Читать книгу: «The Huntress Trilogy»

To Mum, Dad and Nick, for sailing through the storms with me

First published in Great Britain 2017

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © Sarah Driver, 2017

Illustrations copyright © Joe McLaren, 2017

Additional interior illustrations by Janene Spencer

First e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978 1 4052 8467 7

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1763 2

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication and Copyright

Map of Trianukka

The Huntress

PART 1: We Rove

1 Terrodyls

2 Alone at Sea

3 A Flaming Earful

4 The Western Wharves

5 The Stranger

6 A Paw Print in the Ice

7 A Skilful Captain

8 Hunter’s Moon

9 The Frozen Wastes

10 Mouse Arrow-Swift

11 Whale-song

12 Aches and Pains

13 Storm

14 Turning Tides

15 The Unseeing Eye

PART 2: Winter’s Prowl

16 Dragonfly

17 Dread’s Eve

18 The Stone Circle

19 The Merwraith

20 Cut Adrift

21 The Hunter

22 Dungeon

23 Endless Night

24 Bad Blood

25 Moonrise over the End of the World

26 Hawk-courage

27 True-Tribe

PART 3: Flight

28 Rattlebones

29 Thunder Heart

30 What the Sea Spat Out

31 Crow

32 Labyrinth

33 Wreckers

34 One Boss

35 Crew

36 Bony Isle Bound

37 Devil’s Hag

38 Hooked

39 Blood-magyk

40 Song of Sorrow

41 Battle Scars

42 Castle Whalesbane

43 Dead Reckoning

44 Storm-brewing

45 Tentacles

46 Free Flight

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

The beasts are coming.

I’m below decks in the gloomy kitchens, helping Pipistrelle salt raw reindeer steak, when the first call hacks through the air. As the sound fades, my fingers stop dead and cold chunks of salt dig into my skin. My bones turn to water but I won’t let my knees buckle. Pip stops his tuneless whistling and scowls. My heart barely thuds before the clanging of the alarm bell shatters the silence.

Grandma always tells me I’m not to go out on deck when the great winged terrodyls come near. Two summers gone, they killed Grandpa. But this time I’ve got to keep our ship safe.

I stick my knife in my belt and let out my fiercest battle-howl.

‘Mouse!’ Pip grabs for me but his hands are slimy with reindeer blood and I wriggle free.

I run from the kitchens, tear through the murky passageways and into the armoury, with its stink of rot and rust. Spears, daggers, axes and harpoons gleam as I pass. I fling open an elm chest, grab my longbow and a quiver full of arrows dipped in poison-frog venom. Then I burst up the stairs onto the storm-deck.

The deck’s a-flurry with running boots and sweeping cloaks. We’ve been caught unprepared cos the terrodyls should be making for their nests now that winter’s prowling closer.

The battle-horn moans. ‘To arms! Bows and bills!’ Grandma shouts, from the fore-castle above. ‘Come on, you belching babble of layabouts!’

‘Aye, Captain!’ boom the crew.

Shadows thicken as the sun drops towards the horizon. Grandma’s black-cloaks stand along the port and starboard sides. There’s a whish as they draw arrows from their quivers. The oarsmen have left their benches so the Huntress sways in the sea, buffeted by the waves. I’ve not been on deck longer than a few heartbeats when a freezing shock of seawater smashes over the rail and drenches me.

The sound comes again, a hideous whip-crack caw. It makes me stagger and throw myself flat with my hands over my ears. My bow clatters to the deck. A shadow falls across me, cast by a pair of vast, hairy wings. They beat, drowning out my heart.

‘Mouse!’ a shaky voice cries. Slowly I turn my face towards the stern. The hatch is open a sliver and Sparrow’s teary brown eyes peer out.

‘Sing! Sing to the whales!’ I call to my brother, my voice fear-scratched. Sparrow’s gifted with the whale-song. Grandma says it’s an offering to the whales – the gods of the seas – to keep us safe. Terrodyls hate the gentle whale-song, so might be it’s the only thing that can save us, out here with no other trading ships close by.

As I watch, Sparrow opens his mouth and pours his song into the night. The wind gusts and carries his voice over the sea, pulling more strands of song from his mouth – the notes shiver and glow bright blue.

Another scream strikes deep into my brain. A three-strong hunting pack of ten-foot-long terrodyls circles overhead. Their beast-chatter is tangled into one hateful cry of killdeathdiepaindrownstrikedeathscuttlekill!

