A rich smell catches in my nose and I turn to see a cook with greasy white hair passing cups of bone-broth among the riders. A mug finds its way into my hands, glowing with heat that I am more than heart-glad for. I stare down at myself in the gleaming surface of the broth. My eyes are painted from brows through to cheekbones with the black stripes of a Spearsister, an eagle-feather hood is pulled over my head and a raindrop cowl is moulded to my face.
‘Sup your broth and prepare to fly,’ commands Leopard. She wears a long black cloak of eelskin, gifted to her by Pike. I drop my eyes while she’s talking, in case she knows my stormy greys.
I listen to the bubbling of the broth and the crackling of the flames and the nerve-tense chattering of the draggles.
Huntnohuntnohunt? WhywhywhyHUNGRYwherefoodfly?
I’m half asleep with my chin propped in my hands when the storm dies, gaping breathlessness in its wake, sudden as the thunk of a dropped longbow. My chin slips out of my hands and my neck bends painfully as my head lolls. The Wilderwitches’ weather-magyk must have finally pushed the storm away from us. Now there’s just a deadened stillness.
Leopard pulls a small bronze spyglass from her pocket and presses it to her eye. ‘The chief storm has raged west,’ she announces. She sighs, tucks away her spyglass and nods to the draggle warden. ‘We fly.’
I blow out my held breath and we mount our draggles, Leo taking the lead. I copy the others; holding a spear in one hand and the reins in the other. When Leo raises her hand, the draggles swoop from the mountain.
Rough air bruises my eyeballs. My belly plunges, sloshing the broth I glugged. But hidden inside my armour, my lips riot into a grin. Finally, I’m roving.
Below, a group of song-weavers has gathered on the rocks to gift us music as we fly. A little clutch of Sea-Tribe kids – I spot the white shock of Ermine’s hair and Squirrel’s red braid – bang drums they’ve painted to look like whale-eyes. Eyes like portals, or knots in wood. I spot Da and Sparrow, singing together, and duck lower in the saddle. A flush of guilt steals across my skin, itching under all my layers.
We pull away from the mountain, dodging the silvery ghostway tubes that cobweb the stronghold so the Sky-Tribes can pulse messages to each other. The tubes quiver with voices.
Across the valley, tangles of lightning sprout like trees, and the sky flickers as though it’s blinking. When the lightning branches fade, their ashen ghosts hang in the air. My draggle fights the wind, despair mixing with the ice in her fur. I lean down and mutter heart-strengths to her.
We fly over Hearthstone, where almost all the dwellings have been rebuilt, with Leo’s help. But when we reach the Icy Marshes, fury flares in my gut. Terrodyls swirl through the sky, patrolling to make certain the Marsh-folk never dare to return. All that’s left of Pike’s home is a field of blackened wooden stumps capped with bulbs of ice.
Refugees wade through the reeds and ford the rivers on their way towards the mountains, seeking higher ground. We hover while a few riders drop to land and tell them how to reach Hearthstone or Hackles.
As we pass into wilder territory that could be more hostile, Leo calls for us to douse our lamps. I lie along my draggle’s back and stretch to reach the metal lantern hanging on its pole. The hinges squeak as I fumble the door open, making my draggle flick her ears irritably.
Sorry! That needs oiling, I chatter.
I wet my fingertips and squeeze the life from the flame. As the other lamps blink out, heavy gloomlight thickens around us. We race deeper into the murk. I keep to the rear. We soar over leagues of ice-ridges carved by the storm winds; great blue-white dunes that gift the land the look of the wrinkled skin of a whale. Maybe that’s all we are. Whale lice crawling over some giant sea-god.
When Leopard drops back to check we’re all well enough to keep going, I dodge but she draws alongside me and leans across to grip my chin, guiding my eyes to meet hers. My heart skitters.
‘You really thought I would not realise?’ she asks, letting go of me with a sigh. A few Riders twist in their saddles, staring at me with narrowed eyes.
I shrug, cheeks burning. ‘Reckoned it were worth a stab.’
To my startlement, Leo’s face dimples into a grin. ‘I promised your father I would keep you safe – I will deal with this disobedience when we return,’ she swears. ‘But I do admire your determination.’
I don’t dare return her grin, but I let my eyes sing out my wildness.
We reach the sea, where storm-waves have frozen solid, into ice-mountains that rise like great dark fins. Between them, the sea that ent yet frozen bubbles weak as a dying Tribesperson’s spit.
Ice-bound ships litter the sea, wounds agape in their flanks. Tears well in my eyes as I think of my ship. Bear. Frog. Pipistrelle. Vole. I breathe the names of my Tribe into white ghosts on the air. Where are you? Where?
In the distance, a steady drum begins to throb, shattering my thoughts.
The drum beats louder, closer. It rattles my ribs. Riders stare around them, and I feel their nerves tense.
The rider nearest me draws a breath. But then there’s a choking sound as the air catches in her throat.
Movement catches my eye from the left. I twist in the saddle. My skin jumps. Smoke puffs in time with the drumbeat I heard. As I stare I realise that it’s vapour, that it’s something’s breath. Something big, to make that much steam. Something with a footstep even bigger, to make a drumbeat that loud.
A dark shape is looming. My heart clangs and hammers.
Through the bleak light stamps a chalk-white giant with a skull bubbled all over in milky sores.
Yellowy fluid seeps from sores and trickles down the giant’s body. He leans down, opens his cavernous mouth and smashes his tombstone-teeth around a frozen wave. He chews the ice, then bends for another bite.
The giant’s blistered flesh sucks any last warmth from the half-frozen clouds and the sluggish sea, which throws up a new tower of ice as he passes.
A long, low groan knocks from the giant’s mouth, echoing around the sea of crystal waves. I remember seeing giants like this one in the stories etched in bone that Grandma and Da used to read to us. They were called stogs – the biggest of the Tribe of giants, and the most miserable. They made the seas by weeping, and liked to pluck ships from the waves, crushing them with their bare hands. But the stories said the giants were all sleeping . . .
Not any more.
The stog’s face is craggy-glum and his legs are as long as masts. His hot breath knocks the draggles up and down in the air like toy ships. He snaps a hateful glare onto us and roars, a sound that СКАЧАТЬ