Clash of the Sky Galleons (44 page)

At the helm, Imbix Hoth turned to Ruptus Pentephraxis with a look of exultant triumph on his cruel features, and opened his mouth …

What his final words were will, however, never be known, lost as they were in the roar of a gigantic flight-rock - suddenly the weight of ten thousand ironwood pines - hurtling down to earth and taking with it a fortune in finest bloodoak decking, not to mention a screeching flock of pedigree black shrykes.

CRASH!

Quint blinked, unable to take in what he’d just seen. One moment the
Bringer of Doom
had been bearing down on him; the next, the sky was empty and a great plume of smoke was rising up from the forest below. Around the
Galerider,
the abandoned sky ships bobbed on the stiffening breeze - although the shouts and calls coming up from the forest canopy suggested that they wouldn’t remain so for long.

In the distance, a dejected gaggle of badly mauled league ships was snaking off in the direction of Undertown. And from the underside of the
Galerider
came a scratching, scraping sound …

Quint turned to see a tall figure in a heavy sky pirate coat and bicorne hat slowly hauling himself up from the hull-rigging. His sense of being in a waking dream intensified. First he was waiting for death as a monstrous sky ship bore down on him. Then it disappeared. Now a sky pirate was climbing aboard his deserted vessel.

Quint shook his head, and smiled, bemused.

‘Greetings, comrade …’ he called down, then gasped as the sky pirate straightened up and turned a hideous scarred face - all bared fangs and deep glinting eye-sockets - up towards him.

‘Turbot Smeal,’ he breathed.

• CHAPTER TWENTY •
OPEN SKY

Turbot Smeal! Turbot Smeal! Turbot Smeal!

The evil quartermaster’s name screamed in Quint’s head. Turbot Smeal - the malevolent monster who’d set fire to his home and killed his mother and five brothers in the blaze. Turbot Smeal - whose insane act of retribution had killed thousands in the great fire of the Western Quays! Turbot Smeal - murderer of his father, the great Captain Wind Jackal, on board that sky-cursed wreck! Turbot Smeal, who had haunted Quint and Wind Jackal’s dreams ever since he’d first come out of hiding, was coming towards Quint across the deck of the deserted
Galerider -
not dead after all, but hideously, nightmarishly alive.

So this was how it was going to be, Quint thought grimly, the last Verginix facing his family’s scarred nemesis …

‘Yield the helm!’ the quartermaster’s rasping voice sounded as he climbed the aft-deck stairs, his sword glinting. ‘The
Galerider
is mine!’

‘Never!’ Quint cried, drawing his own sword and stepping forward to meet him.

Their blades met with a clanging clash of metal, followed instantly by another and another as Quint deftly parried the quartermaster’s frenzied sword thrusts. Smeal was strong, but he, Quintinius Verginix, squire of the Knights Academy, had been trained by the finest swordmasters in all Sanctaphrax.

As the sword blows rained down, Quint turned them aside, a cold dark fury growing from deep within him. Beneath the great bicorne hat, half-hidden by an upturned collar, Smeal’s hideous face flashed, white and glinting, as he twisted and turned in his efforts to cut Quint down.

‘You stabbed my father in the back, Smeal!’ Quint shouted, blocking another thrust. ‘A coward’s blow for which you shall pay!

Quint leaped low to the right and caught Smeal with a flashing sword thrust. With a muffled grunt of pain, the quartermaster fell back, his great curved sword flailing in a wide arc as he fought to keep his balance. The blade clattered against the flight-levers, shearing off half a dozen of them, and severing the connecting-cables of half a dozen more.

Instantly, the
Galerider
listed sharply to starboard as the port-side hull-weights broke away from the flight wheel and hurtled down to the forest below. Quint was thrown across the aft-castle deck, slamming into the balustrade with a resounding thud. His sword clattered from his grasp. Before he could get back to his feet, Smeal was towering over him, sword raised, his scarred, fang-encrusted face leering down.

‘I didn’t want it to come to this …’ Smeal’s voice rasped, ‘but you stood in my way. You stood between me and the
Galerider.
Now you must die!’

Suddenly, Turbot Smeal’s bicorne hat flew from his head. He pitched forward with a gurgling cry of surprise, and crashed down on top of Quint. Over Smeal’s heaving shoulder, Quint saw Hubble - the great albino bander-bear; groggy, shaken, with a heavy gash over one brow, fighting his injuries, determined to protect his young captain - looking down at him. Hubble reached down with the mighty paw that had felled the quartermaster and pulled the dying body off Quint.

