‘Help!’ Nate cried out, his voice faltering as the banderbear pounded on. ‘Help!’
Just up ahead, he saw the others turn and peer down from the tree, looks of surprise on their faces. He heard a cry of dismay, then a loud clatter as they dropped what they were doing. Squall jumped to his feet. The Professor pulled his phraxpistol from his belt.
‘Wig-wigs!’ Eudoxia exclaimed, her own phraxpistol in her hand.
Beside her, Slip raised his blackwood bow.
A moment later, the banderbear arrived at the lufwood tree. Reaching behind his shoulders, he grasped Nate round his waist and hefted him up into the branches, before stooping down and tearing at the wig-wigs that had seized the opportunity to launch themselves at his legs.
Nate looked down helplessly from the branch he was clinging to. Below, the banderbear was fighting valiantly, his gruff roars echoing as he tore creature after voracious creature from his fur and tossed them aside. He skewered some on his blade-like claws, crushed others underfoot. He was doing his best, but Nate could see that Weelum was fighting a losing battle. There were simply too many of them, and they moved so fast.
Just then, a series of shots, coming in rapid succession, rang out from the branch above. Nate looked up to see Eudoxia and the Professor with steaming phraxpistols in their hands. He looked back down. The dead and wounded wig-wigs were already being torn apart by the living – yet for Weelum, there was no respite. Five or six dead meant nothing to the great pack. If anything, the scent of blood seemed to spur the bloodthirsty creatures on, and they continued their attack with renewed vigour, clinging to his legs, his arms; crawling up his arched back and snapping at his quivering neck …
Nate eased his bedroll from his shoulder and slipped a hand inside it, closing his fist round the sky crystals the old sky pirate had lent him for his nightly climbs. Then, gripping a thick jutting twig, Nate swung himself down, till his legs were dangling just above the ground. A second series of shots rang out from the reloaded phraxpistols, killing a dozen more wig-wigs and sending the rest into a frenzied chaos of bloodlust.
‘Good shot!’ cried Squall Razortooth from the branch above, raising his own rather battered phraxmusket to his eye and opening fire.
A shower of leadwood shot peppered the pack, wounding more than it killed, but setting the blood-crazed creatures one upon the other. At the same time, Slip released a volley of arrows from his blackwood bow. Seconds later, a dozen more lay dead, maybe two dozen – yet Nate knew that even their best efforts were making little difference.
He released his hold on the branch and dropped to the forest floor. Crouching low to the ground, he brought the sky crystals he was clutching in each hand together with a loud crack. A vivid yellow flash was followed by a shower of sparks that rained down onto the seething mass of wig-wigs swarming about him. Like a forest fire hitting a field of glade barley, the orange creatures burst into flames as the sparks hit their lustrous, tinder-dry fur. In an instant, the fire travelled from one wig-wig to the next, until it formed a blazing carpet of flames.
The wig-wigs squealed and screamed as the fire engulfed them and swept on towards the swarm that covered the struggling banderbear. As the heat rose and the acrid stench of burnt flesh and fur filled the air, the wig-wigs let go of their prey and scurried away in terror – only to burst into flames as they tried to escape. Off into the depths of the forest, the pack scattered like tiny shooting stars, leaving the forest floor beneath the lufwood trees smouldering with small smudges of blackened teeth and fur.
Nate rushed over to the cowering banderbear and touched him softly on the arm. The banderbear looked round, his frightened eyes meeting Nate’s gaze.
‘It’s over,’ he said simply.
Weelum nodded slowly. The next instant, he reached forward and Nate felt the banderbear’s massive arms wrap themselves around his body. He smelled the musty odour of mossy fur, laced with the tang of singeing, as he was crushed against the creature’s great belly. And there the two of them remained; boy and banderbear, hugging each other gratefully in the crisp light of the Deepwoods morning.
• CHAPTER FORTY-THREE •
Heavy rain was falling as the small group of travellers crested the ridge and looked down over the marshy valley below. It had started around midday, huge drops which had spattered down through the leaves of the trees as grey clouds darkened the sky. Now, by midafternoon, it was a steady downpour, with the warm rain drenching Nate and his companions to the skin and making the ground slippery with claggy mud.
