The Winter Knights (21 page)

•CHAPTER THIRTEEN•
THE BARKSCROLL
LETTER

A
re you all right, Quint, old chap?’ called Raffix. He was looking up at his friend from the base of the plinth, a puzzled expression on his red, wind-lashed face.

Already, the crowds on the Viaduct Steps were thinning out as the academics, servants and all the other onlookers hurried back to the warmth and shelter of their schools and academies.

‘I hate to interrupt your daydreaming,’ Raffix persisted, ‘but it's getting rather chilly out here. Or hadn't you noticed?’

Quint turned, realizing with a jolt that Raffix was right. While he had been standing there, staring out at the distant horizon, a fresh blizzard had blown in from Open Sky and the icy air was once again thick with snow.

‘I'm sorry,’ said Quint, brushing the gathering snowflakes from his shoulders and jumping down from the plinth. ‘It's just that I can't get this nagging thought out of my head …’

‘And what thought is that, my dear fellow?’ said Raffix.

The two of them linked arms and, leaning against one another for support, began trudging back through the snow-clogged streets towards the Knights Academy.

‘The thought,’ said Quint, as they caught up with Phin, who was battling to pull a pair of snow-goggles down over his cap, ‘that Hax Vostillix might be wrong. That what we just witnessed wasn't really a Great Storm at all.’

‘He'd jolly well better not be wrong!’ said Phin hotly. ‘After all, he's just sent the finest knight academic in all of Sanctaphrax to chase the wretched thing!’ He grimaced with irritation. ‘Blast these wretched goggles! Why won't they fit?’

‘Here, you've got them all tangled up,’ said Raffix, coming to his aid. He tugged at the ear-flaps of Phin's cap, pulling them free, then turned back to Quint. ‘But you've certainly got a point, old chap. There are quite a few in the Upper Halls who also have their doubts about this Great Storm of Hax's. The thing is, the treasury needs stormphrax so desperately that they're prepared to hold their tongues and go along with him.’

They were approaching the East Landing, where the treadmills worked day and night hauling the vast log burners up and down the surface of the great rock. The steady
tramp tramp tramp
of the prowlgrins marching endlessly round and round in the great wheel was all but lost in the howling, snow-filled wind.

With their heads down and their thick cloaks flapping, the three squires hurried past as fast as the thick snow would allow. None of them wanted to acknowledge the awful truth about the great floating rock.

Already the freezing winter weather had made it so buoyant that the Anchor Chain was stretched taut. It creaked and cracked constantly, as if about to snap at any moment. The vast log burners warmed the rock as best they could, but they were fighting a losing battle. The icy winds which blew through the stonecomb were threatening to freeze the heartrock at its core – and if that happened, then no amount of chains or burners could prevent the great rock from breaking free and disappearing into Open Sky for ever.

No, the only hope for the floating city was storm-phrax, and everyone in Sanctaphrax knew it. Only that sacred substance – a small cupful of which weighed more than a hundred thousand ironwood trees when placed in the absolute darkness of the treasury – could provide the necessary counter-balance to the increasing buoyancy of the rock. It was little wonder that, despite any individual doubts or reservations, the crowd had reacted with such joyous enthusiasm to the departure of the knight academic on his stormchaser.

‘And Screedius is just the first,’ said Raffix darkly. They were opposite the School of Mist now, wading through the drifting snow as they approached the North Gate of the Knights Academy. ‘Every knight academic-in-waiting in the Thirteen Towers will get sent, you mark my words. Hophix, Dantius, Queritis … Hax will have them all off chasing after every single snow flurry and blizzard on the merest off-chance that it'll turn out to be a Great Storm. And the funny thing is …’ He paused.

‘The funny thing?’ whispered Quint.

They nodded to the burly gatekeeper as they slipped through the high entrance of the North Gate.

‘The funny thing is, they'll all go,’ said Raffix with a smile. ‘All the knights
and
all the squires promoted to replace them. Every last one of them.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Even me.’

‘But why?’ said Quint. ‘I mean, if you doubt Hax …’

‘Because, my dear chap, this is the Knights Academy,’ Raffix replied. ‘We were born to stormchase.’ They had reached the foot of the staircase which led to the Upper Halls. ‘And one of these days …’ he called back, as he set off up the stairs, ‘old Hax might just get it right.’

Outside in the driving snow, a hunched figure turned the corner of the School of Mist and hurried towards the Knights Academy. The woodtroll matron, her skirts flapping and bonnet held in place with a mittened hand, slipped and skidded over the icy cobblestones. Beneath her feet, the slush – created by the passing of so many boots over the settling snow – was freezing into sharp, jagged peaks that cracked and crunched, and threatened to turn her ankle with every step she took.

‘Am I too late?’ she wheezed to the burly guard, his white hooded cape bearing the red logworm insignia of the gatekeepers. ‘Have I missed the young squires?’

‘’Fraid so, mother,’ laughed the gatekeeper, his deep voice muffled by the long scarf wound round his face. ‘Far too chilly for the little darlings to stay out long. Might catch their death of a cold. We gatekeepers, on the other hand, we can freeze out here for all they care …’

He stamped his heavy boots on the frozen ground and shivered theatrically.

‘I don't suppose …’ began the woodtroll, peeling off her mittens and rummaging in a tilderleather purse, ‘that you could see to it that squire Quintinius Verginix of the Lower Halls gets this?’

She held out a rolled barkscroll in a shaking hand.

‘Did you say Quintinius Verginix?’ came a thin ingratiating voice, and the woodtroll matron turned to see a wiry youth peering down at her.

