by Paul Stewart
‘Magnetized air currents,’ said Gart, one hand gripping the flight wheel, the other the rudder lever, as he struggled to keep the overloaded phraxlighter from turning turvey. ‘We’re in a blood storm, and a bad one at that.’
‘Can’t we land?’ asked Cade desperately.
Gart shook his head. ‘In these conditions, and with this load on board, the Hoverworm would be smashed to pieces in the treetops,’ he said. ‘If we could find a clearing maybe—’
The phraxpilot was cut short by a blinding flash of red light that exploded on the starboard side. For a moment it was as though the entire sky was awash with blood. Then waves of magnetized air currents broke over the phraxlighter. Cade felt a strange tingling sensation course through his body. A loud rattling sound erupted at the stern and, looking back, Cade saw that the tarpaulin they had used to secure the cargo was writhing. It looked as if some great beast was trapped beneath and was trying to punch and kick its way out.
A thousand phraxmuskets and twenty-five crates of ammunition were clattering and clanking against one another.
Just three days earlier, the little phraxlighter had steered a path through the crowded skies of the great city of Hive towards the armoury, a vast circular building that nestled in the shadow of the Clan Hall, close to the top of West Ridge. They’d moored at the rear, where they were met by the quartermaster of the Hive Militia, Tove Gripply.
A heavily built fourthling with thick ginger hair and a waxed moustache, he wore a light grey uniform with embroidered chevrons bearing the names of the battles he’d served in. As he greeted Thorne warmly, Cade read the stitched letters – High Pines, The Two Gorges, Ambris Bluff and Midwood Marshes. The last one, bigger than the rest, on the right-hand sleeve, said simply: Revolution.
‘Thank you for this,’ Thorne had said as the quartermaster led them inside.
‘I hear you’re after old militia phraxmuskets, no questions asked,’ he’d said.
‘You heard right,’ Thorne had replied.
The armoury was vast, with phraxweapons of all types hanging from floating sumpwood racks that were anchored to the floor with chains.
‘Anything for a hero of the Glorious Revolution, like your good self. And besides,’ he’d said and laughed, ‘your money’s as good as the next goblin’s.’
Gart had stepped forward and handed Tove their winnings. After counting through the fat wad of hivers, the quartermaster had stuffed them greedily into his pocket.
‘That’ll buy you five hundred phraxmuskets and a dozen cases of ammunition,’ he’d announced, stopping beside a winch and beginning to turn the wheel.
Above them, a cluster of sumpwood racks had slowly descended from the great domed ceiling. Cade had seen Thorne’s eyes narrow and his fists bunch. The fisher goblin had carefully adjusted the collar of his militia tunic, so old and worn compared to the quartermaster’s, and then stared pointedly at the embroidered chevrons.
‘Make that a thousand muskets and twenty-five cases of ammunition,’ Thorne had said, and Cade had heard scorn mixed with suppressed anger in his friend’s voice. ‘And I won’t rip those unearned battle honours off your sleeve.’
Tove Gripply’s face had turned as red as his hair. ‘Perhaps I was a little hasty,’ he’d blustered, avoiding Thorne’s steely gaze. ‘A thousand it is,’ he’d said, then added, ‘Those of us who sat behind desks did our bit too, you know . . .’ He frowned. ‘And twenty cases, was it?’
‘Twenty-five,’ Thorne had said.
They had loaded the phraxmuskets onto the phraxlighter in bundles of fifty, together with the crates of ammunition, and secured the whole lot with the tarpaulin. Then they’d returned to the prowlgrin stables, to find Tillman Spoke and Whisp waiting for them.
Whisp had given Cade a tub of the minty burberry-oil grease for Rumblix, then knelt down beside his prowlgrin.
‘You are the finest jumper I’ve ever seen,’ she’d whispered. ‘Fly high and keep your master safe.’ Her eyes had filled with tears.
‘May Earth and Sky protect you!’ Tillman Spoke had called after them, his hand on Whisp’s shoulder, as the pair of them waved after the departing phraxlighter.
Now, though, as the force of the magnetic storm gripped the Hoverworm and the tops of the Deepwoods trees thrashed back and forth, both Earth and Sky had become suddenly deadly.
