by Paul Stewart
‘Name it,’ said Rook.
‘You could stay and talk a while. Three days and three nights I’ve been here, and you’re the first who hasn’t been too frightened of shrykes to approach the cage.’ He paused. ‘Yours will probably be the last kind voice I’ll ever hear.’
‘Of course,’ said Rook. ‘It would be an honour.’ He slipped back into the nearby shadows and crouched down. ‘So, what was it like?’ he asked. ‘Skysailing.’
‘Skysailing?’ said Vulpoon, and sighed with deep longing. ‘Only the most incredible experience in the world, lad,’ he said. ‘Nothing compares to the feel of soaring up into the air and speeding across the sky, with the full sails creaking, the hull-weights whistling and the flight-rock – sensitive to every change in temperature – now rising, now falling. Angle, speed and balance, that’s what it was all about.’ He paused. ‘Until the flight-rocks began to fall to the stone-sickness, that is.’
Rook stared at the sky pirate captain’s crestfallen face.
‘A terrible time, it was,’ he continued. ‘Of course, we’d known what was happening to the new floating rock of Sanctaphrax for some time. The loss of buoyancy. The gradual disintegration … But we made no connection between the plight of the New Sanctaphrax rock and our own precious flight-rocks. That was soon to change. First off, news started coming in of large, heavy traders simply crashing out of the sky. The broad tug boats followed, with league ships and patrol boats soon also becoming useless. The leagues fell into decline and the skies above Undertown emptied. A terrible time it was, lad. Terrible.
‘At first, we sky pirates did very well out of the situation. Night after night, we would carry out raids on the Great Mire Road, knowing that none would be able to follow us. What was more, we became the main means of transportation for fleeing Undertowners’ – he rubbed his forefinger and thumb together – ‘for a price.’ He sighed noisily. ‘And then it happened.’
Rook waited expectantly. Vulpoon scratched beneath his chin.
‘We thought we were clever,’ he said. ‘We thought that by keeping our distance from New Sanctaphrax we would avoid the sickness. But we were wrong. Whether it travelled in on the wind, or had simply been incubating inside the stone, we’ll never know … It was on the third day of the fourth quarter that the Cloudbreaker – one of the oldest and finest double-masters ever to have been built; a real beauty – just fell out of the sky like a speared ratbird and crash-landed in the Deepwoods below. Stone-sickness had finally caught up with us.
‘Something had to be done if we were not all to go the same way, one by one. We had to convene to make plans. I dispatched a flock of ratbirds bearing word that an assembly was to be held at Wilderness Lair at the next full moon.’ He sighed. ‘And it was there, clinging to the underside of the jutting Edgelands rock like a collection of rock-limpets, that we decided to scuttle the entire fleet together—’
‘The Armada of the Dead,’ Rook gasped.
‘You’ve heard of it, then?’ said Vulpoon.
‘Of course,’ said Rook. ‘Everyone has.’ He didn’t mention what he’d heard – that it had become a renegade outpost attracting every dissident, runaway and more notorious denizen of the Mire.
Vulpoon was nodding sagely ‘What a night that was,’ he murmured. ‘We sailed together, that final time, across the sky from the misty Edgelands to the desolation of the Mire. And there, as one, we descended. All round us, a flock of white ravens flapped and screeched at the giants in their midst. We landed on the soft, sinking mud …’ He looked up. ‘That was nigh on thirty-five years since – and we’re still there.’
Rook stared out across the mudflats of the Mire. ‘It seems so very bleak,’ he said.
‘We get by,’ said Vulpoon. ‘A fleet of sky pirate ships was a pretty good basis for a settlement. And what we don’t have, we go out and get.’ A broad grin spread from ear to ear, revealing gums which bore more gaps than teeth. ‘The occasional raid on the Great Mire Road. The odd skirmish with the shrykes …’ He chuckled. ‘There aren’t many who haven’t heard the name of Captain Deadbolt Vulpo—’
‘Thunderbolt!’ Rook blurted out. ‘Thunderbolt Vulpoon. That was the name I was trying to remember.’
‘He was my father,’ the sky pirate captain said quietly. ‘Executed in cold blood by the shrykes – those murderous, verminous, pestilential creatures. By Sky, how I’d like to wring every one of their scraggy necks.’
‘The shrykes killed him,’ Rook murmured.
