The Last of the Sky Pirates: First Book of Rook

by Paul Stewart

  ‘It’s all your fault, Rook!’ she laughed. ‘You put me off!’

  The Woodmoth dropped slowly down towards the surface of the lake, landing close to the base of the iron-wood tree where a disgruntled Stob sat rubbing his head ruefully Xanth swooped in from overhead. ‘Are you two all right?’ he called. ‘It’s a bit cold for a swim, if you ask me.’ He flew off with a laugh, circling the lake effortlessly on the soaring Ratbird, before turning back towards Lake Landing.

  ‘Just look at him,’ said Magda. ‘He makes it look so easy.’ She shook her head. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Quiet little Xanth, the best flyer of us all.’

  ‘Beginner’s luck,’ said Rook, and smiled. ‘I’ll race you to the landing, come on!’

  He and Magda splashed through the cold water, with Magda soon pulling in front. Ahead of them, Xanth was coming in to land, the Ratbird – sleek and swift – tilting into the wind.

  ‘He’s coming in too fast,’ said Rook.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ Magda called back. ‘Look at him, he’s in control.’

  The skycraft swooped low in an elegant arc and descended steeply. Just as it did so, a lone figure emerged from the Landing Tower and strode across the lufwood decking. At the sight of the figure, Xanth seemed to check his descent. The Ratbird reared up, its sails collapsed and the smooth arc turned into an ugly tumble. The next moment the skycraft crashed heavily into the landing, splintering its slender mast and throwing its rider clear.

  Rook and Magda kicked out for the landing. The figure was crouching over the stricken body of their friend as they approached. At the same time Stob was running from the far edge of the lake, dragging the Hammelhorn behind him. Wet, breathless and shivering from the cold, Magda and Rook heaved themselves up onto the landing. Behind them, their skycraft bobbed on the water.

  ‘Is he all right?’ asked Magda.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said the figure, without looking up. ‘But he’s broken his leg badly. This is one apprentice who won’t be flying again for a long time to come.’

  Xanth groaned and opened his eyes. ‘It hurts,’ he said miserably.

  ‘It’s all my fault!’ said Stob, running up, red-faced and with tears in his eyes. ‘We were waiting for the flight instructor, but he didn’t show up, so I thought it wouldn’t do any harm just to take a short flight round the lake and back.’ He shook his head. ‘If I’d only known it would end like this …’ He sank to his knees and grasped Xanth’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Xanth. We should have waited for that stupid flight instructor. Now we’ll have to postpone our first lesson.’

  I don’t think so,’ said the figure, standing up and turning to face them. ‘I am your “stupid” flight instructor.’

  Stob groaned; he’d done it again.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of me,’ she said. ‘My name is Varis Lodd.’

  Rook’s jaw dropped. So this was the great Varis Lodd. Felix’s sister. The librarian knight who had rescued him from the Deepwoods all those years ago. He wondered whether he should say something to her … Then again, he thought, she didn’t even seem to recognize him – and why should she? He’d been a child of four when she’d rescued him, and she hadn’t seen him since. He bit his tongue.

  ‘And as for your first lesson …’ Varis was saying. She paused and looked along the line of apprentices, one red-faced, one open-mouthed and one shivering; and at Xanth, prostrate on the landing, and moaning with pain. ‘You have just learned it.’

  As the moon peeked up above the horizon, broad and creamy yellow, Rook soared into the sky. Below him on Lake Landing, Varis Lodd and Parsimmon grew smaller and smaller.

  Far to his left, a great caterbird, its black plumage and huge curved beak magnificent in the moonlight, flapped slowly across the sky. Xanth would have loved the sight. Rook remembered his friend’s proposed treatise and wondered whether he would ever achieve his dreams. Poor Xanth. Even now, six long months after the terrible crash, he still walked with the aid of a stick, and had become even quieter and more haunted-looking, if that were possible.

  Rook had always made a point of seeking Xanth out and including him in all the talk of sail-craft, flight-signing and wind-riding that accompanied their flight training. But there was no escaping the fact that whenever he, Magda and Stob took to the air, Xanth was left behind, his pale face and dark eyes betraying his hurt and disappointment.

