Lessons in etiquette and decorum were a nonsense. An agonisingly tedious nonsense that Tahlia Layne was not prepared to waste another morning on, especially not on a day as full of potential excitement as the one that lay ahead of her.

Etiquette was worthless because she already knew everything she needed to know about the Order's numerous conventions and protocols. She had tried to widen her classmates' understanding of the subject by cleverly considered questioning, but Mistress D'almeria did not appreciate her efforts. In fact, she often seemed quite put out by them. The old kaddena would doubtless be glad of her absence.

Decorum was equally pointless. Tahlia knew herself to be more than capable of walking around and looking perfectly charming, and as for curtsying; any simpleton could bob about in a pretty frock and make it look convincingly deferential. It did not take lessons five out of nine days in a week to teach a girl the way of it. Well, not unless you were a lumpen grump like Luisanna, whose stomping gait made even a tragasaur look graceful.

Another lesson in either discipline would only be a futile misuse of her time so that morning, upon leaving the young ladies' quarters, and with her usual ease, she had avoided Mistress Oleander's fierce surveillance and escaped along a servant's side passage. She passed down through the fortress, finding her way through the maze of narrow passageways that were mostly ignored and disregarded by the majority of its inhabitants. She briefly considered following the twisting passages to the kitchens, where she could make good her escape via the chute to the composting bins concealed at the back of the gardens, but she quickly decided against that route. She was twelve years old, the rubbish chute was becoming too small, even for her, and the last time she had slid down it she had felt as though she would have become stuck if it were not for the greasy mess coating its sides. The thought also arose that her mother would not appreciate her appearing at the temple smelling of borak fat and half mouldy maylard shoots, so she decided that she had no choice but to take the long way down to the station.

The glow-lights that illuminated the passages and stairways that Tahlia followed were small and not as bright as those that lined the quarters she was used to. The corridors were also somewhat narrower, so she was forced to dodge around the legs of constantly hurrying servants. As she approached the lower levels, the servants were replaced with slower moving members of the Growers, and the whole place started to smell of earth and sap and compost. She began to pass rooms stacked with tools and the other paraphernalia of the Grower's craft; handcarts and buckets stood neatly parked and stacked, various tools and coiled watering pipes hung on their walls, and stone pots and bound bundles of thin support staves filled their shelves.

She finally emerged from one of these rooms, out into the bright sunlight of a stone courtyard at the rear of the gardens, where large pots of plants and flowers stood in rows, waiting to be planted out. A lone Grower was busily working at the far end of the courtyard. It was a small squat creature that scurried about on its many short limbs, circling backwards and forwards around a wide pot that held a particularly ornate bush, covered in small luminous red flowers. The creature was carefully shaping the bush with its two long forelimbs, clipping away twigs and unwanted blooms with sharp incisors, all the while making satisfied whistling noises to itself.

Not wanting to be seen, even by a menial, Tahlia ducked behind a row of tall potted vines, then left by a small gate, which led out to the splendour of the gardens themselves. These were not like the gardens far below on the southern slope of the fortress hill, where the exotic herbs, spices and fruits were grown for the fortress kitchens. The plants growing there were aligned in perfect rows amongst orderly paths that crisscrossed the terraces, but in the private gardens the plants sprawled and cascaded over the paths and walls, creating a place of peace in the shadows of the fortress towers that loomed above and all around.

The gardens had once been one of Klinberg's war-engine batteries, but at the closing of the long war with the Predation, it was decided that the shattered engines would not be replaced. The trenches where soldiers had once run and crouched and died became flower beds and pools, and the platforms on which the great machines had once stood became terraces and promenades.

