by D M Cornish
"The job is but part done, sir," she replied to the Monsiere's breathless enthusiasm as they entered the safety of Scantling Aire's yard. "There is one dead out there, pierced by a musket hole that one of your wayward franklocks ought to claim"-the Monsiere looked ashamedly to the floor-"though I do not think the ichor of such unnaturally foul things would be any use for puncting-nor would I risk it if I were you."
The defense declared a great victory; it was universally agreed that the sloe saps-as folks began to call them-were unlikely to return.
As a precaution, Rossamund set small purple cones of repellent-compounded ash of Mehette-atop the rocks where the pudding basins of blood-curdle had previously rested. Found by the box in the saumery, the repellent had a familiar noxious reek that summoned a powerful memory of Licurius doing much the same about the night camp long ago.
With admirable persistence, Autos insisted upon helping, bearing candle and taper to light each cone and following so zealously close that the young factotum was grateful for the darkness to disguise his discomfort in handling it. The faint grassy breeze coming off the meadows shifted and sent the merest whiff of Mehette-fume up Rossamund's nose, stunning him, his vision flashing, intellectuals reeling, sending him staggering away from the vile stuff in a fit of coughing.
"It must be very strong," Autos marveled, thumping Rossamund on the back as if food were choking him.
"It-is-," Rossamund squeezed out between gags, sight blurred with tears, bent double and rocking under the well-intentioned blows. "K-keep… b-back!"
Granted sleep for the remains of the night, he was shown by a plump-faced dame in earth-brown shirts up to one of the cottages' higher rooms. Its crude walls were white and lumpy, its shallow wood-beam ceiling angling down to a dormer window that looked west onto a field of vibrant stars and black land. Rossamund found that a simple wool-stuffed pallet had been laid for him on the floor at the foot of a remarkably downy boxed bed where Europe reclined still fully harnessed, already sighing in the depth of easy sleep. In the fresh of the morning, Fransitart and Craumpalin arrived by the Monsiere's coach midway through breakfast and treacle testing, their relief at Rossamund's well-being evident in their gruff greetings. Accompanying them were three hard-looking fellows in woodland-hued proofing of leather and buff, animal pelts draped over their shoulders. They bore barbed boar-spears and elegant fusils with muzzles fashioned in the form of snarling bestial mouths. These were peltrymen from Lambingstone-or so they said of themselves-working the folds of Broad Trim and happy to accept the lucrative terms offered by Europe through her two crusty mediums. The eldest of them spoke for all with a thick accent Rossamund at first found hard to follow. Introducing himself as Quietis Furrow, he first presented his brother, Agitis Furrow, and then their young prentice, Bodkin Ease, who wore an olfactologue upon his face much like the box of a sthenicon except that it covered only his mouth and nose. Buff-brown faces clenched in permanent squint beneath greasy, battered tricorns, they greeted the Branden Rose and the Monsiere with deep, frowning nods that did for a bow and listened silently, expressions sharp, shadowed eyes bright to the recounting of the night.
"Thee can keep thy dollars and scruples, missus, till job's did done," Quietis Furrow said when part of their fee was offered. "That'n way thee'll know we 'tend to see this all right through to satisfaction."
Europe happily accepted this, saying, "Your integrity is laudable, sir."
"Hark!" Trottinott declared warmly. "Happy the day spent dealing with straight country lads. A boon on those who found you!"
Fransitart and Craumpalin limited their display of satisfaction at this approbation to a slight puffing of the chest.
The three peltrymen were provoked to the slightest surprise when shown a single sap, spiked now to the inside gate post. Stretched as it was from the spike, it still kept much of its structure: fat in its middle, tapering to either end, its spiny sucking mouth sagging viscously from the lower termination, the disturbingly fleshy pallor of the gums a stark contrast to the glistening black hide. No eyes were evident, just a series of holes open to the air and running down every quarter of the creature. Orange ooze leaked from the bullet wound and the spike hole, and the whole thing smelled oddly flat, almost odorless but for a fetid hint like rotting kelp washed on a shore.
"Looks like a smaller kind of them siphunculus beasties we fought off Langoland, 'ey, Pin?" Fransitart observed quietly.
The old dispenser nodded sagely.
"A right squirmerly bull-beggar," the younger Furrow brother muttered dourly.
