Midnight Over Sanctaphrax (20 page)

‘I think they're almost better,’ said Cowlquape.

The scab came away with the final twist of lint. Below it, the skin was smooth and soft. Jervis examined the hand critically in the lamplight before pronouncing it ‘good as new’.

‘Are we approaching the Great Shryke Slave Market yet?’ Cowlquape asked, as Jervis set to work on the second bandage.

‘Not approaching, as such,’ said Jervis, responsive for once. ‘But we're on-track, sure enough. Look-out spotted a market burn-out at sundown, so he did. Signs indicated the great market had flocked north-north-west. That's where we're heading.’

The left hand had healed just as well as the right,
Jervis was pleased to see. He ran a horny finger over the soft, pale skin. The sky ship listed abruptly to port and a beam of moonlight streamed in through the porthole. It passed over Cowlquape's outstretched hands.

‘S'posed to be lucky, that is,’ said Jervis. ‘The moon crossing your palm with silver. Back where I come from they say it means you'll live a long and prosp …’ He stopped, and Cowlquape thought he could see sorrow in the ancient goblin's expression. Abruptly he rose and left, fear obvious in his eyes, as if he had been about to say something unwise.

Cowlquape stared at the closed door nervously. Why had Jervis seemed so fearful? What had he been too afraid to say?

The soft oil lamplight bathed the cabin in shadowy orange. Cowlquape climbed to his feet, crossed to the porthole and flung it open again. Warm, luscious air -heavy with pinesap and lullabee mist - flooded inside. Cowlquape breathed in deeply and poked his head out through the circular window.

Below him, the canopy of trees stretched out as before like a vast sparkling sea in the bright moonlight. Cowlquape didn't know how far they had travelled nor how far there was still to go. He knew only that, if Jervis's pronouncements proved correct, he would soon be down there in the suffocating darkness beneath its leafy surface - in a place he'd never imagined he would ever visit. A shiver of fear and excitement ran through him. The dream was still fresh in his mind.

‘I can't wait to leave this great rolling sky ship,’ he
muttered to himself, ‘and get my feet back on solid ground. It's…’ He fell still, and squinted into the distance.

Before him, gleaming in the moonlight far ahead like a great bleached canker in the luxuriant green of the forest canopy, was a ragged patch of land where everything was dead. Cowlquape trembled. He had never before witnessed such barren desolation.

As the
Skyraider
drew closer, Thunderbolt Vulpoon bellowed out his orders to ‘fly in low’. Sails were lowered, hull-weights realigned, and the sky ship slowed to a woodslug's pace.

Cowlquape poked his head out of the porthole and looked down uneasily. The line separating the living forest and the lifeless clearing was crossed. ‘Sky above!’ he exclaimed.

Every single tree beneath him was dead. Some had been burned, some had been hollowed - others looked as if they had simply died, and stood now with their skeleton leaves clinging to their branches. Vast tracts had been scorched back to bare earth. Nothing lived there; nothing grew.

With the
Skyraider
flying down so close to the scarred, bleached forest, the area seemed unimaginably immense. All round, as far as the eye could see, the terrible desolation continued.

‘So the Great Shryke Slave Market has done all this,’ Cowlquape whispered tremulously.

When the sky ship was passing over the remains of a forest settlement, the captain commanded that they go in
especially close, for it was in the decimated villages such as this - in the stonefall and woodburn - that clues to the market's next resting place were to be found.

Cowlquape trembled with horror. Every tree had been felled, every well destroyed, every building had been razed to the ground. As for those who once inhabited the place - the gnokgoblins, mobgnomes, woodtrolls, or whatever - they were now all gone, captured by the bird-creatures and sold on as slaves. Now, only piles of rubble and heaps of charred wood indicated that a thriving village had once been here: that and the network of paths which radiated out from its former centre.

