Clash of the Sky Galleons (30 page)

‘Again he winked, and I had to admire his bare-faced audacity.

‘Sure enough, Captain Wind Jackal stepped forward and cleared his throat. He seemed embarrassed to have unsheathed his sword so readily.

‘ “Sister, I apologize if I was hasty,” he said. “I’m running a shipload of tallow candles. If you’ll accept a crate, perhaps we can consider this matter closed?”

‘Well, I’m not one to look a gift-prowlgrin in the mouth, I can tell you. A crate of the finest tallow candles, straight from Undertown? Why, I’d have been lucky to get a quarter of their value for the skinny bander-bear pup, and I knew it. Besides, with those blunt talons of mine, I wasn’t about to pick a fight, now was I?’

Sister Screechscale chuckled to herself and tapped the thumb-claw against the table-top, then scraped it, making a deep straight line and leaving a trail of splinters in its wake. The point was perfectly honed. No one who fell into her clutches now would stand a chance.

‘So I kept my beak shut and took the candles. Thaw Daggerslash and the banderbear went off with Captain Wind Jackal and his crew. That young rogue was laughing and joking as if he hadn’t a care in the world, Feckle. But then I’m not complaining, because Thaw
Daggerslash taught me a valuable lesson …’

‘What lesson is that, pride of my nest?’

‘To keep my wits sharp,’ clucked Sister Screechscale, ‘and my talons sharper!’

• CHAPTER FOURTEEN •
THAW DAGGERSLASH

Hauling up the log-baits, I see,’ came a cheery voice from the direction of the fore-deck of the sky ship. Quint looked up - his brow furrowed and beaded with sweat - and smiled as he saw Thaw Daggerslash descending the steps from the flight-rock platform to join him on the aft-deck.

‘Here, let me help,’ Thaw offered, taking the chain from Quint and reeling it in, hand over hand.

After a few moments, the lufwood log attached to the end of the long chain appeared at the balustrade. Its surface was crawling with air-borne creatures of every type. Clusters of transparent mist-barnacles clung to the knotty bark beside wind snappers, whose curved claws were withdrawn into their flat white shells. And oozing from the wood itself, their bodies rhythmically convulsing, were gelatinous sky worms with long tentacles that entwined in great wriggling clumps.

The log, trailed on the end of the chain in the sky ship’s wake, had attracted the strange drifting creatures
of Open Sky that would otherwise have attached themselves to the
Galerider’s
hull. Regular log-baiting was essential to keep a sky ship flight-worthy but lowering and hauling the logs was back-breaking work.

‘This was Ratbit’s job,’ said Quint sadly. ‘He loved hauling the log-baits in and examining what they’d caught…’

‘Can’t see the attraction myself,’ said Thaw, with a flashing smile. ‘Ugly little blighters, the lot of them, if you ask me.’

The handsome young sky pirate grasped the seething, squirming log-bait with long iron callipers and unhooked it from the chain.

‘Shame about Ratbit. Heard he was a fine deckhand and cargo steward,’ said Thaw, his piercing blue eyes suddenly serious. ‘The sort of crew-member a captain hates to lose …’

Quint nodded. ‘We
all
miss him,’ he said. ‘Ratbit was a good friend.’

‘Pity about the quartermaster, too - and the goblin,’ said Thaw, absentmindedly turning the log-bait round on the end of the callipers, and reaching into his pocket for his sky-crystals. ‘To lose a deckhand is unfortunate,’ he mused, ‘but to be forced to “earth” your ship, and then to lose a quartermaster of Filbus Queep’s reputation, along with a fearsome fighting goblin …’

‘What are you trying to say?’ said Quint, feeling his cheeks beginning to flush.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Thaw lightly. ‘Your father’s just been very unlucky, that’s all.’

He shot Quint a dazzling smile and struck the skycrystals
against the iron callipers. A spark sprang across to the lufwood log-bait, which fizzled for a moment, before flaring with a bright purple flame. Thaw released the callipers’ grip, and the burning log, together with its wriggling passengers, shot up high into the sky, before disappearing into the clouds.

‘Ratbit always separated the hull-vermin from the innocent wind creatures before he sky-fired a log-bait,’ said Quint quietly.

‘Did he indeed?’ said Thaw, handing Quint the chain and clapping him heartily on the back. ‘What a very fine deckhand old Ratbit was, to be sure!’ He paused for a moment. ‘Better hook up another log and lower it, there’s a good fellow. I’ve grown very fond of the
Galerider,’
he added. ‘I’d hate her hull to go unprotected.’ He laughed and strode off towards the door to the aft-cabins.

Once inside, Thaw Daggerslash quietly climbed down the ladder and stood for a moment outside the infirmary cabin, his head cocked to one side as he listened to the soft murmur of voices within. Then, reaching into one of the pockets in his greatcoat, he pulled out a small, silver salve-box and tapped it lightly on the lid, before knocking on the cabin door and entering.

The figure of the Stone Pilot - looking impossibly small and fragile without the heavy apron, gauntlets and hood - lay in a sumpwood cradle tethered to the cabin wall. Hyleberry-infused cloth covered her from head to foot, her intense dark eyes glittering through a narrow slit in the bandages. Beside her sat Maris, a small kettle in her hands. The kettle bubbled as she warmed it over a
tallow candle, and an aromatic steam rose from its long spout.

