The Winter Knights (25 page)

‘Welcome, Quintinius Verginix, knight's squire,’ he smiled.

‘Welcome,’ the knights and high professors echoed his words.

‘Welcome, Vilnix Pomp-olnius, knight's squire.’ Graydle fixed the squire with a level, unblinking gaze.

Vilnix's smirk froze on his face.

Had he misheard? A knight's squire? But he was supposed to be an apprentice high professor …

‘Welcome,’ the knights and high professors’ voices sounded as one.

‘Y … you're mistaken … surely …’ stuttered Vilnix, his face turning ashen grey. ‘The Hall Master of High Cloud promised me a high professor apprenticeship …’

‘There will be no high professor apprenticeships until further notice,’ said Graydle Flax gravely. ‘Sanctaphrax is sorely in need of knights academic and their squires.’

Around him, the pale faces of the knights academic-in-waiting nodded solemnly.

‘But Hax, he told me …’

‘The orders come from Hax Vostillix himself,’ said Graydle, turning to leave. ‘Here, we are all equal in our service to Sanctaphrax.’

A stunned Vilnix looked on as the knights and high professors left the pulpit one by one. His stomach knotted and a cold fury gripped him. What good was it becoming a knight's squire? That path led to a knighthood, stormchasing – and certain death. You just had to look at the faces of those stupid fools in their ill-fitting armour to see that.

Hax Vostillix had promised him a high professor apprenticeship for all the favours, all the information, all the little services he'd performed for him … Why, Vilnix hadn't even bothered to read his name on the graduation list because it was a foregone conclusion …

What a fool he'd been! He could see that now.

Next to him, that idiot Quint was grinning from ear to ear, actually pleased that they'd both received what amounted to a death sentence.

Well, if anyone was going to die, Vilnix thought, turning away from Quint, who was following the last of the knights down the pulpit ladder clutching that stupid ungainly sky pirate sword of his, it wasn't going to be Vilnix Pompolnius.

He narrowed his eyes as he stepped into the shaft of light that lit up the centre of the pulpit. A thin, wolfish smile spread across his face as a plan began to take shape in his mind … A brilliant plan. A plan worthy of that devious, lying old fraud Hax Vostillix himself!

•CHAPTER SIXTEEN•
THE CLOUDSLAYER

i
The Gantry Tower

W
humf! Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!

Quint looked up. High above him, the old sky ship strained at its tether as it circled the Gantry Tower. With each rotation, it bucked and lurched as the gusts of icy wind buffeted its ancient timbers.

Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!

The armoured figure of a knight academic-in-waiting stood on the bridge battling with the flight-levers as he struggled to control the vessel. As Quint watched, it suddenly listed to one side, and he could make out the chipped gold lettering on the old sky ship's prow: the
Cloudslayer
.

One day, thought Quint, that would be him up there training for a voyage. And, judging by the rate at which the academy was losing its knights, perhaps sooner than he imagined. Only yesterday, young Hemphix Root had been chosen as the next knight to depart, and was now waiting anxiously in his tower for Hax to confirm the arrival of the Great Storm by ringing the Great Hall bell.

Quint wondered which of the Upper Hall squires would take his place. It wouldn't be him, that much was certain, not if he couldn't even master a solo descent.

‘Move, Sky curse you,’ Quint grunted as he struggled with the frozen winch-lever. ‘
Move!
’

Beneath him, his prowlgrin – suspended in its harness from ropes which hung down from the gantry pole above – squirmed and kicked out. Tash was a fully-grown yearling now, set apart from the other Knights Academic mounts by its lustrous orange coat and magnificent chin-mane. When the gatekeepers had taken over the Hall of Grey Cloud, the Knights Academic had withdrawn their precious prowlgrins to the safety of temporary roosts in the wood stores beneath the Upper Halls. That oaf, Daxiel Xaxis, had protested but the knights and high professors had forced him to back down. Now Tash and his fellow prowlgrins were spared the punishing work on the great treadmills.

‘Easy, boy,’ Quint said, patting the creature reassuringly with his left hand as he continued to battle the stubborn lever with his right.

This wasn't the way it was meant to be, he thought bitterly. He'd listened intently to Fabius Dydex's lecture in the pulpit the evening before, not allowing himself to be distracted by the tame quarms that skittered and squeaked from the high professor's shoulders as he spoke.

A knight academic must harness and lower his prowlgrin and himself into the Twilight Woods, a skill mastered by long hours of practice in the Gantry Tower …

And so, bright and early the following morning, Quint had left his spacious study in the Upper Halls, collected Tash, and made his way to the top of the tall, wooden Gantry Tower, to do just that. He'd run through Dydex's instructions in his head, and then begun.

It had all gone well – at first.

To start with, while still on the gantry, he was to buckle his prowlgrin into the hanging-harness and attach it to a gantry pole – which he'd done. Next, he was to climb up into the saddle – which he'd done. Then, he was to spur his prowlgrin on, so that it leaped into the air from the gantry – which he'd also done. And now, hanging in the air from the projecting gantry pole, like an oozefish on the end of a fishing line, he was supposed to release the winch-lever and lower himself slowly and gracefully down the tower. But that he simply could not do.

