by D M Cornish
They were going home, the knave barely mitigated by the success at Patredike.
Their adventure was nearly over.
So soon . . .
“Well, this used to be more . . . fun,” the fulgar muttered darkly. “The only felicity is the weather,” she added, rolling her hazel eyes to the new diem’s lowering cloud as the landaulet rolled back along the bridge they had arrived upon the day before.
No masked fictler awaited them at the intersection as Fransitart took them now left to continue on down a road named the Holt Street, riding between promontories of native stone thrusting from the heights, pouring with thin cataracts from their summits or fissures in their flanks. Eventually these gave over to low fells dark with haphazard woodlands of native myrtle, turpentine and beech. Frequently they passed great lines of neatly planted teak and oak, ringing with the cough cough cough of distant chopping or the sighing rasp of a saw.Tiny tan-and-white birds chased even tinier bugs among it all, tetching minutely at the travelers for daring to trespass.
At the next major divergence they found a large stone-and-wood wayhouse signed THE SAWYERS’ SLAKE and built right under the reach of towering ancient pines. Marked by a milestone, the main way went almost directly south to Coddlingtine Dell, hidden miles away in its leafy vale, whereas the lesser road—Holt Street—continued in a gentle curve slightly south of east. Drawing carefully through a herd of crotchety pigs let to graze the verges by their surly floppy-hatted swain, Fransitart eased the landaulet to a halt before the wayhouse to let Rufous and Candle water themselves from the common trough. On again, about a mile down the Coddling Road they found the route blocked by a handful of stationary conveyances, themselves stopped by a pair of enormous trees fallen directly across the road. Folks from the held-up carriages of either side were clambering over the mighty trunks, hacking at them with whatever tools were handy—hangers, hatchets, heavy knives—one fellow even bashing at lesser branches with the butt of his musket.
“Some gent’s gone to fetch a woodsman or sawyer or some such to cut us proper clear,” a genial lenterman called over his shoulder to Fransitart—and by association his mistress—from his high seat on a glossy yellow lentum-and-four just before them. “Might be a while till they come though . . .”
“Aye,” interjected a grumpy wagoner from his long tarpaulin-covered dray next to the lentum. “But it will still be a blighted sight quicker’n going the Holtway,” he said, swinging his arm in an exaggerated arc, “all the way about to the Dell.”
“I tire of rural main streets anyway,” Europe declared. “We shall take the long way to Brandenbrass and sleep rough for our last nights out.”
Fransitart backed the landaulet, turned them about and returned through the swain and his hogs to take the old Holt Street. They ate a luncheon of crocidole and Scantling Aire cheese as they went, and the farther they traveled, the surer Rossamünd became of human scrutiny.Yet, if it were so, no impertinent, blank-faced observer materialized this time to prove his suspicions.
The terrain became increasingly downhill, the way bending steadily south about the flank of a high round rise until it emerged from the woods between two house-sized boulders. On the right now between hill and road ran an open culvert fashioned of ancient concrete, its sluggish effluent congealed with algae of a deep and vibrant green. Hidden frogs buzzed with truculent grating voices, and humming emerald emperorflies hovered low, prowling ever-hungry over the sludge. Beyond this the side of the hill climbed, dense with pine and myrtle. Upon the left along the verge grew an unbroken line of elegant pines, and past their rough trunks the wooded land fell quickly to a panorama of a near-treeless wold, purple gray with flowering mercy jane, rolling down and away to the distant milk green sea. The pungence of the ocean blew gently on them, mellowed by the strawlike perfume of the downs.
Back prickling apprehensively, Rossamünd thought he heard travelers approaching from behind, but every time he turned, the bend of road stayed empty.
“Something bain’t right,” Fransitart muttered.
Europe pursed her lips, eyes flicking alertly from the height on their right to the drop on their left.
Taking the gentle unerringly right-handed crook of the culvert road slowly, Fransitart slowed yet further as the way ahead contracted to pass between two large olives growing from the base of the low wall that bisected the road.Where the wall cut the culvert like a gate, rusted bars stood vertically across the drain, a sieve collecting all manner of debris. Several yards beyond this obstacle, the unfolding bend of the road revealed a curricle leaning sharply on its side, one wheel off and sitting conspicuously across the road. Beside it stood a singularly white-skinned woman in a white summer dress, all embarrassed smiles and fluttering lashes. Waving to them, her attention flicked to an angry twittering commotion in the olive trees.
