Stormchaser (15 page)

The lightning flashed again, and Cloud Wolf saw that it was not a circle, but rather, a ball – an immense fizzing,
crackling ball of electrical energy, darkness and light combined, which was rolling headlong across the sky towards them.

‘It's the Great Storm,’ he roared, above the howl of the rising wind. ‘Unfurl the mainsail, batten down the hatches and rope yourselves securely. We’re going stormchasing!’

• CHAPTER NINE •
S
TORMCHASING

I
t had seemed like a good idea at the time, stowing away on the sky ship. Now Twig was not so sure. As the
Stormchaser
pitched and tossed, he retched emptily. Sweat beaded his ice-cold forehead; tears streamed down his burning cheeks.

Mugbutt sniggered unpleasantly. ‘Feeling queasy?’ he sneered. ‘Too rough for you, is it?’

Twig shook his head. It wasn’t the flight that was making him ill, but having to breathe the warm, fetid air he was sharing with the goblin. No flat-heads were known for their cleanliness, and Mugbutt was a particularly filthy specimen. He never washed, his bed of straw was wet and fouled, and remnants from the meat he had gleaned from the dinner table lay all around in various stages of decomposition.

Covering his nose with his scarf, Twig breathed in
deeply. Slowly, the nausea subsided, and with it the awful clamouring in his ears. He breathed in again.

Outside, he could hear the familiar noises of Undertown as the
Stormchaser
sped through the busy boom-docks, over the early-morning markets and past the foundries and forges. Bargains, banter, hog-squeal and hammer-blow; a cackle of laughter, a chorus of song, a muffled explosion – the intricate cacophony of life in Undertown which, even this early in the day, was already in full swing.

Soon, the sounds faded away and were gone, and Twig knew they must have left the bustling town and were heading out across the Mire. Now he could hear the
Stormchaser
itself. The creaking, the groaning; the hissing of air as it rushed past the hull. From below him, came the squeaking and scratching of the ratbirds that lived in the bowels of the sky ship; from above – if he strained – the murmur of voices.

‘Oh, how I wish I could be up there with them,’ Twig whispered.

‘And face the captain's wrath?’ Mugbutt growled. ‘I don’t think so.’

Twig sighed. He knew the flat-head was right. Cloud Wolf would surely skin him alive when he discovered that he had been disobeyed. Yet remaining hidden below deck was torture. He missed the feel of the wind in his hair, of soaring through the air, with the places of the Edge spread out below like an intricate map, and above the yawning expanse of endless open sky.

All through the childhood he’d spent in the Deepwoods, Twig had longed to rise up over the forest canopy and explore the sky above. It was as if, even then, his body had known that this was where he belonged. And perhaps it had. After all, Cloud Wolf, himself, had said on more than one occasion that sky-piracy was ‘in the blood’ – and with such a father…

Twig could hear him now, bellowing commands, and he smiled as he imagined the crew hurrying to obey him. For Cloud Wolf kept a tight ship. He was harsh, but just, and it was to his credit that, with him as its captain, the
Stormchaser
had suffered fewer casualties than any other sky pirate ship.

It was, however, the harshness of his justice which now kept Twig cowering in the flat-head's berth, too nervous to appear until Slyvo Spleethe had spoken up for him. He had no option but to wait.

‘Storm to starboard, and advancing,’ came Spiker's shrill cry. ‘Three minutes to contact, and closing.’

‘Belay that skysail,’ roared Cloud Wolf. ‘And check all winding-cleats.’

As the sky ship pitched abruptly to the left, Twig clutched hold of the main stanchion and clung on tightly. He knew the turbulence was a mere foretaste of what was to come. Normally at this point, with a storm so close, the
Stormchaser
would descend, drop anchor and remain there until it had passed. But not today.

Today, the sky ship would greet the storm up in the sky. It would tack closer and closer, until it was drawn into the hurricane-force slip-stream and be whisked away. Ever faster the
Stormchaser
would fly, inching its way round to the head of the storm. Then, when Cloud Wolf judged the moment to be right, it would spin round and pierce the outer shell of the maelstrom.

This was the most dangerous moment of all. If the
Stormchaser
flew too slowly, it would break up in the violent air. If it flew too fast, then there was always the risk that they would pass straight through the storm, emerge on the other side and watch helplessly as the Great Storm continued without them. In either event, their quest for stormphrax would be over.

No, Twig had heard that there was only one way to penetrate the inner calm of a Great Storm safely, and that was to hold the sky ship at a thirty-five degree angle against the windspin – at least, that was the theory. Yet, as the sky ship bucked and turned and Twig held on for grim death, the
Stormchaser
struck him as absurdly small and fragile for so daunting a task, no matter what angle they chose.

