"Splendid," said Boamund, and he laughed. "Make a general of you yet, we will."
"Thank you," said Toenail. "Must be marvellous to think of things the way you do."
"It"s a knack."
"So," Toenail said, "my idea was that we wait until the postman comes along in the morning - that"ll be after the milkman"s been and gone, of course - and then one of us knocks on the door, as if there was a parcel . . ."
"Or a registered letter," said Boamund, excitedly.
"Yes, even better," said Toenail resignedly. "And then, when somebody comes to answer the door, we thump him and get in." He paused for a moment. "Pretty silly idea, really."
"Oh, I don"t know," said Boamund slowly. "I mean, put like that . . ."
"I thought you said something about the wall."
"Oh, just thinking aloud," Boamund replied. "Got to consider every possibility, you know. Actually, I was coming round to the postman scenario myself. Neat, I thought."
"One of your better ideas?"
Boamund registered modesty. "Simple, anyway," he said. "What do you think?"
Toenail smiled. "I don"t know how you do it, boss," he replied.
"the sleigh howled through the night sky, the clanging of its bells drowned by the shrieking of the wind.
Klaus von Weinacht, head down over the console to reduce the coefficient of drag, stared out through the driving snow for the first glimpse of his battlements. On the instrument panel" the compa.s.s stopped its crazed spinning and jammed dead.
Nearly home. Good.
He ran back through the timings in his mind. If they had all left the Grail Castle at the same time then, allowing for pack ice in the Nares Straight and contrary winds over Permia, then it would still be two or three days before they were due to arrive. Plenty of time. He laughed cruelly.
The reindeer pounded the clouds with their hooves.
"Ready?"
Toenail, concealed behind a bush, nodded, while Galahaut yawned and picked bark off the branch they had found for a club. Boamund took a deep breath, and knocked on the gate.
"Let"s just run through it once more," he hissed. "The porter opens the door, I distract his attention. Galahaut, you hit him. Toenail . . ."
There was the sound of heavy bolts being shot back, and the door opened.
"h.e.l.lo."
Galahaut gripped the club and started to move. Then he stopped.
"Er . . . h.e.l.lo," Boamund was saying. He had gone a very pretty shade of pink.
"Was there something?" said the girl, nicely.
For four seconds, Boamund just stood there, irradiating pinkness. Then he smiled idiotically.
"Postman," he said.
"Oh good," said the girl. "Something nice, I hope. Not more horrid old bills. Daddy gets so bad-tempered when it"s bills."
Toenail had covered his face with his hands. The worst part was not being able to do anything.
"Letter," Boamund gurgled. "Registered. Got to sign for-"
"How exciting!" said the girl. "I wonder who it"s from."
There was a moment of perfect equilibrium; and then it dawned on Boamund that he didn"t have about his person anything that looked like a registered letter.
Toenail had to admit that he coped as well as could be expected in the circ.u.mstances. After he had made a right pantomime of patting all his pockets and rummaging about in his knapsack, he said, "d.a.m.n, I seem to have left it in the van." It could have been worse, said the dwarf to himself, just conceivably.
"Never mind," said the girl. "I"ll wait for you here."
In retrospect, Toenail realised that there was a funny expression on her face, too. At the time, though, he put it down to a complete absence of brains.
"Right," said Boamund, rooted to the spot. "I"ll just go back and, er, fetch it, then."
"Right."
They stood for a moment, gazing at each other. Then Boamund started to walk slowly backwards. Into the bush.
"Be careful!" the girl called out, too late. "Oh dear, I hope you haven"t hurt yourself."
Toenail, who had broken Boamund"s fall very neatly indeed, could certify that he hadn"t. But the fool just sprawled there. It was only natural that the girl should come and look . . .
"Oh," she said.
Boamund grinned feebly. Galahaut tried to hide the club behind his back, and waved.
"Actually," said Boamund, breaking a silence that was threatening to become a permanent fixture, "we aren"t postmen at all."
"Not . . . postmen?"
My G.o.d, thought the dwarf, and I thought he was a pillock. He tried to wriggle the small of his back away from the sharpest roots of the bush.
"No," Boamund said. "That was a ruse."
"Oh!"
"Actually, we"re-"
"Knights," Galahaut interrupted. "Knights of the Holy Grail. At your service," he added.
Boamund gave him a filthy look.
"Knights!" the girl squeaked. "Oh, how exciting!"
The h.e.l.l with this, said the dwarf to himself, things can"t get any worse, they just can"t. With a tremendous wriggle, he extricated himself from under Boamund, shook himself free of leaves and bits of twig, and tugged at his master"s sleeve.
