Clash of the Sky Galleons Read Online Free

the end of a line.
    ‘Only one way to find out,’ answered his father, and Quint found something hard and shiny being pressed into his hand.
    It was a piece of sky-crystal; Quint could tell from its smooth, round shape. He slammed it against the tunnelwall and it glowed in his hand with a warm, yellow light. Behind him, Wind Jackal did the same and together they held their glowing fists up above their heads as they approached the tunnel entrance, half running as the harness ropes dragged them ever faster.
    There, blocking the narrow fissure, was a huge, white creature, its thin papery wings folded tightly behind it as it squeezed into the entrance. It had massive watery eyes that seemed far too big for its shrunken, skull-like head, and long, spidery hind-legs that stretched out towards them, glinting with long, needle-like talons. Thin spittlelike drool dripped from its jaws which, as Quint watched, seemed to dislocate as they opened to become impossibly huge.
    ‘Khhhaaah!’
    The sound it let out was long, harsh and rasping, a blast of air that came from the very depths of its angular body and was expelled with great force from its gaping maw. Its head darted from side to side, the tiny nasal flaps at the top of its beak-like mouth flickering furiously. It was the smell of fetid tilder blood that had drawn it into the tunnel, like a woodmoth to a candle.
    ‘The neck!’ Wind Jackal shouted. ‘Aim for the neck!’
    Quint gripped his sword and raised his forearm to fend off the lunging attack that instantly came. He felt the vicelike jaws crunch into his arm with the pain of a thousand hot needles, before swinging his sword in an upward arc.
    A high-pitched shriek, choked off in mid-screech, followed by the sounds of crunching bone and the crumpling of papery wings, filled Quint’s ears - beforehe found himself bursting from the tunnel’s entrance at the end of the harness rope and swinging free in the dark, freezing air. Below him, the hideous creature tumbled away into the murky blackness, its glassy-eyed head separated from its body.
    Some way behind him, Wind Jackal also swung clear of the tunnel, before rising up alongside Quint on the end of his own harness rope.
    ‘Winch, you skycurs!’ roared his father. ‘Winch us out of here!’
    In front of Quint, the quarry ledges and the rock face sped past in a blur as the violent wind howled once more in his ears.
    From below there came more hideous screeches, as three more creatures swooped up out of the infernal darkness. Their papery wingspans were the size of sky ships, and their gaping jaws wide enough to swallow a full-grown hammelhorn whole. Yet for all that, their white bodies were skeletally thin, and looked as delicate as a spindlebug’s. Round they circled, calling to each other, and coming ever closer to this tempting, dangling bait - so much tastier and more substantial than the dried-out morsels of carrion that the Mire mud filtered down to them in the depths below.
    In their harnesses, Quint and Wind Jackal flailed desperately with their swords as the creatures swooped, dived and snapped at them with their razor-sharp teeth. Each time a creature glided past, Quint caught sight of its huge, swivelling eyes, the irises enlarging and contracting as if calculating exactly when and where to strike.
    His arm was throbbing painfully now, and he was nearing exhaustion. How long could he keep these hideous creatures from the phantasmal depths at bay?

    Quint glanced across at his father, dripping - like himself - with rancid tilder blood, and swinging his heavy sabre in a figure of eight in front of him. Above, the hull of the Galerider had come into view.
    ‘Not far now,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not far now …’
    ‘Waaaarch!’
    A creature - the pupils of its huge eyes fully dilated -managed to avoid the flashing blade and glanced past Quint, tearing his sky pirate coat at the shoulder with trailing talons as it did so.
    ‘Winch! Sky take your