by Paul Stewart
‘Earth and Sky protect us all,’ he breathed.
Reaching the bottom of the Five Falls bluff, they began to climb, Rumblix expertly judging his leaps up from outcrop to rocky outcrop. When they got to the top, Cade dismounted.
‘Good boy,’ he said, stroking the prowlgrin’s soft grey fur. He knelt down beside him. ‘Home, Rumblix,’ he whispered urgently. ‘To the cabin. You’ll be safe there. Off you go.’
Rumblix licked Cade’s hand, then turned and bounded away.
Cade watched him for a moment, then, crouching down, he inched forward as quietly as he could until he was able to peer over the edge of the cliff. Below him was the first of the mighty cavern entrances, out of which a great torrent of water was pouring.
A series of rock-picks had been hammered into the cavern walls, and a chain strung across the entrance. And suspended from the chain was a large black globe, studded with glowing phraxchambers, each one set with a spring-loaded trigger mechanism. A network of cables covered the black globe in a silver tracery, linking the triggers to an evil-looking spike at the bottom of the globe. From the tip of this spike, a single glistening cable led out from the cavern and into the sky, where a phraxsloop hovered.
There were three figures on board. Dressed in a filthy rodent-skin jacket, festooned with tiny quarm skulls and fromp-tail talismans, one was obviously a seasoned mire-pearler. He held a rock-pick in one hand and a hammer in the other; his funnel hat was pulled down low, almost covering his eyes. The other two wore robes that Cade recognized at once as those of academics from the Great Glade Academy of Flight.
‘Three days of hauling all this gear up here, and hammering it into place,’ the mire-pearler snarled. ‘Not to mention beating off the attacks of the natives of these parts. All you two have to do is rig up a wire! What’s taking you so long?’
‘I could give you a lecture on the finer points of phrax-engineering, my dear Crote,’ said one of the academics, who was checking the cable’s connection to a small box with a crank mechanism in its side, ‘but I fear it would go over your head.’
‘Which is what I’ll do with this hammer, smash it over your head, if you don’t hurry up,’ snarled Crote.
‘We need to be three hundred strides away for safety when she blows,’ said the second academic. ‘So I’d concentrate on your flight levers if I were you, Crote, and leave the detonation to us.’
‘Don’t care how you do it, as long as you get this lake drained so we can reach those clam beds – and get out of here.’ Crote the mire-pearler shuddered as he glanced back into the inky blackness of the cavern. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’
The fur of Cade’s hammelhorn waistcoat bristled as he quietly unsheathed the knife at his belt.
Just then, across the Farrow Lake from the direction of the Levels, there came a long, low, mournful sound – the sound of a hammerhead war-horn.
Chert, chief of the Shadow Clan of the High Valley Nation, raised the great curling tilderhorn to his lips and blew once more. Stepping out from the cover of the trees, he began a slow, deliberate march across the marshy expanse of the Levels.
Around him, the warriors of the Shadow Clan marched, holding jag-blade spears, copperwood broadswords and long-handled axes of burnished ironwood. To their left were the warriors of the Bone Clan, walking proud and erect despite the grievous losses they had suffered leading the last attack. The warriors carried thorn-pikes and broad shields of tilderleather inlaid with hammelhorn ivory, their bone breast-plates rattling as they strode forward. To the right strode the clans of the Low Valley Nation; the River Clan warriors swinging their weighted nets in arcs out in front of them, while the Stone Clan whirled flint-loaded slingshots over their heads.
All of them were covered in a thin film of white, the slimy silt dried hard now to form a flaky armour. It helped to camouflage them in the bleached marshland – not that the warriors seemed to be making any attempt to conceal themselves.
Following the warriors out across the open marsh came the shamans – hammerhead goblins from all four clans, in heavy hammelhorn fleeces, the spiky fur twisted and braided with totems and charms; skulls of quarms, bones of rotsuckers, carved wooden amulets and painted clay discs. As they walked, the shamans left behind them a strange stain on the marshy ground, pungent and blood red in the early morning light.
The clans advanced, beating their weapons against shields or breast-plates, and giving the barking guttural war cry of the hammerhead goblins.
Tethered by the long chain to the sky-platform, the brooding black skyship juddered into life. Its mighty phraxchamber began to thrum and steam belched from its funnel. It turned in the air and began to move slowly over the lake towards the western shore until, midway, it reached the end of its tethering chain.
