The Last of the Sky Pirates (15 page)

‘Do you see it?’ Rook called. Stob kept on walking and made no reply. Rook hurried after him. ‘A Knight Academic! Stob! Out there in the woods! He’s getting closer!’

‘Shut up and keep moving!’ Stob growled back. ‘Or a shryke guard will cut you loose. You heard what they said.’

‘He’s right, Rook,’ Magda called back. Her voice was thick from crying. ‘It’ll soon be over if we just keep moving and don’t lose our heads.’

Rook glanced back; the knight had vanished. He could hear muffled sighs and taunting whispers and, whichever way he looked, he caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye – though when he tried to focus in on it, the movement ceased and he saw nothing.

Was anything real in the Twilight Woods? he wondered. Or was it inhabited solely by phantasms and ghosts – the spirits of those who had fallen victim to the seductive charms of the dimly lit forest?

Just then there was a loud
crash
. One of the gnokgoblins’ handcarts had overturned, sending its cargo of metal pots clattering and clanging across the narrow road. The group came to a halt, twisting round on their leash-ropes as they attempted to right the cart and rescue its spilt contents. Soon they were all hopelessly tangled, and shouting at each other.

‘Turn
this
way, Morkbuff!’ wheezed their elderly leader. ‘You, Pegg! Help him out … No, not like that!’

Magda, Stob and Rook came to a halt a few strides away. Behind them, the cloddertrogs approached.

‘Keep moving!’ they bellowed. ‘We can’t!’ Rook called back. ‘Or we’ll get caught up with that lot.’ He pointed at the tangle of goblins.

Another handcart crashed over.

‘Somebody
do
something!’ shouted Stob above the din.

‘That’s really helpful!’ said Magda. ‘What do you suggest?’

Around them, the Twilight Woods seemed to be listening. From the shadows, Rook was aware of movement. The Knight Academic reappeared.

‘Look,’ he whispered excitedly to the other two. ‘He’s back.’

They followed Rook’s gaze.

‘He’s not the only one,’ said Stob.

Sure enough, other figures were emerging from the shadowy gloom, as if drawn by the gnokgoblins’ commotion. Rook shuddered. There were ragged, half-dead
trogs, skeletal leaguesmen, several desperate-looking goblins, some with missing limbs and many bearing terrible wounds. They stood all round them; hollow-eyed, staring, silent.

The gnokgoblins saw the ghostly crowd they had attracted and fell still. The two groups watched each other in absolute silence; the living and the undead.

Despite the clammy heat, Rook felt icy sweat run over his face, into his eyes, down his back. ‘This is a dreadful place,’ he whispered.

Suddenly, there came the sound of furious screeching and squawking, and a squadron of shryke guards appeared through the gloom, glittering dust flying in their wake. Just as suddenly, the ghostly apparitions melted back into the woods.

‘What’s going on?’ squawked the shrykes’ leader, an imposing female with bright yellow plumage and a purple crest. ‘Why is no-one moving?’

Everybody started talking at once.

‘Silence!’ roared the shryke, the feathers round her neck ruffling ominously. ‘Twilight-crazy, the lot of you!’ She turned to her second-in-command. ‘Clear this featherless vermin off my road, Magclaw, and get the rest moving!’

‘You heard what Sister Featherslash said!’ rasped Magclaw, with a click of her bone-flail. ‘Cut them loose! Now!’

The gnokgoblins began wailing, and Rook flinched as the shrykes began slashing at the snarled ropes with their razor-sharp scythes. The ropes fell to the ground.
The shrykes chased the weeping goblins into the woods.

‘Get moving, the rest of you!’ ordered Sister Featherslash. ‘I’m sure you’ve all got important business in the beautiful Eastern Roost!’ She cackled unpleasantly. ‘If you ever get there.’

Magda, Stob and Rook set off quickly.

‘I don’t care what the Eastern Roost is like, it can’t be worse than this,’ said Magda. ‘Can it?’

