‘But it was still two to one, and despite the Galerider‘s superiority as a sky ship, the league ships had come well-armed and prepared for a fight. I had to think fast. Then it came to me - a little trick I’d seen snowbirds do to draw prey from their nestlings. So I feigned a broken wing…’
‘You did what?’ said Quint, intrigued.
Wind Jackal smiled grimly. ‘I pushed one of the flight-levers right across,’ he explained. ‘The mainsail fluttered, flapped and collapsed. Purlis Havelock couldn’t believe his luck.
‘ “We’ve got him!” I heard him bellow triumphantly. “Move in for the kill!”
‘Suddenly, as the Galerider hovered in the air, a sitting wood-duck, there were league ships coming at us from both directions. I pretended to panic, tugging at the supposedly broken flight-lever, all the while keeping an eye on the position of the league ships. I knew that Ramrock would be doing the same. Then, when they were only strides away, their weapons raised ready for the final onslaught, I bellowed to the stone pilot…
‘ “LIFT!”
It was the command my faithful old pilot, may Sky rest his spirit, had been waiting for. He tugged on the drenching-lever, chilling the flight-rock in an instant and catapulting us high up into the sky A moment later, from below us, there came a deafening crash! as the two league ships slammed into one another. I looked over the side to see the Forger of Triumph sliding off to the west, while the Smelter of Woes - which had had a gaping hole punched in its side and half its hull-weights severed - was spinning helplessly round and round as it plummeted down out of the sky towards the treacherous Twilight Woods, from which its hapless crew would never emerge.
‘It was all too much for Havelock. He never even considered the thought of engaging in a fair fight between the two of us. No, so far as he was concerned, the battle was already over. With a bellowed command to his crew, he and his league ship swung round in the sky and beat a hasty retreat, back towards Under-town, where he would have time to plot his revenge.
‘For our part, we swooped back down to the rickety slave ship to finish off the job we’d started. Grim and Grem were waiting for us, bloodied but triumphant. With a tolley-rope secured from the stern of the Galerider to the prow of the slave ship, we set out on the long voyage back to the Deepwoods to return the woodtrolls to their distant village.
‘I’ve never seen such rejoicing as I saw that day when we arrived back and reunited them with their families - nor received such genuine hospitality as we were given there in that wonderful village. I tell you, Quint, woodtrolls are among the finest, noblest tribes to be found anywhere in the Deepwoods. I made some fine and true friends amongst their kind and, believe me, if you are ever in any trouble out in the Deepwoods, you can do a lot worse than seek out a woodtroll village …
‘Anyway, after a great feast put on in our honour, it was high time for us to return to Undertown. We left the slave ship with them to deal with as they saw fit, and set sail. I hadn’t laid eyes on Turbot Smeal since just before the battle with the league ships, when he’d cosied up to Purlis Havelock. I suspected he’d jumped ship and taken his chances with the leaguesmaster, but I fully expected that he’d come grovelling back when the Galerider docked in Undertown.
‘How wrong I was …’
Wind Jackal’s voice suddenly faltered and Quint could see the muscles in his father’s jaw tense as he gritted his teeth to continue.
‘We … we saw the smoke …’ he said, his words now choked with emotion. ‘As we approached Undertown; thick dark columns that coiled up into the sky and formed a menacing pall over the city. And as we got closer, it was clear that the whole of the Western Quays were ablaze.’ He swallowed. ‘I … I steered a course along the Edgewater River. It was chaos below me, the streets filled with noisy crowds desperately fleeing the flames, while the air above them throbbed and hissed with the sound of the fire sky ships loading up their great barrels with river water, flying to the blazing rooftops and attempting to quench the insatiable fire.
‘As I sailed further along, the more the devastation increased, and I knew that … that … the fire must have begun close to our home … I came down lower in the sky, scouring the row of buildings … And … then I saw … you …’
‘Me,’ said Quint softly.
‘Curled up in a ball on the top of a roof … Not our roof, for that had already collapsed. No, you had somehow made it along to the neighbouring buildings …’ He groaned softly. ‘All curled up you were … Curled up and motionless … And …’
‘You slid down a tolley-rope and landed beside me,’ said Quint, tears streaming down his face. ‘I remember. You scooped me up in your arms and held me close … So close. I … I remember the sound of your heart pounding in your chest. So loud. So fast…’
Suddenly, Quint felt Wind Jackal’s hand on his shoulder, and he looked up into the gloomy silver light to see his father’s face convulsed with pain.
