The Winter Knights Read online

  ‘Snow on Treasury Day,’ the tusked goblin commented, as she shuffled forwards. ‘Beggars belief, dunnit?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said the mobgnome, resuming his snow-clearing. ‘I remember last year. Beautiful blue sky and hardly a breath of wind. And the year before that, a slight shower, but there's never been snow before – not on Treasury Day.’

  ‘And now look at it,’ grumbled a lumbering clod-dertrog to their left. ‘You'd think they'd cancel it, what with all this weather 'n’ all. Or at least postpone it …’

  ‘Ooh, can't do that,’ came a voice from behind them. The mobgnome, the tusked goblin and the cloddertrog turned to see a shabby woodwaif, a stiff broom in his spidery hands, shaking his head grimly. ‘First day of the second moon when it's in its third quarter. That's Treasury Day. Always has been and always will be. It's tradition, and you can't change tradition …’

  ‘Which is where we lot come in,’ the mobgnome muttered. ‘Shovelling and sweating …’ He looked up at the sky and brandished a fist. ‘Snow, snow and more snow, curse the sky!’

  ‘Curse the sky?’ muttered the cloddertrog. ‘That sounds like earth-scholar talk to me …’

  ‘So what if it is,’ said the mobgnome hotly. ‘Those earth-scholars knew a thing or two, if you ask me …’

  A gasp went round the small group, followed by an uneasy silence. Such talk was bad enough in the current atmosphere of Sanctaphrax, where earth-scholars were considered blasphemers and infidels, but on Treasury Day – the day set aside to commemorate their overthrow – it could result in the gravest of punishments.

  A flock of white ravens flapped overhead, camouflaged by the falling snow, but cawing so raucously that no-one could fail to notice them. The snow shovellers looked up.

  There, listen to that,’ said the mob gnome. The white ravens are as unhappy as we are.’

  ‘It's the cold,’ said the woodwaif.

  The cold?’ the cloddertrog laughed. ‘But they've got feathers to keep 'em warm, ain't they?’

  The woodwaif smiled indulgently. ‘I mean the effect the cold's having on the Stone Gardens,’ he said. ‘Normally, the rocks down there grow slowly. It takes years before they're buoyant enough to break away from their rock stacks. And those there white ravens, they can tell, just by sitting on 'em, when a rock is nice and ripe and ready to float.’

  The others nodded. Everyone knew how the great flock of snowy birds would rise up, squawking loudly in their Chorus of the Dead, to announce to the academics of Sanctaphrax that it was time to harvest the buoyant rocks.

  These days, though,' the woodwaif continued, ‘the poor creatures don't know whether they're coming or going. It's so cold that the rocks are ripening too quickly breaking away from the stacks and flying off, they are, when they're still small. If this weather keeps up, there'll be no rocks left to harvest, you mark my words.’ ‘And that's not all, I heard …’ Slurp! ‘The flight-rocks in the sky ships are …’ - Slurp! Slurp! - ‘going crazy,’ added a gabtroll, her long tongue wiping away the flakes of snow from the eyeballs that bounced around at the end of long stalks.

  ‘Ay,’ said the tusked goblin. ‘I've got a brother on a sky pirate ship holed up in the boom-docks. His stone pilot refuses to fly until the weather clears up.’

  ‘I don't blame him. After all, half a dozen league ships have gone missing this month already,’ added the mobgnome.

  ‘And if flight-rocks are going crazy, then …’ – Slurp! – ‘what in Earth and Sky's name is going to happen to the biggest buoyant rock of all?’ asked the gabtroll.

  For a second time, the group gasped as one. The next moment – as if in response – the great Sanctaphrax rock gave an almighty lurch, sending them all sprawling. The cloddertrog lost his footing and ended up headfirst in the heap of snow they were shovelling.

  ‘If the great rock gets much colder,’ said the woodwaif, his huge, diaphanous ears fluttering ominously, ‘the Treasury Chamber will need a fresh load of stormphrax to stop it snapping the Anchor Chain, and that means a stormchasing voyage sooner rather than later!’

  ‘Oi! You lot!’ bellowed the flat-head overseer. ‘You're being paid to shovel snow, not gossip like a gaggle of goblin matrons!’

