The Winter Knights (8 page)

Quint stroked the blood -oak hull and traced a finger lovingly over the gossamer-thin spider-silk sails. You had to hand it to the irritable old tree goblin, he thought. Under his tutelage, every single squire had learned all about how a sky-craft worked and fitted together. Today, at last, they were going to find out whether that knowledge had been put to good use.

‘Not bad,’ came a sneering voice to Quint's left. ‘If you want a skycraft for hauling ironwood to Undertown, that is. Still, what can you expect from the son of a sky pirate?’

Vilnix stood at his own workbench, smiling maliciously at Quint. Perhaps because he felt inferior to the Sanctaphrax-born and bred squires and wanted to deflect attention away from himself, Vilnix never missed an opportunity to needle Quint as another outsider. What was more, he had heard Vilnix boasting to Quiltis Wistelweb that his father was a powerful leaguesman who lived in a sumptuous palace in the Western Quays. Quint had said nothing because he actually felt sorry for Vilnix who, despite his boasting and attempts to suck up to his fellow squires, was liked by nobody.

‘This, on the other hand,’ said Vilnix pompously, tightening a hull-weight on his own model, ‘is a
real
stormchaser.’

Quint looked across at Vilnix's bench. He had to admit that when it came to model-making, Vilnix was far better than anyone else in the class. The ship he had designed and fashioned had subtle innovations, like a retractable nether-mast and double hull-weights which not only added to its capabilities, but also enhanced its beauty. Even Arboretum Sicklebough had seemed impressed.

‘Not bad, Pompolnius. Not bad,’ he had snapped. ‘But let's see how she sails before congratulating ourselves, shall we?’

And now at last that time had come.

‘Good morning, squires!’ A thin, peevish voice cut through the theatre. The frail-looking tree goblin made his way to the centre of the hall, his gnarled walking stick
tap-tap-tapping
as he went. He looked round at the squires, his dark, hooded eyes betraying nothing of what he was thinking – although if the latest gossip was to be believed, the number of gold pieces he'd lost on a fromp fight the previous night must have been high on his list of concerns.

‘Take your models and follow me to the Storm Chamber!’ he barked.

The squires did as they were told, chattering excitedly to one another while they removed their sky ships from the vices and carried them carefully across to the neighbouring theatre. As they approached the great pump-bellows – huge concertina-shaped leather sacks with tapered pipes emerging from them – the roar of the wind they were making grew louder, and the air filled with the smell of pinewood smoke.

‘That's it, that's it,’ said Arboretum Sicklebough, taking up his position on a podium above the pumping bellows where he could watch everything that was happening. ‘First of all, observe the movement of the air,’ he told them, and pulled on a lever to his side. ‘And mark it closely.’

Immediately, a streak of grey-white smoke was released into the airstream which, as the bellows pumped, showed the swirls and eddies of the shifting air. Quint noticed how it dipped in the middle, then spiralled off to the left before whirling round and round in the centre, like water pouring down a plughole.

Sicklebough closed off the lever. The smoke stopped. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let the storm test commence!’

The squires assembled in a large circle round the edge of the chamber, holding their precious models by the fingertips of their outstretched left hands. With their right hands, they carefully adjusted the hull-weights and sail settings.

Quint looked across the Storm Chamber to where Phin was battling with a stubborn studsail, his brow creased with concentration. Looking up, he caught Quint's eye and smiled weakly. Quint set his hull-weights high, to compensate for the down-draught at the edge of the miniature storm, but gave his mast extra topsail for the eddying winds closer to the centre.

He touched the talisman around his neck for good luck, and hoped that he hadn't made a mistake in his calculations – a mistake that would lead to his mast being snapped off at the last moment. Just then, a sly elbow dug into his ribs, knocking him off balance.

‘Sorry, didn't see you there,’ said Vilnix, smiling unpleasantly.

He was standing next to Quint, attaching an extra staysail to his retractable nether-mast and adding neben-hull-weights below as a counterbalance. Quint bit his tongue.

‘Make your final adjustments and prepare to launch!’ Sicklebough's voice rang out above them.

Quint looked at the model in Vilnix's hand. It was a beautiful craft, certainly, but Vilnix had completely misread the pinewood smoke. If he launched the sky ship with the sails set as they were, the extra neben-weights would cause it to turn turvey the moment it reached the centre of the Storm Chamber.

Quint wrestled with his conscience for a moment. Should he keep quiet? Let Vilnix humiliate himself after all his hard work? He didn't like Vilnix, but still …

‘Your neben-weights,’ Quint whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

‘What?’ said Vilnix, a startled look in his eyes.

‘Your neben-weights,’ Quint repeated. ‘You've mis-set them. They'll wreck your ship. If you just take them up three notches …’

‘I'm not falling for that,’ sneered Vilnix. ‘I know your sort, sky pirate's brat!’