From where she had entered the gardens on the highest terrace, Tahlia looked out over the expanse of well-crafted floral chaos below her, and sighed happily. It was still early, and the sun had not yet risen high enough above the fortress' towers to warm the garden. The air still held its morning chill, but Tahlia did not mind; it was a small price to pay for the advantage of having the place to herself. She would often attend lessons on biology and botany in the gardens, but they were always with the other young ladies of the Order, watched over by one tutor or another, more often than not a human member of the Growers. The only other times that she was allowed in the gardens were to pass through them on the way to catch the chain-carriage, or to attend her lessons at the archery field on the lowest and largest terrace at their farthest edge. Looking down across the sun terraces and flower beds, she could see the wall of the archery field, topped with its thick scented eroni hedge, and beyond the hedge was nothing but a void of blue, empty except for the few small red dots of distant circling crak.

The ground could not be seen from where she stood. The only place in the gardens that afforded a view of it was at the top of the old ranging tower, though Tahlia had only ever known it as the broken tower. The story went that the tower, which stood in the very centre of the garden, was the last place to be struck by a missile on the final day of the siege of Klinberg, at the end of the Predation wars. Even though the fortress had been rebuilt since the wars had ended, the tower had remained unrepaired as a reminder of the great cost at which the peace of the gardens had been bought, and so it stood, broken and shrouded in climbing leaves.

The door to the tower was buried now in a deep trench of earth, where tap flowers grew, but Tahlia had long since found a way to climb halfway up its side, to a place where she could slip through a gap between the distorted metal plates. From there she could take the spiralling stair inside, up to the high targeting chamber, and look down and see the distant plains far below.

She had plenty of time to spare, but she did not have the inclination to climb that morning. Instead, she followed the path beneath the broken tower's overgrown walls and followed it along the edge of a sun terrace, humming tunelessly to herself as she idly watched the green and red striped fish darting about in the deep pool that ran alongside it.

Who, on Terra's earth, under Fortak's sky, would want to be doing anything else on such a beautiful day?

* * * * *

Maddock could feel his tunic cling and pull at the sweat on his back as he hauled the bale of grass upright, while Jathik expertly tied it tight with oiled twine. A third boy then forked the bale and lifted it up to the girl on top of the cart, who stacked it with the rest. The sun had not long climbed above the horizon, but the karabok-fields, beneath the tall eastern walls of the fortress-bailey, were already growing hot.

Maddock looked over the segment of field that they would still have to cover before they reached the tall barns where the bales would be stored for the karabok herd's fallows feed. There were still a good two hundred metres of fresh scythed grass still left to collect and bale. Maddock knew that would mean a fair few more hours of sweaty work, as the sun rose higher and the day grew hotter.

He grabbed the next bale savagely and pulled it towards him.

The Pride could starve and the Order with it as far as he was concerned.

"Careful!" said Jathik. "Grellik'll tan you if you wreck another one."

The boy looked round anxiously at the bearded Herd-master at the far end of the karabok-field, who was talking with the men who were preparing to scythe the next segment of grassland.

"I don't care!" hissed Maddock, the anger that had been smouldering all morning suddenly taking flame.

He looked up and saw one of the young Field-hands, who had been given the task of supervising the baling, glance over at the sudden noise, so he loosened his grip on the bale of grass and Jathik began to bind it.

He had spent half a turn of the Sladin moon labouring in these fields alongside the other hopeful boys and girls. He had been doing nothing but baling grass when he should have been back at the farm, clambering about the kernik trees with the other children, gathering the crop of seed pods. A crop that would spoil if it were not picked before the rains came. So he cursed the Order as he worked. Cursed them for their promises and their trickery.

Everything was so unfair.

He had been born on the farm of Dredar, which had seemed a fine place to live as he had grown. A place of wonders, especially for a child who, from as early as he could remember, had been fascinated by anything that walked, hopped, jumped, flew, glided, swam or climbed. From the skipclaws living in its river, the yareys nesting in the eaves of its oast houses, the ruteia patrolling its cellars for vermin, to the ugliest borak wallowing in its pit, everything had been a marvel in his childhood. But as he had grown older, the joy of the farm had waned. He slowly came to recognise his position in the world, and, likewise, the position of his home, and how it fell under the rule of the Order of the Plains, and the knights who dwelt in Klinberg.

