The Winter Knights (24 page)

Two days earlier, it had all seemed so exciting when the cry went up that the graduation scroll had been posted. Immediately, all the squires had clustered round the newel post at the foot of the Central Staircase, good-naturedly jostling and shoving one another in their attempts to scrutinize the list.

‘Look! Look!’ Tonsor had shouted excitedly.

‘I would do, if you'd just move your fat head for a moment,’ Quiltis had laughed, pushing his friend out of the way to get a better look.

‘The swivel catapults! Both of us! We've been assigned to the swivel catapults!’ Tonsor had hugged his friend delightedly.

Phin had been peering to see over their heads. ‘Yes!’ he'd cried, when he saw his name. ‘Belphinius Mendellix: Apprentice Swordmaster! And look, there's you, Quint,’ he'd said, excitedly pulling Quint by the arm to the front of the jostling crowd of squires.

Quint's gaze had fallen on his own name, the words
Upper Halls – Knight's Squire
written beside it in neat, italic letters, and had felt his stomach lurch.

‘What's wrong?’ Phin had asked, when he saw his face. ‘Isn't this what you always wanted?’

‘It's not that,’ Quint had replied quietly. ‘It's just … Well, you'll be an academic-at-arms, and I'll be an Upper Hall squire …’

‘We'll still see each other,’ Phin had laughed, ‘in the Eightways.’ He slapped Quint on the shoulder. ‘After all, even high-and-mighty Upper Hall squires have to eat!’

‘Yes, but look …’ Quint had pointed to the graduation scroll. Phin had narrowed his eyes and peered at the list.

‘I don't believe it!’ he'd gasped. ‘Vilnix Pomp-olnius …’

‘Upper Halls – Apprentice High Professor,’ came a thin, sneering voice.

They had turned to see Vilnix standing behind them, with an unpleasant smirk on his face.

‘Actually, Vilnix …’ Quint had begun, pointing to the scroll, but a bony hand had shot out and seized him by the sleeve and he'd found himself being led away by the thin squire.

‘We Upper Hall squires really ought to stick together, don't you think, Quint?’ Vilnix had said in a wheedling voice, ignoring Phin completely. ‘Now, I hear you have still to pick up your sword miniature from the School of Colour and Light Studies. Tut! Tut!’ He'd shaken his head. ‘Lucky for you, Quint, that you've got me looking out for you. After all, that's what friends are for.’

Vilnix, his friend! Who would have thought it? Quint snapped out of his daydream with a jolt. They were halfway up the staircase and the shadows were deepening. He cast a sideways look at the squire climbing the blackwood staircase beside him. Yet that was exactly what Vilnix seemed to think he was.

Quint didn't like to admit it, but there was something about Vilnix's sneering smile and wolfish grin that made his flesh crawl. That, and Vilnix's habit of sucking up to Hax Vostillix at every opportunity … After all, how else had he managed to be elevated to the Upper Halls? Vilnix was grinning now, Quint saw with a shudder, his face resembling that of the carved woodwolf they'd just passed on the stairs.

Strange, Quint thought as his mind began to wander again, that ever since that afternoon when Screedius Tollinix had set sail on the
Windcutter
, Vilnix's attitude to him had seemed to change. From that day on, the sour-faced squire always seemed to be hanging around, greeting him, chatting to him, offering to do him small favours.

At first, Quint had been suspicious, half-expecting Vilnix to trick him or get him into trouble with Hax. But as the months had gone by Quint had to admit that, despite his creepy ways and hostility towards the other squires, Vilnix actually did seem to want to be his friend – whether he liked it or not.

Take that incident just the other day with his sword miniature, for instance. Vilnix had absolutely insisted on picking it up for him, even though it had been blowing a blizzard outside. Quint shook his head. It wasn't as though there was any need; there had been plenty of time for him to pick it up himself before the Elevation Ceremony. But Vilnix simply wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer, pestering Quint to write an explanatory note to the painter and then cooing delightedly over his beautiful handwriting when he'd done so.

Oh, yes, that Vilnix Pompolnius was a strange one, all right …

But what was that?

Quint snapped out of his reverie. Below them, there came the sound of raised voices from the Central Landing. Quint recognized the loudest voice – deep, guttural, with a slight lisp …

It belonged to the leader-elect of the academics-at-arms, Dengreeve Yellowtusk. He was a tall, rangy tufted goblin; a swordmaster with a tunic covered in the red ‘duelling patches’ that showed his prowess with the sword. Dengreeve was a hero-figure to Phin, and Quint had seen him many times in the Eightways.

‘Has it come to this!’ The swordmaster's voice sailed up to Quint and Vilnix as they continued up the staircase. ‘Are the forges of the academy serving gatekeepers ahead of academics-at-arms now?’

‘My gatekeepers need more weapons!’ Daxiel Xaxis's voice rang out defiantly. ‘To defend the academy!’

‘Insolent fromp!’ Dengreeve barked. ‘The academics-at-arms defend
all
of Sanctaphrax, and what weapons the forges produce are ours, as of right!’

‘As the only remaining hall master,
I
am the authority here!’ Hax Vostillix's voice joined the argument.

Quint could see Vilnix's white-fanged smile out of the corner of his eye as they climbed on, but he kept his head up and his gaze forward.