The phraxcannon at the Doombringer’s prow cranked down as it took aim at the ranks of warriors standing defiantly out in the open of the Levels. The figure of Merton Hoist appeared at the prow and turned to address the forty or so mire-pearlers who had mustered on the upper deck.
‘They’re making it easy for us,’ he sneered, gesturing at the goblins. ‘But this,’ he said, tapping the barrel of the phraxcannon, ‘is a last resort.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Hammerheads make such excellent slaves – once they’ve been broken.’
He turned to the phraxsloops tethered to the sides of the Doombringer.
‘Launch the sloops!’ he barked.
With a triumphant roar, the mire-pearlers leaped to it, leaving the deck and taking their places on board the phraxsloops. Armed with phraxmuskets, phraxpistols, phraxgrenades, slave nets and shackles, they were ready for anything the hammerheads might throw at them.
As the phraxsloops set off from the skyship, Merton Hoist’s voice boomed out from the prow of the ship after them.
‘Take them alive, boys. Every single one . . .’
The seven phraxsloops steamed out over the Farrow Lake, streams of vapour from their funnels trailing back across the dawn sky. Cade crept forward. He climbed over the cliff edge and down the rock face to the arch of the cavern entrance.
Glancing up, he saw that the phraxsloop with the mire-pearler and two phraxengineers was halfway towards the Doombringer, trailing the fuse cord behind it. Cade looked at the spike that protruded from the bottom of the black globe. If he could just reach it, he’d be able to swing the globe towards him and cut the fuse cord attached to it. But he’d have to be quick. Setting the bulky hammelhorn waistcoat aside, he clambered down the side of the cavern opening. Then, with a shaking hand, he reached out towards the spike and . . .
‘What the . . . !’ The mire-pearler’s indignant voice sounded from the phraxsloop.
‘It’s one of the Farrow Lakers!’ shouted a phraxengineer. ‘Stop him, Crote!’
Behind him, Cade heard the thrum of the sloop’s phraxchamber grow louder as he reached out and made a grab for the spike. He missed. Gritting his teeth, he tried again.
‘Get away from there!’ Crote’s voice sounded, blustering and angry. ‘Or I’ll shoot!’
But Cade knew Crote was bluffing. The phraxsloop was too close. He wouldn’t dare fire a phraxmusket, for fear of setting off the explosive globe and blowing them all up. Cade reached out again, and this time his hand closed round the cold, shiny surface of the spike. He yanked the globe towards him and heard the chains rattle as it shifted.
Looking up, he saw that the phraxsloop was rapidly approaching. Crote was standing at the bow, while one of the phraxengineers steered. Tottering on the spur of rock in the mouth of the cavern, Cade held onto the spike to balance himself and raised the knife in his other hand.
With a roar, Crote leaped from the bow of the phraxsloop and onto the black globe, knocking Cade aside.
Cade fell, landing on the lip of rock beside the thundering torrent of water that spewed from the depths of the cavern. The wind was knocked out of him, and his knife tumbled from his grasp.
Crote looked down from the swaying globe and smil
ed triumphantly as he raised a phraxpistol and levelled it at Cade’s head.
‘Say goodbye to the Farrow Lake, boy,’ he sneered. ‘It belongs to us now . . .’
Suddenly Crote’s eyes bulged and his mouth fell open as he made a strange gurgling sound. Cade saw the shard of crystal embedded in the mire-pearler’s neck.
There was a flash of white, and out of the blackness of the cavern mouth two gigantic spiders emerged, white trogs on their backs. They leaped into the void and landed on the hovering phraxsloop. The trogs skewered the terrified phraxengineers on the ends of their crystal lances and tossed them overboard. Then, turning, they spurred their spiders on, leaping back to the cavern mouth. With a small cry, Crote slipped, toppled from the black globe, and was washed away by the falls.
Cade climbed slowly to his feet. Towering over him was the extraordinary figure of the queen of the white trogs, standing at the entrance to her realm.
Her jagged necklace and crystal crown sparkled in the early morning sun; her bleached snailskin cloak fluttered in the wind, the clusters of snail shells that festooned it emitting their strange flute-like sounds. On her arm was the scrawny cave-bat, while at her sides were half a dozen of her white trog guards, some on foot, some on spiderback. All of them had their long crystal lances pointed at Cade.