Something small dashed in on the wing from the great bush, chattering angrily, diving at the ears of Rufous and Candle, flying almost into their faces, desperately seeking their attention otherwise blocked by winkers.
Darter Brown!
Fransitart cursed loudly as the two horses tossed their heads and jerked violently to the left and back, shying wildly to avoid the fierce sparrow’s diminutive assault.
Standing in his seat to call Darter Brown to stop and knowing full well he had no such command over the perplexing bird, Rossamünd saw hurried movement in the tree to the right, people hefting something large and round and then running with all haste. The horses reared, tossing him back into the seat. In an abrupt, shattering flash the ex-dormitory master’s imprecations were cut short as the world burst, an eruption of soil and stones and sharp fragments that engulfed the poor horses with a detonation so loud it was like silence. The almighty gust of smashing air and dust lifted Rossamünd from his seat, throwing him high and long to land with numbing impact, skidding and rolling on grass and needles to halt with a crack! in a cleft of spreading pine roots. Pummeled and confounded, for untellable moments he just lay there, cap-a-pie, ears deaf with a thousand stentorian ringings, unable and unwilling to move.Yet one thought shimmered clear. We have been ambushed!
18
THE AID OF FRIENDS UNBIDDEN
testudoe(s) heavy-ended bludgeon, five to seven feet long, knobbled with metal studs or wooden knots and giving a powerful and nasty blow. A very old pattern of weapon finding its way into Soutland culture from the Lauslands—who took it from the passionate folk of Ing—testudoes are traditionally made of wood and as such provide some protection from the arcs of a fulgar if you should ever choose to take on such a foe.
THE first sensation to puncture Rossamünd’s numbness was the shouting of many voices from every cardinal; angry cries surrounded them, accompanied by the dire pops of several firelocks.
NO! Fransitart! Craumpalin! Europe!
Sight still reeling, he felt rough hands grip him hard about each arm, lifting him well off his feet. At once he reckoned Fransitart and Craumpalin had endured the blast to come gather him, but there was something unkind in the handling, and the sweaty pungence that accompanied the two heavy figures hefting him was frighteningly foreign. Senses clarifying in his alarm, Rossamünd saw his captors as strangers man-shaped and man-sized, robed in black and wearing white oval masks striped with two blood-dark bars. Rossamünd’s innards froze.
Fictlers ...
With a coughing growl he exerted his strength, and, to a duet of startled yelps, pulled his arms together, throwing both masklings into each other with a fatty slap. Skulls collided, masks cracked. Rossamünd wrested himself free as the two would-be captors toppled to the ground. Dropped onto his knees, he spluttered and blinked at the fume of dust and powder smoke rolling about him and drifting down the incline. Thick as it was, the roil was quickly settling, revealing the landaulet between the trunks well above and to the left, the carriage broken and tipped back, its thills now splinders. Some large pallid bulk half hung over the road-edge between two pines. With a choke of grief Rossamünd realized it
was Candle, ripped and fatefully still. Sobbing in a rising rage, he clawed desperately at the slope, slipping on the mat of needles as he tried to climb, pulling on thistles and barely sprouted treelings. In confused and frantic fear, he cast about the trees for his masters.
No Fransitart.
No Craumpalin.
No Europe.
There was a great furor on the unseen side of the smashed carriage, a desperate struggle of life and limb. Three penetrating zzacks! rang clear, eliciting muffled cries of agony. With this came a splash as a heavy thing slid into the mucky drain and two fellows in white masks scurried back down the road, hands over heads and wearing the scorching of a fulgar’s defense.
The Branden Rose emerged swiftly from behind the landaulet, shockingly bloodied and sporting a limp, yet very much alive and alert. Her eyes deadly slits, her fuse already in hand, she did not heed her young factotum struggling through the saplings and berry runners below.
In the intensity of his relief, Rossamünd let out a bubbling, choking laugh, yet the sound of it was blanked by the staccato popping of musket fire bursting with white puffs from among the dark conifers high upon the farther bank of the culvert where hidden musketeers plied fire down upon his mistress. Rossamünd threw himself to the hillside by the roots of a tree, glimpsing Europe stagger and drop out of sight beyond the matted brink.
