Clash of the Sky Galleons

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  Tem felt his knees buckle and his heart begin to race. Beside him, Steg reached out with a steadying arm.

  ‘Easy there, lad. I’m with you,’ he whispered.

  ‘There are three axe-teams,’ the timber-master continued. ‘Enough for a classic death thrust. Snatchwoods approach from the east, Snetterbarks from the north … You must engage the tarry vine, and hold it off for as long as you can, while we Polesticks attack from the west. We’ll do our best to bring it down before any of you are taken.’ He looked round the circle of expectant faces. ‘Attack on my signal.’

  Tem felt cold sweat trickling down his back.

  ‘And may the axes of our forefathers protect us!’

  The timber-master waved his blackwood staff once more and the three axe-teams - with the Galerider’s crew falling in behind them - set off to take their positions on the edges of the glades.

  A short while later, Quint and Maris found themselves crouched behind a thornberry bush beside Wind Jackal. There was no birdsong; no rodents scurried, no creatures cried. The three of them clutched razor-edged axes, each one sharpened by the woodtrolls of the Polestick clan, who were clustered round the timber-master. Putting his stubby hands to his mouth, Chopley gave a low hooting whistle that cut through the unearthly deathstillness of the sunlit glade in front of them.

  At the sound of his whistle, Quint glimpsed the flash of sunlight reflecting off axe-heads between the clumps of trees and undergrowth as, from the north and east, the Snetterbarks and Snatchwoods dashed out into their respective glades.

  ‘Wait!’ Chopley growled to his axe-team as they tensed in readiness to spring forward. ‘Wait till they engage the tarry vine …’

  Suddenly from the dense patch of forest in the middle of the ring of glades, came a whirring, snapping sound, as if a driver was cracking a hammelhorn whip.

  Halfway across the eastern glade, Tem gasped in horror as a thick, green vine - with trailing tendrils and pulsating veins of sap - reared up from the lush meadow grass at his feet. A short woodtroll spun round just in front of the terrified fore-decker and swung his axe, and the thick, poisonous-green coil of vine exploded in a spray of stinking slime.

  The severed stump flayed around violently before drawing back, rearing high in the air and sprouting three fresh, oozing tendrils that sprang out in opposite directions. All at once, Tem’s ears filled with the whirring sound of the Snatchwood clan’s axes hacking through lashing vine strands that slithered back, only to divide and lash out again.

  Whirr! Splatch! Whirr! Splatch! Whirr! Splatch!

  The hideous rhythm rang in his ears, freezing Tem to the spot.

  ‘Swing that axe, lad!’ shouted Steg Jambles beside him as the sounds of battle erupted in the glade to the north.

  But Tem couldn’t hear him. He was back in the past, in a far-off glade, tethered to his brother Cal, and being driven by slavers towards the terrible sound of thrashing mandibles coming from the shadows …

  Just then, an intense jolt of pain shot through his body; shocking, yet horribly familiar. Looking down, Tem saw a sinuous coil of green vine wrapped tightly round his forearm, and beads of blood pouring down from the vicious barbs which had pierced the skin.

  This was no dream; no buried nightmare. It was real!

  ‘Steg!’ Tem screamed in terror as, kicking and writhing, he was dragged across the glade towards the black heart of the forest.

  ‘Tem!’ Steg’s anguished shout answered his call, as the harpooneer hurled his axe, end over end, at the retreating vine.

  All over the glade, the six axes of the Snatchwood clan were engaged in equally desperate battles with vines of their own. Steg’s axe blade whistled past Tem’s head and sliced through the vine with a juicy splatter. Duggin was first to the fore-decker’s side, pulling him back and holding a rag to his bloody arm. Steg stood over them, a wide grin on his face.

  ‘Told you I’d look after you,’ he boasted, turning to retrieve his axe.

  At that moment, in a loud whirr, the vine stump reared up, seized Steg by the neck and shot back into the depths of the forest. With a scream of horror, Tem leaped to his feet, axe in hand, and tore after his friend.

  Into the dark mass of undergrowth and tree-trunks he stumbled, fighting back briars and switching branches -and the rising panic in his chest. Suddenly the undergrowth gave way to rich dark earth from which, at every footfall, a thick rancid odour rose up and caught in Tem’s nostrils.

  It was the underscent.

