Clash of the Sky Galleons
Page 27
‘Quint, we can’t stay’ Maris’s tearful voice sounded in his ear. ‘Duggin has the Edgehopper ready. We’re all aboard …’
Quint spun round, as if suddenly awakened. ‘What about Hubble?’
The banderbear lay on his side by the wheel.
Tears coursed down Maris’s cheeks. ‘There’s nothing I can do for poor Hubble,’ she wept bitterly.
‘You go, Maris,’ said Quint gently. ‘I’ll secure the helm and parawing after you …’
‘But Quint! …’ Maris protested.
‘Please, Maris.’ Quint’s eyes beseeched his friend to understand. ‘Go! I’ll follow …’
They both knew he was lying; that he would never abandon his father’s sky ship. What was more, if Maris gave him away to the crew waiting in the small sky ferry, then they wouldn’t leave either - and Maris knew Quint couldn’t bear that.
She nodded, tears running down her face, and her heart breaking.
‘Maris. Please …’
She crossed over to Quint, took his head in her hands and kissed him gently on the lips.
Then she turned and ran from the helm. Moments later, the small sky ferry cast away from the Galerider and sped down towards the forest canopy, and not a moment too soon.
Quint stood at the helm, his hands poised over the flight-levers. The Stone Pilot had left the flight-rock burners at a quarter setting, and Tem had recharged the prow harpoon, ready for action. In the sky ahead, the massive league ship closed in on the Galerider. Its decks were bristling with screeching jet-black shrykes, and a boarding-party hurriedly lowered ropes and grappling-hooks.
Quint watched impassively a deep sorrow welling up in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. Yet despite this, he found himself fascinated by the most extraordinary feature of the monstrous vessel as it drew closer.
Its flight-rock.
It was the largest, most perfect flight-rock Quint had ever seen. No wonder The Bringer of Doom was so manoeuvrable and fast, with such an extraordinary flight-rock at its centre.
But how had the rock managed to grow so big before being harvested? Quint wondered, gazing at its surface, so smooth and unpitted - the clear sign of a freshly harvested rock.
The secret lay deep at the very centre of the enormous flight-rock. There, nestling in the heartrock, was the crystal of stormphrax in its sheath of glow-worm skin, which Zaphix Nemulis, the custodian of the Stone Gardens, had planted there. As the glow of the rotting skin dimmed, so the weight of the stormphrax had increased, weighing the rock down and allowing it to grow to its enormous size.
But now the rock had been harvested. Zaphix Nemulis had been paid and was back in Sanctaphrax, toasting his feet in front of a roaring fire. What did he care that the rock he’d nurtured with this clever technique over all those months had the seed of its own destruction at its very core? Zaphix had a full purse and warm feet - and better still, no spiky-fingered leaguesmaster bothering him all the time …
Meanwhile as the Bringer of Doom loomed up before the Galerider over the distant Deepwoods, the very last fragment of glow-worm skin fell into desiccated dust and its pale glow turned to pitch darkness.
At the helm, Imbix Hoth turned to Ruptus Pentephraxis with a look of exultant triumph on his cruel features, and opened his mouth …
What his final words were will, however, never be known, lost as they were in the roar of a gigantic flight-rock - suddenly the weight of ten thousand ironwood pines - hurtling down to earth and taking with it a fortune in finest bloodoak decking, not to mention a screeching flock of pedigree black shrykes.
CRASH!
Quint blinked, unable to take in what he’d just seen. One moment the Bringer of Doom had been bearing down on him; the next, the sky was empty and a great plume of smoke was rising up from the forest below. Around the Galerider, the abandoned sky ships bobbed on the stiffening breeze - although the shouts and calls coming up from the forest canopy suggested that they wouldn’t remain so for long.
In the distance, a dejected gaggle of badly mauled league ships was snaking off in the direction of Undertown. And from the underside of the Galerider came a scratching, scraping sound …
Quint turned to see a tall figure in a heavy sky pirate coat and bicorne hat slowly hauling himself up from the hull-rigging. His sense of being in a waking dream intensified. First he was waiting for death as a monstrous sky ship bore down on him. Then it disappeared. Now a sky pirate was climbing aboard his deserted vessel.
