Foundling

by Cornish, D. M.

  “Git!” cursed Shunt.

  “Ah . . . aye! Sorry, Mister Shunt, sir, I . . .” Rossamünd pulled his hand away from the side of the box.

  The gastrineer rolled his eyes horribly. “Git!” he grated again, stabbing a hand at the foundling.

  Rossamünd blinked in surprise, then realized with horror that there was a weapon in the man’s hand—a curved and cruelly barbed dagger. He had never been threatened with a real weapon before. It was enough to send him stumbling back up the ladder and running back to his couch of canvas at the bow.

  “I see’s ye’ve got yerself well acquainted with our darlin’ gastrineer,” chuckled Poundinch as Rossamünd fled past him.

  Rossamünd refused to do anything so embarrassing as cry—though he very much felt like it and might have once. At that moment, hugging his knees to his chest and scowling back any tears, he would rather have been back in the foundlingery’s suffocating halls.

  With the dark of his first night aboard descending, Rossamünd decided to sleep at his original station at the prow on a pile of old hessian and hemp distinct only from the other piles of old hessian and hemp as stinking less. No one objected, and so he settled in for sleep. If it rained he would rather get wet than endure the disgusting hold.

  The night passed mercifully dry, yet dreams of a knife-wielding Shunt, the incessant clanging of the watch bells and the stomping of the crew’s bare feet kept Rossamünd from restful sleep. By the ringing of the morning watch at around four o’clock, he gave up on the prospect of proper rest and was rewarded eventually with a beautiful, brilliant pink sunrise.

  Red dawning, traveler’s warning, he thought gloomily.

  The Hogshead was now clear of Boschenberg and its jurisdiction and roaming an ungoverned stretch of the Humour.The land on the eastern side of the river remained flat open pastureland. Upon the west it was becoming more rolling and rocky and decidedly more wild-looking. Such places were known as ditchlands, the borders between everymen’s kingdoms and the dominion of the monsters. Rossamünd could well imagine bogles and nickers prowling about the stunted trees and ragged weeds, seeing who they might devour.

  As the day progressed, Rivermaster Poundinch ignored everyone and contributed little to the running of the vessel. Occasionally he would growl a command, but usually he lounged silently at the tiller, his chin in his chest as if he was dozing.

  Rossamünd was taken by loneliness. At that moment, alone among all these self-interested cutthroats, he would have welcomed even Mister Sebastipole’s stiff manners and disturbing eyes.

  Poundinch came alive suddenly at the end of the forenoon watch and the beginning of the afternoon when dinner was served by the taciturn, sour-faced cook, and again when there was gunnery practice. Early in the afternoon watch, when the river seemed clear of other craft, he roused himself and bellowed, “Right, lads! Gunnery practice! To yer pieces!”

  A bosun’s whistle was blown and the crew hustled to the six cannon on the ladeboard side of the Hogshead. Poundinch strutted at the helm post, bellowing orders, directions, abuse. “Run them out, ye mucky scoundrels! Come on, Wheezand, I’ve seen me grandmamma, rest her, move faster than ye, and she’s been a-molderin’ in th’ ground these last ten years! And I should know. I put her there meself!” At this he gave a bloodcurdling chortle and many of the crew joined in.

  Rossamünd chuckled nervously with them, eagerly awaiting what he hoped would be a spectacle. He had always wanted to see the cannon worked. The foundlings of Madam Opera’s had never been allowed near one, regardless of their training in the naval crafts. Suddenly he realized that there were benefits in leaving the foundlingery and its strict policies after all.

  BOOM! One after the other the pieces were fired, at a rotten stump or anything that happened to be passing by—the smaller the better, to improve the bargemen’s aim.

  For Rossamünd it was indeed both thrilling and deafening, and completely distracted him from his anxious woes.

  BOOM! went the guns once more, the crash of their firing hitting him with a thump right in his chest, each blast filling the air with creamy, fizzy-smelling smoke that billowed and lazily drifted away. The whole vessel shuddered with each cannonade, while across the other side of the Humour great vertical splashes were thrown up, or part of a tree would collapse, sending cattle fleeing from the riverbank.

  After the fourth broadside, the crew were piped to cease and routine resumed. Rivermaster Poundinch went back to his languor and Rossamünd remained alone at the bow, humming within in boyish joy at what had proved a spectacle indeed.