NO!
Smitten dumb in horror, he flicked a caste from his right-hand digital and threw it at the musketeers, a prodigious lob flying clear over the landaulet and the drain.The orange glare of beedlebane flashed among the trunks where the marksmen hid. Another he tossed, and another after that, the blue gust of Frazzard’s powder and the yellow-green glare of loomblaze flickering a yard left and right of the orange fire.
“You little muckhill!” someone shockingly close cursed.
Rossamünd spun about to catch the butt-end of a firelock in his right shoulder, the hit driving him to earth. In the flaring of pain he saw a person clad in leathers of bosky drab, face concealed behind a sthenicon, looming over him, flourishing a long-rifle high and clearly intent on staving his face with the stock.
Addled, Rossamünd did the best thing that occurred to him in the moment and simply caught the swinging rifle butt with both hands, stopping its savage momentum dead.
In shock the lurksman tugged ferociously to get his weapon back, but the young factotum held fast. Thwarted, the lurksman let go and went to draw a blade.
Still gripping the firelock by its stock, Rossamünd did not afford him the chance but drove the barrel hard into the man’s abdomen. Thrust bodily backward, the lurksman buckled in a whimper of agony about the blow, collapsing in on himself as he toppled and half slid, half tumbled down the steep hillside until he was halted by a tree. With a box-deadened gag, the fellow sagged and did not move again.
Struggling, slipping, dragging himself up the sharp slope, Rossamünd could hear the increasing shouts of the hurried advance of a multitude rattling and tramping among the trees. Pivoting his gaze urgently one way and the other, he searched for sign of Europe, of Fransitart, of Craumpalin, of anything . . .
On his right, about the northern curve from where they had first arrived, he could see the heads of perhaps a dozen violent fellows coming with all haste. Half were masked fictlers wielding gabelüngs, war-rakes and long spittendes—every one a wooden weapon that did not easily transmit a fulgar’s arcs. With them came savage-looking fellows carrying large round shields and long thorny clubs, braces of pistols and wickedly barbed blades of black. Wildmen they were, their shaggy hair bound in all manner of knots and spikes, wearing thick Piltmen skirts belted high over their bare chests, running barefoot, their lower legs bound in bands of hide. Most sinister yet among all these were heavier figures swathed about their shoulders in matted furs, their heads casqued in round helmets perforated with many holes sprouting horns or antlers. In thickly armored grips they bore immense wooden testudoes, wickedly barbed and knobbled, each as long as a man is tall. Conspicuous among this motley horde was the feather-hatted stranger with the four-barred mask, the silent watcher from the day before clearly commanding those about with emphatic gesticulations.
His line of sight impeded by the camber of the road and trees sprouting all along its edge, Rossamünd could hear yet another gang rushing from the left. Closer and closer the stouching parties drew, two jaws of a trap, coming headlong from north and south, caterwauling to steel their nerve. At the same moment the clatter of a small but violent turmoil sounded down past a screen of olives upon a lower slope.
Fransitart? Craumpalin!
Ready to dash to this new commotion, he was stopped as Europe’s head and shoulders thrust into view above the matted verge of the roadside. The fulgar hunkered by the rear wheel of the landaulet, leaning on her fuse. Saved by the excellence of her proofing, her expression bleak yet unflinchingly resolute, she glared back and forth rapidly between the all-too-quickly encroaching gangs.
Hollering obscenities at their lonely foe as they drew in sight of her, the wild southern horde swarmed along the road on either side of the broken landaulet. Impassioned by more than common battle fervor and howling like crazed hounds, they pushed the carriage in their rage. It tottered on the brink, and with a great creak and a corporate shout of success tipped between the line of pines and off the road. In a clash of splinters it hurtled rearward down the slope, flattening myrtle saplings as it bore toward Rossamünd. Its rear right wheel struck some unseen obstruction in the weeds and needle. The whole vehicle leaped, spraying chests and prizes and lesser effects as it flipped onto its side. Sliding, it smashed to a halt a few feet to Rossamünd’s left against a row of lower trees.
