The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  With increasing frequency they found baited animals hung, dead, on fence posts: foxes, hares, possums, mink—left to be taken by peltrymen or soapers. Though the land was long cicurated and barely threwdish, Rossamünd expected to spy some small bogle murdered and stiff, strung up on some fence-post hook.

  Though a well-used, well-founded thoroughfare bending through the domed pasturelands, the Athy Road was not broad and straight like the Wormway that ran east from Winstermill. Several times was Fransitart forced to slow and pull aside or stop for oncoming traffic: local folk commuting carefree between towns; post-lentums or hired canty-coaches carelessly hustling to the great city; lumber wagons from the plantations or ore-carters from the local coal mine, driven by hardy wagoners and under the escort of saturnine harnessguarde in the employ of some mining cartel. With these obstacles and the usual privacy stops taken at conveniently luxuriant bushes, when sundown came they were still short of Spelter Innings, a proper wash and a cozy bunk.

  “The town is really only a skip over those hills,” Europe advised, pointing away northwest. “Yet the twist of the road makes it much farther. Let us stop at the nearest nook; this part of the map is easy for sleep.”

  Muttering of a softer seat for his aging tailbones, Fransitart willingly complied, urging the horses to pick up their trot.

  In the cool, clear luster of a just-set sun, they halted in a deep crease on the right-hand side of the road, a bay in the downs that sheltered a stand of young, self-sown white oaks. To the soft chorus of sparse crickets they settled themselves for food and sleep.

  “Ahh, lad, look at thee test like a wise old rhubezhal,” Craumpalin observed proudly as Rossamünd made treacle.

  The young factotum stood a little taller as he brewed, nearly forgetting the foul sensation as he poured the Sugar of Nnun. “Give me elbow-way, Master Pin. I don’t want to topple this nasty stuff on you!”

  It was a cold camp—no fire at least. However, the laborium made for an excellent pot, and once Rossamünd was done with his brewing, Craumpalin assumed the role of cook and soon had a savory medley sizzling out its friendly aromas.

  “This is a decidedly pleasant shift from my usual encampments,” Europe announced. “Hearty food and plaudamentum fit for the dinner table. If I could have, gentlemen, I would have employed all three of you years ago.”

  Despite the general reputation this land had for being friendly and peaceful, the night was divided into three watches—Europe neither offering nor expected to take part and Rossamünd taking the middle watch. Curled on the landaulet seat and well asleep under ample blankets, he reluctantly woke at Craumpalin’s firm shaking and softly rasping voice.

  “Rouse out, me hearty, all is well! Tumble up and shake thyself. Time to watch the midnight world!” The dispenser pointed to the proverbial green star rising with a bulging moon in the eastern firmament. “When Maudlin’s at her height, be waking ol’ Frans for last lookout; don’t let his limping or his groaning drive thee to too much sympathy.”

  Rubbing eyes and yawning wide, Rossamünd climbed as easy as he could from the carriage. With a yawn, he hooked his baldric with its attached stoup over his shoulder, adjusted the digitals at his waist and made ready for all surprises.

  The night was prickling cold, the air sharp with the tang of frost and damp grasses as his breath made steam in Phoebë’s rising gleam. Cheeks stinging, Rossamünd wrapped a blanket of silken wool about him and listened, blinking, holding his breath to better hear any furtive hints. In this cleft the air was still, rare puffs setting the knuckled branches of the oaks to an arid rattling. Up on high in the spangled firmament where Gethsemenë sparkled brightest, flat fragments of clouds raced, thin luminous veils that left the world of men and monster untroubled in their chase.

  Rossamünd drew deeply of the frosted night.

  Somewhere away to the left a boobook gave voice to a husky, cautious hu-hoo, speaking twice then lapsing to quiet.

  His bladder griping for his attention, the young factotum awoke more fully. “Give me a moment, Master Pin,” he said as the old dispenser was settling himself for sleep. “I need the jakes.”

  Grumbling to himself, the old dispenser kept hold of the musketoon and consented to watch the sleepers a little longer.

  With a quick look about, the young factotum sought the privacy of a flowering hawthorn up on the brow of the left-hand hill.This was deceptively steep, and he was well awake and near bursting as he reached the blossoming tree. Finding relief just in the nick, Rossamünd was gifted with an enchanting, almost endless panorama of the vales and swards beyond, a silver-lit sea of flattened downs bounded only on the east by the low and distant umbra of the Brandenfells. Most obvious in this midnight charm were the twinkling lights of a settlement in a shallow combe west-by-northwest, not much more than two miles away.