  That evening was clear and bitterly cold. A three-quarter moon was rising, swollen and yellow in the dark green sky. Muffled in his scarf, his jackcoat buckled right up, Rossamünd lay belly down on the deck of the bow and stared at the black water. For some time, he had been listening to the loud concert of a thousand frogs all singing along the banks and watching a small, pale shape dashing upon the water’s surface. At first he thought it was a weak reflection of lunar light playing on the bow wave but, as two bells of the second dogwatch rang, it moved oddly, darting out away from the vessel then back again. The hairs on Rossamünd’s neck bristled and a shimmer of terror thrilled through his belly. He stared as the pale shape broke the surface—it was a head: a pallid lump, unclear in the jaundiced light, showing a long snout full of snaggle-jawed teeth. Its glittering black eyes rolled evilly and fixed him with a terrible gaze. His first monster . . .

  Rossamünd had enough wit to grope for his satchel, which he never kept far from him. Perhaps now was the time to use one of his precious repellents. Just as he gripped the strap, the pale lump in the water gave a long bubbling snort and disappeared under the bow and away to the right, toward moon shadows and the root-tangled bank. Rossamünd shook with fear. He did not move for a long time but just lay staring at the right bank, trying to blink as little as possible for fear that the pale beast would spring upon him in ambush from the water. His horror was heightened when a gurgling howl rang in the dark. For Rossamünd it was pure terror. Among the crew, however, it caused but a minor stir and nothing more.

  For the second night, curled up tight in pungent hessian, Rossamünd got little sleep.

  5

  . . . AND OFF AGAIN

  rivergates (noun) great fortifications built across rivers and broader streams to protect a certain valuable place or as an outworking of a city’s more terrestrial battlements. Certain riverside duchies and principalities have long used their rivergates to control trade, not just into their own domains but into those domains beyond as well.

  THE next day, when Rossamünd mustered the courage to tell Poundinch of the previous night’s pale monster, the rivermaster showed little alarm, or even interest in, the sighting.

  “Just one of those things, me boy, and nowt to trouble yerself over.” The rivermaster stroked his scabrous chin for a moment, pondering. “River’s full o’ strange but ’arm-less surprises. Be takin’ my word on that ’un—ol’ Poundy knows these waters.”

  As the day progressed they met many vessels going upriver, and were even overtaken by a faster-moving cromster with a smartly dressed crew. These fine fellows hailed the bargemen of the Hogshead, who only sneered and returned the brisk greeting with sullen looks.

  A bargeman coiling rope near Rossamünd told him off for waving vigorously as his own reply. “Fancy-lad good-fer-nothin’s,” the crewman growled. “Reckons they’re better than us . . .”

  Rossamünd could not help but wish Sebastipole had found him passage aboard the other vessel.

  In the afternoon, clouds black and blue blew up from the southeast—a hint of the bitter winter to come—making the day dark and the evening even darker. Downriver a city built on the east bank of the Humour came into view, its many lights already shining in the untimely gloom. Rossamünd consulted the almanac. Proud Sulking it was called, the major river port of the vast farming region known as the Sulk and a bitter rival of Boschenberg. It had become rich from the
many merchants who wished to avoid the stiff tolls of the Axles, and chose instead to pay the lesser port fees that Proud Sulking demanded. There they would unload their cargoes instead and transport them by ox-trains along the highroads and, through much danger, to their customers further upstream. In doing this, Proud Sulking made a jealous and bitter enemy of Boschenberg.

  Proud Sulking was not nearly as large as Boschenberg, although its bastions and keeps and curtain walls along the riverbank were just as high and threatening. Its many wharves and piers were clogged and bustling with the vigorous activity of river craft, their crews and the laborers working ashore. Eager to avoid this foreign enemy city, Rossamünd was afraid that the Hogshead would go about and enter the river port. Instead Poundinch steered her as far over to the opposite bank as was possible, and held his course there, with many a nervous glance over at the forbidding city. Relieved, Rossamünd watched solemnly as the Hogshead passed Proud Sulking by.

