“Ready!” he yelled.
Crowhurst began to unloosen the knot of the noose around the Treacleshell’s throat. As soon as the pressure was released there came an ominous click-click-click, followed by a furious roar. The muzzle sparked blue as a powerful burst of fiery Dragon Breath was forced through the insulated tube and into the clay vessel. After no more than a few seconds the cook pulled the tube away and corked the sizzling neck. It sat there hissing and steaming, till someone wearing thick gantlets stepped in to drag it back to the hold.
“She’ll be good for one more!” cried Captain Zachariah.
Another clay vessel was rapidly transported from the galley.
Meanwhile two more Treacleshells, duly roped and netted, were being unceremoniously deposited onto the gondola deck. Seizing his chance to finally get some hands on experience Angus rushed to help pin one of them down. The Treacleshell seemed to sense his approach. Its head snapped round and the wrangler who was straddling its ridged back lost the pressure point his fingers had on its neck.
Angus found himself staring directly into a pair of angry red eyes. Unsettled he stumbled and almost lost his footing. Above the blustering din of the wind he clearly heard the click-click-click that emanated from within her scaly throat. She let forth a howl of rage and Angus was instantaneously engulfed in a ball of blistering white fire. Blinding flames clawed all around him. He felt the sleeves of his jerkin tighten around his upper arms as fire seized hold of them. He could smell the dreadful stench of his hair singing beneath his helmet.
Crying out in terror he rolled across the deck, trying to extinguish the flames in the manner he had been previously shown. Then suddenly he was drenched by the freezing cold contents of a pail of water that came at him from the left. As he gasped for breath and tried to struggle back to his feet another bucket load came at him from the right.
“Damn near washed the freckles right off your face,” said one of the bucket-wielding crewmen who’d come to his aid. Angus crouched there smoldering and dripping, cringing with embarrassment at the mocking laughter that rose all around him.
To celebrate the successful harvesting of Treacleshell Breath the crew assembled on deck and engaged in a boisterous rendition of the famous Dragon Hunter’s Sky Shanty. Shivering in his wet clothing, Angus couldn’t help feeling that he had still not fully earned the right to participate. So he simply stood there, swaying a little unsteadily, as he listened. Having made the first catch Brinsley got to sing the main lines, while the crew responded with the noisy rejoinder.
“Now I was born in Tennanbrau
Haul away above the clouds
And grew as tall as I am now
Haul away above the clouds
I signed on with my Captain bold
Haul away above the clouds
We traveled north to where it’s cold
Haul away above the clouds
And there I swore on pain of death
Haul away above the clouds
To take the precious Dragon Breath”
Down in the hold three dozen corked vessels of said Dragon Breath lay cooling on the shelves. They would fetch an excellent price at auction back in Tennanbrau City. The captain had promised everyone a handsome bonus. Once their Breath had been taken the Treacleshells had been released back into the open skies. It would take weeks for the buildup of the natural gases in their lungs to reach sufficient levels for them to be able to breathe fire once more. Even then Angus thought that it would be a long time before anyone else dared to tackle them.
“Airship, ho!”
The singing of his crewmates was suddenly interrupted by the loud shout that went up from the watchman’s station to the rear of the gondola.
Captain Zachariah rose to his feet and snapped his fingers at the grimy faced boy employed as the ship’s fetcher. “Telescope! Sharp as you like!”
Boots still squelching from their drenching, the stink of fire still in his hair, Angus squeezed in behind the rest of the crew as they assembled at the rear deck railing. Dread washed over him as an airship came listing lopsided and wraithlike through the cloud mist. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones.
She was a commercial vessel. Not the type of airship that would normally venture this far north. The type used for transporting goods or passengers…Angus could see that her main balloon was gone, the silver wires that had lashed it to her gondola whipping erratically and dangerously loose in the wind. Only three of her smaller emergency balloons were inflated. All that remained of the section of her deck where the fourth should have been situated was a jagged chasm, exposing her guts all the way through to the gloomy interior of her hold.