"I reckon I made out a reddleman cove yesterday, while Pin an' me were on th' look for these 'ere fellows," Fransitart went on to report. "'E was much like th' one ye exchanged a word with back at Spelter Innings, Rosey me lad. But it can't 'ave been, for 'ow could the ruddy fellow 'ave got ahead o' us already on only feet, an' pushin' a cart?"
Rossamund frowned. Surely this was more than coincidence or mistaken identities.
"Hmm, most perplexing, Master Vinegar," Europe said airily, but, preoccupied with the saps and the course ahead, she offered nothing more.
Advised by the still-sulking Parfait-now restored to his weapon-that the meadows were unfit for carriages, the landaulet was left and Craumpalin and Fransitart with it. The ex-dormitory master was well displeased with this arrangement, but his old friend was resolute.
"Thy joints will not suffer such wearing, Frans," Craumpalin scolded. "Thee daren't want to be laid up and useless by unneedful confustication to thy joints."
To this Fransitart only growled.
A billy-pot, faggots, kindling and a tinderbox were provided in a burlap sack for boiling Europe's treacle. After a quiet word of encouragement from his old masters, Rossamund fixed his vent better about his throat, ordered his stoups, reloaded the flammagon, stowed food in his satchel, shouldered waterskins, and stood ready to go.
The creased foreheads of the peltrymen creased only slightly more at Rossamund's inclusion in the course.
Taken out back to the scene of the adventure, Quietis Furrow and his colleagues quickly picked the faintly slimed slot, a metallic gossamer shimmer scarcely detectable among the spring-fresh grass.
"Thy worms are cunning baskets," Quietis informed the half circle of watchers. "They squirm out in line wit' each other to keep their count a secret, yet e'en wit' so many they barely trouble a blade or weed."
Like a pack of slothounds eager for the chase, the peltrymen set off. With a strange lift of excitement in his belly, Rossamund paced after, Europe close behind.
Quick and sure, the Furrow brothers kept well ahead, peering at the ground, sometimes bent almost double in their search, Bodkin Ease turning his boxy snout left and right to catch every scent, but seldom slackening stride.The path of the worms was unerring, almost directly east to the sunken land Rossamund had spied from the ridge-caps last night. The peltrymen spoke of older or lesser trails meandering off north and south into the green folds, of running shepherds, of lame sheep among a flock of a hundred, but the freshest drag was ever east.
Europe gave a grim smile at this intelligence. "How happy for us that they are so single-minded."
When the sun was at its highest, they lunched in the warm day on cold helpings provided by the cottagers, sitting by a stile over a drystone wall beneath a lone apple tree, young and straight with a thick white coat of full-blooming blossom. About them, all manner of bugs hummed and bumbled, curious of the food. The peltrymen exchanged muttered tidings and kept to themselves but for a brief report that the trail passed over the wall.
Much to Europe's increasing disgust, the day remained gloriously blue and clear except for a high mist of ice. The vermid trail took them far out into uncultivable eastern fields until the land began to lean downward by slight degrees, granting a low vista of the dark expanse of brown bog ahead, the sunken region Rossamund had seen the previous evening from the roof of Scantling Aire. A rank vegetable stink increased with its proximity, until Bodkin Ease was
forced to remove his olfactologue for fear of fainting dead away under the amplified fetor.
Continuing on, the party arrived at the salt-crusted brink of a sodden stretch where the green of spring refused to take. A gray heron sprang to wing at their approach, interrupted in its hunt for slimy wriggling morsels and giving a soft remonstrating croak as it circled over them and away.
"This here be the Pout, missus," Quietis somberly informed them, pushing his tricorn back on his pate. "It is the sink for the Foist stream yonder north." He pointed vaguely after the retreating heron. "Folks di'n' come here a-much on the count of it being too unwelcoming, though we've had good trapping on its edges up by Angas Welcome."
"And the slot takes us in?" Europe inquired.
"That it does, missus."
"Then let us keep to it."
"Even in this lately-ing part o' day?"
"Even then… Lead on, man."