  With night closing in, the wind diminished but the clouds remained. The Hogshead was now many miles south of Proud Sulking and the land on both sides of the river became boggy and threatening: holm oak grew in squat, clotted thickets; bristling swamp oaks and sickly turpentines rose tall and stick-gaunt. This must be a monster-infested place. Here, surely, were the wilds that Fransitart and Craumpalin had spoken of with such awe and warning. Rossamünd was convinced he could feel bogles and nickers prowling and spying.

  When dark finally ruled, the Hogshead’s stern and mast lanterns were inexplicably doused so that the cromster moved in pitch-black. Even the binnacle lamp that lit the compass by the tiller was hooded to show as little glow as possible. Rossamünd knew that the lights on a vessel should never be put out: on a river or at sea, a ship without its lanterns lit in the night or a deep fog was a danger to all other rivergoing craft. Why would Poundinch do such a thing? Somehow Rossamünd knew better than to ask. He certainly would not consult any of the crew. In the blind night he fought against sleep.

  Despite his determination, he eventually succumbed and lapsed into a troubled slumber.

  Sometime later he was woken by the sound of an anchor dropping. There was some quiet cursing, and Rivermaster Poundinch’s voice scolded huskily, “Keep it steady, ye slop buckets! No noise!”

  The cromster had halted near the western bank at a place neither remarkable nor distinct from any other part of the river’s haunted edge. All hands were pressed to duty as smaller hand lanterns were lit and the Hogshead’s only boat, a large jolly boat normally towed behind, was brought about to the steerboard side. The crew were nervous. They lugged up several foul-smelling kegs from below and lowered them by rope into the little craft. Bewildered, Rossamünd listened to the thumps and quiet exclamations. He sat up slowly, hoping to avoid attention, and peered over the edge of deck.

  Ponderously laden with barrels, the jolly boat was being rowed slowly to the bank. Poundinch was in the bow holding high a lantern with another fellow—Sloughscab, the Hogshead’s own dispensurist; there were eight crew to row and two sturdy fellows sitting in the boat’s stern holding primed muskets and looking alert. As it moved to shore the large rowboat became no more than the wan glow of the lantern and a silhouette of the activity within. Soon it disappeared altogether among the hanging branches and crooked, buttressed roots that knotted the riverbank. Rossamünd saw, or at least thought he saw, the flicker of another lantern somewhere further in the trees. He could hear still the creaking of oars and fancied too the echoes of hulloos coming back across the water. For a time everything was still, waiting—even the frogs. There were no lights aboard and the limbers were even stilled. Little could be seen but a faint orange smudge striped with the indigo shadows of intervening trunks. Rossamünd imagined that he was floating in the midst of nothing, drifting in an empty universe with just his thoughts and his breath.

  A flicker from the bank interrupted his wandering notions.

  Then another.

  A bright flash, half-hidden by the black shadows of tree trunks, was closely followed by the muffled but unmistakable popping of musket fire. The crew at once became agitated, and even more so when a loud crack snapped and echoed across the water. Quickly a dim lantern hove into view, indistinctly showing the jolly boat being rowed as rapidly as possible back to the Hogshead. There was a fizzing spurt and a brilliant flash, stark against the dark—another telltale eruption of a musket, fired by one of the sturdy fellows kneeling stiffly in the aft of the jolly boat.

  The other sturdy fellow was missing. So was Sloughscab the dispensurist.

  Rivermaster Poundinch was in the jolly boat’s bow, bellowing, “Pull! Pull, ye cankerous pigs!”

  Behind them whole trees shuddered and sagged. Cries rang out on board the Hogshead. The stern lantern flared into light and by its green glow bargemen hurried and panicked.

  Rossamünd stood, transfixed by the spectacle. Through parted trunks something enormous was moving. Rossamünd could barely make out what it was: long of limb it seemed, yet hunched, pushing at the trees as if they were mere shrubs. It turned its head and Rossamünd felt he caught a glimpse of tiny, angry eyes.

  “Pullets and cockerels!” Rossamünd exclaimed in a horrified whisper.

  There was a loud yell.

  Simultaneously, one of the cromster’s cannon fired, the smoke of its discharge belching obscuring blankness over the scene. The small thunder reverberated, flat and hollow, all about the land, and as its fumes cleared, the giant thing was gone. Poundinch was now scrabbling back aboard his vessel spluttering foul language, crying for the anchor to be weighed and limbers turned.

