Fire over Swallowhaven (4 page)

“That is Captain Thaddeus Darkside,” said the admiral. “Leader of the steam moles of Hammerland. His people live in the outer reaches of the Sundered Lands. We are very fortunate to
have their support—they seldom concern themselves with events outside their own land. Captain Darkside tells me that beneath those tarpaulins he has some experimental weaponry that he is eager to test in combat. I have not seen the weapons, but he assures me they will come in most useful when battle is joined.”

“I don’t like ’em steam moles,” grumbled Dolly Wideawake. “You never know what they’re thinking behind them glasses. Shifty, I calls it. Dead shifty.”

Staring out at the grimy, noisy, smoke-spewing iron windships, Trundle couldn’t help but agree with her.

“So, twenty windships in all,” said Esmeralda. “Against twenty-five pirate windships led by the
Iron Pig
.” She rubbed her chin. “Hmm. Interesting odds.”

“I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t talked us into this mess,” muttered Trundle. “But maybe we can still slip
away before things get uncomfortable. We
are
on an important quest, after all. There are four crowns yet to be found, remember? And this battle really doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?”

“He’s got a point,” whispered Jack. “What say we leg it while there’s still time?”

Esmeralda looked from one to the other. “Yes,” she said in an undertone. “This time I think you’re both quite right. We need to skedaddle before Grizzletusk turns up.”

“How?” asked Trundle.

“I’m working on that,” Esmeralda replied.

“Sail ho!” called a lookout from the masthead of the
Gilded Lily
.

They turned to see the
Bolt from the Blue
skimming swiftly toward them under the rocky ceiling of Swallowhaven Island.

“Pirates!” yelled a frantic female voice from the prow of the onrushing windship. “Cor, blimey,
luvaduck! The pirates are here—flippin ’undreds of ’em, gawd ’elp us!”

And with that, the
Bolt from the Blue
came sailing alongside the
Gilded Lily
. Captain Wideawake heaved herself up onto the rail and, with a fearsome war cry, leaped back aboard her own foredeck.

“Needles in their nappers, my girls!” she hollered as the
Bolt from the Blue
turned, gathered speed again, and rushed off to do battle. “Pins in their posteriors! Scissors and pinking shears at the ready! Death or glory, Amazons of Swallowhaven—death or glory!”

Admiral Firwig turned to the three friends. “Well, my young heroes,” he declared, “it’s time for you to prove your worth!” And with that, he shouted orders so the
Gilded Lily
cut a swift circle in the air and went flying out into the open skies.

“Oh, my giddy aunt!” gasped Trundle, his eyes bulging.

Filling the sky over Swallowhaven lay the entire pirate fleet—and at its head was the terrifying spectacle of Grizzletusk’s flagship: the dire and dreadful
Iron Pig
!

“S
o, my fine young beasts,” said Admiral Firwig, lowering the telescope from his eye and turning to Trundle, Esmeralda, and Jack, “battle is about to be joined! Which tactics do you recommend?”

Run like fun! thought Trundle as he goggled at the looming pirate fleet.

The
Iron Pig,
with its grisly red sails, was in the lead, while the rest of the vessels—a motley and mongrel bunch of windships, bristling with cannon
and sabre-wielding pirates—were organized in two long columns that stretched out like a pair of ugly ribbons in the flagship’s wake. Already they were bearing down on the small Swallowhaven fleet like buzzards coming in for the kill.

“I’ve seen this formation before,” Esmeralda said grimly, gripping the rail as she stared at the approaching armada. “They’ll try to smash right through your fleet, blasting away with their cannon as they go. If your windships stay where they are, they’ll be blown to smithereens.” She looked up at the admiral. “Have you seen the damage the pirates’ cannon can do? I have—and I don’t recommend being in their sights once they start blazing away.”

“All your people will be killed if they don’t get out of the way,” Jack added urgently.

“Then go tell them so!” said the admiral. “Cast off the
Thief in the Night,
” he called. “Admiral’s
orders: All windships to break ranks and hold off till reinforcements arrive.”

“Come on,” Esmeralda shouted to Trundle and Jack as she raced for their little skyboat. “You heard the admiral—we’ve got work to do.”

Pausing only long enough to exchange a startled glance, the two of them went running after her.

As they leaped aboard, Trundle heard the admiral shouting further orders. “Signal to Captain Wilde aboard the
Scarlet Scavenger,
” he bellowed. “Tell him to lead his fleet into combat with all possible speed!”

“That’ll give them piratical types a nasty surprise,” said Jack as he unfurled the sails. “Jimminy, but this is exciting! I can feel a battle song coming on!” He cleared his throat and began to sing.

“
Swallowhaven, stand ye steady,

Pirates come, but you are ready,

Fight until they all are dead-ee,

Heroes one and all!”

“Very stirring,” yelled Esmeralda, leaping for the tiller. “Save it for later!” She grabbed the tiller in both hands and gave an almighty wrench. Its sails plump with the wind, the
Thief in the Night
went skimming away from the admiral’s flagship.

Trundle clung to the mast, feeling the blood surging through his usually peaceable veins. Curse those horrid pirates! It would serve them jolly well right if the whole darned lot of them were killed.

