Clash of the Sky Galleons (20 page)

Up at the helm, Quint stared ahead as the
Galerider
soared across the sky, the setting sun in his eyes and the cold wind on his face. His nimble fingers danced over the bone-handled flight-levers, constantly adjusting the sails and hull-weights to keep the
Galerider
on an even keel.

He had what sky-sailors called ‘the touch’ - the instinctive ability to know precisely which of the twenty-four levers - each one attached to its own sail or weight; each one set differently - to move in order to compensate for every wind eddy or temperature shift. Now he could steer the
Galerider
almost without thinking, as if the great sky ship with all its different crew-members was simply an extension of himself.

Quint loved the feeling he had when he stood at the helm, the flight-levers beneath his fingers. It was as if, here at the topmost deck of the sky ship, he was protecting all on board: his father, hollow-eyed and distracted as he pawed over the sky charts in the great cabin; Maris, as she tended to cuts and scrapes in the aft-store cabin she’d turned into an infirmary.

Down in the depths of the cargo-hold, Quint could hear Ratbit cursing and stamping about as he hunted cargo vermin, while up at the prow, Steg Jambles and young Tem Barkwater were deep in conversation. Tem seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time … Up from the galley came the smell of frying woodonions and the sound of raised voices. Queep and Sagbutt were having another one of their furious arguments. Quint smiled. What an odd couple the small quartermaster and the great hulking flat-head goblin were - always shouting at one another, always fighting. And yet Sagbutt would lay down his life for Queep without a second thought.

The haunting cry of snowbirds rang out, and a great flock, in arrow-head formation, passed over the sky ship, a thousand strong. It was one of the great sights of the Edgeland skies and Quint never tired of it.

Just then, the wind swung round and gusted from the north, cold and strong, buffeting the starboard-side of the sky ship. Quint’s hands automatically moved to the mainsail and neben-hull-weight levers.

Down on the flight-rock platform, the Stone Pilot was cleaning the cooling-rods.

‘Down a tad, Stone Pilot!’ Quint called across, and the Stone Pilot jumped up and hurried across to the bellows.

Within seconds, the combination of the burners and bellows had raised the temperature of the flight-rock just enough to bring the
Galerider
down the required dozen strides in the sky. The Stone Pilot was a natural, Quint thought with a smile - though he wondered if he would ever truly understand what went on in that head of hers, hidden beneath the great conical hood.

High above him, at the top of the mast, Quint could see the head of Spillins poking out of his beloved caterbird cocoon. The oakelf look-out was stroking the caternest with one gnarled hand almost as one might stroke a pet fromp or a friendly
hammelhorn. Spillins was the oldest member of the crew. What sights those great dark eyes of his must have seen, Quint marvelled …

Just then, the oakelf’s high, urgent voice rang out. ‘Storm on the horizon!’ Spillins cried. ‘Approaching fast! …’

• CHAPTER NINE •
STORMLASHED

Wind Jackal lowered his telescope. Time is of the essence!’ he reminded the crew in a booming voice. ‘Make her stormtight. I want everything lashed down.’

He pulled down hard on two of the bone-handled levers, simultaneously staying the mainsail and lowering the stern-weight. The
Galerider
slowed and, as he raised the large starboard hull-weight, it swung round so that the stern was lowered and the prow pointed upwards.

‘I’m waiting!’ Wind Jackal’s voice rang out. ‘Let me hear those reports!’

Steg Jambles and Tem secured the second boomsail they had been struggling with and turned their attention instead to the winch-drives, drawing in the sail-sheets and tying them off as fast as they could. Sagbutt worked feverishly on the aft-deck, fastening the tolley-ropes and securing the nether-fetters, while Duggin - his head still bandaged - helped Ratbit as best he could with the rigging-locks.

‘Storm at ten thousand strides and closing,’ Spillins called out from the caternest high above their heads.

‘Report!’ Wind Jackal repeated, his hands tensed over the flight-levers.

At the flight-rock platform, the Stone Pilot had just finished preparing the drenching-tanks and chilling the cooling-rods. Now she was pumping the bellows, heating the rock as much as she dared. Quint hurried past her, with Maris close behind. The pair of them had battened down the hatches on the aft-deck to prevent the rain from getting in, having already secured those on the fore-deck. Meanwhile, Filbus Queep was down below, lashing the tarpaulins in the hold and unfastening the hull-shutters, just in case it did. A heavy downpour, sluicing unchecked off the deck and cascading down the stairs, could fill the bowels of a sky ship in minutes - with the watery ballast ruining the cargo and rendering the vessel all but unsailable.

Quint and Maris arrived at the helm, gasping for breath.

‘Hatches battened down!’ Quint made his report.

Beside him, Maris bit her lower lip nervously, her face drained of all colour.

The sky pirate captain nodded. ‘Secure yourselves!’ he told them grimly.

Quint did as he was told. He fastened the long tether-rope around his waist and then, since Maris appeared frozen to the spot, one around her waist too, and tied them both to the balustrade.

Maris shook her head as she stared ahead, her eyes wide and unblinking. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she whispered.