‘Aye, lad, in that evil Wig-Wig Arena of theirs,’ he said. ‘Yet it was a noble death, an honourable death – for he died that another might be saved.’
‘He did?’
Deadbolt Vulpoon nodded, and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘You may not have heard of him, but it was a certain Captain Twig they were actually after.’
‘Oh, but I have heard of him,’ said Rook. ‘The young foundling, raised by Deepwoods woodtrolls, who was to become the most famous sky pirate captain of all time. Who has not heard of him?’
‘Yes, well,’ said Vulpoon, and puffed up his chest – as far as the confines of the cage would allow. ‘Perhaps not the most famous.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, Twig’d been sentenced to death by the shrykes for some heinous crime, so he had. They were about to throw him to the bloodthirsty wig-wigs, when my father intervened – and sacrificed himself instead.’
‘He must have been very brave,’ said Rook.
Deadbolt Vulpoon sniffed, and wiped the corner of his other eye. ‘Oh, he was,’ he said. ‘He certainly was.’ He paused. ‘If only there had been something left of him to bury, something to remember him by. But … well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about wig-wigs. By the time they’d finished, there wasn’t a scrap remaining.’
Rook nodded sympathetically and left a respectful pause before asking what he really wanted to know. ‘And this Captain Twig?’ he said. ‘What happened to him? Is he with you at the Armada of the Dead? Or …’
‘Or?’ said Vulpoon.
‘Or could those stories about him be true?’ said Rook. ‘That he alone refused to scuttle his ship. That he sailed off, back into the Deepwoods. That he lives there still, alone, unwashed and in total silence, wandering endlessly by day and sleeping in caterbird cocoons by night.’
‘He did sail off into the Deepwoods,’ Vulpoon concurred gruffly. ‘As for the rest, I don’t know. I’ve heard stories, of course. There have been sightings. Soundings, even – for some have returned with tales of him singing to the moon.’ He shrugged. ‘You have to take most of what you hear with a pinch of salt.’ He looked up. His eyes narrowed. ‘Shrykes,’ he whispered urgently. ‘You’d better make yourself scarce.’
‘Shrykes!’ Rook jumped. He turned and saw three of them, all bedecked in gaudy ornamentation, striding across the platform towards them. Rook shrank back into the shadows.
One of them cracked a flail ominously. Three pairs of yellow eyes seemed to cut through the darkness and bore into Rook’s. He held his breath.
‘Not long now, Mire scum!’ the lead shryke taunted. ‘Where are your friends now?’ She threw back her head and gave a cruel, screeching laugh.
Then, as one, the three of them turned and clicked back across the landing.
‘Phew,’ Rook murmured. ‘I thought …’
‘You were lucky just then,’ said Deadbolt Vulpoon. ‘But you must leave now. Thank you for the food and drink,’ he whispered. ‘And for listening.’
‘It was nothing,’ Rook replied. ‘Good luck,’ he murmured awkwardly.
Rook walked back to the sleeping pallets with a heavy heart, his parting words mocking him with their in adequacy. ‘Good luck’, indeed! What could he have been thinking? Magda rolled over and muttered something in her sleep, and next to her Stob snored noisily. Rook laid his head down on the soft mattress of straw and fell gratefully to sleep.
t first Rook’s sleep was deep and dreamless. He was warm beneath the thick blankets and the straw was wonderfull
y soft. Later, however, a cold wind gathered. It plucked at his bedding and sent dark clouds scudding across the moon. The light seemed to be flashing – on, off, on, off – now bathing Rook’s face in silver, now plunging it into darkness. His eyelids flickered.
He was on a sky ship; a huge vessel with two masts and a great brass harpoon at its prow. He was standing at the helm, with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes.
‘More lift, Master Midshipman,’ came a voice. It was the captain, a foppish creature with jewelled clothes and a great waxed moustache, and – Rook realized with a start – he was giving orders to him.
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ he said, and, with nimble fingers playing over the rows of bone-handled levers, he raised the hanging weights and adjusted the sails with the expertise of someone who had the touch.
‘Thirty-five degrees to starboard!’ the captain barked.
The sky ship soared and around him its crew cheered and called out to one another. Rook felt a surge of ex hilaration. The shouts and cries of the sky pirates rose, getting louder and louder and—
‘Wake up!’ came an insistent voice.