  Poundinch said nothing about the affair. No reasons were given for the absence of Sloughscab or the sturdy musket-wielding chap, no explanation of what the giant on the shore might have been. The contents of the jolly boat—three box-crates emitting odd and disturbing sounds—were simply hurried into the hold. Normal duties were resumed. Those on watch rapidly got the cromster moving once more. Those off watch muttered grimly for a time and went to sleep.

  Rossamünd tried to sleep himself. He tossed the rest of that night over it, his head full of fear and pondering and repeating images of the nicker’s angry eyes and the startling flash of cannon fire. Rising at the fourth bell of the morning watch, the foundling determined that all through the next day he would listen, as far as he possibly could, to every word spoken on board the Hogshead.

  With the rising of the sun and the changing of watch, the crew exchanged meaningful glances with each other.

  “Oi don’t moind cartin’ abowt bits o’ bodies in them there barrels of pigs’ muck,” one filthy bargeman offered to another quietly at breakfast. “We’re shorely paid noice for doin’ it. But thowse things down thar now just bain’t natural.”

  To this the second growled wordless agreement, then waggled his finger to ward off evil. “Right you are, right you are. Ablatum malum ex nobis,” he said, “Rid evil from among us.”

  Later that day, Rossamünd overheard one of the crewmen who had helped row the party ashore the previous night say to another, “We’d made the trade fine, but that thing must have been watching for a long time, ’cause we heard nowt of it till it come out all a-quick with a roar. Scatters the corsers with a big sweep o’ its terrible arm—like this.” He swung his own arm wildly, thoughtlessly letting his voice become louder. “And those that it hasn’t smashed are off into the trees and ol’ Poundy is pushing us back onto the barge while Cloud and Blunting have a crack at it with their firelocks and poor Sloughscab hurls his potions—you know how ’e’s always wantin’ to give ’em a good testing—well he got ’is chance, ’cause . . .”

  “Gibbon!” It was the rivermaster. One eye was open as he lounged at the tiller and this single orb glared horribly at the loquacious crewman. “Don’t give me a reason to remember yer name any further, me darlin’ chiffer-chaffer.”

  At this Gibbon went pale and lapsed to silence, as did the rest of the crew. One thing that he had said kept spinning in R
ossamünd’s head. “ . . . Scatters the corsers.” He had heard of these before. Corsers were folk who robbed graves and stole from tombs to make their living. The dark trades!

  What did such wretched people as these have to do with the crew of the Hogshead? Why would Poundinch stop in the middle of nowhere in the deep of night just to meet them? Was he a part of the dark trades too? After the suspicious doings with Clerks’ Sergeant Voorwind at the Axle, it was becoming disconcertingly clear that this was most probably the case. And what was that gangling giant he had glimpsed? Rossamünd heard little else that day but the occasional inaudible griping, and as time went on, his anxieties increased. Surely he had to get off this unhappy vessel.

  By the middle of the next day Rossamünd, huddled and unmoving at the prow in an agony of fear, spied the low wall of the Spindle as it finally appeared from around a river bend. Not nearly as tall or as grand as the Axle, the Spindle was a long, low dyke of black slate, stretching the river’s mile-wide waters. Along its thick middle sections it was perforated by seven great arches and several lesser tunnels toward either bank. Each arch and tunnel was blocked by a massive portcullis of blackened iron. Great taffeta flags—one side black, the other glossy white, the colors of the city-state of Brandenbrass—were flown from the four central bastions in the middle of the river and flapped wildly in the windy morning. Rossamünd could see many great-cannon poking from hatches and strong points all along the walls and bastions. The ends of the Spindle terminated on either bank in a strong fortress of sharply sloping walls, high, steep roofs and tall chimneys and were protected by stout curtain walls of the same black slate as the gate itself. Rossamünd could even see that the ground at the foot of the curtain walls was densely prickled with a vicious-looking thicket of thorny stakes. About the eastern fortress a small wood of swamp oak and olive grew, while along both banks leafless willows wept into the black run of the Humour. The Spindle instead was squat, imposing, daunting. To Rossamünd, however, it was also the chance of escape. Hope fluttered within his rib cage and he stared at it longingly.