Stormchaser (9 page)

He kept on, whispering words of encouragement to himself as he went. ‘Just a little bit further. Just a teeny bit more.’

‘How's it going?’ he heard his father call.

‘Nearly there,’ he shouted back.

‘League ship back on one hundred strides, and closing,’ came Spiker's latest update.

Trembling with anticipation, Twig reached forwards, and pulled the clump of rope hard to one side. The weight should be swinging free. If he could just … He inched forwards and pushed the back of the huge knot with the heel of his hand. Suddenly it gave, the rope came loose, the weight swung down and … fell completely away. Twig gasped in absolute horror as the huge, round circle of iron tumbled off through the air, down to the forest below.

‘What have you done?’ came a voice. It was Cloud Wolf, and he sounded furious.

‘I … I…’ Twig began. The sky ship was rolling from end to end and reeling from port to starboard, completely out of control. It was all Twig could do to hang on. What
had
he done?

‘You’ve only gone and released the rudder-wheel!’ Cloud Wolf yelled. ‘For Sky's sake, Twig! I thought that Mugbutt was stupid!’

Twig quaked under the barrage of insults and recriminations. Scalding tears welled in his eyes, tears he couldn’t wipe away for fear of losing his grip. Then again, he thought miserably, wouldn’t it be better simply to let go, to disappear? Anything, rather than face his father's wrath.

‘Twig! Can you hear me, lad?’ came a second voice. It was Tem Barkwater. ‘We’re going to have to ditch our cargo. That means opening the hull-doors. You’d better get yourself out of there sharpish!’

Ditch the cargo! Twig's heart sank and his tears flowed more freely than ever. The ironwood which had taken so much effort – and money – to acquire would have to go. And all because of him.

‘Come on!’ Tem screamed.

Twig climbed feverishly back along the hull-rigging, hand over hand, foot over foot, until he was climbing upright once more. He looked up. Tem Barkwater's huge red hand was reaching down for him. He grasped it gratefully and gasped as he was pulled back onto the deck. ‘Right-ho, cap’n!’ Tem cried.

Twig went to smile his thanks, but the sky pirate had already turned away, unable to meet his gaze. No cargo meant no wages. And, though squalid, Undertown was not the place to be with neither money nor the means to make it.

‘Open the hull-doors!’ Cloud Wolf commanded.

‘Aye-aye, cap’n,’ came the voice of Stope Boltjaw from the hold. Then, from deep within the bowels of the ship, there came the clanking of chains, followed by a rumbling
thud-thud-thud
.

Twig looked away guiltily. It was the ironwood logs tumbling, one after the other, through the gap beneath the hull as the doors were slowly cranked open. He glanced over the side. As he did so, the rest of the load was abruptly discharged. A strange and deadly precipitation, it tumbled back down to the Deepwoods from where it had come.

On seeing what was taking place just in front of them, the league ship immediately gave up the chase and swooped down after the falling logs. A load that size was not to be sniffed at. Twig's misery was complete. The
Stormchaser
's loss had turned to the league ship's gain.

‘Can’t we go down and battle it out with them?’ Twig asked. ‘I’m not afraid.’

Cloud Wolf turned on him with a look of utter contempt. ‘We have no rudder-wheel,’ he said. ‘No control. It's only the flight-rock keeping us skyborne at all.’ He turned away. ‘Raise the mainsheets,’ he bellowed. ‘Square the bidgets – and pray. Pray like you’ve never prayed before. An untimely squall and it won’t be just the cargo we lose. It’ll be the
Stormchaser
itself.’

No-one spoke a word as the sky ship limped back to Undertown. It was the slowest and most nail-biting trip that Twig had ever endured. Darkness had fallen by the time the fuzzy lights of Sanctaphrax came into view. Below it, Undertown seethed and gagged beneath a heavy pall of smoke. And still the silence continued. Twig felt wretched. It would have been better if the sky pirates had ranted and raved, called him every name under the Sky – anything but this deathly hush.

There were patrol boats around, but none took any notice of the crippled sky ship as it headed in towards the boom-docks. With its hull-doors still open, the craft clearly had nothing to hide.

Cloud Wolf steered the
Stormchaser
into its concealed berth, Stope Boltjaw dropped anchor, and Spiker jumped
down onto the raised jetty to secure the ship's tolley-ropes to the tether-rings. The crew disembarked.

‘Outstanding, Master Twig!’ Slyvo Spleethe hissed as he passed him by. Twig shuddered, but the comment was only to be expected. Spleethe had never liked him. Worse, by far, were the averted eyes of the others. He shuffled miserably after them towards the gangplank.

‘Not you, Twig,’ said Cloud Wolf sharply. Twig froze. Now he was for it! He turned round, hung his head – and waited. Only when the last sky pirate had departed, did Cloud Wolf speak.