  Tonight had been especially tough for Xanth because it was the night of their final flight. After this, Magda, Stob and Rook would be fully-fledged librarian knights, ready to embark on their treatise-voyages. The thrill of it coursed through Rook’s body as he realigned the sails and pulled hard on the pinner-rope. The skycraft shifted round, swooped down lower in the sky and skirted the fringes of the vast island of light and prosperity nestling in the dark, mysterious Deepwoods.

  ‘The Free Glades,’ he whispered, as he steered the little craft over each of the three glistening lakes in turn, past the towering Ironwood Glade and back down towards New Undertown.

  He skimmed over the Lufwood Tower, the building that had so impressed him when he first arrived in the glades: how long ago that now seemed! Over the hive-huts and the tufted goblins’ long-houses he flew, and round the gyle-goblin colony where small groups of the bulbous-nosed goblins were wending their way home from the surrounding fields – back to their Grossmother and a supper of sweet gyle honey.

  The moon rose higher. Tacking expertly against the gathering wind, Rook swooped down over the Tarry-vine Tavern, meeting-place for creatures from the farthest corners of the Deepwoods. How he’d loved sitting in its dark corners, listening to the tales of the old times, before stone-sickness, when the great sky ships had sailed the skies.

  And now, here he was, in his own skycraft, with the moonlight in his eyes and the wind in his hair. He smiled, re-jigged the sails, stood up in the stirrups and flew up high over the tavern and beyond.

  There were the timber yards, and the woodtroll villages beyond. ‘Farewell, Oakley,’ he whispered, remembering the kindly, tufty-haired old woodtroll. ‘And thank you.’

  There, beneath the huge Ironwood Glade, was the entrance to the Gardens of Light. How many times, labouring over his varnish stove, had he dreamed of this very night. But now the time had come, he knew he would miss the beautiful shimmering gardens – and his ancient spindlebug tutor. ‘Farewell, Tweezel!’ Rook whispered.

  And there, shrouded in a fine red mist, the slaughterers camp. The huge fires were blazing beneath the sleeping hammocks, already swaying with waking slaughterers, making ready for a hard night’s work. Rook could almost taste the spicy tilder sausages he’d eaten so many times. ‘Farewell, Brisket!’ he whispered. ‘Enjoy your breakfast, kind master.’

  He coaxed his craft into a long, slow turn, and headed back towards Lake Landing. In the distance, the Silver Pastures glistened in the moonlight. They’d never looked more beautiful, thought Rook. ‘Farewell, Knuckle – my friend,’ he said softly.

  As he approached the Central Lake, Rook spotted Magda and Stob circling the landing, waiting for him to join them for their final descent. They, too, had been saying their last goodbyes. A lump came to Rook’s throat.

  There was heavy, arrogant Stob on his solid Hammelhorn. Quick to anger, slow to forgive – but now, Rook realized, for all his faults, like an older brother to him. And Magda, serious, sensitive Magda, on her Woodmoth, fluttering delicately on the wind. She was like a sister, sharing his triumphs and disasters alike, and always ready with a word of encouragement or a sympathetic look.

  The three of them twisted down through the air in perfect harmony, furling their sails gracefully as they came lower, and landing in front of their flight instructor and the High Master soundlessly.

  ‘Well done, all of you,’ Varis Lodd said quietly. ‘That was magnificent.’

  Glowing with pleasure at her words of praise, Rook smiled. He remembered how haughty and aloof he had initially thought Varis Lodd to be. Yet how wrong he’d been
. On that first morning, as she had turned and walked away, he’d run after her, keen to announce himself.

  ‘I’m Rook Barkwater,’ he had told her.

  And she had turned, placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly. ‘I know,’ she’d said. ‘I’d know those deep blue eyes anywhere. But look at you! What a fine young apprentice you’ve turned into. Go and get your skycraft, Rook Barkwater, and then we shall have lunch together at my table.’

  Ever since that moment Rook had felt close to her, as if the bond between them – established all those years ago when Varis had discovered him in the Deepwoods – had never been broken. Sometimes she reminded him of Felix, humorous and playful. At other times she could be as earnest and exacting as Alquix Venvax. Throughout it all, however, she had always been there for Rook; teaching him well and spurring him on to ever greater feats of achievement. And now here he was, standing before her, having completed the final flight of his studies.

