Doombringer Page 15

  Gart pulled on the rudder lever and brought the Hoverworm down close to the roofs, the smoke from a thousand chimneys making their eyes water, then descended to the docking-tower and manoeuvred the Hoverworm into a gap between two barges, each one laden with winesap barrels.

  Thorne jumped onto the platform and cleated the little vessel securely. After paying the dock warden, a rotund goblin with a fat belly and large tufted ears, the four of them – with Cade holding Rumblix on a leash – set off down the steps of the mooring tower and followed Thorne through the labyrinth of narrow alleys beyond.

  ‘That’s the house I grew up in,’ said Thorne, stopping in front of a squat, timber-framed house with shuttered windows. ‘Twenty-three of us in two rooms, there were, with little enough to eat, and long hours at the sappress to look forward to.’ He shook his head. ‘But times changed after the war . . .’

  They walked on and, as Thorne guided them from alley to alley, Cade noticed how the goblins they passed would nod or doff their caps when they saw the old grey militia jacket that Thorne was wearing. At last, they came to a tall building flanked by warehouses, hooks and pulleys dangling from their fronts, and packed inside with huge winesap casks.

  The sign above the door confirmed that they’d come to the right place. The Winesap Inn.

  As Thorne pushed open the tall doors, which were covered in carved vines laden with grapes, and went inside, Cade felt Rumblix pull on his leash and yelp excitedly.

  ‘Easy there, boy,’ he reassured him, patting his head. ‘I know it’s strange – it’s strange for me too.’

  He followed Gart and Thorne inside, with Rumblix sticking close at heel, his nostrils flared and tongue lolling as he took in the unfamiliar sights and smells.

  Suddenly a whispery, yet oddly penetrating, voice sounded, so close to Cade’s ear it was as if it was inside his head.

  ‘Well, well. If it isn’t Militia Private Lammergyre,’ it said.

  Cade looked up and saw a slight whey-faced creature with large black eyes and red-veined ears perched on a high seat that had been carved into one of the upright pillars above their heads.

  ‘Artifuce!’ Thorne exclaimed and thrust out his hand in greeting. ‘My favourite tavern waif!’

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ the waif said, his bony hand lost in the fisher goblin’s grasp. ‘Heard you’d left the city, returned to the Deepwoods.’ The waif’s black eyes grew large as he peered down from his seat into Thorne’s face. ‘Seems you have found a measure of peace at . . . Farrow Lake.’

  ‘Indeed I have, old friend,’ said Thorne. ‘We must catch up, but first . . .’

  ‘You want to see the boss,’ said Artifuce, his ears fluttering. ‘You’ll find Sergeant Gleep up in the barrel-wood balcony. I’ll tell him you’re here.’ The little waif closed his large eyes and tilted his head to one side, but didn’t move from his seat.

  ‘As I live and breathe!’ came a booming voice moments later. ‘Thorne Lammergyre!’

  A ruddy-faced mobgnome with red plaited side-whiskers, wearing a leather apron over his jerkin and checked breeches, came striding down the stairs towards them. Cade noticed the soft-peaked cap he was wearing, the ornate H of the Hive Militia embroidered on its front.

  ‘Sergeant!’ said Thorne, smiling broadly, but standing to attention and giving a salute.

  Pushing his way through the crowded tavern, the mobgnome threw his arms around Thorne and patted him hard on the shoulder. ‘Thorne, old comrade, it’s good to see you looking so well,’ he said. He stepped back. ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Nearly fifteen years,’ said Thorne. He turned to Cade and Gart. ‘This is my old comrade-in-arms, Rampton Gleep. Rampton, these are my neighbours from Farrow Lake, Gart Ironside and Cade Quarter.’

  Rampton shook their hands enthusiastically. ‘Any friends of Thorne’s . . .’ He turned back to Thorne and his face assumed a look of utter shock. ‘Fifteen years!’ he exclaimed. ‘It hardly seems possible! But come, follow me, we must drink a toast to old times with my best sapwine!’ He took Thorne by the arm and strode back up the stairs to the balcony, the drinkers stepping aside and doffing their caps in respect as the two old soldiers passed.

