by Martin Vine
Hopskotch shrugged back. He had no idea what Bellows was talking about.
The tramp glanced back without slowing his step. “But if yer headed for Saddleslip Gorge, I’ve got some fey news: treefall’s cut yon path ’fore Witherness. Gotta borrow a wee skiff by the lake you wanna fill yer pouches this day.”
At the mention of Saddleslip Gorge, Hopskotch’s ears pricked. Hope rekindled inside him that they might yet gain something out of this. If he could just keep Bellows talking, there was a chance he’d reveal more about the western shores, anything to give Dobbin pause to reconsider the Gorge country.
Ignoring the death stare of his teammate, Hopskotch began chipping in with the occasional words of encouragement.
Bellows needed none. Well and truly recovered from his earlier coughing fit, the tramp began regaling the boys with tales of his own childhood hunting for cicadas in the steep gorges beyond Witherness.
Hopskotch was surprised to learn that the high-country folk had different names for the coveted insects. In all his years in the playground, he’d never once heard of the Crimson Bishop, Cyan Bandit, Violet Angel or the Spackled Cinnamon (as common to the high country as mosquitos, apparently). Even the colours sounded unusual and that was one topic Hopskotch considered himself quite the expert.
Of course, Dobbin was having none of it. The grumpy Syltling expressed his displeasure by feigning interest in Bellows’ story, egging him on with sarcastic enthusiasm. To make matters worse, he’d taken to running the metal base of his trick staff along the brickwork, creating an annoying (and completely unnecessary) grinding sound that seemed to grow louder and louder the further up-tunnel they travelled.
Hopskotch recognised the behaviour: it was Dobbin’s way of making sure everyone else was as brassed off and miserable as he was. If his teammate turned one more time to pull a face, Hopskotch had made up his mind to punch Dobbin square in the jaw.
To the boys’ quiet relief, the underground drain eventually rejoined the surface, linking up with an open U-shaped channel with steep brick walls either side and a narrow stream of water flowing through the middle. Emerging cautiously from the black, Dobbin and Hopskotch squinted against the skylight. Both Syltlings drew deeply upon the fresh air.
In contrast, Bellows responded in no visible way to the change of scenery. Nor did he stop talking. His mouth flapped like a broken shutter in a windstorm as he continued to regale the boys with a new story, something about being set upon by giant bees while hunting Spackled Cinnamons in the gullies of Saddleslip Gorge.
At least, that was the sum total Hopskotch could piece together. The thundering waters of the Artery echoed loudly from the near distance, making the old tramp even harder to understand.
Extinguishing his globe lamp with a quick puff of breath, Hopskotch offered it back to its owner.
Bellows stopped talking. Blinking at the youngster’s outstretched hand, he paused for a moment, before waving it away. “Nah, yee keep it, lad,” he said.
A furrow formed over his brow, as if he was trying to remember something. Bellows’ eyes bulged suddenly out of their sockets. “You take this one, Stomper!” he blurted. Blowing out the wick of his own lamp, he thrust it into Dobbin’s empty palm.
“Dobbin!” the frustrated Syltling corrected him. “My name’s D-O-B-B-I-N: Dobbin. And this is Hopskotch,” he continued, working himself up. “Awfully glad to meet you, but we really must be going now!” His head darted this way and that, trying to see over Bellows’ shoulder for a stair or ladder leading up to street level.
“And thanks for the lamp,” Dobbin added insincerely. “Truly, deeply.” Sliding his rucksack around to the side, he capped the wick and squeezed the still-warm terracotta globe into a side pocket. “But it’s a big day for us and we really need to find cicadas of our own. Have you heard of the Golden Duke?”
Dobbin didn’t wait for a response.
“Well, they’re out this year and if we don’t catch one, well, we’ll be your age before we get another crack at ’em.”
“Golden cicadas!” gasped Bellows. “Barnacles, how smashing!”
He took a sudden and unexpected pause, as if taking a mental detour to some dark recess of his brain. Following a few uncharacteristically silent seconds, the hobo snapped his fingers. Standing bolt upright, he added, “But ye’ll need some more globe lamps, and more than they, te boot! Saddleslip Gorge be a fair hike, but I’m just beyond yon corner.”
