The Last of the Sky Pirates (36 page)

The crowd of banderbears roared all the louder. Rook quivered with happiness. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Wuh!’

The black banderbear nodded earnestly. ‘Wurrah-woor. Wuh-wuh.’
You are special. No others have witnessed our Great Convocation – save for one …

Just then Rook sensed a movement behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the great crowd of banderbears parting. A long, narrow passageway opened up between them and, as Rook peered down it, he saw a figure emerge from the other end and walk slowly towards him.

‘What the—?’ Rook whispered.

He stared at the figure, with his stooped shoulders and long, white matted hair and beard. His jerkin, trousers and boots were made from wild-leather, and stitched together with strips of thong. His threadbare hammelhornskin waistcoat flapped in the rising breeze. As he approached, Rook looked into the newcomer’s face.

The skin was leathery and lined, every crease and every scar hinting at an episode in the stranger’s past. But the eyes! Rook had never seen such eyes before. Marsh-gem green and crystal clear, they twinkled brightly in the moonlight, like the eyes of someone much younger.

He stopped in front of Rook.
I
believe this is yours,’ he said.

Rook looked down to see his treatise-log clutched in the stranger’s calloused hands. He reached out and took it gratefully. ‘Th-thank you,’ he said. ‘But … who am I thanking?’

‘My name is Twig,’ came the reply. ‘I used to be a sky pirate captain, a defender of Old Sanctaphrax. Now, like you, I am a friend of banderbears …’ He smiled warmly, his eyes twinkling brighter than ever. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of me?’

t was a glorious morning, Rook. I’ll never forget it. A morning which, after the ferocious storm which had raged throughout the previous night, many of us thought we’d never live to see.’ Twig’s eyes became dreamy; he shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I can scarcely believe that fifty years has gone by since then.’

Rook looked at Twig thoughtfully. Fifty years. That would make the sky pirate captain nearly seventy years old. So much had changed in the Edge in that time.

‘The old days – oh, the stories I could tell you of the old days,’ Twig was saying. ‘But that is for another time. With the passing through of the great Mother Storm, the waters of the Edge were rejuvenated and the glistening air that morning pulsated with hope for a bright new future.’

Rook nodded. From the texts and scrolls in the Great
Storm Chamber Library he had learned about the birth of the new rock and the subsequent founding of New Sanctaphrax. And how Vox Verlix had taken over from the first High Academe – an obscure youth, not up to the task – and built the foundations of what was later to become the Tower of Night. Now, speaking to this strange, ragged old sky pirate captain, the dry accounts he’d read came vividly to life.

‘My work there finally done,’ Twig continued, ‘I boarded the
Skyraider
and prepared to depart, for it was time for me to set a course for the Deepwoods, to collect those faithful members of my crew who were still at Riverrise, awaiting my return.’

‘Riverrise,’ Rook breathed.

‘Aye, lad,’ said Twig. ‘That was where I’d left them. There was Maugin – the best stone pilot that ever tended a flight-rock. And Woodfish, a waterwaif with powers of hearing that were truly remarkable, even by waif standards. And Goom.’ He smiled and looked round. ‘Dear Goom, the bravest banderbear a captain could wish for. I promised them faithfully that I would return for them – and, on that fine morning so long ago, that was just what I intended to do.’

Rook and Twig were sitting side by side on the log of a fallen tree at the edge of the valley clearing. Before them, the Great Convocation was in full sway, with the vast crowd of banderbears mingling and chanting and sharing their knowledge of the Deepwoods, one with the other, as the first blush of dawn tinged the edges of the sky.

‘I had a good crew to aid me in my quest,’ Twig went on. ‘I can see their faces almost as clearly as I can see yours now. There was Bogwitt, the flat-head goblin – just the type to have fighting by your side in a battle. And Tarp Hammelherd, the slaughterer I had rescued from the drinking dens of Undertown. And my quartermaster, Wingnut Sleet – his face hideously scarred by a lightning bolt.’ He sighed. ‘And the others. Teasel the mobgnome – good with ropes, I recall. Stile, the cook, with his twisted spine and awkward walk. Old Jervis, the gnokgoblin – not much use, but a cheery soul. And, of course, Grimlock. Who could forget Grimlock!’

‘Grimlock?’ said Rook.

‘A giant of a brogtroll,’ said Twig. ‘Not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, perhaps, but strong as a team of hammelhorns.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Anyway … Where was I? Ah, yes. Pausing only to bid farewell to the Most High Academe and wish him luck, we set forth, with the wind in our sails and hope in our hearts.’ He turned to Rook, his eyes twinkling brightly. ‘I can still remember how warm upon my back the sun was, as we soared off over the Mire and on towards the Deepwoods.’ He smiled broadly. ‘And how high my spirits flew … Riverrise! I was returning to Riverrise!’