  Gart and Cade, with Rumblix pulling on his leash, followed them. Up on the balcony, Rampton called loudly for sapwine, and several oakelves, their conical bonnets nodding, came hurrying towards them. A cloth was thrown over a round table, stools pulled up and goblets set down. A cork popped close by Cade’s ear, making him jump – and Rumblix bark – and looking round, Cade saw an oakelf holding a foaming bottle of red sapwine almost as big as she was. She filled their goblets and Rampton raised his high above his head.

  ‘To old comrades and the Glorious Revolution!’ he announced.

  ‘To the Glorious Revolution!’ The toast was taken up from table to table on the balcony, then spread down to the drinkers at the troughs below.

  ‘The Glorious Revolution!’

  ‘The Glorious Revolution!’

  Cade saw Thorne flinch, and realized that old, long-suppressed feelings were being reawakened.

  ‘To the Glorious Revolution,’ he said quietly, and drained his goblet.

  Cade did the same. The sapwine was delicious, the bubbles exploding on his tongue, leaving intense flavours of sweet, sun-ripened grapes; meadowgrass, mulled spices, a hint of smoked oak. They sat down, and Rampton refilled their goblets from the enormous bottle.

  ‘You were in a bad way when you left,’ he said, laying a hand on Thorne’s shoulder. ‘You never got over the Midwood Marshes fight, I know, but you acquitted yourself bravely. I only hope your new home has given you some peace of mind.’

  ‘It has, Rampton,’ said Thorne. ‘At least, it had until now . . .’ He paused, then nodded to Gart, who reached inside his flight coat and took out a small leather wallet. ‘Our home at Farrow Lake has been invaded by mire-pearlers from Great Glade, and we need all the phraxmuskets we can buy to fight back.’

  Rampton’s face grew serious, and he fiddled with a plaited side-whisker as he listened intently while Thorne described the Doombringer and exactly what they were up against.

  ‘I’ve got contacts at the militia armoury,’ he said thoughtfully when Thorne had finished. ‘I can certainly get you phraxmuskets. But they don’t come cheap.’

  ‘We know,’ said Gart, opening the wallet and sliding it across the table to the tavern keeper. ‘Which is why we need the best price we can get for this.’

  Rampton’s eyes lit up as he looked down at Celestia’s string of pearls and marsh-gems. ‘Very nice,’ he said, then sucked in air through his teeth as he wound the side-whisker round his little finger. ‘There is someone I know . . .’ he said. ‘A connoisseur, you might say, who’d pay extra for such fine workmanship – more a work of art than just a necklace.’

  Rampton glanced around to make sure no one was observing them as he flipped the wallet closed and pushed it back across the table to Gart.

  ‘Keep those out of sight and close to your chest,’ he advised, then leaned over to Thorne. ‘The Sumpwood Bridge Academy,’ he said. ‘Ask for a professor of phrax studies by the name of Landris Bellwether.’ He winked. ‘And keep that old militia jacket on if you want the best price.’

  Thorne smiled. ‘I will, and thank you, old friend,’ he said.

  On the far side of the balcony, an oakelf had opened the shutters and a cool breeze wafted into the tavern. Suddenly, with a high-pitched, excited yelp, Rumblix, his nostrils quivering, launched himself up into the air, yanking the leash from Cade’s hand as he did so.

  ‘Rumblix!’ Cade shouted as the pedigree grey prowlgrin scattered the oakelf servers and disappeared through the open window. ‘Rumblix! No!’

  · CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE ·

  CADE DASHED DOWN the stairs as fast as he could, barging past the drinkers below. He burst out through the carved doors and into the street. His head was fizzing; his stomach churned.

  Then he saw him. Rumblix. Galloping of
f over the rooftops on the other side of the street. Cade put his fingers to his lips and whistled. The prowlgrin ignored him, and disappeared over the pitched roof of a warehouse on the corner.

  ‘Rumblix!’ Cade called despairingly, as their best hope – their only hope – for making enough money to buy the weapons they needed vanished into the bustling city.

  ‘I won’t give up! I can’t give up!’ Cade told himself as he gave chase, running as hard as he could up the sloping street.

  Rumblix, his beloved prowlgrin, whom he’d nurtured and trained from the moment the little creature had hatched from his egg: Rumblix was gone. The poor thing must be panicking in this great city, overwhelmed by the noise and smell and bustle of the place. He must be so frightened.

  Cade reached the end of the alley and caught sight of the pedigree grey prowlgrin jumping over the rooftops further up the steep mountainside. Gasping in lungfuls of air, he dashed up the street after him, the distant roar of the Hive river in his ears as it plummeted down the gorge.

