by Dan Abnett
PUFFIN
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Dan Abnett is a multiple New York Times bestselling novelist. He is the fan-favourite author of over thirty Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 novels, and has sold nearly three million copies in over a dozen languages. He has also written for franchises such as Torchwood, Primeval and Doctor Who. When he’s not being a novelist, he writes screenplays and video games.
In collaboration with Andy Lanning, Dan has scripted some of the most famous superhero comics in the world, including Iron Man, Thor and The Guardians of the Galaxy at Marvel, and Superman, Batman, The Legion of Superheroes and Wonder Woman at DC Comics.
Dragon Frontier is Dan’s first book for younger readers.
For Alexander Dembski-Bowden – there be dragons!
– D. A.
For my wife, Lynne, my girls, Rachel and Lucy, and for my mum and dad – while my head is in the clouds, you guys help me keep my feet on the ground
– A. L.
Prologue
I have a story to tell you.
Many years ago I found myself at the beginning of it. I was a child then, lulled by the nodding rhythm of a westbound wagon.
It seems so far away now. I see the start of the story as nothing more than a group of tiny figures on a distant plain. They are blurred by the heat, moving across the landscape, just specks upon a giant world.
When we travelled west, we had already been told the land was vast. We expected it. Pioneering fellows had gone ahead of us, bold as you please, all the way to the end of the land. They journeyed far enough to see the ocean that waited on the other side.
Until you see it with your own eyes, you don’t truly know what a great distance looks like. It felt as if the land went on forever. That’s what people said. We were in the middle of a great land, under a greater sky, and there was nothing beyond the horizon except another horizon, and then another.
Our wagon train, assembling for departure outside St Louis, Missouri, seemed grand and rowdy, but once we entered the West it seemed to be reduced to a tiny thread by the sheer size of the country. We were like ants among the crumbs on a fancy cake plate, the glassy dome of the sky above our heads. We were tiny and we were insignificant. Whole days, whole weeks passed by without the sense that we had taken a single step.
Some of us saw the ocean, eventually. Some of us did not. Some of us made homes in the middle of the great distance, and only knew the ocean through stories and pictures.
Some of us found that ‘West’ was a constant, and the land did go on forever. Then our imaginations, already numbed by the scale of our adventure, had to contend with the greatest distance of all, and the wonders contained therein.
I will do my best to make an account of them.
The year was 1850.
Julius Greengrass clung to the lip of the cockpit, his hands sweating as he heaved and kicked, and tried to climb back to safety.
He could feel his heart thumping in his chest. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. One last burst of effort, and the top half of Julius’s body was in the cockpit, while his feet continued to dangle. He pulled hard on the lever set in the floor of the cockpit of the magnificent flying machine. Then he reached out and yanked on the handle that controlled the left wing, making it spread out to full stretch. The flying machine levelled off a little, and Julius swung his legs over the lip of the cockpit and safely inside.
He reset the winch and switched his attention to the right wing. The brass handle had sheared off in the collision with the silver gondola of the evil captain’s hot-air balloon. Exasperated, Julius had no choice but to haul himself back on to the lip of the cockpit. In a matter of a few anxious seconds, he was standing high on the contraption’s back. The wind flapped at his jacket and stuck his trousers to his legs as the machine hurtled into a steep bend. He grabbed the joint and pushed hard with the heel of his hand, locking the right wing.
Finally, both wings of the flying machine were at full stretch as the last of the steam that propelled the brass and tin beast streamed from its nostrils.
The clouds around Julius were grey and black, and heavy with water. They were his biggest worry because the machine needed the sun to fly. Without its rays, the engine would die, and the great beast would plummet to earth. Julius feared that he would plunge to his death. He must stop the evil captain from ruling the great city of Atlantis, forever. There was nothing for it: he must gain control of the machine and steer it into the last of the sunshine.
Julius saw a long beam of light cut through the clouds at an angle to his right. He began to paddle the pedals in the bottom of the cockpit, stalling on the left and then pedalling hard on the right so that the machine glided towards the sunbeam.
Another bead of sweat appeared on Julius’s young forehead, and he pushed away a damp curl of blond hair, blowing hard up into his face to prevent the sweat from dripping into his eyes. Then the sunlight hit his face and gleamed off the golden carapace of the cockpit. In another moment, the machine’s engines began to tick over slowly.
Julius used the burst of energy from the sunbeam to flex and flap the wings, working hard to adjust the wingtips so that he could gain the optimum amount of lift. The sunbeam broadened above him, and then the carapace in front of Julius dulled in the failing light.
