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The Cold Knights are on the march.

Later —

Breakfast: more sweets. It's funny how you can get fed up with chocolate.

After dawn, we emerged from the boiler room, and looked around cautiously. The bodies and the broken Jeep were still in the playground, half-buried under fresh snow.

John is the most upset by the corpses.

I worried the whole city would be dead, but plenty of people were milling about even before nine o'clock Assembly. Some children and teachers arrived as normal, full of stories about things they'd heard in the night or rumours going round the district. Supposedly, there is some big snow-related fuss up the West End. There were many absences. It obviously wasn't going to be a normal school day, but most people were trying to pretend otherwise.

The Year One and Two girls played skipping games, as usual. Boys skidded around on the patches of dangerously slick ice in the car park, arms out for balance. Some took nasty spills, but no bones were broken.

The Head flapped around, infuriated by the damage to various doors and windows. Rules were bending, ready to break. It was obvious that it wasn't all down to the weather. According to conventional wisdom, snowstorms don't kick in locks.

Mr Carker saw Captain Brent, and came over, glowing with relief.

'Thank Heavens someone's in charge,' he said. 'What on earth has been going on?'

'Vandalism and indiscipline,' said the Captain. 'Of the worst sort. You have my permission to give the boy the Cane. It's what he needs to get him back on track. I was flogged at my school and it never did me any harm. It's all this permissiveness and laxity, you know. Late night socalled "satire" programmes on the BBC. That's what causes chaos like this.'

The Head noticed the dead people.

'Is that Okehurst?' he said.

I looked at Gillian and John. These grown-ups weren't going to help.

The snowman stood over the corpses. In the daylight, he wasn't moving. The sun shone through a chink in the clouds. The snowy face sparkled with innocence, smiling blandly.

There were pink streaks in the ice-white. Blood.

'Get up, Okehurst,' shouted Mr Carker. 'What's the matter with you, man?'

John reached into his coat and brought out a pistol. I noticed the holster on his father's belt was empty. John had appropriated the gun while Captain Brent was sleeping.

'What are you doing with that, Johnno? Give it back at once.'

John clicked the safety catch and worked the slide. He'd obviously learned something in R.O.T.C., or at least from reading Commando Library comics.

John pointed at the snowman.

'It comes alive,' he said, and fired.

The gun kicked in his hand. The noise got everyone's attention.

A chunk was blown through the snowman's torso. The bullet shot straight out of its back, momentum barely slowed. A bright orange crater exploded in the wall beyond the snowman. I wondered if John had considered what would have happened if someone were standing behind his target.

The snowman didn't react. It still smiled.

Mr Carker and Captain Brent, both incandescent, stared at John in gasping fury.

'It was alive,' he insisted.

The whole playground was quiet. The shot still rang incredibly loud

inside my skull. A lot of children had clapped mittened hands over their ears like muffs and were crouched down low, against walls to make smaller targets. Last autumn, during the missile crisis over Cuba, a craze for special air raid warning lessons had struck the school. That was before I came to Coal Hill, but John had said the lessons would be starting up again soon, to deal with the Emergency.

I stepped close to the Cold Knight, to investigate. I touched the snowand-ice chest. It was just a snowman.

Last night, yesterday, it had been different.

'It's not cold enough,' I said, thinking aloud. 'It has to be below freezing. Remember, at break yesterday, when it moved for the first time, there was that chill wind. And after dark, when they all came to life, it was well below.'

'What