The Soul Machines (eBook)

Chapter 1 – A Trouvaille?

Don’t panic! Tudor told himself, as the five patrol riders escaped the forest and steadily climbed the bare hill towards him. Half a dozen Komondor dogs surrounded them, whistle trained to go for the jugular of their prey.

I feel like a field rabbit, still in the face of danger, hoping that nobody will notice me. And this is how my life can easily go from bad to worse, the 17-year-old boy worried.

He signaled to his faithful companion Nero, a golden-fur mongrel resembling an overgrown German shepherd, to be quiet. Tudor knew he was in trouble. It was a bad idea to be caught in these parts of the woods any time of the year, but during chestnut harvest time, in the mid-fall season, it meant an unwelcome trip to the cold cellars of the bishop’s castle, a few months in the township dungeon, or even death, if one was foolish enough to fight these guards. With his little knives, Tudor could shave the skin of a chestnut ten yards away. But knives were no match for the heavy swords of the ex-Honvéd, let alone for their long rifles.

I’m not getting locked up for this, he thought, gnashing his teeth in rage, his eyes sparkling and moist. But standing still won’t work if they come just a little closer.

Not sure whether he had already been spotted, he ducked slowly, glancing at a fissure not far away, covered in briery bushes. It looked old and undisturbed, witness to many chestnut harvest seasons. He came across it just minutes ago, his eye passing over it, without giving it a second thought until this very moment.

Only Providence put me so close to it. Next time I won’t be so lucky.

His knuckles white on his knives’ sheaths, he crawled towards it and threw in his large, nearly full bag. He then slid inside, his leather tunic touching, ever so slightly, the thorny claws, which rustled in protest like a desperate last attempt to keep him out.

“Nero, hide, boy, hide!” he whispered to his dog who looked at him confused for a short while, tilted his head a bit, a sure sign that he understood his command, and then took off towards a rock a little farther up.

A gentle wind blew from the hill bottom towards Tudor, complementing his luck, otherwise the Komondors would have picked up his scent. If not for the dogs, he might have passed unnoticed even to someone close by, unless this someone was looking straight into the bush to notice his two luminous eyes peeking from within. Barely breathing, he looked at the outside world through the spiked window. The Rooster Comb Mountain Peak, some ten miles away, as the crow flies, was rising from the top of a few ancient fir trees. The interplay between the deep blue of the clear sky, the raw green of the trees and the white-covered mountains was truly a sight to behold.

Not exactly the time to admire nature’s beauty, he scolded himself, his ears pricking up. He shifted a bit, as if unsure of what to do next, then stared intently at the small unwelcome pack coming his way. He could already hear the muffled sound of hooves over dirt and short grass. A sudden shift in the direction of the dogs, followed by a tongue-against-bottom-lip whistle, signaled that something was going on. Tudor panicked. He focused on the remote scene until tears got into his eyes. A touch of brown far to the right, near the tree line, moved fast and disappeared into the forest. The guards changed direction and unleashed the dogs with a sharp command. They went into a frenzy after whatever they were following—a deer, most likely—and got lost shortly after, between the trees.

As if guessing that the danger was about to pass, Nero ran back towards the fissure.

“Nero, my dear, it seems that we’ll get to eat roasted chestnut pie after all,” Tudor whispered, relieved and amazed at his dog’s instincts. “Or at least I will, seeing as you don’t value it.”

