This chapter is dedicated to dilettantesdo, for all of her support and comments. She has an insightfulness when she reads, and is the first one to have picked up on the importance of the character of madriel, and the bond that is shared between them and their riders. No mean feet, considering the fact that deal explicitly with that subject until chapter six or so.

If you have not come across dilettantesdo's work already, please do check it out. Nascent is a wonderful tale; a subtle blending of fantasy and sci-fi in a vividly created world, with a captivating cast of characters. You won't regret giving it a look.

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As he climbed through the warren alleys of the Workshops, Maddock's nostrils were assailed by the familiar scent of freshly chopped wood, the sharp unpleasant stench of curing tragasaur hides, slick borak grease, fragrant hive wax and pungent hova oil. As well as those, there were countless other smells he did not recognise, but over all those odours lay the burning tang of hot metal.

His climb had brought him to a square yard, where the heat from the doorways of the three workshops that opened on to it was almost unbearable. He shielded his eyes to peer inside one of the buildings, where a forge roared white heat; a solid block of fire that left a coloured after-image hovering in the brief darkness when he blinked. An Engineer, tall and powerfully built like all those of the Guild, with a thick tragasaur apron and a bald head, hauled a glowing piece of madriel armour onto a rounded anvil with a long pair of tongues. A second Engineer, much younger but just as wide and powerful, began hammering the metal, refining the shape.

The noise of the place was deafening after the quiet he was used to on the plains. Maddock almost staggered as he climbed the steep stairs out of the courtyard and up again into the twisting alleyways. He soon found himself back on the road that wound up the rocky prominence where the Workshops were stacked. It was quieter there, and he took the opportunity to close his eyes, stick his fingers in his ears, and waggle them back and forth, trying to get rid of the ringing in his head.

"Watch yourself there, boy!"

Maddock opened his eyes to see a juddra bearing down on him.

The great hulking beast was being ridden by a thickly bearded Engineer, dressed in fine purple trousers and waistcoat, sitting high above on the saddle strapped about the creature's powerful shoulders. The juddra peered down at him from beneath heavy brows and snorted through its squat muzzle, as its splayed rear hooves came forward and its shoulders bunched to haul at the waggon it was harnessed to.

Maddock leapt out of the way as the creature's leg, covered in coarse dark hair, brushed passed him. A long train of juddra were obediently following, each pulling another heavy wagon, some piled with metal bound crates and others with tall barapane tanks. Maddock stepped quickly back into the alleyway's mouth as they passed, to avoid the tread of their heavy wheels, each of which was taller than himself.

"Thanking you, boy!" the Engineer shouted back, but the look that he gave was one of suspicion. It made Maddock plunge his hand into the bib-pocket of his tunic to find the admittance token that the Signal-engineer at the barbican-fort had given him. He had already been stopped twice by patrolling Forge-guard, and he wasn't even half way to Dak's house. The last thing he wanted was to get thrown out of the Workshops, not when he had such good news to tell his friend. So, as he climbed the road behind the slowly moving juddra train, he kept his hand in his pocket, the square token clasped firmly in his grip.

A little way up the hill, where the road switched back and continued upwards, Maddock paused to look back over his climb.

The irregular slopes of the Workshops' rooftops, punctuated with tall chimney stacks and stark towers, filled the space between the two shield-bastions. They extended all the way to the battlements that skirted the rocky escarpment at its lowest edge, where the barbican-fort stood. He could see the impregnable walls of the fort, but the air above the Workshops shimmered from the heat of the forges and furnaces, so that the distant plains beyond it danced and wavered, and he could make out none of their detail.

Taking a deep breath of the Workshops' heated air, he turned and continued up the road.

* * * * *

Engineer Tomova's workshop seemed almost cold after the oppressive heat outside. Maddock had splashed his face and neck with water from the narrow trough beside the workshop's door, and now his skin felt suddenly chill. The domed forge in the room's centre was unlit, the cickracol in its hearth damped down. The Engineer's tools were neatly stored in their racks, the cool stone floor was freshly swept, and the cutting blades and polishing heads of the machine that filled the room's back wall were all similarly cleaned and oiled.

