What could be more exciting…and more dangerous…than chasing dragons on an airborne steamer?
Angus watched as Captain Zachariah lowered his telescope. Deep in thought, the captain tapped his fingers absently against the brass rim that encased the lens. Angus felt a knot of excitement tighten in his belly. He drew in measured inhalation of breath. It didn’t do anything to calm his beating heart.
A flock of black dragons had been spied toward the western horizon and Angus wasn’t the only one nervously waiting for the captain to reach a decision. The airship’s entire compliment was gathered on the gondola deck in hushed silence.
At sixteen Angus was the youngest person onboard the Drunken Molly. He felt a bit like an intruder. Unlike the rest of the crew, who mostly hailed from Tennanbrau City, he had been born in the rolling vista of green hills that encompassed the rural communities of the Low Counties.
The men of Tennanbrau tended to be broad and brawny, whereas Low county folk were small and often softly spoken. Angus sported a distinctive shock of red hair. It hung down lankly around his ears, augmenting the explosion of freckles that splattered his nose and cheeks. Many of the crew had taken to calling him Ginger and he was becoming increasingly convinced that hardly any of them knew his real name.
Maybe this will be my day, he thought. Maybe today the name of Angus Stonedyke will be on everyone’s lips.
He kept his eyes fixed on Captain Zachariah. The airship captain stroked the narrow ribbon of beard that traced the line of his jaw. The only sound to be heard was the creaking of the timbers as the gondola swayed on the silver wires that hung down from its crimson balloon and rocked against the constant pummeling of the sky winds.
The captain looked up and narrowed his eyes. Angus felt the tensing of his muscles pull tighter. Everyone seemed to recognize the grin that spread on the captain’s face for what it meant. But still they waited for the final confirmation. At last he gave a single nod of his head.
A loud cheer exploded from the assembled crew.
The hunt was on!
As the cheer echoed skyward Angus hurriedly donned his rope loader’s helmet and rushed to his station beside his designated cannon emplacement. Brinsley, one of the rope gunners, climbed into his cockpit and, with practiced precision, checked the cannon’s spring loaded trigger mechanism. Angus felt a twinge of jealously. Brinsley wasn’t that much older that himself. He longed for the day that he’d be given the chance to operate a rope cannon.
The Molly tacked hard left and a blustering gust of icy air washed a vaporous mist across his face. He gasped from the shock of it. Trepidation began to tempter his excitement. Treacleshells, as black dragons were more commonly known, were said to be the most pernicious of all the airborne serpents. Angus had heard that tackling them was fraught with danger. Ill-tempered and notoriously difficult to capture they were a species that most dragon hunters tended to avoid.
But Captain Zachariah is not like most dragon hunters, he reminded himself.
The captain was famed for an unshakable confidence in the infallibility of his airship. The Drunken Molly may have been named after an inebriate Aunt that the captain had a deep affection for-but she soundly defied the unfortunate implications of her name with the velocity of her speed and the ease of her maneuverability. With the Molly to rely upon the captain had become renowned for taking risks that others did not even dare consider. If any airship captain could lead his crew to a successful harvesting of a savage flock of Treacleshells it was Nathaniel Zachariah.
Checking that the beaded lead weights on the loop of the cannon’s lasso were evenly spaced, and making sure the knot of the noose was sound, Angus carefully loaded the rope into the mouth of the cannon. With a tap of his fingers on his helmet he signified to Brinsley that the lasso was in place. The rope cannon gunner pulled his goggles over his eyes and swung the stubby barrel skyward.
Duty performed, Angus studied the captain as he climbed onto the raised iron gantry from where he would direct the hunt. Despite being browned and weather worn from the constant attentions of the harsh conditions endured at high altitude his features remained deceptively youthful. The pencil thin moustache that crested his upper lip was as neatly trimmed as the dark slither of beard on his jaw. Gazing unflinchingly ahead his resolute blue eyes seemed oblivious to the braided ponytail of his long black hair as it danced in the crosswind and whipped against the scaled sheen of his dragon skin jerkin.
“Steady as she goes,” he called to the coxswain. “We want to be right in amongst them before the first lasso is fired.”
