by D M Cornish
The noise of the audience settled to a pent hubble-bubble.
With a sinking feeling, Rossamünd beheld the remains of what must have been a grisly desperate clash. He had little love for dogs, but to watch them tear each other apart was not his notion of entertainment. Steeling himself for an unpleasant spectacle ahead, he looked glumly about the crowd.
Far across on the opposite side were a set of canopied boxes hung with leaf-hued taffeta. In them sat a congregation clad almost uniformly in dark green and black. Mostly secretaries and spurns, they were gathered about a fellow proud in peacock silks and curly periwig of spotless white.
“Pater Pontiflex Maupin,” Rookwood said in Rossamünd’s ear. “He is the owner of the Broken Doll and has major interest in this place,” he said, rolling his eyes at the pit, the stalls and all the ruckus with them.
Sitting on the right of this man was a young dandidawdler in a vibrant harness of blue-green stripe with pink, his throat thickly enfolded in a tortue, a high neckerchief of white cotton. Most remarkable was his silver wig, its fringe twisted up into a pair of horns, its tail long and thick like that of a horse and held by greasy black ribbon. The wig twinkled under the cosmos of bright-limns hanging by hook or chain from the convoluted scaffold of heavy beams that held up the weight of the city far above.
Upon the other side sat a singular woman swathed in black with a flaring collar of black feathers making an unhallowed aura about her pale bald head. Her face was cold, her gaze unkind; a great spoor of a diamond and an arrow combined jutted above her right eye. She was a dexter—a wit and fulgar in one. Instinctively, Rossamünd began making a tally of the costly regimen of chemistry she would need to keep her collection of foreign and contrary organs from rebelling within and destroying her.
“Ah, that is Anaesthesia Myrrh,” Rookwood explained. “She prefers spurning work to teratology. As much as I admire the lahzarine set, she truly frightens me . . .” Some distraction away to his left took his attention. “Euse has achieved only one other seat,” he said after a moment’s cryptic waving of fingers. “Do you want it, young sir, or . . .”
The dexter looked sharply at Rossamünd looking at her.
A hot flush in his cheeks and cold thrill of fright in his innards, the young factotum hastily turned his attention to his companion’s question. “No, no . . . ,” he said quickly, not relishing being pinned in among all these fervid spectators.
“Well, how about you remain here,” Rookwood advised. “We shall sit out the first half.” He shrugged. “Then we shall meet here again to call it even, yes?”
Left to stand at the balcony, Rossamünd crouched on his haunches and stared uneasily down through the posts at the blood-puddle becoming just one of the many stains in the swept earth of the pit, a rising apprehension pressing on his soul. The grieving threwd was so strong in that awful pit, it was almost audible. Can the people not feel it?
A clang of metal and a heavy man in a thick buff apron of bright blue stepped through the iron portal, raising a hand to the audience’s renewed raptures. With him came two tractors leading a Greater Derehund of exceptional size. Its watery eyes full of death and hopelessness, the mighty dog snarled at the folk of the lowest stalls. The man in blue stopped before the canopied boxes and did honor to his patrons. At this Pater Maupin stood and, beholding the crowd, twirled a lace handkerchief in acknowledgment of their applause. He sat, and a fellow behind him in clerical black called down to the tractor, “Scion of the Geiterwand; which champion do you bring before us to do goodly battle?”
“I bring befer ye Skarfithin, the Blackheart of Dere!” the thickset handler cried in his best in-public voice. “Scion of the Geiterwand; winner o’ thirteen full stouches and sixteen halves and as sure a wager as ever prowled the pit!”
More cheers.
“As you say, sir!” the clerical gent returned; then, twisting his attention to the stalls, he cried, “Who dares bid unseen against this mighty friend of men? Do I have any takers? You, sir!” He pointed to some invisible soul well above Rossamünd’s vantage. “You appear the all-a’glory kind; will you dare a posit against this fearsome specimen?” He swept his hand down to indicate the panting Derehund, Skarfithin.
A muffled, unintelligible cry from on high brought shouts of approbation and jeers of playful derision from many.
