Master Hepskil leant forward in his chair, and began fumbling through the countless books and rolled up papers on the wide table, until he found the map he was looking for. He unrolled it, securing its corners with various books, a large rock, and his bowl of garrola fruit. The children around the table all leant forward eagerly. The map showed the lands around Klinberg, with the strongholds of the Order of the Plains clearly marked.

The afternoon was hot, and the room was as stuffy as always.

"Klinberg," said Master Hepskil, pointing at the map with his fruit knife. "Our western forces were under the control of our Grand-commander, and he had placed our eastern forces under the commander of Dolphus Chapter, stationed at Wildonstack."

Master Hepskil indicated a fort to the east, where a line of mountains ranged south, pointing like a knife into the flatlands of the plains.

"Commander Axbulla had managed to push the enemy's eastern forces back into the mountains, and was laying siege to their southern forts. Meanwhile, in the west, our armies had pushed far across the hills beyond the Rhebus, capturing the lowland city of Halsbaad, before advancing into the Monmellier mountains. There, after months of hard fighting, our Grand-commander managed to drive back the enemy forces, trapping them in the high valley of Wessvall, cut off from the safety of their strongholds."

In his usual place by the window, Grifford listened with a measured scowl on his face. He was already quite familiar with the details of the Order's last battle.

"Even the javac of their knights would have been hard pressed to climb the icy walls of that valley. They were outnumbered, and it should have been a simple task to destroy them, hunt down the remains of their forces and then turn our attention on the enemy to the east.

"But there was a weakness in our Grand-commander's plans. To the north lay the lands of the Free-clan States, cut off from the less barbarous lands of the Order by sharp ridged rocks and snowy peaks. A pass cut through those dangerous heights, and though it was widely believed that the Free-clans would never come to the aid of their brethren, our Grand-commander saw the danger. As a precaution, he had dispatched some knights and their soldiers to guard the pass, while the rest of his troops engaged the forces trapped at Wessvall.

"The battle was not a sophisticated affair. There was little room for manoeuvre and the enemy fought with desperate aggression, but by midday we had forced them back to the highest and narrowest stretch of the valley. All that was required was to break through their hastily constructed defences and the day would be ours. But, as we made our final charge, a new enemy appeared from the north. We had misjudged the disposition of the Free-clan States, and despite their renowned enmity towards the Order of the Heights, it seemed they would rather see Monmellier in their hands than in ours. They had gathered themselves together from all of the northern lands and attacked in dreadful numbers, through the pass our troops had been sent to guard. Our defence of the pass had failed and the Free-clans had broken through."

Squire Gefry, who was once again sitting in front of Grifford, leant to Marcin, who was sitting next to him, and whispered.

"And we all know who was to blame for that failure, don't we?"

Marcin gave a smirk and glanced over his shoulder at Grifford.

Grifford's scowl deepened.

"Have you something to add, Squire Gefry?" asked Master Hepskil.

"No, Master Hepskil," said Gefry, looking up guiltily, and Marcin similarly turned to face the front.

"Good." Master Hepskil scratched at his beard. "Where was I?"

"Reinforcements," said the boy sitting at the front, beside Tahlia. "From the Free-clans."

"Reinforcements, indeed. Survivors from the pass arrived first, but their warning came too late. We barely managed to turn our troops to defend our flanks before the enemy was upon us.

"Our Grand-commander was slain in the initial charge, and our forces suddenly found themselves trapped between two enemies. One fresh and eager for a fight, and the other who suddenly scented a chance of victory and so fought with renewed energy.

"All would have been lost had not Pride-commander Morath managed to rally our troops and regain stability, where before there had been chaos. We fought our way to safety, but not before we had lost an appalling number of men and madriel. And so, utterly defeated, we had no option but to withdraw south, though we were harried all the while and lost yet more men in our retreat. Only the strength of Commander Morath kept us as an army, rather than a beaten rabble."

"He was a great man," said the boy beside Tahlia.

"A great man, indeed, Xantir," said Master Hepskil, smiling at the boy.

