Engn

X

XThey rode like that for three days, Finn shackled to his horse or, at night, either to one of the ironclads or to a post hammered into the ground. They took turns to watch him. He saw no chance to escape.

They were soon farther from home than he'd ever ventured before. The buildings and trees looked more and more strange. They resembled those he knew but had different shapes and formations, as if someone had taken his familiar world and jumbled it up.

Whenever they passed through a village, the people stopped to watch them go by, saying nothing, sullen eyes staring. Finn knew from their faces what they were thinking. Don't stop here, don't stop here. Or perhaps, Thank the stars, they've already taken someone. They haven't come for one of ours.

He slept little. Again and again, he slipped into memories of his old life, awaking with a sickening shock to his surroundings each time. Sometimes it seemed his memories were real and solid, and the relentless plodding of his horse was a nightmare he repeatedly slipped into. He would fall sleep, only to jerk awake again as he slumped forwards. Occasionally an ironclad leaned over to prod him with a gauntleted finger. No one spoke to him. He was an object, a package, a sack, to be delivered to Engn.

They were passing through a stand of trees early one evening when he finally succumbed to sleep. He found himself falling sideways off his horse. He was still attached by the shackles behind the saddle so that he was left dangling by his arms, face near the ground and the great stamping legs of the horse, his shoulders pulled at a painful angle.

The master called a halt and came over. He dismounted and looked at Finn for a time, amused at the sight of him. The sharp pain in Finn's arms grew with each second.

“Is that how you ride where you come from?” the master asked. There were snorts of laughter from the ironclads, a rare sound from them. “It's an interesting technique.”

“I fell off,” said Finn.

“Ah, did you? You're supposed to hold on, you see. With your knees. A shame no one explained to you.”

“I fell asleep.”

The master sighed. “Oh dear. I didn't realize it was past your bed time.” He took a key from his robe and, reaching up, unshackled Finn from the horse. Finn crashed to the ground face-first, unable to get his numb arms down to save himself in time. There was the immediate taste of blood in his mouth and a sharp pain in his nose. He spat out soil and turned over.

The master stood over him, shaking his head.

“We're going to get nowhere at this rate. We'll stay here tonight. Tomorrow we'll meet up with the Eagle column down at Fiveways. They should have room in their engine for you.”

“Their engine?”

“They have a moving engine. I believe you've seen one before?”

“Please, no. I can ride properly. I can stay awake; I promise I can.”

The master shook his head. “You can sleep all you like in the engine. Right now, you should stop your nose bleeding. You're making a mess of the woods.”

He turned away to instruct the ironclads to begin setting up camp.

They rode a short way the following day, to a point where five lanes met. A spur of the woods came close to the road there, but there were no buildings, only a wooden signpost indicating where each road led. The other ironclads were already there: three of them with a master and, steaming and hissing, one of the wheeled engines. It might have been the same one he'd seen all those years ago.

The two masters conversed for a while. Then Finn's master returned. He nodded to the ironclads. “Put him inside.”

Finns struggled, trying once again to rip his hands free of the shackles that held him. “No!” he shouted. “Please, no!”

He was still struggling as the ironclads grasped his limbs and carried him to the waiting engine to hurl him inside.

The jumble of white buildings sat alone in the middle of the wide green plain at the junction of their track and numerous others than ran crossways. A single yew, the only tree Finn had seen since they left the mountains, towered over the walls, as if carrying them under its great wide arms.

Beyond, towards Engn, the country changed. Earth and stone had been heaved up into great mounds, as if someone was trying to construct a new mountain range. Here and there he could see piles of broken, rusting machinery. Pools of oily water reflected the mounds like mirrors. The air smelled of oil.

“What is this place?”

“The Halfway House,” said the master. “We'll stay here the night.”

Behind them, the moving engine ticked and clanged as it cooled. The ironclads had left them, leading the steaming horses to a stable block that adjoined the Halfway House. Finn and Master Whelm stood alone in the courtyard. The master seemed subdued, reluctant to follow the soldiers inside.