Rook stirred. The dream began to fade. No, he thought muzzily, he didn’t want to be dragged away. He was enjoying it all too much – the sensation of flight, his sudden expertise with the flight-levers …
‘Wake up, all of you!’ the voice insisted.
Rook’s eyes snapped open. The sky ship disappeared – yet the sound of its crew seemed louder than ever. He turned to Partifule, who was shaking the snoring Stob roughly by the shoulders. ‘Wh-what’s happening?’ he murmured.
‘It’s a raid,’ the nightwaif whispered back. ‘A sky-pirate raid.’
Rook was on his feet at once. ‘It is?’ he said. He peered into the darkness. Sure enough, figures with flaming torches were shinning up ropes attached to grappling-irons and swarming onto the landing near the cages. ‘But this is fantastic!’ Rook gasped. ‘They’ve come to rescue Deadbolt Vulpoon.’
‘Fantastic for your friend Vulpoon if he does manage to escape,’ Partifule said. ‘Not so great for the rest of us if the shrykes go into one of their rage-frenzies. Like creatures possessed, they are, screeching, screaming, spitting, slashing out at anything that moves … Rook!’ he called out, as the youth hurried off. ‘Come back!’
‘I must help!’ Rook called back.
‘ROOK!’ Magda shouted, as he disappeared into the shadowy and chaotic scene unfolding over by the hanging-cages.
Stob sat bolt upright, and looked round, bleary-eyed, startled. ‘What? What?’ he said.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Magda. ‘Nothing at all. Except we’re in the middle of a sky-pirate raid. And the shrykes are about to go crazy. Oh, and Rook’s decided he wants a better view.’
Stob jumped up from his pallet. ‘Why didn’t anyone wake me before?’ he demanded.
Magda rolled her eyes impatiently.
‘Never mind all that now,’ said Partifule. ‘We must get as far away from here as possible. All of us.’ He stared back towards the cages, ears fluttering. ‘I … I can hear Rook,’ he said.
‘Let’s just go on without him,’ said Stob. ‘I can’t think why an under-librarian was selected in the first place. Insolent, sloppy, disobedient—’
‘Stob, be quiet,’ Magda snapped. ‘I’ll go and get him.’ And before anyone could stop her, she dashed off.
Unaware of the discord he was generating amongst his fellow-travellers, Rook darted ahead from shadow to shadow. All round him, the roaring sky pirates were homing in on the cage where Deadbolt Vulpoon was imprisoned. One had already shinned up the fluted column and had used a long pikestaff to jam the chain and stop it from swinging. A second, at the very top, acted as look-out. Meanwhile, two more sky pirates – one a brawny giant with thick, matted hair and an eye-patch; the other (on his shoulders) an angular individual with steel-framed, half-moon glasses – were standing directly beneath the cage. All round them, a dozen or more pirates formed a protective circle, their weapons glinting in the intermittent moonlight like the horns of a phalanx of hammelhorns. The raid must have been well-planned.
Rook listened, spellbound, to the flood of muttered expletives as the bespectacled sky pirate picked at the lock of the cage door with the long, thin blade of his knife. All at once there was a click.
‘At last!’ he exclaimed, but his triumph was drowned out by the wail of a loud klaxon splitting the air, and the look-out’s bellowed warning.
‘Shrykes!’
The effect that single word had on the scene was both immediate and absolute. Bystanders and spectators on the landing turned away from the spectacle of the sky-pirate breakout, some taking cover, others dashing this way, that way, desperate to escape, yet terrified of running slap-bang into the oncoming shrykes – while those who had been trying to sleep through the raid, now picked up their bedding and fled for their lives.
Back on the road, the merchants and traders who had decided to journey through the night were suddenly thrown into turmoil. Those on foot scurried into the shadows and concealed themselves and their wares; those on wagons and carts shouted at their hammelhorns and prowlgrins, and the sound of cracking whips rose up above the klaxon wail and panicked screaming. There were crashes and collisions, cries of anger and groans of dismay as the carts keeled over and spilt their loads. And underneath it all, the rhythmic screeching of the shrykes advancing down the Great Mire Road towards the landing.
‘Fifty strides and counting!’ the look-out cried, then added, ‘I’m getting out of here.’