A tailwind was driving them westwards across the sky at breakneck speed. The whole of the Edgelands had turned red, with the magnetic currents pulsing through the air and jagged forks of lightning pouring down to earth like streams of blood.
‘Watch out!’ Thorne bellowed as a mighty ironwood pine rose before them.
For a moment, Cade thought that the Hoverworm had been driven down to the forest and was about to crash. But no. They were still airborne, high up above the forest canopy. The tree had come to them.
Gart wrenched the rudder lever to starboard and the Hoverworm missed the ironwood pine by inches, only for two more to appear directly in their path. Seized by the powerful magnetized air currents, whole sections of the forest had been wrenched from the earth and yanked up into the sky. As Cade looked around, he saw dozens more of the huge ironwoods hissing across the sky towards them.
Teeth clenched and eyes narrowed as he stared ahead, Gart focused all his energies on steering the Hoverworm through this terrifying aerial forest, while Cade knelt beside a trembling Rumblix, enfolding him in his arms. He shut his eyes.
‘Earth and Sky protect us.’
Suddenly, from behind them, there came the sound of ripping fabric.
‘No!’ came Thorne’s anguished cry.
Cade opened his eyes. A bundle of phraxmuskets had come loose, cut through the tarpaulin and, gripped by the magnetized air currents, were tumbling up into the crimson night in all directions. And as he watched, open-mouthed, unable to speak, the muskets were followed by one of the crates of ammunition, bullets scattering to the wind. The Hoverworm creaked and rattled as it hurtled on faster than ever.
‘We’ve got to do something!’ Cade cried, pushing Rumblix aside and clambering to his feet.
He staggered to the back of the pitching vessel, grabbing a coil of rope from a stanchion-hook as he went. Seeing him, Thorne went with him, taking a rope of his own. They tried to tie down the tarpaulin; to stop the precious cargo breaking free.
But it was hopeless. The Hoverworm was still gaining speed.
The sharp-edged phraxmuskets were tearing through the thick, oiled material as if it was mere spidersilk, and hurtling off into the darkness, followed by crate after crate of ammunition.
‘I can’t stop them!’ Cade wailed. ‘Thorne, there’s nothing I can do . . .’
All at once there was a blinding flash. Then another. And another and another, until the sky behind them was lit up by dazzling splashes of light, white against the crimson, as the muskets’ phraxchambers exploded. Then, like erupting seed-heads, the ammunition crates went up, sending constellations of glowing bullets spiralling out across the blood-red sky.
It would have been spectacular if it hadn’t been so heart-breaking.
The phraxmuskets they had travelled so far to find and worked so hard to buy were gone. All of them. How were they going to defeat the mire-pearlers now?
In the wheelhouse, Gart stared ahead as the last of the lightning-struck ironwood pines rose up before them. He gripped the wheel with both hands as he steered the now lighter and more agile Hoverworm past the blazing trees, the storm-force winds still driving the little vessel on.
Thorne and Cade pulled themselves back along the deck, tore open the wheelhouse door and collapsed inside. The fisher goblin bolted the door shut behind him and slumped forward, his head in his hands. Cade buried his face in Rumblix’s fur and fought back his tears.
An hour passed. No one spoke. Outside, the clouds thinned, the winds dropped and the blood storm slowly faded away behind them.
‘It’s over,’ Gart announced at last, his voice bleak. He was hunched o
ver the flight wheel, the lever of the broken rudder dangling uselessly behind him. ‘I’ve never sailed through a storm like it. Not in all my years. It’s a miracle our phraxchamber didn’t explode like the phraxmuskets . . . All those phraxmuskets . . .’ He stopped, unable to continue.
Thorne flinched. Then, seeming to gather himself, he rose to his feet and straightened his tunic. Cade found himself looking at the faded patch on the sleeve: 1st Low Town Regt.
‘We’ve had a setback,’ Thorne said through clenched teeth. ‘A terrible and unfortunate setback. But the fight must continue.’
Cade stroked Rumblix. ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he murmured. ‘For dragging you all the way to Hive; for making you train, and jump the falls – all for nothing . . .’
‘Not for nothing!’ said Thorne fiercely. ‘Our journey to Hive has taught each of us valuable lessons.’ He managed a rueful smile as he reached out and stroked Cade’s prowlgrin. ‘You and Rumblix here have discovered a courage that will serve you well in the challenges that lie ahead. And you, Gart.’ He turned and laid a hand on the phraxpilot’s shoulder. ‘You have proved more than a match for the worst the sky can throw at us. I’m honoured to have you at my side.’