  The cloddertrog climbed to his feet, joined the others and, without saying a word, the work-party resumed its monotonous task. They were outside the Mosaic Quadrangle by now and, at the flat-head's barked orders, they swept, scraped and shovelled on past the College of Rain, towards the edge of the rock.

  ‘Watch out below!’ bellowed the cloddertrog as they pushed the great heap of compacted snow off the floating rock. Not that his warning would have done much good if a hapless Undertowner had been walking along as the huge ball of snow crashed down. Luckily no-one was hurt – this time …

  Back in Sanctaphrax, the Mosaic Quadrangle was filling up with academics who, despite the weather, had turned out to witness the annual spectacle. They stood, shivering and stamping their feet: professors, apprentices, servants and squires, their usual robes now lined with fur or stuffed with rags, depending on their status, to keep out the penetrating cold.

  All round, academic hoods and headgear now sported ear-flaps and mufflers of extravagant size and design. A bunch of junior academics from the Institute of Ice and Snow sported huge turbans wound tightly round their heads, while the under-professors of the School of Sleet favoured shaggy hammelhornskin snow-caps, complete with tinted goggles and fromp-fur handwarmers. Most exotic of all were the ‘furnace bonnets’ – specially designed headpieces that comprised a miniature sumpwood burner and heated ear-muffs.

  The square had only recently been cleared, yet the snow was falling so quickly that it had already obscured most of the ornate mosaic pattern of concentric circles and zigzag lightning bolts once more. From the southern end there came the sound of tramping feet as a line of squires in smart, ankle-length cloaks and polished silver helmets – chaperoned by a phalanx of gatekeepers in their familiar logworm-emblazoned white tunics – marched in strict formation into the square.

  Word of their appearance went round the crowd in loud whispers, as the onlookers nudged one another and pointed.

  ‘It's the squires from the Knights Academy, look!’

  ‘Sky preserve 'em!’

  ‘Gonna need all the knights academic we can get for stormchasing if this cold weather persists.’

  From the middle of the front rank, Quint stared straight ahead and tried to concentrate on keeping in step. Behind him marched the squires from both the Lower and the Upper Halls, plus the hall servants, and behind them, the knights academic-in-waiting, marching stiffly in their gleaming armour and attracting looks and whispers from the crowd.

  Phin was beside him, head high and back straight, with Tonsor, Quiltis and Vilnix completing the rank. Out of the corner of his eye, Quint could see Vilnix's dark, mistrustful eyes scanning the crowds, a curious expression – a mixture of contempt and malice – distorting his sullen features.

  Quint tried to ignore him. It felt good to be out of the academy after so many weeks penned up inside, and although the burnished silver helmet was heavy and uncomfortable and the long cloak threatened to trip him up at any moment, Quint felt his heart swell with pride as they marched towards the corner of the quadrangle. It was all so very different from the first time he'd witnessed the ceremony a year earlier.

  On that occasion, he'd watched it from the sidelines with Maris. The two of them – pupils of the Fountain House school – had mingled with the other onlookers, and no-one had given them so much as a second glance. Now, however, as a squire from the Knights Academy, Quint was to stand to attention beside the pyramid-shaped entrance to the treasury tunnel, with all eyes on him.

  He felt a sudden twinge of guilt when he thought of Maris down below in Undertown, missing all this. Next to him, unaware of his friend's thoughts, Phin was smiling now with a mixture of delight and pride, a lock of unruly hair tumbling from beneath his helmet to cover one eye.
/>
  ‘Academy, halt!’ came Hax Vostillix's deep voice from the back. ‘Form ranks!’

  The squires turned about and lined up beside the treasury tunnel entrance, hall by hall, and to Quint's dismay he realized that now, instead of being in the front rank, he was at the back and having to peer over the shoulders of the squires from the Upper Halls to get a view.

  Behind him, the crowd jostled and pushed at the squires’ backs as they, too, craned their necks to see. Just then, Quint felt a tug on his cloak, which he brushed away – and then another, more insistent this time.

  ‘Master Quint,’ came a voice. ‘It is you, isn't it? Master Quint!’

  Looking round, Quint found himself staring at a familiar figure. Short and roly-poly with a small rubbery nose and chapped lips, she was dressed in a heavy fur-lined coat and a familiar frilly mob-cap. But if Quint hadn't looked into that smiling face with its twinkling eyes, then the small lemkin crouched on her shoulder, its striped tail twitching, would have been enough for him to recognize her instantly.