Bellows pointed to a row of warehouses that followed the curve of the channel, looming from street level above like an ill-kept barricade. He began shuffling away, beckoning the boys to follow. “I’ll fix ye both up and tell ye a top spot where ye ken catch the li’l screechers.”
Dobbin groaned, dipping his chin in defeat.
Hopskotch felt his friend’s pain, but there was no question Bellows’ words tugged at his curiosity. The idea of taking another detour was not ideal (Aethelron knew they’d clocked enough miles for one morning) but if they could take some information out of it, then he might just be able to prevent Dobbin from blowing his stack all over again.
Leaving the drain behind, Bellows led the boys back to street level, and then to their surprise up a series of fire stairs to the connected rooftops of Parchmond. Braving the numerous loose tiles and shingles, they followed the nimble tramp high above the city.
It took no small effort.
Neither Syltling had ever seen an adult move so fast, jump so far, or climb with such youthful dexterity. It was if Bellows commanded gravity itself, and laughed at its pitiful attempts to restrain him. Rattled by the pace and altitude, Team SnapTalon struggled to keep up.
Of course, it was also greatly distracting. Such a high vantage revealed the Bridgetown skyline at its most breathtaking, and Hopskotch found he could barely wrench his gaze from the view: hundreds of tightly-packed buildings cascading downhill to Market Square. To the wide-eyed youngster, it looked as if a toddler playing with wooden blocks had built the city.
Eventually, they came upon a large warehouse with a corrugated-iron roof that sloped upwards at a shallow angle. Allowing the boys to catch up, Bellows returned to his tale about giant bees, resuming pretty much at the beginning. Just as he got to the bit they were actually up to, Bellows halted mid-sentence. Turning his head, he held one finger to his lips in the universal ‘be quiet’ signal, and on cautious legs crept sideways and crouched over toward a glass skylight just shy of the roof’s peak.
The boys followed, mimicking the stealth of their guide all the way to the window. Through a thick layer of dirt-smeared glass, Hopskotch and Dobbin peered down to the floor of Bridgetown’s largest functioning granary.
Inside, the storehouse was divided into separate bays carved out of the solid grey granite native to Parchmond. The floor of each sloped downwards from the building’s outer wall, which appeared to be below street level. It was impossible not to notice each bay was almost completely empty.
Movement drew Hopskotch’s eyes across the granary floor where the cobblestone surface was scoured with uncountable crisscrossing wheel tracks. Cadets! No less than four black-clad figures paced up and down, two near the main entrance and two toward the back of the building. Hopskotch found himself more than a little grateful that the skylight was so grimy.
With a double flick of the hand, Bellows signalled it was time to get moving again. This time he led the youngsters up and over the peaked roof to the north side of the building. More guards came into view by the entrance – eight, by Hopskotch’s count – teamed in pairs, as if covering all approaches. At the junction of the main road leading in, and the two side-alleys branching immediately away from it, temporary roadblocks had been set up. They looked to be unguarded but all were only a short distance from the four cadet teams.
Hopskotch’s immediate thought was that such a show of strength must be for their benefit.
His teammate could have told him otherwise.
More familiar with Bridgetown City and its politics, Dobbin Butterfel
d was quick to recognise the direction in which way the blockade faced. As Bellows led the pair to the granary’s low western wall, down a rainwater pipe and into a secluded side-alley, his suspicions were confirmed.
Through gaps between the surrounding warehouses, Dobbin could just make out the grey plumes of cooking fires rising through the morning air. Familiar smells summoned memories of his childhood. The cadets were guarding against something more serious than a pair of runaway cicada hunters, and his eyes confirmed his suspicions: all barricades facing the Shanties.
As a country boy, born and bred, Dobbin had always taken a sympathetic view of the refugees, or ‘Provis’, as they were commonly known. He knew that if not for his father’s ingenuity and work ethic, his own family might be living under a canvas roof in the shale valley like so many other rural folk who’d lost their land to the borders fogs.