It was there - at the central-most point and sticking up out of the scorched ground like some giant black insect -that a gibbet of burnt timber stood, a bleached white skeleton strapped to its black crossbeam. A bone finger

pointed towards the moon, low on the horizon.

All at once a cry went up. ‘East-north-east!’

‘East-north-east!’ Cowlquape heard the captain repeat, and the
Skyraider
abruptly swung round to port and soared back up into the sky.

Beneath him, as the sky ship gathered speed, the dead area of forest receded and was finally left far behind. Cowlquape shuddered miserably. Having seen for himself the awful devastation it caused, the Great Shryke Slave Market was the last place in the Edge he now wanted to visit.

‘I think I'd sooner stay on board the
Skyraider,’
he muttered. Just then, the sky ship hit a patch of squally air and dipped sharply, rocking from side to side as it did so. Cowlquape groaned. His stomach gurgled ominously. ‘Then again …’ he murmured queasily.

BANG
!
BANG
!

The two heavy thuds on the door sounded as though someone was trying to batter it down. Cowlquape jumped and, remembering the look in Jervis's eyes, drew his dagger.

‘Wh… who i… is it?’ he asked.

The door was flung wide open. The great ragged brogtroll was standing in the corridor.

‘Oh, it's you,’ said Cowlquape.

‘Grimlock it be,’ came the reply as, stooping low, he shuffled into the cabin. He was carrying a tray, with an earthenware jug and two goblets on it, dwarfed by his massive hands. He looked round the cabin. ‘Where's the other one?’

‘Just stretching his legs,’ said Cowlquape, concealing the knife behind his back, but not returning it to its sheath. ‘He'll be back in a minute.’

Grimlock nodded. ‘Is good,’ he said. ‘The master said this be for the pair of you.’ He held the tray out. ‘Finest woodgrog gold can buy. Help you get a good night's sleep, he says.’

‘Th … thank you,’ said Cowlquape, eyeing the murky brew suspiciously. It was the first time Thunderbolt Vulpoon had concerned himself with the quality of their sleep. ‘If you just put it on that shelf over there I'll tell Twig directly he returns. As I say, he shouldn't be …’

At that moment Twig himself appeared in the doorway. ‘Cowlquape,’ he said breathlessly ‘We've got to talk…’

‘Twig!’ Cowlquape interrupted. ‘Just the person I was
hoping to see. Grimlock here,’ he said, flapping his hands towards the figure standing in the shadows, ‘has just brought us a jug of the captain's finest woodgrog.’ Twig nodded towards the brogtroll and smiled. ‘It's to help us get a good night's sleep,’ added Cowlquape meaningfully.

‘I'm sure it is,’ said Twig brightly.

‘Shall Grimlock pour some?’ the lumbering creature asked hopefully.

‘No,’ said Twig. ‘No, I think I shall save it for when I'm about to turn in. But thank you for offering, Grimlock.’ He crossed the cabin and sniffed at the jug. ‘Mmm, I'll look forward to that,’ he said, and looked up at the brogtroll. ‘The captain is too kind.’

Grimlock shook his head glumly. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘the master's not kind. Not him. He starves Grimlock, he does. Won't let him eat the cargo - not even the little-'uns.’

Twig looked at the great mountain of muscle in front of him. ‘You don't look starved,’ he said. ‘Could do with a new set of clothes maybe …’

‘Grimlock's always cold,’ the brogtroll complained. ‘The master sells the cargo's clothes.’

Cowlquape's jaw dropped. He turned to Twig, who nodded and frowned; he should remain silent.

‘Grimlock never gets them,’ the brogtroll continued. ‘Grimlock likes pretty clothes, he does. Nice pretty clothes to keep Grimlock warm. Grimlock likes your clothes.’

He reached out a meaty paw to brush Twig's hammel-hornskin
waistcoat. It bristled defensively.

‘Ouch!’
Grimlock wailed, and clutched his finger where the spiky hair of the waistcoat had drawn blood. ‘Not pretty!’ he exclaimed.

