The Winter Knights by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell

Author:Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell [Stewart, Paul & Riddell, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ages 10 and up
ISBN: 9780307495020
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2006-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

‘Mind your own business!’ snapped the youth. ‘And it's Squire Pompolnius, to you, gatekeeper, and don't you forget it!’

The gatekeeper guffawed behind his scarf and gave a sarcastic bow. Ignoring him, Vilnix reached out and snatched the barkscroll from the woodtroll matron's hand.

‘I'll see that he gets it!’ he said, with a quick, wolfish flash of his teeth, before darting away through the gates.

‘Tell him, Welma and Tweezel send their best wishes …’ the woodtroll called after him uncertainly.

There was something about the youth's thin, pinched face and shifty eyes that disturbed her – yet he wore the robes of a squire of the Knights Academy, and seemed to know Quint. Besides, since she couldn't hand the letter to the young master in person, she had no choice but to trust him. In front of her, the gatekeeper swung the heavy gates shut again and folded his arms.

‘I'd hurry along, mother, if you intend to get back to Undertown this afternoon,’ he said. ‘What with all this heavy snow, they're talking of closing the hanging-baskets.’

Welma gasped. ‘Ooh, I can't afford to get stuck up here,’ she said and, bidding the gatekeeper a hasty ‘good-day’, she hurried away in the direction of the East Landing.

As Vilnix strode along the central corridor, lightly patting the little bulge in his inside pocket as he went, he permitted himself a rasping chuckle. How it amused him that the ridiculous old woodtroll had entrusted the barkscroll to his care. Up until that point, it had been a cold, miserable, unsatisfying afternoon, his studies interrupted by the preposterous ritual of sending off old ‘brass-breeches’ in that swanky sky ship of his.

Oh, and how the other squires had cheered and hollered, and waved their arms in the air like demented fromps. Fools, the lot of them!

Vilnix smiled to himself.

Stormchasing! It was all they ever talked about, those pampered Sanctaphrax-born and bred squires. But he, Vilnix Pompolnius, would show them! Reaching the end of the corridor, he turned right, surreptitiously patting the scroll once more as he did so.

Ahead of him, several squires exchanged looks and stepped aside to let him pass. They all hated him, he knew that – but one day Vilnix would make them fear him as well. One day, he would look down on all of them, because he – plain old Vil Spatweed, knife-grinder from Undertown – would be Vilnix Pompolnius, Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax.

He thrust out his jaw and his face took on a look of twisted pride.

He would become Most High Academe because he had what it took to make it to the very top – cunning, malice, treachery and deceit. And he knew this for a fact, because these were just the things it had taken to survive in the fetid sewers of Undertown.

The drunken grey waif who'd found him as a baby and raised him in a sewer tunnel in the boom-docks had taught him to pick locks and pockets almost as soon as he could walk. He'd

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