Nate looked away, aghast, and clamped his hands over his ears. But there was nothing he could do to shut out the gory sights and sounds of battle. The dead and the dying were everywhere. Broken goblins and shattered trolls; a mobgnome, both his legs shot away at the knees, and innumerable other mutilated corpses bearing witness to the appalling damage phraxweapons could inflict on flesh and blood.
He and Eudoxia had to get away from the horror. He knelt down next to his friend, who was still curled up in the mud, her hands clasped over her helmeted head, and shook her by the shoulder.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to make a run for it …’
Just then, to his left, amongst the countless unknown soldiers strewn across the mud, Nate saw someone he did recognize.
It was Twill, the treegoblin. He was kneeling on the ground, cradling the head of a fallen grey trog in his bony lap. The treegoblin stared down at the trog, tears in his eyes, stroking the side of his face and whispering words of comfort as he did so.
‘It’s all right, Gorlan,’ he was saying. ‘You’re going to be all right … But you’ve got to hold on. Just a little bit longer. Hold on … for Merla,’ he said, reaching up and brushing tears away from his mud-smeared face. ‘For me …’
Yet even as he watched, Nate knew it was too late. His friend and comrade, Gorlan the grey trog, was fading fast, and as his life slipped away, so too did his hopes and dreams for the future – for the coming harvest, for the recovery of his sapwine cellar, for the family he’d always longed to have with his beloved Merla …
All around him, Nate heard the groaning and moaning and blood-choked coughs that swirled through the air, the hideous noises rising to a terrible crescendo – before fading once more as, one by one, the stricken soldiers breathed their last. Before him, Gorlan closed his eyes and, with a low breath rattling at the back of his throat, the trog slipped away.
‘Open Sky take your spirit,’ Twill whispered. He hung his head, then turned to Nate, his eyes blazing and nostrils flared. ‘They’ll pay for this,’ he said bitterly. ‘Kulltuft Warhammer, Firemane Clawhand and the rest. They’ll pay.’
Suddenly, a strident trumpet call sounded far ahead. On his knees beside Eudoxia, Nate turned to see wave after wave of prowlgrins emerging from the tree line, rising up into the air and coming down, landing amid the depleted ranks of the Second Low Town Regiment. Their riders wore white topcoats with green and white chequerboard collars and carried thornwood lances under their arms.
‘The Freeglade Lancers!’ breathed Nate, his hand shooting involuntarily to the medallion that hung at his neck.
He shook Eudoxia excitedly by the shoulder once more, only for her to roll over in the mud with a strangulated sigh. The side of her copperwood helmet had been shattered by a bullet and her golden hair was covered in blood.
Around him, the Second and First Low Town Regiments were in full flight, bundling into the Bloody Blades and goblin Guard as the Freeglade Lancers slammed into their flank, and began rolling up the line. A prowlgrin shot past him and, as it did so, the heavy butt of a thornwood lance dealt Nate a savage blow to the side of his unhelmeted head, and he slumped forward into oblivion.
• CHAPTER SIXTY •
‘Nate … Nate … Nate Quarter …’
Nate opened his eyes. Above him, two great white sails billowed up into a blue sky dotted with huge clouds. Wind was ruffling his hair, the air rushing past his ears, while beneath him the ground swayed and shivered like a sumpwood bunk.
‘Where … Where am I?’ he croaked, his throat dry and sore.
Squinting into the bright daylight, he saw a familiar-looking figure standing above him. He held a rudder lever in one hand, a coil of rope in the other, and was gazing over Nate’s head into the distance.
‘Do I know you?’ Nate asked, propping himself up on one elbow. He was suddenly aware of a painful throbbing at his temples and, raising a hand to his forehead, found it heavily bandaged.
‘Only slightly,’ said the figure. He was wearing a peaked funnel hat with earflaps and a worn topcoat of tilderleather; his breeches were a patchwork of carefully stitched repairs. ‘I’m Zelphyius Dax, librarian scholar. We met in the sumpwood stands,’ he said, without looking at Nate. He adjusted the rudder lever and played out some rope with his other hand. ‘And you’re aboard my skycraft, the Varis Lodd.’