Coxswain Grisling tightened his oil stained hand on the navigation wheel. With the other he pulled a lever to lower the rotation of the turbines. High above the gondola the crimson balloon swayed a little to this alteration in the airship’s momentum.
Pushing the rim of his helmet up onto his forehead Angus glanced up at the magnificent balloon above him. It was filled with a compound that consisted mainly of refined Dragon Breath. Lighter than air, Dragon Breath was also the core component of the energy source for all of Tennanbrau City’s vast factories. It was the power upon which the Emperor Julian drove his burgeoning empire ever forward.
The harvesting of Dragon Breath was a lucrative business and since childhood Angus had yearned for the romance and adventure of a life above the billowing cloudbank. Back home in the Low Counties he had practiced roping sheep with a long length of frayed chord that had been disposed of by the vicar when the village church installed a new bell in the belfry.
Imagining that the rugged hill sheep were dragons he had developed, through a considerable amount of trial and error, an excellent and accurate aim with his makeshift lasso. As a consequence he longed to be seated where Brinsley sat, in the cockpit behind a rope cannon, ready let loose a lasso to snare a dragon.
“Lower the bait,” ordered the captain.
Immediately several lengths of rope were cast over the sides of the gondola. The ropes yanked tight. Hunks of salted meat on the hooks attached to the ends of the ropes spun with the relentless forward motion of the Molly.
Through the oncoming swirl of cloud Angus could see that the Treacleshells were viciously attacking a flock of geese that had been passing over the tundra in tight formation. They were hunting in pairs - the midnight hued sows swooping in to snap the necks of the geese between razor sharp teeth, while the larger boars followed swiftly through to clamp their powerful jaws around the plummeting corpses.
Then, with a grotesquely synchronized symmetry, the two would share the prize, tearing and clawing at the limp carcass, as a blizzard of bloody white feathers fluttered a macabre dance in the sky around them.
Angus felt a quickening of his pulse as Grisling steered the Molly straight into the midst of the flock’s savage feeding frenzy. Several of them turned and let out high-pitched screeches, their tongues starkly red against the licorice tones of their scaly muzzles. The surviving geese thrust their wings, long necks outstretched, honking noisily as they made a desperate bid to escape. For a moment it seemed to Angus that the dark assembly of dragons would follow them and that the Molly, in turn, would be forced to give chase.
Then, almost as one, the gleaming slits of their quivering nostrils appeared to scent the salted meat dangling below the gondola. Keening noisily-three, four, five of them dipped their ferocious heads and swooped down, barbed tails slashing the air as they fell from view.
“Steady men,” cautioned Captain Zachariah.
No sooner had he spoken these words than a rancorous looking boar rose immediately in front of Angus, hunk of meat clamped in its slavering black jaw. Brinsley traced its progress with his cannon. Beating down on its wings the boar climbed till it was almost level with the crimson balloon, gnawing at the hunk of meat and raking it with its scimitar claws. One of the gunners released his lasso and spat out a foul curse when it missed its mark.
I wouldn’t have missed so easily, Angus whispered under his breath.
The Treacleshell boar dipped low once more. Following it with his sight Brinsley triggered the coiled spring on his cannon. The rope shot from the barrel and went singing through the air, the lead beads helping it maintain a rounded circumference. With an almost improbably perfect trajectory the loop of the lasso whipped around the hoary ankle of the Treacleshell’s hind leg. When it dived in panic the noose pulled instantly tighter.
“First catch to Mister Brinsley!” cried Captain Zachariah. “Haul the beast in, Angus. Haul the beast in!”
Heart swelling with pride at being given such a direct order Angus made a grab for the rope. But no sooner had he started to heave back against the frantic struggle of boar than several burly crewmen snatched the rope from him and barged him out of the way. “You’re too skinny, Ginger,” goaded one of them. “Watch out you don’t get dragged overboard.”
Whilst they were doing this the gunner who had previously missed his mark fired off his re-loaded lasso. The rope dropped over the Treacleshell’s thrashing head and pulled tight around its neck, effectively preventing it from retaliating against its capture with blistering inferno of its fiery breath.
