Clash of the Sky Galleons

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  ‘Oh, Quint, that is good,’ said Maris, a moment later. ‘Meaty. Spicy. Succulent…’

  She reached forward for another one. And then another, and another, before washing them all down with some more freshly squeezed sky nectar.

  Maybe it was because she had been so hungry and thirsty. Maybe it was the relief of escaping from the terrors of the forest below with its pusfrogs and slither-worms and wig-wigs, and who knew what else besides. Or maybe it was just sitting there in that huge ancient tree that had survived and prospered for countless centuries, and whose branches not only protected them, but also provided this generous feast … Maris would never know. What she did know was that the simple meal she shared that evening with her friend, Quint, high up above the dark forest, was the most delicious she had ever tasted in her entire life.

  ‘Perfect,’ she whispered.

  Far away, the sun - now a great wobbling crimson ball - sank down behind the distant trees. As it did so, the low streaks of cloud down near the horizon turned to bright yellows and oranges, pinks and purples, while the sky behind them was stained a deep red that spread out like spilled winesap on a tablecloth.

  A soft wind blew, rustling the leaves at the tops of the forest canopy as it passed across the majestic sweep of the endless Deepwoods, and filling the warm air with a mixture of aromatic scents - oakmint, lyptus-balm, blue-thyme, and the herby fragrance of the ironwood pine itself. A flock of snowbirds circled in the sky, before swooping down towards the tall lufwoods, where they would roost for the night. A giant caterbird flapped its way across the darkening sky …

  Slowly but surely, the darkness of the night moved across the firmament, like a great black blanket. Stars came out, bright and twinkling in the moonless sky. The cries of the night creatures grew louder as fromps and quarms, febrals, goremorps, manticrakes and so, so many others joined the rousing chorus - a great symphony of sound that swirled round the forest and rose up into the sky.

  Up on the huge branch, Maris and Quint settled down to sleep in the parawing tent, Quint’s sky pirate greatcoats pulled up round their ears and buttoned tightly. Bone-tired from their climb, but well fed and watered, they fell in moments into a deep, heavy sleep that not even the Deepwoods could disturb.

  Maris dreamed of the Palace of Shadows - her former home in the great floating city of Sanctaphrax. She dreamed she had lost her pet lemkin and was searching for it through the great rooms of the palace, each one full of cabinets and curiosities and ornate furniture. But something was wrong. From the cupboard doors and bureau drawers, amber resin oozed. It was spreading over the marble floors, and she was running through room after room. But the more she ran, the slower she moved as the resin trapped her heels, then rose to her knees, her waist, her neck …

  Beside her, Quint was dreaming of the sky-shipyards. He was looking up at a sky cradle. And there was the Galerider, newly repaired and perfect in every detail. He was climbing the tower; emerging at the top. The Galerider‘s crew was waving to him …

  They were all there, Ratbit, Steg Jambles, Tem Barkwater, Sagbutt, Filbus Queep and the Stone Pilot…

  And there was his father - shouting, trying to tell him something. But Quint couldn’t hear …

  He reached out to grasp the Galerider‘s tolley-rope, but a gnarled hand snatched it from him and pushed him away. It was a hooded figure with no face - though Quint knew at once that it was Turbot Smeal. He felt a hot rage boil up within him as he drew his sword and lunged at the figure, only for it to disappear.

  Suddenly, the Galerider rose up into the air, only it wasn’t the Galerider any longer. It had turned into a land-fish! A huge monstrous angler, with Turbot Smeal as its lure, whirring high above its horrible grinning head …

  ‘Quint! Quint!’ Maris’s voice sounded. ‘Wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’

  Quint opened his eyes to see Maris’s concerned face staring into his own. He sat up and ran trembling fingers through his hair.

  ‘Sorry’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  Maris smiled ruefully. ‘Actually no, I was having a bad dream myself,’ she admitted.

  Quint unhooked the parawing tent and peered out.

  ‘Talking of bad dreams …’ he said, looking out at the great expanse of forest rolling off to the distant horizon, ‘we’d better break camp and get to the top of this tree…’

  ‘The beacon?’ said Maris.