‘Father knows what he’s doing,’ said Quint, resting his hand on her shoulder. ‘And the
Galerider
hasn’t let us down yet.’

Despite his confident words, as he watched the wall of cloud rolling towards them, Quint’s own heart began to quicken. It was dark and turbulent, a boiling mass of charcoal grey exploding out of itself, each fresh excrescence tinged with purple and orange and shot with dazzling flashes of iridescent white. All round them, the mighty Deepwoods forest had changed colour. It was as though a dark yellow filter had been placed across the sun, leaving everything beneath it gloomy, yet malevolently glowing. The canopy of leaves below them surged and swirled like a mighty ocean swell, threatening to swallow up anything that dropped into its raging depths.

‘Eight hundred strides,’ Spillins shouted down.

‘Sail-sheets secure, Captain!’ Steg Jambles’s hoarse voice rang out.

‘Aft-deck secure!’ growled Sagbutt.

‘Rigging-locks secure!’ Ratbit joined the chorus.

There was a pause.

‘Queep!’ roared Wind Jackal. ‘You’re keeping us all waiting…’

Pouring down from the base of the approaching cloud was torrential rain. From where they were, it seemed to be moving in soft rippling waves, like the fringe of a vast
velvet curtain. Where the cloud neared the ground, it looked, Maris thought, almost as though it was dissolving. In starkest contrast, high up in the sky, the top of the dark cloud was silhouetted against the pale yellow sky, so clearly defined that it might have been cut out with a knife.

‘Five hundred strides …’

Wind Jackal clenched and unclenched his fist over the flight-levers, his eyes steely and jaw set. He raised his head and bellowed above the deafening roar of the oncoming storm.

‘Queep!’

All at once, the wind stopped blowing. The rolled sails stopped creaking, the rigging, which a moment earlier had been whistling, fell still - and the quartermaster’s voice echoed up from the depths of the ship loud and clear against the eerie silence.

‘Below decks secure!’

‘What’s happening,’ Maris whispered, looking about her.

‘It’s the lull,’ Quint replied.

‘The lull?’

Quint shook his head. There was no time now to tell her about the anomalies of cloud-walls and storm-winds - about how at a distance, the wind of an approaching storm came
from
it, pushing everything in its path away; but how, closer to it, the wind reversed, and sucked everything
towards
its churning turbulence - and how, strangest of all, in between the two, the air was absolutely still.

‘It means the storm’s about to strike,’ he whispered,
trying to sound calmer than he felt.

‘Stone Pilot!’ Wind Jackal called across to the flight-rock platform. ‘Chill the rock …
Now!
‘

Without a word, the Stone Pilot raised both arms, took hold of the drenching-levers and tugged. Chilled earth and sand dropped onto the glowing rock. Then, while it was still pouring down, she seized the ice-cold cooling-rods and thrust them into the rock itself. There was a splutter, a hiss and a powerful jet of stream.

The next moment, the
Galerider
shot up into the sky with such force that everyone on board felt their stomachs sink down to their toes. Back at the helm, Wind Jackal stood tall and erect, his hands clasping the rows of flattened flight-levers, while beside him, Quint and Maris gripped onto the balustrade. Ahead of them, the wall of black and grey cloud flew past in a blur. Higher and higher the sky ship flew, rising above the billowing stormclouds, and as it rose, the vessel began to shake and creak ominously …

On the flight-rock platform, the Stone Pilot stood over the flight-burners, as tense as a mire-heron
waiting to strike an oozefish. The colder the rock became, the faster it rose - and the higher the
Galerider
climbed. Soon the sky around them would be so cold that, if they weren’t careful, it would be impossible to re-heat the flight-rock and come down again. At that point, the
Galerider
would ‘hurtle’, and they would be doomed. They were all in the Stone Pilot’s hands now.

At the helm, Wind Jackal remained erect and motionless, betraying none of his feelings as the
Galerider
continued to climb. Suddenly, above the sound of the rushing air, there came a screeching and squawking and Maris looked over the balustrade to see the air filled with countless ratbirds. They were streaming out from the bottom of the hull, a long ribbon of them that fluttered and flexed - before darting off down towards the ground.

‘We must be close to hurtling,’ Quint muttered. ‘The ratbirds can sense it…’

The Stone Pilot must have sensed it too, for she ratcheted up the burners, which flared brilliant yellow in the thin air. As if in reply, the flight-rock seemed to give out a sigh which, as the burners set to work, rose to a low hum, then a steady whistle, rising in pitch and intensity.

Maris turned to Quint. ‘We’re slowing down,’ she said, her voice breathless in the thin air. ‘I can feel it. I…’ She gasped. ‘We’ve stopped!’

Quint nodded, but said nothing. As he wrapped his sky pirate greatcoat more tightly round him against the
blistering cold of high sky, he knew that the
Galerider
was still in great danger. It was one thing to bring the flight-rock under control and prevent it hurtling. But quite another to remain here, hovering in the freezing air of high sky long enough for the terrible storm below to pass …