Before Angus had the chance to do anything another crewmember grabbed the second rope and began to help the first group to heave the dragon in. Starved of oxygen, it was easily overwhelmed. The hunk of meat fell hopelessly from its slackening jaw as it slashed out with its claws. Its wings folded back to its ridged spine. It dropped like a stone. A wide net was tossed over the edge of the gondola to catch it and in no time at all it was yanked over the side and tipped onto the deck.
It came awake in an instant.
Two crewmen pinned down its jerking hind legs and stilled the whipping of its tail with their feet. Another wrestled one of its flailing black wings and held it tight. Angus was about to make a grab for the second wing but someone bustled him out of the way and took his place. Relegated to the sidelines all that was left for him was to watch as Crowhurst, one of the ship’s professional dragon-wranglers, straddled the boar’s scaly neck and forced its head into an upright position.
Angus heard the telltale click-click friction of the two flint-like organs that sat half way down the throat of all dragons. Despite the rope around its neck the Treacleshell was desperately trying to produce the spark that would ignite its powerful gaseous breath. Crowhurst reached down and pressed his index finger expertly against the visibly fidgeting bulge on the dragon’s dark, scaly neck.
The clicking ceased.
“Fetch the Breath Extractor!” yelled Captain Zachariah.
A spry crewman dashed along the deck. He was carrying a piece of apparatus with a leather muzzle at one end and a long length of rubber tubing trailing from the other. He barged past Angus and yanked the muzzle over the dragon’s snout. No sooner was the muzzle in place than Crowhurst swiftly buckled the straps behind the Treacleshell’s head. Seconds later the cook came lurching from the galley, his skinny, tattooed arms wrapped around a narrow rimmed clay vessel. He placed the vessel on the deck and stuffed the tubing running from the end of the muzzle into its slender neck.
“Ready!” he yelled.
Crowhurst began to unloosen the knot of the noose around the Treacleshell’s throat. As soon as the pressure was released there came an ominous click-click-click, followed by a furious roar. The muzzle sparked blue as a powerful burst of fiery Dragon Breath was forced through the insulated tube and into the clay vessel. After no more than a few seconds the cook pulled the tube away and corked the sizzling neck. It sat there hissing and steaming, till someone wearing thick gantlets stepped in to drag it back to the hold.
“She’ll be good for one more!” cried Captain Zachariah.
Another clay vessel was rapidly transported from the galley.
Meanwhile two more Treacleshells, duly roped and netted, were being unceremoniously deposited onto the gondola deck. Seizing his chance to finally get some hands on experience Angus rushed to help pin one of them down. The Treacleshell seemed to sense his approach. Its head snapped round and the wrangler who was straddling its ridged back lost the pressure point his fingers had on its neck.
Angus found himself staring directly into a pair of angry red eyes. Unsettled he stumbled and almost lost his footing. Above the blustering din of the wind he clearly heard the click-click-click that emanated from within her scaly throat. She let forth a howl of rage and Angus was instantaneously engulfed in a ball of blistering white fire. Blinding flames clawed all around him. He felt the sleeves of his jerkin tighten around his upper arms as fire seized hold of them. He could smell the dreadful stench of his hair singing beneath his helmet.
Crying out in terror he rolled across the deck, trying to extinguish the flames in the manner he had been previously shown. Then suddenly he was drenched by the freezing cold contents of a pail of water that came at him from the left. As he gasped for breath and tried to struggle back to his feet another bucket load came at him from the right.
“Damn near washed the freckles right off your face,” said one of the bucket-wielding crewmen who’d come to his aid. Angus crouched there smoldering and dripping, cringing with embarrassment at the mocking laughter that rose all around him.
To celebrate the successful harvesting of Treacleshell Breath the crew assembled on deck and engaged in a boisterous rendition of the famous Dragon Hunter’s Sky Shanty. Shivering in his wet clothing, Angus couldn’t help feeling that he had still not fully earned the right to participate. So he simply stood there, swaying a little unsteadily, as he listened. Having made the first catch Brinsley got to sing the main lines, while the crew responded with the noisy rejoinder.