Quint shook his head, and smiled, bemused.
‘Greetings, comrade …’ he called down, then gasped as the sky pirate straightened up and turned a hideous scarred face - all bared fangs and deep glinting eye-sockets - up towards him.
‘Turbot Smeal,’ he breathed.
• CHAPTER TWENTY •
OPEN SKY
Turbot Smeal! Turbot Smeal! Turbot Smeal!
The evil quartermaster’s name screamed in Quint’s head. Turbot Smeal - the malevolent monster who’d set fire to his home and killed his mother and five brothers in the blaze. Turbot Smeal - whose insane act of retribution had killed thousands in the great fire of the Western Quays! Turbot Smeal - murderer of his father, the great Captain Wind Jackal, on board that sky-cursed wreck! Turbot Smeal, who had haunted Quint and Wind Jackal’s dreams ever since he’d first come out of hiding, was coming towards Quint across the deck of the deserted Galerider - not dead after all, but hideously, nightmarishly alive.
So this was how it was going to be, Quint thought grimly, the last Verginix facing his family’s scarred nemesis …
‘Yield the helm!’ the quartermaster’s rasping voice sounded as he climbed the aft-deck stairs, his sword glinting. ‘The Galerider is mine!’
‘Never!’ Quint cried, drawing his own sword and stepping forward to meet him.
Their blades met with a clanging clash of metal, followed instantly by another and another as Quint deftly parried the quartermaster’s frenzied sword thrusts. Smeal was strong, but he, Quintinius Verginix, squire of the Knights Academy, had been trained by the finest swordmasters in all Sanctaphrax.
As the sword blows rained down, Quint turned them aside, a cold dark fury growing from deep within him. Beneath the great bicorne hat, half-hidden by an upturned collar, Smeal’s hideous face flashed, white and glinting, as he twisted and turned in his efforts to cut Quint down.
‘You stabbed my father in the back, Smeal!’ Quint shouted, blocking another thrust. ‘A coward’s blow for which you shall pay!
Quint leaped low to the right and caught Smeal with a flashing sword thrust. With a muffled grunt of pain, the quartermaster fell back, his great curved sword flailing in a wide arc as he fought to keep his balance. The blade clattered against the flight-levers, shearing off half a dozen of them, and severing the connecting-cables of half a dozen more.
Instantly, the Galerider listed sharply to starboard as the port-side hull-weights broke away from the flight wheel and hurtled down to the forest below. Quint was thrown across the aft-castle deck, slamming into the balustrade with a resounding thud. His sword clattered from his grasp. Before he could get back to his feet, Smeal was towering over him, sword raised, his scarred, fang-encrusted face leering down.
‘I didn’t want it to come to this …’ Smeal’s voice rasped, ‘but you stood in my way. You stood between me and the Galerider. Now you must die!’
Suddenly, Turbot Smeal’s bicorne hat flew from his head. He pitched forward with a gurgling cry of surprise, and crashed down on top of Quint. Over Smeal’s heaving shoulder, Quint saw Hubble - the great albino bander-bear; groggy, shaken, with a heavy gash over one brow, fighting his injuries, determined to protect his young captain - looking down at him. Hubble reached down with the mighty paw that had felled the quartermaster and pulled the dying body off Quint.
The Galerider was tilting at a crazy angle, and its decks shook as it hurtled up into Open Sky. With difficulty, Quint climbed to his feet and looked down. The hideous face of Tur
bot Smeal stared back at him. Low gurgling sounds were escaping from the bare glistening fangs, as his eyes glinted out from the dark sunken eye-sockets …
But wait … What was this?
