CHAPTER FIVE
Two weeks cross-realm the Aelsling went, cruising always through the kinder airs of the Upper Third over the Spiral Crux, the ever-shifting aerial continents of Chamon laying their patterns of shadow over each other. They gave the great storms of the centre a wide berth, and fared away from the perils of the Cursed Sky. Even so, stahl- and shimmerstorms could have struck at any moment, and with the awakening of the god of destruction, Kragnos, the beasts of the air were more aggressive than usual, and so the duardin kept up a careful watch, but the Aelsling fared without incident, and the crew occupied themselves with such pastimes as are possible upon a ship of the air. They scrimshawed whaleen bone, smoked, sang sky-shanties as Hysh dimmed and turned the metal-shot lands of the realm to glittering jewels, and indulged in games of diamond, at least until Adrimm lost all his money to Urdi Duntsson, old accusations of treachery came up, and that nearly started a fight. Drekki had to put a stop to gaming after that.
‘Grimnir and Grungni both, save me from bored arkanauts,’ he muttered darkly.
Drekki spent much of his time in his cabin, poring over his charts. One afternoon, while Drekki cross-checked the migratory patterns of the colp shoals against the currents of the Upper Second Airs, Locklann Dundersson came in to see him.
‘Not more fighting,’ Drekki asked, somewhat wearily. ‘Umherth was getting twitchy. He’s not punched anyone has he?’
‘No, captain,’ said Locklann. Dundersson was a no-nonsense duardin, and so stood even less on ceremony than Drekki’s pre-existing crew. He came in and sat down in one of Drekki’s chairs without asking permission, then equally easily helped himself to the fire rum that just happened to be on the chart table. Drekki had been getting bored himself.
‘Make yourself comfortable, Locklann,’ Drekki said mildly.
Locklann gave him a furrowed look. His pasty face was a marked contrast to Drekki’s deep brown skin, but that was the way with many Mhornar duardin. There was so much mist and murk around the place they never felt the kiss of Hysh. Give him a few years in the open skarrenruf,[35] Drekki thought. That’ll bake some colour into him.
‘Thanks, captain,’ said Locklann. He had a voice like a toad gargling gravel. ‘I will.’
Drekki considered bringing Locklann up on his familiarity, but he was good at his job, and was respectful enough, in his own way. Drekki got a dependable feeling off the purser, and for duardin, that counted for a lot.
‘How goes it?’ Locklann asked, glancing at the charts.
‘I have a very good idea where Evtorr might have come down, and therefore where the Dead Air is.’ Drekki stabbed a finger onto the chart. ‘It’s all to do with the colp. Colp migrate, you see, to established patterns. Evtorr fell right into the nets of a deep-sky trawler hunting out over the edgelands.’
‘Don’t know the term “Dead Air”,’ said Locklann. ‘Nor the edgelands, if I’m honest. Done most of my faring through Ulgu and the central Spiral Crux, when I’ve been here in Chamon.’ He shrugged. ‘If that’s an excuse, though I’ll grant it’s a poor one for ignorance.’
‘Continent huggers are never polite about the Skyshoals,’ said Drekki. ‘They never name it, it is always just “over the edgelands”, and even then it barely warrants a spot on the map, so far as they’re concerned.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘We might wear Mhornar’s colours and Thrund pays Mhornar’s due, but Ulgu will never be home to us. The open space between the isles is our place, out in the wild blue yonder.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Locklann, and poured himself another two fingers of rum.
‘Only one other person has a good claim on seeing the Dead Air. He was called Brokki Zunderdampf.’ Drekki reached behind him and pulled a slim volume from the shelf. ‘Went in, came out. He wrote this book about it. Not many people believed him. My father did.’
‘I heard that. He went into the Eye, so Kedren says.’
‘He did. With my brothers. Zunderdampf’s testimony convinced him it was possible to go through the vortex.’
‘This is personal then.’
Drekki nodded. ‘To an extent.’
‘I won’t pry,’ Locklann said.
‘What was it you wanted?’
‘Me? Oh, nothing much, just that I think we’ve got a stowaway.’
Drekki grinned. ‘Heh. I wondered when that was going to come up. In the hold?’
Locklann nodded.
‘Thought so, come on.’
They got up.