Rook smiled with him, caught up in the enthusiasm of the old sky pirate captain.

‘Of course,’ Twig continued, his expression becoming serious, ‘I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The voyage would be long and difficult. But I also knew that I needed to trust both my instincts and my senses.

Woodfish would be calling to me. I had to keep my mind focused so that I could follow his call.’

Twig’s eyes had a faraway look in them as he went on. ‘We sailed for several months,’ he said, ‘soon leaving woodtroll villages and goblin settlements far behind. Each morning I scanned the horizon and cleared my mind. All about us, the great Deepwoods stretched as far as the eye could see; dark, forbidding and endless. But we kept going, ever onwards, into the deepest, darkest places where the forest was so dense that no light penetrated. The air above it boiled with black, turbulent clouds and festering storms which buffeted and battered the
Skyraider
until it was as ragged and frayed as our nerves.’

Twig fell still. He put his head in his hands.

‘What happened?’ asked Rook. ‘Did you hear the waif’s call? Did you find Riverrise?’

Twig looked up, his eyes glistening. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I heard nothing but the taunting howl of the storms as
they ripped through our sails – and the mocking silence of the Deepwoods during the lulls between.’ He shivered. ‘And worse …’

‘Worse?’ said Rook.

‘The scream of Wingnut Sleet as a storm swept him from the quarterdeck, the last gasps of poor old Jervis, crushed by a falling section of rigging, and the incoherent babble of Teasel as he lost his mind and jumped from the mast into the blackness below. Stile, the old cook, died soon afterwards – of a broken heart, or so my crew said. And yet still we continued, because I couldn’t give up, Rook. I couldn’t. None of us could. You must understand.’

Rook patted the old sky pirate’s tattered sleeve. ‘I understand,’ he whispered.

‘Do you?’ said Twig. ‘Do you? Sixteen years we sailed, Rook. Sixteen long, lonely, frightening years, growing ragged, weary … defeated. And it was all my fault. I couldn’t find my way back to Riverrise.’ He looked up, his eyes shot with pain. ‘I failed them, Rook. My crew … My friends …’

‘You did your best,’ said Rook.

‘But my best just wasn’t good enough,’ said Twig bitterly. He shook his head. ‘At last there were just four of us left. Bogwitt, Tarp Hammelherd, Grimlock – and myself. Flying the sky ship without a stone pilot had been difficult enough before, but now, with so few hands on board, it was all but impossible. To continue our search for Riverrise I needed to take on extra crew. So I turned back and set a course for a place I’d heard talked
of in the woodtroll villages and rundown goblin hamlets we had passed through on our travels – a place that was said to be a beacon of hope in the darkness of the Deepwoods, offering a welcome to the weary and a haven to the lost—’

‘The Free Glades!’ Rook exclaimed. ‘You visited the Free Glades!’

‘That we did,’ said Twig. ‘New Undertown was no more than a collection of lufwood cabins back then, and the woodtroll villages were only just being established. But we did indeed find a welcome, at the Lake Landing Academy, from a young librarian by the name of Parsimmon—’

‘Parsimmon,’ Rook broke in excitedly. ‘He’s still there. Except he’s the High Master now. He taught
me.’

‘Then you had a wise teacher, young Rook,’ said Twig. ‘I remember that evening well. We limped into the Free Glades and moored up at the Landing Tower. Caused a bit of a commotion, we did.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘I suppose we must have looked quite a sight to those young librarians, Parsimmon amongst them, who greeted us. Our clothes were no better than rags, and the poor old
Skyraider’s
hull was pitted and scarred, its sails in tatters. But they gathered round us and gawped, open-mouthed, until Parsimmon stepped forward and introduced himself.

‘He said we looked as if we could do with a good meal and rest, and that we must dine with them in their refectory; and that he wouldn’t take no for an answer! It was over supper – tilder stew and oakapple cider, as I
recall – that we heard the terrible news, and realized why they were so surprised to see us.’

‘What news?’ asked Rook.

‘Why news of stone-sickness, of course,’ said Twig. ‘Parsimmon told me all about it. Both league ships and sky pirate ships were dropping out of the sky like stones, he said. Not a single flight from Old Sanctaphrax had reached the Free Glades for more than a year.

‘The sickness had, it seemed, spread out from the stricken New Sanctaphrax rock. It was highly con tagious, travelling from sky ship to sky ship like wild-fire. As the flight-rock of one sky ship crumbled, so the crew had to find work on another – infecting the flight-rock of the new ship as they did so. “The First Age of Flight was at an end” – those were his very words, and as I heard them I realized the awful truth.

‘Though we had come to the Free Glades in desperate need of more crew-members, I could not risk taking anyone on board who might be contaminated. We had only escaped until then because we’d been out in the furthest parts of the Deepwoods for so long. I leaped up from the table, hurried back to the
Skyraider
, and departed at once.