‘But … but how?’ Nate said, suddenly feeling very weak and equally dizzy.
Looking down, the forest was an unending sea of green far below, while on either side of him, on outstretched cradles of sumpwood, two masts stretched up into the sky, each with a billowing white sail. Nate was lying at the feet of the librarian scholar on a narrow deck no wider than a New Lake coracle. In front of them, a long thin prow stretched up into the sky. At its tip was a carved figurehead of a striking fourthling female, dressed in the flight suit of a librarian knight from the Second Age. Behind, on an equally thin sumpwood board, was a tiny covered cabin, a lamp attached to its roof and a three-pronged fork rudder secured to the back.
‘I found you on the battlefield and recognized you,’ Zelphyius Dax said simply, ‘though I hardly expected you to be wearing Hive grey …’
‘It’s a long story,’ mumbled Nate. ‘And where’s Eudoxia?’
‘Your friend?’ said the librarian, his eyes fixed steadily on the horizon. ‘She, like you, had been left for dead. Though for her, alas, that was nearer to the truth …’
‘What do you mean?’ said Nate slowly as the horror of those final moments in the Midwood marshes replayed themselves in his mind. ‘Where is she?’
‘Eudoxia is back there.’ Zelphyius Dax nodded over his shoulder.
‘At the Midwood Decks?’ Nate asked, sitting up and gripping one of the sumpwood struts that supported the decking.
‘No, in the stern cabin,’ Zelphyius replied, smiling grimly. ‘But she’s badly wounded. A leadwood bullet has lodged itself behind her right ear.’
Nate pictured the scene in the marshes, Eudoxia’s fair hair covered in blood. Had they really come so far, endured so much, only for it to end like this? he thought bitterly.
‘Is there anything you can do for her?’ he asked the librarian.
‘Her wound is far beyond my limited skills as a physician, I’m afraid,’ Zelphyius Dax admitted ruefully. ‘But I’m taking you to the one place where you might find help.’
‘Where’s that?’ asked Nate, his mouth dry and his head throbbing.
‘Riverrise,’ said Zelphyius Dax. ‘The City of Night.’
• PART THREE •
RIVERRISE
• CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE •
‘Secure the nether sail, Nate,’ said Zelphyius Dax, his voice calm and measured as ever.
Nate, who had been perched on the narrow sumpwood deck of the Varis Lodd staring out over the forest, looked up to see that one of the two sails on the starboard mast had folded back on itself and was fluttering uselessly in the wind. He scrambled to his feet and edged across the cradle of sumpwood struts until he reached the foot of the mast. Reaching out, he grasped the swaying sail rope. Then he unhitched the slide knot – just as Zelphyius had shown him how to – and pulled hard. The rope went taut, and the sail above instantly filled with wind, billowing out in front alongside the loft sail.
‘Well done,’ said Zelphyius, pulling on the rudder, his unblinking gaze fixed ahead as the skycraft gathered speed once more.
Like a great bird, the Varis Lodd flexed and bowed as the wind carried it across the sky, its slender masts and sumpwood timbers bending into each gust. And, as they did so, the whole vessel bucked and shuddered, movements that Zelphyius seemed to anticipate, never losing his balance – unlike Nate.
‘The timbers give with the wind,’ he’d explained as Nate stumbled and gripped the slender sumpwood struts of the mast cradle beside him for dear life. ‘You’ll soon get your skylegs. We’ve got a long voyage ahead.’
The librarian was right. After eight hours of fligh
t, Nate had begun to get used to the constant movement of the skycraft beneath him. It felt, he thought, almost as though he was riding Tallix as he galloped over the forest canopy, and that, instead of a construction of sumpwood timber and sailcloth, the Varis Lodd was in fact a living creature moving beneath his feet.
It was all a far cry from the mighty phraxvessels like the Deadbolt Vulpoon. The skytavern, with its humming phraxchamber, its roaring propulsion duct and great funnels billowing steam, powered its way through the skies with a brute force that seemed to defy the buffeting winds and swirling air currents. Old Glory, the great timber-laden phraxbarge Nate had taken from the Midwood Decks to Hive, was the same. Slow and lumbering, it had ploughed through the turbulent air, reliant on the awesome power and buoyancy of its phraxchamber to stay aloft.