The damaged airship drew close enough for Angus to see the name ornately painted onto the hull of her gondola–The Blue Plover. Angus had heard of her. Her captain was Finneus Watling, a former officer in the Imperial Sky Constabulary, who had used a lump sum from his retirement pension to set himself up as a merchantman.
On Captain Zachariah’s order Grisling maneuvered the Molly alongside the wounded craft. This close the damage looked even worse that it had on her approach. Several areas of her deck were blackened and trails of smoke were still hovering near areas where it seemed as if fires had only recently fizzled out.
Angus looked at the jagged section of wood where the deck had been torn away. Perhaps the Treacleshell flock had attacked the merchant ship. If it had they would have been defenseless. This was one of the main reasons merchantmen did not often venture into the wintry skies above the tundra.
“Ho!” Captain Zachariah called across the swirling blue gap between the two airships. “Finneus Watling! Bring your crew on deck and greet my dragon hunters in the proper manner.”
Silently the Plover’s gondola listed and rocked to the asymmetrical sway of its trio of emergency balloons. “Ho!” cried the Captain again. “Can we be of assistance?”
Not a sound.
Coxswain Grisling looked sideways at Captain Zachariah.
The mood of the crew grew noticeably darker.
Angus overheard their superstitious exchanges.
“Cursed.”
“Jinxed.”
Then something darted across the deck of the Plover’s gondola. Something small and swift. Before anyone had a chance to make out exactly what it was it had disappeared once more amongst the smoldering wreckage.
“Ghost,” said someone, in a quiet voice.
Beside him Angus saw that Brinsley’s face had turned pale. His hands were trembling as they gripped tightly to the rails of the gondola. Angus felt a cold shiver shudder down his own spine. Somehow he was unable to draw his eyes away from the swirls of smoke that danced around the Plover’s eerily silent deck.
Just then a fierce updraft, drawn from the cold air rising from the tundra below, howled through the gap between the two airships. The Molly rocked back, sending several members of the crew stumbling across the deck. By the time it righted itself once more the Plover had been sent into an unpredictable spin that caused it to tilt and yaw as the three emergency balloons struggled against the uneven weight of the gondola.
“In again, Mister Grisling,” cried Captain Zachariah. “Fetch the longpoles to pull her closer.”
Longpoles were twelve foot in length and were mainly used by the crew on the approach to the terminus at Tennanbrau City, to ensure that an airship didn’t drift too close to the walls of tall buildings. They could also be used to pull airships alongside each other.
Four crewmembers stood ready with the tall poles resting against their shoulders. The drone of the turbines vibrated through the deck as Grisling once more steered the Molly as close to the Plover as he could manage. The longpoles were then utilized to hook and secure the dancing wires. Finally ropes were lashed to the Plover’s damaged decking rails to slow her glide.
“We need to tow her back to the reclamation yard at Forgsnur’s Footprint,” said the captain. “She’ll be a risk to other airship if we leave he
r adrift like this. However, if there is a survivor over there, they need to be brought onboard the Molly for their own safety.”
“There’s no survivor over there,” said one of the crew. “What we saw was a ghost.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” snapped Captain Zachariah.
He turned to coxswain Grisling.
“A volunteer,” he said. “We need a volunteer to investigate.”
“You heard,” said Grisling. “Who’s got the guts to go over for a gander?”
Most of the crew bowed their heads and studied their feet, shuffling cautiously backwards. Angus could sense their fear. No matter what the captain said they still believed there was something supernatural prowling the charred decks of the Plover.
Grunting in obvious disgust Crowhurst stepped forward and jutted his chest out.
“Takes a wrangler to do a job like this.”
He scowled darkly at the others.
Stroking his narrow beard Captain Zachariah looked him up and down.