“Why is it called that?” asked Finn. “We're nearly at Engn now.” The great machine loomed behind the Halfway House, looking close enough to touch. He'd felt the thrumming of it through his feet as he climbed out of the moving engine and stretched life back into his limbs.

“When the foundations were laid five hundred years ago and the first wheel was put into the En, this place was halfway to the mountains,” said the master. “Engn has grown since then.”

“And when we get there tomorrow … what will happen to me?” asked Finn.

The master turned to look at him. With the wind hugging his purple cloak to his body he looked smaller and thinner than usual.

“Your father was a blacksmith?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Who you are counts for a lot. I mean, who your people are, whether they have guild connections. Shouldn't but it does.”

For once, the master seemed willing to talk. It occurred to Finn that no one talked much to Master Whelm, either. The ironclads kept to themselves and the master rode in silence. He was free, of course, and people did what he told them to. But still, it had to be lonely.

“What did your family do?” Finn asked.

The master shook his head, dismissing the question. He spoke quietly. “Nothing grand anyway.”

“My friend Connor was the Baron's son. He was taken to Engn a few years ago. Do you know him?”

“Engn isn't like that little hamlet of yours, boy. There are thousands and thousands of people there. But the son of a Baron won't be stuck on the Seventh Wheel for the rest of his life, you can be sure of that. That's the way it works in Engn, lad. Maybe he wasn't just another pair of hands for the factories or the mines; maybe they took him for a reason.”

Finn thought about the master's words. That was good news. If Connor could work his way into a position of influence, perhaps into this Inner Wheel, then surely he would be able to find some way to sabotage Engn. He would be there even now, working on his secret plans. There was hope.

“Why do they even need so many of us? My father said I was safe because my sister had been taken.”

Whelm shrugged. “Once that might have been true. I told you, Engn has grown. It needs more and more people to build it and maintain it. A generation ago you and your friend might have been left alone, but not these days. That's why we're sent out. Although pickings are scarce – we hardly need all these ironclads to harvest a few scraps like you. There's been some talk of reducing the number of patrols, or of sending us further afield.”

“So, what about you?” asked Finn. “What happens to you when we get back to Engn?”

The master stared at the Halfway House or, possibly, at the smoke and stone, the glinting metal of Engn beyond it. He still looked unhappy.

“Enough talk, boy,” he said, his old sneer returning. “I'll shackle you in the stables with the animals. We'll leave at dawn.”

The following day, Finn was at least allowed to walk again, tethered to the horse by his wrists. This close to Engn there was little or no chance of escaping. The moving engine had been handed over to another master staying at the Halfway House that morning. They trotted slowly towards Engn, the master apparently in no hurry to reach their destination.

They passed through clusters of ramshackle huts: five, ten, twenty of them grouped around the scorched circle of a fire or the stone lip of a well. Men and women, thin and pinched and dressed in rags, flitted around drawing water, repairing their hovels, or just sitting and watching them vacantly as they passed.

“Who are they?” asked Finn. “What are they doing out here?”

“These?” replied the master. “They're nothing. Parasites. They huddle around the walls of Engn, begging for handouts.”

“But who are they?”

“Who knows? Perhaps they have someone inside and they've come to be as close as possible.” Master Whelm snorted. “It's pathetic. We should clear them all out, send them home. Cockroaches.” He shouted his last word so it would be heard by everyone around. No one reacted.

“Some of these houses look like they've been here ages,” said Finn. “One or two have the remains of stone walls.”

“Oh, they didn't build all this, the wells and the walls. These were the villages of the original builders of Engn, the first builders. Hundreds of years ago. All these scum have moved in since, spread over everything like a fungus. They squabble over their rotting planks while slowly starving to death.”

An old woman – short, slight, frail – watched them as they trotted by. She held a sloshing pale of water in her hand. Her face was expressionless but she studied Finn intently, as if hoping to see someone she knew. Finn nodded at her. The woman frowned, turned and walked away, clearly concluding Finn was of no interest.