The Varis Lodd was different. Guided by Zelphyius Dax’s steady hand, it used the winds and air currents rather than fighting against them. Once Nate had become accustomed to the feel and rhythm of its flight, the effect was exhilarating.
Nate glanced up at the librarian scholar. He was standing upright, perfectly balanced, with his head back and legs apart, surveying the mighty expanse of sky before him from beneath the jutting peak of his funnel hat. His earflaps fluttered as, with one hand on the sumpwood tiller and the other on the sail ropes, he steered a course through the air, heading due west.
Nate watched in awe as the librarian scholar’s long thin fingers played out more rope to the sails and realigned the tiller, making constant tiny re-adjustments as the air eddied and swirled about them. It was, Nate thought, as if Zelphyius Dax himself was a part of the vessel.
Slowly and expertly, the librarian scholar brought the skycraft round until the low orange sun was directly ahead of them. Nate raised his hand to shield his eyes. Beside him, Zelphyius tugged at the peak of his hat, casting his eyes into shadow, before returning his hand to the bone-handled tiller. Nate turned away, and looked down at the blur of green forest speeding along below him.
This was the second time, he realized, that he’d crashed into unconsciousness, only to wake and find his world turned upside down. The first had been his fall from the High Pine during the mock battle of thousandsticks, when he’d woken to find that his life in Great Glade was at an end. The second time, the battle had been all too real, though now the carnage on the Midwood marshes seemed more like a waking nightmare.
And here he was again, he thought, waking up to find himself heading across the Edgeland skies towards another great city. This time, though, it wasn’t his life that was in danger; it was Eudoxia’s.
She now lay in the tiny stern cabin of the Varis Lodd, racked with fever, her face crimson and her breathing shallow and rasping. With the leadwood bullet lodged in her skull behind her ear, she was hanging on to life by a thread.
‘Do you see those clouds, there?’ said Zelphyius, stirring Nate from his thoughts.
He pointed towards a small cloud bank up ahead, its flat top tinged with a twilight glow. Nate nodded.
‘That’s what the librarian knights of the Second Age called Kobold’s Anvil,’ Zelphyius said, ‘and it’s what every skycraft pilot looks out for. The flat top is formed by powerful air currents above,’ he explained, ‘which we can use to ride clear across the central Deepwoods and down towards the west.’ Stooping slightly forward, a look of intense concentration on his face, he cranked up the hull weights until they nestled beneath the sumpwood deck. Then, with a slight realignment of the rudder, the Varis Lodd soared up towards the flat-topped cloud. The sails flapped for a moment, before billowing hard; the masts creaked as they bowed forward.
Nate gripped on tightly to the struts of the mast cradle.
‘Mind you,’ said Zelphyius thoughtfully, ‘the weather’s been unpredictable of late, even for an old hand like me. Odd cloud formations, unpredictable currents … It’s almost as though something strange was brewing out in Open Sky.’ He pulled the rudder further to starboard. ‘But if I’m right about Kobold’s Anvil, then it’s all a matter of …’ He realigned the hull weights, bringing the Varis Lodd round. ‘Of entering the current of air at … the right angle …’
As he spoke, Nate could feel the skycraft buck and sway beneath him. Zelphyius played out more rope to the sails, and pulled hard on the tiller. The skycraft stopped rising and, for a moment, hovered in one place. He turned to Nate and winked.
‘Any second now …’ he said, glancing down at the curiously shaped cloud bank almost directly below them.
The next moment, and with a colossal lurch, the Varis Lodd was seized by a powerful current of air and propelled through the sky with such speed that Nate was left gasping for breath. He gripped the mast cradle with white-knuckled ferocity as the skycraft sped through the evening sky in a huge sweeping arc. Below them, the forest became a green smudge; above, the sails strained at the slender masts.
‘Now, this is what I call skysailing,’ said Zelphyius, his face flushed and eyes twinkling with excitement as he glanced round and smiled.
