by Paul Stewart
‘League ship to starboard!’ Spiker’s strident voice cried out. ‘League ship to starboard and approaching fast.’
The words echoed round Twig’s head. He felt short of breath; he felt sick. The rows of levers blurred before his eyes. One of them would almost certainly make the sky ship accelerate forwards but which one? ‘League ship getting closer,’ Spiker announced. And Twig, in his blind panic, broke the first rule of sky ship sailing. He let go of the helm.
The wheel spun back viciously the moment his sweaty hands loosened their grip, sending him skittering across the deck. Instantly, the sails crumpled, and the Stormchaser went into a sudden spinning descent.
‘You halfwit!’ Cloud Wolf roared. He seized the wheel and, bracing himself against the deck, frantically tried to stop it turning. ‘Hubble!’ he bellowed. ‘Here. Now!’ Twig was just stumbling back to his feet when Hubble brushed past him. It was only the most glancing of blows, but the albino banderbear was a colossal mountain of a creature and Twig went flying.
The next moment, the spinning stopped. Twig looked up. The wheel was clasped, motionless, in the banderbear’s massive paws. And the captain, freed up at last, was running his hands over the levers now here, now there as surely as an accordion-player darting over the keys.
‘League ship, one hundred strides and closing,’ called Spiker. The captain’s silent playing continued. ‘Fifty strides! Forty …’
All at once, the Stormchaser leapt forwards. The crew roared their approval. Twig staggered to his feet at last, muttering heartfelt thanks to Sky above. They’d made it.
Then Cloud Wolf spoke. ‘There’s something wrong!’ he said quietly.
Wrong? thought Twig. What could be wrong? Hadn’t they escaped with their illicit cargo of ironwood after all? He squinted behind him. Yes, there was the league ship, miles away!
‘Something very wrong,’ he said. ‘We’ve got no lift.’
Twig stared at Cloud Wolf in horror. His stomach felt empty. Was this some kind of joke? Had he chosen this moment to tease him like a father? One look at the man’s ashen face as he jiggled, jerked and yanked at a lever with more and more force confirmed that he had not.
‘It’s … it’s the bl … blasted stern-weight,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s jammed.’
‘League ship gaining once more,’ Spiker called out. ‘And from the flag I’d say the Leaguesmaster himself was on board.’
Cloud Wolf spun round. ‘Hubble,’ he said, but then had second thoughts. The massive creature was ill-suited to clambering over the hull. As were Tern Barkwater and Stope Boltjaw. And the oakelf, Spiker, though willing, would never be strong enough to release the great iron weight. Slyvo Spleethe would have been ideal if he wasn’t such a coward. While Mugbutt, the flat-head goblin, though fearless in battle and everything else, was too stupid to remember what he was supposed to do. ‘I’d better see to it myself,’ he muttered.
Twig leaped forwards. ‘Let me,’ he said. ‘I can do it.’ Cloud Wolf looked him up and down, his thin lips tightly pursed. ‘You need to stay here, at the levers,’ Twig went on. ‘For when I’ve released it.’
‘League ship at two hundred strides,’ Spiker called.
Cloud Wolf nodded briefly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But be sure not to let me down.’
‘I won’t,’ said Twig grimly, as he hurried off to the back of the ship. There he seized a tolley-rope and pulled himself up onto the rail. A flash of forest green blurred past him far, far below.
‘don’t look down!’ he heard Tern Barkwater shouting to him.
Easier said than done, thought Twig as he lowered himself carefully onto the hull-rigging, which hugged the bottom of the ship like cobwebs. The further down and round he went slowly, carefully the more upside down he became. The wind tugged his hair and plucked at his fingers. But he could see the stern-weight now all tangled up in a loop of pitched rope.
He kept on, whispering words of encouragement to himself as he went. ‘Just a little bit further. Just a teeny bit more.’
‘How’s it going?’ he heard his father call.
‘Nearly there’ he shouted back.
‘League ship back on one hundred strides, and closing,’ came Spiker’s latest update.
Trembling with anticipation, Twig reached forwards, and pulled the clump of rope hard to one side. The weight should be swinging free. If he could just … He inched forwards and pushed the back of the huge knot with the heel of his hand. Suddenly it gave, the rope came loose, the weight swung down and … fell completely away. Twig gasped in absolute horror as the huge, round circle of iron tumbled off through the air, down to the forest below.