“Someone lighter,” he said. “We don’t know how stable those balloons are–or how much more weight they’ll hold. Once the gondola starts to fall she’ll pick up momentum and she won’t stop till she smashes onto the tundra.”
Angus saw the young fetcher drop to his knees and crawl rapidly back between the legs of the men. Clearly he wasn’t taking any chances of being nabbed for the task. Brinsley was small–but he too had pushed himself some way back into the crowd.
Angus felt several eyes looking down at him.
He thought of the ethereal figure they had seen darting across the Plover’s deck.
His pulse quickened. Cold sweat broke out in needle-pricks all over his body. Now Captain Zachariah looked at him. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He couldn’t be found wanting. Swallowing against the dryness that suddenly filled his mouth he stepped forward.
“I’ll go,” he said.
More ropes were lashed to the Plover’s broken and scorched gondola. Slowly and cautiously she was pulled close enough to the side of the Molly that a wooden gangplank could be placed to span the narrow gap between the two airships. Grisling held the navigation wheel steady and cut the Molly’s engines so that she floated freely on her crimson balloon.
Captain Zachariah squeezed Angus on the shoulder.
“Don’t dally too long over there, lad.”
Angus drew in a deep breath and tightened the strap of his helmet under his chin.
“That won’t help you none if you fall to the tundra,” said the little fetcher, who had re-emerged, cheekily confident now that at least he wasn’t going to be expected to volunteer.
“This will though,” said Brinsley.
Smiling sympathetically at Angus he tied a rope tightly around his waist.
“Just give it a tug when you want us to let out a little more slack,” he said.
Forcing himself to smile back Angus climbed up onto the gangplank and spread his arms wide to try and gain his balance. Down below the clouds had thinned enough for him to be able to see the bleak scrub of the tundra far below, stretching flatly and monotonously for miles in every direction. Despite Grisling’s best effort the gondola was still rocking slightly and the yowling squall of the wind was making it impossible for him to maintain an upright stance.
“Hands and knees, lad,” said Captain Zachariah, his long ponytail slapping against dragon scales on his jerkin. “Down on your hands and knees. This is not a circus.”
Heaving a sigh of relief Angus dropped to all fours and crawled rapidly across the gangplank, eyes fixed straight ahead so that he wouldn’t be tempted to look down again.
The desolate deck of the Plover reeked with the tainted stench of ignited Dragon Breath and the charcoal bite of scorched wood. He had gone half way across the deck when he came upon a set of three deeply ragged furrows torn into the flooring boards. He imagined one of the Treacleshells swooping down here and raking the timbers with its talons. He imagined another sinking its powerful jaws into the side of the deck and tearing it to splinters. He could almost hear the terrified screams of the crew as they’d been mercilessly attacked with tooth and claw and fire.
Crouching low he inserted a finger into the splintery groove of one of the furrows and tried to estimate the size of the talon that had clawed through the wood. It was difficult to judge. Standing back up he turned and called back a description of what he’d discovered to Captain Zachariah.
“Search below deck, lad,” urged the captain. “See if you can find the poor soul who survived.”
Somewhat warily Angus eyed the three emergency balloons. He didn’t like the look of the one to the stern. It seemed oddly wrinkled, as if it might be slowly leaking Breath. He remembered what the captain had said about how the gondola would drop if her balloons gave out. The thought of that happening while he was down in the hold traced a cold shiver down his spine.
But when he looked at the expectant faces staring across at him from the Molly it became patently clear that there could be no turning back. If he was going to win the acceptance of his crewmates he simply had to do as the captain asked. Staggering against the erratic keeling of the gondola, he tugged at the rope. Once he had been given sufficient slack he lurched his way to the entrance of the hold.
As a consequence of the gaping hole torn into to the side of the airship the hold did not look as gloomy as it might otherwise have. Angus cautiously eased his way down the wooden stepladder. He began to feel the pull of the wind that was whipping around the confines of the Plover’s belly in a frosty, swirling vortex.