‘And you, Thorne?’ said Cade. ‘What has all this taught you?’
The fisher goblin stared out of the wheelhouse window. He sighed. ‘I joined the Hive Militia despite my family begging me not to. I didn’t care. I wanted adventure, excitement . . . The war was a bad time for me,’ he said quietly, ‘but it wasn’t the worst. When we came marching home, Hive had changed. Its inhabitants felt betrayed by the clan chiefs and Kulltuft Warhammer, their leader. There were riots in Low Town when news of our defeat reached Hive, and Kulltuft was ruthless in suppressing them. He sent in his guards and massacred whole families . . .’
Thorne paused, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
‘My family was among them. I only discovered this when I arrived back, muddy and footsore, from the Midwood Marshes. I hadn’t been there to protect them.’ Thorne’s eyes blazed as he stared out of the window. ‘So I gathered my comrades, and others, and I led them all up the mountain to the Clan Hall. We broke down the door and we took our revenge . . .
‘The Glorious Revolution, they called it.’ Thorne gave a bitter laugh. ‘It was brutal, bloody. Kulltuft Warhammer was beheaded . . .’ He paused. ‘He was dead, but so too were the ones I loved. My family. As long as I remained in Hive I knew I could never move on. So I ran away.’
He turned to Cade.
‘Our journey to Hive has taught me to confront my past, Cade. We have lost the phraxmuskets, but we still have each other. You, me, Gart, Celestia, Blatch, Phineal . . . You’re my family now, and I won’t run away – not again. Not ever.’
Gart brought the Hoverworm down in a clearing, and the three of them patched her up as best they could. They worked in silence. Despite Thorne’s rousing words, Cade was unable to shake off the feeling of failure. Their situation was dire. They had gone to Hive to get the weapons that would have given them at least a fighting chance against the mire-pearlers, but now they had nothing.
Taking to the sky once more, they pressed on, limping towards their destination. The storm had driven them on with tremendous speed, and they were much closer to Farrow Lake than any of them had thought possible.
‘More than two weeks it took us to fly to Hive,’ Gart told the others as he pored over his navigation charts. ‘Yet we’ve made up so much time . . .’ He frowned. ‘We should arrive back tomorrow.’
It was late afternoon when, having flown high over the shimmering green of the forest canopy for hours, the Farrow Ridges came into view far ahead. There on the horizon were the Needles, jagged against the orange sky; there were the High Farrow and the Western Woods, with the Farrow Lake nestling between them like a glittering marsh-gem; and there, the Five Falls, the cascades of water tumbling down from the water caverns like rivers of gold. Cade’s heart soared.
He couldn’t help it. He was home.
But as they drew closer and Gart brought the Hoverworm down low, to conceal their flight in the treetops, Cade caught sight of the great black skyship, and his heart sank.
Vast, black and sinister, the Doombringer hovered in the sky, moored to the sky-platform at the end of a great chain some hundred strides long. It was shuttered, and clustered around its sides, like suckling woodhogs, were tethered phraxsloops. The sound of raucous laughter and drunken shouts rose from the upper cabins as the skull lanterns outside clinked against the ship’s black hull. And there was another sound which mingled with the crew’s carousing. A low mournful wailing that came from deep within.
Cade felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was the anguished moaning of the slaves imprisoned in the hold. There must be hundreds of them, he realized.
He counted the phraxsloops. There were eight in all, each one capable of carrying – what? Four . . . five at the most. Which meant there were probably no more than forty mire-pearlers on board.
Forty mire-pearlers enslaving hundreds from all parts of the Deepwoods, Cade thought, and every chained prisoner a living testament to lives and communities ravaged and destroyed. The great black phraxcannon stood jutting out from the prow, a black finger pointing towards the open pasture of the levels on the far shore.
What chance did anyone stand against its terrible firepower?
Glancing over at the Five Falls, Cade noticed black barrel-shaped objects stacked on the lip of rock at four of the cavern mouths. At the fifth, the tallest and largest cavern, scaffolding and ropes suggested it was still being worked on.