"Hello!" he called.

"We are in here!" replied a girl's voice from the back of the room.

He made his way past the room's curved anvils, and the two slab workbenches, to a door that led into a second room, brightly lit by a large paned window in its ceiling. Another high workbench sat in the centre of the room, with a rack of tools on the wall behind, but where the tools in the main workshop were large and heavy, made for beating out raw metal, these seemed more delicate; small hammers and pliers and fine looking files.

Engineer Tomova sat massively behind the bench. In front of him, clamped in a complicated ring vice, was the hock-joint from a suit of madriel leg armour. Tomova had a valve-can of oil in one huge hand, and he was applying it carefully in between the metal plates of the armour, his short beard almost touching the workbench.

Perched on a high stool besides him was Dak. She wore her usual heavy, practical shirt and tragasaur hide waistcoat, and her thick hair was pulled back and tied, with her obligatory chamber-pen stuck through the binding behind her head.

"Come in, lad," said Tomova. "You are arriving early, but just in time."

"Hello, Maddock," smiled Dak, looking up. "I was not expecting you until later this day."

"Grellik let me off early," said Maddock, barely hiding his excitement. "They said I can become a Field-hand!"

"Well done!" said Dak. "You see! I was telling you that the Order was not doing anything deceptive."

Maddock smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Yeah, and you were right. I had the test this morning and I passed! Though only Terra knows how."

"Good lad!" said Engineer Tomova. "Were they letting you in at the barbican-fort then, even with you having an arrival earlier than that scheduled?"

"Oh, father!" said Dak. "We should be congratulating Maddock."

"My congratulations were being implied before I expressed my concerns at the possibility of protocols being breached."

"Yes, sorry, father."

Dak looked momentarily downcast, but then Engineer Tomova tousled his daughter's hair with one massive hand and they both grinned at each other.

"When will you be starting, lad?"

"I'm to go and see Master Dramut tomorrow."

Dak smiled at his excitement. She was a year older than Maddock, tall and stocky, like her father, with the same broad open features. On the table in front of her was the cranial of a madriel's helmet. She had a tall barrel of sand beside her, and was scooping out handfuls with her soft leather gloves and rubbing it vigorously onto the shiny blue grey metal of the helmet, making it gleam.

The piece in front of her was the largest part of the helmet, which would cover the skull and upper muzzle. Bracing sections ran down from each side, onto which the metal covering for the creature's horns would be bolted. The coverings, each one well over a metre long, and split in two halves, lay on the table in front of the Engineer and his daughter. Also on the table were the heavy curved jaw pieces and cheek-guards.

"Not so rough, daughter!" said Engineer Tomova. "You are polishing a madriel's armour, not scrubbing pots in a scullery.

"Sorry, father," said Dak, taking more care with her next handful of sand.

"What am I just in time for?" asked Maddock.

"My work is nearly finished. Show him, daughter."

Dak pulled off her gloves, climbed down from her stool, and went to a curtain that hung from floor to ceiling and ran the width of the room. When she pulled it aside, Maddock gaped. Behind the curtain was one of the finest suits of madriel armour he had ever seen. Even with its helmet and one rear leg not yet attached, it was an impressive sight; a thing of pure beauty and power. His eyes ran over it, from the huge riveted plates of curving metal that would cover the beast's shoulders and sides, to the smaller pieces linked like a metal spine along its back. More metal strips of armour linked beneath, joining together like a rib-cage whose breast bone curved up between the front legs, before ending in the sharp metal ridge of the armour's charge-plate.

The armour had been highly polished and oil had been applied to bring out the blue grey brilliance of its surface, and it was decorated with detail of a lighter metal, which described delicate curves and spirals along the edges of the thick metal plates.