Driven into the open, Europe leaped away and back along the road, limp forgotten, spinning in a martial dance, frock and petticoats twirling. Fuse twisting faster than eye could follow, she made headlong for the northern party, now charging her too.
Overeager to grapple with their vaunted adversary, some wildmen sprang ahead to point and fire their pistols, their shots joined by those of the surviving musketeers skulking in the trees of the higher bank across the culvert. Once more the Branden Rose was felled, toppling to the bellowing glee of her antagonists and a cry of anguish from Rossamünd.
Snatching the single caste of asper from its digital, the young factotum let it fly through the line of pine trees at the attackers. The caste struck an antlered foe. Boiling black falsefire expanded rapidly to completely engulf the fellow, spreading farther yet to swallow those about. Horrified, Rossamünd watched as those caught in the oily vapor were blistered black, screeching their pain. Three fellows stumbled off the road and tumbled down the bank, to land steaming and lifeless.
However, the general press was not thwarted, and almost as a single creature the reckless mass of bravoes rushed to where the fulgar must have lain vulnerable on the road.
With an almost joyful “HA!” Europe abruptly appeared, springing to her feet and thrusting her fuse into the sky. A mighty lightning bolt spat down from the murk and struck the fulgaris, coruscating down the fulgar’s upraised arm. Passing right through her, it stabbed out blindingly from her outstretched hand. The writhing bolt struck the massed company, leaping from one man to the next, calling more lightning from the roiling heavens independent of the fulgar’s summoning, smashing all about her. Rossamünd cowered at the roar, stumbling against the bole of a pine, hands over ears, sure that they and the whole world with them would rupture. Bolt after bolt stabbed with bursting, crushing thunderings—five—six—seven—eight, slaying most fellows instantly, leaving others shattered while the remaining few recoiled, some already scampering away.
Even as reverberations of thunder rolled about the wold, Rossamünd was struck hard from the left, a potent blow skewering him in his kidneys, sending him sprawling to the mold. Seeing stars, he felt a rough-clothed arm pinch him about his neck in a malicious embrace, pressing his face into the leaf litter and dust. An all-too-familiar threwdless dr
ead constricted in his soul. Rever-man! A second great strength pinned him in the small of his back, holding him to the ground while a cruel, cold grip took hold of his arms. He flailed his legs, bucking with all his might, near dislodging his captors’ callous clutches. He got one brief and terrifying hint of an expressionless, empty-eyed face before a coarse sack was jerked forcibly over his own head and then cords wrapped about his throat to be pulled choking tight.
Swallowing hard against the pressure on his gourmand’s cork, Rossamünd refused to let this be his end. Somehow he managed to get a toe-hold in the slippery needles and with every mite of his thew pushed, wrenching sideways, breaking the hold on his wrists. Kicking out savagely, his left foot connected with something yielding. Instantly realizing he was free of constraint, he flung himself down the slope, tumbling, hitting the ground hard over and over with shoulders and back. His career stopped with a neuralgic jolt, leaving him winded and sitting on flatter land. Tearing the cord from his throat and the bag from his head he saw that he had landed in the very midst of the tumbledown foundations of some roofless dwelling. Built on a small cobbled shelf, it was clearly long abandoned, its crumbling sandstone stained and moldering.
The stuttered cough of firelocks resounded flatly from the trees above, followed by a shout diminishing in volume and a powerful zzack!
Europe!
Crashes in the nearby underbrush descended swiftly toward him. Scrabbling to stand and drawing a caste of Frazzard’s powder, Rossamünd spied a misshapen figure plunging down the hill. Pulling his clammy vent about his mouth and nose, the young factotum recoiled as the assailant burst through a stand of juvenile pines at the edge of this level shelf. But for the threwdless emptiness of this being, he might have thought by its filthy frock coat and jauntily tilted tricorn that he was beset by a drunkard. Formed from cloth and wood and metal springs as much as of fleshly parts, this thing was not the headlong, bloodthirsty bits of meat the revermen he had met before had been. It seemed careful, almost calculating, as it regarded him from the black holes in its sack-cloth head, its eyes perpetually open in an exaggerated expression of horror.This was a jackstraw, the acme of a black habilist’s arts.
