The Farrow Ridges

‘Do something! Please, do something!’ Laria was pleading. Vitus was writhing about in her arms, his little arms and legs flailing, his face red and twisted up with pain. And he was screaming - screaming with pain and fear. ‘Hedgethorn, for the love of Earth and Sky, do something! ‘

Yes, yes. I must do something. But what?

The venom of the hoverworm is deadly. It courses round the body, causing it to swell up until the hapless victim becomes so huge and buoyant that he or she flies up into the air and off into Open Sky, never to be seen again. That was Vitus’s fate if I didn’t do something. And quick.

But what? What should I do?

The slaughterers, they knew a thing or two about the hoverworm. As far back as the First Age of Flight, they knew how to treat its bite. An antidote of charlock and hempleaf, that’s what they used.

And the librarian knights of the Second Age of flight. They used a similiar concoction. Hover tincture, they called it. No librarian knight’s equipment was complete without the antidote to the bite of the hoverworm, which they wore on their arms in a small ironwood phial.

And then the Freeglade Lancers. They’d taken to carrying the same ironwood phials around with them, attached to their belts. The same antidote against the hoverworm bite in their forays into the Deepwoods around Great Glade.

‘Laria,’ I said. ‘Listen carefully. This is important. Get Vitus inside the hive-house…’

‘He… he…’ Laria clutched at the struggling infant, already growing bigger, lighter in her arms. ‘Hedgethorn, what’s happening?’

‘Get him inside the hive-house,’ I repeated. ‘The venom’s taking effect. Get him inside the hive-house! ‘

Gripping Vitus tightly, Laria stumbled across the veranda and through the door. The baby screamed and howled. I rushed in after her. I had to be quick. A fully-grown soldier might last an hour at the most before the venom sent him soaring into Open Sky. But how long might a baby last? Fifteen minutes? Ten?

With my heart thumping and my hands shaking, I climbed the ladder to my loft. I emerged at the top. I looked around at all the junk I’d amassed over the years. Boxes and crates, stacks of barkscrolls, tools I’d replaced with better ones but couldn’t discard. Old furniture. Old clothes. Memories…

And there, on the far side, against the plaited walls, was a small chest. It contained my old Hive militia uniform; it contained my medals, my papers. It had seemed the perfect place to put the uniform of the brave Freeglade Lancer I’d found dead on the ground after the Battle of the Farrow Lakes. Parvis Helm…

‘Hurry, Hedgethorn!’ Laria Chillax’s voice cut through the air. ‘He’s dying…’

I seized Parvis Helm’s uniform and pulled it from the chest. I lay it on the wooden boards and rifled through it - tunic, helmet, breastplate… Belt!

Below me, in the hive-house, the screaming ceased. In its place came a desperate snuffling gasping for air. I knew that Vitus’s neck and chest must have swelled so much he was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Hedgethorn! Hedgethorn!’ Laria shrieked.

I ran my trembling fingers over the belt and there, attached by a leather loop, was a phial. I pulled the cork from the neck of the small bottle with my teeth, spat it away and sniffed. Charlock and hempleaf. Hover tincture. The antidote I’d been searching for.

‘Hedgethorn, I can’t…’ Laria’s anguished words turned to a loud scream and I spun round to see her hands grasping desperately for Vitus. The poor mite was twice his normal size now and still inflating, and so light that no matter how hard Laria tried to keep a hold, he slipped from her grasp and soared up into the air. ‘HEDGETHORN!! ‘

If we’d still been outside, he’d have been a goner for sure. He would have risen up into the air and off into Open Sky. But here, inside the hive-house, he still had a chance…

I reached out, plucked him from the air and wedged him beneath my arm. Then, with my free arm I raised the phial of antidote and put it to Vitus’s bloated lips. One drop slipped into his mouth. Then another. I rubbed his neck and he swallowed. I counted off another half dozen drops of the antidote. He swallowed again, and again…

I climbed down the ladder slowly, Vitus in my arms. Already the swelling was beginning to go down. I handed him over to Laria, who cradled him to her breast, tears streaming down her face.

‘To think we almost lost you,’ I said, smoothing the hair on his little head as Laria sobbed. Vitus looked up at me, his eyes bright and tear-filled.

‘Da-da,’ he said.

‘My dear Forden,’ said Captain Gart Ironshank, clapping me on the back, ‘what we need, to brighten our spirits and restore the fire to our bellies, is an expedition!’

We were walking beside the Farrow Lake on a winding path from the bustling webfoot village towards the Levels. My nameless one, Kulltuft, was bounding ahead on those great galumphing legs of his. He’d grown to almost twice my size in the half year or so since I found him in the Northern Woods, and had proved a loyal and obedient companion, not to mention an excellent bodyguard.

‘Here, boy!’ I called. ‘Heel!’ In answer to my call, Kulltuft came bounding back down the path and came to a halt by my side, nuzzling me affectionately with his misshapen head. ‘An expedition, Gart?’ I said, turning to the old phraxship captain.

He nodded. ‘I’ve got it all worked out. In here.’ He tapped the side of his head and smiled. ‘What Farrow Lake needs to grow is industry - a stilt-factory producing goods we need right here, instead of shipping them all the way from Hive or Great Glade.’

Gart came to a stop and pointed out across the flat marshy mudflats of the Levels.