  Spelter Innings.

  Rearranging himself and about to descend, Rossamünd caught movement in the field across the way. Before him the earth dipped abruptly to a plant-choked runnel, the other bank rising to a larger, almost perfectly round hillock. In Phoebë’s stark light, bright enough to obliterate the sight of many stars, the young factotum could see this hillock was sprouted all over with slender square-sided markers of stone tapering to pyramid points or blank orbs. Crownstones! A whole mass of them! This was a boneyard, perhaps the very one identified in the first singular for the corpse-eating Swarty Hobnag—the one already filled by some other teratologist.

  Something shifted in the necropolis, a careful, contained action in the shadows of the stones. At the base of an unremarkable crownstone, some stooped figure was pawing at the soil. In full sight from Rossamünd’s vantage, it clearly thought itself hidden from view of the middling distant town. Even in the three-quarter lunar light the young factotum had the awful dawning it was not an everyman.

  Was this the Swarty Hobnag? Surely not . . . Surely it was just a corser or an ashmonger. Which is worse?

  Drawing cautiously down the hill in the hide of the long grass, moon shadows as his ally, Rossamünd could feel a faint, unpleasant threwdishness tingling in his backbone and shivering along both arms.The furtive digger pivoted unexpectedly and stared suspiciously at the slope, its attention fixing disconcertingly close to where the young factotum huddled. Distorted blunt-jawed face plain in the moon-glow, it let out a very un-humanlike hiss, then returned to its gruesome excavation.

  Surely it was the Swarty Hobnag!

  Clearly the teratologist who had taken the singular for its annihilation was in no hurry to complete the labor . . . or had met his end at the creature’s hands.

  He thought to go for Craumpalin’s help, but feared the creature might leave in the time it would take to climb down and come back. Rossamünd sneaked closer, determined to confront the creature before Europe did and drive it away. As carefully as he could, he scampered down to the trickling runnel and pushed through the thick fennel, releasing its pungent licorice perfume into the night. Catching hold of the rough top of the boneyard’s drystone wall, Rossamünd heaved himself over, to land in the stubbly rabbit-mown lawn of the necropolis.

  A caste of beedlebane was in Rossamünd’s grip in a trice as he toiled up the incline. Rounding the memorial obstacles, he was startled to find the creature so close, so stocky, so real and apparently awaiting his approach.

  “UHH!” He gave voice to wordless dismay.

  The Swarty Hobnag unbent to its full height. Even on stout legs it was a foot taller than Rossamünd, its gangling forelimbs thick and prodigiously muscled, all fingers ending in obtuse claws. Its face was bluff and chinless, its skin parched black.Thin nostrils in a small, sharply pointed nose flexed and narrowed as the monster sniffed and snorted. Its lips parted obscenely, rolled back over blenched gums and protruding carnivorous teeth as once more the creature hissed.

  “Go back to the wilds!” Rossamünd demanded. He had traded words with an urchin-king; he could banter with a lesser nicker. “The lands of everymen are not for you!”


  The creature stared at him with jet-dark eyes made luminous by Phoebë’s unsympathetic luster. Tainted threwd seethed from the bogle, a broken, confused malice as clear now to the young factotum as the rising reek of the opened grave.

  THE SWARTY HOBNAG

  “The long-gone have not been put here just for you to eat,” Rossamünd pressed, self-doubt beginning to gnaw.

  “What are thee to prat at me about mine own doings!” the Hobnag coughed, its voice somewhere between a belch and a wheeze. “What are thee with thy rosy cheeks, thy puffy lips and thy dandy naughtbringerling drapes? Thee clearly lives false among the menly ones. Dost they love thee like thee was their own?” it heckled, then spat.

  “I am Rossamünd, known to the Lapinduce, whose realm you are spoiling, watched over by the sparrow-duke, and servant to the Branden Rose,” Rossamünd retorted, the words just spilling out. “Nought but bad can come from your worthless digging. My mistress will not be so kind.”