One of them dives towards me but I roll, quick, and its claws tear gouges in the deck. It screeches and comes at me again. I try to stand but bash into its wing, and it sends me crashing into a barrel of salted herring.

There’s a thud as the hatch bangs closed. Sparrow must’ve let it fall shut and now his voice is muffled. Will the whales hear him?

Two of the terrodyls dip lower and use their spear-point heads to strike the hull. They’re trying to send our ship down! Arrows skitter off the edges of their wings.

Grandma’s voice carves the air. ‘Stave the monsters off, but see you don’t bring them down on us!’ Her silvery hair billows around her head as she strides, clad in merwraith-scale armour. ‘Summon my prentice; might be she has a drop of whale-song left in her staff !’

Arrows fly. The terrodyls screech and snap their jaws, furiously rounding on the black-cloaks. Then Vole stalks along the deck, wielding a wooden staff topped with a crystal. Blue wisps of whale-song moan from the crystal; a song-wave that pushes the terrodyls back.

Stealing my chance, I scramble to my feet and hurry along the starboard side. Salt spray strikes my face and the wind whips my hair into my eyes. Grandma don’t spy me. If I stick to the left of her she won’t, neither, cos of her glass eye.

The tumbling sea stretches into the distance. The moon crawls up the sky, lighting the waves as they roll and crash around us. The arrows and Vole’s staff have chased the beasts away. But the staff ’s whale-song is already trailing off, leaving a silence that makes my skin creep. I can feel the Huntress holding her breath for the next attack.

I glance out to sea and my heart lurches, cos a huge grey fin glides along by our side – must be the bigtooth shark that’s been circling our ship for days. Hunt, weave, death-cold, it mutters from the water. Quest, crunch, search-bones. Drowns soon, soon, soon.

Pip reckons it’s the same rogue that munched a whole crew when terrodyls sent their ship down, three moons back. The wreck must be lurking on the seabed, riddled with merwraiths – the blind, scaly victims of drowning – and gulpers that can swallow a person whole. But it ent today that we’ll be joining that shipwreck, I swear it. I promised Ma I’d keep Sparrow safe for always.

As the thoughts of Ma nip at me, Sparrow’s voice rises up again, high and pure. His glittering blue notes skate across the water.

Gods of the sea,

Ice-bright,

Moonlight, the lighthouse on the shore . . .

The next great screech of the terrodyls makes me drop to my knees with my head in my hands. Pain swells behind my eyes. But then the shriek dies and my heart skip-skitters and I can breathe again.

Staggering, I grab my bow and haul myself into the rigging. I shin up the main-mast, the highest of the three. The wind tries to throw me into the sea but I cling tight.

At the top I leap into the crow’s nest and peer at the deck far below. The black-cloaks shout and scramble to find the best position to shoot at the beasts, which loop and plunge back down through the air towards us. With shaky hands I string my bow, take an arrow from my quiver and nock it. I rest the arrow on my finger and close one eye, trying to still my breath.

Suddenly I spot a bright wisp of whale-song coiling up from the sea, and a sad song groans through the air – a whale has come! The whale’s voice joins Sparrow’s and it’s the strangest thing, but spooky-beautiful.

Drumbeats,

Snow peaks.

Stare into the fire, see battles of yore . . .

A grey shape lurches clear of the water. If the whale is alone, its song might not be enough to save us. My heart sinks as the largest terrodyl jerks its head towards the shape and dives for the surface of the sea.

‘No!’ I scream.

Grandma looks up. ‘Mouse!’ I’m too high to see her face, but it must be frightful-fierce. ‘Get down from there or I’ll shoot ye down, little fool!’

I can hardly watch as the terrodyl rakes its claws across the flesh of the whale, leaving a bloody tear. ‘It can’t die for us!’ I bellow into the wind.

As the terrodyl hovers in the air above the sea, I take aim, draw and loose. My arrow slams into its wing. The beast gives a sickening scream. Far below, black-cloaks fall to their knees and moan. What if the sound stops our hearts, like the legends say it can?

‘Mouse! This ent the day to try my patience!’ roars Grandma.

My gut leaps but I grab another arrow and nock it to my bow. The creature draws close on huge wings that stir the air enough to twist the sails into knots. I can see my first arrow, lodged deep in the muscle. Blood beats in my ears.