‘Oh, Quint,’ he moaned, and lowered his own head so that it rested on his son’s chest. ‘Can you ever, ever forgive me?’
‘Forgive you?’ Quint whispered.
‘It … was all my fault. I should have realized how evil, how twisted Turbot Smeal was. How he would go to any lengths to punish me for crossing him. If only I had returned immediately, perhaps …’
‘You can’t know that, Father,’ Quint tried to reassure him. ‘You saved those woodtrolls from certain death …’
‘And lost my family in the process.’ Wind Jackal’s voice was harsh and bitter. ‘And now I shall make him pay! I shall make Turbot Smeal pay for destroying my family!’
His eyes were blazing now with an intensity that seemed almost unhinged. Quint stepped forward and embraced him.
‘Aren’t you forgetting, Father,’ he said. ‘You still have me.’
From the garret alcove next door, there came a short gasp, and the faint sound of a tilder-oil lamp being snuffed out.
• CHAPTER FOUR •
THE SKY-SHIPYARD
Come on, you tw o,’ sa id Wind Jackal, p ushing his seat back noisily ov er the stone-flagged floor. ‘W e’d best make a move.’
Quint glanced across at Maris. Her face was ashen and drawn, and there were dark rings beneath her eyes. It was, he thought, almost as if she’d slept as badly as he had the night before - although when their eyes met, Maris gave Quint a reassuring smile. In front of her, the plate of tilder sausages and snowbird eggs had barely been touched, but at Wind Jackal’s command, she stood up and drew her cloak about her. Pushing his own plate away, long since cleared of its sausage and eggs - not to mention mopped clean with toasted blackbread - Quint got to his feet and followed Maris and his father.
The great drinking hall of the Tarry Vine tavern was deserted. The floor was dirty and sticky, and the air was shot with glittering dust as shafts of light from the high narrow windows cut through the stillness and fell on upturned tables and discarded drinking vessels. The sky pirates, whose loud snoring had set the tavern’s rafters trembling during the night, had all risen just before dawn as the ale vats were being filled, and slipped away into the sprawling alleys and lanes of Undertown.
The crew of the Galerider had followed - each with errands to perform. Steg Jambles and his constant shadow, Tem Barkwater, were buying rope and rigging in the chandlery sheds. Ratbit the mobgnome and Spillins the oakelf had set off for the weavers’ district in search of spider-silk sails, whilst the quartermaster, Filbus Queep - with Sagbutt the flat-head goblin as protection - was visiting one of his contacts in the League of Taper and Tallow Moulders.
Quint, Maris and Wind Jackal were the last to leave. Tossing a gold coin into the apron pocket of a mobgnome maid, the sky pirate captain placed his great bicorne hat firmly on his head and stepped out into the early-morning sunshine. Quint and Maris followed him.
The street was already busy. A heavy lugtroll laboured past, pushing a barrow loaded with crates of pungent pickled tripweed, followed - as if in a convoy - by a doze
n others, pushing loads of tangy woodsaps, barrels of sourmash, round creamy hammelhorn curds and clotted sides of tilder meat, clouds of bloodflies buzzing overhead. Behind them - the hems of their gowns rolled up and fastened to avoid trailing in the mud - stood several fussy-looking leaguesmen in low, three-pronged hats, busy ticking off lists of produce on barkscrolls.
From the opposite direction came a gaggle of milkmaids. These sallow-skinned gabtrolls, their quizzical eyes bouncing on the end of stalks as they peered over the heads of the crowd, waddled along awkwardly slopping buckets balanced at either end of yokes which straddled their shoulders. Every twenty strides or so, they waved the long-handled ladles they carried and called up to the windows on either side of the street in beguilingly soft, mellifluous voices.
‘Pure milk! Pure milk! From hammelhorns … pastured in lullabee groves!’
‘Mind your backs! Mind your backs!’
A pair of slaughterers with sallowdrop switches in their blood-red hands were approaching, driving two huge tethered hammelhorn bulls along the narrow cobbled street. Quint and Maris darted into a mud-churned alley out of the way and waited for them to pass, before running to catch up with Wind Jackal, who was striding ahead, seemingly oblivious to the bustling crowd. From behind them came the sounds of angry voices, and Quint glanced round to see the two slaughterers being confronted by a leaguesman, whose face seemed to be turning even redder than theirs as he shouted.