The banderbear, in particular, was finding the going tough. As the rain pattered down on the matted fur of his broad back, and clouds of steam rose above him, Weelum was hobbling badly. For the most part, the injuries the wig-wigs had inflicted were superficial, little more than scratches and grazes. One of the creatures, though, had bitten deep into the tendon at the back of the banderbear’s ankle, and the vicious wound now throbbed painfully with every step he took.
‘Wuh,’ he grunted, and winced as he lumbered after the others, who slowed to allow him to catch up.
Eudoxia turned, and grimaced. ‘We’ll soon be there, Weelum,’ she said. ‘And the first thing we’ll do is find an apothecary to take a look at that leg of yours.’
Falling into line, they started along a narrow track that wound down from the ridge, through pastures of gladegrass, to the valley below. To their right was an area of farmland, the fields familiar shades of yellow, green and blue, despite the unfamiliar crops that grew in them. Slip paused and crouched down to inspect the rows of bushy plants growing closest to the track. They had dark heart-shaped leaves and glistening clusters of succulent-looking fruit growing from their bulbous stems. He plucked one and turned it over in his hands.
‘Never seen their like before,’ he commented to himself, ‘but they’d grow well in Slip’s steam garden back in Great Glade …’ For a moment his large eyes took on a faraway look, then he smiled, pushed the fruit into his forage sack, and ran to catch up with the others.
They rounded a low shrub-clad spur at the bottom of the hill and, as they did so, Nate gasped. Before him, looming out of the mist, stood a magnificent settlement, which looked curiously out of place in the humid rain-drenched forest – though no less welcome for that.
‘The Midwood Decks,’ said the Professor with an airy wave of his hand. ‘Five weeks’ hard march through the Deepwoods and here we are, halfway to Hive.’ He smiled. ‘Thank you, Squall, for your excellent navigation – and you, Nate, for those meticulous nightly observations.’
The Professor shook them both warmly by the hand, before turning to the banderbear.
‘As for you, Weelum, our nest builder and protector. And you, Slip, with that forage bag of yours always full of delicious surprises … What can I say?’ He embraced both of them, before turning to Eudoxia. ‘And you, my companion at the brazier.’ He smiled. ‘I cherished our talks over the cooking pots and look forward to many more …’
Blushing, Eudoxia allowed the Professor to take her hand and kiss it gallantly. Then, straightening up, he turned and stood for a moment, looking at the extraordinary sight before them.
Built almost entirely from buoyant sumpwood taken from the surrounding forests, the Midwood Decks consisted of great clusters of floating cabins, log houses and timber towers, all tethered by anchor chains to the ground below. Around the perimeter of the settlement, a great timber wall of spike-topped copperwood logs had been driven deep into the marshy soil. Behind it, the towers and tall houses of the town dipped and swayed in great ripples as the warm rain clattered on their rooftops and gables, and fell to earth from long gutter spouts in fountain-like streams. But the most remarkable feature of the settlement were the decks themselves. These were great saucer-shaped platforms of floating sumpwood, like gigantic glade mushrooms, where visiting phraxships would dock and load and unload their cargoes. Like the buildings below them, they rose and fell, their anchor chains controlled by great gearwheels that seldom st
opped turning.
‘Stay close together,’ the Professor advised the others, ‘and follow me.’
They headed left along a broad track paved with a thick layer of rocks and stones that squeaked and chinked underfoot as they passed. Overhead, a steaming skybarge puttered on towards the town, while ahead of them, swathed in a fine mist that coiled up into the air, stood the tall stockade wall, standing some fifteen strides high. The top of each post had been fashioned into points, making the whole lot look like a long row of filed teeth. A broad double gateway, its doors reinforced with ornately swirling iron hinges, stood ajar.
They passed through the narrow opening and into the town. A couple of flatheads stood to the right of the entrance at the bottom of a wide staircase, which was seemingly floating in mid-air. They wore oilskin capes and broad flat hats from which the rainwater dripped, and had phraxpistols hanging from low-slung holsters at their sides.
The Professor nodded casually to them as he walked past and began climbing the stairs, then turned to Nate. ‘Hired thugs,’ he whispered. ‘This is a frontier town. There’s no law here.’