By the early afternoon, Finn stood at the base of the great cliff face walls of Engn. Except the walls weren't walls; they were a series of constructions and edifices joined together. Stone ramparts and the curving metal sides of vast tanks or furnaces. The sun blazed overhead but he could feel a greater heat from the metal on his back. The ground thrummed, dancing with regular whumps. He peered upwards. Fast-moving white clouds scudded through the air from over the city, giving him the clear impression that the walls were falling and falling forwards, threatening to crush him. The heat, the walls' height, the illusion of movement – all contributed to a dizzying feeling of nausea. He longed for cool water. The air smelled of ash and burned oil. Smoke billowing from the chimney above him formed a solid mountainside of black and grey, thick enough to walk up.

All the way across the great plain, part of him had wanted to reach Engn, to see up close the towers and turning wheels, to understand what they did, what they were. Was the city one great machine or a collection of many? Now that he stood at the walls, he found he wanted to step back again, to see the place from a greater distance, to try and take it all in. Up close he was no nearer making sense of it. The black iron pipes running horizontally around the walls above him were vast, surely big enough for him to walk through. But he could no longer see where they led, how they connected. He couldn't begin to guess their purpose.

In one of the stone sections of the walls, hundreds of small square windows ran in lines twenty or thirty feet up. Some blazed with light, some were dark, like blind eyes. What went on in all those rooms? Who moved around in there and what did they do? It seemed impossible, staring upwards, to understand it all.

He looked back down at his feet. The road from the Halfway House, paved with red bricks now, had taken them directly to a vast arched doorway in the walls. It would have been tall enough for a cart stacked high with hayricks to pass through. But the doors, wooden and banded with a crisscross pattern of iron strips, were locked shut. Twenty-four ironclads stood in front of them, muskets in their arms, unmoving.

Beside the barred door, leaning against the wall, stood a ramshackle wooden hut with a single window in it. Master Whelm awaited his turn to speak to someone in there, Finn's chain in his hand. Finn could see a bushy grey beard wagging inside the darkness of the hut, a hand writing something in a book as other masters reported in. Next to the hut stood a line of boys, six of them, all watching Finn. They were, he could see now, chained together by their ankles, the chain secured to an iron ring cemented into the wall.

“Who are they?” asked Finn.

“Today's newcomers. You'll be joining them soon.”

Red-brick tracks fanned out in all directions from the gates of Engn. Just that morning he'd seen five or six groups of ironclads converging on the city, two of them with moving engines of their own. A clutch of boys or girls shuffled or rode along with each. How many people were brought there each day? And what happened to them all inside?

The boys by the wall watched Finn with a mixture of suspicion and outright hostility. Their clothes were all odd: unusual cuts and colours. Where were they all from? Two of them whispered to each other, something inaudible but clearly amusing. They laughed together as they looked at him.

Whelm's turn at the hut came, and he stooped to speak to the old man sitting inside, just a beard and a nose sticking out of the darkness.

“Another for you, Master Gatekeeper.”

“Just the one, Whelm?”

“Just the one.”

The gatekeeper peered out at Finn. He caught a glimpse of bright beady eyes, a frown.

“You needed a moving engine to capture that? Doesn't look like he could put up much of a fight.”

“Kept falling off his horse, didn't he?”

There were sniggers from the gaggle of boys. Wherever they were from, they clearly understood what was being said. Master Whelm handed something in to the gatekeeper, a small strip of metal with numbers on it.

“Fine, fine, I'll book him in,” said the gatekeeper. “Not going to be one for the ironclads, though, is he?”

“No,” said Master Whelm.

“Name?” said the gatekeeper.

Master Whelm elbowed Finn in the side to make him answer.

“Oh. My name is Finn.”

“Finn what?”

“I, I don't know. Just Finn.”

There were snorts of laughter from the other boys now. Finn heard them whispering to each other. Doesn't even know his own name.