“Bravo to you, sir!” the clerk cried, and sat again.
Rossamünd could see several similar clerical fellows moving among the stalls, listening intently to the wagering calls of the chancers, scribbling upon tiny folds of paper and exchanging monies.
Rossamünd craned to see down over the lip of the balustrade to the access that he could just make out below, curious despite himself to see what tribe of dog the contender would be.
With a clunk and a sustained whining rumble the iron gutter now shifted. Rising out of the floor, it slowly became a metal curtain dividing the pit in two. The tractor released his anxious hound and quickly retreated, the beast ravening suddenly, chasing the fellow from the pit and giving Rossamünd a sharp start, though much of the crowd seemed well used to such shocks.
Left on its own, Skarfithin paced before the iron fence, its dripping tongue lolling hungrily, sniffing at the small holes that stippled the iron sheet.
Rossamünd held his breath. He looked up into the stalls to find Rookwood, but the fellow was intent on the beasts in the pit below and laughing and talking with great animation to Eusebus.
A thump and another clang! warned that the near door below him was opening.
With a collective gasp the entire audience went quiet.
What manner of tykehound was it that caused such corporate dismay?
Rossamünd pressed his forehead against the struts of the balustrade till it hurt, to get a glimpse of the competing dog. When the beast stalked into view, right there, right below him, the young factotum’s innards went frigid. It was not another dog Skarfithin was to fight. It was . . . a monster.
Out stalked a nicker of the most weird appearance, walking upright with strange angular flexings of ropy, footless legs. Instead of a head it had a long writhing tentacle, with a similar appendage at its posterior end too, its arms of exactly the same form as its legs. Its warty skin was an ashen green, with vivid rings of purple mottling the darker hide of its back, its limbs and tentacles.
This was worse than a dogfight. It was a hob-rousing set between selthounds and bogles. Here was the cause of the anguished threwd!
Rossamünd’s soul revolted. What have I found!
8
IN THE PIT
sabrine adept(s) also called percerdieres, lehrechtlers or spathidrils; said to be the cousins of the sagaars, originating long ago in some foreign northern land. Revering swordplay as the sagaars revere the dance, some go so far as to almost worship their swords, ancient therimoirs of forgotten make, though they have no time for devotion to constant motion as the sagaars do.The best of them, those warranted to teach, are known as sabrine magists or master sword-players, and will gather about them a loose association of adepts, serving together for a common ideal.
“GOODLY peoples,” the rouse-clerk cried into the stunned hush from his safe seat in the lowest stalls, “I give you the Handsome Grackle!” He flung a dramatic gesture at the frighteningly alien and ungainly creature that awaited its doom in the rousing-pit. “What be your stakes?”
At this the watchers burst with the dispute of wagers, numbered white pugs waving as results were speculated and amounts offered. In the din it was still clear: most seemed convinced of the Derehund’s victory.
Fixing his attention on the creature dubbed the Handsome Grackle, Rossamünd could well understand why, for the creature staggered in palsied jerks into the middle of the pit. Staying back from the perforated fence, it turned quickly from side to side, both tentacles reaching out and up, rippling as if they were testing the very air. Feeling a delicate flutter in his head like the gentlest sending of a talented wit, Rossamünd knew the thing
was looking, searching by means unknown to find an escape. There was something about its parched, knobbled skin and bizarre physiology that spoke more of the vinegary deeps than of the bosky dells or forsaken pastures. As the beast twisted, the young factotum could see in the center of its torso a weird, vertical mouth quivering, making great “O’s” as if it were gasping for breath.
Transfixed, Rossamünd swallowed at the clench in his throat, his hand already grasping for a potive.
A shriek of clashing metal silenced the crowd.
With a penetrating boom! the iron curtain dropped and the foes were immediately confronted. In an instant Skarfithin was all hackles and maddened, shuddering growls. Saliva drooled from its gnashing fangs; its small red-shot maniac eyes rolled. Without a face the Handsome Grackle seemed little affected: its only reaction was to bend its tentacles and wave them slightly at its canine foe.