The tent city that now occupied the old quarry north of Parchmond – barely half a mile from the granary – was a place of hopelessness and misery. Overcrowded, rife with unemployment and petty crime, and now volatile with rumours of food shortages, the atmosphere was becoming explosive in the Provis’ slum. Lately, there were rumours serious trouble was brewing – organised trouble – and that it was bad enough to potentially disrupt the Cicada Festival itself. Folks were talking up the idea that the Shanties were about to erupt into violence, driving a wedge between Witherness and Bridgetown: a prickly relationship at the best of times.
It was something Dobbin didn’t care to think upon. Team SnapTalon had bitten off more than its share of trouble so far this hunt, and he saw little need to pile worry upon worry. If an empty granary needed to be guarded against an army of hungry Provis, well, that was just going to have to be someone else’s problem on this particular day.
It came as a surprise to Hopskotch that Bellows’ hideout (or ‘lair’, as Dobbin would later refer to it) was not located underground. The secretive Sylt had led them away from the granary through streets and laneways the young out-of-towner never knew existed. It didn’t feel like they’d travelled far, but Bellows had taken so many twists and turns Hopskotch doubted he’d ever be able to retrace his steps.
Wouldn’t Bartrem love all this sneaking about and secrecy! he thought with a grin.
Crab-crawling across a stout ‘toothpick’ (playground slang for the wooden support beams used to brace Bridgetown’s many leaning walls), Hopskotch trailed Dobbin to the upper ledge of an abandoned multi-storey brick building that smelled like it must have once been a brewery. The narrow ledge steered Hopskotch around a sharp corner to a balcony framed by a rusted railing. Neither Syltling had any problem clambering over.
The roofless platform was shaped to a perfect triangle, as if a wedge had been cut right out of the building’s upper floor. On the east-facing wall Hopskotch observed a broken wooden door, and adjacent to that, an old bench seat with a cast-iron table set in front. The only items on the table were a long-stemmed clay pipe and a pottery ashtray that looked like it hadn’t been emptied since the spring.
Encouraging the boys to ‘take in the scenery’, Bellows disappeared behind the door, leaving it half-shut and creaking on loose hinges.
Team SnapTalon were alone for the first time since the smokehouse.
Hopskotch took advantage of the pause, relaxing his tired limbs as his eyes were drawn to the skyline. It amused him to think that Bridgetown’s most notorious street tramp enjoyed an outlook that would have been the envy of the city’s wealthiest. Bellows’ balcony boasted a jaw-dropping view downhill all the way beyond the Shallowfrond to the eastern woodlands. If not for the distant Skillion – a massive, wedge-shaped upthrust of rock pointing toward the river from the Sleeves district – Hopskotch would have been able to see clear to Curmudgeon’s Gulch from such a vantage.
Scanning further to his right, beyond the jagged industrial rooftops of Parchmond, the youngster could just make out the famous parklands adjoining the south bank of the upper Artery, acres of manicured lawns and gardens which flowed through the exclusive Vistafells and Threetop districts.
What a map I could make from here! he daydreamed.
The thought jolted Hopskotch back to reality. The sodding map! This detour was certainly exciting, but it would all be for nothing if Team SnapTalon lost sight of their goal.
Pa Rand would have reached at the lake by now, he realised with a shudder. Now we’ll have to trek all the way up to Cotteslope Dam. Dobbin will not be impressed.
Turning from the scenery, Hopskotch noticed his teammate had removed his gear, dumping it – staff, sling-pouch and all – in a pile by the railing. Eyes closed, Dobbin was slowly rotating his arms at the shoulders, tilting his neck left and right with a pained expression.
Hopskotch detoured his attention to the door. Though more than a little tired himself, his curiosity remained. What the mittens is he up to in there?
Cautiously approaching the frame, the Syltling heard a loud string of swear words erupt from inside (it became immediately obvious who was behind the cussing back at the smokehouse). Hopskotch was just steeling his courage for a sly peek inside when the door burst open and Bellows thundered out like a dark whirlwind.
The tramp’s dramatic reappearance had an immediate effect on Dobbin. He stared in stunned silence, his mouth hanging agape like a landed whiskerfish. Bellows was loaded up with a ridiculous assortment of carry pouches, stuffed full to bursting.
