Clash of the Sky Galleons (26 page)

Up on the huge branch, Maris and Quint settled down to sleep in the parawing tent, Quint’s sky
pirate greatcoats pulled up round their ears and buttoned tightly. Bone-tired from their climb, but well fed and watered, they fell in moments into a deep, heavy sleep that not even the Deepwoods could disturb.

Maris dreamed of the Palace of Shadows - her former home in the great floating city of Sanctaphrax. She dreamed she had lost her pet lemkin and was searching for it through the great rooms of the palace, each one full of cabinets and curiosities and ornate furniture. But something was wrong. From the cupboard doors and bureau drawers, amber resin oozed. It was spreading over the marble floors, and she was running through room after room. But the more she ran, the slower she moved as the resin trapped her heels, then rose to her knees, her waist, her neck …

Beside her, Quint was dreaming of the sky-shipyards. He was looking up at a sky cradle. And there was the
Galerider,
newly repaired and perfect in every detail. He was climbing the tower; emerging at the top. The
Galerider
‘s crew was waving to him …

They were all there, Ratbit, Steg Jambles, Tem Barkwater, Sagbutt, Filbus Queep and the Stone Pilot…

And there was his father - shouting, trying to tell him something. But Quint couldn’t hear …

He reached out to grasp the
Galerider
‘s tolley-rope, but a gnarled hand snatched it from him and pushed him away. It was a hooded figure with no face - though Quint knew at once that it was Turbot Smeal. He felt a hot rage boil up within him as he drew his sword and lunged at the figure, only for it to disappear.

Suddenly, the
Galerider
rose up into the air, only it wasn’t the
Galerider
any longer. It had turned into a land-fish! A huge monstrous angler, with Turbot Smeal as its lure, whirring high above its horrible grinning head …

‘Quint! Quint!’ Maris’s voice sounded. ‘Wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’

Quint opened his eyes to see Maris’s concerned face staring into his own. He sat up and ran trembling fingers through his hair.

‘Sorry’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’

Maris smiled ruefully. ‘Actually no, I was having a bad dream myself,’ she admitted.

Quint unhooked the parawing tent and peered out.

‘Talking of bad dreams …’ he said, looking out at the great expanse of forest rolling off to the distant horizon, ‘we’d better break camp and get to the top of this tree…’

‘The beacon?’ said Maris.

Quint nodded. ‘There’s just one thing, though,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Maris turned to him.

‘I’ve never lit an ironwood pine beacon before.’

Following a brief breakfast of pine-kernels and sky nectar, Quint and Maris set off shortly after dawn on the long climb to the very top of the ironwood pine. A brisk wind had got up. It swirled round them, tugging at their fingers and plucking at their clothes.

They climbed for several hours, passing ring after ring of broad branches; century after century of growth. And as they climbed, the trunk narrowed, the rings of
branches became thinner and closer together, and the amber resin no longer oozed from the bark. Here, instead, it was set solid in small fists of gleaming fiery colour.

Maris paused and snapped a small piece from the bark. It was smooth as glass, yet curiously warm to the touch, and not at all sticky. She slipped it inside her pocket and patted it, ‘for luck’, she whispered.

‘This’ll do,’ Quint announced finally.

Maris looked up. Half a dozen strides above their heads was a huge clump of pinecones; beyond that, the very top of the tree, which ended with the needle-clad apex of the great trunk, pointing up at the sky like a giant finger.

‘Here, take my knife,’ said Quint, pulling it from his belt and handing it to Maris. ‘I want you to strip the trunk and these main branches here of every twig, every pinecone, every pine-needle. We need to make a firebreak, to stop the fire at the top of the tree spreading down to the branches below. And while you’re doing that, I’ll climb up and prepare the treetop for firing.’

Maris nodded and set to work. Hacking determinedly, she turned her attention to the trunk, chopping off all the protruding bark and leaving it as smooth as a well-whittled stick. Climbing past Maris, Quint clambered up to the next ring of stubby branches where the great clump of dark-green pinecones - each one the size of a banderbear head - were clustered.

The sun was high in the sky now, sending dazzling rays out across the forest. Above him, a woodteal puffed
out its speckled chest and sang, its voice pure and mellifluous.

Quint turned his attention to the clump of pinecones. He eased himself slowly up towards them. Then, with his legs wrapped round the tree-trunk as tightly as if he was riding a prowlgrin, he reached up. While his left hand supported the first of the giant pinecones, his right hand swung the sword round. He ran the edge of the blade deftly down the ridged and knobbly surface in a zigzag line.

For a moment, apart from a tangy whiff of pine that wafted into the air, nothing happened. Then, where the blade had passed, the dark-green skin peeled back a tad and thick, deep red resin began to well up like blood. It gathered in the corners of the line, which got fuller and fuller, until it started running down the surface pinecone in two glistening red blobs.

‘Thank Sky!’ Quint murmured, smiling with relief that a theory he had only ever heard about from old sky pirates in Undertown taverns actually seemed to be working.