‘Oh. You might want to bring your helmet,’ Locklann said. ‘You’ll see why.’
‘Grimnir’s rutz![36] What is that stink?’ Drekki said. They hadn’t even gone into the hold, but were standing by the small hatch that led below.
‘It’s the supplies for Ramarius,’ said Locklann, putting his helmet on before descending the narrow companionway stairs that ran along the inside of the hull. Hysh shone through the open hatch, punching a square hole of light into the dark. The hold was the largest volume on the sky-cutter, though compared to the cargo spaces of dedicated merchant ships it was small, and was cramped by the supplies occupying most of it. A larger double lading hatch made up most of the ceiling. It was unadorned, utilitarian. Built entirely for function, the Kharadron way.
‘Came down and found one of the fish barrels open this morning,’ Locklann went on.
Drekki took a few steps down the iron stairs. ‘Wow. The smell fair builds, doesn’t it? I’d never have thought, even given they are fish guts. I see why the helmet is required.’ Drekki locked his in place. ‘What a way to announce yourself!’
Drekki and Locklann went over to the fish barrels stacked in the corner. One of them had been broached by an axe, and from it rose a most awful reek that filled the hold as thickly as water.
‘Only Gord would eat fish guts,’ said Locklann.
‘He can’t get down here,’ said Drekki.
‘Aye, and as it was him as told me about the smell, I’m thinking he’s probably innocent of this minor act of theft.’ Locklann stood over the barrels, wafting his hand in front of his helmet’s brass nose. ‘Grungni’s best axe, I’m glad I’m wearing me helmet. I can still smell them! What have we got this muck for anyway, we’re not chumming for megalofin are we? I hate megalofin steaks.’
‘You’ll see,’ said Drekki with a smile. ‘Not that our greedy guts did.’
‘Who’d open this up?’ said Locklann.
‘Someone who can’t read custom stamps,’ said Drekki, sauntering nonchalantly across to the inner hull. ‘Someone who hasn’t had an opportunity for a wash since they accidentally got covered in fermented fish guts.’ There was a ventilation panel in the wall which, when open, let fresh air into the hold, and that was needed right then more than ever, and yet it was closed. ‘Someone who is probably very, very hungry, and didn’t think their plan through properly.’ He undid the thumb bolts holding the panel closed, let it drop and reached inside, right up to his armpit. He rooted around, then raised his eyebrows, and pulled out a dirty-looking beardling by his collar. ‘Someone like young Uzki Frenek here.’
Uzki smiled timidly.
‘Hello, Captain Flynt,’ he said.
‘Where the funti drukk did he come from?’ said Locklann.
‘Ah, I have known that he was here all along,’ Drekki said airily. ‘Nothing gets past me, Uzki.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ said Locklann. ‘We’ve been running short on stonebread, must have been him stealing it. It was giving me no end of bother trying to figure out why the stocks didn’t add up, until now.’
‘My apologies, Locklann, I wanted to see what he was made of,’ said Drekki. ‘He’s impressed me. Isn’t that right, Uzki?’
‘Aye aye?’ ventured the beardling.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Drekki. ‘All right, youngster, come with me.’ He sniffed loudly in his helm. ‘But stay downwind.’
‘You could have died, you know,’ said Drekki. ‘You’ve no food, no gear, and the Code allows me to throw stowaways overboard if the desire so takes me. Ask Locklann here. He trained as a code-wright.’
‘Does it?’ said Uzki, alarmed.
‘No,’ said Locklann.
Drekki laughed. ‘I’m mocking you, lad. I made that one up. In fact, there’s an amendment somewhere that I’m supposed to take you in to the nearest port and hand you over. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, captain,’ said Locklann. ‘Somewhere in Artycle Eight.’
‘But the rest is true. You were cold and hungry, weren’t you?’
Uzki nodded. ‘Starving. Freezing!’
Drekki left Locklann down below to tidy up, and led the boy out of the hold. They stopped at the top of the stairs. ‘If you can’t get the lid back on that,’ he called down to Locklann, ‘feed it to the ogor. Better he have fish breath for a couple of days than we stink out the whole ship.’
‘Sorry, captain,’ said the beardling.
‘Too late for sorry now,’ said Drekki.