‘I . . . I was trying to stop them,’ he muttered hurriedly. ‘The mire-pearlers. We tried to warn you, your majesty. You remember? Thorne and Blatch and me . . . I’m Cade . . . We—’
‘I know who you are,’ the white trog queen broke in evenly, her painted eyelids flashing like blood as she blinked into the dazzling sunlight. ‘And I recall our meeting. I told you that if these mire-pearlers did not enter our caverns, we would ignore them.’ Stroking the cave-bat on her arm, she nodded towards the black globe. ‘But they did enter our caverns . . .’ Her eyes blazed. ‘And they have paid the price.’
‘Thank you,’ Cade called back, as he turned away and jumped onto the hovering phraxsloop, ‘but the Farrow Lake is still far from safe.’ He turned the vessel round and set it steaming towards the stern of the great black skyship in the distance. ‘My friends are prisoners,’ he called back, ‘and I will do anything to save them . . .’
The phraxsloops from the Doombringer came in low across the water, the mire-pearlers crowding forward, trailing nets and ropes in anticipation of easy pickings. Their loaded broad-barrel phraxmuskets were levelled at the ranks of the primitive hammerheads, who were standing out in the open, brandishing their own puny weapons: the heavy arms of the Third Age of Flight against the Deepwoods’ tribes of the First Age.
It was no contest.
The mire-pearlers were exultant. Here for the taking were more slaves to help dig the pearl-laden clams out of the claggy mud of a drained Farrow Lake. They brought the phraxsloop down lower, until they were skimming over the marshy ground.
All at once, like glade barley cut by an invisible scythe, the ranks of hammerhead warriors fell face-down into the mud. And in the treeline behind the prostrate goblins, following the strange blood-red streaks the shamans had left, a rolling, writhing mass emerged from the depths of the forest.
Logworms. Roused from the depths of the Western Woods.
Pressed flat in the mud, the hammerheads held their breath as the ravenous creatures tumbled out of the shadows and glided over them. Silt-covered, their odour was masked. And so long as they didn’t move, they were invisible.
Homing in on the phraxsloops, the logworms abruptly reared up, the jets of air from their under-ducts hissing as trunk-like bodies writhed and thrashed. One of them slammed into the side of a phraxsloop, which spun and keeled and tossed its crew high up into the air. A dozen or more logworms lunged, sucking the hapless mire-pearlers inside their great gaping mouths before they could hit the ground, and devoured them whole.
Phraxfire erupted as the mire-pearlers struggled to defend themselves. But it was hopeless. And in the rising confusion, two of the vessels collided with one another and crashed to the ground. The logworms were on them in an instant, plucking the mire-pearlers from the stricken vessels with a vicious delicacy, like birds picking berries from a branch.
Meanwhile, another of the massive creatures swallowed an entire phraxsloop in one great gulp, stern first. It swelled and convulsed, then, with one rippling spasm, spat out the unappetizing lump of wood and metal, now stripped of its tasty titbits.
Other logworms were less dainty. Frenzy-driven now, and reluctant to expel the two phraxsloops they had swallowed while any delicious morsels might still remain, they constricted their muscles and crushed the vessels, tighter and tighter – until all at once, one, then the other, exploded as the phraxchambers were breached. Scraps of metal and tatters of flesh rained down from the air.
Finally, there was only one of the phraxsloops remaining. The pilot tried desperately to boost the thrust, to gain altitude, to escape the squirming horror of the ravenous creatures – and he might have made it if he’d managed to pass between the two ironwood pines in front of him. Instead, the phraxship became wedged. Screaming with terror, the mire-pearlers leaped from the deck in all directions – and straight into the waiting mouths of the logworms that had swooped in and clustered around the stranded vessel.
Sated, the logworms drifted back into the forest. And then there was silence.
Cade docked the phraxsloop to the Doombringer, using a tether ring at the stern of the great black skyship, and climbed a rope ladder up to the deck. Out across the Levels, the writhing mass of logworms was dispersing. It was the second logworm cascade he had witnessed – this one even more horrific that the first. He could only wonder at the bravery of the hammerheads, who had kept their nerve when the ravenous creatures had erupted from the forest.
