back up to safety.
'Well, well, well,' said Tarquin. 'I do believe we won.'
CHAPTER 18
The battle-worn Flan O'War and Kurvy Kylie II climbed into the morning sky. A night of intense labour on the ground had seen the latter's rigging rearranged to allow the ship to hang beneath the remaining air-whale. The Kylie was holed in many places, but airworthy. The Flan O' War was dented, the foremost chimney leaning at a crazy angle and spitting more flame than smoke as the boilers were fired.
Richards stood at a porthole set in the side of the Flan O'War and watched the ground recede.
'It looks beautiful from up here,' he said.
'It looks bloody cold,' said Bear.
'Yeah, well.' Richards turned away from the window and sat at an aluminium table bolted to the floor. They were in a small room lined with wire bread-racks, though there were no loaves in them now.
'You look quite the buccaneer,' said Tarquin.
'Arrr, that be because I'm…'
'…a piratical kind of bear?' said Richards.
'Exactly.' Bear smirked. 'Yohoho,' he added, for good measure. He had lost an eye in the fight and wore an eye-patch. He was garbed in a short embroidered waistcoat and canary-yellow pantaloons. Stitched tears in his fur crisscrossed his body. He looked tatty, but happy. Being a pirate suited his temperament.
Richards tugged the bottle of rum from Bear's fist and took a long swig from it. It was rough and burned his throat, but he didn't care.
'Mini cupcake?' said Bear. 'I'll say one thing about that Pastry Chef, he knew how to bake a bun.'
'Thanks, I'm starving,' said Richards, 'and I do like my cake.' He pulled out a chair and sat down. He munched upon the bun; not as good as Hughie's, but close. His chewing started with vigour, but then he slowed. 'This cake, it didn't…'
'Don't worry, they cooked the chef in the other oven,' said Bear. 'Arrr.'
'Oh, do stop talking in that ridiculous fashion,' said Tarquin.
'Ahem,' said Bear sheepishly, and looked into his bottle with his single eye.
They ascended for hours before they were high enough to cross the peaks. On the other side an improbable ocean lapped icy shores at the roof of the world. The pylons turned west along this sea, and Piccolo's small armada followed. In places they were treated to glorious vistas, the mountains sweeping down into foothills, the foothills to plains, the plains into fields and so on until the horizon, but all were bounded by the void. At times it was a purple band on the horizon, often it was much closer. In the unfathomable black they spotted sizeable islands, whole countries marooned upon the night, frittering away to nothing.
As they flew further west it became warmer as the mountains grew lower, and the sea stepped down from the heavens on a series of immense cataracts. The ice disappeared, replaced by glittering archipelagos, but the Great Western Ocean was not untouched by that which devoured the world; they passed a roaring whirlpool in whose centre, half obscured by vapour, lay a perfect circle of black.
All the while the ground shook below them, fissures opening as the integrity of Reality 37 crumbled. The marks of the Terror were everywhere.
On the eighth day, the mountains turned in on themselves, forming a giant dam for the sea. The Kurvy Kylie and Flan O'War swept over their jagged teeth and sailed on as the mountains plunged down to a country of farms and small villages.
The lands beneath were like Swiss cheese, the holes in them growing larger as they watched. The tortured ground grumbled all the while, scaring sleep away at night. The days revealed long trains of refugees, broad trampled paths snaking behind them, spotted with discarded belongings and corpses. Piccolo's crew became morose. They bet insane sums of loot against one another in games of chance, aware that now, at the end of all things, it was worthless.
'Hooray!' said Bear, scooping up an armful of trinkets. 'I win again.'
'You are blessed by the gods,' said Bosun Mbotu.
'I thinks he might be cheating,' said another pirate. 'Arrrrr.'
'Hey!' said Bear. 'How's that possible?' He tugged at his wrists. 'See? No sleeves.'
'What does it matter?' said the bosun dolefully.
'I don't know how you do it, Bear, but I am cheating and I am still losing.' Richards cast his cards onto the table. 'I'm going outside for some air.' He went to the Flan O'War 's heavy exterior doors and let himself out onto the fighting deck.
It was an hour or so after dusk. Richards looked out over the ruination below, fascinated at this physical manifestation of numbers at war. Out over the void, wherever the smallest scrap of land persisted, bits of sky shoaled like strange fish in the blackest of oceans.
Below the ships was the woolly dark of young night. Richards had seen farms and towns below in the day, but there were no lights to break up the darkness. Whatever had lived in these parts was long gone. Light did shine in the night, but not of a homely kind. Where the land had failed, the shattering edges of reality showed up as showers of sparks.
They picked up a set of enormous footprints, a double track of multiple feet made by giants walking in two lines. Piccolo assured them that at the end of these they would find Secret, its elusive Queen and a way into Hog's mountain.
On the ninth day the tracks cut across a marsh, and the trail was lost in mere and mud.
'Are we nearly there yet?' asked Bear, as the two ships completed yet another sweep of the marsh.
Richards scanned the ground with poor human eyesight, intent, until he called, 'Captain! Bring us round, to that brown area over there.'
Piccolo shaded his eyes with his hand. He shrugged 'Ah, well, nothing ventured… hard a port!' he yelled. The tenor of the engines changed as they altered course, the whistle tooted and the whale of the nearby Kylie replied in kind.
The two ships banked in a wide arc round the area Richards indicated, a circular area of brown vegetation, as if it had been starved of sunlight by a giant tent.
Richards nodded. 'What was there?'
'Whatever it were, 'tis there no longer,' said Piccolo. He put his telescope to his eye. 'And if it is there no longer, where did it go?'
'That way,' said Richards. The massive tracks started up again, leading away from the dying reeds. 'Follow those prints.'
Three hours later, the city came into view.
Secret was a city like no other; gaudy on a plain of sere grasses, a citadel of brass and filigree; its iridescent buildings bolted to a double circular platform carried like a palanquin by a dozen brazen herms of immense size, halted now and kneeling. Four bridges arched upwards to meet in the centre of the city where they formed the base of a tower, directly above a large circle of shadow. The Kylie and the Flan flew over Secret's spires, its flags fluttering beneath their keels. But though the city was a blaze of colours, the centre of the circle was an altogether different kind of place. Out of the light was a twilit world of cages. Dark shapes moved within them.
Gracefully the ships descended, drawing level with the burnished giants' heads. An extravagant jetty jutted out into the air from a mounting tucked away behind the lead giant. With a series of loud commands bellowed through a candied bullhorn, Piccolo directed the Kurvy Kylie out away from the city, there to sit in vigil. His new flagship he steered towards the jetty. There was a loud clang, a slight start, and the Flan O'War came to a stop. Pirates shouted as they leapt onto the polished metal decks of Secret, calling to their colleagues for rope. Piccolo ordered the boilers extinguished. One by one, the blackbird chimneys ceased to smoke. The pie dish slowed its rotation, until the Flan O' War hung in the air, motionless and silent.