  Quint nodded. ‘There’s just one thing, though,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Maris turned to him.

  ‘I’ve never lit an ironwood pine beacon before.’

  Following a brief breakfast of pine-kernels and sky nectar, Quint and Maris set off shortly after dawn on the long climb to the very top of the ironwood pine. A brisk wind had got up. It swirled round them, tugging at their fingers and plucking at their clothes.

  They climbed for several hours, passing ring after ring of broad branches; century after century of growth. And as they climbed, the trunk narrowed, the rings of branches became thinner and closer together, and the amber resin no longer oozed from the bark. Here, instead, it was set solid in small fists of gleaming fiery colour.

  Maris paused and snapped a small piece from the bark. It was smooth as glass, yet curiously warm to the touch, and not at all sticky. She slipped it inside her pocket and patted it, ‘for luck’, she whispered.

  ‘This’ll do,’ Quint announced finally.

  Maris looked up. Half a dozen strides above their heads was a huge clump of pinecones; beyond that, the very top of the tree, which ended with the needle-clad apex of the great trunk, pointing up at the sky like a giant finger.

  ‘Here, take my knife,’ said Quint, pulling it from his belt and handing it to Maris. ‘I want you to strip the trunk and these main branches here of every twig, every pinecone, every pine-needle. We need to make a firebreak, to stop the fire at the top of the tree spreading down to the branches below. And while you’re doing that, I’ll climb up and prepare the treetop for firing.’

  Maris nodded and set to work. Hacking determinedly, she turned her attention to the trunk, chopping off all the protruding bark and leaving it as smooth as a well-whittled stick. Climbing past Maris, Quint clambered up to the next ring of stubby branches where the great clump of dark-green pinecones - each one the size of a banderbear head - were clustered.

  The sun was high in the sky now, sending dazzling rays out across the forest. Above him, a woodteal puffed out its speckled chest and sang, its voice pure and mellifluous.

  Quint turned his attention to the clump of pinecones. He eased himself slowly up towards them. Then, with his legs wrapped round the tree-trunk as tightly as if he was riding a prowlgrin, he reached up. While his left hand supported the first of the giant pinecones, his right hand swung the sword round. He ran the edge of the blade deftly down the ridged and knobbly surface in a zigzag line.

  For a moment, apart from a tangy whiff of pine that wafted into the air, nothing happened. Then, where the blade had passed, the dark-green skin peeled back a tad and thick, deep red resin began to well up like blood. It gathered in the corners of the line, which got fuller and fuller, until it started running down the surface pinecone in two glistening red blobs.

  ‘Thank Sky!’ Quint murmured, smiling with relief that a theory he had only ever heard about from old sky pirates in Undertown taverns actually seemed to be working.

  Emboldened, he seized the pinecone once more, and scored the skin with a whole series of zigzag lines. Then, with resin coursing all down the outside of the cone, he turned his attention to the next one, and the one after that, until the whole clump of giant pinecones - each one with a dozen or more wounds to their skin - oozed and dripped the deep red, intoxicatingly scented resin.

  ‘Criss-crossed the cones, I did,’ Quint could hear the old captain, Storm Weezit, saying to his father in the

  Tarry Vine tavern. ‘Then I lets the resin drip - but not too much mind … Next, I strikes these here sky-crystals …’ Qu
int could remember the crystals held in those gnarled old sky pirate’s hands -hands that were scarred by horrible burns …

  Quint closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn’t stop now. The two of them had come too far …

  Balancing precariously on a broken-off stump, Quint rummaged in the pockets on either side of his greatcoat and pulled out the two yellow sky-crystals. As they came together they glowed brightly. Then, taking one in each trembling hand - and before he could have any second thoughts - Quint struck them together.

  Clack!

  From the branch ring below, as Maris watched, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. The spark - glinting like a shooting star - dropped down through the air towards the dripping red pinecone. She was waiting for it to land before bursting into flames, so it came as a surprise when, with an inch to go …

  WHOOF!

  The vapours ignited with a loud explosion, and all at once the whole cluster of pinecones was ablaze. Quint, thrown back by the blast - his arms flailing, his mouth open, his eyes shut - was falling, falling, falling, until…

  Crack!