  “Hark thee, the little blithely hinderling, quothing thy poxy masters!” it spat. “I fully ken whose borders I invade, Pinky! What might the Largoman do to me so far from his hiding hole? Has he sent thee to chasten me?” it continued in a mockingly saccharin voice. “Or hast thy sparrow-prince doomed thee to bring us all to harmony?”

  “There is a writ taken against you . . .”

  “Bah! Thou blithely ones always wheedle and nag at me!”

  “You will be found and killed,” Rossamünd pressed, regretting already entering into parley with this wretched thing. “You must go—”

  “Humbuggler!” it barked. “Why don’t thee!”

  At this the foul thing sprang from the hole it had fashioned. Without hesitation, Rossamünd threw the beedlebane. Yet the nicker leaped higher, narrowly clearing the glaring sickly orange burst of the potive as it struck the globe of an intervening crownstone with a whoomp! In that single bound, the Hobnag covered the five-yard gap between them and more still, landing adroitly behind Rossamünd. Before the young factotum could turn, it struck him hard in the side with a mighty backhanded swat, lifting him clear off his feet and sending him smacking, back and shoulders, into a crownstone ten feet uphill. The carven rock cracked with the blow of Rossamünd’s fall, and the heavy top slipped and tottered. Rossamünd sagged back against the memorial. Weird lights crowded his vision’s edges, and an iron taste rose in the back of his throat.

  Head craning to see the fall of its victim, the blunt-faced monster shambled up and past the bubbling remains of the burst beedlebane, thinking perhaps its diminutive foe done in.

  Dragging himself out of the blankness that sought to submerge him, Rossamünd pulled up his legs to stand, pains flashing all about his battered body. With a dry, stony pop! the top of the crownstone came loose and toppled directly over the young factotum. Rossamünd’s senses were a sudden clarity as he reached into his strength and caught the heavy thing in both arms, holding it before it could squash him. He heaved to his feet, the stone still in his grasp, as the cunning Hobnag rushed him with loping leggy strides. Head craning back and jaws stretched impossibly wide with teeth fully exposed, it charged like some jutting jagged saw, seeking to carve Rossamünd to mince and jelly.Yet, with strangely indifferent lucidity, Rossamünd stepped aside, swinging the crown-piece like some battering post, striking the nicker on throat and jaw to send it colliding with the broken base.The foul creature reeled and stumbled, lurching back down the boneyard hill. Tripping on another crownstone, it came to a stop, parched black skin on its left temple torn to reveal lurid flesh seeping in the moonlight.

  “So thee has found thy strength . . . ,” the Hobnag muttered, facing him cautiously now.

  Chest heaving, hurting sharply with every gasp, Rossamünd caught his breath.Though the shadowy hint of its face was a dismal blank, the young factotum somehow perceived a kind of bafflement in the wretched thing.

  “I want food, not fighting,” it seethed, and with that it sprang nimbly away and hared across the flank of the hill, attempting escape between the stones.

  Mindlessly, Rossamünd dared his strength and with an almighty heave flung the crown-piece at the retreating creature, throwing it astonishingly far to catch the Hobnag a glancing cuff upon its hip. An audible crack! broke the night quiet and the wretch tumbled to the mold, pitching head over end to disappear among the grave-markers. Seizing a caste of Frazzard’s powder, Rossamünd hurried as fast as his own bashed body would allow through the tall slender crownstones like some avenging heldin glorified so often in his old pamphlets. Not far on, where he thought he saw the nicker fall, he found the crownstone piece, but the Hobnag was gone. He spied a glimpse of it, staggering through the stones toward the iron-bound entrance on the opposite side of the hill.

  “What good does it do to make everymen your prey?” the young factotum cried futilely after it.

  “Humbuggler!” he heard it hiss at him in turn. Struggling over the iron-arched gate, the thing was gone into the night.

  Rossamünd thought to follow it, but he did not have a single notion what he would do if he caught up with the creature. To kill in the passion and mayhem of a fight was one thing, to destroy by cold choice another, and that he did not think he could do.

  His perception swam and oblivion crowded.

  Something sharp and deep hurt in his right side.

  His back pained.

  He knelt for a moment in the graveyard soil and took as deep a breath as his aches would allow.

  A terrifying, reedy wailing, an alto voice of sorrow and rage rose and fell on the shifting airs.

  Then silence.

  No other sound punctuated the quiet, that complete and buzzing silence that seemed to follow every fight; even the crickets were still.