Quint reached down and traced a finger over the bony pitted surface of the quartermaster’s face - except it wasn’t a face at all. It was a mask. Quint could see that now, despite the wind whistling past, and the pitch and roll of the sky ship. A hideous mask of bone and fang it was, belonging to a skullpelt. In life, this evil creature was a hunter of dreamers in lullabee groves. Now, in death, its grinning face was a mask for Turbot Smeal to hide behind …
With trembling fingers, Quint reached forward and undid the straps that held the mask in place. Then, gently, hardly daring to look, he pulled the mask away.
Beneath, instead of the mass of flame-melted flesh and scar-tissue he’d been expecting, was the young fresh face of a handsome sky pirate, blue eyes clouded with pain.
‘Thaw!’ Quint exclaimed. ‘Thaw Daggerslash … I don’t understand …’
The Galerider gave a great lurching shudder and, over Quint’s shoulder, Hubble growled with alarm as they hurtled ever higher into Open Sky. Not that Quint noticed any of this. His eyes were fixed on the young sky pirate dying before him. His hands gripped the collar of the impostor’s greatcoat and shook it.
‘Why? Why? Why?’ he wailed.
‘Because …’ Thaw’s voice was a whisper; urgent, breathless, full of pain. ‘Because I was young … ambitious … Because I wanted a sky ship of my own … I wanted … I wanted … the Galerider!’
‘So you lied? You cheated? You murdered?’ Quint’s eyes blazed and his fists clenched as they gripped Thaw’s collar.
‘It seemed so simple …’ A thin smile crossed Thaw’s lips, along with a trickle of blood. ‘The moment I saw her, I knew the Galerider had to be mine. But … your father stood in my way … So I set a trap and baited it with the promise of a showdown with his long-dead enemy, Turbot Smeal …’
‘The slave market, the cliff quarries, the Sluice Tower?’ Quint shuddered. ‘All you?’
Thaw grimaced with pain, but managed to smile.
‘… And the sky wreck, Quint. I finally got him there, and the Galerider was going to be mine, along with her crew. I would have been a great sky pirate captain, Quint. And you would have grown to love me, and serve me faithfully - all of you … And one day, my name would have been carved on the great table of the Tarry Vine tavern … Captain Thaw Daggerslash … Greatest sky pirate captain …’ Thaw’s voice faltered, his breath coming in painful gasps, his blue eyes clouding over. ‘That ever lived …’
The Galerider gave another shuddering lurch as Quint released his grip and Thaw sank back, his dead eyes staring up into Open Sky; his dead hands gripping the aft-castle balustrade of the sky ship he’d schemed so hard to possess.
For a moment Quint just stood there on the listing deck, all emotion drained from him. Then, looking across at the flight-rock platform, he saw the flight-burners flicker and go out. Taking Hubble by one mighty paw, he braced himself for what he knew was coming next.
Quint didn’t have long to wait. Moments later, with a great howling scream, the cold rock slammed against the rock cage, and the Galerider rolled over and turned turvey
Suddenly, Quint and Hubble were falling away from her, down through the sky, as the mighty sky ship sailed up into Open Sky, for ever.
As the Galerider disappeared into the clouds, Quint felt all the cares and sorrows of his past disappearing with her -the horrors of the cliff quarry, the terrors of the Deepwoods, the dangers of the sky wreck and the senseless carnage of the sky-battle. They all soared upwards along with the sky pirate ship into the endless void of Open Sky.
Below him lay the Deepwoods, and the future - a future in the Knights Academy with his loyal friends; a future as a knight academic dedicated to the sacred search for Stormphrax…
Quint reached for the lever at his chest and pulled. Behind him, his parawings opened with a loud clap, followed closely by those of his faithful banderbear bodyguard. Hand in paw, the two figures silhouetted against the setting sun swooped down through the air towards the tiny sky ferry in the distance.
EPILOGUE
So, here we are,’ said Maris, looking up a t Quint, ‘ the gates of the Kn ights Acade my …’ Her v oice tra iled away and her grip on Quint’s hand tightened.
They were standing by the old East Gate of Sanctaphrax’s most venerated academy the sun setting over the high gables of the Upper Halls and the wooden Gantry Tower with its ancient tethered sky ship.