Hopskotch dared not imagine what they contained, but the smell suggested a combination of tobacco, smoked fish and sour juniper berries.
“Sorry ’bout before back there,” he said to Hopskotch.
Hopskotch screwed his face up. He had no idea what Bellows was apologising for. Then it clicked: my net!
“Here, take this wee ’un instead,” Bellows offered. Turning Hopskotch around, he produced an archaic-looking cicada net and wedged the wooden handle into the gap between the youngster’s rucksack and back.
Hopskotch had no time to examine the new net properly, nor ponder whether it was gift or loan. He barely had time to sputter out a quick, “Thank you,” before Bellows vaulted the railing like a Sylt half his age and disappeared beyond the corner drainpipe.
After assisting Dobbin with his gear, Hopskotch climbed back out and followed the stranger along the ledge.
“I think they call that a whistlestop visit,” Dobbin groaned from over his shoulder. “Nice net, by the way.”
Excerpt From The Secrets Of The Ancients
by Tulloch Greighspan
Realms 2.4
Divine Spark
Within generations, the work of the angels had changed the face of Delgard, lighting a fuse of creativity that ushered in great advancements at rapid pace. Altars grew into churches, and churches into cathedrals; towns expanded and evolved to become cities; provinces allied to form nations, and nations united to become empires.
On the greater continents dividing Dellreigh’s oceans, and also on the smaller islands grew settlements that towered over the landscape, even as the industrious Sylt now towered over their animal-like ancestors. They raised cities from within the darkest and most ancient forests, beneath ice-covered plains and buried deeper still beneath the cool earth. They carved cities out of solid-rock cliff faces in the valleys of high mountain ranges. Cities rose upon stilts over swamplands bridging the salty ocean and sweetwater rivers, and upon palm foundations over coral reefs in the tropical archipelagos.
Yet, of all the lands of Dellreigh, none shone brighter in Aethelron’s eyes than the continent of Celestia Gar. A special line of Sylt he anointed there to rule, along with an order of high priests in service to his angels to watch over them. A great and powerful kingdom emerged from the seed the God of Small Things had planted.
The Empire of House Delgard was the greatest their world had ever known. At its height, her borders stretched from sea to mountain range along more than five hundred miles of Celestia Gar’s eastern coastline.
A union of five major prov
inces, the political and religious heart was located high on the inland plateau. From the mountain capital of Sanufell, the line of House Delgard – blessed of ancient Aethelron – ruled over the united provinces: Royal Fellensia; ice-covered Norsteigh on its northern border; the agricultural heartland of Geldonia to the east; and distant Braythorn and Tarador, whose forces guarded the Empire’s south-western and southern flanks respectively against the hostile Kardacians, wild nomads from Celestia Gar’s rugged desert centre.
Also within the Delgardian Empire’s borders was the autonomous province of Florenmeer: impenetrable swamplands inhabited by the reclusive Spackles, a curious race of Sylt who honoured a fragile alliance with surrounding Geldonia and Braythorn.
The only area within its borders entirely outside of House Delgard’s control was Adensee, a large saltwater inlet joined to the Fathomsong Sea by a narrow channel cursed with king tides and shifting sandbanks. Ruling these treacherous inland waterways from the marshland stilt city of Adenstatt were the ferociously independent Corsairs, a tribe of seafarers whose origins were said to be linked to an unknown island continent beyond the eastern horizon.
“By Sea, By Sand, By Sky.”
With the looming wall of Hycliffe framing their right flank, the overloaded tramp led the boys at stitch-inducing pace through the upper quarter of industrial Parchmond. Hopskotch struggled to keep up, distracted by Dobbin’s sarcastic one-liners and relentless whining, which added an unnecessary soundtrack to the scene.
It still surprised the Syltling to observe how deserted the streets were. Even in the middle of a public holiday, the out-of-towner never realised Bridgetown could be so quiet. Since leaving Bellows’ hideout, only a few other Sylt had crossed their paths: delivery workers, mostly, navigating two-wheeled drays through the cobblestone streets downhill to Market Square. Happily, they encountered no cadets.