‘It seems I was mistaken, mother,’ the gatekeeper said. ‘This will be the last of the little darlings - young Vilnix here is always the last one in. Browsing in the viaduct schools again, were we?’

‘Mind your own business!’ snapped the youth. ‘And it's Squire Pompolnius, to you, gatekeeper, and don't you forget it!’

The gatekeeper guffawed behind his scarf and gave a sarcastic bow. Ignoring him, Vilnix reached out and snatched the barkscroll from the woodtroll matron's hand.

‘I'll see that he gets it!’ he said, with a quick, wolfish flash of his teeth, before darting away through the gates.

‘Tell him, Welma and Tweezel send their best wishes …’ the woodtroll called after him uncertainly.

There was something about the youth's thin, pinched face and shifty eyes that disturbed her – yet he wore the robes of a squire of the Knights Academy, and seemed to know Quint. Besides, since she couldn't hand the letter to the young master in person, she had no choice
but
to trust him. In front of her, the gatekeeper swung the heavy gates shut again and folded his arms.

‘I'd hurry along, mother, if you intend to get back to Undertown this afternoon,’ he said. ‘What with all this heavy snow, they're talking of closing the hanging-baskets.’

Welma gasped. ‘Ooh, I can't afford to get stuck up here,’ she said and, bidding the gatekeeper a hasty ‘good-day’, she hurried away in the direction of the East Landing.

As Vilnix strode along the central corridor, lightly patting the little bulge in his inside pocket as he went, he permitted himself a rasping chuckle. How it amused him that the ridiculous old woodtroll had entrusted the barkscroll to his care. Up until that point, it had been a cold, miserable, unsatisfying afternoon, his studies interrupted by the preposterous ritual of sending off old ‘brass-breeches’ in that swanky sky ship of his.

Oh, and how the other squires had cheered and hollered, and waved their arms in the air like demented fromps. Fools, the lot of them!

Vilnix smiled to himself.

Stormchasing! It was all they ever talked about, those pampered Sanctaphrax-born and bred squires. But he, Vilnix Pompolnius, would show them! Reaching the end of the corridor, he turned right, surreptitiously patting the scroll once more as he did so.

Ahead of him, several squires exchanged looks and stepped aside to let him pass. They all hated him, he knew that – but one day Vilnix would make them fear him as well. One day, he would look down on all of them, because he – plain old Vil Spatweed, knife-grinder from Undertown – would be Vilnix Pompolnius, Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax.

He thrust out his jaw and his face took on a look of twisted pride.

He would become Most High Academe because he had what it took to make it to the very top – cunning, malice, treachery and deceit. And he knew this for a fact, because these were just the things it had taken to survive in the fetid sewers of Undertown.

The drunken grey waif who'd found him as a baby and raised him in a sewer tunnel in the boom-docks had taught him to pick locks and pockets almost as soon as he could walk. He'd shown real talent, and before long he'd left the pathetic old creature snoring in its hammock and set up on his own as a knife-grinder.

He was the best – everybody knew it. Every goblin with a grudge, every clod-dertrog on the warpath, every waif assassin, knew to come to him to have their sickles sharpened, their axes honed or their daggers given a razorlike edge.

But even back then, Vilnix had known it wasn't enough. He had wanted more, much more. He was fed up with others telling him what to do – he wanted to be the one in control, in charge. In short, he wanted power. Then the Professor of Darkness had dropped that telescope of his and the rest, as they say, was history.

It was his mentor, the professor, who had given him his name.

‘Vil Spatweed,’ he'd mused, as the pair of them had sat opposite one another in the professor's study. ‘An excellent name for a knife-grinder, but not, I'm afraid to say, quite right for a future knight academic.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Vil,’ he said at last. ‘The shortened form of Villox, Vilfius and Vilnix …’ He frowned. ‘Now, there's a name to conjure with … Vilnix …’

‘Pompolnius,’ the youth had said.

It was the name of one of the leaguesmen in the Western Quays who had met an unfortunate end at the point of a dagger, sharpened to perfection just the week before by the best knife-grinder in Undertown.

‘Vilnix Pompolnius it is,’ the Professor of Darkness had said, nodding in agreement. ‘A scholar could go a long way with such a name.’

To the top, Vilnix had thought as he smiled back respectfully. To the very top.

Being sponsored through the Knights Academy was the first step on that ladder. The moment he met the other squires, he was immediately confident that he could outdo the lot of them – all, that is, except Quintinius Verginix. He frowned. What
was
it about that particular squire that got so under his skin?

Was it because he was sponsored by the Professor of Light? Or that he, too, had been born in Undertown?

Vilnix's lip curled with contempt. Those weren't the reasons at all. He was the pampered son of a famous sky pirate – and as for his mentor, in Vilnix's mind, the Professor of Light was no match for his own Professor of Darkness.

No, there was something else about Quint that enraged Vilnix – something he couldn't quite put his finger on …

He had reached the Central Staircase by now and, roughly brushing aside several squires coming down, he strode purposefully up the circular stairs.

True, Quint had scuppered his chances to shine throughout the Lower Halls. In the Hall of Storm Cloud, he'd ruined his model sky ship. And then, how he had sucked up to Philius Embertine in the Hall of White Cloud,
and
made such a fuss over that forge-hand, Stope. And worst of all, the way he'd pretended to be his friend in the Hall of Grey Cloud, only to betray him to Fenviel Vendix.

Vilnix rubbed his fingers lightly over the raised scar that ran the length of his left cheek, and permitted himself a wry smile.