Suddenly, chief oarsman Bear heaves himself into the basket, towering over me. ‘Get out of here, quick!’ he shouts. Fear is etched across his kind face.

‘I won’t!’ I sink to one knee and angle my bow straight up to the sky. The terrodyl shrieks again and Bear stumbles, but I focus on my breath, sighing in and out like the tides.

A razor-sharp wing slashes at me but I duck low, draw, loose. My arrow twangs into the terrodyl’s sinewy neck and pierces a thick blood vessel. Black blood hails down on us, hissing as it strikes the wood. A droplet fizzles on my arm and makes an angry red pit in my flesh.

Bear grabs my waist and throws me from the crow’s nest into the rigging. Rope burns my palms as I hurtle downwards. The Huntress shudders as the terrodyl crashes onto the crow’s nest with a great crunch of splintering wood. I jump the rest of the way and roll when I hit the deck. Bear lands beside me. Most of the nest falls away, showering splinters down around us, until all that remains is part of the mast and the bleeding body of the terrodyl. It twitches and finally stills.

The two living terrodyls scream in fury as I lie curled on the deck. All the wind is knocked from my lungs. Inky blood rains down from the broken mast and devours the wood with a smoky crackle.

‘Mouse, get below decks, now!’ Grandma booms. ‘And someone send for Pipistrelle – we need his cauldrons to catch that filthy slime, so it don’t eat the Huntress whole!’

Bear helps me up and starts to lead me away. ‘Oarsmen, to your positions,’ he calls down to the rowing benches. ‘Someone take up the drum until my return!’ I pummel Bear with my fists but he tugs me until my boots slide across the soaked wood.

The captain’s hatch has fallen closed again. When Bear opens it, Sparrow’s voice reaches us through the gloom. A clump of song knocks against my cheek, whale-skin cold. With it comes a low, sad groan from far across the water.

I twist to look over my shoulder and in the distance, lit by the yellow moon, the dark shapes of whales swim towards us in great numbers. They’re a mass of giant tails and fins, blowholing jets of water into the air. A veil of blue whale-song throbs over them, and Sparrow’s song rushes to join it. Together, they push against the terrodyls.

Bear stops dragging me and watches the horizon. Terrodyl screeches rip at the air as they reel away from our ship, recoiling from the whale-song. Tears of heart-gladness stream down my cheeks, but I swipe them away with the back of my hand – it’s nearly my thirteenth Hunter’s Moon and I ent some child.

The drum, the Huntress ’s life-pulse, begins to beat steadily as we pull away, heading west. As the black-cloaks gather up their arrows, an icy blanket of mist settles. Frog swings from the ropes, coaxing the lanterns to life. When he reaches the main-mast, he wiggles and weaves around the skewered terrodyl. I glance down; my breeches are torn at the knees and the wound on my arm is crusted with terrodyl blood. When I wipe my nose, my hand comes away bloody.

Grandma stalks towards me and Bear as the terrodyls throb out of sight. She’s wearing her danger-face. Without a word she grabs my sodden cloak and bundles me along the deck, past the hidden Hoodwink where the sea-hawks live, and down the steps to our cabin.

Sparrow’s stopped singing; now he’s just sobbing amongst the bed-furs. My brother’s sickly as a merwraith and full of heart-sadness, especially when he sings with the whales. Even more now that Da’s been away trading since the last full moon.

Thunderbolt, Sparrow’s pet moonsprite, sits on a pillow and chatters softly. Grandma plucks her from the pillow and drops her into a glass bottle, making a silvery moon-lamp that she hangs from a hook. It spills pale light across Grandma’s oak table, where the big crinkled map is nailed down, spotted with puddles of blood-red sealing wax. Furs, silks and velvets are heaped in one corner and chests are stuffed with golden eggs, onyx, jade and boxes of pearls. My diving sealskin hangs from a nail, still dripping wet from my morning dive.

That’s one of the things I’m best at – diving for pearls. When I collect more than three in a day Grandma tells us her best stories as we huddle amongst our blankets and furs.

Now I ent expecting stories, though. Just a flaming earful.

Grandma catches my jaw in her hand, checking my face for hurts. ‘You won’t be in need of stitching – I’ve a mind some of my crew will, though. Ent no place for a child on deck when terrodyls come near, girl. Half a hundred times I must have told you!’

