The Winter Knights (26 page)

Some consulted cloud charts or ballistics lists, or joined in lively discussions on tactics with their colleagues in neighbouring armchairs. Some polished swords, some cleaned ornate crossbow mechanisms; some helped themselves to the contents of laden trays brought to them by the army of barracks servants, whilst others allowed their heads to nod over empty tankards of woodale.

In various parts of the great barracks hall, groups of academics-at-arms were engaged in weapon practice of all kinds, from swordplay and pikestaff drill, to knife-throwing and crossbow practice. In the centre of the hall, bathed in the light streaming in from the great circular window set into the north wall, Dengreeve Yellowtusk – swordmaster and leader elect of the academics-at-arms – threw up his hands in mock horror.

‘No! No! No! Master Phin!’ he exclaimed in his deep voice, with just that hint of a lisp. ‘You're letting your guard down, opening yourself up to a parry from the left.’

He motioned for the young swordmaster apprentice to step aside and unsheathed his rapier. In front of him, a sumpwood dummy hovered in mid air. Dengreeve's blade swished this way and that in a blur of sudden movement, before the swordmaster stepped back and sheathed his sword.

Phin gasped. A spiral of sawdust hovered like a halo over the sumpwood dummy, which slowly listed over to one side.

‘Practise, Master Phin,’ laughed Dengreeve when he saw the look on the young academic's face, ‘if you want a tunic full of duelling patches!’

Just then, the heavy leadwood doors at the far end of the hall burst open, and a detachment of academics-at-arms strode in, stamping the snow from their boots and unbuckling their armour and heavy cloaks. They were instantly surrounded by barracks servants, who took their snow-drenched clothes and gave them fresh robes warmed by the fire. Most settled into armchairs and called for mulled sapwine, but one of the academics-at-arms approached the swordmaster.

‘It's about the catapults on the ramparts by the College of Rain,’ he began.

Dengreeve dismissed Phin with a smile, and turned to greet the academic. ‘I hadn't forgotten, Mardel, old friend,’ he said. ‘I raised the matter with the hall master just this morning.’

‘Well, if those furnace masters in the forge don't overhaul the mechanisms on those catapults, and soon, then I can't ask our academics to go on operating them.’ Mardel shook his head. ‘It seems they can't do enough for the gatekeepers, whilst we academics-at-arms are last in line.’

Dengreeve nodded. ‘Hax Vostillix can think only of these crazy stormchasing voyages,’ he growled.

‘Meanwhile, those gatekeepers do as they please,’ added Mardel grimly. ‘And talking of crazy stormchasing voyages …’ He motioned towards the great oval window. ‘There goes another one now.’

Dengreeve turned and looked up. Sure enough, rising up from the top of the viaduct, a stormchaser – the varnish on its timber still glistening wet from the ship cradles of Undertown – was setting sail.

Several academics-at-arms rose from their armchairs at the sight, but most carried on with what they were doing. Few in Sanctaphrax believed in stormchasing any longer, preferring instead to pray that the winter would end before it was too late.

From a vantage point halfway up the suspended staircase to the study rooms, Phin peered through the glass of the oval window. On the top of the viaduct, he could just make out the ragged figure of Hax Vostillix. The hall master's arms were raised, and his robes and beard flapped in the snowflecked wind as he urged the sky ship on.

As the wind spun and the snow thickened, the sky ship faltered and shook. For one incongruous moment, it seemed almost to grind to a complete halt. An instant later, the sails slumped and the vessel flipped over, so that the mast was pointing back down to the earth. Then, as Phin looked on, the helpless sky ship – its flight-rock chilled to super buoyancy – shot up into Open Sky.

Back at the viaduct, a gaunt Hax Vostillix abruptly doubled over and clutched his head in his hands. The stocky figure of Daxiel Xaxis, Captain of the Gatekeepers, appeared at his side. He turned towards Hax, wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulder and led the broken-looking hall master away.

Phin turned away from the window. Who had it been this time? He'd heard Tonsor mention the name – that's right, Hemphix Root. Phin had seen him slumped unhappily over his hammelhorn steak in the Eightways a couple of nights earlier. Now he was gone, just like that.

Who would be next? he wondered. One day, he realized miserably, it would be his friend Quint. It was only a matter of time …

Phin continued up the stairs and, turning into the corridor at the top, made his way towards his study alcove. Phin loved his alcove. Unlike the dormitory closets of the Lower Halls, where the squires slept in cupboards stacked from floor to ceiling, the academic-at-arms study alcoves were spacious and comfortable. Phin had his own floating lectern, a soft bed and more cupboard space than he knew what to do with. There was even a little lufwood stove in one corner to keep him nice and warm.

In fact, it was perfect in every respect but one. The study alcove was situated at the westward end of the Academy Barracks, where they adjoined the Hall of High Cloud – too close to Hax Vostillix for Phin's liking. But then you couldn't have everything, he told himself.

Reaching his study alcove, Phin was just about to draw back the heavy tilderwool curtain and enter, when he heard a thin, wailing cry.

‘Help! Help!’

It was coming from the passage that led into the Hall of High Cloud. Phin hesitated for a moment.

‘Help! Please help!’

There it was again – fragile-sounding and pathetic, but with an urgent note that Phin couldn't ignore. He turned from his alcove and headed down the unlit passage at the end of the corridor. He paused outside a small lufwood door that stood slightly ajar. The grander chambers of the High Cloud academics and that of Hax Vostillix himself were on the other side of the building, overlooking the Inner Courtyard. So far as Phin knew, the small rooms along this passage were mostly stockrooms or timber-stores …

‘Help!’

