Sky Run by Alex Shearer Page B

was coming our way. I kept the scope trained on it and tightened the focus a little. Then I prodded Gemma with my foot and I shook Peggy by the arm.
    â€˜Something coming,’ I said. ‘Something funny-looking.’
    And it
was
funny-looking too. It was weird. The shape of it was wrong. It couldn’t be a sky-fish. I knew what they looked like. I knew every kind and variety that lived up at our level, and even the names of some of the leathery ones from down below that we had hauled up sometimes on great long lines.
    Gemma stretched and stood up and Peggy did the same, but she took a little longer and she creaked more.
    â€˜Let me see, Martin –’ Peggy said.
    I handed her the scope.
    â€˜It looks a bit like a sky-fin, but if it is, there’s something else with it …’
    Peggy held the scope to her eye and then passed the scope to Gemma.
    â€˜What do you think?’
    â€˜It’s a rider.’
    Gemma handed the scope back to me.
    â€˜It’s a what?’ I said.
    I looked again. I’d never seen anything like this. She was right – there was a rider on the back of the sky-fin. The sky-fin was saddled and bridled and somehow broken in and tamed, and the rider was using it as private transport, and the mount was speeding him through the sky.
    â€˜I knew they were friendly but I thought they were wild. I didn’t know you could tame them.’
    â€˜If you’re got the patience – and the determination – and don’t mind getting a few bites and tail slaps along the way,’ Peggy said. ‘Or you can whisper them, if you have the gift.’
    â€˜Whisper them?’
    â€˜Persuade them and cajole them – with sweet nothings in their ears. You don’t need whips and spurs when you’ve got sweet nothings and you know how to say them. Just brings them round and calms them down. But you have to have the knack. Cloud Hunters do it.’
    â€˜That a Cloud Hunter?’
    â€˜If it is, it’s a lost and lonely one. They don’t usually travel alone.’
    The sky-fin and its rider were heading across our path at fifty degrees. But then abruptly the rider seemed to see us, for he jerked at the bridle and turned the sky-fin around, and he began to head in our direction.
    â€˜Looks like he wants some company,’ Peggy said. She took the telescope back. ‘I wonder …’ She put the lens to her eye, seemed to stiffen, then, ‘Gemma,’ she said. ‘Go down to the cabin, get my knife and bring it to me.’
    Gemma didn’t question her and nor did I, and I made out like I wasn’t worried neither, but I was. What had Peggy seen about the rider that she wanted her knife for?
    â€˜Can’t we just change course?’ Gemma said. She was back with the knife and the sheath it came in. Peggy hooked it to her belt.
    â€˜Wouldn’t be any good,’ Peggy said. ‘A sky-fin, even with extra weight on its back, is going to outrun you easy. Let’s just see what he wants. Might all be fine. Why look for trouble?’
    She put the telescope down. As Gemma didn’t pick it up again, I did. I could see them both clearly now, the sky-fin and the rider. He didn’t look much older than Gemma to me, but he looked kind of strange, kind of blank, like there wasn’t much going on in his mind – or if there was, he was determined to keep it all to himself.
    He wore a bandana around his head to keep his long hair in place and out of his eyes, and both were streaming behind him as the sky-fin rode the thermals and kept on coming, its fins beating so fast they were blurs in the heat haze. I could see already that he had scars on his face – deep, ritual, Cloud Hunters’ scars, running from just under his eyes to the corners of his mouth. His torso was bare and he wore camouflage fatigues on his legs. But criss-crossing his bare chest were bandoliers, make out of sky-shark leather, and