The Last of the Sky Pirates (12 page)

Rook felt a surge of excitement. ‘Are … are you a sky pirate?’ he asked hesitantly.

A throaty laugh went up. ‘Aye, lad. Long ago. A sky pirate captain, no less.’ He paused. ‘Not that that means anything these days – not since the Edge was stricken with stone-sickness.’

‘A
sky pirate captain
,’ Rook whispered in awe, and felt tingles of excitement running up and down his spine. What must it be like, he wondered, to have sailed in a sky pirate ship, with the sun in your face and the wind in your hair? He had often read, late into the night at the lecterns of the underground library, of the Great Voyages of Exploration into the darkest Deepwoods and the fearful dangers encountered there; of the series of Noble Flights out into Open Sky itself – and, of course, all about the fierce and terrible battles the sky pirates had fought with the wicked leaguesmen in their determination to keep the skies open for free trade.

Ships with names like
Galerider, Stormchaser
,
Windcutter, Edgedancer
and the
Great Sky Whale
, sailed by
legendary sky pirate captains. Ice Fox, Wind Jackal, Cloud Wolf. And, perhaps the most famous of them all, the great Captain Twig himself.

Rook stared more closely at the caged captain. Could
this
be the fabled Twig? Had the popular young captain he’d read so much about become the huge hairy hulk before him?

‘Are you Captain—’ he began.

‘Vulpoon,’ the sky pirate captain answered, his voice low, hushed. ‘Deadbolt Vulpoon. But keep it to yourself.’

Rook frowned.
Vulpoon
. There was something familiar about it.

A little smile played around the captain’s eyes. ‘I see you recognize my name,’ he said, unable to keep the pride from his voice. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Those flea-ridden featherballs that captured me had no idea the size of the fish they had landed. If they had, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.’ The sky pirate captain laughed. ‘If they knew it was Deadbolt Vulpoon in this stinking cage, they’d cart me off to the Wig-Wig Arena in the Eastern Roost faster than a three-master in a sky-storm.’ He played with one of the skulls in his thick beard. ‘Instead, they’ve left me to waste away like a common Mire raider.’

‘Can I help?’ asked Rook.

‘Thank you, lad, for the thought,’ said the pirate, ‘but unless you have the cage key of a shryke-sister, I’m done for like an oozefish on a mudflat.’ He stroked his beard. ‘There is one thing …’

‘Name it,’ said Rook.

‘You could stay and talk a while. Three days and three nights I’ve been here, and you’re the first who hasn’t been too frightened of shrykes to approach the cage.’ He paused. ‘Yours will probably be the last kind voice I’ll ever hear.’

‘Of course,’ said Rook. ‘It would be an honour.’ He slipped back into the nearby shadows and crouched down. ‘So, what was it like?’ he asked. ‘Skysailing.’

‘Skysailing?’ said Vulpoon, and sighed with deep longing. ‘Only the most incredible experience in the world, lad,’ he said. ‘Nothing compares to the feel of soaring up into the air and speeding across the sky, with the full sails creaking, the hull-weights whistling and the flight-rock – sensitive to every change in temperature – now rising, now falling. Angle, speed and balance, that’s what it was all about.’ He paused. ‘Until the flight-rocks began to fall to the stone-sickness, that is.’

Rook stared at the sky pirate captain’s crestfallen face.

‘A terrible time, it was,’ he continued. ‘Of course, we’d known what was happening to the new floating rock of Sanctaphrax for some time. The loss of buoyancy. The gradual disintegration … But we made no connection between the plight of the New Sanctaphrax rock and our own precious flight-rocks. That was soon to change. First off, news started coming in of large, heavy traders simply crashing out of the sky. The broad tug boats followed, with league ships and patrol boats soon also becoming useless. The leagues fell into decline and the skies above Undertown emptied. A terrible time it was, lad. Terrible.

‘At first, we sky pirates did very well out of the situation. Night after night, we would carry out raids on the Great Mire Road, knowing that none would be able to follow us. What was more, we became the main means of transportation for fleeing Undertowners’ – he rubbed his forefinger and thumb together – ‘for a price.’ He sighed noisily. ‘And then it happened.’

Rook waited expectantly. Vulpoon scratched beneath his chin.

‘We thought we were clever,’ he said. ‘We thought that by keeping our distance from New Sanctaphrax we would avoid the sickness. But we were wrong. Whether it travelled in on the wind, or had simply been incubating inside the stone, we’ll never know … It was on the third day of the fourth quarter that the
Cloudbreaker
– one of the oldest and finest double-masters ever to have been built; a real beauty – just fell out of the sky like a speared ratbird and crash-landed in the Deepwoods below. Stone-sickness had finally caught up with us.

‘Something had to be done if we were not all to go the same way, one by one. We had to convene to make plans. I dispatched a flock of ratbirds bearing word that an assembly was to be held at Wilderness Lair at the next full moon.’ He sighed. ‘And it was there, clinging to the underside of the jutting Edgelands rock like a collection of rock-limpets, that we decided to scuttle the entire fleet together—’

‘The Armada of the Dead,’ Rook gasped.

‘You’ve heard of it, then?’ said Vulpoon.

‘Of course,’ said Rook. ‘Everyone has.’ He didn’t mention
what
he’d heard – that it had become a renegade outpost attracting every dissident, runaway and more notorious denizen of the Mire.