"What happened then?" asked Tahlia eagerly.

"When our troops reached the Rhebus, the enemy finally stopped their pursuit, and we retreated to Klinberg to lick our wounds and face an involuntary peace. The Order of the Heights had suffered as much in the years of war as we had ourselves. Commander Morath rose to be the next Grand-commander, and he had seen enough loss in that final battle to have an ardent desire for a more permanent peace. He was a clever man, with a strong will, and he negotiated a peace between our Order and the Order of the Heights, which has lasted longer than any since the wars began. But peace is frail, and war now threatens our Order once again."

"Because Lord Morath is dead," said Tahlia.

"Indeed so."

"I cannot see how one man can make such a difference to anything," said Grifford derisively.

"You would be surprised at the difference one man can make, Squire Grifford. Lord Morath strove for peace, but the current Commanders of Klinberg are all in some disagreement at the moment concerning our northern borders. Some believe that Lord Taine, the Heights' current Grand-commander, cannot be trusted, while others worry about the disposition of the Free-clans. They are more powerful than they were before Wessvall. They saw opportunity in our defeat and captured much of our northern lands; Solridge being the most burdensome."

"Do you think we might be attacked?" asked a young girl at the far end of the table.

"An attack is always a possibility. As concerns the northern Order, Lord Taine has held to the terms of the treaty, but the Free-clans are unpredictable." Master Hepskil leant forward and rolled up the map of the province. "Still, that is not something you will have to worry yourselves with. The High-tourney is coming, and at its end we will have a new Grand-commander. It will be up to him to decide our policy in the north."

He tucked the map away beneath the table.

"Now, children; get out your paper and your pens. It is time for today's assignment."

Grifford groaned, while the other children took out their chamber pens. In his eagerness to wash and change after his morning's training, he had forgotten to pick up his writing things from his dormitory at the barracks. It was that impertinent Field-hand's fault for distracting him. If anyone needed teaching a lesson, it was that common, dung stinking scum!

He scowled and raised his hand to get Master Hepskil's attention.

* * * * *

The gardens were steeply terraced up the section of fortress hill, between two towering shield-bastions, and they formed a tapering wedge of verdant green between their dark walls. The terraces followed the contours of the hill, and some ran along the shelves of exposed stone, so their formation was haphazard. Each was fronted by a high wall, though the lushness of the place meant that only short sections and patches of them could be seen, along with the odd glimpse of a stair or ramp linking the terraces together.

When Maddock had first arrived at the fortress to begin the long weeks of baling karabok fodder, the gardens had been on fire with colour. But now, looking up at them as he pushed his cart towards the thick hedge that bordered their lowest edge, he noticed that the brightest colours were mostly gone. The flowers had been de-headed and the fruits picked. First summer was ending, and the Growers were preparing the gardens for the onslaught of the rains.

There was still some brightness beneath the domes of the glass houses on the garden's widest terrace, and high above them, where a water tower stood amongst a tangle of pipes, there was the watery hint of rainbows. The tower was where the terraces ended. Beyond it, the narrowing gap between the two shield-bastions was filled with steep, foliage garlanded, rock. Maddock thought he could see the distant small shapes of Growers clambering about the cliffs above the tower, but he was not sure.

Earlier in the summer, as well as the brightness of the flowers, the air had been filled with the spiralling dots of crak, along with the rising and falling pitch of their cries. Now, though, with the season of sunflies and rockgrubs over, Maddock could only see one or two of the red birds perched hopefully about the place. The crak were not the only thing missing. He could see no sign of the Growers on the lower terraces, and as he passed beneath the shadow of the gardens' hedge, the place seemed empty. There was no one around to get directions from.

He had been told the composting-pits were up on the third terrace. One of the paths that faced him curved away around the line of the hedge, and the other ended in stairs. Two other paths led upwards, one on a ramp in the side of the terrace, and another carried by a gantry. The wooden framework climbed steeply upwards, before it turned back on itself and then climbed once more, a little like the round staircases in the oast houses back on the farm.