‘That I should live to see the day when my son – my own son – should scupper a sky ship,’ he said.

Twig swallowed hard, but the tears would not go away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

‘Sorry? What good is sorry?’ Cloud Wolf thundered. ‘We’ve lost the ironwood, the rudder-wheel – we almost lost the
Stormchaser
itself. And I still might.’ His eye glinted like hard flint. ‘I’m ashamed to call you my son.’

The words struck Twig like a blow to the back of the neck. ‘Ashamed to call me your son?’ he said and, as he spoke, his distress turned to anger. He looked up boldly. ‘So, what's new?’ he demanded.

‘How dare you!’ Cloud Wolf raged, his face turning purple.

But Twig did dare. ‘You’ve never acknowledged to anyone, ever, that you’re my father,’ he said. ‘Does that mean you’ve always been ashamed of me, ever since the moment we first found each other? Does it? Well, does it? Tell me it does and I’ll leave, now.’

Cloud Wolf remained silent. Twig turned to go.

‘Twig!’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘Wait.’ Twig stopped. ‘Turn and face me, boy,’ he said. Twig turned slowly round. He stared up at his father defiantly.

Cloud Wolf stared back, a twinkle in his eye. ‘That was well said,’ he told him. ‘You are right. I have not acknowledged who you are on board the ship. But not for the reason you suppose. There are those who would mutiny given half a chance, and take the
Stormchaser
for themselves. If they found out what…’ He paused. ‘How important you are to me – for you
are
important to me, Twig. You should know that.’

Twig nodded and sniffed. The lump in his throat was back.

‘If they found that out, it would put your own life in the gravest danger.’

Twig let his head hang. How could he ever have doubted what his father felt for him? Now
he
was the one who felt ashamed. He looked up and smiled sheepishly. ‘Can I stay, then?’ he said.

Cloud Wolf's face creased up with concern. ‘I meant it when I said I still might lose the
Stormchaser
,’ he said.

‘But how?’ said Twig. ‘Why? It's your sky ship, isn’t it? I thought you took it on the day of your inauguration.’

Cloud Wolf snorted. ‘It costs a lot to keep a sky ship
aloft,’ he said. ‘And ever since that infestation of woodbugs, the
Stormchaser
has been in debt up to the top of her pretty caternest. I was depending on the ironwood to pay off some of the money I owe. No,’ he sighed, ‘if anyone owns the
Stormchaser
, it's Mother Horsefeather. She's the one who finances us. And rakes off most of the profits into the bargain,’ he added with a scowl. ‘And now I can’t pay her, she might well decide to take back what's rightfully hers.’

Twig was appalled. ‘But she can’t,’ he cried.

‘Oh, but she can,’ said Cloud Wolf. ‘What's more, she’d make sure I never got credit anywhere else. And what is a sky pirate captain without a sky ship, Twig? Eh? I’ll tell you. Nothing. That's what he is. Nothing at all.’

Twig turned his head away, distraught. His father – once the finest Knight Academic Sanctaphrax had ever seen, now the greatest sky pirate in the Edge – was staring ignominy in the face. And he, Twig, was to blame. It was
all
his fault.

‘I’m…’

‘Just don’t say you’re sorry again,’ Cloud Wolf interrupted. ‘Come on. Let's go and get this over with,’ he said gruffly. ‘I just hope the old buzzard's not in too greedy a mood. And remember,’ he said, as he strode off towards the gangplank, ‘when we’re sat down talking with Mother Horsefeather in the Bloodoak tavern, you be careful what you say – or even think. I swear the walls in there have ears!’

• CHAPTER FIVE •
T
HE
B
LOODOAK
T
AVERN

C
reak, creak, creak
, the tavern sign protested as it swung to and fro in the gathering wind. Twig glanced up and flinched. The sign was – as might have been expected – an artist's impression of a bloodoak, a terrible flesh-eating tree. And a very good impression it was, too, Twig admitted with a shudder. The glistening bark, the glinting mandibles – every time he saw the picture of the tree, he could almost
smell
the rank, met-allic stench of death oozing from it.

For Twig knew all about bloodoaks. Once, lost in the Deepwoods, he had fallen victim to a particularly gruesome specimen. It had swallowed him whole and would have eaten him alive had it not been for his hammelhornskin waistcoat, which had bristled at the danger and jammed in the monster's throat. Trembling at the memory, he asked himself why anyone would want to
name a tavern after so disgusting a creation.

‘Are you going to stand there gawping all night?’ Cloud Wolf snapped impatiently as he pushed past his son. ‘Let's go in.’

As he threw the door open –
BOOF
! – a burst of energy exploded from the room. Heat. Noise. Light. And a heavy cocktail of smells, both fragrant and foul. Twig reeled backwards from the blast. No matter how many times he visited the Bloodoak tavern, he would never get used to the shock of that first moment.