  ‘You are all now ready,’ she said, bowing her head formally. ‘It is time for you to embark on your treatise-voyages, friends of Earth and Sky’

  Parsimmon bowed his head in turn. ‘Good luck in all your travels, and may you return safely to us in the Free Glades, my dear, precious librarian knights.’

  Rook’s heart was thumping fit to burst. He felt like shouting out, with relief, with joy and anticipation, but instead he followed Stob and Magda’s lead, bowing low and saying quietly, ‘By Earth and Sky, we shall not fail you.’

  Just then the heavy creaking sound of rough wheels on the lufwood decking interrupted the quiet ceremony, as a hammelhorn cart drew up, accompanied by two Free Glade guards on prowlgrins. Rook looked round.

  A young apprentice lay groaning softly in the back of the cart, a dark stain spreading across the knife-grinder robes he wore. Parsimmon hurried over.

  ‘We found him on the Northern Fringes,’ the first guard, a gnokgoblin, reported, saluting the High Master. ‘He says he was one of a group of apprentices from Undertown ambushed by shrykes. Says they knew they were coming.’

  ‘Is this true?’ said Parsimmon, kneeling down beside the stricken apprentice.

  ‘Yes, master,’ the apprentice whispered, his face pinched and white from the pain. ‘They picked us out in the Eastern Roost, surrounded us on the upper gangways, and hacked us down, one by one …’

  Parsimmon patted his hand. ‘There, there, the journey is a terrible one indeed, but you have made it. That’s the important thing. We will look after you now. You are very precious to us.’ He motioned to the guards. ‘Take him to the tower, and fetch Tweezel – we don’t want to lose this brave young apprentice.’

  The guards hurried off. Varis walked stiffly over to Parsimmon. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said tersely. ‘That is the third group that has been ambushed. We can’t afford these losses, High Master. The Guardians of Night are growing stronger. I sense their hand in this.’

  Parsimmon nodded sagely. ‘You may be right, my dear Varis, but that is a matter for the Free Glades Council and our masters back in Old Undertown. Tonight, let us salute our brave young friends here, and talk no more about it.’ He turned to Magda, Stob and Rook. ‘Go now,’ he said. ‘Supper awaits you in the upper refectory.’

  As he turned to follow the others, Rook caught sight of Xanth, half-hidden in shadow, his face ashen, his lips thin and bloodless. Their eyes met. ‘Xanth,’ Rook called out.

  Xanth looked away shiftily.

  ‘Xanth!’ he called, louder.

  ‘Come and join us.’

  ‘Leave him,’ said Magda. ‘He knows where to find us if he wants to. He must be feeling pretty miserable at the moment – wishing his leg would mend, wishing he was us.’

  Rook nodded. But though he knew Magda’s words made sense, he didn’t believe them. It wasn’t sadness or regret, or even envy, that he had seen in Xanth’s eyes. It was guilt.

  fter a wild storm that raged through the night and late into the morning, the weather had finally cleared around noon. In its wake came fluffy white clouds which scudded across the gleaming sky seemingly buffing it up as they passed, while down in the Deepwoods, it looked to Rook as if every leaf of every tree glinting in the shafts of silvery sunlight had been freshly waxed and polished.

  He steered his skycraft expertly round a great lullabee tree and on low over the jagged thickets of razorthorn beyond, his heart racing with the excitement of it all. He could hardly believe it; so soon after his final flight as an apprentice, here he was with the great Varis Lodd and his best friend, Knuckle the slaughterer, flying through the Deepwoods on a raid!

  Darting swiftly and silently through the dappled light of the forest, the three skycraft – the Windhawk, Woodwasp and Stormhornet – kept low in amongst the towering trees. Rook’s hands played with the rope-handles, coaxing the skycraft this way and that, up, down and from side to side. It was difficult flying, demanding his constant attention.

  Every so often – more from nervousness than necessity – his hand would pat his flight-suit, checking that all the unfamiliar items of flight paraphernalia were still in place: his grappling-hook and a coil of rope; his water-flask and – Sky and Earth forbid he should ever need it – his lufwood box, courtesy of Tweezel the spindlebug, with its bandages, potions and salves. On his chest he wore his telescope, compass and scales; at his side, his knife, Felix’s ornate sword and, slung through a leather loop on his belt, one of the small razor-sharp axes carried by all skycraft pilots. Now he felt like a real librarian knight, equipped for any eventuality. If only the uneasy fluttering in the pit of his stomach would go away.

