Midnight Over Sanctaphrax (2 page)

‘Sleet!’ Twig called back. ‘We are all in this together. Just make sure those tolley-ropes are securely cleated.’

Muttering under his breath, the quartermaster went to do the young captain's bidding. On the lower deck, he found a heavy flat-head goblin clinging to the rigging, its eyes white with fear.

‘Nothing to worry about, Bogwitt,’ Sleet said through gritted teeth. ‘If our young captain really does believe that that great scraggy bird can lead us to his long-lost father rather than to certain death in the heart of the vortex, then who are we to argue?’

‘Who indeed!’ shouted a stocky figure with the telltale flame-red skin and hair of a Deepwoods slaughterer. ‘You signed on with Captain Twig, just like the rest of us. And I reckon, just like the rest of us, you saw something special in him - like he saw something special in each of us. We're the chosen few, we are, and we'll see this through to the end.’

‘Yes, well,’ replied Sleet uncertainly. ‘The end seems rather closer than I'd expected.’

‘Vortex, a hundred thousand strides and closing,’ came the nerve-racked voice of Spooler from the caternest.

‘It's all right to be afraid, Sleet,’ murmured a soft, hissing voice from the shadows behind them.

Sleet dropped the tolley-rope and turned. ‘Reading my thoughts again, were you, Woodfish?’ he said.

Woodfish recoiled. He was a slight, reptilian individual with webbed hands and feet and enormous fanned ears which were constantly aquiver.

‘I can't help it,’ he apologized. ‘It's what we water-waifs do. And I can tell you this, too. The young captain knows this caterbird well. He was there at its hatching, and for that the creature is bound to watch over him as long as they both shall live. It was the caterbird who discovered Twig's father marooned in a wreck of a ship in
open sky. It enlisted Captain Twig's help, and he enlisted ours. We are behind him all the way. Besides,’ he added, ‘the caterbird knows what it's doing - even though its thoughts are a bit tricky to read.’

‘Oh, well, that makes me feel much better,’ Wingnut Sleet replied sarcastically.

‘I know,’ said Woodfish quietly. ‘I can read your thoughts quite clearly’

Sleet's smile froze, and his sallow cheeks reddened.

‘The tolley-ropes, Sleet!’ shouted Twig.

The young captain stared ahead into the great open void. The Stormchaser, his father's sky pirate ship was out there somewhere, deeper in open sky than any sky ship had ever sailed before, and he would find it, whatever it took.

They had already travelled for twenty days and twenty nights, with the caterbird out ahead, leading them on unfalteringly into the treacherous void. Now, as the pink light from the rising sun spread out across the sky on that twenty-first morning, the seemingly tireless creature was taking them still further. And all the while, the winds were becoming more and more unpredictable as the dominant south-westerlies collided with the tunnel of air coming in from the east.

‘Take the helm, Goom,’ Twig said to the great shaggy mountain of hair and tusks standing behind him. Every sky pirate captain needed a faithful lieutenant, and Goom the banderbear was Twig's. ‘Hold a steady course. We've got to keep on after the caterbird.’

Goom grunted, his feathery ears fluttering.

Twig turned his attention to the two rows of bone-handled levers that controlled the sky ship. With dextrous expertise, his hands played over them - raising the stern-weight and lowering the prow-weight; lowering the starboard hull-weights, small, medium and large, as far as they would go, while raising their counterparts on the port side completely

The sky ship dipped and listed sharply to starboard as Twig attempted to follow the caterbird's erratic path. Cries
of alarm went up from the lower decks. Twig gritted his teeth and concentrated. Flying a sky ship was a difficult skill at the best of times, but with a vortex looming in from open sky, Twig was being tested to the limit.

With one hand, he positioned the neben- and klute-hull-weights. With the other, he adjusted the angles of the sails - tilting the staysail, slackening off the mainsail, bringing the jib gently round … Easy does it…

‘Angle, speed and balance,’ Twig muttered to himself.
They were the three fundamentals of skysailing. Yet as the wind became more turbulent with every passing minute, it was difficult to maintain any of them.

‘Harder to starboard, Goom!’ Twig bellowed, as he realigned the hull-weights. ‘We've got to maintain the angle of …’

All at once a fearsome juddering went through the sky ship. The hull creaked, the masts trembled. Abruptly it flipped up and listed to the other side.

‘Tether down!’ Twig bellowed at his crew. At any moment, the Edgedancer could turn turvey - and, with no land below them, anyone who fell would fall for ever.

Spooler, the oakelf, disappeared into the caternest. Wingnut Sleet grabbed a tolley-rope and lashed himself to the fore-mast. Tarp Hammelherd the slaughterer and Woodfish the waterwaif clung to the bowsprit, while Bogwitt the flat-head goblin simply threw back his head and howled.

At the centre of the ship, on a platform above the flight-rock, a figure in a great pointed hood and coat stood, calm and still and silent. This was the last member of Twig's crew - the Stone Pilot.

The wind buffeted the sky ship violently: now on the port bow, now on the starboard. Twig raised the prow-weight completely and held his breath.

For a moment, the Edgedancer juddered more violently than ever. But it remained upright. Heartened by this, Twig made fine adjustments to the mainsail and jib. The sky ship listed slightly to port and leapt forwards. The tether slackened off. In the distance, the caterbird flapped towards the great gaping chasm of the vortex.

‘Seventy-five thousand strides and closing,’ Spooler shouted out.

‘Stay tethered!’ Twig cautioned his crew loudly. ‘I don't want to lose anybody overboard.’

‘Anybody?’ Sleet mumbled. ‘More like everybody! We're all doomed if we pursue this foolish course.’

Tarp Hammelherd glared round at him. ‘Sleet!’ he warned.

Sleet stared back at him defiantly. ‘Someone's got to tell him,’ he said. ‘He's going to get us all killed.’

‘The captain knows what he's doing,’ said Tarp.
‘Besides, we've come too far to turn back now.’

Hearing the developing dispute, Twig looked round. He saw his crew, each one now tethered securely to the tolley-ropes. The fear in ‘ their eyes was unmistakable. His gaze fell on Tarp.

‘What's going on down there?’ he said.

‘Nothing, cap'n,’ said Tarp, with a shake of his shaggy red head. ‘Just Sleet here got a touch of the jitters.’

Wingnut Sleet turned and looked up. ‘So far as I'm aware,’ he said, ‘no captain has ever steered his sky ship into a weather vortex and lived to tell the tale.’

The others listened but remained silent. They were all too loyal - and grateful - to the captain to question his commands, yet their fear of the approaching weather storm kept them from leaping to his defence. Twig looked at them sadly.

How different the scene before him was now compared with the night the Edgedancer had set off on its long journey. Then, under a bright full moon, the entire crew had sat down together on the lower deck to a hearty supper of roast snowbird, wood pumpkin and blackbread. Their spirits were high, the woodale loosened their tongues, and they regaled one another with stories of their lives before Twig had signed them up to sail with him.

For the crew of the Edgedancer, this was their first voyage together. There was Spooler the oakelf - small, wary, but with vision so sharp he could spot a white raven in the mire at a thousand strides.

Goorn, the young banderbear, was already a giant, his tusks newly grown; a single blow from one of his massive paws could kill a ham-melhorn. And then Woodfish, the reptilian creature from the black depths of the Deepwoods whose fan-like ears heard everything, spoken or unspoken. Twig had rescued all three from the clutches of Flabsweat, an unsavoury retailer in exotic pets, and earned their lifelong gratitude in the process.