‘But I ent no child. I just shot one of the terrodyls!’ I wave her hands away and fling myself down on the bunk I share with Sparrow. ‘And I’m the only one with the beast-chatter, so only I can understand—’

She scoffs. ‘You think we need beast-chatter to hear the hate in them terro-wails? You brought the creature down to crush us! Count yourself heart-glad we’re striking distance from land, with the damage you’ve done to that mast. By dawn we should be docked. But we’ll have to battle to make it through the night.’ Her voice is weary and her brow is furrowed with crags.

‘What am I to do with my arrows ’n my poison then? Save them for the merwraiths, when we’re good and scuttled?’

Grandma sits at her table and mixes sea-mud, kelp and herbs to make an ointment for my arm. ‘That’s enough o’ your flaming lip. If your da returned to find you dead and buried at the bottom of the sea, what would I tell him?’

‘That I died like any good captain; saving her crew.’ I scowl and pick a nib of hardened skin from around my fingernail. Bright blood wells and I suck it clean.

‘Twelve moons old and captain already, is she? I think not. I’m hopeful the gods will gift me a few more moons yet, my girl. And any captain knows better than to put the lives of all on board in danger, for the sake of showing off.’ Grandma seizes my arm and rubs ointment into my scorched skin. Her silver rings scrape me and I try to push her away but her hand’s clamped tight as a limpet.

My cheeks begin to burn. ‘I didn’t do it for showing off – I done it to avenge Grandpa, and to keep us safe! And it’s barely sundown. I’ll be thirteen tomorrow night! Sparrow’s eight and he ent even asleep yet!’ I splutter and almost choke on my words.

A small smile tugs at Grandma’s mouth. ‘Never mind what your brother’s doing, though he should be snoring by now. We might have need of his voice again afore the sun wakes. Off to the privy, now, Sparrow.’

‘Yep, off you go,’ I say, smirking at my brother. ‘Just be watchful that bigtooth shark don’t leap up and bite your behind while you’re peeing.’

Sparrow yelps and burrows deeper among the blankets. Grandma fixes me with her glass eye. Story goes, her eye went blind when she half turned to merwraith, when the ship of her childhood sank at the hands of wreckers and she nearly drowned. I stare back into its sea-green depths, hard and unblinking.

All of a sudden the fierceness drops out of her face and she starts to chuckle. ‘Gods have mercy,’ she gasps after a moment, clutching her sides. ‘Sparrow, off t’ the privy ’n I’ll hear no more about it. Mouse, get yourself into your nightclothes. You’re to get to bed, and stay put whilst I tend to my injured.’

She turns and clomps up the stairs, herding Sparrow before her. ‘My hide’s much too ancient for all this child-rearing caper,’ she exclaims. ‘Not enough that I’m captain and medsin-maker and—’ her grumblings fade as she disappears through the hatch.

I strip to my smallclothes, dry myself with a scrap of linen and wriggle into my nightshirt. One of my fingers is grazed raw from my bowstring, so I lick it clean and dab it with Grandma’s ointment. When I scoot onto our bunk and prop open the porthole the night rings with the siiigh and shhhhh of whales breathing.

In the sky, the great green fire spirits dance and ripple, stretching far away into the distance. Grandma says their pictures are gifts, to show us what will come and what has been. She says they showed our Tribe that I’d be a captain, before I was even born. At Sparrow’s birth the spirits said he’d be a whale-singer – and sure enough, he was singing before he could talk. I search for some sign of Da among the fire spirits as they flicker with life. But there’s naught of him there and my heart aches with it. ‘Da?’ I whisper.

Sparrow clatters back down the steps into the cabin. ‘You ent gonna see Da up there. He’s waiting with the land-lurkers.’ He jabs me in the ribs with his elbow to make me budge up on the bunk. I’m about to elbow him back when I see the way his hair sticks up in a nest cos I ent got round to brushing it today.

‘You better fetch that brush from—’

‘Shhh!’ hisses Sparrow. He bounces up on tiptoe and grabs the edge of the porthole to peer out.

A knot of women pass along the storm-deck, right below us. ‘Carpenters,’ I whisper, cos I can hear the little silver hammers on their belts chiming as they lug wood to patch some of the damage to the Huntress.

‘Bleeding nippers running about, bringing troubles on us,’ says one. ‘They should be kept below when the beasts come near! Captain’s granddaughter or no, it can’t go on!’

‘Aye, she could’ve scuppered us! We’ve a long night ahead.’