‘The Elevation Ceremony is no place for such arguments!’ the hall master hissed. ‘But the gatekeepers must have what they require …’

‘This is outrageous!’ Dengreeve bellowed – but Hax must have raised his staff to dismiss the swordmaster, because the next thing Quint heard was the sound of angry footsteps clattering down the staircase to the Lower Halls.

He and Vilnix were now approaching the top of the staircase, and in the deep shadows ahead of him Quint looked up to see a magnificent blackwood arch. It was formed from two mighty carved banderbears who were positioned on either side of the staircase, their great arms raised above their heads and joined at the top. Every tusk, every claw, every tooth, every hair on their bodies, had been carved with such exquisite detail and accuracy that Quint had to look twice to convince himself that the great beasts weren't real.

This was it. With his heart in his mouth, Quint stepped through the archway and into the vast, echoey Common Hall of the Upper Halls.

The walls were lined with ornately patterned panels, from the wooden-tiled floor right up to the great vaulted beams that spanned the ceiling. The afternoon sun pierced the high shuttered windows, sending shafts of glittering light diagonally through the air. Ahead of them, sprouting from the floor like mighty lullabee trees in a Deepwoods grove were the Common Hall pulpits.

Raffix had told Quint about them, but nothing he'd said had quite prepared Quint for the sight before him. Each pulpit had been carved with unique patterns; a cornucopia of circles and spirals, whorls, wheels, flutes and volutes. Thirty strides tall, they stood, with dais-like platforms at the top, accessible only by flimsy ladders, where forty or so squires and professors could gather at a time.

It was here that the great theories of sky-flight had been hammered out, breakthroughs in stormchasing discussed, and fantastic notions dreamt up and put to the test. The hairs on the back of Quint's neck stood on end. This was the heart of the Knights Academy and it was every bit as magnificent as he had hoped it would be.

Just then, he felt a sharp dig in the ribs. It was Vilnix. He nodded towards the huge pulpit in front of them, which was illuminated by a glittering shaft of light. The pulpits on either side of it were crowded with squires all peering down at them, while the one in front held the thirteen knights academic-in-waiting and the thirteen high professors.

Quint recognized several of the high professors from their visits to lecture in the Lower Halls. There was grim-faced Graydle Flax and the smiling Fluvius Hume. Others, he knew only by reputation. Fabius Dydex, for example, was unmistakable.

The most brilliant scholar of his generation, Fabius would have been a great knight academic, but for a leg crippled in a riding accident. He used a silverwood cane, rumoured to contain a sword and – unusually for a high professor – wore upper body armour and had several duelling patches on his robes.

Everywhere he went, Fabius Dydex was accompanied by his two tame quarms, Squeak and Howler, who, even as Quint looked on, chattered from the high professor's shoulders. Many believed that Fabius was a new ‘Linius Pallitax’ and would one day become Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax. Quint, although a little nervous, couldn't wait to meet him.

The knights academic, on the other hand, were unfamiliar. All the old faces had long gone, to be replaced by nervous-looking senior squires, hastily knighted. They looked uncomfortable in their newly-minted armour which, despite the forge masters’ best endeavours, seemed too large for their bony frames. Their faces, too, Quint thought, looked pale and drawn from the strain of awaiting their ever more desperate stormchasing voyages.

From the pulpit, Graydle Flax motioned for Quint and Vilnix to approach.

‘Welcome, squires, to the Upper Halls, where all are equal in their service to Sanctaphrax,’ intoned the high professor in a soft yet sonorous voice as Quint and Vilnix reached the top of the ladder and stepped into the pulpit. ‘Please present your miniatures.’

Their hands shaking with nerves and excitement, the two squires reached for the tilderleather pouches at their belts, and removed their tiny lufwood portraits. They held them out to the high professors and knights academic, who gathered round.

In the palm of his hand, Quint's portrait seemed almost to glow as he looked down at it. How young he looked, despite the shiny armour; how optimistic and carefree, despite the dark intensity in his indigo eyes. Behind his head, the Loftus Observatory glinted against the snowy background.

Quint smiled. He had made it to the Upper Halls! And who knows, he thought, one day maybe he too could become a knight academic.

Next to him, Vilnix looked down at the portrait in his hand. The artist had captured the thin determined mouth with its hint of an upward curl. The eyes were dark and narrowed, as if against the light, and the lower jaw was thrust defiantly forward.

As he waited for the high professor to continue, Vilnix smirked. Now at last, he could really begin to show these haughty knights academic and high professors a thing or two. First as an apprentice high professor, then a high professor, and then …

‘Now present your swords,’ Graydle said in his calm, hushed voice.

Quint drew out the heavy, curved sky pirate sword that his father, Wind Jackal, had given him, and a wave of pride mixed with sadness washed over him. If only his father could be here to witness this, he thought.

Vilnix drew the thin rapier from the scabbard at his belt, the razor-sharp blade making hardly a sound as it slid out. An intense feeling of expectation mingled with delicious malice lit up his eyes.

He was hungry for power, and these fools were giving him the keys to the larder!

Two knights academic stepped forward carrying small glowing braziers suspended by silver chains in their gauntleted hands. Each contained a thimble of glowing ironwood sap, bubbling in the flames. Graydle took the lufwood miniatures and applied the ironwood sap to their un-painted sides, filling Quint's nostrils with the smell of toasting pine cones as he did so. Then, taking care to align them, the high professor pressed the portraits gently into place on the pommel of each sword.