He must pull around again, back into the sunbeam, so that he could gain enough lift to recharge the magnificent flying dragon’s engines and land before dusk.
Suddenly, the machine lurched sideways as the guide-wire on the right wing snapped free from its anchor point. It whipped through the air, narrowly missing Julius’s face. He dragged himself up on to the wing to secure the rogue wire. The wing wasn’t just shiny metal, it was a
lso slick with moisture, and, as his weight began to tip the wing, Julius lost control and slid down its entire length.
‘Aaaaahh!’
Julius flew off the great, segmented, brass dragon wing, its surface glittering with droplets of water. At the last moment, he twisted his back and thrust out an arm. His hand grasped the guide-wire as it whipped over his head. He swung through the air, clinging to the wire. He flipped over and flew past the dragon’s head at the front of the flying machine, before crashing into the cockpit floor. His back slammed hard into the pedals, but he never let go of the guide-wire.
He had done it. Julius Greengrass had gained control of the machine.
He steered the great brass dragon back under the sunbeam, and, when it had recuperated a little, he managed to gain enough lift to leave the clouds below him and come out into the low angle of the last of the sun.
The great yellow ball of flame was beginning to fall through the clouds, its lower curving edge disappearing into a grey fog. The cloud was forming a mist low over the ground. Soon, the sun would duck below the cloud layer, and there would be no more fuel for his flying machine. He must come down to earth fast, before losing all power and falling out of the sky to certain death.
‘Jacobs,’ said a faint voice, somewhere in the distance. ‘Jacobs, can you hear me?’
Jake Polson looked up from the book he was reading. It had taken him a moment or two, but he finally realized that his father was riding his horse next to the wagon and talking to his son.
‘Sorry, Pa,’ he said.
‘You and your stories,’ said Jake’s father. ‘Maybe we’ll see the elephant today, neh, Jacobs?’
With a wink and a laugh, Pa pulled on the reins and trotted Jeremiah ahead to join the lead wagons.
Jake Polson, sitting on the driver’s bench of their covered wagon, laughed in reply, but only out of habit. He was hot and weary, and his pa made the same joke at least once a day. One foot up on the side-board, elbows on his knees, Jake flicked the reins. It was not as if Gertie or Bertie, the two sturdy oxen, gave a hoot about what he did. Jake was convinced they’d maintain their steady, plodding pace even if he lashed them with a whip or fired Pa’s old musket in the air.
Most of the other families in the wagon train didn’t bother riding in the driver’s seat. They preferred to walk alongside the wagons or, if they were lucky enough to have them, ride their horses or mules. Jake was allergic to horses. He started sneezing and coughing if he stayed near them too long, and his eyes turned red and swelled up.
Pa, who was a doctor, had told Jake it was his job to drive the wagon and look out for his ma and his eight-year-old sister, Emmie. Jake knew his pa was trying to make him feel better by inventing a job for him. The oxen didn’t need driving, and his ma and Emmie, who were taking a nap in the wagon, didn’t need looking after.
Jake desperately wanted to ride, even on an old horse like Jeremiah. The other boys laughed at him behind his back for not being able to. What sort of pioneer would he make if he couldn’t even ride a horse? He reached into the wagon for a canteen of water and took a long drink. It was baking hot under the afternoon sun, and the rocking and bouncing of the wagon made him feel seasick, despite them being as far from any ocean as it was possible to be.
‘We’re riding a schooner across a sea of dust,’ his pa joked, ‘but it’ll all be worth it when we see the elephant, neh, Jacobs?’
Over the last six months, Jake had often heard people talk of the mythical beast. Elephant sightings were reported almost daily at the beginning of the journey, when folk were full to bursting with anticipation at setting out west. Lately, the remark had become something else.
‘That desert is the Great Elephant of the route, and God knows I never want to see it again.’
It had taken Jake a while to realize that they weren’t referring to an actual elephant, that herds of wild pachyderms weren’t roaming the prairies with the buffalo. They might have been, for all he knew. Jake was a city boy, born in St Louis, Missouri. When he’d asked about the elephant, his pa had laughed and ruffled Jake’s hair, which always irritated him. He was thirteen, after all. He was grown-up.
‘There’s no elephant, Jacobs,’ his pa had said in his deep voice, his Scandinavian accent lending his words great importance. Back home, before they had been obliged to move, it had made people take his diagnoses and remedies seriously. ‘You’d have to travel all the way to Africa or India to see such noble creatures, neh?’
‘Neh’ was Pa’s favourite word. Depending on how he said it, it could mean almost anything.
‘Why an elephant, Pa?’ Jake asked. ‘Surely a buffalo would make more sense?’
