Clash of the Sky Galleons by Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell Page A

lop-eared goblin hat-tipper. The armour, he noted, was scuffed and dented, and the row of shields werescratched and pitted by sword blows and crossbow bolts.
    ‘I heard all about the Battle of the Knights Academy,’ Imbix purred, with a smile that revealed a mouthful of small, stained peg-like teeth. ‘And how Sanctaphrax lost many of her best academics-at-arms in that bloody fight…’
    He raised a hand of razor-sharp finger-spikes and waved the young academic-at-arms dismissively aside.
    ‘So, since you’re obviously new and this is your first harvest,’ he said, ‘I’ll forgive you your insolence in stopping me entering the Stone Gardens.’
    The leaguesmaster took a step forward - then stopped, outraged, his eyebrows shooting upwards, when the young academic held his ground.
    ‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,’ he said coldly.
    Behind him, the eight massive Undertown shrykes of his bodyguard were getting restless. Dressed in full-length black cloaks and gleaming spiked helmets, they clacked their beaks and hissed with irritation, the ruffs of feathers at their necks standing on end.
    Stretching back from the gates of the Stone Gardens in the direction of Undertown was a line of some fifteen huge stone-wagons, teams of shaggy hammelhorns in harness. The wagoneers, who had been standing around stamping their feet and blowing on their hands in the chill of the early dawn, now all turned to watch the confrontation unfolding before them.
    ‘Just one word from me,’ hissed Imbix Hoth, no longer smiling, ‘and my shrykes will rip out your insolent heart and feast on your liver!’
    ‘There’ll be no need for that,’ came a slightly breathless voice. ‘Let the Master of the League of Rock Merchants through, Captain, there’s a good fellow.’

    The stone marshal, Zaphix Nemulis - a high professor in the violet and white striped robes of the Academy of Wind - pushed past the academic-at-arms, who was still blocking the entrance to the Stone Gardens, and ushered Imbix and his bodyguard inside with a flurry of apologies and excuses. As the shrykes strode past, one leaned towards the young guard, who had now lowered his crossbow, and spat a stream of green bile at his feet. The watching wagoneers - leaguers from the League of Rock Merchants - chuckled and went back to checking their hammelhorns’ harnesses and preparing their grappling-poles for the harvest to come.
    Just two hours earlier, as the first blinding darts of light had broken over the horizon and shot the mist-drenched Stone Gardens with long, stark shadows, a great multitude of white ravens had taken to the sky. High above Undertown the birds had flocked, thousands of them, breaking the dawn silence with their piercing cries as they headed for the great floating city.
    ‘Waaark! Waaark! Waaark!’
    Round the Raintasters’ Tower and Loftus Observatory they had wheeled, alerting the Sanctaphrax academics to the fact that a rock harvest was imminent. Their screeching din had woken even the deepest sleepers, who had tumbled from their beds with the rest, quickly dressed and, still bleary-eyed, headed for the Stone Gardens.
    Down in Undertown, this discordant din that had rudely torn every trog, troll, goblin, waif and shryke from their slumbers was known as the chorus of the dead. It was common knowledge that when the venerable academics of Sanctaphrax died, they were taken to the Stone Gardens to be laid out at the top of the stone stacks, where their earthbound bodies were consumed by the white ravens. To the superstitious Undertowners, it seemed logical that the spirits of those deceased entered the rocks. After all, what other reason could there be for the ghastly howls that filled the air when those same rocks finally broke free of the stacks as they floated up towards Open Sky?
    The thought of it all filled them with dread. On that particular morning - with the marked exception of the drivers of the stone wagons, who had no choice - the