Maddock set off, pushing his cart along the shallowest ramp, up the terrace's edge. A low wall, barely a hand's span high, ran along the outside of the ramp, which he reckoned was to stop carts from running over the edge. He took that as a sign that he was heading in the right direction. As he climbed, he passed through two terraces; one of them a neat garrola orchard, and the other a bare field of turned soil. The smell of the damp earth somehow overcame the stench of his cart's contents, and reminded him of home.

He shook his head and climbed a final ramp to where a high stone colonnade fronted the terrace above. He thought he could hear voices beyond the colonnade, but could see nothing between its pillars because its top had been planted with krodillis vine. Though its dark petaled flowers had gone, its thick fronds still hung over the colonnade's entrance, blocking his view like a curtain.

He pushed his way through, and stopped dead to take in the scene on the vine's far side. The terrace was a rough half circle, with the terraces above splitting the back wall into a series of smaller irregular curves. A small domed water tower stood in the centre of the terrace, raised high on six metal girders, each of which sloped outwards like the legs of a pond walker, their feet sitting in the water of a large pool. Stretched and tethered between the suspended base of the tower and the ground about the pond were big triangular hide tarps, which shaded the space beneath the tower on almost all sides, leaving only one opening facing onto the terrace.

In the shadowed cave beneath the tower squatted a creature, its body huge and fat and covered in a shiny green skin, mottled with dark veins and spots. It was as though a giant ball of pot dough had been placed in the centre of the pond, and then a second smaller ball had been put on top and pressed down. It looked like more and more balls had been pressed on top of that, each one smaller than the last, until they formed a squat lumpen cone almost three metres high. The furrows where each section met were filled with masses of red feelers, writhing about as though tasting the air. The ones that emerged from between the fat lower sections were as thick as his wrist, and those nearer the top of the cone were thin and tapered to something almost like hair. Further growths, thick and root like, quivered at the creature's base, and sent ripples across the pool's surface.

The creature seemed to lean forward towards him out of the cave. Its head, at least the strange round mass at the top of its body that he took to be a head, was topped with three long red nodules, which also seemed to be slowly tasting the air. Maddock could see no sign of any mouth or eyes on the thing. Curving above it, from out of its back, were four long jointed limbs, each one ending in a clump of sharp fingers. They reminded Maddock of the legs of a rachnid as it hung from a barn's rafters, waiting patiently for its prey. The arms almost touched the base of the water tower above, where a tangle of pipes emerged to run down its two closest legs. At ground level the pipes split and ran across the stones of the terrace, before each one turned down and disappeared into the ground beside a round metal hatch, six of which were set in a semicircle around the tower.

On the far side of the terrace, a wide cutting ran across its centre and up through the wall of the terraces above. Crossing the cutting was a wide flat bridge, and it was from there that the sound of voices was coming, though not voices anything like those he was used to.

Maddock knew that most of the Growers weren't human. He had glimpsed some of them from down at the Enclosures, but the only ones he had ever met were Micreech, the Grower envoy to the farm, and the mowmok. Micreech, apart from being more than two metres tall and impossibly thin, with skin that was thick and gnarly, looked almost human, but the mowmok were truly different.

Sometimes, when the harvest of kernik seeds had to be gathered and there were not enough hands on the farm to do the job, superintendent Feldor would call on the services of the Growers. Then Micreech would send a dozen mowmok to help. With their six arm like legs and two tails they could jump and clamber among the trees faster than any human, and the harvest would always be gathered on time when they helped. Despite that, the farmers were rarely pleased because, despite Micreech's friendly nature, the services of the Growers were not given freely.

There were a few mowmok amongst the group at the far end of the terrace, but the rest of the Growers were completely different from each other in appearance. The only thing they did all have in common was that every one of them was either wheeling or carrying something loaded with old vegetation, presumably destined for the compost pits. One wide shouldered Grower, who stood in the centre of the bridge on four short stubby legs, had a heavy basket slung over its back, piled high with old brown olap vine. Another, which looked like a small scrunched up ball in the centre of a dozen spinney legs, stood between the traces of a cart loaded with curled brown leaves, each one the size of a spearman's shield.