“Now I was born in Tennanbrau
Haul away above the clouds
And grew as tall as I am now
Haul away above the clouds
I signed on with my Captain bold
Haul away above the clouds
We traveled north to where it’s cold
Haul away above the clouds
And there I swore on pain of death
Haul away above the clouds
To take the precious Dragon Breath”
Down in the hold three dozen corked vessels of said Dragon Breath lay cooling on the shelves. They would fetch an excellent price at auction back in Tennanbrau City. The captain had promised everyone a handsome bonus. Once their Breath had been taken the Treacleshells had been released back into the open skies. It would take weeks for the buildup of the natural gases in their lungs to reach sufficient levels for them to be able to breathe fire once more. Even then Angus thought that it would be a long time before anyone else dared to tackle them.
“Airship, ho!”
The singing of his crewmates was suddenly interrupted by the loud shout that went up from the watchman’s station to the rear of the gondola.
Captain Zachariah rose to his feet and snapped his fingers at the grimy faced boy employed as the ship’s fetcher. “Telescope! Sharp as you like!”
Boots still squelching from their drenching, the stink of fire still in his hair, Angus squeezed in behind the rest of the crew as they assembled at the rear deck railing. Dread washed over him as an airship came listing lopsided and wraithlike through the cloud mist. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones.
She was a commercial vessel. Not the type of airship that would normally venture this far north. The type used for transporting goods or passengers…Angus could see that her main balloon was gone, the silver wires that had lashed it to her gondola whipping erratically and dangerously loose in the wind. Only three of her smaller emergency balloons were inflated. All that remained of the section of her deck where the fourth should have been situated was a jagged chasm, exposing her guts all the way through to the gloomy interior of her hold.
The damaged airship drew close enough for Angus to see the name ornately painted onto the hull of her gondola–The Blue Plover. Angus had heard of her. Her captain was Finneus Watling, a former officer in the Imperial Sky Constabulary, who had used a lump sum from his retirement pension to set himself up as a merchantman.
On Captain Zachariah’s order Grisling maneuvered the Molly alongside the wounded craft. This close the damage looked even worse that it had on her approach. Several areas of her deck were blackened and trails of smoke were still hovering near areas where it seemed as if fires had only recently fizzled out.
Angus looked at the jagged section of wood where the deck had been torn away. Perhaps the Treacleshell flock had attacked the merchant ship. If it had they would have been defenseless. This was one of the main reasons merchantmen did not often venture into the wintry skies above the tundra.
“Ho!” Captain Zachariah called across the swirling blue gap between the two airships. “Finneus Watling! Bring your crew on deck and greet my dragon hunters in the proper manner.”
Silently the Plover’s gondola listed and rocked to the asymmetrical sway of its trio of emergency balloons. “Ho!” cried the Captain again. “Can we be of assistance?”
Not a sound.
Coxswain Grisling looked sideways at Captain Zachariah.
The mood of the crew grew noticeably darker.
Angus overheard their superstitious exchanges.
“Cursed.”
“Jinxed.”
Then something darted across the deck of the Plover’s gondola. Something small and swift. Before anyone had a chance to make out exactly what it was it had disappeared once more amongst the smoldering wreckage.
“Ghost,” said someone, in a quiet voice.
Beside him Angus saw that Brinsley’s face had turned pale. His hands were trembling as they gripped tightly to the rails of the gondola. Angus felt a cold shiver shudder down his own spine. Somehow he was unable to draw his eyes away from the swirls of smoke that danced around the Plover’s eerily silent deck.
Just then a fierce updraft, drawn from the cold air rising from the tundra below, howled through the gap between the two airships. The Molly rocked back, sending several members of the crew stumbling across the deck. By the time it righted itself once more the Plover had been sent into an unpredictable spin that caused it to tilt and yaw as the three emergency balloons struggled against the uneven weight of the gondola.
“In again, Mister Grisling,” cried Captain Zachariah. “Fetch the longpoles to pull her closer.”
Longpoles were twelve foot in length and were mainly used by the crew on the approach to the terminus at Tennanbrau City, to ensure that an airship didn’t drift too close to the walls of tall buildings. They could also be used to pull airships alongside each other.
Four crewmembers stood ready with the tall poles resting against their shoulders. The drone of the turbines vibrated through the deck as Grisling once more steered the Molly as close to the Plover as he could manage. The longpoles were then utilized to hook and secure the dancing wires. Finally ropes were lashed to the Plover’s damaged decking rails to slow her glide.