The
Galerider
was tilting at a crazy angle, and its decks shook as it hurtled up into Open Sky. With difficulty, Quint climbed to his feet and looked down. The hideous face of Turbot Smeal stared back at him. Low gurgling sounds were escaping from the bare glistening fangs, as his eyes glinted out from the dark sunken eye-sockets …

But wait … What was this?

Quint reached down and traced a finger over the bony pitted surface of the quartermaster’s face - except it wasn’t a face at all. It was a mask. Quint could see that now, despite the wind whistling past, and the pitch and roll of the sky ship. A hideous mask of bone and fang it was, belonging to a skullpelt. In life, this evil creature was a hunter of dreamers in lullabee groves. Now, in death, its grinning face was a mask for Turbot Smeal to hide behind …

With trembling fingers, Quint reached forward and undid the straps that held the mask in place. Then, gently, hardly daring to look, he pulled the mask away.

Beneath, instead of the mass of flame-melted flesh and scar-tissue he’d been expecting, was the young fresh face of a handsome sky pirate, blue eyes clouded with pain.

‘Thaw!’ Quint exclaimed. ‘Thaw Daggerslash … I don’t understand …’

The
Galerider
gave a great lurching shudder and, over Quint’s shoulder, Hubble growled with alarm as they hurtled ever higher into Open Sky. Not that Quint noticed any of this. His eyes were fixed on the
young sky pirate dying before him. His hands gripped the collar of the impostor’s greatcoat and shook it.

‘Why? Why? Why?’ he wailed.

‘Because …’ Thaw’s voice was a whisper; urgent, breathless, full of pain. ‘Because I was young … ambitious … Because I wanted a sky ship of my own … I wanted … I wanted … the
Galerider
!’

‘So you lied? You cheated? You murdered?’ Quint’s eyes blazed and his fists clenched as they gripped Thaw’s collar.

‘It seemed so simple …’ A thin smile crossed Thaw’s lips, along with a trickle of blood. ‘The moment I saw her, I knew the
Galerider
had to be mine. But … your father stood in my way … So I set a trap and baited it with the promise of a
showdown with his long-dead enemy, Turbot Smeal …’

‘The slave market, the cliff quarries, the Sluice Tower?’ Quint shuddered. ‘All you?’

Thaw grimaced with pain, but managed to smile.

‘…
And
the sky wreck, Quint. I finally got him there, and the
Galerider
was going to be mine, along with her crew. I would have been a great sky pirate captain, Quint. And you would have grown to love me, and serve me faithfully - all of you … And one day,
my
name would have been carved on the great table of the Tarry Vine tavern … Captain Thaw Daggerslash … Greatest sky pirate captain …’ Thaw’s voice faltered, his breath coming in painful gasps, his blue eyes clouding over. ‘That ever lived …’

The
Galerider
gave another shuddering lurch as Quint released his grip and Thaw sank back, his dead eyes staring up into Open Sky; his dead hands gripping the aft-castle balustrade of the sky ship he’d schemed so hard to possess.

For a moment Quint just stood there on the listing deck, all emotion drained from him. Then, looking across at the flight-rock platform, he saw the flight-burners flicker and go out. Taking Hubble by one mighty paw, he braced himself for what he knew was coming next.

Quint didn’t have long to wait. Moments later, with a great howling scream, the cold rock slammed against the rock cage, and the
Galerider
rolled over and turned turvey

Suddenly, Quint and Hubble were falling away from her, down through the sky, as the mighty sky ship sailed up into Open Sky, for ever.

As the
Galerider
disappeared into the clouds, Quint felt all the cares and sorrows of his past disappearing with her -the horrors of the cliff quarry, the terrors of the Deepwoods, the dangers of the sky wreck and the senseless carnage of the sky-battle. They all soared upwards along with the sky pirate ship into the endless void of Open Sky.

Below him lay the Deepwoods, and the future - a future in the Knights Academy with his loyal friends; a future as a knight academic dedicated to the sacred search for Stormphrax…

Quint reached for the lever at his chest and
pulled. Behind him, his parawings opened with a loud clap, followed closely by those of his faithful banderbear bodyguard. Hand in paw, the two figures silhouetted against the setting sun swooped down through the air towards the tiny sky ferry in the distance.