The gluey track of the saps paid little heed to the miry obstacles and sludgy pits that hindered the way of their human-framed pursuers. Where young Bodkin Ease had been allowed to lead the lurk on easy pastures, the elder Furrow now took over. With admirable patience the peltryman directed them around every boggy impediment, always keeping to firmer ground until he found the trail again, holding to the course until the next puddle diverted them. Several times Rossamund managed to slip on swampier soil, griming hands and stockinged knees, once sinking to the hem of his longshanks in flesh-colored murk, yanking his leg out violently when he felt an all-too-lively slithering about his shin.
Back to the mud from where I did come…
"Do try, dear Rossamund, not to soil your harness," Europe chided almost smirkingly. Somehow, she always managed to pick a surer path and never once looked even slightly troubled by the difficult route.
As the westering sun drooped below gray strips of low cloud, they neared a gloomy hollow, and Rossamund spotted figures in long robes well away to their left, crouched and furtive, running north with many a backward glance out of the depression. Although it was impossible to be sure, Rossamund had the impression they were wearing white masks.
"They surely di'n' want to be met with," Quietis observed.
Europe watched the receding runners narrowly.
"No," she said slowly. "They surely do not."
"Commercial gents, perhaps," Agitis offered, Rossamund understanding him to mean smugglers.
"Or coursers like us," Rossamund added.
"Perhaps…" was all the fulgar said, little convinced.
Making directly for a sunken bowl of some sickly brown discharge, the mucous drag came to an end. A grotesque threwd brooded in this hollow, forbidding enough to make nervous even the hardened hearts of the peltrymen and troubling Rossamund with its unwontedness. The pool of black muck in the midst was mirror-still, dead, its edge a fringe of wilted lilies and sparse brown rushes. Wind hissed in reeds but barely stirred the surface. Anything could be lurking in there. At the farther end were three posts of rotting wood daubed with white lime and looking like some marker or hasty memorial. Cords of some unidentifiable substance had been strung over and over between the posts and the soft southwesterly blew on them a doleful two-pitch tune.
Europe eyed the scene wearily. "A feculent place, if ever there was."
Staying many yards back, Rossamund stared at the water: it looked the perfect home for the sloe saps, and the threwd spoke clearly to him of the fact. "This is where they hide…," he murmured to her.
"Not for much longer," she returned matter-of-factly.
The Furrow brothers sought about the entire rim of the sump, but the trail did not pick up again on any side. "It'll be a'lurking in yonder welk," Quietis muttered, bobbing his head at the pond as they gathered by its southern bank. "O' that I would stake me certainty." He held up a white porcelain cup he had found, decorated about its rim in delicate blue. But for its missing handle and a disturbing brown crust inside, it was a strangely civilized item out here in the mire. With it the elder peltryman produced a strange blob of black wax wound with greasy string, formed like some fat man with a peculiarly skinny head. "There's a chest o'er by them song-poles, holdin' some lime and a daub-brush and a wicked-curved knife too. I reckon thy prize has jackornerers encouraging its hucilluctions… Those very lads we saw darting away."
His younger brother spat. "Prostematin', muck-moundin' fictlers!" he cursed.
Europe gave a sour look to the thrumming poles. "I thought such cross-eyed folks liked to stay in those hills," she observed, looking to the dark, distant eastern downs. "I wonder if our Monsiere realizes he has fantaisists on his threshold."
Fantaisists! Rossamund's heart missed beats in his dread. False-god worshippers! What have we found for ourselves? Surely the worms were not a false-god, not out here so far from the vinegar sea. False-gods were meant to be uncontainably massive, invincible, able to turn men to their idiot wills.
With a long-suffering glance at the still, clear evening, Europe bowed her head and stood in thought.
Knowing better than to disturb his mistress, Rossamund laid down the burlap bag and set about building a fire upon a low brown stone nearby. Filling the small billy-pot with water to boil, he stared about uneasily at the unsettling mire. Did I truly come from such a place? he wondered, studying the pool and its slimy banks. It seemed to him too distinctly dreary, too outlandishly hostile to be a font of life.
A single lonely cricket sent out a desultory rasp.
Some distant hooming beast uttered three short, unhappy calls.
Drawn by the barely adequate fire, the peltrymen huddled together, peering uncomfortably at the dour surrounds. Nodding to yellow Ormond as the ever-early star rose into the russet haze above the hills, they muttered uneasily of their desire to depart. About them all the pregnant quiet expanded, trickling with many tiny waters humming faintly with the gloomy monotone of the corded poles.