“We need to tow her back to the reclamation yard at Forgsnur’s Footprint,” said the captain. “She’ll be a risk to other airship if we leave her adrift like this. However, if there is a survivor over there, they need to be brought onboard the Molly for their own safety.”
“There’s no survivor over there,” said one of the crew. “What we saw was a ghost.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” snapped Captain Zachariah.
He turned to coxswain Grisling.
“A volunteer,” he said. “We need a volunteer to investigate.”
“You heard,” said Grisling. “Who’s got the guts to go over for a gander?”
Most of the crew bowed their heads and studied their feet, shuffling cautiously backwards. Angus could sense their fear. No matter what the captain said they still believed there was something supernatural prowling the charred decks of the Plover.
Grunting in obvious disgust Crowhurst stepped forward and jutted his chest out.
“Takes a wrangler to do a job like this.”
He scowled darkly at the others.
Stroking his narrow beard Captain Zachariah looked him up and down.
“Someone lighter,” he said. “We don’t know how stable those balloons are–or how much more weight they’ll hold. Once the gondola starts to fall she’ll pick up momentum and she won’t stop till she smashes onto the tundra.”
Angus saw the young fetcher drop to his knees and crawl rapidly back between the legs of the men. Clearly he wasn’t taking any chances of being nabbed for the task. Brinsley was small–but he too had pushed himself some way back into the crowd.
Angus felt several eyes looking down at him.
He thought of the ethereal figure they had seen darting across the Plover’s deck.
His pulse quickened. Cold sweat broke out in needle-pricks all over his body. Now Captain Zachariah looked at him. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He couldn’t be found wanting. Swallowing against the dryness that suddenly filled his mouth he stepped forward.
“I’ll go,” he said.
More ropes were lashed to the Plover’s broken and scorched gondola. Slowly and cautiously she was pulled close enough to the side of the Molly that a wooden gangplank could be placed to span the narrow gap between the two airships. Grisling held the navigation wheel steady and cut the Molly’s engines so that she floated freely on her crimson balloon.
Captain Zachariah squeezed Angus on the shoulder.
“Don’t dally too long over there, lad.”
Angus drew in a deep breath and tightened the strap of his helmet under his chin.
“That won’t help you none if you fall to the tundra,” said the little fetcher, who had re-emerged, cheekily confident now that at least he wasn’t going to be expected to volunteer.
“This will though,” said Brinsley.
Smiling sympathetically at Angus he tied a rope tightly around his waist.
“Just give it a tug when you want us to let out a little more slack,” he said.
Forcing himself to smile back Angus climbed up onto the gangplank and spread his arms wide to try and gain his balance. Down below the clouds had thinned enough for him to be able to see the bleak scrub of the tundra far below, stretching flatly and monotonously for miles in every direction. Despite Grisling’s best effort the gondola was still rocking slightly and the yowling squall of the wind was making it impossible for him to maintain an upright stance.
“Hands and knees, lad,” said Captain Zachariah, his long ponytail slapping against dragon scales on his jerkin. “Down on your hands and knees. This is not a circus.”
Heaving a sigh of relief Angus dropped to all fours and crawled rapidly across the gangplank, eyes fixed straight ahead so that he wouldn’t be tempted to look down again.
The desolate deck of the Plover reeked with the tainted stench of ignited Dragon Breath and the charcoal bite of scorched wood. He had gone half way across the deck when he came upon a set of three deeply ragged furrows torn into the flooring boards. He imagined one of the Treacleshells swooping down here and raking the timbers with its talons. He imagined another sinking its powerful jaws into the side of the deck and tearing it to splinters. He could almost hear the terrified screams of the crew as they’d been mercilessly attacked with tooth and claw and fire.
Crouching low he inserted a finger into the splintery groove of one of the furrows and tried to estimate the size of the talon that had clawed through the wood. It was difficult to judge. Standing back up he turned and called back a description of what he’d discovered to Captain Zachariah.
“Search below deck, lad,” urged the captain. “See if you can find the poor soul who survived.”