Vulpoon was nodding sagely ‘What a night that was,’ he murmured. ‘We sailed together, that final time, across the sky from the misty Edgelands to the desolation of the Mire. And there, as one, we descended. All round us, a flock of white ravens flapped and screeched at the giants in their midst. We landed on the soft, sinking mud …’ He looked up. ‘That was nigh on thirty-five years since – and we’re still there.’

Rook stared out across the mudflats of the Mire. ‘It seems so very bleak,’ he said.

‘We get by,’ said Vulpoon. ‘A fleet of sky pirate ships was a pretty good basis for a settlement. And what we don’t have, we go out and get.’ A broad grin spread from
ear to ear, revealing gums which bore more gaps than teeth. ‘The occasional raid on the Great Mire Road. The odd skirmish with the shrykes …’ He chuckled. ‘There aren’t many who haven’t heard the name of Captain Deadbolt Vulpo—’

‘Thunderbolt!’
Rook blurted out. ‘Thunderbolt Vulpoon.
That
was the name I was trying to remember.’

‘He was my father,’ the sky pirate captain said quietly. ‘Executed in cold blood by the shrykes – those murderous, verminous,
pestilential
creatures. By Sky, how I’d like to wring every one of their scraggy necks.’

‘The shrykes killed him,’ Rook murmured.

‘Aye, lad, in that evil Wig-Wig Arena of theirs,’ he said. ‘Yet it was a noble death, an honourable death – for he died that another might be saved.’

‘He did?’

Deadbolt Vulpoon nodded, and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘You may not have heard of him, but it was a certain Captain Twig they were actually after.’

‘Oh, but I
have
heard of him,’ said Rook. ‘The young foundling, raised by Deepwoods woodtrolls, who was to become the most famous sky pirate captain of all time. Who has not heard of him?’

‘Yes, well,’ said Vulpoon, and puffed up his chest – as far as the confines of the cage would allow. ‘Perhaps not
the
most famous.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, Twig’d been sentenced to death by the shrykes for some heinous crime, so he had. They were about to throw him to the bloodthirsty wig-wigs, when my father intervened – and sacrificed himself instead.’

‘He must have been very brave,’ said Rook.

Deadbolt Vulpoon sniffed, and wiped the corner of his other eye. ‘Oh, he was,’ he said. ‘He certainly was.’ He paused. ‘If only there had been something left of him to bury, something to remember him by. But … well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about wig-wigs. By the time they’d finished, there wasn’t a scrap remaining.’

Rook nodded sympathetically and left a respectful pause before asking what he really wanted to know. ‘And this Captain Twig?’ he said. ‘What happened to him? Is he with you at the Armada of the Dead? Or …’

‘Or?’ said Vulpoon.

‘Or could those stories about him be true?’ said Rook. ‘That he alone refused to scuttle his ship. That he sailed off, back into the Deepwoods. That he lives there still, alone, unwashed and in total silence, wandering endlessly by day and sleeping in caterbird cocoons by night.’

‘He did sail off into the Deepwoods,’ Vulpoon concurred gruffly. ‘As for the rest, I don’t know. I’ve heard stories, of course. There have been sightings.
Soundings
, even – for some have returned with tales of him singing to the moon.’ He shrugged. ‘You have to take most of what you hear with a pinch of salt.’ He looked up. His eyes narrowed. ‘Shrykes,’ he whispered urgently. ‘You’d better make yourself scarce.’

‘Shrykes!’ Rook jumped. He turned and saw three of them, all bedecked in gaudy ornamentation, striding across the platform towards them. Rook shrank back into the shadows.

One of them cracked a flail ominously. Three pairs of
yellow eyes seemed to cut through the darkness and bore into Rook’s. He held his breath.

‘Not long now, Mire scum!’ the lead shryke taunted. ‘Where are your friends now?’ She threw back her head and gave a cruel, screeching laugh.

Then, as one, the three of them turned and clicked back across the landing.

‘Phew,’
Rook murmured. ‘I thought …’

‘You were lucky just then,’ said Deadbolt Vulpoon. ‘But you must leave now. Thank you for the food and drink,’ he whispered. ‘And for listening.’

‘It was nothing,’ Rook replied. ‘Good luck,’ he murmured awkwardly.

Rook walked back to the sleeping pallets with a heavy heart, his parting words mocking him with their in adequacy. ‘Good luck’, indeed! What could he have been thinking? Magda rolled over and muttered something in her sleep, and next to her Stob snored noisily. Rook laid his head down on the soft mattress of straw and fell gratefully to sleep.

t first Rook’s sleep was deep and dreamless. He was warm beneath the thick blankets and the straw was wonderfully soft. Later, however, a cold wind gathered. It plucked at his bedding and sent dark clouds scudding across the moon. The light seemed to be flashing – on, off, on, off – now bathing Rook’s face in silver, now plunging it into darkness. His eyelids flickered.

He was on a sky ship; a huge vessel with two masts and a great brass harpoon at its prow. He was standing at the helm, with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes.

‘More lift, Master Midshipman,’ came a voice. It was the captain, a foppish creature with jewelled clothes and a great waxed moustache, and – Rook realized with a start – he was giving orders to
him
.

‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ he said, and, with nimble fingers playing over the rows of bone-handled levers, he raised
the hanging weights and adjusted the sails with the expertise of someone who had
the touch
.