To their left and their right were modest sumpwood cabins, each one hovering above the ground at head height, anchored by the chains attached to the underside of their floorboards, gently swaying in the rain-soaked wind. As they reached the top of the staircase, itself held in place by anchoring chains bolted to each of the individual steps and which clanked softly as they climbed, it opened out onto a vast platform. Beyond it, steaming walkways snaked off in all directions. Buoyant buildings around them soared up towards the glowering sky, the tops of the highest towers swathed in cloud.
‘Ah, the floating city,’ Squall muttered croakily, a hand raised to shield his eyes from the driving rain as he looked about him. ‘It’s been a while. I’d almost forgotten how grand it looks, even in this confounded drizzle.’
‘Those towers are amazing!’ the grey goblin sighed. ‘They’re like stilthouses.’ He frowned. ‘Only without the stilts …’
All around them as they walked, streams of warm water fell from the gutters of the buildings above, drumming on the decking and forcing them to weave a path between them to avoid a soaking. The denizens of the Midwood Decks, though, didn’t pay these water spouts any attention. In their great broad-rimmed hats and oilskin capes, they walked straight through the streams of water – splattering Nate and his companions as they passed by.
‘It’s like living inside a waterfall,’ said Eudoxia. ‘A warm, steamy waterfall, at that.’
They continued across a swaying bridge and took the left-hand fork of the walkway on the other side. As they went deeper into the bustling city, the buildings became grander, some with fluted pillars, gabled arches and ornately carved parapets, others with rows of lancet windows and latticed spires; all of them anchored to the saturated ground beneath by increasing lengths of chain. And above them were the huge decks themselves, stretching up into the air, each one secured by a series of chains and cables to the gearwheels that raised them to meet the laden phraxbarges, and lowered them again once their cargoes had been unloaded.
The Professor paused and placed the flat of his hand against the wall of one of the sumpwood towers. He looked around at Eudoxia.
‘You try it,’ he said.
Eudoxia touched the wood herself and smiled. ‘It’s warm,’ she said.
‘Only the finest-grade sumpwood has this timber glow,’ the Professor explained as he continued along the crowded walkway. ‘It’s treated with a special varnish which stabilizes its natural buoyancy, sealing in the warmth but allowing the wood to breathe …’
He moved aside to allow a short lugtroll who had come clattering up behind them to hurry past, the lufwood barrow he was pushing covered with a dripping square of waxed tarpaulin that concealed its load. A pair of slaughterer matrons, each with a tall, angular, umbrella-shaped hat upon her head, parted to let him through. Beyond them, a tall fourthling grunted irritably as he was forced to step out of the way of the approaching barrow.
‘We have sumpwood furniture at our house in New Lake,’ Eudoxia was saying. ‘Did that come from here?’
‘Possibly,’ the professor said thoughtfully, ‘but not if it’s old furniture. Until the sumpwood stands of Midwood were discovered, sumpwood was comparatively rare – a few clusters here and there in the Free Glades …’
Nate smiled as he followed Eudoxia and the Professor, who were soon lost in the sort of conversation they had enjoyed together round the hanging brazier.
‘During the First Age of Flight,’ the Professor was telling her, ‘sumpwood was used down in the Great Storm Chamber Library of Old Undertown. The librarians had lecterns and desks made of the stuff. Trouble was, the least change in humidity or temperature made them unstable. It was only with the invention of the varnish that everything changed.’
‘Invented by the spindlebug, Tweezel!’ Eudoxia exclaimed. ‘Didn’t he live in the Free Glades district?’
The Professor nodded. ‘Only it was just the plain old Free Glades in those days,’ he said. ‘The other districts had yet to be settled.’ He stepped aside to avoid the water gushing down from an overhead spout, and continued. ‘The story goes that he experimented for years down in the Gardens of Light beneath the ironwood stands of the Free Glades. Finally, he managed to perfect the varnish that not only made sumpwood more stable, but also ushered in the Second Age of Flight.’ He paused. ‘If it hadn’t been for him, none of this,’ he said, sweeping his arm round in a wide arc, ‘would have been possible.’