Somewhat warily Angus eyed the three emergency balloons. He didn’t like the look of the one to the stern. It seemed oddly wrinkled, as if it might be slowly leaking Breath. He remembered what the captain had said about how the gondola would drop if her balloons gave out. The thought of that happening while he was down in the hold traced a cold shiver down his spine.
But when he looked at the expectant faces staring across at him from the Molly it became patently clear that there could be no turning back. If he was going to win the acceptance of his crewmates he simply had to do as the captain asked. Staggering against the erratic keeling of the gondola, he tugged at the rope. Once he had been given sufficient slack he lurched his way to the entrance of the hold.
As a consequence of the gaping hole torn into to the side of the airship the hold did not look as gloomy as it might otherwise have. Angus cautiously eased his way down the wooden stepladder. He began to feel the pull of the wind that was whipping around the confines of the Plover’s belly in a frosty, swirling vortex.
Glad now of the protection afforded by his helmet he dismounted the ladder and turned his head sideways against the blustering barrage, squinting as he surveyed the remains of the interior. The shelves, where goods for commercial transportation might normally sit, lay entirely empty. But to the far end of the hold he could see some of the airship’s supplies still piled there - sacks of potatoes and onions, a pallet bearing slabs of salted meat, two spare coils of rope, stacked in the corner.
Other than that the hold seemed as deserted as the deck had been. He was about to turn back to the ladder when he spied something crouching low beside one of the splintered beams. His pulse started to thrum as his mouth turned dry once more.
“If you are human, come out and show yourself,” he said. “If you’re a ghost I apologize for disturbing you. Just let me return to the deck unmolested.”
“Are y-you a p-pirate?” asked a timid voice.
“A pirate?” said Angus. “Absolutely not. I’m a rope cannon loader on the finest dragon hunting airship ever to fly out of Tennanbrau City.”
“And you’re not going to hurt me?” asked the voice.
“I’m here to help you,” said Angus. “To rescue you, if you’ll let me.”
The figure stepped cautiously out from behind the beam. It was a child - a girl of around ten or eleven years old. The cloak she was wearing was covered in scorch marks. Her face was grimy with soot, the outline white tear tracks tracing zigzags down her filthy cheeks.
“I’m Finneus Watling’s niece,” she told him. “My uncle took me on a trip to see the green hills of the Low Counties. But there was a storm and we got terribly lost. And my uncle got confused. We went north instead of south. And then the dragons came…”
She started to sob.
Angus reached out and took her by the hand.
“I’m going to get you over to the Drunken Molly,” he said. “My captain will take care of you. He’ll get you safely home.”
With the wind whipping furiously around them he led the girl back to the ladder. It was then that he saw something else on the floor, just beyond the storage area, near the hole that had been torn from the side of the deck. It looked somehow too bulky to be simply the pile of rags it appeared at first to be. Another survivor?
“Wait there,” he said to the girl, wrapping her hand around the first rung of the ladder.
Ducking beneath the wooden beams he dropped down onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the object. As he did so the gondola tipped a little and the object slid precariously closer to the ragged hole. The wind was blowing so fiercely into his face now that it was making his eyes water, blurring his vision.
“Hello?” he called out, inching closer. “Can you hear me?”
An eyelid trembled and blinked open.
Angus froze.
It wasn’t a human eye.
The object seemed to unfurl and rise unsteadily on clawed feet, revealing itself as a Treacleshell Sow. She was badly dazed. She shook her head, momentarily lost her footing and then rose up again. She turned to Angus, snarling through the rows of razor sharp teeth.
Then a dreadful sound rose from her throat, chilling Angus to the bone.
Click-click-click.
If she ignited her Breath the entire hold would be engulfed in a ball of fire. This time there would be no one to step in with a pail of water to douse the flames. Angus turned to the girl. “Run!” he yelled. Her eyes went wide. She turned and scrambled up the ladder. A chill traced his spine when he heard the padding of the dragon’s feet creeping stealthily up behind him.
He swung around.
The Treacleshell sow snarled again and flapped her wings menacingly at him. The organs in her throat clacked rapidly against each other–click-click-click. She let out a roar–hot, steamy smoke belched out. But her Breath did not ignite. Angus dodged to the left. She still seemed a little unsteady on her feet, her head sluggish when it followed him.