Emboldened, he seized the pinecone once more, and scored the skin with a whole series of zigzag lines. Then, with resin coursing all down the outside of the cone, he turned his attention to the next one, and the one after that, until the whole clump of giant pinecones - each one with a dozen or more wounds to their skin - oozed and dripped the deep red, intoxicatingly scented resin.

‘Criss-crossed the cones, I did,’
Quint could hear the old captain, Storm Weezit, saying to his father in the

Tarry Vine tavern.
‘Then I lets the resin drip - but not too much mind … Next, I strikes these here sky-crystals
…’ Quint could remember the crystals held in those gnarled old sky pirate’s hands -hands that were scarred by horrible burns …

Quint closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn’t stop now. The two of them had come too far …

Balancing precariously on a broken-off stump, Quint rummaged in the pockets on either side of his greatcoat and pulled out the two yellow sky-crystals. As they came together they glowed brightly. Then, taking one in each trembling hand - and before he could have any second thoughts - Quint struck them together.

Clack!

From the branch ring below, as Maris watched, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. The spark - glinting like a shooting star - dropped down through the air towards the dripping red pinecone. She was waiting for it to land before bursting into flames, so it came as a surprise when, with an inch to go …

WHOOF!

The vapours ignited with a loud explosion, and all at once the whole cluster of pinecones was ablaze. Quint, thrown back by the blast - his arms flailing, his mouth open, his eyes shut - was falling, falling, falling, until…

Crack!

He hit the ring of branches on which Maris stood.

Maris fell to her knees beside him. She stroked his cheeks, his forehead, the line of his jaw - the black soot that covered his face coming off on her fingers.

‘Quint,’ she said urgently, as scalding drops of the crimson resin plashed all round them. ‘Quint, are you all right? Tell me you’re all right…’

Quint opened his eyes. ‘I … I’m all right,’ he whispered, but as he looked up at the blazing fire at the top of the tree - the bright roaring flames reflected in his eyes - it was impossible to ignore the look of terror in his expression.

‘Oh, Quint,’ Maris gasped, her heart overflowing as she seized his hands. ‘Fire … I’d forgotten how terrified you are of it.’ She squeezed his hands warmly. ‘It must have taken a lot to climb up there and …’

‘It had to be done.’ Quint swallowed, sat up and looked around. ‘The fire break?’

‘I’ve stripped everything. The branches, the trunk …’

‘Good work,’ Quint managed to smile as he stroked the smooth wood.

Maris helped him to his feet, and the pair of them stared up at the burning pinecones above. Now that the sticky coating of volatile resin had burned off, the inner cone was burning - but far less dramatically.
Apart from a patina of small, pale purple flames which flickered over the surface, the main indication that the fire had not gone out was the white smoke pouring out of the top of each of the pinecones in the cluster. Thick and as pungent as incense, the individual coils of smoke wound round each other, plaiting themselves together, before flying off into the sky as a great swaying column.

‘It seems to work,’ said Quint, watching the smoke rise higher and higher.

‘Seems to work?’ said Maris. ‘Quint, it’s fantastic. I bet it’s visible in Sanctaphrax itself!’

Quint turned to Maris. ‘It’s not Sanctaphrax that we need to see it,’ he said. ‘It’s the
Galerider -
that is, if she’s still sky-borne …’

But Maris wasn’t listening. Instead she was staring over Quint’s shoulder, a look of horror on her face.

‘Quint!’ she cried. ‘Your parawings! Take them off! Quick! They’re on fire!’

A jolt ran through Quint’s body as he tore at the straps of his parawings. The red lines and splashes of resin from the pine-cones which streaked the wings smouldered and burst into flames as Quint struggled free from them and flung them away in horror. The flaming parawings landed on a branch below them, then slipped off, further down the tree. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, there came the unmistakable whiff of pine smoke coiling up towards them - and a moment later, a branch some twenty or thirty strides below them burst into flames.

Maris gasped. ‘Quint,’ she said, her voice tremulous with fear. ‘We’re trapped.’

Quint swallowed hard. Above them, the treetop blazed furiously, spitting and cracking and burning down towards the firebreak. Below them, the fire took hold, sending thick smoke coiling upwards. The gathering flames started to rise.

‘There’s not much time,’ said Quint urgently. ‘Use your parawings - you’ll have to fly off to another tree.’

Maris leaned forwards, then wrapped her arms round Quint and hugged him fiercely. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Do you understand, Quint? I am
not
going to leave you …’

Suddenly overwhelmed with the thick smoke coming up from below, she
collapsed into a fit of coughing. Above, the great cluster of pinecones crackled and fizzed; below the fire crept inexorably up the trunk, coming closer and closer towards them …

‘Maris … Oh, Maris …’ he whispered, his voice rasping as he tried not to cough. ‘For Sky’s sake, save yourself, Maris …’

• CHAPTER TWELVE •
THE SWARM

The instant the flight-burners were snuffed out, the flight-rock had gone berserk, battering away at the bars of the cage as the storm winds froze the rock’s surface and turned it super buoyant.