They had reached a broad platform, lined with stores and market stalls. Nate looked up at the crimson-feathered hammelbills that perched on the jutting gutters in huddles of three or four. The birds were scavengers from the surrounding forests, large and ungainly, hunched forward on long spindly legs, their bedraggled feathers hanging limply at their sides. Occasionally, one would lift a bald crested head and yawn, its long hooked bill gaping widely, before resuming its close watch on the bustling market square below, clearly on the lookout for scraps.
‘I suggest that we split up,’ said the Professor, stopping next to a decoratively carved gutter spout. ‘Eudoxia and Nate, why don’t you take Weelum here to have his leg seen to by the apothecary over there.’ He nodded towards a cabin at the far end of the platform, connected to it by a narrow walkway. ‘While Squall, Slip and I find us a bed for the night. Those timber towers over there look promising. We’ll meet up there in half an hour.’
Eudoxia nodded, and she and Nate – together with Weelum, who was hobbling worse than ever now – headed towards the apothecary. Squall, Slip and the Professor set off in the opposite direction towards the row of swaying timber towers, tall ridged buildings with lanced gables and oilskin-covered balconies.
Nate and Eudoxia stepped onto the narrow walkway. It was crammed with goblins, trogs and trolls, who were shoving and jostling one another, their broad umbrella-shaped hats clashing. They squeezed their way through, with Weelum following some distance behind. Twenty strides or so along the swaying boards, they saw a glistening sign – MIDWOODS APOTHECARY (Medicines and Elixirs from the City of Night) – which hung above the studded door of a cabin. Nate opened it, setting a small bell jangling, and he and Eudoxia went inside.
‘Greetings,’ came a voice, and a small dumpy gabtroll, wearing an ochre dress and a starched white apron, came tip-tapping out of the shadows, a knotted walking stick in one hand and a lantern in the other. She examined them closely, her glistening eyeballs bouncing about on their stalks. ‘And what can I do for you?’ she asked brightly, and slurped as her long tongue flicked out and moistened her eyes.
‘Our friend is injured,’ said Eudoxia. ‘He has a bite to his leg …’
‘A bite … slurp … you say,’ the gabtroll said, turning to the rows of shelves behind her that rose from the floor to the rafters, and were crammed with bottles, vials and jars of every description. ‘Now, let me see … whooah!’ she exclaimed as the band
erbear crossed the threshold, setting the whole store swaying. ‘By Sky and Earth … slurp,’ she said, her eyestalks rigid with surprise. ‘If it isn’t a banderbear!’
She smiled as she looked Weelum up and down from two directions at once.
‘Takes me back to the days when I used to travel the Deepwoods trails … slurp …’ she said, ‘in a covered wagon and prowlgrin … slurp … listening to the yodelling of your kind.’ The gabtroll chuckled, then tutted softly. ‘Nasty bite you’ve got there. A wig-wig by the look of it … Slurp … Lucky to be in one piece …’
Weelum nodded, his ears fluttering and coils of steam rising from his wet fur.
‘You’ve come to the right place,’ said the gabtroll. ‘I’ve … slurp slurp … got just the thing.’
She bustled behind the overflowing counter and, her walking stick raised, began poking and pushing at the bottles and pots which crowded the top shelf.
‘I’m … slurp … sure I had some, but … Ah, yes, here we are.’ She tapped the side of a large stone-coloured urn twice with the end of the walking stick, before turning to the banderbear. ‘If you could just lift that down for me.’
Wincing with pain, Weelum stepped forward, retrieved the urn and held it out. The gabtroll took it in both hands and, making space for it on the counter with her elbows, placed it carefully down on a reed mat at the centre. She unscrewed the lid, filling the small store with an aromatic, yet pungent, smell of herbs and spices.
‘Healing balm,’ she said, ‘all the way from the City of Night.’ Her tongue slurped noisily round her eyeballs. ‘Water from the Riverrise aqueduct.’ She smiled and slurped again. ‘Blended with my own special ingredients.’
Using a wooden spatula, the gabtroll filled a small glass pot with the oily green paste. Then, having stoppered it, she handed it to Eudoxia.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 24