It was clear though that she was fast regaining her strength. The clicking in her throat was become more rapid and forceful. Taking the risk to turn and flee after the girl could prove to be a fatal error of judgment.
In that instant he decided he only had one alternative.
With a yell he ran at the sow and dived onto her ridged back. She was so surprised by this sudden and unexpected turn of events that she fell flat on her belly. Angus reached round and pressed his fingers against the rough scales on her neck. She rose to her feet, arching her spine to try and buck him off. He dug in with his knees.
Click-click-click came the dreadful sound from her throat.
It was what Angus had been hoping for. He felt the vibrations in his fingers and quickly located the correct spot. Pressing down hard he pushed his index and middle finger so that they effectively created a barrier between the two organs. He had no idea whether this was the same technique that dragon wranglers applied.
But somehow it worked.
The clicking ceased.
Angus let forth a triumphal whoop.
The sow jerked her head left and right, trying to dislodge his fingers from their position. She arched her spine again, so sharply that his knees almost lost their hold. She whipped her tail around, thumping him hard on the shoulder as its barbed tip sliced at his cheek. He began to realize what a terrible mistake he might have made. He wasn’t half as strong as a wrangler like Crowhurst and he didn’t have other crewmembers to help pin down the dragon’s legs.
The tail came at him again, this time from the right. He saw it from the corner of his eye and ducked low. The tail clattered against his helmet, jarring his neck and causing little silvery stars to tumble before him. The wind was howling around him, making it even more difficult keep his balance.
The sow started to throw itself around the hold, trying to use the wooden beams to knock him off. He ducked and dodged. But he was rapidly becoming exhausted. It wouldn’t be long before she succeeded. Then he would be at her mercy.
Icy cold wind gushed against his face.
Suddenly the two of them were out in the open sky–falling rapidly.
Somehow in her frantic struggle the dragon must have stumbled too close the gap torn into the side of the gondola. Down they dropped. Then Angus felt the rope around waist pull painfully tight, digging into his lower ribs. He lost his grip on the dragon’s back and she tumbled away from him, leaving him dangling precariously beneath the Plover’s tarred hull.
The wind beat about him, sending the rope into a dizzying spin. Nevertheless he could see the dragon below him. She glided around in a wide arc. She caught his eye and, with an ear-piercing shriek, beat her wings and rose.
Angus tugged desperately at the rope. He looked up and saw some of the Molly’s crew looking down at him. He heard them yelling to the others. When he looked back down the dragon was rising at a terrifying speed, teeth bared in a vicious snarl.
Then, just as she was almost upon him, he felt a powerful yank on the rope and he was instantly hauled back into the hold. Scrambling frantically back across the floorboards he caught a glimpse of gleaming black scales as the sow appeared just beyond the hole.
She roared, and this time her Breath ignited with a fury. A dazzling ball of flame illuminated the hold. The heat of it knocked Angus flat onto his back. A fierce maelstrom of fire raged within the swirling wind just above him. It lasted only a moment before the cold air seemed to suck the life out of the fire.
Angus didn’t hesitate or look back. He jumped to his feet and took the ladder rungs two at a time. The girl was waiting at the top, trembling and terrified
“I thought the dragon got you.”
“Come on,” said Angus, gabbing her hand. “We have to get across to the Drunken Molly.”
She pulled against him.
“No, the dragon will come. We’ll be killed - like my uncle. Like all of his crew.”
“What’s your name?” asked Angus.
For a moment she seemed surprised by the question.
“Your name?” pressed Angus.
“Sonia,” she said, sniffing back her tears.
“I’m Angus,” he said. “Do you know who my captain is? Do you know who the captain of the Drunken Molly is?”
Sonia shrugged her skinny shoulders.
“Nathaniel Zachariah,” said Angus.
Sonia gasped.
She had clearly heard of him.
Who hadn’t?
“Really?” she said.
Angus nodded.
“You know that Captain Zachariah is the greatest dragon hunter ever to fly out of Tennanbrau City, don’t you?”
“Do you really think that a bad tempered old Treacleshell sow is any match for Nathaniel Zachariah?”