‘What have you done?’ came a voice. It was Cloud Wolf, and he sounded furious.
‘I … I…’ Twig began. The sky ship was rolling from end to end and reeling from port to starboard, completely out of control. It was all Twig could do to hang on. What had he done?
‘You’ve only gone and released the rudder-wheel!’ Cloud Wolf yelled. ‘For Sky’s sake, Twig! I thought that Mugbutt was stupid!’
Twig quaked under the barrage of insults and recriminations. Scalding tears welled in his eyes, tears he couldn’t wipe away for fear of losing his grip. Then again, he thought miserably, wouldn’t it be better simply to let go, to disappear? Anything, rather than face his father’s wrath.
‘Twig! Can you hear me, lad?’ came a second voice. It was Tern Barkwater. ‘We’re going to have to ditch our cargo. That means opening the hull-doors. You’d better get yourself out of there sharpish!’
Ditch the cargo! Twig’s heart sank and his tears flowed more freely than ever. The ironwood which had taken so much effort and money to acquire would have to go. And all because of him.
‘Come on!’ Tern screamed.
Twig climbed feverishly back along the hull-rigging, hand over hand, foot over foot, until he was climbing upright once more. He looked up. Tern Barkwater’s huge red hand was reaching down for him. He grasped it gratefully and gasped as he was pulled back onto the deck. ‘Right-ho, cap’n!’ Tern cried.
Twig went to smile his thanks, but the sky pirate had already turned away, unable to meet his gaze. No cargo meant no wages. And, though squalid, Undertown was not the place to be with neither money nor the means to make it.
‘Open the hull-doors!’ Cloud Wolf commanded.
‘Aye-aye, cap’n,’ came the voice of Stope Boltjaw from the hold. Then, from deep within the bowels of the ship, there came the clanking of chains, followed by a rumbling thud-thud-thud.
Twig looked away guiltily. It was the ironwood logs tumbling, one after the other, through the gap beneath the hull as the doors were slowly cranked open. He glanced over the side. As he did so, the rest of the load was abruptly discharged. A strange and deadly precipitation, it tumbled back down to the Deepwoods from where it had come.
On seeing what was taking place just in front of them, the league ship immediately gave up the chase and swooped down after the falling logs. A load that size was not to be sniffed at. Twig’s misery was complete. The Stormchaser’s loss had turned to the league ship’s gain.
‘Can’t we go down and battle it out with them?’ Twig asked. ‘I’m not afraid.’
Cloud Wolf turned on him with a look of utter contempt. ‘We have no rudder-wheel,’ he said. ‘No control. It’s only the flight-rock keeping us skyborne at all.’ He turned away. ‘Raise the mainsheets,’ he bellowed. ‘Square the bidgets and pray. Pray like you’ve never prayed before. An untimely squall and it won’t be just the cargo we lose. It’ll be the Stormchaser itself.’
No-one spoke a word as the sky ship limped back to Undertown. It was the slowest and most nail-biting trip that Twig had ever endured. Darkness had fallen by the time the fuzzy lights of Sanctaphrax came into view. Below it, Undertown seethed and gagged beneath a heavy pall of smoke. And still the silence continued. Twig felt wretched. It would have been better if the sky pirates had ranted and raved, called him every name under the Sky anything
but this deathly hush.
There were patrol boats around, but none took any notice of the crippled sky ship as it headed in towards the boom-docks. With its hull-doors still open, the craft clearly had nothing to hide.
Cloud Wolf steered the Stormchaser into its concealed berth, Stope Boltjaw dropped anchor, and Spiker jumped down onto the raised jetty to secure the ship’s tolley-ropes to the tether-rings. The crew disembarked.
‘Outstanding, Master Twig!’ Slyvo Spleethe hissed as he passed him by. Twig shuddered, but the comment was only to be expected. Spleethe had never liked him. Worse, by far, were the averted eyes of the others. He shuffled miserably after them towards the gangplank.
‘Not you, Twig,’ said Cloud Wolf sharply. Twig froze. Now he was for it! He turned round, hung his head and waited. Only when the last sky pirate had departed, did Cloud Wolf speak.
‘That I should live to see the day when my son my own son should scupper a sky ship,’ he said.
Twig swallowed hard, but the tears would not go away. ‘I’m sorry’ he whispered.