  Trembling with terror, Tem looked up. And there, at the centre of the gloomy enclosed glade, rising up from a hideous mound of white bones, was the monstrous blood-oak itself. Its gnarled and pitted trunk was encrusted with grotesque lumps and nodules that oozed and glistened, and from the middle of the circle of branches at its top came the grinding sound of its great mandibled maw.

  The noise grew in intensity, and while Tem clawed his way across the stinking earth of the clearing, the tarry vine came lashing back through the treetops towards its roots in the branches of the bloodoak. As Tem looked helplessly on, the vine dangled the limp body of Steg Jambles over the bloodoak’s gaping maw. A sharp jerk rippled down the vine as it released the body from its strangling grasp and dropped it into the tree’s gurgling gullet. The bloodoak shivered and shuddered, the grotesque lumps and nodules on its trunk pulsating.

  ‘No!’ screamed Tem, and swung his axe, embedding it deep in the bloodoak’s fleshy bark.

  Suddenly, from the far side of the clearing, burst the Polestick clan, their axes swinging. The air filled with the whirring of razor-sharp axe blades and the massive trunk pulsated and groaned with each blow as the woodtrolls fell upon the tree. Thud after resounding thud filled the air as the axes hacked at the tree, eating quickly into its very core.

  Above them, high in the branches above, the tarry vine seemed to go berserk -thrashing and flailing in the forest canopy and filling the air with falling twigs and leaves. Suddenly, with an ear-splitting scream that rose up from the very roots beneath the axe-team’s feet and burst from the mandibles above, the bloodoak teetered, toppled and came crashing to the forest floor.

  Tem threw away his axe, his face streaming with tears, and raced along the up-ended tree. When he reached its gaping mouth, ringed by razor-sharp teeth, he dived inside, disappearing deep within - only to emerge moments later dragging the lifeless body of his friend after him. Both were drenched in sweet rancid sap that made the woodtrolls step back and hold their round button noses with disgust. For a few moments the fore-decker crouched, cradling the crushed body of the harpooneer in his arms, rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘You did look after me, Steg,’ Tem wailed. ‘You did …’

  Wind Jackal stepped forward, his face an expressionless mask, but his eyes fierce and unblinking. He took Tem gently by the arm, raising him to his feet.

  ‘We shall send him to Open Sky with his harpoon, Tem,’ he said. ‘And you will meet again in Open Sky -when your time comes …’

  With the great bloodoak chopped into logs and loaded into the hold, the Galerider set sail. The voyage back to the woodtroll village was short, with Wind Jackal’s charts and calculations proving as reliable as a well-trodden woodtroll path. The mood was sombre. Once again, the captain retreated back into the brooding presence he’d been on the voyage to the slave market. Three crew-members lost on that voyage, now a fourth on this.

  The Galerider was desperately undercrewed now - something the woodtrolls seemed to sense, for no sooner had the sky ship docked in the woodtroll village than they scrambled back down to earth and disappeared without a backward glance. After all, it wasn’t unheard of for sky pirate ships - or league ships for that matter -to press a few unwilling recruits into their service when the occasion demanded it.

  Chopley Polestick took Steg Jambles’s death harder than most and, as timber-master on the bloodoak expedition, felt a heavy responsibility for the tragedy. Before the sky pirates left, he personally supervised the cons
truction of a traditional lufwood funeral sky-raft for the fallen harpooneer, built from the finest seasoned timbers in his timber store, and then stood, alone, on the mooring-platform, waving his blackwood staff in farewell till long after the Galerider had become a distant speck on the horizon.

  With the pathways of the twelve villages now receding into the dusk, and heading into a golden sunset, Wind Jackal signalled for his remaining crew to gather beneath the flight-burners on the flight-rock platform. There, on the lufwood sky-raft, lay Steg Jambles, his harpoon cradled in his arms.

  At the captain’s signal, Tem Barkwater stepped forward and took a blazing torch from the hooded Stone Pilot. Gently, tenderly, he held it to the logs at his dead friend’s feet. As the flames took hold, the sky-raft slowly rose, gathering speed as the purple fire gained in intensity until the sky-raft became a blazing star soaring off into the vastness of the darkening sky.

