Clash of the Sky Galleons (41 page)

The high-hats nodded uncertainly. What, they wondered, was to stop that actually happening?

‘As usual, those arrogant upstarts will expect us to flee back to Undertown to lick our wounds,’ Ruptus went on. ‘Then, little by little, the leagues’ resolve will weaken and we’ll begin to use their services again - just as we always have. And before we know it, they’ll be back in Undertown, in their taverns, smirking at us behind our backs … But not this time!’ he bellowed.

Ruptus brought his huge fist down on the table with a resounding crash that set the high hats of the leagues-masters trembling on their heads like startled reed eels.

‘This time it’ll be different!’

‘But how?’ queried Renton Brankridge, his large
flabby face reddening. ‘High Master Marl Mankroyd tried smashing the sky pirates in “the Battle of the Great Sky Whale,” and perished in the attempt …
You
should remember that, High Master. After all, you were there … How will this battle be any different?’

Ruptus’s own face reddened and contorted with suppressed rage at the painful memory of that defeat, and his own humiliation at the hands of the great sky pirate captain, Wind Jackal. His great fists clenched, his one good eye blazed - and Renton Brankridge’s high hat trembled uncontrollably.

Just then, from the far side of the table, there came the teeth-jarring sound of sharp ened finger-spikes being scraped across ironwood. All eyes turned in the direction of the appalling sound.

Ruptus’s deputy, Imbix Hoth, the High Master of the Leagues of Flight, stood up and crossed the chamber to the tall windows and threw one open. Far below, from the direction of the sky-shipyards in Eastern Undertown, came the sounds of sawing, drilling and frenzied hammerblows as priceless bloodoak timber was fashioned and worked, and fitted into place.

‘How will this battle be different?’ Imbix Hoth sneered, his features twisted into an unpleasant leer as he pointed towards the great sky cradles in the distance with his long, cruel finger-spikes. ‘Let me tell you …’

A short while later, the magnificent curved stairway was full of clamour and uproar as the high-hatted leagues-masters clattered down its steps, chattering excitedly.

‘Plunder for all!’ babbled Ellerex Earthclay, the young Master of the League of Melders and Moulders. ‘The sky pirate armada to be split up between the leagues!’

‘We’ll smash a few,’ laughed Rustus Xintax, a wizened master of a minor barrel and cask-making league. ‘But the rest’ll surrender. I’ve my eye on the
Fogscythe.
Make a perfect slave-rider!’ He chuckled nastily.

‘There’ll be plenty to go round!’ laughed his companion as they joined the high-hatted throng spilling through the great door of the Leagues Palace, down the statue-lined steps and off towards the bustling boom-docks.

From the doorway, Ruptus Pentephraxis and Imbix Hoth watched them go, looks of sly satisfaction on their faces.

‘Stupid, greedy fools,’ sneered Imbix, with a thin smile. ‘Once the sky pirates are crushed …’

‘We shall take the sky pirate armada for ourselves, dear Imbix,’ growled Pentephraxis. ‘And then our plans can
really
grow.’

Imbix followed the brutish leaguesmaster’s gaze upwards towards the great floating city of Sanctaphrax, and stifled a high-pitched giggle.

‘Indeed, Ruptus, and I look forward to that,’ he said. He turned. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must gather my hatch-lings and prepare for our voyage … Brummel, my hat!’

Imbix’s hat-tipper raised his staff and steadied the leaguesmaster’s hat as he hurried down the steps after him. Ruptus remained for a moment staring up at the floating city, a faraway look in his eye, before a hand on his shoulder brought him back down to earth.

‘Father!’ came a gruff voice. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

Ruptus turned to see his son, Ulbus - stocky, thin-lipped and hard-eyed - staring back at him. The lad was as brutal and cruel as his father but sadly lacked both his tactical brilliance and driving ambition.

‘What do you want, Ulbus?’ Ruptus snarled. ‘The fleet’s about to set sail.’

‘Come with me, Father,’ said Ulbus, eager as always to win his father’s approval, ‘down to the cellars …’

‘The cellars?’ said Ruptus impatiently.

‘It’ll be worth it, I promise!’ urged Ulbus, pulling his father by the arm.

Grumbling in his deep growling voice, Ruptus followed his son back inside the Leagues Palace and down the steps into the vast kitchen in the cellars, where brow-beaten goblin matrons scuttled away into the shadows at their approach. In a gloomy recess by the great furnace, a figure in a heavy coat -collar raised and wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his face - sat hunched on a copperwood chopping-stump.

‘Father,’ said Ulbus, ‘allow me to introduce Turbot Smeal…’

Ruptus stared at the shadowy figure, then recoiled as the flickering furnace light illuminated a hideous, pitted face - deep sunken eye-sockets and glinting fangs. As if aware of his disfigurement, the figure looked down, pulling his coat collar up further and hunching his shoulders.

‘Torcher of the Western Quays!’ Ruptus growled. ‘What brings you back to Undertown after so many years? The smell of burning taverns?’

Turbot Smeal shook his head, reached into his greatcoat and drew out a blood-stained bicorne hat. He threw it at Ruptus’s feet. The High Master bent down and picked it up.

‘Wind Jackal’s hat,’ he murmured, turning it over in his great gauntleted hands. ‘This can only mean…’

‘Dead!’ rasped Turbot Smeal from the shadows, his voice muffled but distinct. ‘By
my
hand.’