The treacle made, Rossamund dared to approach his mistress, offering her levinfuse and saltegrade with it, grateful these alembants did not require further preparation; he did not relish remaining here until night in the creatures' dominion.
Nor, evidently, did the fulgar.
Quaffing levinfuse and downing the plaudamentum with her usual inelegant promptness, she strode into the mire, pouncing from tussock to tussock to keep out of the filth, chewing on the purple lump of saltegrade as she went. At the rim of the pool she drove her fuse directly into the water.
Rossamund peered in bafflement at her.
The water about the fuse started to hiss. Little waddling things were soon hastily exiting the pool while a colorless fish bobbed to float dead on its surface.
She arcs the water!
Soon enough the black element began to ripple and trouble. With a sudden great splashing, the sloe saps emerged, writhing, almost leaping out onto the bank opposite the arcing fulgar.
A caste of beedlebane was instantly in Rossamund's hand; he thought to try his strength but hesitated, uncertain both of his accuracy with such a throw and the deservingness of these things to die.
Three near-unison pops of musketry cracked the air off to the left as the peltrymen tried their aim.
Rapidly the sloe saps rushed together from all reaches of the farther shore. Coiling, writhing over each other, unhindered by three frank musket shots, the wrigglers began to knot together, tightening steadily into a larger and larger ball-like mass. Building higher and higher, the bulk of worms rolled about the western bank of the inky pool, fashioning themselves into some fore-determined shape as they moved.
Collecting herself, Europe sprang from sure footing to sure footing, making straight for the mass as she cried angrily to the peltrymen to cease their shooting.
"I shall do this, thank you!"
Meeting it halfway about the pool, Europe struck at the swarming host as it formed, jabbing her fuse with a ringing zzzack! into the coagulating worms, seeking to arc it to pieces just as she had done to the lesser collection last night. Insta
ntly a sinuous cord of worms lashed out like an arm and swatted the fulgar, hitting her as she twisted to avoid the blow. Flung back several yards, she landed heavily in the mire between Rossamund and the reloading peltrymen, her fuse still caught like a twig in the belly of the beast now grown too big to end in a single blast.
The young factotum ran to his mistress' aid.
Before them an obese figure rose as tall as five tall men, a tapering collection of worms ending in a single sap for the head, its bloated torso seething with a wriggling legion of inky skins. A powerful hostility surrounded it, unlike anything Rossamund had felt before, an oppressive un-threwd, a dread of abysmal airless depths where wicked mindless behemoths crawled and fed. Rossamund gagged and smacked his mouth against a bitter aftertaste stinging the back of his throat.
With a shudder of effort the sapperling lifted its now ponderous bulk, rising upon three stiltlike legs made entirely of worms wrapping tightly about each other, stiffening to bear the weight of their brethren.
"What by the hide of me chin be that?" one of the peltryman hissed in awe as the three moved aside in sluggish amazement to get a better shot.
Hair askew, Europe looked dangerously unamused as, winded, she leaned on Rossamund to stand. "If it is all right with you, little man," she added with a sardonic murmur, "I won't be chatting with this one."
While the struggling fulgar achieved her feet, the Furrow brothers fired again at the lumbering, squirming collection toiling toward them about the western edge of the pond. Their united shot hit the heaving vermiculate flesh of its belly with livid orange splats.
"Stay your shots, gentlemen!" she snarled. "You will have your fee; this is mine to kill, and I do not intend to share the prize."
Faster than whips, quicker than shouted warnings, a massive tentacle of worms spat out from its middle straight at the reloading peltrymen, the sapperling getting thinner as the arm flew farther. Three gaping wormy fingers grasped Agitis Furrow about neck and chest and hoisted him off his feet. With astounding reflexes the peltryman snatched up his boar-spear stuck ready into the soggy loam and began to jab wildly at the great arm as it raveled, pulling him back into the main mass of the sapperling. Flourishing his mighty spear, Agitis skewered the thing right in the fat of its belly as it sought to swallow him whole. The great, heaving mass of wormy flesh received the long spear with a quiver of shock, sliding unflinchingly up it to engulf the entire blade, unhindered by the wide tangs.