Without a backward crouch the selthound sprang, leaping the entire gap between it and the Grackle. There was a frightful crunching like the chewing of a fresh apple as the dog bit deep into the startled monster’s left arm, the momentum of the leap bringing both crashing to the hardened dirt. The Grackle did not make a sound as it fell, no cry of agony or shout of fear. Even if it had, none would have heard it as the willing audience let out a roar of delight at its fall. Gripping alien flesh in its mighty maw, Skarfithin shook its head violently until the whole form of the Grackle rocked. Finally some piece of it tore free, leaving a deep purple gash in its arm. The Derehund was not intent on morsels, and struck again and then again. With every chunk of seltling flesh ripped away, the dog’s assaults grew more frenzied, not allowing the mauled and flailing Grackle time to right itself.
“Come on, ye mighty daggy, rend the mucky salamander!” were the shouts from the lower stalls.
“Huzzahrah! Mother and the boys’ll be supping hearty a’morrow!”
“I declare, bravo! Smash the brute to flinders! My entire purse is on your head!”
“Bravo!” came the cries from the high stalls; even Rookwood was calling out with babbling gusto.
Rossamünd could scarce stand it. Without looking, he began counting through the slots of his digitals.
Suddenly the Grackle made a huffing, almost keening cry as, with a great thrust of its limbs, it threw Skarfithin back and sent the dog tumbling to the floor. Before Rossamünd’s eyes and all the wagerers’ with him, the monster’s ghastly purple wounds began to ripple, the flesh bubble and the wounds close.
It’s mending itself! Rossamünd stilled his face to contain his delight.
“It heals!” some observant soul across the way echoed, and a hush momentarily dampened the throng.
THE HANDSOME GRACKLE
Undaunted, the Derehund pounced straight back as the Grackle tried to stand, the dog’s great teeth clashing loudly on vacant air. Swinging its club-fisted arms, the nadderer managed to bay the Derehund.
Someone shouted, “Ten oscars on the sea-selt!” and the flurry of bets and jeers and mindless exclamations exploded again.
At this mighty noise Skarfithin got teeth into meat and pulled the nadderer’s left arm, threatening to topple it again. Yet the Handsome Grackle was not so easily done for. With another austerating hiss it lifted its arm, hauling its foe, still clamped to the meat of its arm, clear off the floor. Writhing like a line-caught fish, Skarfithin growled and seethed and would not let go. The Grackle raised its other arm and, with a quick, powerful punch, sent the Derehund reeling, its mouth still full of monster-flesh, to smack with an unpleasant wet sound on the far wall and slide heaplike to the hard-packed dirt.
Dismayed at last, Skarfithin labored to stand and now paced more warily before its foe, head down, gaze murderous, calculating, its ribs heaving like a bellows.
Surrounded by puddles of its own gore, but its wounds almost entirely gone, the Grackle remained motionless; only the tips of its tentacles undulated minutely, bending toward the battered dog.
Snarling, the tykehound leaped once more, rushing the sea-monster from the left with astounding fortitude, seeking to catch the Grackle exposed as it twisted to face this new assault.
Worried now as much for dog as for monster, Rossamünd could barely watch, and half closed his eyes as the Derehund bit terrible hold of the nadderer’s lower tentacle. Tugging powerfully left then right then left then right, Skarfithin tried to overset the Grackle and bring it down. The monster tottered perilously and toppled sideways.Yet it did not collapse; rather, one of its arms now became a leg, a stumped foot became a clubbed hand and the perversely vertical mouth was now more properly horizontal. Still the maddened dog tore and tugged, its jaw locked on soft tentacle flesh, until Rossamünd was sure it would tear the entire limb from the poor Grackle’s trunk. With a hiss the nadderer rolled completely onto its other end. Weirdly deft acrobatics had it standing upside down, both arms now legs, both legs now arms, and Skarfithin was lifted high as the lower tentacle became the head.
Still the Derehund would not let go. Dangling, its growls like small thunder heaving in its throat, legs scrabbling and twitching impotently, it kept its hold.