Me and Sparrow stare at each other. ‘I was just trying to keep our Tribe safe, and this is the heart-thanks I get?’

‘I’m cold.’ Sparrow pulls the porthole closed with a bang. ‘Who cares about the stupid carpenters? Can I have a story?’ he begs. He plops himself down amongst the bed-furs and wriggles his hand under the pillow to search out a crispy old starfish.

I sigh. ‘Crafty little bargainer, ent you?’ I shut one eye and squint at him. ‘All right. Just one.’

He pulls off a starfish arm and shoves it into his mouth. ‘No sky-monsters! And no stogs – Thunderbolt hates all giants cos they gobble up sprites and spit out their wings.’ The moonsprite hops about inside her glass bottle, making a tiny thudding sound like a moth beating against a lantern.

‘Gods,’ I mutter, rooting around under the bunk to grab the long, smooth walrus tusk with the pictures of Sparrow’s favourite story etched into it. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you still believe in the ghost of Captain Rattlebones or—’

‘Don’t!’ Sparrow shrieks, face gone pale. ‘You’re only allowed to tell the story of the Storm-Opal Crown!’ He nestles in next to me, peering at the pictures in the tusk. His yellow hair smells like nutmeg and his feet are cold as stones.

‘Get them freezing planks off me!’ I move the tusk to catch Thunderbolt’s moonlight. ‘One hundred moons and suns ago, long after the first oarsman beat his drum, but while you was still just a puny sea-spark on the wind—’

‘I weren’t never!’

‘—the last King of Trianukka had a golden crown that got gobbled up by a great whale. Three powerful Storm-Opals were to be set in the ancient crown, to heal the trouble between all the Tribes of Sea, Sky and Land and let them live in peace together. The first Opal held a foam of sea, the second a fragment of sky, and the third a fracture of land. But after the crown was swallowed—’

‘Did it hurt?’ murmurs Sparrow sleepily, tracing the etched outline of the whale with a fingertip.

‘Did what hurt?’ I kick his cold feet away again.

‘Swallowing a crown?’ He belches and I waft away the starfish-stink.

‘Ugh! What do you think, clumber-brain? Anyway, the Opals had to be kept safe somehow, didn’t they? So the crinkled old mystiks of the Bony Isle guarded them, deep within the walls of Castle Whalesbane, where the last King dwelt.’

I’m getting pulled into the thrill of the story, but Sparrow’s breath is soft with sleep, so I skip to the last bit and make it quick. ‘And he blamed the Sea-Tribe captain, Rattlebones, for hiding the crown in the whale’s belly, and that brought a hundred years of war, and gifted all the power to the land.’ My voice trails away. I run my finger across the etching of the first oarsman’s drum, then lean down and put the tusk back under our bunk.

Soon Sparrow’s garbling in his sleep. The Huntress creaks and the wind wails loud enough to almost burst my brain. The whales keep up their moaning; I try to block out their song with my pillow but it’s too loud. Shouts drift from Grandma’s medsin-lab – must be she’s stitching a wound, and I know she’s run out of stingray venom for the numbing. ‘What are you, True-Tribe or land-lurker?’ comes her distant roar.

When I hear her boots creaking down the steps to the cabin I turn towards the wall. I listen to her get ready for bed; taking out her glass eye, peeling off her armour. She flings off her boots but keeps her tunic and breeches on, in case she’s needed on deck.

She clambers into bed and I think about calling out that I’m sorry about the terrodyl, but I don’t know how to start. I dig my toes into the mattress. She might tell me off if I wake up Sparrow, so I keep quiet, but then another thought makes me bite my tongue – nighttime’s always when I think of questions about Ma. Ma was Grandma’s own daughter, but we never talk about her. Oftentimes I’ve lain in my bunk and wanted to call across the cabin: do you miss her? Cos I do. That’s the only gap between me and Grandma. The missing Ma and not saying a thing about it.

I open my mouth, turn over, but then Grandma’s walrus-snore starts rumbling so I shut my mouth and sigh.

When I’m captain I’ll have my own cabin, with no noisy kin to disturb me. I can’t wait to fill a captain’s boots. My eyelids grow heavy. Da’s coming home tomorrow, once we reach port. I grin sleepily into the pillow, imagining the treasures he might bring me for my thirteenth Hunter’s Moon. But having Da home will be the best gift of all. He’ll make everything right again.