The Farrow Ridges

I opened my eyes. The darkness swirled. I didn’t know where I was. I lifted my head to look round, but when I did so, a sharp pain filled my skull. I flopped back and closed my eyes again.

There were muffled voices coming from the other side of the wall. Some I recognized. Hench and the other conspirators were in the middle of a heated argument. Mother Redwattle was trying to quieten them down, but without much success. Then I heard my own name, and winced. They must be deciding how to deal with me. So much for my attempts to glean information about the smashed loom…

‘You were a fool to come here in the first place.‘

The sharp voice inside my head came as a shock, and I sat bolt upright despite the stabs of pain at my temples and behind my eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Hedgethorn, but I had no option. When I saw that cloddertrog wielding that machete of his, I pretended to side with them. I hit you over the head and dragged you into the store-room. Better a sore head, I thought, than no head at all.‘

‘Threnodesse?’ I said. ‘Is that you?’

‘It is, Hedgethorn,‘ the voice said, and I heard a match being struck. Abruptly, flickering candlelight illuminated my surroundings, and I saw the windowless little store-room she had brought me to. Three of its walls were lined with shelves laden with goblets and tankards, and I was lying on a straw mattress that had been pushed up against the fourth wall, behind the door.

The waif emerged from the shadows. Carrying a candle-holder in one hand and a small black leather bag in the other, she crossed the room and crouched down beside me. She inspected the bump on the side of my head. It was tender to the touch, but as she smoothed in the ointment she took from her bag, the pain subsided to a dull throb.

 

‘You’re the Split-Willow’s tavern waif?’ I said.

‘For my sins,’ said Threnodesse with a sigh. ‘After our Great Glade mission, I’d had enough of corrupt bigwigs - then Mother Redwattle offered me the job here.’ Beyond the wall, the voices were getting rowdier. Threnodesse shook her head. ‘Trouble is, Hedgethorn, rich or poor, some folks are good and some…’ She paused. ‘Are just rotten.’

‘The Defenders of the First Age,’ I muttered grimly.

At that moment, there came a ferocious thumping at the door.

‘This place is a hot-bed of their rebellion,’ Threnodesse confirmed as the thumping grew louder. ‘They aim to put an end to any use of phrax-driven machines in the Farrow Ridges. Even if it means civil war.’

Just then, the wooden frame started to splinter. I leaped to my feet, seeing stars as I did so, and staggered backwards. Threnodesse caught me.

‘Quickly,‘ she said, speaking inside my head once more as she steered me across the room. In the shadows I saw a second door. She turned the key and pulled it open. ‘Your friend Bragsworn has promised to help you, she said. ‘He slipped out unnoticed and is waiting for you by the well out back. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.‘

She pushed me out into the cold night and locked the door behind me. A moment later I heard the inside door splinter and crash to the floor as it was kicked open. The shouting grew louder. I started running, dodging the empty ale kegs and wine casks. The angry voices grew fainter.

‘Bragsworn,’ I said, as a familiar figure stepped out from the shadows behind the well.

‘I gave them the slip, Hedgethorn,’ he began, his eyes looking round wildly. ’But we’ve got to get out of here before they track us down and finish us both off.’

I orientated myself. If we head left and keep to the forest, it should bring us out near to my hive-house,’ I told him. ‘We’ll be safe there.’

But Bragsworn didn’t move. Instead, he nodded back the way I’d just come, where swords, machetes and studded clubs glinted in the light of flaming torches and swaying lanterns as the baying mob blundered towards us.

‘I fear, Hedgethorn,’ he said, ‘it’s already too late…’

The hideous flock of glowing-eyed rotsuckers descended on the sky galleon, claws spread and snouts dripping. Around me on the deck of the Rainseeker, the sky pirates sprang into action.

A team of burly trogs and flatheads leaped onto the phraxchamber’s scaffolding, swinging large double-edged axes at the rotsuckers, that were landing and attempting to gain a clawhold on the iron struts. The bat-like creatures hissed and spat streams of bile as twenty or so of their number were decapitated and sent spiralling down into the gloom below.

I crouched in fascinated terror as a grim battle unfolded on the foredeck in front of me. A powerful harpooneer in plated body armour had swung his swivel-mounted phraxcannon around and loosed a barbed harpoon at a cluster of black crouching rotsuckers. It pierced six of their number as it swept across the foredeck and disappeared over the side into the darkness. Four more of the hideous creatures fell upon the harpooneer who, despite his armour, was torn apart by their razor-sharp claws.

Suddenly, flashes of light lit up the fore and aft decks as the sky pirates opened up a fusilade of phraxmusket fire. The phraxbullets must have been incendiary, for, as they found their mark, rotsuckers burst into balls of flame. As the flock scattered, the flames spread to the streams of bile that poured from the rotsuckers’ snouts, creating an extraordinary pyrotechnic display in the dark air. The musket-fire had cleared the decks, though at the cost of ten or so sky pirates who lay horribly disfigured in pools of blood.

Danger was far from over. As I got to my feet, the deck shuddered and sent me tumbling. From below came the sound of claws scrabbling and scratching as they embedded themselves in the ship’s hull. The Rainseeker shuddered once more and then began to roll back and forth with increasing momentum.

‘They’re trying to turn us turvy!’ came Captain Skullbaiter’s shouted warning from the helm. ‘Everybody hold fast!’

With that, there came a hissing blast from the phraxchamber, and the funnel belched forth a billowing cascade of smoke. I ventured a look over the side as the sky galleon suddenly put on a burst of speed. Below, I could just see a mass of black shapes dotted with glowing eyes, hanging from the hull of the Rainseeker like monstrous sky-barnacles. Even as the ship gathered speed, more rotsuckers seemed to be landing and clinging on to its underside. A few more, and they would drag us down into the depths of the canyon with disastrous results.

‘Prepare for impact!’ bellowed the captain from the helm, and I crouched down on the deck and gripped the gunwales.

The Rainseeker had now reached its maximum speed and ahead the ramparts of the sumpwood stockade rose up to meet us. There was an ear-splitting crash as the hull timbers of the ship slammed into the sumpwood logs of the stockade. The flock of rotsuckers clinging to the Rainseeker were sloughed from its underside in screaming, twisting shards as the funnel of the phraxchamber enveloped us in steam.

The phrax vapour cleared to reveal the sky galleon embedded in the fort’s facade. I had been considerably shaken up by the collision, as had most of the Rainseeker’s crew. Shakily, I reached for my phraxpistol and rose to my feet. The rotsuckers had been repelled, but now a new danger appeared out of the rising mist to take their place. The tallow-hats - hundreds of them - armed to the teeth and with murder in their eyes.

The Battle for the Floating Fortress had only just begun…