  One by one, the crew left the platform to find quiet private places on the great sky ship, for none of them felt much like talking. Below deck, the cargo-hold was stacked full with bloodoak timber of the most exquisite quality - but acquired, as they all knew, at a terrible price. Back at the helm, Wind Jackal found Thaw Daggerslash leaning against the balustrade, a thoughtful expression on his handsome face.

  ‘It’s hard losing a crew-mate. Even harder sending them on their final journey to Open Sky,’ he mused. ‘Though there’s one former crew-mate of mine I’d happily send on his final journey …’

  ‘The sky pirate you recruited for your mire-pearling voyage?’ said Wind Jackal, raising an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I think I’ve heard you talk of him before, Thaw. But tell me, this rogue who festooned you - I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned his name.’

  ‘His name?’ said Thaw Daggerslash, examining his fingernails. ‘His name … He did tell me, though he seldom spoke much … Now let me see. He was an old quartermaster, down on his luck … Oh yes, that’s right. His name was Turbot Smeal.’

  • CHAPTER SIXTEEN •

  THE GATHERING STORM

  For the first time since the terrible winter of the year before, there was frost in the air and a bitter wind was blowing. The great sphere of the full moon came and went as clumps of cloud were blown across her bright yet mottled face, like a vast shaggy herd of migrating hammelhorns sweeping across the Silver Pastures. Far below, at the furthest extent of the Edge, the Stone Gardens were one moment bathed in delicate white light; the next, drowned in shadow.

  Weaving wormlike in and out of the tall stone stacks was the flickering golden glow of a dozen flaming torches, as a line of gowned figures made its way from the arched gates to the jutting lip of rock at the very edge of the gardens. Their progress - silent, secretive and unnoticed by a sleeping Undertown - was marked by the white ravens, that squawked indignantly and flapped their wings, high on their roosts at the top of the mighty stone stacks.

  At the front of the column strode Imbix Hoth, High Master of the League of Rock Merchants. As a huge white bird, flapping and cawing, launched itself from the top of a stone stack above, Imbix glanced up. His high hat keeled to one side and tumbled to the ground.

  ‘Imbecile!’ Imbix Hoth snapped at his hat-tipper.

  ‘I … I’m so sorry, sir,’ the lop-eared goblin replied, leaping forward, picking up the tall hat and gingerly returning it to the high master’s head. ‘It won’t happen again, sir …’

  ‘Make sure it doesn’t, Brummel,’ Imbix Hoth rasped, his tone harsh and mocking, ‘unless, that is, you want some more marks of my displeasure?’ Metal finger-spikes glinting menacingly, he pointed to four angry-looking scratch marks on the lop-eared goblin’s cheek.

  ‘N … n … no, sir,’ Brummel stuttered.

  The high master turned impatiently away and strode on. The lop-eared goblin - tipping-pole in one hand and torch in the other - tripped along behind him, struggling to keep up.

  ‘I trust all these months of waiting have been worthwhile,’ said Hoth, turning to the stone marshal, Zaphix Nemulis, who was walking beside him, a pair of large rock callipers under one arm.

  The academic’s violet and white robes flapped in the cold wind. ‘I think you will be more than satisfied, High Master,’ Zaphix Nemulis replied proudly. ‘You requested a flight-rock fifteen strides across …’

  ‘At the very least, Nemulis,’ Imbix Hoth broke in.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Nemulis, ‘and as your Most Highness knows only too well, to grow a flight-rock of fifteen strides across is an almost impossible feat, and yet…’ He paused for a moment, to savour the look of anticipation on the high master’s face. ‘I have produced a rock a fraction off sixteen strides - and still growing.’

  Imbix Hoth whistled softly. ‘Impressive,’ he said.

  Nemulis nodded. ‘But it must be harvested this night,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, by daybreak, with such a frost in the air it will surely break free and be lost to Open Sky for ever.’

  The stone marshal and the high leaguesmaster strode on, side by side, at the head of the torchlit column, their words turning to coils of mist in the ice-cold air. Behind them, Brummel the hat-tipper skipped and bobbed in front of a hand-picked contingent of academics-at-arms from the Knights Academy, their armour and weapons glinting in the torchlight.

  ‘Have you any idea what this is all about, Phin?’ one of the academics-at-arms whispered to the young swordmaster in front of him.