  ‘Welma!’ he cried, and fell into the motherly woodtroll's warm embrace. The lemkin screeched loudly and began jumping up and down, tugging at its leash. Quint grinned. ‘And Digit,’ he said, and tickled the small creature behind its ears. ‘How are you both?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you, Master Quint,’ said Welma, speaking over the kha-kha-kha-kha sounds of the chattering lemkin. ‘Oh, but it's all been a bit of an upheaval,’ she went on quickly, as Phin and Tonsor looked round to see what was going on. ‘Tweezel and I have taken rooms at the top of an ironmonger's run by a nice pink-eyed goblin family. Tweezel's been selling tinctures and potions up at the Viaduct Steps, and I … oh, a bit of cleaning here and there, taking in washing. Nothing too taxing. Just enough to make ends meet …’

  ‘And Maris?’ said Quint, aware that the squires of the Upper Halls in front were now looking back over their shoulders.

  ‘That's why I'm here,’ said Welma, urgently. ‘That hard-faced cousin of hers, Dacia, never lets her out of her sight …’ Her face creased up with distaste as she uttered the name. ‘But I managed to have a few words with her when they visited the market-place last week,’ she said, reaching inside the folds of her coat. ‘She told me not to worry, and to give you this.’

  She pulled out a scrolled letter, and Quint saw his own name written on the front in Maris's familiar angular writing.

  ‘Is that all she said?’ he asked.

  Welma nodded and pushed the letter into his hands. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now I'd best be off. Before any of these fine squires here have something to say about a scruffy old woodtroll engaging in conversation with the likes of you, a future knight academic.’ She smiled and winked, and quickly squeezed his hands in her own. ‘Earth and Sky love you,’ she whispered, and slipped back into the crowd before Quint had time even to wish her farewell.

  ‘Who was that?’ Vilnix sneered. ‘Your old nursemaid?’ He sniggered. ‘Worried that her little darling will catch a cold out here in the snow …’

  ‘Shut up, Vilnix,’ said Phin, turning on him angrily.

  Quint grabbed his arm. ‘Forget it, Phin,’ he said. ‘He's not worth it.’

  ‘I say, you chaps,’ came a voice from the rank in front. It belonged to a squire from the Upper Halls who had turned and was facing them. He was tall and gangly with slightly protruding teeth and small oval spectacles. ‘I don't suppose you could keep it down a bit, because the jolly old ceremony's about to start and you wouldn't want to miss it, now would you?’

  Vilnix snapped to attention, while Phin looked down at his feet, blushing furiously and scowling. Quint smiled apologetically.

  ‘Sorry, an old friend of mine was just wishing me well,’ he said.

  ‘I quite understand,’ said the Upper Hall squire with a smile. ‘You're the new lot, aren't you?’

  Quint and the others nodded.

  ‘Hope to have some of you chaps joining us in the Upper Halls soon. Raffix Emilius,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ The squire stuck out a thin, bony hand.

  Quint took it and winced at the surprisingly strong grip. ‘Quint Verginix.’

  ‘Well, Quint,’ said Raffix Emilius, ‘here come the treasury guards, so if you and your chums stand on tiptoe, you might just glimpse the tops of their heads. My, my, what splendid breast-plates they're wearing!’ he added, turning round to face the front once more.

  As he did so, there came a loud fanfare and all eyes fixed themselves on the entrance to the treasury tunnel, where an ornately decorated carriage had just come to a halt. It was drawn by an even more ornately decorated prowlgrin, with a jewel-encrusted harness, a flapping purple plume and a swaying umbrella of gold and black that was keeping the falling snow at bay.

  On either side, it was flanked by four enormous flat-head treasury guards, resplendent in identical armour, the silver bloodoaks on their breast-plates gleaming in the snowy light. One of them opened the carriage door and bowed low as a small professor in dark grey robes and a string of spectacles and eye-glasses round his neck, clambered out. As tradition demanded, the twin Most High Academes, the Professors of Light and Darkness, had sent their deputy – the ‘Next-Most High Academe’ – to enter the treasury tunnel and venture into the dangerous stonecomb.