‘Where do you think you’re going with those?’ the leaguesman was bellowing, as the gabtroll milkmaids stopped to gawp over his shoulder.
‘The League of Gutters and Gougers …’ began the first slaughterer.
‘Oh, no, you don’t. Not without the permission of the League of Haulers and Herders!’ the lea guesman thundered, his three-pointed hat seemingly quivering with outrage. ‘You know that!’ he added, and held out a stubby hand.
As Quint turned away, he heard the distinctive clink clink of coins mingle with the cries of ‘Pure milk!’ behind him.
Undertown, he thought. Throbbing, thronging, heaving, sweating, stinking, hustling, bustling Undertown. During his time in the Knights Academy, high up in lofty Sanctaphrax with its mannered rituals and arcane traditions, he’d put aside all thought of the place. Now, back down in the gritty day-to-day life of the seething city, it was as if he’d never been away.
With the rickety stores and ramshackle dwelling-towers on either side closing in, the street seemed to become more crowded than ever. Quint had to push and shove his way through, to keep up with his father, whose bicorne hat bobbed above the heads of the crowd. Maris stumbled alongside him, her hand gripping Quint’s arm tightly, and a look of barely concealed alarm on her face. For whereas Quint was used to the streets of Undertown, Maris - born and raised in the floating city of Sanctaphrax - had only ever lived there and in the refined grandeur of Undertown’s Western Quays. The raucous clamour of the rough quarters of Undertown was entirely new - and deeply disturbing - to her.
All around, the air throbbed with noise. The clatter of iron wheels on stone cobbles, the snorting of livestock and jangle of tack. Bellowed greetings and sobbed goodbyes, curses and oaths, and the cries of the street-traders, announcing their wares. And in amongst the cacophony of noise was the hum of odours, dark and pungent, as honeymead, sour milk, woodsmoke and hammelhorn dung created an ever-changing symphony of smells.
‘Over here, Quint, lad!’ bellowed a familiar voice. ‘Keep up!’
Up ahead, Wind Jackal had turned the corner, and was striding down a broad avenue leading to the tall, often windowless, clap-board buildings that lined the Edgewater River.
‘We’ll take a sky ferry’ he called over his shoulder.
‘What’s the hurry?’ panted Maris, looking up at Quint, the rings beneath her eyes darker than ever.
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Quint, ‘but at least he seems a bit more cheerful than he was last night. Come on, or he’ll leave us behind!’
Maris laughed and hurried after Quint as they ran down the avenue. All around, there were groups of leaguesmen clustered together, their tall, three- and four-pronged hats swaying as they nodded or shook their heads, like ironwood pines in a storm. Here by the waterside, the wharf-towers and warehouses groaned with the accumulated riches of the Deepwoods, laboriously flown in by sky ship. There were deals to be done, cargo to be traded and fortunes to be made - very little of which would ever filter down to the milkmaids and herders of the crowded alleys behind the avenue.
Quint and Maris joined Wind Jackal on one of the many small wooden jetties that stuck out over the river like the prickles on a woodhog’s back, few of the high-hatted leaguesmen giving them so much as a second glance as they passed by. Then the three of them picked their way along the narrow platform, taking care to dodge the cluster of small boats that bobbed about their heads. At the far end, which jutted out high over the muddy Edgewater, a gnokgoblin was leaning against a boarding-post, the end of a tolley-rope in one hand.
‘The sky-shipyards,’ said Wind Jackal. He produced a coin from his pocket and placed it in the gnokgoblin’s hand.
‘Right away, Captain,’ he replied. ‘Jump aboard, sirs, miss.’
Maris went first, climbing up the knotted rungs that stuck out from the post on both sides. At the top, she clambered across into the flat-bottomed vessel tethered there. Quint followed, with Wind Jackal and then the gnokgoblin bringing up the rear.
Settling himself on a small bench, the gnokgoblin raised the sail, slipped the tolley-rope from the mooring-ring and the little sky ferry - the Edgehopper - leaped up into the air. Quint and Maris looked around them as they rose higher and Undertown fell away beneath them. Suddenly, the maze-like streets and alleys took on a certain order, and the broad sweeping curve of the great Edgewater River as it sliced through the city could be seen. Below, in the dirty swirling water Quint saw shoals of oozefish swimming in neverending figures of eight, while ahead, the glass dome of the magnificent Leagues Palace - home to Ruptus Pentephraxis, the High Leaguesmaster - glinted in the bright early morning sunshine.