They came up through the small deck hatch. Uzki shuddered in the biting wind. Duardin were about their work around the deck. Urdi was closest, coiling a spare steel hawser. He stopped and looked at the boy, then at the captain. Drekki waved him away with a discreet flap of his hand.
‘We’re up in the Fourth Air now,’ Drekki said. ‘It’s cold up the top, and it’ll get colder still. And once you get into the Fifth, the air gets so thin you can’t breathe.’
‘I know that,’ said Uzki.
‘So how were you going to breathe once we got up there, eh?’ said Drekki. ‘If you are going to apprentice yourself to me, then you’ve got a lot to learn. You can’t just make it up as you go along.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Most of the time, anyway.’
‘Then… then you’re not going to send me away?’
‘A beardling with your persistence deserves a chance,’ said Drekki. ‘Don’t get excited, it’s just a chance! You mess up, you’re off the next sky-port we get to, do you hear? You listen carefully, you do what you’re told, and you might, just might, get to stay. As it is, I can’t get rid of you yet anyway, because we’re in the middle of funti nowhere, so do what you are told and stay out of trouble.’
Uzki saluted crisply. ‘Aye aye, captain!’
‘And I don’t want to see you in that fake beard again. Clear?’
‘Yes, captain!’ said Uzki, ripping the beard off his face. Underneath, he was very grimy.
‘Right, let’s get you cleaned up, and get Bokko to outfit you with a suit before you freeze or asphyxiate or something. Hrunki!’ Drekki shouted. She was atop the ship’s sole aether turret, polishing it to a high shine.
‘Captain?’ As she looked down, her old face went wide with surprise. ‘Who’s that beardling?’
‘The new ship’s beardling, that’s who. He wants to be an arkanaut, so we’re doing it the old-fashioned way. On-the-job training. You’re in charge. First he needs a bath. He stinks of fish guts. Then find him something to do.’
Hrunki’s puzzlement turned to a wicked smirk. She clambered down off her turret. ‘Brilliant! I’ve always wanted a beardling of my own. Come on, little bald-chin,’ she said, in the kind of voice one uses when addressing very young duardin.
‘I’m not a beardling,’ protested Uzki. ‘I’m nearly thirty-five!’
‘Until the captain says otherwise, you’re my beardling,’ she said. She pinched his cheek. ‘Time for a little bath. Do you need me to scrub your back?’ She tickled him.
‘Hey, stop that!’
‘Nobody said life on a ship was easy or fun, beardling!’ Drekki said sternly, as Hrunki dragged him away. He kept a straight face until Uzki was inside, then he and the entire crew on deck burst out laughing.
As the ship’s sole tin bath was hauled up and filled with cold water, Drekki went looking for Bokko. He was, predictably, with Khenna in the passenger cabin, feeding her soup and holding her hand.
‘Beardlings, poisoned kvinn and romantic entanglements,’ muttered Drekki as he dragged his endrinrigger back to his duties. ‘And we haven’t even started yet.’
Bokko did his best with Uzki’s aeronautical gear, moaning that the beardling wasn’t yet fully grown and that meant cutting the flight suit down to fit, which was a waste of a suit, and therefore a waste of money, because he would just grow out of it, and could everyone please keep the noise down, because Khenna had a headache. Drekki retorted that Uzki had finished growing, being nearly an adult, so even if he hadn’t filled out completely, the suit didn’t need cutting, and why didn’t he use some of that famed ingenuity of his to pull it in a bit with belts. He also said that Bokko needed to remember he had duties beyond mooning over Khenna, all of which shut the endrineer up.
On they fared across the shifting metalith-scapes of the Realm of Metal, its subrealms, landscapes and gargantuan floating continents sliding around their orbits like roughly made machinery. They kept a steady watch at all times, for the skies were anything but safe. Several times Hysh dimmed and flared, its celestial track around the fractured realm lighting a complex set of nights and days as it was obscured by and emerged from the floating realmscapes. They crossed the Domtanguan Mountains, and thereafter turned edgewards, up over old Prosperis, whose night-time lands were pinpricked with the lights of Sigmar’s free cities, and then out over the outer bounds of the Crux, where the Skyshoals spread themselves across the free skies. There, Drekki gave the order to ascend higher. The air grew thinner, the days colder, until through clouds of ice crystals, the Aelsling burst into the lowermost part of the Fifth Air of the Skyshoals.