‘And what better place for a stilt-factory than here? Just think of it, Forden. The purified steam from the factory’s phraxengines would turn this wasteland into a market garden to rival any in Great Glade, and all the ironwood ore we could possibly need is just beyond, in the Western Woods…’

I tickled Kulltuft behind one ear, and was rewarded by a deep, growling purr.

‘That’s all well and good,’ I said, for I knew as well as Gart how the by-products of the phraxengines that powered stilt-factories didn’t produce pollution, but instead nourished and watered the land they stood on with the steam from their funnels. ‘But to build phraxengines, we’d need stormphrax - and plenty of it.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gart, smiling delightedly. ‘When the Farrow Lake militia defeated the mire pearlers, we captured Commander Felvis Yellowmane’s war-chest - a great iron-bound sumpwood thing it was, stuffed full of hivegeld and gladers; money he probably owed his troops and was hoarding. Well, as head of the Farrow Lake Chamber of Commerce…’

Gart drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. For the first time I saw the ribbon at the collar of his topcoat, and the guilded carving of an ironoak acorn that dangled from it.

‘I proposed to the council that we invest that ill-gotten loot in buying stormphrax, and building a stilt-factory for the good of us all.’

‘But the stormphrax markets in Great Glade are controlled by the phraxmerchants. We’d need permits and permissions and payoffs…’

‘Not if we by-passed the phraxmerchants and went straight to the source,’ said Gart, his eyes twinkling.

‘To the phraxmines of the Eastern Woods?’ I said with a sharp intake of breath. ‘It would be risky. Even if we managed to get a berth on a sky tavern, we’d have to get past the merchants’ militia.’

‘Who needs a sky tavern when we’ve got the Wind Zephyr - the finest little phraxlighter this side of the Farrow Ridges? She’s fully repaired, supplied and ready to go. And I’ve got a very good friend in the Prade mine who I’ve been meaning to look up for years. What do you say, Forden?’

I weighed up Gart Ironshank’s proposal. If it worked, it could be the making of our little community here in Farrow Lake. But the risks were high and the dangers very real…

‘I’m in, on one condition,’ I said, patting Kulltuft on the head.

‘Name it,’ said Gart.

I smiled, ‘That you make room for one more.’

It was a balmy evening and the three of us were out on the veranda of my hive-house. Laria Chillax - the widow of the brave lancer I had fought alongside at the battle of Farrow Lake - and I were sitting in rocking chairs, sipping sapwine and watching the golden sunlight spread out across the Farrow Lake, then set above the Western Woods. Vitus, the little foundling I had rescued from the battlefield, was getting stronger every day. As we watched, he crawled across the boards, shepherding the three wooden balls I had carved for him.

‘I’ve been thinking about my future here in the Farrow Ridges,’ Laria was saying. ‘I was a seamstress back in Great Glade. And with an excellent reputation by all accounts,’ she added with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘With Parvis dead, there’s nothing for me back there. And I wondered whether the Farrow Ridges might benefit from a small tailor’s shop…’

I thought it was an excellent idea. Before the battle, the Farrow Ridge settlers’ clothing had been brought in on the trading vessels that docked at the Needles. None had visited for months, and I was sure Laria’s idea would prove a winner. We talked of where she might come by a sewing machine; whether there might be someone locally who could make her buttons, toggles, fasteners. We made plans for constructing her a cabin, to include a workshop and small store, on the lakeside plot next to my own hive-house.

Unlike the main cities of the Edge, where business is conducted in dockets, gladers, waifmarks , hivegeld and such like, the Farrow Ridges has no currency. Instead, we barter, exchanging goods for goods, or for works carried out - joinery, plumbing, tiling, boat-repairs, letter-writing. That sort of thing. Laria laughed as we tried to decide whether a worsted hackjacket and matching breeches were worth more or less than a side of hammelhorn, or a newly tiled roof, when all at once, Vitus let out a scream that was shrill and urgent and filled with terror and pain.

‘Vitus!’ Laria cried out, leaping from the rocking chair and dashing to the far side of the veranda, where Vitus lay, silent now and motionless. ‘Vitus, Vitus…’ she moaned, gathering his body up in her arms and cradling him to her breast. ‘Vitus, what is it?’

In the short time that she had stayed with me, Laria had treated Vitus like the child she had never had with Parvis Helm. And Vitus adored her in return.

She turned to me, her green eyes wild with fear. ‘Hedgethorn,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I… I don’t know…’ I said. ‘Perhaps…’ And then I heard it, a loud hissing noise, and I saw a flash of green and yellow. ‘Oh, no,’ I gasped. ‘A hoverworm.’

Laria spun round. ‘A what?’

‘A hoverworm,’ I repeated miserably. ‘A Deepwoods creature. It usually favours the darkest parts of the forest. It must have come down to the lakeside to drink…’

Laria inspected Vitus’s hot, limp body agitatedly, and let out a stifled cry as she discovered the two marks puncturing the skin of his left arm. She looked up at me.

‘He… he’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she sobbed, her tear-filled eyes imploring me to assure her that he would be.

But I could not. How could I? After all, I’d learned from bitter personal experience that, if the victim of a hoverworm’s bite was not given the antidote to its vile venom within the hour, then he or she would surely die…