‘How are my favourite crew-members today?’ Thaw smiled warmly ‘I was just passing, and wondered whether you might like this.’

He held out the silver salve-box. At the sight of the handsome young sky pirate, Maris broke into a beaming smile of her own and visibly flushed. Beside her, the Stone Pilot gave a muffled sigh and raised a white mittened hand in greeting.

‘Oh, how thoughtful, Captain Daggerslash!’ Maris exclaimed, taking the salve-box and flipping the lid open. ‘Cloudberry balm! Perfect for easing inflammation of the joints …’

‘And cooling fever,’ Thaw went on for her, ‘especially when burn-related. I should know!’ he added with a laugh. ‘I’ve picked up a fair few burns just lately.’

From the sumpwood cradle, the Stone Pilot gave a small groan and tried to sit up.

‘Please, my dear Stone Pilot!’ said Thaw, kneeling down beside her. ‘Don’t distress yourself. I might be a little clumsy with the flight-burners, but your beloved flight-rock is safe and well in my care, I assure you.’

He patted her lightly on the arm, seemingly oblivious to her shiver of pain at his touch.

‘Now, you must concentrate all your efforts on getting well, and not worry about a thing. After all…’ Thaw shot a dazzling smile at a blushing Maris. ‘You have the finest nurse anyone could wish for - she has the expert touch of a gabtroll, but twice as soft…’

‘You’re very kind, Captain Daggerslash,’ said Maris quietly, refilling the little kettle with aromatic sallow-drop water and placing it back over the candle.

‘Alas, a captain no longer,’ said Thaw, getting up and giving them each a low bow. ‘But perhaps, one day, a captain once more.’

He left the small cabin and closed the door quietly behind him before pausing as he caught the unmistakable smell of burning tilder sausages. Thaw hurried up the ladder and made his way to the
Galerider’s
galley, bursting through the door.

‘Tem Barkwater!’ he exclaimed with a hearty laugh. ‘If it isn’t my favourite galley-slave! Now, let’s see if we can’t rescue these sausages before they all turn to charcoal…!’

The
Galerider
rose on the warm air currents, the patched spider-silk sails ragged but billowing as they filled with
the following wind. The damaged ironwood mast -lovingly bound by Spillins - creaked and groaned, but held firm as the mighty sky ship sailed on, lighter now after delivering her cargo of tallow candles to the Great Shryke Slave Market.

At the
Galerider’s
centre, the warm flight-rock wheezed fitfully as the steady burners kept its temperature constant. Without the expert hand of the Stone Pilot to tend it, the rock had become a dull, lifeless thing, keeping the great sky ship airborne, but little else. At the helm, the figure of Captain Wind Jackal stood erect and vigilant. Given the inadequately tended flight-rock, his job was all the more exacting. His fingers moved constantly across the flight-levers on either side of the ship’s wheel, making adjustments, not just for the hull-weights, rudder and sails, but for the dormant flight-rock as well.

It was ceaseless work, but Wind Jackal refused to leave his post even for a moment. The
Galerider
was his ship and the crew was his responsibility. This voyage had tested his captaincy to the very limit, and there had been times when even he - the great Captain Wind Jackal -had felt his resolve weakening and his courage failing. He had lost three brave and loyal crew-members, and the memory of their deaths would haunt him for the rest of his days, he was certain of that.

But he was a sky pirate captain, and such tragedies had to be accepted. What he found harder to take; what made his heart contract within his chest as if grasped by the icy talons of a shryke-sister, was the dark panic of almost
losing his son, Quint, together with Maris, the daughter of his best friend. The seemingly endless hours that had passed when he’d thought they were lost for ever had been, without a shadow of a doubt, the blackest of his life.

Even after their rescue, the memory of that black despair nagged away at Wind Jackal. It made his hands tremble over the flight-levers; it drenched his body in a cold clammy sweat, while lighting a fiery furnace in the pit of his stomach that seemed to consume his strength from within. But just as he fought with the wheel and flight-levers to keep the
Galerider
on a steady course, so Wind Jackal fought the raging panic within himself, and gradually, as the seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned to hours, he felt his sanity slowly returning, while the sky ship sailed on over the endless Deepwoods.

For three days they journeyed, sailing by day and anchoring up by night, and leaving the stench and misery of the shryke market behind them like a bad dream. Up over the high ridges they’d climbed, across the lakes and the glade country beyond, towards the great Timber Stands of the woodtrolls and deep forest clans. As the sun rose on the fourth day and a fair wind filled the
Galerider
‘s sails, Wind Jackal felt his spirits start to rise lift.

‘Report, Master Spillins!’ he shouted to the oakelf, who, ever since they’d left the slave market, had kept to his caternest as determinedly as he, Wind Jackal, had kept to the helm.

‘Timber Stands on the horizon, Captain,’ Spillins announced. ‘Can’t see any pathways yet, but I’ll keep looking.’

‘One path leads to all!’ Wind Jackal called back, his spirits lifting all the time.