiding in the shadows. Some have even claimed to have killed it. Did you really meet it?’

She laughed.

‘What you saw the other day was proof enough that no one has ever killed him Utin. No, he is still around - just like always - and there is only one of him I believe. He is not natural, he is a travesty, and he is unique. Alone and unique, I think that’s terribly sad.’

‘He? Him? You speak of that beast like it’s human!’

‘Perhaps he was once.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘And yes, I did meet him once, with your grandfather when we were young. The Tribes were much more numerous then, and we all blamed the Feeg for the horrible deaths of so many of our people. Perhaps he was responsible, although I don’t think so now, but he never laid a hand on us when I met him. I must, though, admit that I was utterly sure my end had come….’ She stared into space. ‘He hasn’t changed you know. Not even slightly.’

Utin Sathe remained silent for a while, watching her intensely before changing the subject.

‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing, moving into the Badlands?’ he asked.

‘Utin, we have killed some of the Ruling Caste. You know they will hunt us down now. The Badlands are a hard place to live, but we’ve all spoken about this in the past; its maybe the best place to hide.’

‘Grandma, I’m not sure Anke will stop at the Badlands, are you? Not if he thinks we’re going to be followed. He is absolutely determined to hide the tribe and I’m a little worried where all this might be leading.’

‘The island.’

‘Yes, the bloody island! And the Tunnel. A Tunnel under the sea!’

‘I know, I know. But where else can we be sure not to be found? He has a point there. We are doing the only thing we can do really, and Anke seems to have the people’s respect.’

Utin Sathe sighed. ‘Aye, they say the tunnel does exist, although the very thought of it scares me out of my wits, but what are we going to find when, if, we get through?’

‘Stories of that place are as varied as snowflakes in the wind. Many do not have a happy ending, I must say, or any ending, but for every story of death from the skies there is one that tells of the island providing refuge to a fugitive.  But regardless, we surely have to support Anke and go where he would go Utin, however frightening that prospect might be. We’ve all had our say on the matter in the past. If we’re not followed, then maybe the Badlands will be far enough. If it turns out we just can’t hide, we may need desperate measures.’

They were silent for a while, listening to sounds of birdsong and the children playing behind them in the ruins.

Utin Sathe nodded to himself.

‘We really ought to keep the kids quieter.’ he said, and with that the two rose and turned to leave the graveyard with is collection of fallen and broken stones.

Among the stones, Niambh Sathe noticed as she left, was one close to where Utin had sat and where the moss had been cleared from its surface. It seemed he had chipped a small piece off the corner too. She couldn’t read even her own language - few of them could - but even if she could have she would not have been able to read the worn and archaic letters from a very different language carved on that stone. She therefore had no idea that the family name revealed on that particular gravestone was that of their own.

Over the next two days the gentle wooded hills, wrapped in beautiful autumnal colours, gradually gave way to a more rough and rocky landscape. The tribe were still travelling south, and their route began to wind between rocky, jagged teeth of rock that seemed to stand in their path at every turn. Scouts were sent regularly to climb the highest of these towers, keen eyes looking for signs that they were being followed.

There was little life here when compared to the richness of the forests. The soil was sandy and infertile, allowing mainly scrubs and brushes to grow, and small willow-like trees. These seemed strange to the eye, their leaves ugly and streaked with black and their branches gnarled and somehow too stubby. They seemed almost to lean in and scratch anyone passing.

Everything seemed a little odd. Lizards appeared and then scurried away at their approach and these too were a source of disquiet. Their bulging eyes were too large for their body and stared at the