  Anxious to get back to Craumpalin waiting so stoutly, Rossamünd clambered to his feet, gathered up the fallen crown-piece in one arm as if it were a light thing and went to the partly exhumed grave. Hastily kicking the new-turned soil back into the hole, Rossamünd refused to look too closely at the ashen dome of the putrefying head poking through where the Hobnag had been digging. Evidently, the dear departed were humed here feet-first too, just as in Winstermill, but that was already more than he wanted to know. Returning the crownstone piece to its original stump, he gingerly scaled the wall and returned up the hill and back to his watch.

  All twinges and stabbing aches, he looked to the slow-spinning heavens; the Signals had barely moved. From when he left till his return and the great struggle for life and limb in between had taken little more than one quarter of an hour.

  At the camp, he found Craumpalin sitting in a sagging huddle propped against the musketoon and nodding in sleep, unmolested and serene. With a wry sniff, he thought to wake the old salt, tell of his exploits and receive some skillful care.Yet what was there to say? Smiling ruefully to himself, he left the old fellow to his slumber.

  Probing his flanks and chest, he sought the manner of his injuries for himself. No cuts or gashes, no blood, just a very sore trunk. Fossicking a gray vial of levenseep from his stoup, he took a swig. His mouth was filled with a taste like fallen leaves that spread an inward cheer, dulling pain, lifting weary thoughts. Invigorated, the young factotum sat cross-legged by the landaulet’s rear ladeboard wheel with the musketoon across his lap.To the soft sounds of Europe’s regular slumbering breaths and Craumpalin’s restless grumbles, he settled himself and—almost as if nothing untoward had ever happened—waited for his stint to end.

  14

  THE PATREDIKE

  gregorine(s) common name for gater and parish border warden in the rural parts of the central Soutland states; also gregoryman, and so called because they serve as protectors. In the Grumid lands they are sometimes named bindlestiffs—a term usually retained for more vagrant types in other parts of the world—for the time they will spend patrolling their parish boundaries, living rough. Traditionally employed as protectors against the nickers and bogles, in safer parishes gregorymen often become more con
cerned with the small disputes of parochial parish pride as small regions vie and squabble with their neighbors like full-grown states.

  PHOEBË’S thoughts were on setting and Maudlin was glimmering verdantly in heaven’s acme when, in the small of the night, Rossamünd and Fransitart finally changed watches.

  The old salt readily accepted Rossamünd’s story of his confrontation with the Swarty Hobnag. “Methinks, lad,” he said, gently examining Rossamünd’s torso for the nature of his hurts, “that on the next occasion, ye come rouse me out whene’er there be an enemy in sight. I would rather ye stayed hale an’ let yer enemy go free on the breeze than have us towin’ ye home with yer stern-lights stove in an’ yer rudder shot through.”

  Rossamünd had no response to this. He peered at Fransitart’s haggard, sea-scarred dial and wrestled inwardly if this was the moment to tell him of the Lapinduce. The longer left, the harder to do. Is this how his master carried the secret of his own origin for all that time?

  Doting just a little, the aging vinegaroon poured him a tot of claret. “It does me old wind good, though, to see ye win the day,” Fransitart said with a chuckle, ending the awkwardly extending pause. “At but half their ages ye’re already accomplishin’ the feats of them heldin-swells ye always love to read on.”

  “Well . . . I . . . ,” Rossamünd mumbled, sipping his claret awkwardly. Using his satchel as a pillow he stretched out, wrapped once more in the blanket. Part of him wanted sleep, but his heart still hurried and his thoughts still jumped with the lingering, passion of the fight. “Master Frans, what is a humbuggler?”

  Huddled cross-legged nearby, musketoon now in hand, the ex-dormitory master seemed to start and took a moment to answer. “Not a very pleasant word, is what it is, lad. It’s the foul name given to a blaggardly cove who acts the opposite of what he says.”

  “A hypocrite?”

  “Aye, that’s the one; a hypocritactical cur ...” Fransitart regarded his young companion closely. “Don’t ye be fret-tin’ for what ye are, Rossamünd; ye’re exactly what ye’re s’posed to be, just as Providence determines for each o’ us. The sleep of the victor is for ye now, lad. Turn to your hammock else ye’ll be shot through and sinking tomorrow.”