  He hit the ring of branches on which Maris stood.

  Maris fell to her knees beside him. She stroked his cheeks, his forehead, the line of his jaw - the black soot that covered his face coming off on her fingers.

  ‘Quint,’ she said urgently, as scalding drops of the crimson resin plashed all round them. ‘Quint, are you all right? Tell me you’re all right…’

  Quint opened his eyes. ‘I … I’m all right,’ he whispered, but as he looked up at the blazing fire at the top of the tree - the bright roaring flames reflected in his eyes - it was impossible to ignore the look of terror in his expression.

  ‘Oh, Quint,’ Maris gasped, her heart overflowing as she seized his hands. ‘Fire … I’d forgotten how terrified you are of it.’ She squeezed his hands warmly. ‘It must have taken a lot to climb up there and …’

  ‘It had to be done.’ Quint swallowed, sat up and looked around. ‘The fire break?’

  ‘I’ve stripped everything. The branches, the trunk …’

  ‘Good work,’ Quint managed to smile as he stroked the smooth wood.

  Maris helped him to his feet, and the pair of them stared up at the burning pinecones above. Now that the sticky coating of volatile resin had burned off, the inner cone was burning - but far less dramatically. Apart from a patina of small, pale purple flames which flickered over the surface, the main indication that the fire had not gone out was the white smoke pouring out of the top of each of the pinecones in the cluster. Thick and as pungent as incense, the individual coils of smoke wound round each other, plaiting themselves together, before flying off into the sky as a great swaying column.

  ‘It seems to work,’ said Quint, watching the smoke rise higher and higher.

  ‘Seems to work?’ said Maris. ‘Quint, it’s fantastic. I bet it’s visible in Sanctaphrax itself!’

  Quint turned to Maris. ‘It’s not Sanctaphrax that we need to see it,’ he said. ‘It’s the Galerider - that is, if she’s still sky-borne …’

  But Maris wasn’t listening. Instead she was staring over Quint’s shoulder, a look of horror on her face.

  ‘Quint!’ she cried. ‘Your parawings! Take them off! Quick! They’re on fire!’

  A jolt ran through Quint’s body as he tore at the straps of his parawings. The red lines and splashes of resin from the pine-cones which streaked the wings smouldered and burst into flames as Quint struggled free from them and flung them away in horror. The flaming parawings landed on a branch below them, then slipped off, further down the tree. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, there came the unmistakable whiff of pine smoke coiling up towards them - and a moment later, a branch some twenty or thirty strides below them burst into flames.

  Maris gasped. ‘Quint,’ she said, her voice tremulous with fear. ‘We’re trapped.’

  Quint swallowed hard. Above them, the treetop blazed furiously, spitting and cracking and burning down towards the firebreak. Below them, the fire took hold, sending thick smoke coiling upwards. The gathering flames started to rise.

  ‘There’s not much time,’ said Quint urgently. ‘Use your parawings - you’ll have to fly off to another tree.’

  Maris leaned forwards, then wrapped her arms round Quint and hugged him fiercely. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Do you understand, Quint? I am not going to leave you …’

  Suddenly overwhelmed with the thick smoke coming up from below, she collapsed into a fit of coughing. Above, the great cluster of pinecones crackled and fizzed; below the fire crept inexorably up the trunk, coming closer and closer towards them …

  ‘Maris … Oh, Maris …’ he whispered, his voice rasping as he tried not to cough. ‘For Sky’s sake, save yourself, Maris …’

  • CHAPTER TWELVE •

  THE SWARM

  The instant the flight-burners were snuffed out, the flight-rock had gone berserk, battering away at the bars of the cage as the storm winds froze the rock’s surface and turned it super buoyant.

  The grappling-hooks gave way, one after the other, as a series of sickening jolts convulsed the stormlashed vessel and tore the Galerider from its moorings. In an instant, the mighty sky ship was plucked from the tree-tops and tossed into the raging night, as if by a giant hand. The last thing Captain Wind Jackal saw as the helm spun from his grasp were the shocked faces of Quint and Maris staring up at him, open-mouthed, from their perch in the blackwood tree.