Much of the noise coming from the group was the high whistling voices of the mowmok, but there were a variety of other noises which, Maddock assumed, were the voices of the other creatures. As he stood beneath the colonnade, panting for breath after his climb up the ramp, one of the creatures detached itself from the group and made its ponderous way towards him. It carried itself on three legs; two at the front that were thick and tree like, and one single limb at the back, which was long and supple, nothing more than a narrowing extension of its body. The limb's end was wrapped in a thick covering of tragasaur hide. At its narrowest, it was thinner than Maddock's waist, but it was still able to support the creature's heavy upper body and head as it lifted both front limbs off the floor together to thump them down in front of it like two heavy bags of soil.

The creature stopped a metre in front of Maddock and looked down at him, though looked was probably not the right word to use at all. He could see no eyes in the wide flat head, or any kind of mouth either, though there were a lot of long branching feelers around the rounded front edge that faced him. About the creature hung a familiar scent of damp vegetation.

"Hello?" said Maddock uncertainly.

The creature's feelers reached down, curling and licking at the air around him, but none touched his skin directly. After a few seconds, a rough clicking sound came from somewhere behind the creature's head, and two of the thicker feelers tapped him lightly a few times on the side of his face.

Maddock resisted the urge to take a step back.

"Hello!" the creature said in a high pitched voice.

"Hello?" said Maddock again, looking closer at the creature's head, trying to find the mouth from where the voice came.

"No, up here!"

"What?" said Maddock, looking up. "Oh!"

Peering down at him from over the side of the creature's head was the small fury face of a mowmok. The two thick feelers that had been tapping at Maddock lifted and curled up to drum gently at the mowmok's face. The clicking noise came again, and to Maddock's surprise, the small creature answered with the same high pitched clicks while it tapped with its nimble fingers at the edge of the bigger creature's head.

The creature bent its legs and lowered itself slowly to the floor so that its head, and the mowmok perched on top of it, were level with Maddock's face.

"Oh, new boy!" said the mowmok, peering at him.

The mowmok had a narrow head, which flattened back on either side into large ears with dark hairless skin, so thin that the sunlight shone right through. It had a small mouth which grinned at him with sharp pointed teeth. Above its mouth were a pair of luminous eyes, and above those was a second pair of eyes, smaller than the first but no less bright. Near the top of the creature's tapering skull were a further set of even smaller eyes, which were so piercing they seemed to shine a bright red in the sunlight.

"What's happening?" asked Maddock.

"Bit of backlog, afraid. Everyone with carts for the pits and the PM meticulous as ever."

The mowmok crouched down on the platform of the creature's head, with the hands of his middle arms resting on its narrow front edge. Then it scratched at the hair beneath its chin with the nimble fingers of one of its upper arms, and Maddock saw its six digits; three pointing forward and three behind, like odd thumbs.

"PM?" he asked.

"Pit-master," replied the mowmok, gesturing at the thing beneath the water tower.

"I was told not to call it that."

"By Dramut, expect. Ha ha; Dramut's little joke. Call Pit-master what you like. Pit-master not hear a thing unless you scream. No shouting allowed here and no blades. You want to upset Pit-master, scream at him and wave sharp blade then we see some fun."

The creature on which the mowmok sat, which hadn't moved since it had lowered itself to the ground, suddenly started clicking and tapping at the smaller creature's head with its thick feelers. The mowmok gave a quick click tap of an answer.

"Sofree not like to be out of conversation," the creature explained.

"Oh," said Maddock, looking back down at the creature, Sofree, which was still again, apart from the gentle waving of the finest of its feelers.

"Sofree positive gossip among Growers."

"Right," said Maddock. "I've got some dung from the training-grounds. What shall I do with it?"

"Over there," said the mowmok, pointing. "Wait by pit one and two for inspection. Dung always goes in pit one or two. Ah, action at last."

Maddock looked over to the group of Growers standing on the bridge, where something interesting was happening.