“Trundle, we’re busy. You have to call to ’em to scatter!” yelled Esmeralda as they sped toward the Swallowhaven fleet. The
Bolt from the Blue
was back in line, and the pirate windships were bearing down on them in an arrowhead formation.

“They’ll never hear me,” yelled Trundle.

“Improvise!” howled Esmeralda, leaning hard on the tiller.

What Trundle really needed was a megaphone—
except that there wasn’t one on board. Then he had a brain wave. He grabbed the copper tube in which their skycharts were kept rolled. Tipping out the charts, he leaned over the bow of the
Thief in the Night
and put one end of the hollow tube to his snout.

“Windships of Swallowhaven!” he bellowed at the absolute top of his voice. “Split up! All of you! Get out of there! You’ll be blown to bits otherwise!”

He spotted animals scuttling about frantically on the decks for a few moments, and then, slowly but surely, the line of ten windships began to sheer off, left and right and up and down.

“Way to go, Trundle!” whooped Jack.

“Watch out!” shrieked Trundle. With the Swallowhaven fleet scattered to the four corners of the sky, the only vessel remaining in the
Iron Pig
’s sights was theirs!

Jack flung himself across the skyboat, dragging the boom after him, while Esmeralda dug in hard
with both feet and yanked the tiller almost out of its socket.

Trundle covered his eyes with his paw as the
Iron Pig’s
bloodred sails filled the sky in front of them.

“Pop ’em, me hearties! Singe their eyebrows for ’em!” barked an all-too-familiar voice. Trundle parted his fingers and saw that the fearsome bosun, Razorback himself, was standing on the foredeck, yelling orders and brandishing his cutlass.

“It’s them!” croaked yet another familiar voice. “It’s
them,
I tell ’ee! Kill ’em! Kill ’em to death, y’ swabs!”
Squatting on Razorback’s shoulder was the scraggy black shape of his evil pet raven, Captain Slaughter. Except that, as Trundle noticed, the bird was looking a little the worse for wear since last they’d met. It had an eye patch and a wooden leg, and a crutch under one wing—the result, Trundle guessed, of having been trodden on by his master in the heat of their fight in the verminous back alleys of Rathanger, on the island of Drune.

“Let’s give ’em a fright,” shouted Esmeralda at the tiller, her eyes shining. The
Thief in the Night
swooped down low over the deck of the
Iron Pig,
sending many a pirate diving for cover and making even Razorback and the raven duck to avoid having their heads knocked off.

“Shut your beak, you mangy magpie!” Trundle yelled down at the raven as they swept past.

“Blister me tripes!” bellowed Razorback. “It
is
them! We searched the seven hundred skies of the
Sundered Lands, and they were here all the time!” He let out a laugh like a goose being strangled. “Fortune favors the fiendish, ye stouthearted stinkbugs! Twenty golden sunders for the man who captures them alive!”

This was followed moments later by a deafening volley of musket and pistol shot. The decks of the
Iron Pig
vanished in a fog of thick gray smoke. Trundle ducked and winced as musket balls went whistling past his ears. He heard the
pop
and
crack
of balls striking the skyboat’s hull and searing through the sails.

But Esmeralda and Jack were a crack sailing team, and while Trundle held on, whooping and hollering with excitement, they navigated the
Thief in the Night
down the full length of the
Iron Pig
, zigzagging in and out of the windship’s masts and sending the crew leaping for their lives in all directions. They were flying so low that at one point Trundle was even able to give one pirate rat a hefty thwack around the ear with the copper tube.

“Ye lubbers!” roared a voice through the smoke. “Ye bowlegged sons of cuttlefish! Blow ’em out of the sky! Must I do everything myself, blast yer eyes?”

The
Thief in the Night
surged upward as it neared the high poop deck, its keel scraping wood as it only just cleared the rail. And in the moment before they went scudding off, Trundle saw for the first time the frightful form of the leader of all the pirates of the Sundered Lands—the terrible and tremendous Captain Grizzletusk.

A huge and scarred hog he was, with a fearsome frowning brow and eyes as red and ferocious as blazing furnaces. His face was crisscrossed with scars, and his jaw was twisted so that his hideous tusks jutted up crookedly, like the shards of a broken bottle. His right hand was missing, and in its place Trundle saw a great five-barreled pistol sticking out from his sleeve, as though it were attached to the stump of his arm. He wore a leather belt and had two leather bandoliers
stretched over his mountainous chest, and into these were thrust swords and daggers and pistols and axes and choppers and maces and clubs and cudgels, so that he looked like an entire armory on two thickset legs.

He didn’t even flinch as the
Thief in the Night
grazed past his head. Trundle saw him draw a massive pistol with his good hand. He aimed at them with both arms, and a moment later, six tremendous explosions sounded as the ordinary pistol and the five-barreled one went off at the same time. Trundle felt the heat of a musket ball singe his prickles as Captain Grizzletusk vanished into a cloud of white smoke.

“Missed, you pitiful piglet,” Esmeralda shouted back. “Missed by a mile!”

A split second later, it seemed to Trundle that the whole world was exploding around his ears.

“Oops!” shrieked Esmeralda as cannonballs came flying at them from all directions. In her excitement over getting clear of the
Iron Pig,
she had forgotten
that she was steering them right between two columns of heavily armed and murderous pirate windships.