  What followed had been like a nightmare - a nightmare from which the crew of the Galerider could not wake up. A universe of cracking wood, flying splinters, beams, pulleys, ropes and sailcloth stripped from the vessel and hurtling past their heads. There was nothing they could do but tether themselves to the nearest spar, gunwale or balustrade, and hold on with all their might, their muscles clenched and protesting as the great sky ship was blown across the sky in the clutches of the storm, rainlash and windhowl echoing in their ears.

  But it couldn’t go on, Wind Jackal knew that. Out of control, the Galerider was being torn apart by the gale-force winds, but the minute they released their icy grip, the flight-rock would send them hurtling up into Open Sky for good. All was lost. Wind Jackal fought the rising desire to release his tether and give himself up to the storm and oblivion.

  Was that Turbot Smeal’s mocking laughter he could hear, rising out of the howling winds?

  ‘No!’ Wind Jackal roared into the teeth of the gale. ‘It shall not end like this!’

  But what was that? Wind Jackal forced himself to look up, icy rain stinging his face like frenzied woodwasps. There, through the driving rain and roaring wind, a hooded figure, hunched and bowed, was slowly, painfully, hauling itself across the juddering flight-rock platform.

  As Wind Jackal peered across from the helm, the muscles in his arms aching and his fingers numb, the Stone Pilot reached out - a short axe in her gauntleted hand - and flailed at one of the squat barrels of wood-pitch lashed to the mast. The barrel splintered and its black contents shot out of its ruptured side, splattering the hooded figure. Monstrous now in a thick, congealing coat of woodpitch, the Stone Pilot rolled off the flight-rock platform and down onto the rock cage.

  What was happening? Wind Jackal had never seen anything like this. Had the Stone Pilot gone mad; abandoned hope as he himself so nearly had?

  The next instant, there was a spark as the blackened figure brought a sky-crystal smashing down on the bars of the cage, then an explosion of light … The hooded figure burst into flame before Wind Jackal’s horrified eyes, and remained, clamped to the bars of the rock cage like a giant fire float.

  The flight-rock responded instantly to the intense heat of the burning woodpitch, sucking in the warmth and plunging the Galerider back down towards the swirling treetops. Seizing the opportunity given to him, Wind Jackal slammed the flight-levers either side of him as far forward as they would go. In answer, the sky ship’s descent grew less steep - but they were
still coming down perilously fast, the storm still driving the Galerider on.

  The jagged tree-line was rising to meet them. It was their only chance, Wind Jackal knew that.

  If the blazing torch that was the Stone Pilot could only cling to the rock cage for a few seconds more, the flight-rock would pull them down into the dark forest below and the Galerider would have to take her chances in the tangle of branches and tree-trunks.

  Better the Deepwoods should have them, thought Wind Jackal, than this accursed storm. The Deepwoods had taken his son, now let it take him!

  Suddenly they were down amongst the trees, the howling wind replaced by thrashing branches which tore at the speeding sky ship from all sides. A mighty lullabee was looming up before him, tall, solid, its great branches reaching, grasping. Wind Jackal ducked … Then all was blackness.

  Wind Jackal’s eyes snapped open.

  He was half-standing, half-kneeling; his tether rope lashed to the helm’s balustrade stretched taut. The rope was frayed and close to snapping, but it had held, and Wind Jackal felt a wave of relief wash over him. Without this length of plaited woodvine, carefully woven and repaired by Ratbit the mobgnome, he would have been blown away by the terrible storm of the night before.

  Wind Jackal squinted up into a clear blue sky, then down at the deck of the Galerider. It had been a savage landing, but he’d had no choice - and they’d been lucky, Wind Jackal could see that plainly. The great lullabee tree had stopped the Galerider dead, but not before the sky ship’s razor-sharp keel had sliced through deep into the trunk of the unfortunate tree. Now they were wedged tight in the cleft of the shattered wood, high above the forest floor.

  Becoming aware of a hissing sound, Wind Jackal glanced over to the flight-rock platform. The noise was coming from the softly glowing flight-rock. He saw that the flight-burners were burning steadily and - slumped below them in a blackened, smoking heap across the rock cage - was the hooded figure of the Stone Pilot.