Not that he had any intention of giving up … Quint twisted round and seized the lever.

‘One, two, three,’ he muttered grimly. ‘Pull!’

He tugged at it with every ounce of strength. There was a grinding noise and a loud
crack
as the lever shot across, followed by a sudden jolt, and the rope began to feed out at last. Slowly – though since Tash was still kicking out, not very gracefully – prowlgrin and rider descended through the air.

‘Easy, Tash. It's all right,’ said Quint, leaning down to stroke the snorting, bucking creature round its sensitive nostrils as he continued to let the rope slip round the pulley-wheels. ‘Easy there, boy.’

All at once, as the pair of them reached the halfway mark of the tall tower, the prowlgrin suddenly stopped struggling. Quint patted him warmly, realizing that his mount had been reacting neither to the dizzy height, nor to being suspended so precariously, but rather to his own agitation. Now that the winch was working and he had calmed down, Tash, too, was fine. And as he lowered himself still further, Quint could imagine the pair of them descending from his stormchasing sky ship, down into the Twilight Woods below …

Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!

Above him, the
Cloudslayer
juddered as it circled the Gantry Tower. Once it had been a proud sky pirate ship, soaring through the skies. But its days of plying a lucrative trade – anything from buoyant timber to illicit mire-pearls – between the Deepwoods and Undertown were long behind it. Now it was fit only to be a training vessel for young knights to perfect their skills while they awaited the delivery of their sleek new ‘stormchasers’ from the cradles of Undertown.

Below Quint, as the icy wind whistled through the ropes, the landing-platform at the bottom of the Gantry Tower came closer.

Now for the tricky part, thought Quint, going over the high professor's words in his head.
Harness release must be smooth but quick, freeing the prowlgrin to land cleanly.
Quint tugged on the harness release, once, twice …
The worst fate that can befall a knight is to be caught in his harness, suspended above the forest floor.
Dydex had paused for a moment before continuing.
Suspended for all eternity!

Quint shuddered and pulled desperately at the catch. It clicked open and the harness fell away, just as the rope snapped taut. With a whinny, Tash dropped to the platform on powerful legs.

‘Good lad!’ Quint exclaimed, quickly dismounting. ‘Well done!’

He tickled the creature through its long, luxuriant mane. Tash gave a long, growling purr and rolled its eyes with pleasure.

‘Why, you're just a big, soppy pup, aren't you, boy?’ Quint laughed, and was about to lead the prowlgrin off the landing-platform when a high, metallic screech from above made him look up.

The
Cloudslayer
had flipped completely over and shot up directly above the Gantry Tower. The screech was coming from the chain which, now stretched almost to breaking-point, was only just managing to prevent it from disappearing into Open Sky.

As Quint anxiously watched, the knight academic tumbled down from the upturned helm, the black parawings strapped to his back billowing out like the wings of a giant ratbird. With his heavy armour accelerating the descent, it was all the knight could do to twist round and brace himself before he crashed into the landing-platform in a flurry of snow and splintered wood.

Quint raced over to the stricken figure. He crouched down, clicked back the collar fastenings and pulled the heavy helmet from the knight's head. A familiar face smiled up at him.

‘Raff?’ Quint said.

The young knight sat up. ‘Quint, old chap!’ he exclaimed. ‘Didn't see you there.’ He nodded across at the prowlgrin. ‘Getting in a bit of harness-practice, eh? Good show.’

‘Yes, I was,’ said Quint. ‘But … but
you
, Raff. You're in full armour …’

Raffix grinned lop-sidedly and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘You noticed,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It's what all the best knights academic-in-waiting are wearing, I hear.’

‘You? A knight?’ Quint was taken by surprise.

‘That's right, old chap,’ said Raffix. ‘Well, almost, that is …’ He struggled to his feet and brushed the snow from his armour. ‘When old Hemphix sets off, they've chosen yours truly to take his place as a knight academic-in-waiting.’

‘But Raff—’ Quint began. His friend held up a gauntleted hand to silence him.

‘I know, I know,’ he said, looking up at the Gantry Tower, where a group of hall servants had emerged from the upper gantry and were busy winching the upturned
Cloudslayer
back down. ‘The prospects for stormchasing don't look too good, I'll concede …’

‘Don't look too good?’ Quint echoed him incredulously. ‘It's madness trying to fly in this weather. You know it and I know it.’ He snorted. ‘The only person who doesn't seem to know it is Hax Vostillix!’

‘Now, that's just where you're wrong,’ said Raffix, a broad grin spreading over his face. He wiped some snow from his glasses. ‘There is one other person who reckons that it's possible to control a flight-rock in this weather.’

‘Who?’ asked Quint.

Raffix chuckled. ‘A very good friend of ours …’

*

ii
The Academy Barracks

The Academy Barracks were bustling. Beneath the lofty vaulted ceiling, with its clusters of hanging cop-perwood lamps, groups of academics-at-arms lounged in high-back armchairs of tilderleather, small buoyant tables tethered at their sides.