Quint smiled. What a voyage they’d had. Before the final battle, Quint had deposited the small fortune from the bloodoak timber with the Professors of Light and Darkness. With it, Maris had been able to move back into her old apartments in the School of Mist, together with her family’s old retainers: Tweezel the spindlebug and Welma the woodtroll matron.
Quint had also been able to look after the rest of the crew. Tem Barkwater, Spillins and the Stone Pilot had joined Duggin and his new fleet of sky ferries plying a lucrative trade over the teeming thoroughfares of Undertown - teeming even more than usual, because of the rebuilding of the burned taverns. There were rumours that Sister Horsefeather had plans for the biggest establishment yet, to be called the Bloodoak tavern. Hubble the banderbear, now recovered from his injuries, had joined Stope in the forge of the Hall of White Cloud here in the Knights Academy, where Quint saw him often. Raffix was in one of the thirteen towers awaiting the arrival of a great storm, while Phin - his burns fully healed - was back in the Academy Barracks.
Quint met them in the Eightways Refectory or up in the Gantry Tower, where they could watch the sky ships approaching Undertown from far destinations out in the Deepwoods. After the latest purge, it was business as usual for the sky pirates and leagues of Undertown.
But it was Maris that Quint saw more often than anyone else. Despite his arduous studies which one day would, he hoped, lead to a knighthood and a storm-chasing voyage, Quint always had time for her. Sometimes they would visit the deserted Great Library, or venture down in the sky cages from the West Landing, or climb to the top of the Loftus Observatory, reliving their past adventures.
But wherever they went, Quint and Maris always ended back at the gates of the Knights Academy as the sun began to set over their beloved floating city.
‘Yes,’ said Quint. ‘Here we are …’
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PAUL STEWART is a highly regarded author of books for young readers - everything from picture books to football stories, fantasy and horror. Together with Chris Riddell, he is co-creator of the Far-Flung Adventures series, which includes Fergus Crane, Gold Smarties Prize Winner, and Corby Flood, Silver Nestlé Prize Winner. They are of course also co-creators of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, which has sold over two million books and is now available in over thirty languages.
CHRIS RIDDELL is an accomplished graphic artist who has illustrated many acclaimed books for children, including Pirate Diary by Richard Platt, and Gulliver, which both won the Kate Greenaway Medal. Something Else by Kathryn Cave was shortlisted and Castle Diary by Richard Platt was Highly Commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal.
A DAVID FICKLING BOOK
Published by David Fickling Books
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text and illustrations copyright © 2006 by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
All rights reserved.
Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random
House Children’s Books, in 2006.
DAVID FICKLING BOOKS and
colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stewart, Paul.
Clash of the sky galleons / Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The edge chronicles; 9)
“Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, in 2005.”
SUMMARY: Quint leaves his studies at the Knights Academy in Sanctaphrax
to assist his father, Wind Jackall, in his obsessive and dangerous quest
to track down and bring to justice the evil Turbot Smeal.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49504-4
[1. Fantasy] I. Riddell, Chris. II. Title.
PZ7.S84975Cla 2007
[Fic]—dc22
2006036424
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One - Edge Wraiths
Chapter Two - Glaviel Glynte
Chapter Three - Turbot Smeal
Chapter Four - The Sky-Shipyard
Chapter Five - The Waif Assassin
Chapter Six - Imbix Hoth
Chapter Seven - The Bane of the Mighty
Chapter Eight - Galerider
Chapter Nine - Stormlashed
Chapter Ten - The Angler
Chapter Eleven - The Beacon
Chapter Twelve - The Swarm
Chapter Thirteen - Sister Screechscale
Chapter Fourteen - Thaw Daggerslash
Chapter Fifteen - The Bloodoak
Chapter Sixteen - The Gathering Storm
Chapter Seventeen - The Sky Wreck
Chapter Eighteen - Shryke Teeth
Chapter Nineteen - Clash of the Sky Galleons