He took her hand again. This time she didn’t pull back. They both rushed headlong along the deck. “Look!” he cried when he saw that the crew had utilized the rope cannons to capture the sow. “I told you. She’ll be hauled on deck and they’ll take her Breath. She won’t trouble us anymore.” Sonia managed to smile, the white of her teeth contrasting sharply with the black, sooty mess of her face.
“Her name is Sonia!” Angus called over to the Molly. “She’s Finneus Watling’s niece.”
“No one else alive?” asked Captain Zachariah; his face for once had lost most of its usual composure.
Angus shook his head.
Beside him Sonia let out a loud sob. But somehow she stopped herself from crying. Angus could see that she was nervously watching the Treacleshell sow, now hauled onto the Molly’s deck and being straddled by Crowhurst while others pinned down her wings and tail.
“Once they take her Breath she’ll be no threat to us,” Angus reminded her.
She squeezed his hand–seemingly not convinced.
Angus stepped to the plank and mentally steeled himself, ready to crawl back over.
He looked down at Sonia.
“Go down on your hands and knees,” he told her. “Go slowly. Don’t look down. It’s only a few feet across. Someone will help you at the other side.”
Her lip trembled.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“I’ll be right behind you,” promised Angus. “I won’t let anything happen.”
Without warning there came a sharp crack from behind them both.
When Angus looked around the emergency balloon to the stern of the gondola had finally given out. It hissed and spluttered, flapping wildly as the last of the Dragon Breath gushed out of a ragged tear. The gondola became unbalanced and tipped so abruptly that the plank fell and spun away into the blue void. One of the ropes lashed to the side of the Plover snapped. The wires broke loose from the longpoles. The rope around his waist was next to go and Angus found himself sliding helter-skelter down the deck of the gondola as it keeled further into an acute dip.
He lost his grip on Sonia’s hand.
She went tumbling away from him.
The dead weight of the Plover pulled the Molly with it. Angus wedged himself against the railings and found himself swallowed up by the great looming shadow of the Molly’s balloon as she capsized and swung her gondola almost horizontal. He saw Sonia clinging to the railing at the far end of the gondola. If the Plover dipped any more she might be thrown out into the open skies.
He heard the captain barking a desperate order to the crew to cut the other ropes in order to save his beloved airship. Angus felt his heart sink. Cut loose the Plover immediately drifted a good seven or eight feet from the Molly, dropping ever lower in the sky as the two remaining balloons struggled to keep her aloft.
Looking up at the curved belly of the Molly’s gondola Angus could easily tell that the distance between the two airships was already growing greater by the moment. If Captain Zachariah intended to do anything at all to save him he would have to act now.
Sonia let out a scream as another of the emergency balloons burst to ragged shreds.
Hand over hand he pulled himself back along the railings till he was beside her.
“We’ll be fine,” he tried to assure her.
But all the time the distance between the two airships was growing even wider.
Then, just as he was about to give up hope, he saw that two of the rope cannons were being aimed in a downward trajectory. He let out cry of joy as the lassos came racing through the air towards him. One was clearly going to go wide.
The other was his one last hope.
Grabbing Sonia and pulling her close to his chest with his left arm he punched his right fist into the air and leapt into the path of the spinning rope. His clenched fist passed cleanly through the lasso. Fingers wrapping around the knot he pulled back and yanked the noose tightly around his wrist. The lead beads bit into his flesh. The rope gnawed at him. Sonia was clinging so tightly to his neck he could hardly breathe.
The wreck of the Blue Plover fell away, hurtling toward the tundra, bits of her hull breaking up. In the open sky the rope began twisting and untwisting, spinning him around and back around at such a terrifying speed he felt sure his shoulder would be yanked out of its socket. Nevertheless he was being hauled up, slowly but surely. Back to his airship, his captain and his crewmates-and perhaps the chance, at last, to man a rope cannon?
Feeling drunk with elation he held onto Sonia with all the available strength he could muster. His voice hoarse against the roar of the wind he began singing-singing and laughing at the same time. At last he felt that he had the right. His voice echoed joyously to the open sky
Now I was born in Tennanbrau
Haul away above the clouds!