  Following the prescribed ritual, the academic hammered hard with his stave – one, two, three times – on the door, which was opened by the Captain of the Treasury Guard, Sigbord, himself. He, too, wore a magnificent breast-plate, which he showed off to the crowd by puffing out his chest as he gestured grandly to the Next-Most High Academe and his guard to enter. And as they all disappeared inside, a tumultuous roar went up and cries of ‘Trust the skies! Trust the skies!’ echoed round the Mosaic Quadrangle.

  The heavy ironwood door to the treasury tunnel slammed shut with a dull clang and the crowd stood for a moment in silence and then turned to go. There was none of the jollity and laughter that Quint remembered from the year before.

  The celebration of the day when the Sanctaphrax rock was first weighted down with stormphrax was usually a raucous, joyful affair. But with the snow falling and the temperature dropping swiftly as the light failed, the atmosphere was sombre. The academics trudged back to their schools and academies, eager to escape the biting wind and swirling snow.

  ‘Academy! Dismissed!’ came Hax Vostillix's loud command, and as the ranks of squires broke up, Quint saw the Hall Master of High Cloud in a robe of pure white tilderfur standing in front with the other hall masters on either side of him. Behind them, like statues, stood the knights academic-in-waiting, the visors to their helmets closed, giving them a mysterious and distinctly sinister air.

  ‘Treasury Day banquet at evening gong in the Eightways!’ Hax was announcing over the heads of chattering squires. ‘Don't be late!’

  He strode from the Mosaic Quadrangle, which was now covered by a thick coating of snow, followed by Arboretum Sicklebough, Philius Embertine and Fenviel Vendix, the Hall Master of Grey Cloud. The knights academic-in-waiting fell in behind them and marched stiffly off.

  ‘Well,’ said Raffix Emilius, adjusting his spectacles, ‘we have the rest of the afternoon off, my dear squires. Might I suggest a diversion?’ He kneeled and picked up a handful of snow. ‘Upper Halls against the Lower!’

  With a loud cheer, the squires raced to opposite sides of the Mosaic Quadrangle and began scooping up snow. Suddenly, the air was full of flying snowballs as squire pelted squire in the greying snowy light.

  ‘Watch out, Phin!’ yelled Quint as his friend took three direct hits on the chest.

  ‘Watch out, yourself!’ laughed Phin, bending to scoop handfuls of snow -and being hit full in the face.

  ‘Charge!’ shouted Quint, running towards Raffix and the Upper Hall squires. ‘Phoarrr! Uggh! Phhwl!’

  A hail of snowballs sent him sprawling to his knees, helpless with laughter, but not before the squires of the Lower Halls had surrounded their Upper Halls’ colleagues. And
all round the quadrangle the whoops and cries rang out as they pelted them to a standstill.

  Finally, wet through and exhausted, the squires made their way back to the Knights Academy, laughing and joking and in high spirits.

  ‘I like your style, Quint Verginix,’ said Raffix Emilius, slapping Quint on the back as they rounded the corner of the College of Rain. ‘That was quite a fight you and your chums put up.’

  ‘Thanks, Raffix,’ said Quint, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. ‘You didn't do too badly yourself.’

  ‘I shall allow you to call me Raff,’ said the Upper Hall squire with a laugh, ‘since I now consider us to be friends. And that goes for you too, Phin.’

  ‘I'm honoured, Raff,’ said Phin, bowing low with mock solemnity, ‘and you can save me a place in line for the stew-cart while you're about it!’

  ‘That reminds me!’ said Quint, quickening his step. ‘It's almost evening gong. We'd better hurry if we don't want to be late for the banquet!’

  That evening, as the crowded tables and benches of the Eightways resounded to the laughter and songs of the squires celebrating Treasury Day, Quint shared a banquet of roast snowbird and tilder pie with his three friends. Phin, always with a ready smile and an encouraging word, sat next to him, complimenting the grey goblin, Stope, on the fine workmanship of the breast-plates he'd made for the treasury-guards.

  ‘Sssshh!’ Stope said, smiling delightedly. ‘That's all meant to be a secret! I didn't mean to say anything, Squire Phin! Honest!’

  ‘To the finest forge-hand in the Academy!’ Phin toasted Stope with a tankard of woodale.

  On the other side of him, Raffix, the Upper Hall squire, joined in the laughter. ‘If only I'd known what good company you keep down here on the lower benches, I'd have joined you sooner. Here's to you, Stope!’ He raised his tankard.

  ‘Thank you, Squire Raff, sir.’ Stope beamed, raising his tankard in reply.