Quint turned away.

‘Launch!’

Sicklebough's voice rang out. As one, the squires released their sky ships into the swirling air at the centre of the Storm Chamber, where they darted and dipped like stormhornets at dusk.

Above their heads, Arboretum Sicklebough craned his thin neck forward and narrowed his eyes as he assessed the performance of each of the twenty-two miniature sky ships. Several were torn to shreds within moments.

‘Faulty hull construction, Squire Wexis!’ barked the tree goblin.

A moment later, his irritated voice rose up above the sound of the storm winds a second time. ‘Split rudder, Mendellix. That'll teach you to skip lathe-practice!’ And Quint grimaced as his friend Phin's sky ship shattered in mid air.

The others hovered at odd angles, buffeted by the savage winds of the miniature storm, until Sicklebough signalled for their makers to haul them back in by tugging on their anchor ropes. After several minutes, only Quint and Vilnix's sky ships remained, sailing ever closer to the centre of the swirling storm.

Of the two, Vilnix's model was faring far better, its nether mast allowing it to ride the worst of the downdraught. But Quint's stormchaser was holding its own – despite its tiny mast bending alarmingly. He could hardly bear to look.

All round him, the squires clasped their own battered models and held their breath. Vilnix, at Quint's side, stared at his own beautiful model, a look of triumph on his face.

Suddenly, Vilnix's craft reached the centre of the storm. For an instant, it hung there in the air. The next, the neben-weights abruptly flew up in the air and dragged the tiny ship upside down, like a fighting fromp on the end of a chain. With a loud
crack
, the retractable mast snapped, and the ship hurtled downwards, smashing to smithereens on the ironwood floor below.

A gasp went round as Quint's ship reached the centre of the storm, where it hovered gracefully and effortlessly in classic, stormchasing style.

Sicklebough pulled hard on the lever by his side, and the bellows wheezed to a halt. Quint pulled his craft back towards him with shaking hands before glancing over at Vilnix.

‘I'm sorry, Vilnix,’ he said. ‘I did try to warn you …’

He stopped, shocked at the look of pure hatred on the squire's face.

‘You think you're so clever, Quintinius Verginix,’ Vilnix rasped, spitting the words out. ‘But I'll show you. Just you wait and see …’

•CHAPTER SIX•
THE HALL OF WHITE
CLOUD

S
igbord smiled as he turned the breast-plate over in his great paddle-like hands. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Beautiful workmanship. I haven't seen anything like it since the old days back in the Deepwoods.’

The forge throbbed with heat thrown out by the glowing furnaces and the pounding of the foundry hammers. Spedius Heepe looked at the Captain of the Treasury Guard, a greedy glint in his eyes.

‘You just can't get quality like this in Undertown,’ Sigbord continued, shaking his head. ‘Not for love nor money,’ he added, running his fingers over the stylized emblem of the bloodoak that had been picked out in burnished copper on the breast-plate's front.

’Yes, I thought you'd appreciate that, as an old Deepwoods goblin yourself,’ said Spedius, pushing his wire-framed spectacles up over the bridge of his nose. ‘Old hammerhead design, I believe. Isn't that right, Clud?’ He paused, and frowned. ‘I said, isn't that right, Clud?’

The huge mottled goblin turned from the convoluted tangle of pipes and gauges that spread across the walls and ceiling of the forge like metallic tarry-vine.

‘That's right, Spedius,’ Clud Mudskut growled, a lopsided, gap-filled grin crossing his lumpen face. ‘Though what would a weedy little Undertown scroll-scratcher like you know about old hammerhead designs, eh?’

Spedius gave a thin, high-pitched laugh and climbed to his feet. Short and slight, the bespectacled armourer barely came up to the mottled goblin's waist, but he reached up and slapped his colleague heartily on the back.

‘Only what you tell me, Clud, you old Deepwoods metal-basher. Only what you tell me.’

The two armourers laughed heartily, Spedius's shrill giggle mingling with Clud's rumbling guffaw. Sigbord waited for a moment, then cleared his throat noisily.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, placing the breast-plate carefully down on the scroll-strewn desk, ‘beautiful workmanship, as I say. But if I know you two I'm going to have to pay handsomely for it.’ His stroked his stubbled jaw. ‘Shall we say fifteen gold pieces?’

Spedius Heepe stopped laughing and his small, dark eyes narrowed behind the wire-framed spectacles. ‘Come come, Captain Sigbord,’ he said, ‘you can do better than that.’ His mouth set in a thin, hard line beneath his sharp, twitching nose. ‘Clud here has spent the best part of a week on this breast-plate, just so that you'd look your best for Treasury Day.’ He paused thoughtfully, and when he spoke again his voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Shall we say,
fifty
gold pieces?’