“You must have a family name too?”

“No. I'm just Finn.”

“What does your father do?”

“He's the blacksmith.”

“Very well. Finn Smithson it will be.”

“What will he do inside?” asked Master Whelm.

The gatekeeper examined the strip of metal, then began turning the pages of his book. “Ah, yes, here he is. Interesting, interesting. He has potential, I see.”

“Potential for what?” asked Finn.

“Of course, it all depends on whether he passes the tests,” said the gatekeeper, ignoring Finn. “And hardly any do, of course. So many try and so many fail. But he's a possibility.”

“What do you mean?” said Finn. “What are these tests?”

The gatekeeper began to scratch away in his book with a metal pen. Without looking up again, he waved Finn over towards the group of boys. The master pulled Finn away from the hut and set about shackling him to the chain alongside all the others.

“What did he mean about the tests?” asked Finn.

Master Whelm shrugged but didn't reply. When he'd finished with the ankle-lock he stood back and looked at Finn.

“Goodbye, then, boy. Good luck with … everything.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he turned and walked to his ironclads, not looking back.

Finn smiled at the lad beside him: a tall, gangling, black-haired boy in green clothes. He had an intelligent face. But he scowled in response. None of the boys spoke to him. Some eyed him suspiciously, as if he was to blame for them being there. The others ignored him completely.

The sun blazed hotter and hotter. A narrow line of shadow ran along the foot of the walls and the boys huddled there, despite the heat radiating from the metal. Finn sat on the ground and leaned against the wall. His back was soon sticky with sweat. He longed even more for cold water. He longed for a honey sweet, but he had eaten the last of them days ago.

Far across the grass plain, the mountains of his home were a faint, pencil-sketch line on the horizon, no longer solid. Somewhere partway across, between the mounds of earth, he could just see a group of figures, black sticks shimmering in the haze. Perhaps it was Master Whelm heading back to the mountains, or another group being brought to Engn. He wondered, again, what it was all for. What exactly they had been brought here to do. He wondered if Connor had once sat in this same spot, asking himself the same questions.

They stayed at the foot of the wall for several hours. Two more boys joined them in that time, brought in by a pair of ironclads. They were both stocky, strong-looking boys, farm laborers maybe, who clearly knew each other well. They talked in low tones to each other as they were led to the wall. They resembled each other a little, Finn thought. Cousins maybe.

Finally, without warning, the great doors began to creak open. Glimpsed through the widening c***k, Finn could see they were hauled by thick chains that ran to two floor-standing steam engines inside. Walls reached up beyond the engines: more sheer walls of stone and metal. Here and there he could see windows and doorways. Winding around and through everything ran a confusion of pipes and ducts, wires and walkways. Distantly, he could see people up on the walkways, appearing and disappearing in and out of the entrances. He was reminded of ants he'd once found within a broken machine in his father's workshop. Tiny insects crawling around in a vast machine they could never hope to understand.

A large open square lay between the gate and these inner workings. People stood there, hundreds of them, all in regimented lines a fixed distance apart, none of them moving, like pieces in some vast chess game. He could make no sense of what they were doing. He glanced at the other boys, but each looked just as puzzled as he was. Puzzled or alarmed.

The ironclads standing in front of the gates moved aside, then, to let someone through. A new master strode out. He was older than Master Whelm. His purple robes were trimmed with gold. Three rings adorned his left index finger where Master Whelm had worn only one. Fifth Wheel.

Finn and the others scrambled to their feet. The new master strode up to them and stopped to inspect them. He was a squat, ugly toad of a man, but his head was that of a pig, his eyes black specks. He held his mouth open as he gazed at them, as if in dumb bemusement at what he was seeing. But his voice, when he spoke, was hard and clear.

“My name is Master Owyn,” the new master said. “From now on I am your father and your mother and your sister and your brother. You will do what I say. Do you understand me?”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to the ironclads standing by the great gates.

“Unshackle these boys,” he said. “And bring them inside Engn.”