‘Sorry? What good is sorry?’ Cloud Wolf thundered. ‘We’ve lost the ironwood, the rudder-wheel we almost lost the Stormchaser itself. And I still might.’ His eye glinted like hard flint. ‘I’m ashamed to call you my son.’
The words struck Twig like a blow to the back of the neck. ‘Ashamed to call me your son?’ he said and, as he spoke, his distress turned to anger. He looked up boldly. ‘So, what’s new?’ he demanded.
‘How dare you!’ Cloud Wolf raged, his face turning purple.
But Twig did dare. ‘You’ve never acknowledged to anyone, ever, that you’re my father,’ he said. ‘Does that mean you’ve always been ashamed of me, ever since the moment we first found each other? Does it? Well, does it? Tell me it does and I’ll leave, now.’
Cloud Wolf remained silent. Twig turned to go.
‘Twig!’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘Wait.’ Twig stopped. ‘Turn and face me, boy,’ he said. Twig turned slowly round. He stared up at his father defiantly.
Cloud Wolf stared back, a twinkle in his eye. ‘That was well said,’ he told him. ‘You are right. I have not acknowledged who you are on board the ship. But not for the reason you suppose. There are those who would mutiny given half a chance, and take the Stormchaser for themselves. If they found out what…’ He paused. ‘How important you are to me for you are important to me, Twig. You should know that.’
Twig nodded and sniffed. The lump in his throat was back.
‘If they found that out, it would put your own life in the gravest danger.’
Twig let his head hang. How could he ever have doubted what his father felt for him? Now he was the one who felt ashamed. He looked up and smiled sheepishly. ‘Can I stay, then?’ he said.
Cloud Wolf’s face creased up with concern. ‘I meant it when I said I still might lose the Stormchaser,’ he said.
‘But how?’ said Twig. ‘Why? It’s your sky ship, isn’t it? I thought you took it on the day of your inauguration.’
Cloud Wolf snorted. ‘It costs a lot to keep a sky ship aloft,’ he said. ‘And ever since that infestation of wood-bugs, the Stormchaser has been in debt up to the top of her pretty caternest. I was depending on the ironwood to pay off some of the money I owe. No,’ he sighed, ‘if anyone owns the Stormchaser, it’s Mother Horsefeather. She’s the one who finances us. And rakes off most of the profits into the bargain,’ he added with a scowl. ‘And now I can’t pay her, she might well decide to take back what’s rightfully hers.’
Twig was appalled. ‘But she can’t,’ he cried.
‘Oh, but she can,’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘What’s more, she’d make sure I never got credit anywhere else. And what is a sky pirate captain without a sky ship, Twig? Eh? I’ll tell you. Nothing. That’s what he is. Nothing at all.’
Twig turned his head away, distraught. His father once the finest Knight Academic Sanctaphrax had ever seen, now the greatest sky pirate in the Edge was staring ignominy in the face. And he, Twig, was to blame. It was all his fault.
‘I’m…’
‘Just don’t say you’re sorry again,’ Cloud Wolf interrupted. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get this over with,’ he said gruffly. ‘I just hope the old buzzard’s not in too greedy a mood. And remember,’ he said, as he strode off towards the gangplank, ‘when we’re sat down talking with Mother Horsefeather in the Bloodoak tavern, you be careful what you say or even think. I swear the walls in there have ears!’
•C H A P T E R F I V E•
THE BLOODOAK TAVERN
Creak, creak, creak, the tavern sign protested as it swung to and fro in the gathering wind. Twig glanced up and flinched. The sign was as might have been expected an artist’s impression of a bloodoak, a terrible flesh-eating tree. And a very good impression it was, too, Twig admitted with a shudder. The glistening bark, the glinting mandibles every time he saw the picture of the tree, he could almost smell the rank, metallic stench of death oozing from it.
For Twig knew all about bloodoaks. Once, lost in the Deepwoods, he had fallen victim to a particularly gruesome specimen. It had swallowed him whole and would have eaten him alive had it not been for his hammelhornskin waistcoat, which had bristled at the danger and jammed in the monster’s throat. Trembling at the memory, he asked himself why anyone would want to name a tavern after so disgusting a creation.
‘Are you going to stand there gawping all night?’ Cloud Wolf snapped impatiently as he pushed past his son. ‘Let’s go in.’