Phin pushed open the door, and entered. In front of him, in a cluttered but freezing room, sat none other than Philius Embertine, the disgraced Hall Master of White Cloud.

He was slumped in a buoyant sumpwood chair and, instead of the familiar knight academic armour he usually wore, the old hall master was swathed in scarves, mufflers, quilted vests and padded leggings. At the foot of the sumpwood chair was a bundle of barkscrolls and an upturned tallow candle. Phin took a sharp breath. Crackling and spitting, the flames were consuming the tinder-dry barkscrolls and threatening to ignite the sumpwood chair hovering above.

‘Help!’
cried Embertine, waving the barkscroll he clutched in a mittened hand in Phin's direction.

Without another thought, Phin dashed into the room, pushed Philius's; buoyant chair aside and began
t
stamping on the blazing scrolls, extinguishing the flames.

‘I was … reading … when … when .…’ gasped the old professor, looking up and blinking round the gloomy room as he struggled to make sense of what was going on.

‘It's all right,’ said Phin. ‘You must have dropped your candle … Lucky I was passing and heard you. It could have been far worse …’

‘Worse? Worse?’ Embertine said, his brow creasing with concern. ‘It'll get far, far worse soon enough!’

All at once, he leaned forwards and grabbed at the young apprentice's sleeve. He pulled him close, until Phin found himself staring deep into the old hall master's piercingly blue eyes.

‘You're an academic-at-arms, aren't you?’ he croaked. ‘Can I
trust
you, lad? Can I?’

Phin nodded.

‘You must take this scroll,’ he said, thrusting the barkscroll he was clutching into Phin's hands, ‘and go to my apartments in the Hall of Storm Cloud. In my bedchamber there is a panel in the wall beside the carved quarm … Have you got that, lad?’

Again, Phin nodded.

‘Slide the panel back,’ the old knight gasped weakly. ‘Behind it, you'll find a light-casket. Take it and the scroll to my good friend, Screedius Tollinix, knight academic-in-waiting. Tell him the time has come, “not to take from the sky, but to give back”.
He'll
know what must be done …’

Phin nodded, a lump forming in his throat. Poor old Philius Embertine was as confused as ever. He didn't have the heart to tell the old hall master that Screedius Tollinix was gone, probably lost for ever out in Open Sky, like all those other knights academic who had followed after him.

‘I … I'll see what I can do,’ said Phin softly.

‘Now go quickly,’ Philius told him, his eyes gazing at him imploringly. ‘Before they get back.’ His eyes narrowed and his grip on Phin's arm tightened. ‘They're in Hax's employ,’ he hissed, ‘and they're keeping me prisoner here.’

Phin rolled up the barkscroll and pushed it inside his robes. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ he asked, pity and compassion bringing tears to his eyes.

‘Just take the scroll and go to my apartments,’ Philius whispered urgently. ‘As quickly as you can. The future of Sanctaphrax depends on it!’

‘I shall,’ Phin replied as he pulled himself away and hurried from the room. Scrolls? he thought. Panels? The future of Sanctaphrax? The poor old knight academic had clearly lost his reason.

Phin had just made it to the end of the passage when he heard the sound of loud voices and heavy footsteps coming along the corridor behind him. Glancing round, he saw a couple of rough-looking gatekeepers turning into Philius's chamber.

‘What in Sky's name have you been up to now, you senile old woodgoat?’ one of them bellowed. ‘There's ashes everywhere.’

‘Can't leave you alone for a minute, can we?’ roared the other. ‘Do you want to be chained up?’ he demanded. ‘
Do
you?

Phin gulped. Maybe old Philius wasn't so confused after all, he mused.

*

iii
The Forge

The grey goblin forge-hand stared into the depths of the roaring furnace. He was wearing a heavy tilderleather apron, reinforced gloves and a tall conical forge hood, yet he could still feel the intense heat beginning to burn his skin.

‘Just a little longer,’ he whispered to himself, blinking away the sweat that was stinging his eyes.

In one hand he gripped a pair of long-handled tongs, in the other a thin metal taper. On the end of the taper, a ball of molten metal glowed in the furnace heat.

Taking great care, the forge-hand teased a glowing strand from the molten ball with the long-handled tongs and twisted it around and back on itself. Once, twice, three times, like a spinner teasing a strand of tilderwool into a ball, the forge-hand spun the strand of molten metal until it took on the form of an exquisite glowing cage.

This was where it usually went wrong. The intense furnace heat would become unbearable and force the forge-hand to retreat, only to see the molten cage collapse in on itself and fall to the floor to produce a useless puddle of liquid metal.

Not surprising really, if you thought about it, Stope realized. After all, the idea of spinning molten metal the way a woodspider spun a web was crazy, even
he
had to admit.

The idea had occurred to him when he'd been watching from the West Landing as the huge log burners warmed the Sanctaphrax rock. If only flight-rocks could be warmed in the same way, then perhaps those brave knights academic would stand a better chance of controlling their sky ships, Stope had thought.

He'd hurried back to the forge in the Hall of White Cloud to work on the problem. Instead of logs, which were far too cumbersome and fast burning, Stope had decided on sumpwood charcoal – light as a feather and with a slow, intense burn.

But how to encase it? That was the problem. He'd tried cage-like boxes, solid metal braziers and oval casings drilled with holes, but none of them worked properly. Either they stifled the heat or they allowed the charcoal embers to fall through the bars. The answer, Stope realized, after long hours at the forge – usually late at night when the furnace masters had retired to bed – was a spherical metal cage, so fine that the heat could pass freely through, while its intricate mesh would contain the glowing sumpwood securely.