Despite its patched sail, its creaking timbers and the primitive flight-cauldron, filled with flight-rock rubble, that just managed to keep everything aloft, the vessel was in expert hands. It sped like an arrow from the east to the west bank of the river, and then made its way along the curve of the Edgewater. Past breweries and mills it went, and on over the foundry district, with its vast metalworks and factories, with tall smoke-belching chimneys, cramped workshops and cobbled inner courtyards, where heaps of raw materials were piled high beside crates of finished goods.
A little further to the north, on the edge of the foundry district, Quint could see the distinctive outline of the sky-ship cradles; huge cagelike structures which soared up into the air from square towers, high above the neighbouring rooftops. These elegant pieces of scaffolding were the structures that supported the sky ships being built in the great sprawling sky-shipyards beneath them. It was towards the sky-ship cradles that the Edgehopper was heading.
Wind Jackal turned to the gnokgoblin pilot and pointed down below. ‘Just over there will do fine,’ he said with a smile.
‘Aye-aye, Captain.’ The gnokgoblin leaned down hard on the little vessel’s tiller.
Quint felt his stomach lurch and, for a moment, regretted his hearty breakfast. The Edgehopper swooped down out of the sky and glided to a halt in a large courtyard surrounded by tall square towers on all sides. With the sky ferry hovering a couple of strides above the ground, the gnokgoblin motioned for his passengers to disembark. Stepping to the ground after Quint and Maris, Wind Jackal tipped his bicorne hat to the pilot.
‘Excellent flying,’ he said, tossing the gnokgoblin another coin.
‘Learned my trade as a “leaguer”,’ the pilot laughed, pocketing the coin. ‘But I just couldn’t take to being ordered around by high hats the whole time. This way, I can be my own boss …’ He swept the Edgehopper back into the air. ‘Just like you
, Captain!’
The gnokgoblin laughed again as he flew away, back towards the Edgewater River.
‘Throwing your money around, I see,’ came a terse, hoarse-sounding voice, and Quint turned to see a leaguesman in a high four-pronged hat, standing at the ornate entrance to one of the towers.
His rich robes were gathered and fastened above the ankle and he wore ‘mire-paddles’ - flat, wooden shoe-protectors for splashing through the muddy streets. A great cluster of the charms and amulets beloved of leaguesmen formed a cluttered ruff around his neck, and in one hand he carried a long thin ‘leagues-cane’; a walking-stick that could be unsheathed in an instant to reveal a razor-sharp sword.
Wind Jackal tipped his hat. ‘Yardmaster Hollrig,’ he said coolly. ‘Just come to find out what your shipwrights have to report on the Galerider.’
Thelvis Hollrig, high-hat yardmaster in the League of Sky Shipwrights, smiled to reveal teeth filed down to points - the very latest Undertown fashion.
Quint shuddered.
‘Hummer!’ The yard-master clicked his fingers. A moment later, a harassed-looking clerk came bustling out of the tower clutching a sheaf of barkscroll plans. ‘The Galerider berthed with us … the day before yesterday?’ Thelvis Hollrig glanced at Wind Jackal, who nodded.
The clerk, a thin grey goblin with white tufted ears, fished a pair of grubby-looking spectacles out of his waistcoat pocket and began examining the barkscrolls. As he did so, Quint looked around. When the Galerider had limped in to dock here, after the terrible voyage to the cliff quarries, it had been the middle of the night. The shipyards had been quiet and deserted, with the cradles and ship towers nothing more than dark silhouettes against the sky.
Now, in the morning sunshine, it was as if some giant had disturbed a nest of woodants and sent them scurrying here and there with twigs and leaves to repair their home. Yet instead of woodants, the tiny figures high up in the sky cradles, dangling from sky barges and tenders, or balancing on thin swaying ladders that snaked up from the tops of the towers, were shipwrights and boat-builders. Tree-goblins, oakelves, waifs and mobgnomes, skilled in woodcraft and with a head for heights, they swarmed over the great timber carcases of the sky ships, carrying ironwood struts rather than twigs, and lufwood decking instead of leaves.
Clash of the Sky Galleons Page 5