‘One minute to contact, and counting,’ Spiker shouted above the oncoming roar.

‘Secure that spinnaker!’ Cloud Wolf screamed. ‘And Spiker, get down from the caternest,
NOW
!’

Twig had never heard such urgency in Cloud Wolf's voice before. What must it look like, he wondered, this Great Storm which filled his father – the esteemed Quintinius Verginix – with so much terror and awe? He had to see for himself.

Hand over hand, he pulled himself along a crossbeam towards the hull. Although there were no portholes down this deep in the sky ship, the cracks between the curving planks of lufwood were, in places, wide enough to see through. Wedge-shaped chinks of light sliced through the gloom. Reaching the hull at last, Twig knelt down and peered into the cracks.

Below him, he saw the featureless wasteland of the Mire stretching out in every direction. The white mud rippled in the wind, as if the entire wasteland had been transformed into a vast ocean. And there, to complete the illusion, was a ship.

‘Except it's not sailing,’ Twig muttered as he squinted at the distant shipwreck. ‘And probably never will again.’

As the
Stormchaser
sped onwards, Twig realized that the ship had not been abandoned. There was someone there: a tall, thin figure, brandishing his fist at the sky. As colourless as his surroundings, he was well camouflaged. Twig wouldn’t have noticed him at all had it not been for the bright lightning of the approaching storm glinting on the dagger clenched in his fist.

Was it the storm he was cursing? Twig wondered. Or was it the sight of the
Stormchaser
itself, passing overhead, that had filled the curious bleached individual with such anger?

The next instant, both he and the shipwreck were gone. Lightning-dazzle briefly lit up the flat-head's disgusting quarters. The air crackled and hissed. Twig struggled to his feet and peered through a chink higher up the hull, wincing as the onrush of air stung his eyes. He wiped his tears away on his sleeve and squinted back through the gap in the wood.

‘Sky above!’ he cried out.

Directly in front of the sky ship, and obliterating everything else from view, was a rolling, tumbling, heaving wall of furious purple and black. The noise of the blast was deafening – like a never-ending explosion. Louder still, was the creak and groan of the
Stormchaser
itself.

As Twig maintained his gaze, so more lightning was discharged. It streaked across the curving surface of the Great Storm like a network of electric rivers, and imploded in circles of pink and green.

The din grew louder than ever; the lightning, brighter still. And all the while, the
Stormchaser
shook and rattled as the seconds to impact ticked unstoppably past. Twig wrapped both arms around the beam to his left, and tensed his legs.

Five … four … three…

Wheeeiiiiiiiiii
whistled the wind, its high-pitched whine rising to an ear-splitting scream.

Two…

The sky ship had never travelled so fast before. Twig clung on for dear life as it hurtled onwards.

One … And…

WHOOOMPH!!

Like a falling leaf in an autumn gale, the
Stormchaser
was abruptly seized and whisked off by the spinning wind. It listed hard to port with a fearful lurch. Twig was torn from the beam and hurled back across the straw-strewn floor.

‘Aaaii!’ he cried out as he flew through the air. He landed heavily, with a thud; his head jerked sharply back and struck the side of Mugbutt's berth with a loud
crack
.

Everything went black.

Mugbutt looked down and smirked. ‘That's it,
Master
Twig,’ he said, ‘you stay here by my side where I can keep an eye on you.’

*

Above deck, it was all the captain and his crew could do to keep the
Stormchaser
airborne. While Hubble held the wheel in his powerful grasp, Cloud Wolf's fingers played over the keyboard of levers.

Twenty years it was since he had studied in the Knights’ Academy; twenty years since he had learned about the finer points of stormchasing – and twenty years is a long time in which to forget. As Cloud Wolf raised this weight a fraction and lowered that sail a tad, it was instinct rather than memory that guided him.

‘Stormchasing!’ he murmured reverently.

On and on, they were drawn, whistling across the sky in the slip-stream of the Great Storm. Slowly, slowly and little by little, Cloud Wolf used the dry, turbulent currents to inch his way along the outer edge of the storm and on towards the front.

‘Whoa, there, my beauty,’ he whispered to the
Stormchaser
. ‘Easy now.’ Tentatively, he lowered the prow-weight – a fraction of a degree at a time. The sky ship bowed forwards.

‘Raise the mainsail!’ he ordered. Tem Barkwater and Stope Boltjaw stared at one another in confusion. What madness was this to raise the mainsail in such a wind? Surely they had misheard. ‘
RAISE THAT ACCURSED MAINSAIL, BEFORE I HAVE YOU SKY-FIRED!
’ the captain raged.