  A couple of doughty cloddertrog matrons stepped smartly aside to let him run between them; a hammel-horn cart skidded and swerved, its driver shouting at him to watch where he was going. But Cade didn’t even hear him.

  ‘Rumblix! Come back, boy!’ he was shouting. ‘Rumblix!’

  He reached the end of the street and kept on running. Open-fronted shops with displays of ironware, wooden utensils, bolts of cloth blurred past him; bustling market stalls laden with fruits and vegetables, trinkets, footwear, pots and pans. Their stall-owners, bellowing too-good-to-miss bargains, fell still as he dashed by. Breathing hard, Cade came to a square. There was a well at its centre, where a gathering of trog females with leather aprons and knotted headscarves were chatting to one another as they filled their water pails.

  Cade stopped, looked around.

  ‘Rumblix!’ he shouted desperately as he saw the prowlgrin land on top of the roof of Chandler Natwick’s – a candle-making shop on the opposite side of the square – then gallop along the pointed roof-ridge with a curious mixture of care and determination. Cade put his fingers to his mouth and whistled again.

  Two hammelhorns in harness skittered anxiously at the noise, while the trog females at the well stopped what they were doing and looked round. And up on the chandler’s roof, the prowlgrin paused, turned his head and eyed him intently.

  ‘Rumblix, boy,’ Cade called out, his voice as calm and measured as he could make it. Then, his unblinking gaze fixed on the jittery prowlgrin, he ran headlong across the square.

  He’d hoped that Rumblix, reassured by the sight of his master, would leap down from the roof and come bounding over. But instead, as Cade watched, the prowlgrin sniffed the air, then turned away and jumped from the candle-maker’s roof onto the adjoining roof, then onto the next one, then the one after that . . .

  Panting loudly, Cade continued the chase, darting up street after street. He kept his head raised and his eyes peeled for the tell-tale streak of grey, high up on the rooftops, as Rumblix galloped on over the slate tiles and smoking chimneys of Low Town.

  Close to exhaustion now, Cade rounded a corner at the end of a long and winding alley – and stopped in his tracks. There was a rich, earthy scent in the air, a mixture of fresh dung, damp fur and the tang of wet straw – a warm Deepwoods smell that was at odds with the acrid ironwood smoke and molten metal from the city’s furnaces and workshops. It was a familiar smell, one Cade knew well.

  It was the smell of prowlgrins.

  Cade followed his nose. Just round the corner was a broad courtyard, at the centre of which stood a prowlgrin stable. Cade stared up at the large open-fronted building with its weathered timber walls and sloping ironwood roof. Inside was a framework of stout horizontal roost-beams, each one with a trough clamped to its front. Narrow walkways, with ladders connecting the different levels, gave access to each of these individual roost-beams – and to the prowlgrins perched upon them.

  Forty pairs of large jewel-like yellow eyes stared down at him. The prowlgrins shifted from foot to foot on long sensitive toes that were as glistening and well-oiled as their fur was sleek and shiny . . .

  And grey.

  Cade gasped. These were pedigree grey prowlgrins, forty of them, all roughly the same age and size as Rumblix. Each one had a collar around its neck, with a name picked out in silver against the black leather. Matrix, Codix, Matafix, Emblix . . . names that were repeated on the small painted plaques nailed to each of the wooden troughs. And there, skittering about, nuzzling up to one prowlgrin, then another, then hopping from one roost pole to the next, was Rumblix.

  His Rumblix! Cade didn’t think he’d ever heard the young prowlgrin purring so loudly.

  ‘So, you picked up their scent?’ Cade called up to him. ‘Couldn’t resist, eh, boy?’

  ‘Who are you?’ came a voice, and Cade looked round to see a young fourthling on a magnificent-looking white prowlgrin approaching him.

  She had a snub-nose, and thick fair hair gathered together in a single rope-like braid that hung down her back. Reaching Cade, the rider swung her feet from the stirrups and expertly dismounted to stand facing him, hands on her hips.

  ‘My name’s Cade Quarter,’ Cade said. ‘And that’s my prowlgrin, Rumblix, up there.’ He pointed at the purring prowlgrin.

  ‘So it is,’ came a familiar-sounding voice from the shadows of a walkway, high up in the roost-house, just above where Rumblix was perching. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see the two of you again.’

  · CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX ·

  CADE STARED UP at the familiar figure of Tillman Spoke standing on the walkway at the top of the open-fronted roost-house – the well-tailored frockcoat; the salt-and-pepper hair, oiled and styled in the Great Glade way, giving its owner an unmistakable military air; the piercing green eyes . . .

  The last time Cade had looked into those eyes, they had been full of anger and disappointment. And, at the sight of his former employer now, Cade was suddenly back in the cabin on board the Xanth Filatine when the pearl necklace that had been planted in Cade’s backpack was discovered by a brutal skymarshal.

  ‘I believed you. I trusted you,’ Tillman had said coldly when the skymarshal arrested Cade. ‘And it seems my trust was ill-judged.’

  They were words Cade could never forget. And now, here he was, looking up at his former employer.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right down!’ Tillman called, striding to the end of the walkway, where a rope and pulley system was attached to the side of one of the wooden uprights.

  Tillman slipped one foot into a stirrup-like attachment, grabbed hold of the ropes and, as the ironwood counter-weight rose, sank quickly down through the air. At the same time, Rumblix jumped off the roost-perch he’d been sitting on and started leaping down the wooden framework.

  Cade watched them descend. Tillman Spoke, his waisted frockcoat fluttering in the wind, and Rumblix, leaping down from strut to strut. They reached the ground at the same moment. Rumblix landed with a thud. Tillman stepped lightly off the pulley-stirrup.

  Cade realized his own legs were shaking. He and the prowlgrin breeder had parted on such bad terms . . .

  ‘Cade!’ Tillman said, and grasped Cade’s hesitantly outstretched hand with both of his own. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to see you standing before me here in Hive, safe and well.’ The prowlgrin breeder was beaming at him – but there were tears in his eyes. ‘Can you ever forgive me, Cade,’ he said, dabbing at his face with a striped handkerchief, ‘for thinking you were a thief?’

  ‘So you know I didn’t steal that necklace?’ said Cade, tears of his own filling his eyes.

  ‘I know everything,’ said Tillman. ‘It was the work of a gang from the lower decks. It all came out after you disappeared – the murder of two academics on board was the last straw. The skymarshals arrested the gang leader down in the depths of the skytavern . . .’

  ‘Drax Adereth,’ said Cade dully.

  ‘That’s
the fellow.’ Tillman shook his head. ‘Unpleasant piece of work. Turns out he was in the pay of the High Professor of Flight, Quove Lentis. I’ve felt guilty ever since . . .’ Unable to contain himself, Tillman Spoke wrapped his arms around Cade and hugged him so tightly it took Cade’s breath away. ‘It’s so good to see you, Cade!’

  Beside Cade, Rumblix nuzzled at him and purred loudly. Tillman released Cade and stepped back, smiling broadly as he looked at the prowlgrin.

  ‘And you, Rumblix! I can hardly believe it!’ he said. ‘Look how you’ve grown. And the two of you still together – it’s more than I could ever have hoped for!’

  Tillman looked up at the prowlgrins roosting above their heads.

  ‘And now you’ve found your brother and sisters, all grown up, just like you. Remarkable, eh, Whisp?’

  The fourthling girl, who’d been standing stroking the heavy-set white prowlgrin, her eyes fixed on Cade all this time, nodded.

  ‘He’s as fine as any of them,’ she said, her voice soft, almost shy. ‘You’ve raised him well,’ she told Cade.

  ‘That’s high praise coming from my head groom,’ said Tillman warmly.

  Just then, there was the sound of footsteps, and Cade turned to see his two friends come running round the corner into the courtyard. Gart was bright red, his moustache wet and drooping, and Thorne’s scalp was beaded with sweat. They came to a halt in front of him.

  ‘Is he here?’ Thorne panted, gazing up at the rows of identical pedigree prowlgrins on the roost-perches. ‘Cade, is Rumblix here?’

  ‘Right here!’ Cade laughed, stepping aside to reveal the prowlgrin standing behind him.

  ‘Thank Sky for that!’ Thorne exclaimed as he bent double and struggled to catch his breath. ‘You gave us a fright, Rumblix . . . taking off . . . like that.’

  ‘These are my friends from Farrow Lake,’ Cade told Tillman. ‘They helped me after I had to jump ship.’