Ten minutes later, with all the commotion gone, he was about to come out from his hiding spot when his hand touched a little round rock. The rock felt more like a smooth piece of metal than a stone, irradiating neither heat nor cold. A sort of neutral, skin-temperature something protruding from dirt. It looked almost completely buried, save for the round top about the size of a cherry. His eyes used by now with the semi-darkness inside, he inspected the fissure more closely. It couldn’t have been taller than one medium-size person, about as wide as his arms spread, and no longer than four yards, as it was set in an oblique position relative to the tree line that he saw outside. It looked just about as natural as any small hole caused by a landslide after heavy rain. The ground had settled over many years. He crawled further with his legs, while with his hands he vigorously dug the dirt around the queer rock. He forgot entirely about the danger he was in just minutes ago. His companion whined softly, as if wondering what possessed his master. In a short time, Tudor uncovered the knob-looking thing and made up his mind to examine it further. After a powerful push downwards, he felt the ground giving up under him. He succumbed with no time to react, dirt in his mouth and eyes. He looked around, coughing and spitting. His action had enlarged the initial fissure to what was now more like a little underground cave, so small that perhaps only four or five adults could fit in. A paltry amount of light was coming from outside. The first thing he saw was Nero yelping above him and moving around agitated. He reckoned he was just three yards below the surface.

“Nero! Stay there, boy, stay there. Down!”

Tudor looked around for a root or rock that he could use to climb back up. His eyes fell on a strange grayish object with a short rod spearing up, ending with a sphere—what he took for a temperature-less rock a few minutes before. From what he could see, the object looked brand new, with no signs of rust or decay. Its shape reminded him of a pear cut in half from top to bottom, with the bulgy end sticking out of the dirt. It seemed made of metal, but an unfamiliar one. Its yellow lines converging towards the center and distorted in the low light, made it look like a face, grinning at the relentless, yet fruitless efforts of the entropy to break it apart. Or grinning at him, satisfied that someone discovered it, at last. Tudor thought it reminded him of a small metal boat, about two-thirds of it buried. Its size couldn’t have been more than eight or nine feet. He knew little of boats, having never left the hilly region of his hometown, but he had seen pictures in the books that his best friend Roli lent to him. This thing had a flat top and didn’t have anything resembling a deck. Despite its surface looking unscratched, it gave the feeling of being old, really old.

“What would a boat do underground, in the crack of a hill, miles away from any big river?!” wondered Tudor aloud.

Lost in thought, he got startled by a noise. Nero was losing patience.

“By the looks of it, this thing won’t leave this place anytime soon,” he muttered. “I can always come back and check it out.”

He hurried, pulling himself together and looking for a way up. If Nero were to bark, he might attract the guards. Half crawling, half pushing himself against the wall, Tudor grabbed a root and reached the rim of the hole he created. With a last effort, he pulled himself up.

“Who’s a good boy now?” he said, patting the dog. “We seem to have stumbled upon a little treasure, the two of us, but don’t you go now and tell all your stray buddies about it, we don’t want anyone else close to it.”

Getting out in the open, he glanced around. There was no sign of the guards. He carefully covered with grass the most visible part of the cave entry. It took a good while, but finally he was satisfied that he made it look natural and insignificant enough. After all, what were the chances that someone else crazy enough to come into this area to steal chestnuts would need to hide there.

“I think we can conclude that we were either incredibly lucky or these woods are ridden with dirt-sailing boats,” Tudor snickered, taking a good last look at his work.

Nero answered in his typical way, waving his tail approvingly.

Still trembling from excitement, Tudor started ascending and descending the many hills that he had to cross to get home. At the risk of delaying his return by a couple of hours, he carefully went in the direction opposite to where he had seen the guards go.

Forcing himself to be on the lookout, he glided from tree to tree, ready to hide at any suspicious sound. His mind was swirling, thinking about his discovery. He decided to call it a “boat”, for lack of a better name. How old was it? Judging by the fact that the fissure in the hill looked ancient, it couldn’t have been from recent times. Also, why did anybody drag it across several hills? He was dying to tell his best buddies about it.

Short of a few curious squirrels, he didn’t encounter anybody for a couple of hours. The kingdom of chestnut trees covered a vast area—he wasn’t even sure how many hills, but there must have been at least thirty. The owner, bishop Henczi, or the Great Fir Tree bishop, as people called him, besides being a well-known Roman Catholic figure, was a powerful baron with connections all over the Kingdom of Hungary. Given his volatile disposition and conceited nature, not to mention his small personal army, it was certainly a terrible idea to...