Nate – who was surprised to discover that he’d been holding his breath – breathed in deeply and smiled back. ‘It feels very fast,’ he said.
‘Oh, it is, Nate, it is,’ said Zelphyius. ‘Up here in the high skies, we’ll cover a thousand strides in the blink of an eye. I tell you, when you ride the air currents in a sleek skycraft like the Varis Lodd, it’s possible to cover vast distances in days rather than weeks. There isn’t a phraxcraft built that can match her! We’ll be at the Thorn Gate in no time …’
‘The Thorn Gate?’ said Nate, puzzled. ‘But I thought we were going to Riverrise.’
‘That’s right, Nate,’ said Zelphyius, tugging on the tiller and securing all four of the sail ropes. ‘But we can’t fly all the way there.’
‘We can’t?’ said Nate.
‘Certainly not,’ said Zelphyius with a shake of his head. ‘In the old days, during the First Age of Flight, the sky galleons learned that the hard way. The sky changes over the Nightwoods. It becomes wild and unstable, prone to funnel storms, maelstroms and worse. Many spent their lives trying to reach the fabled Riverrise peak, only to be beaten back. No,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon, ‘the only way to Riverrise is on foot, through the Thorn Gate.’
Nate nodded as the Varis Lodd continued its westerly flight, swaying gently, now in the grip of the powerful air current.
‘I think I’ll go and check on Eudoxia,’ he said.
‘Good idea, Nate,’ said Zelphyius.
Nate climbed to his feet and made his way carefully along the curved sumpwood spine of the skycraft to the tiny cabin at the stern. He crouched down and crawled in on hands and knees.
Placing a hand on his friend’s brow, Nate felt his stomach give a sickening lurch. Eudoxia was freezing cold. The burning fever was gone, and now she was shivering violently, her skin blue and cold to the touch and her teeth chattering. He pulled her light grey topcoat up over her and removed his own topcoat and laid that over it. Then, leaning forward, he gently swept the strands of lank golden hair from Eudoxia’s face and checked the bandage that swaddled her head.
‘You’ve been so brave,’ he told her. ‘I couldn’t have survived the march to Midwood without you by my side …’
Eudoxia’s husky breathing continued, low and faltering.
‘You’re strong,’ Nate continued, and swallowed hard. ‘And you’ve come this far. Don’t give up, Eudoxia. Hold on until we get to Riverrise …’
Shivering, he reached out and unhooked a waterflask from the cabin strut above Eudoxia’s head and held it to her lips – but he couldn’t get her to take more than a sip. Replacing the flask, he noticed a green tilderleather jacket stowed neatly below it. Nate picked it up and put it on, before crawling back out of the cabin and returning to the sumpwood deck where the librarian stood.
‘She’s a fighter, that one,’ said Zelphyius Dax, his hand playing rope to the billowing sails. ‘I could tell that the moment I first clapped e
yes on her. But that nasty wound she’s got …’ He turned and looked at Nate, then smiled. ‘I see you found a new jacket,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Nate looking down at it, a little embarrassed. It was long in the body and tight in the arms, with several pleated pockets and a line of copperwood buttons that did up to the neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I should have asked …’
‘Don’t apologize, lad,’ said Zelphyius Dax. ‘It’s yours,’ he added generously. ‘And I’ve got to say, I much prefer to see you dressed in my old jacket than in that terrible grey topcoat.’
Nate smiled. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m glad to be able to take it off at last,’ he admitted, looking back across the darkening forest the way they’d come. ‘And there were many Eudoxia and I marched with in the Hive Militia who I’m sure would feel the same.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Zelphyius Dax said grimly. ‘Perhaps, after the defeat at the Midwood marshes, they’ll take off their topcoats too.’
He returned his attention to the skycraft, trimming the sails and readjusting the hull weights as he peered out from under the peak of his funnel cap. Far in the distance, the sun was down on the horizon now, a giant crimson ball that seemed almost to wobble the lower it sank. The air current filled the sails and, as he looked up, Nate saw that the few clouds there had been had turned to wisps and dissolved, leaving the sky empty of everything but the first stars of night, which were beginning to shine in the gathering dusk.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 34