So this was the deep dark savagery of the forests that Baahl and Chert had spoken of.
Cade made his way over the deck, past shuttered hatches, towards the prow. He climbed the steps to the phraxcannon-platform, then stopped and gripped the rails for support. The long mooring chain rippled from the sky-platform, sending a tiny tremor through the black skyship. In front of him, a dark shape, stark against the bright dawn sky, turned.
Cade stared at the tall, heavily built figure in the crushed quarm-fur hat and moss-green cloak, which flapped in the wind. Merton Hoist’s face was set hard, the grime etched into the lines that crossed his brow and clustered round the corners of his eyes accentuating his grim expression. His deep-set eyes glinted, and his dark beard parted as he smiled, to reveal the chipped brown teeth that looked too small for his mouth.
Around his neck he wore a medallion from the Academy of Flight bearing the likeness of Quove Lentis, the High Professor of Flight himself. The mossy cloak parted, and Cade saw desiccated crests cut from the heads of Four Lake webfoot goblins strung from his waistcoat. Phraxpistols with mire-pearl handles nestled in a broad belt, while a row of leather pouches hung below, containing the spoils of countless other regions this mire-pearler and his gang had despoiled.
Hoist’s eyes narrowed, and his smile turned to a sneer. ‘You win some, you lose some,’ he said. ‘A crew can easily be replaced. But your hammerhead friends will pay for their defiance with their lives. My phraxcannon will see to that. But first, I’ll take great pleasure in personally skinning you alive, boy, and wearing your pelt as a neckscarf . . .’
Cade boiled with anger. His fists clenched and unclenched as he stared at Merton Hoist’s taunting face. And suddenly, he was running, head down and howling with rage. He threw himself at the hulking great mire-pearler. He wanted to hurt him, to kill him; to wipe that smug expression from his face once and for all . . .
The blow slammed into the side of Cade’s head as, with a dismissive sweep of his arm, Merton Hoist struck him with his pearl-handled phraxpistol. Cade crumpled to the deck. Stars twinkled in spinning circles before his eyes. He looked up to see the mire-pearler towering over him, a filthy ham of a hand rubbing his bearded jaw thoughtfully. In the other hand w
as the phraxpistol. It was aimed at his head.
‘Your lake is mine, boy,’ Merton Hoist snarled. ‘This is the Third Age, and you and your friends are history . . .’
Suddenly, a great muscular arm slammed down over the mire-pearler’s shoulder, followed by another, pinning Merton Hoist’s own arms to his side. His face turned red as he bellowed and squirmed, but the arms around him did not slacken their hold. Instead, their grip tightened, and Cade saw the muscles ripple and go taut with a savage, primordial power.
Cade gasped. ‘Tug,’ he murmured. ‘Tug, you made it! All the way up the mooring chain.’
But Tug did not acknowledge him.
‘You made Tug go to sleep,’ he growled softly in Merton Hoist’s ear. Hoist’s eyes bulged in their sockets. ‘Now Tug make you go to sleep.’
There came the muffled sound of splintering bones. Hoist’s face registered a moment of surprise – then went slack. His eyes rolled back in his head. With a soft grunt, Tug relaxed his grip and, almost tenderly, turned and allowed the lifeless body to fall from the skyship, down to the forest below.
‘Tug,’ said Cade, placing a hand on his friend’s great shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Tug. It’s over.’
Tug turned. He was shaking uncontrollably, and Cade saw that there were tears streaming down his cheeks.
· CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX ·
‘HEY, CADE! PASS me up that bucket of nails!’ Thorne was at the top of the half-completed stilt-house, tiling the roof. He was kneeling on a crossbeam, a small ball-peen hammer in one hand and a leadwood shingle in the other. Beside him was Tak-Tak, silent for once, gnawing contentedly on a woodapple.
Cade had spent the previous day extracting the nails from the hull timbers of the great black skyship, which lay on its side by the lakeshore now, like some beached monster from the deep. Slowly but steadily, the Farrow Lakers were dismantling the mighty vessel and putting its parts to good use. They had dug a saw-pit in the ground the previous week and, bit by bit, were cutting the huge timbers from the Doombringer down to size, creating manageable planks, beams, pillars and joists for the rebuilding of Fifth Lake Village.