"Boss," he said.
Boamund looked round. "What?"
"The plan, boss. You know."
"Go away, Toenail."
Dwarves cannot, of course, disobey a direct order. He shrugged his shoulders and drifted away to the shelter of a wind-blasted thorn tree, crossed his legs, and sulked.
The girl"s eyes were shining. "This is so thrilling," she said. "What are you doing here? Or is it a secret?"
"We"re ..." A tiny spark of common sense flared up in Boamund"s brain. "It"s a secret," he said. "A quest," he added.
"Gosh!"
"And you mustn"t tell a soul."
"I won"t."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
A long silence followed, as the girl gazed at Boamund, Boamund and Galahaut gazed at the girl, and Toenail darned a sock. It could have gone on for ever if it hadn"t been broken by the sound of a door slamming.
The girl gave a startled squeak and looked round. The gate had blown shut.
"Oh dear!" she wailed. "And I"ve forgotten my key again."
Toenail closed his eyes and counted under his breath. One, two . . .
"Never fear, fair damsel," Boamund said. "We"ll have you back in there in two shakes, won"t we, tally?"
(Three, said Toenail, opened his eyes and returned to his darning.) "Absolutely," said Galahaut. "No trouble at all."
Wearily, Toenail picked himself up, put the sock carefully away, and walked over. He took his time. Why hurry? Where"s the point?
"You"ll be wanting the rope now, then," he said.
Boamund"s eyes were fixed on the girl. "Rope?" he said.
"The rope I just happen to have with me in this holdall," Toenail continued resignedly. "And goodness me, what"s this? Gosh, it"s a grappling hook and some crampons. Talk about coincidence, eh?"
Boamund nodded, with all the animation of a hunting trophy. "Right," he said, "this won"t take a jiffy. We, er, take the hook like so, we pa.s.s the line behind the hook to make sure it doesn"t tangle, then we swing the hook one, two, three and . . ."
The hook soared into the air, hung for a moment like a strange steel falcon, and came down again, precisely where the girl would have been standing if Galahaut hadn"t moved her.
"You idiot!" Galahaut shouted. "Give me that hook."
"Shan"t."
There was a tussle. Both knights fell over and started pulling each other"s hair. Toenail finished off the sock and started on another.
Eventually, Galahaut won control of the hook, stood up and dusted himself off. "Like this," he said. "Watch."
He threw the hook, and far above their heads there was a faint c.h.i.n.k of steel on stone. Toenail stared in amazement.
"All right," he said.
Not long afterwards, the gate opened and the four of them pa.s.sed through. They didn"t, however, pa.s.s unnoticed. On the main security monitor in Radulf"s stall, a green light began to wink ominously. The old reindeer narrowed his brows, studied the screen and shook his head until the tinsel in his horns swayed.
Then he sounded the alarm.
"Pa.s.s the salt."
"Sorry?"
"I said pa.s.s the salt, there"s a good fellow."
"There you are. Sorry. I was miles away."
Aristotle shrugged, salted his kipper and turned to the sports pages. There is a difference, he always said, between not being one"s best in the mornings (which was something he could respect) and being dozy. His mood wasn"t improved when he read that Australia had gone down thirty-seven to three against the All Blacks.
"Typical!" he said.
On Aristotle"s left, Simon Magus looked up from the letter he was reading and said, "What is?"
"You said something was typical."
"Oh." Aristotle closed the paper. "The b.l.o.o.d.y Newzies have walked all over us again, that"s all. We"ve been no good ever since they capped that idiot Westermann."
Simon Magus looked at his neighbour over the tops of his spectacles. "By us, I gather, you mean the Australians," he said. "I never knew you came from those parts, Ari."
"Certainly not," replied Aristotle severely. "As a philosopher, I am above nationalism. On the other hand, I am logical. There is no point following rugby football unless you support a particular team. On purely rational grounds, I selected the Australians."
Simon Magus grinned. "I did that once," he said. "At five to one on. Never again."
Aristotle frowned at him down the great runway of his nose, and reached for his toast.
"Beats me why you want to follow sport anyway," Simon Magus went on. "Complete waste of time, if you ask me, a lot of idiots running about chasing things. When I used to be a teacher we had to take it in turns to be referee. I loathed it."
"You," Aristotle replied, "are not a philosopher. If one has any pretensions to philosophy, one must cultivate understanding. I study humanity. Humanity is obsessed with sport. Therefore, if I want to understand humanity, I must study sport. It"s purely scientific, you see."