Glad now of the protection afforded by his helmet he dismounted the ladder and turned his head sideways against the blustering barrage, squinting as he surveyed the remains of the interior. The shelves, where goods for commercial transportation might normally sit, lay entirely empty. But to the far end of the hold he could see some of the airship’s supplies still piled there - sacks of potatoes and onions, a pallet bearing slabs of salted meat, two spare coils of rope, stacked in the corner.
Other than that the hold seemed as deserted as the deck had been. He was about to turn back to the ladder when he spied something crouching low beside one of the splintered beams. His pulse started to thrum as his mouth turned dry once more.
“If you are human, come out and show yourself,” he said. “If you’re a ghost I apologize for disturbing you. Just let me return to the deck unmolested.”
“Are y-you a p-pirate?” asked a timid voice.
“A pirate?” said Angus. “Absolutely not. I’m a rope cannon loader on the finest dragon hunting airship ever to fly out of Tennanbrau City.”
“And you’re not going to hurt me?” asked the voice.
“I’m here to help you,” said Angus. “To rescue you, if you’ll let me.”
The figure stepped cautiously out from behind the beam. It was a child - a girl of around ten or eleven years old. The cloak she was wearing was covered in scorch marks. Her face was grimy with soot, the outline white tear tracks tracing zigzags down her filthy cheeks.
“I’m Finneus Watling’s niece,” she told him. “My uncle took me on a trip to see the green hills of the Low Counties. But there was a storm and we got terribly lost. And my uncle got confused. We went north instead of south. And then the dragons came…”
She started to sob.
Angus reached out and took her by the hand.
“I’m going to get you over to the Drunken Molly,” he said. “My captain will take care of you. He’ll get you safely home.”
With the wind whipping furiously around them he led the girl back to the ladder. It was then that he saw something else on the floor, just beyond the storage area, near the hole that had been torn from the side of the deck. It looked somehow too bulky to be simply the pile of rags it appeared at first to be. Another survivor?
“Wait there,” he said to the girl, wrapping her hand around the first rung of the ladder.
Ducking beneath the woode
n beams he dropped down onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the object. As he did so the gondola tipped a little and the object slid precariously closer to the ragged hole. The wind was blowing so fiercely into his face now that it was making his eyes water, blurring his vision.
“Hello?” he called out, inching closer. “Can you hear me?”
An eyelid trembled and blinked open.
A red eye stared back at him.
Angus froze.
It wasn’t a human eye.
The object seemed to unfurl and rise unsteadily on clawed feet, revealing itself as a Treacleshell Sow. She was badly dazed. She shook her head, momentarily lost her footing and then rose up again. She turned to Angus, snarling through the rows of razor sharp teeth.
Then a dreadful sound rose from her throat, chilling Angus to the bone.
Click-click-click.
If she ignited her Breath the entire hold would be engulfed in a ball of fire. This time there would be no one to step in with a pail of water to douse the flames. Angus turned to the girl. “Run!” he yelled. Her eyes went wide. She turned and scrambled up the ladder. A chill traced his spine when he heard the padding of the dragon’s feet creeping stealthily up behind him.
He swung around.
The Treacleshell sow snarled again and flapped her wings menacingly at him. The organs in her throat clacked rapidly against each other–click-click-click. She let out a roar–hot, steamy smoke belched out. But her Breath did not ignite. Angus dodged to the left. She still seemed a little unsteady on her feet, her head sluggish when it followed him.
It was clear though that she was fast regaining her strength. The clicking in her throat was become more rapid and forceful. Taking the risk to turn and flee after the girl could prove to be a fatal error of judgment.
In that instant he decided he only had one alternative.
With a yell he ran at the sow and dived onto her ridged back. She was so surprised by this sudden and unexpected turn of events that she fell flat on her belly. Angus reached round and pressed his fingers against the rough scales on her neck. She rose to her feet, arching her spine to try and buck him off. He dug in with his knees.
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