  The swordmaster shook his head. ‘Only that the stone marshal has a rock that needs harvesting,’ he whispered back, pushing the thick fringe of hair out of his eyes, ‘and wants it to be done quietly, without any fuss …’ He patted his jacket pocket, which clinked softly with the coins inside it, and grinned. ‘And, Balfus, that he is paying us handsomely for our trouble.’

  ‘I know that,’ his companion persisted, ‘but aren’t there rather a lot of us to harvest just one flight-rock?’

  Suddenly, up in the sky, far ahead of the column of academics-at-arms - twenty strong, and weighed down with rock callipers, flaming braziers, rock nets and fire-floats - the clouds cleared. The full moon shone down brightly.

  ‘That’s why’ said Phin, with a whistle of amazement.

  A gasp rippled through the column. There, towering above them, at the top of the last stack in the Stone Gardens, was a huge pitted rock, silhouetted against the silvery sky.

  ‘Truly outstanding,’ Imbix Hoth exclaimed gleefully. ‘I congratulate you, Stone Marshal.’

  But at his side, the stone marshal had a tense worried expression on his face. ‘We haven’t a moment to lose!’ he announced, hurriedly turning from the high master and gesticulating to the academics-at-arms. ‘I chose you because you are the best,’ Zaphix Nemulis told them. ‘Don’t let me down …’

  At his words, the academics-at-arms sprang instantly into action. The young swordmaster, Phin, and his companion Balfus quickly scaled the rock stack, a great weight-fringed rock net in their hands. Scrambling up, agile as lemkins, they expertly dropped the net over the mighty rock to form a hanging canopy. Then the others -using their hooks and grappling-poles - eased the huge rock from its perch at the top of the stack and gently guided it down to the waiting rock-handlers with their white-hot rock callipers.

  ‘Carefully! Carefully!’ Nemulis clucked, like a broody woodhen over a newly-laid egg. ‘Easy with those callipers. I want no chippings!’

  From the rock stacks nearby, the white ravens eyed them suspiciously, flapping and cawing uneasily.

  Normally the vicious birds would attack intruders who dared to trespass within the Stone Gardens, keeping the place safe from robbers, vandals and vagabonds. But not this night. Their flock-leaders recognized the tall academic in his violet and white robes as the stone marshal - and besides, the chunks of meat and offal the academics-at-arms had been careful to place beneath each stack they passed went a long way to compensate for the disturbance in the middle of the night.

  As the icy wind blew, the huge rock teetered and tugged, threatening to break
free of the rock net. Nemulis flapped his violet and white robes desperately.

  ‘The braziers!’ he shrieked. ‘More heat!’

  In answer, the academics tending the sumpwood-burning braziers raised them in gauntleted hands and gathered beneath the huge rock. The warm air beneath it brought the massive rock down and eased the strain on the rock net and the academics-at-arms clutching it.

  ‘Now we must get it to the carts before this wind gets any stronger!’ the stone marshal commanded.

  Struggling and straining, the academics-at-arms set off for the gates of the Stone Gardens as quickly as they could, tugging the huge rock after them. Even the High Master of the Leagues of Flight, Imbix Hoth, played his part, seizing a corner of the rock net with his razor-sharp finger-spikes and gripping ferociously. Having waited so long and paid so much, he had no intention of losing his precious flight-rock now.

  At the gates at last, the huge buoyant rock was loaded up onto a waiting hammelhorn cart and bound tightly into place with ropes - and not a moment too soon, as the wind turned into a snow-flecked gale. The stone marshal ran round the cart, checking each of the knots, before declaring himself satisfied.

  ‘Move it on out!’ he bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth.

  The mobgnome driver - a wagoneer who worked for the League of Rock Merchants, his eyes obscured beneath a low-brimmed cap - lashed his whip and the great bull hammelhorn trotted forward, with the exhausted academics-at-arms following behind on foot.

  Back at the gates to the Stone Gardens, an ornate two-seater barrow pulled by two lugtrolls drew up, and the High Master of the League of Rock Merchants climbed in, his hat-tipper fussing behind him. Settling himself on a velvet cushion, he reached into his robes and drew out a small fromp-skin purse and handed it to a smiling Zaphix Nemulis.

  ‘A little bonus for you, Zaphix,’ Imbix Hoth grinned, his small eyes gleaming. ‘The finest mire-pearls - for a job well done. You have done the Leagues of Undertown a great service tonight, Zaphix; more than you know!’