The fortress had always been a dark shadow to the south of Dredar, reaching into the clouds and dwarfing the farm in its lush green valley of terraces and fields.

The knights of the Order had seemed like legends when he had been younger. When the day's work was done, he would listen eagerly to the stories that were told of them at the tables in the farm tavern. The stories were of great deeds; of brave heroes and valiant soldiers, pitched against foul monsters and the armies of the Predation that had once come out of the west. The stories had prompted childhood games and he had joined with the other children of the farm as they spent their days pretending to be knights, fighting mock battles with imaginary monsters and demons. The old temple in the island had become a fortress to defend, and the valley and its fields had been their own private province.

Sometimes he would climb with the other children to the top of the falls above the kernik orchard to watch the real knights, on their mighty madriel, crossing the stone bridge that spanned the river there. On one of those days, he had even seen Lord Morath himself on the road to the northern towers, accompanied by his retinue of knights. The Grand-commander of the Order of the Plains had worn dark armour, deeply polished so that it shone like the Khensis moon, and his madriel had been encased in armour of similarly dark metal.

The other children had gaped at the madriel as they crossed the bridge. They had averted their eyes and bowed their heads when one of their riders looked across to where they lay hidden, but Maddock hadn't. He had kept his head high as he watched the knights pass because he knew he was not like the other children of the farm, who would have to bow in subservience to the knights of Klinberg for the rest of their lives. His future held something different. He knew that for a fact because the voice in the vaultweed had told him so.

He had never told anyone about the voice in the vaultweed, because the voice had told him not to, but he could still remember its words and every detail about the day he had heard them.

He had been hiding, curled up in the island temple's dark insides, playing the part of the brave Templar Derrius, waiting for his brothers and the other heretics to find him and challenge him to fight them. He had been six years old, the temple had been warm, the vaultweed covering the ceiling and walls above him, and the floor beneath, had been comfortable, and he had been dozing and dreaming. The voice that had suddenly intruded on his daydreams had been precise and polite. It had not had the accent of the farm, nor the odd drawl of the ranches. It had sounded more like the speech of the Order, only not really.

The voice had told him many things, and the memory of them had still been clear on that day as he watched Lord Morath cross the bridge above the orchard's falls. Since then, time had passed and he had spent the years digging jepsil roots, shovelling ghat dung and stripping maylard shoots. His admiration for the knights of Klinberg had diminished as his understanding of their tyranny had grown, and his memory of the voice slowly faded as the things it had told him started to seem like more and more of an impossibility.

But then the bright messenger had come from Klinberg and a notice had been posted on the cherossa tree that grew in the centre of the farm's yard. As he had read its words, clumsily tracing each line with his finger, the memories resurfaced. Once he had read the whole thing through twice to make sure he had understood it correctly, he had run to find his father.

His father had refused his request, of course, having no wish to lose another of his sons to the Order, but his mother had intervened. After a long discussion between his parents, which had taken place behind the closed doors of one of the farm's oast houses, and from which his father had emerged looking shame faced and troubled, he had been given his permission. He would go to Klinberg and be tested by its Madriel-masters. He would become a Field-hand. He would be given his own madriel and he would train it better than any other, but after that the Order and its Madriel-masters could sod off. Karek was already teaching him how to use a sword, and when he had finished his training, Dak could make him armour, a sword and a lance. It would be easy. What else was there to being a knight?

Maddock gave an angry sigh, which was completely ignored by Jathik, who had finished binding the bale of dried grass.

The bale was hauled up.

Another one was gathered, and the heat continued to grow.

He lifted his tunic, wiped the sweat from his face with the rough material, and cursed himself for his own naïve stupidity. The promise of training had clearly been nothing more than a cruel lie to force more labour from himself and the other hopeful applicants. There would be no madriel to train and no rise to the swaggering heights of knighthood for Maddock Jonas.

The voice in the vaultweed had been talking borak crap.