Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Sam Llewellyn

Author:Sam Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141911861
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

Rosetti had not bothered to join the relic queue, but had followed his fellow Skolars at a distance, moving carefully because of his bad ankle. He had hung around in the shadows outside the glassmaker’s shop. He had not liked the look of the underground passage, but he had felt he ought to follow. Then sure enough there were Owen and Onyx being hustled down a dark tunnel by five louts and a dwarf, and a scream, and an iron door slamming. Rosetti pressed himself into an alcove as the louts and the dwarf came back without the Skolars. The louts stationed themselves at the end of the passage while the dwarf stumped off to book a torture chamber.

Squashed into his little patch of shadow, Rosetti thought hard. To help his classmates he would have to get past the louts. The louts had weapons. Primitive weapons, true, but extremely sharp.

What to do?

Rosetti allowed himself to imagine that the louts were Security Masters, and the Cathedral Crypt was Skool. What would he have done?

Easy.

Reaching under his robe, he pulled out the water pistol. He marched up to the largest of the louts. ‘Oi!’ he cried. ‘Mutton face!’ The lout looked up, ready to maim. A jet of something hit his eye. The eye started stinging. He licked at what was running down his face. It tasted vile. He wiped his face with his hand and saw by the torchlight that the stuff was blue.

Even in a world where water pistols are easy to get hold of, people are surprised when squirted in the eye with ink. In a world where water pistols had not yet been invented, Rosetti had suspected that the effect would be pretty intense.

He was not disappointed.

‘Aiee!’ cried the lout. ‘Witchcraft!’ A knife hurtled through the air and clattered off the wall in the exact spot where Rosetti had been standing. But Rosetti was no longer there. He was limping down a side-tunnel, taking the wall-torches down from their brackets and throwing them behind him as he ran. His ankle hurt. But Rosetti limping was faster than most people running. He could hear the louts lumbering after him.

He passed two doorways on his right, and tossed a torch into the second. When he came to a third, he turned down it and waited. The lumbering came closer. He held his breath. If they looked in on him, he was doomed.

But the lumbering went off down the side-alley where he had thrown the torch. He let out his breath. He heard voices, large and stupid, fading into a hollow distance. He threaded through the passages back towards the Skolars’ dungeon. A lot of red light was pouring out of an archway, together with heat and smoke. The guards must have been doing some torch-throwing of their own. By the light of the flames he caught a glimpse of a wooden scaffolding of the kind that might support a cathedral floor.

He arrived in the central passage. It was getting quite smoky.

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