‘Just keep moving,’ said Stob. ‘And try not to think about it.’

Rook looked back over his shoulder. In the eerie, dappled light, the elderly gnokgoblin was sitting on a tree-root, waving his arms and protesting loudly to thin air.

ut of the swirling twilight loomed a lufwood tree, so enormous that a gateway had been tunnelled through the middle of its vast trunk. It straddled the road, separating the Twilight Woods from the Eastern Roost beyond. High up, above the arched entrance, the cable to which the leash-ropes were attached came to an end.

Two shryke guards stood sentry, one on either side of the gateway. ‘Untie your ropes!’ one of them commanded harshly as Magda, Stob and Rook approached.

They quickly did as they were told. Already, the cloddertrogs were arriving behind them.

‘Proceed by the Lower Levels to the Central Market!’ barked the other guard. ‘The upper roosts are for shrykes only’ Her yellow eyes glinted menacingly. ‘You have been warned!’

Rook’s head was beginning to clear as the strange,
penetrating atmosphere of the Twilight Woods released its grip. He squinted into the gloom beyond the Lufwood Gate.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. Beneath the roasting pinecoffee and sizzling tilder sausages, beneath the odours and scents, of leatherware, incense and the greasy smell of oil lamps, there was another smell. A rank and rancid smell. A smell that, as the wind stirred, grew more pungent, then less – but never faded completely.

Rook shivered.

‘We’re going to be fine,’ Magda whispered, and squeezed his hand reassuringly. ‘If we all stick together. We must head for the Central Market.’

Rook nodded. It wasn’t only his sense of smell which had become so acute. After the sensory deprivation and confusion of the Twilight Woods, his senses were blazing. The air felt greasy, dirty. He could taste it in his mouth. His ears heard every screech, every squeal; every barked order and crack of the whip – every heartrending cry of despair. And as for his eyes …

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Rook muttered, as they started along one of a series of walkways strung out between the trees, which led deeper and deeper into the thronging city.

Lights. Colour. Faces. Movement … Everywhere he looked, Rook was bombarded by a confusing mass of strange and disturbing sights. It was like a great patchwork quilt which, as he passed through it, threw up image after individual image.

A caged banderbear. A chained vulpoon. Tethered rotsuckers. Betting posts and gambling tables. Itinerants hawking lucky charms. A pair of shrykes, their flails clacking. Two more – one armed with a great studded club. An animated argument between a gnokgoblin and a cloddertrog. A lost woodtroll, screaming for its mother. Leather dealers, paper merchants, chandlers and coopers. Refreshment stalls selling snacks and beverages that Rook didn’t even know existed. What was a wood-toad shake? Or a hot-bod? And what in Sky’s name might gloamglozer tea taste of?

‘It’s this way,’ he heard Stob saying, pointing up at a painted sign above their heads.

They descended three flights of rickety steps, zigzagging downwards until they arrived at a bustling walkway in the trees. Burdened with its heavy load of
merchants and marketeers, goblins, trogs and trolls streaming in both directions, the walkway dipped and bounced, creaking ominously as it swayed. Rook gripped the safety-rail anxiously.

‘Don’t look down,’ Magda whispered, sensing Rook’s nervousness.

But Rook couldn’t help himself. He peered down into the depths below. Three levels beneath him, in the dark, acrid gloom, was the forest floor. It shimmered and writhed as if the earth itself were somehow alive. With a jolt, Rook realized that that was precisely what it was – for the forest floor was a living mass of tiny orange creatures.

‘Wig-wigs,’ he muttered uneasily.

Although he’d never seen one before, Rook had read about them in Varis Lodd’s treatise on banderbears. They hunted in huge packs and could devour a creature as big as a banderbear in an instant – flesh, hair, bones, tusks; everything. Rook shuddered as it occurred to him that this vast city in the trees – the Eastern Roost – must provide an abundance of food for so many bloodthirsty scavengers to have congregated underneath. Giddy with foreboding, he gripped the rail tightly.