Rook stood rooted to the spot. He watched, mouth open and eyes unblinking, as the cage door flew back and Deadbolt Vulpoon himself squeezed his body through the narrow opening and dropped heavily to the boards below. He was free, Rook realized, his heart fluttering. The old sky pirate was free!
All at once an anguished cry rang out. Louder than the klaxon, louder than the crowd, louder even than the shrieking shrykes. ‘Spatch!’ roared the voice.
It was the huge sky pirate with the eye-patch. He crouched down beside the companion who, only a moment before, had been on his shoulders. Now he was dead. A single crossbow bolt had shattered one of the half-moons of his glasses and lodged itself behind his eye.
‘Oh, Spatch, my friend,’ he wailed. ‘Spatch!’
‘Come, Logg.’ It was the captain himself. He laid a hand on the sky pirate’s shoulder. ‘There is nothing more we can do for him. We must leave before the rest of us taste the shrykes’ weapons.’
‘I’m not leaving Spatch here,’ came the belligerent reply as he hoisted the limp body up onto his massive shoulders. ‘He deserves a proper burial, so he does.’
‘As you wish,’ said Vulpoon. He raised his head and looked round at the expectant sky pirates, all waiting for his command. ‘What are you waiting for, you mangy mire-rats? Let’s get out of here!’
As one, the sky pirates turned on their heels – only to find their escape route cut off. The shryke guards had surrounded the landing on all sides and were closing in. The sky pirates had no choice but to fight.
‘Forget what I said!’ Vulpoon roared. ‘ATTACK!’
The air abruptly shook with an explosion of noise as the sky pirates and the shrykes fell on one another. The shrykes swung their bone-flails, and fought with beak and claw, crossbow and evil spiked scythes. The pirates battled back with cutlass and pike and baked mire-mud slingshots that hissed like angry hover worms as they cut through the air.
The fight was short and vicious.
A crossbow bolt whistled past Rook’s ear. He came to his senses, wild excitement turning to cold, stomach-churning fear. He flung himself behind an upturned cart, its cargo of heavy stone jars strewn around it.
In front of him two sky pirates – one tall and thin, one short and portly – stood back to back, battling with two shrykes. The pirates’ swords glinted and clanged. The shrykes’ claws flashed, their beaks gnashed. It looked as if the sky pirates were tiring when – as if to so
me un spoken command – both of them lunged forwards. Their attackers were skewered simultaneously. The sky pirates withdrew their swords and turned to face a fresh onslaught.
There were dead shrykes everywhere, but those who fell were instantly replaced by more of the frenzied bird-creatures, answering the klaxon-call and streaming down the Great Mire Road.
‘Take the balustrades!’ Rook heard Vulpoon bellow, and looked round to see the sky pirate captain fighting off two shrykes at the same time. ‘And keep them,’ he grunted as first one, then the other shryke fell lifeless to the ground. ‘We all leave together,’ Vulpoon cried. ‘When I give the word.’
Just then Rook saw the flash of crimson and yellow feathers as a tall, muscular shryke guard emerged from the shadows behind Vulpoon. She was wearing a gleaming breast-plate and a plumed helmet. A spiked scythe was raised above her head.
‘Captain!’ screamed Rook, leaping to his feet.
Just in time, the sky pirate captain dodged sharply to his left. The scythe struck the wooden boards and stuck fast. Vulpoon swung his heavy cutlass. With an ear-piercing screech, the shryke hawked and spat. A glistening boll of saliva flew through the air and splattered into his face. Crying out in disgust, Vulpoon staggered backwards in the direction of the cart.
Rook gasped with surprise. This was no ordinary shryke guard, he realized. With her bright plumage and her stature, she must be one of the elite Shryke Sisterhood.
‘Deadbolt Vulpoon!’ the shryke-sister screeched, as she advanced towards him in a hissing whirr of bared talons. ‘The great Deadbolt Vulpoon! Let’s see how great you are now!’
Vulpoon was dazed and half-blinded. The shryke-sister contemptuously knocked his sword away. Then, balancing on one clawed foot, she slashed at his arm with the other.
‘I’ll rip out your heart!’ she shrieked. ‘And devour it!’
There was blood seeping through the sleeve of Vulpoon’s jacket and dripping down the hand which clasped his sword. The sky pirate slumped to his knees in front of the upturned cart.