Ruptus smiled and nodded his great scarred head.

‘I knew you’d be pleased, Father,’ broke in Ulbus, excitedly. ‘Turbot found me in the boom-docks, told me all about it! How he’d hunted Wind Jackal down, lured him to a sky wreck and cut him down! He’s heard of the purge and the leagues fleet, and he wants to sail with us, Father…’

Ruptus raised his hand to silence his son, and turned to Smeal.

‘Turbot Smeal, traitor, fire-starter and assassin…’ he growled, his one good eye glinting in the furnace light. ‘Most hated and reviled individual in all of Undertown…’ Ruptus paused, then laughed unpleasantly. ‘I like your style. Tell me, what price do you put on your services?’

The hunched figure rose, and once more shot a look of hideous disfigurement towards the High Master in the flickering light.

‘The
Galerider,’
he rasped.

‘The gloamglozer rock!’ shouted Spillins from the cater-nest, as the sinister-shaped landmark came into view. ‘Two hundred strides, and closing …’

The winds howled across the Edgeland pavement as the
Galerider
plunged into swirling cloud so thick that, for a moment, everything disappeared from view. At the helm, the young sky pirate captain swallowed anxiously.

‘Father, watch over and protect me,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Protect us all…’

Quint let his fingers play over the flight-levers. He brought in the sails slightly so that they wouldn’t become saturated. He raised the prow-weights and lowered those at the stern - all just as Wind Jackal had taught him. This was his first time without his father that he was attempting to enter Wilderness Lair on his own.

What if he judged it wrongly and the
Galerider
hit the looming gloamglozer rock that rose up from the very edge? Or worse, what if he set too much sail and the howling winds drove them far out beyond the edge and off to a point of no return?

Quint swallowed again. He was Captain Cloud Wolf now, young sky pirate captain of the
Galerider,
and his crew were depending on him. There was Hubble the banderbear, his new bodyguard, standing behind him -massive, yet still only half grown. Maris, quartermistress and ship’s doctor, wise beyond her years, and faithful old Spillins, ship’s elder, on constant watch above. Good old Duggin, now a deckhand and second-mate to young Tem Barkwater, the harpooneer. The Stone Pilot, behind her hood, was as inscrutable as ever, but now fully recovered, the most dependable member of the crew. And then there were the three new recruits …

Quint smiled and his heart leaped. Stope, Raffix and Phin. The Winter Knights!

When Quint had delivered the consignment of blood-oak timber to the sky-shipyard, honouring his father’s contract, the sinister yardmaster, Thelvis Hollrig, had let slip that a purge of sky pirates was about to begin and
that they should get out of town. Quint hadn’t needed telling twice. He’d taken the
Galerider -
light now without its great load - up into the sky as the first tavern fires had begun.

Hollrig, counting out a fortune in gold, had gleefully mentioned the great leagues fleet gathering in the boom-docks, and Quint knew he had to warn the sky pirates fleeing to Wilderness Lair of its approach. It would be a hard, tiring flight out to the Edgelands, and the
Galerider
‘s depleted crew would not be enough …

There was only one place to go.

Quint had flown up to the floating city and sought the help of his old comrades at the Knights Academy. Stope, master forge-hand, dropped his tools at once and came running. He would man the aft-deck and grappling-hooks. Phin, the academic-at-arms, left the Academy Barracks and took up his position beside Tem at the harpoon, with the great crossbow and fore-deck hooks now under his control. Then there was Raffix - proud young knight academic - as Quint’s second-in-command, ready to take the helm or lead a boarding-party as the occasion demanded.

The three of them had come gladly and without so much as a backward glance, delighted to help an old comrade in his hour of need - even though Quint knew how much the great floating rock meant to them. He swallowed hard again as the clouds thinned. Whatever lay ahead, he was determined not to let any of them down. He would get the Winter Knights safely back to Sanctaphrax once this voyage was over.

‘Father, protect us all,’ he murmured again, fingering the blackwood amulet which hung around his neck.

‘Wilderness Lair, thirty degrees to port!’ Spillins shouted down from the caternest as the clouds continued to thin, the closer the
Galerider
got to the very edge.

Quint stared down at the scene below him as he brought the
Galerider
round in a sharp curve to port, his heart singing. It occurred to him that, with the exception of Spillins, he was the only one on board who had seen the sight of Wilderness Lair before - and what a sight it was!

Far beneath, where the rock cliff dropped away into nothing, was a great gathering of sky pirate ships. There were already over two hundred there, with more latecomers emerging from the boiling clouds. Some had already moored, attaching themselves to the great steel eyelets that had been sunk into the rock. Others were coming in to land, making pinpoint adjustments to their sails and hull-weights as they battled with the unpredictable winds and air currents that threatened at any moment to dash them against the rock face. Inching closer by degrees, they would nuzzle up close to the rock and lower themselves into any gaps in the great flotilla.

‘Easy does it!’ Spillins shouted down as Quint brought his own vessel down close to the others. ‘Starboard a touch. That’s it. A little more …’ His voice was soft, encouraging. ‘Right, now hard to port and down.’

Both Quint at the helm and the Stone Pilot at the flight-rock platform reacted to his sudden command. Quint shoved three of the flight-levers forward, lowering all the
port-hull-weights, while the Stone Pilot gave the rock a sudden blast of heat from the burners.