‘Ha!’ his pa cackled. ‘Jacobs, always the scholar. Everyone has seen a buffalo, neh? Not everyone even knows what an elephant looks like! A farmer rode his wagon to the circus. Upon arriving, he encountered an elephant, which so terrified his horses that they overturned his wagon. “I don’t give a hang,” declared the happy farmer, “for I have seen the elephant!”’
Jake wondered what they would really do if they saw an elephant. He decided they’d probably shoot it and have a cookout every night for a month.
The steady jolt and sway of the wagon rocked Jake into a daydream as the world passed him by. There was nothing new to see, no one new to speak to and nothing new to do, just like every other day on the long trek west.
Jake was woken from his daydream when the rhythm of the wagon was broken by several little bumps. They weren’t from the well-trodden road but from someone moving around behind him.
Jake’s mother emerged from the wagon, carrying a tall beaker of milk and some hard tack. She handed them to Jake, and then straightened her dress and smoothed her hair. The little brooch that Pa had given her for her birthday caught the light. It was a circle of bright green enamel leaves, interlocked like fish scales, with a perfect ruby at the centre, and Ma wore it every day they were on the trail, as if it was a lucky charm.
‘Drink your milk, Jacob, it’ll make a man of you,’ said his mother, pushing at a lick of hair that had fallen across his forehead.
The milk was too warm and creamy on such a hot afternoon, but Jake drank it to please his mother. Then he drew the sleeve of his shirt across his face, before she could fuss over him again. He cleaned away the milk-moustache, but left a grimy smear on his cheek where the dust on his shirt met the sweat on his face.
Jake’s mother dropped deftly off the side of the wagon. All around them, women and children began to appear, refreshed after their naps. Emmie was one of the last. When she ducked out under the canvas flap of the wagon, their mother reached up and helped her down. Soon, she was running around with the other children.
Jake scowled. The children were noisy, and the women’s chatter was irritating. He wished for the hundredth time that he could ride with the older boys, but that was never going to happen. His eyes itched at the mere thought of being near a horse. All Jake wanted to do was forget that he was on the wagon, sitting behind Gertie and Bertie, jostling along, and crossing the country, day in and day out.
Jake had read the book twice already. He hadn’t planned to open it again so soon, but, of the few things he had been allowed to bring with him, this was his favourite. Space was at a premium on the wagon, so he had left behind almost half of his clothes, which he didn’t mind so much. He and Emmie had been allowed to keep their favourite toys, though, including the rag doll that Emmie was seldom without.
Books were heavy, so most families packed only the family bible. Pa believed in the value of education, but, in the face of necessity, they had given their books to the schoolhouse, all except for Ja
ke’s favourite. He wriggled it free of his pocket. The bright red bookcloth had worn to the colour of old dried blood, the edges of the pages were dark with trail dust, and the corners of the cover were bent from long use. Jake could hardly read the words on the spine, but he didn’t care; he knew what they said:
FIRE BEYOND THE CLOUDS
BY
H. N. MATCHSTRUCK
H. N. stood for Hubert Neville, and Jake believed that Hubert Neville Matchstruck was the greatest writer in the world.
Never mind Pa and his elephants, he thought. I’d much rather fight one of Mr Matchstruck’s marvellous monsters!
He had got to the part where the magical flying machine, part soaring bird and part steam engine, with a twinkle of magic thrown in, was heading into the clouds. Julius Greengrass was the young hero on-board, fighting to keep it aloft. The fate of the great city of Atlantis was in his hands, but he was in great danger. Young Julius must manoeuvre the craft through the thunderheads and into the sunshine that propelled its mechanism. If he failed, the machine would plummet to the earth and he would die with it.
Jake picked up reading where he had left off and was soon deep in the magical world of H. N. Matchstruck once more.
Without warning, one of the wagon wheels hit something hard in its path, throwing Jake viciously to one side. His hat dropped down over his face, and he was thrown from his seat. Fire Beyond the Clouds tumbled out of his hands and under the wagon. Jake threw the reins over the bar in front of the driver’s bench and jumped down, but he was too late. There was another jolt as the rear wheel ran over his book. He dashed to the back of the wagon, bent in the dust and retrieved his book. It was battered and dirty, and the spine had been so badly crushed that some of the stitching had come loose.
Jake could feel the prickle of a blush on his neck. He felt stupid and childish, because his book was one of his few belongings. He was angry at Gertie and Bertie and the wagon for ruining his book, and he was fed up with the endless trek west. Most of all, he was angry with his Uncle Jonas. If he hadn’t gambled everything away, including the family’s reputation, they wouldn’t be here now.