The disconcerting maw of the Grackle gaped wide, its sphincterlike lips quivering, revealing row on row of rasping ridges. Its teeth! With a shrug it flexed its surprisingly powerful head-tentacle—dog and all—and swung the tenacious Skarfithin right into its open mouth. The rippling lips closed about its middle with a wet slap and a collision of bones.
The crowd was stunned silent.
The Handsome Grackle had bit Skarfithin, the Blackheart of Dere, clean in two . . .
In the quiet Rossamünd could hear a faint, breathy wailing coming from the victor as it flicked the dog’s now lifeless head and shoulders splatteringly down.
Skarfithin had lost—and with it almost every soul in the room; though by the count of the losers, Pater Maupin and any other associate of the pit had done well. Mute shock quickly became a murmur of malcontent.
Clearly unsatisfied at the outcome, a brave soul leaped from the stalls down into the pit. He was a strangely dressed fellow in an odd, folded hat of red cloth, gathered over itself and tilting over one ear. For proofing he wore a short-sleeved frock coat of buff dyed dull olive, undershirt puffed over his elbows, thick black vambrins protecting forearm and hand, a red sash about his waist. The fellow wore no protecting boots, rather soled hose, one leg white, the other bright yellow and patterned with the figures of twisted black laurel-fronds.This was a sabrine adept; skilled at swordplay, they were said to taint their swords with venal pastes. Instead of the telltale black, however, this adept clutched a thin blade of glaucous translucent white, handle down. Its curved cutting edge reared behind his back.
A spathidril, Rossamünd realized in horror, the most deadly of all blades.
The adept betrayed no urgency, but stared almost in abstraction at the Grackle, approaching it one halting dance-like step at a time.
Neither pit-bobs nor the rouse-master tried to stop the adept, and the people began to mutter approvingly, eager for him to go to his deadly work and avenge their losses.
Bloody-mouthed and so terribly alone among all this hatred, the Grackle seemed to sense something truly dangerous about its new foe. Shuffling backward to the tunnel from which it had come, the nadderer’s tentacles rippled in clear agitation, thrusting in the adept’s direction, then retracting sharply as if they tasted something foul.
With an awed gasp from the chancers, the adept suddenly whipped forward, sword a wan blur betwixt man and monster, and sprang back to stand tall once more, noble, supercilious.
What just happened?
The Handsome Grackle seemed unaffected, yet the swordist had all the swagger of the victor.
Rossamünd looked more closely at the nadderer. Its tentacles were tight now, their ends blurring with a stunned vibration. As he watched, a terrible incision began to open from the left shoulder of the beast and down deep into its trunk. The Grackle wheezed gore and collapsed to the hard floor.<
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Its shocking wound did not heal.
It did not rise again.
Cheers!
Rapturous, delighted ovation!
Smiling with what seemed to Rossamünd feigned satisfaction, Pater Maupin stood again in his proud peacock silks and white periwig and bent down to shake the hand of the adept.Torn gambling chits fell like celebratory rain as every throat cried its approval of the swordsman—every throat but one.
The stark blank inside Rossamünd had no accompanying voice. Yet if it had, he could not speak such a thing in this invidical place. I should have intervened . . . He ached inwardly, doubling his fist about the caste of botch powder he had half consciously selected from his digital.
With tumblings of bolts and locks, the farther pit door was opened and the stricken tractor in blue buff collected what little was left of his once-mighty fighting hound. The adept was helped back up into the stalls by many reaching, congratulatory hands. The heavy corpse of the slaughtered Grackle was dragged away by a quarto of pit-bobs.The gory floor was quickly scrubbed by laboring lads, the ticket tearings swept away and the pit readied for the next bout.
What other undeserving creatures languished beneath the gambling house? How can I leave them all there? The young factotum was in torment.Yet how could he hope to ever set them all free?
Another dog was brought, this time a white-and-gray stafirhund led by a tractor in an orange-and-white apron.
“Patient souls!” came the rouse-clerk’s cry as he swept an arm to point dramatically to the jowly, slobbering dog, “I give you our own darling—Truncheon, the Bogle-biting Bitch-queen of the Batch!”