  Dense forest ahead, Varis Lodd signalled to her two companions and, as one, she, Knuckle and Rook soared up high into the air and burst through the forest canopy.

  Rook gasped with wonder as the tops of the trees spread out all round him. He stood up in his carved stirrups and, with the warm wind in his face, gave the Stormhornet full sail. The skycraft trembled for a moment before throwing Rook back in his seat and leaping forwards.

  Stay low, Varis signalled silently. It was important that they weren’t spotted.

  Rook pulled at the looped pinner-rope. The Stormhornet swooped down obediently, and skimmed over the top of the watery forest, just like its yellow and red striped namesake that Rook had watched skimming the surface of the lake. How long ago that seemed now. Rook’s thoughts began to wander.

  He went back to the previous evening when, just as he had been about to turn in for the night, he had heard a light tap-tap-tap on the door of his sleeping cabin. It was Varis Lodd, her flight-suit fully equipped and a loaded crossbow at her side.

  ‘Come with me,’ she’d said. ‘I have something to tell you.’

  He had followed her down to Lake Landing, where Knuckle was waiting for them, twirling his lasso. Below them, the dark, turbulent waters of the lake surged and swelled; above, dark, boiling clouds tumbled in from the west. Varis had turned to address them both, her face sombre, her voice trembling with emotion. Rook had never seen her so upset.

  ‘Your young friend, Xanth, approached me this evening,’ she began. ‘Since his injury, he’s made himself useful by, shall we say, gathering information.’

  ‘Spying?’ said Rook, faintly shocked.

  ‘You could call it that,’ said Varis. ‘In our war against the Guardians of Night and their allies, we need to be vigilant. Anyway, young Xanth had disturbing news.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Knuckle, letting the rope fall.

  ‘Slavery has returned to the Foundry Glade.’

  Knuckle shook his head bitterly. ‘Will the Foundry Master never learn?’

  Varis put a hand on the slaughterer’s shoulder. ‘Like you, Knuckle here lost his family to slave-takers,’ she said to Rook. ‘We thought we’d taught them and their goblin allies a lesson last time we raided, but it seems they’re back to their old ways.’

  ‘These slaves,’ Rook remembered asking, ‘are they slaughterers? Gnokgoblins?’

  And Var
is had shaken her head. ‘They’re …’ She had turned to Rook, her eyes filled with a mixture of anger and sorrow.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Banderbears, Rook,’ she had said. ‘Banderbears.’

  The Stormhornet juddered as the memory of Varis’s words made his fingers tremble. Banderbears! How could anyone enslave such mighty, noble creatures? The very thought of it made his blood boil. Yet that is exactly what Hemuel Spume, the Foundry Master, had done. What kind of an individual must he be to keep banderbears in chains?

  ‘You love banderbears as much as I do,’ Varis had said. ‘I knew you’d want to help rescue them.’

  ‘And Stob and Magda?’ Rook had asked.

  Varis had shaken her head. ‘The fewer the better on this sort of raid,’ she’d said. ‘And you two are the best flyers in the Free Glades.’ She had paused. ‘If you’re with me, we’ll need to fly into the Foundry Glade under the noses of Spume’s goblin guards, release the bander-bears from their slave-hut and get away before we’re discovered. It won’t be easy’

  ‘We’re with you,’ Rook and Knuckle had both replied at the same time. It was then that Rook had first felt the fluttering in the pit of his stomach.

  As the sun darkened and slid down towards the horizon, Rook felt the wind getting up once again. He trimmed his nether-sail and tightened his grip on the pinner-rope. Although the stiffening breeze would make their flight much quicker, it also made the skycraft skittish and wilful.

  There it is, Knuckle signalled, signing the words quickly, thumb and forefinger coming together to form the unmistakable signal for glade.

  Rook looked ahead. Far in the distance, he saw thick black smoke belching out of the tall foundry chimneys and staining the sky above with a dark smudge of filth. His heart missed a beat.