As he threw the door open BOOF! a burst of energy exploded from the room. Heat. Noise. Light. And a heavy cocktail of smells, both fragrant and foul. Twig reeled backwards from the blast. No matter how many times he visited the Bloodoak tavern, he would never get used to the shock of that first moment.
The tavern was like a miniature version of Undertown itself, reflecting the incredible diversity of the place. There were flat-head and hammer-head goblins; oakelves, mobgnomes, black-dwarfs and red-dwarfs; trolls and trogs of every shape and every size. There were leaguesmen and sky pirates, tinkers and totters, raggers and royners, merchants and mongers … It seemed to Twig, as he stared in through the open door, that there was not a single Edge creature, tribe or profession not represented in the throbbing room.
The cloddertrog on the door recognized Cloud Wolf at once. He informed them that Mother Horsefeather was ‘somewhere hereabouts’ and waved them through. Sticking close to him as Cloud Wolf carved a route across the room, Twig tried hard not to knock anyone’s drinks as he went. Flat-heads were notoriously volatile and throats had been slit for far less than a tankard of spilled woodale before now. Jostled and crushed in the sweaty, steaming surge of bodies, it occurred to Twig that the Bloodoak was exactly the right name for the tavern after all.
The owner of the tavern was over by the rear exit. She looked up as Cloud Wolf approached.
‘Mother Horsefeather,’ he said. ‘I trust I find you well.’
‘Well enough,’ came the guarded reply.
She turned and stared down at Twig questioningly
‘Ah yes,’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘This is Twig. Twig, Mother Horsefeather. I want him to sit in on our meeting.’
Twig trembled under the ferocious gaze of the creature in front of him. Of course, he’d seen Mother Horse-feather before, but always at a distance. Close up, she was imposing, intimidating.
As tall as Cloud Wolf himself, she had beady yellow eyes, a sharp hooked beak and a ruff of crimson feathers around her neck. Her arms, too, were fringed with feathers which, since she was standing with her taloned hands clasped together, hugged her like a purple and orange shawl. Twig found himself wondering whether, under the voluminous yellow dress, her whole body was covered with the same magnificent plumage.
All at once, he became aware of someone sniggering to his right. He turned. And there, perched on a bar-stool, was a slight, almost luminous creature, grinning from ear to huge bat-like ear.
Mother Horsefeather raised a feathery eyebro
w and glared at Twig menacingly. ‘This is Forficule,’ she said, and returned her unblinking gaze to Cloud Wolf. ‘He, too, will be present during our little talk,’ she told him.
Cloud Wolf shrugged. ‘It’s all the same to me,’ he said, then added as if Forficule were not there, ‘What is it? Looks like the runt of an oakelf litter.’
Mother Horsefeather’s beak clacked with sudden amusement. ‘He’s my little treasure-weasure,’ she whispered. ‘Aren’t you, Forfy? Right then,’ she announced to the rest. ‘Follow me. We’ll find it much easier to talk in the quiet of the back room.’ And with that, she turned on her talon-toes and disappeared through the door. Cloud Wolf and Twig followed her, with Forficule bringing up the rear.
The room was hot, airless, clammy; it smelled of decay. And as Twig took his place at the small, square table, he felt increasingly uneasy. To his left was his father; to his right, Mother Horsefeather; while opposite him sat Forficule, eyes shut, ears trembling. The fur of his hammelhornskin waistcoat prickled beneath Twig’s fingers.
Mother Horsefeather placed her scaly hands in front of her, one on top of the other, and smiled at Cloud Wolf. ‘Well, well,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Here we are again.’
‘Indeed,’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘And may I say how hale and hearty you are looking tonight, Mother Horsefeather and how much yellow suits you.’
‘Oh, Wolfie!’ she said, preening despite herself. ‘You old flatterer!’
‘But I mean every word,’ Cloud Wolf insisted.
‘You, too, are as dashing as ever,’ Mother Horsefeather clucked admiringly.
Twig looked at his father. It was true. In his ornate sky pirate regalia with its ruffs and tassels and gleaming golden buttons Cloud Wolf looked magnificent. Then, with a sudden shiver, Twig recalled how angry his father’s face had turned when he had let go of the helm; when the Stormchaser had gone into a downward spin. How he had cursed when their precious cargo of iron-wood had tumbled down out of the sky.