‘No,’ said Twig, smoothing down the ruffled fur. ‘This wouldn't suit you at all. In fact, I'd have thought a nice embroidered coat and a hat with a feather would be much more suitable.’

‘Yes, yes!’ said the brogtroll excitedly.

‘Grimlock!’ roared the captain's voice from above. ‘The cargo's getting restless again. Go and sort it out!’

‘Grimlock's starving,’ said the brogtroll. ‘Grimlock's cold. Grimlock would like a hat with a feather. Pretty’

‘You'd better go,’ said Twig. ‘Thank the captain for the woodgrog.’

The brogtroll shuffled out. The door shut. Cowlquape turned immediately to Twig. ‘Clothes!’ he exclaimed. ‘He talked about the cargo's clothes. And how many hammelhorns do you know that wear clothes?’

Without answering, Twig picked up the heavy earthenware jug and emptied its contents into the two goblets. Then he tipped them both out of the porthole. ‘Full of powdered sleeping-willow bark,’ he muttered. ‘Cowlquape, we are in great danger …’ He placed the empty jug back on the shelf. ‘I overheard a conversation
between Teasel, that mobgnome, and Stile,’ he continued. ‘That dead grove we recently passed over had a black gibbet with a skeleton strapped to its crossbeam. It meant one thing and one thing only. Our next stop will be the Great Shryke Slave Market itself.’

‘B … but that's good, isn't it?’ said Cowlquape uncertainly.

Twig sighed. ‘It should have been,’ he said. ‘Oh, Cowlquape, I feel so bad about bringing you into all this.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Cowlquape anxiously. ‘What else did you overhear?’

‘I've been stupid. Stupid and blind,’ Twig said. ‘All I could think about was finding my lost crew, and now…’ He gripped his young apprentice by the shoulder. ‘You were right all along, Cowlquape,’ he said. ‘The cargo we're carrying is not hammelhorns. It is slaves.’

Cowlquape took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I knew it,’ he said.

Twig sighed. ‘Just our luck to have stumbled across the most villainous of sky pirate captains ever to have taken to the air. Five dozen or more wretches he's got chained up in the lower hold of the ship,’ he said. ‘Mobgnomes, flat-head goblins, cloddertrogs … All bound for the market where they will be sold on to the highest bidder.’

‘And us?’ said Cowlquape. ‘Why didn't the captain simply have us thrown into the hold and clapped in irons with the rest?’

Twig looked away. ‘We're too valuable for that,’ he said quietly. ‘He doesn't want us damaged - the moment he saw us he must have made up his mind. He's a crafty one, I'll give him that.’ He turned back to Cowlquape. ‘We are to be sold to the roost-mother herself.’

‘The roost-mother?’ said Cowlquape.

‘The leader of the bird-creatures which rule the market,’ Twig replied. ‘She goes by the name of Mother Muleclaw. Apparently she is offering to pay highly -
very
highly - for specimens such as us. It's not every day that a Sanctaphrax academic is sold in the slave market!’

‘That was why he was so interested in our well-being,’ said Cowlquape. He stared down gloomily at the pale new skin on the palms of his hands. ‘And why he was so keen that my wounds should heal.’

Twig nodded. ‘And why the food has been so excellent,’ he said, and shuddered. ‘He's been fattening us up!’

• CHAPTER THIRTEEN •
MUTINY

T
wig stared out of the porthole as the
Skyraider
lurched and swayed onwards, tacking against the wind in the east-north-easterly direction the gruesome sign had pointed them in. A breeze got up. The moon sank low in the sky, sparkling on the forest canopy as the wind rippled its leafy surface. There was no sight of the slave market.

All round him, he could hear the sounds of the sky ship in flight. The whispering of the sails. The rhythmical tapping of the tolley-ropes. The creaking boards. The whistling rigging. The squeak and scurry of the rat-birds, deep down in the bowels of the ship. And something else … A deep, sonorous sound …