Dak pulled the curtain further back to reveal another set of armour, crafted for the madriel's rider, equally fine and matching in detail. Intricately wrought on its breastplate was the horned demon skull and sword crest of Chapter Vikas.

"Pride-commander Galder will have no complaints with this work," said Tomova proudly as he crossed the room and knelt to begin fastening the joint he had been oiling onto the rear leg of the armour. "This year he and Sacsensia will be wearing the finest armour that there is."

Maddock knew that the High-tourney was approaching. The whole land was rife with talk of it. Bets were already being made in the taprooms of every tavern in the Order's lands, and at every kitchen table in the houses of the farmers, and around the campfires of the ranchers guarding their herds. All the talk was of Sir Zembulla and Sir Galder, and which one of them would take the position of Grand-commander.

"It is fine work, Engineer Tomova, but I still hope Commander Galder don't win," said Maddock. "I hope he stakes his claim to Dredar and loses it. Then he'll stop taking my brothers away to war."

"It would make no difference who is owning your home; the law remains the law, and your brothers will still be taken to be soldiers," said Engineer Tomova. "Although war will undoubtedly be less of a certainty if Pride-commander Galder is not finding his success."

"I do not think I would like him as Grand-commander, either," said Dak.

"It is not our concern, daughter," said the Engineer.

"I am hearing that Sir Zembulla is unbeatable."

"Oh he is good, daughter, that I will grant you, but no one is unbeatable."

"So you think Commander Galder will win?" asked Maddock.

"Sir Galder is older and he has the experience. He was second only to Lord Morath in his time. I saw them fight in the last High-tourney and it was a close thing. Morath was winner, of course, but only by the thickness of a layer of grease."

Engineer Tomova continued his work on the armour.

"Some people think Commander Kralaford will challenge this year," said Maddock.

"Some people wish, you are meaning," said Tomova. "Sir Kralaford is a good man, and is popular, but the people have been caught up by his reputation, I think."

"What?"

"He is having a fantastic notoriety. The people like him, and would wish for him to be next Grand-commander, but their wishes and the true reality are two different items."

"You don't think he will stand?"

"I believe it to be unlikely. Pass me that greave, daughter."

Engineer Tomova had finished attaching the hock-joint. Dak took the lower greave from its place on the workbench and handed it across.

"So who are you to be betting on, father?" she asked as Tomova began to attach it.

"That is between me and my Chief, daughter. All bets between Engineers are sacred and a secret of the Guild. That is the law."

Dak turned to Maddock.

"I am sure that my father is making these laws up."

"For that act of sacrilege to the Guild, my girl, you can be cleaning the temping trough out."

"Ah, father!"

"Actually, Engineer Tomova, I was wondering if Dak could come with me to Dredar."

Dak's honest eyes widened with excitement.

"Oh father, can I?"

Engineer Tomova looked up from his work, his brow creased with concern.

"You know that I do not like you leaving the Workshops."

"Superintendent Feldor bought a flock of hamabirds, and I ain't had a chance to get a good look at them yet," said Maddock.

"Please, father! I have not been to the farm since mother died, and you know how she was loving the place so!"

Engineer Tomova scratched at his beard.

"Tell me, lad, how is Engineer Barov?"

"He's fine," said Maddock. "But his son does most of the forge's work now, because Barov's hands aren't so good anymore."

"That is a pity to be hearing."

"Oh, you should be going to visit Uncle Barov father!"

"Yes," said Maddock. "He'd be fair pleased to see you."

"Hmm," said Tomova again, studying the two of them from under his wide brow. "I will tell you what. While I am finishing the assembly of Sacsensia's armour, you two can clean out the temping trough, and then we will all three take a juddra ride out to Dredar. Your work will be faster with two sets of hands, the ride will save your feet, and I will get to see Engineer Barov. Then everyone is happy."

"Okay," said Maddock, unsure whether he had got a fair side to the bargain.

Dak frowned at her father.

Engineer Tomova grinned back.

"Everyone is happy," he said again.