‘Phraxmines!’ Gart exclaimed. ‘They’re after the clam beds. They’re going to dam the falls and drain the lake. We’ve got to stop them.’
‘How?’ said Cade bitterly. ‘If it hadn’t been for that blood storm, we might have stood a chance. But now . . .’
‘If it hadn’t been for that storm,’ Thorne broke in, ‘we would have arrived too late.’
· CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE ·
CADE TOOK OUT his spyglass and trained it on the Doombringer. As he watched, a hatch on the foredeck opened, and two hammerhead goblins stumbled out, followed by a tall figure in a crushed quarm-fur hat and a moss-green cape.
‘Merton Hoist,’ Cade breathed. ‘He’s alive.’
The mire-pearler chief had a whip in one hand and a phraxpistol in the other. He pointed it at the defiant hammerheads who, Cade now saw, were chained and shackled. Hoist cracked the whip across the backs of the hammerheads once, twice, until they knelt and began cleaning and polishing the great phraxcannon.
Cade was horrified, yet transfixed.
The three of them were silhouetted against the fading gold of the sunset. Then Hoist suddenly turned and seemed to stare directly at Cade. Cade started back.
‘Your spyglass!’ said Thorne sharply, reaching out and snatching it from Cade’s hands. He nodded towards the setting sun. ‘The reflection on the glass,’ he muttered, closing the spyglass and handing it back to Cade. ‘I hope they didn’t spot us.’
‘So do I,’ said Cade, staring down at the spyglass, shame-faced. He’d been careless. And he hated that. The initials carved in the brass seemed to wink at him in the sunlight. N.Q. Nate Quarter, the uncle he’d never met; the famous descender who now lived in the floating city of Sanctaphrax . . .
Gart was flying as close to the forest canopy as he dared, weaving a course through the jagged treetops that rose all around them. Beneath him, Cade felt the uppermost branches graze the hull. Roused from his thoughts, he looked up. Immediately in front of him, he saw a patch of forest devoid of trees. It wasn’t large enough to be a natural clearing, and as they flew over it, he looked down to see jagged shorn-off tree trunks and, at the centre of them, a deep crater gouged out of the earth. A little further on, to port, was another crater. And on the starboard side a little beyond that, a cluster of three or four more . . .
‘That’s the work of the Doombringer and its accurs
ed phraxcannon,’ Thorne commented.
Gart sighed, and raked his hair back from his forehead. ‘Somehow, we’ve got to figure out a way to disable the cannon,’ he said. ‘Otherwise any attempt to stop the detonation of the caverns will be futile.’
Cade found himself glancing back at the hovering Doombringer, his heart hammering like a drum inside his chest as the Hoverworm left the Farrow Lake behind and entered the Western Woods.
The three of them stood in the wheelhouse of the phraxlighter. Gart was concentrating hard, his brow creased as he shifted the rudder lever this way, that way, deftly steering the phraxlighter between the angular treetops.
‘What we need to do is create a diversion,’ Thorne mused. ‘Get the mire-pearlers to leave the ship . . . Then a few of us could board the Doombringer and put the cannon out of action, while others could scale the falls and stop the detonations . . .’
‘This diversion,’ said Gart. ‘Sounds a lot like the rest of us coming out into the open and asking to get shot at. You saw those shell craters back there.’
Cade shuddered as he thought of Celestia, and Tug, and everyone else back at the hanging-cabin.
‘Do you think the others are still safe?’ he said, reaching down and ruffling the fur around Rumblix’s neck.
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ said Thorne grimly.
Cade became aware of a change in the pitch of the hum coming from the phraxchamber and, glancing round, saw that Gart’s hands were a blur as they danced over the flight levers, slowing the Hoverworm, then lowering it beneath the forest canopy.
Looming before them, hidden from view from above, was the magnificent three-storey building that Thorne had helped Blatch Helmstoft build all those years ago, suspended from the horizontal branch of the mighty ironwood pine.
They came down slowly, past the roof and upper storeys, the hammerhead hive-towers and the conical snailskin tents of the webfoots perfectly camouflaged on the ground below. Gart eased the flight lever back, bringing the phraxlighter to a hover next to the under-balcony. Then Thorne left the wheelhouse and hastened to the stern, where he uncoiled a tolley rope.