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 Rossamund"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 gra.s.s, moon shadows as his ally, Rossamund 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. Rossamund 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, Rossamund heaved himself over, to land in the stubbly rabbit-mown lawn of the necropolis.
A caste of beedlebane was in Rossamund"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 Rossamund, 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!" Rossamund 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 Phoebe"s unsympathetic l.u.s.ter. 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," Rossamund 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 Rossamund, known to the Lapinduce, whose realm you are spoiling, watched over by the sparrow-duke, and servant to the Branden Rose," Rossamund 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," Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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 Rossamund. 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 Rossamund"s fall, and the heavy top slipped and tottered. Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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. Rossamund"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 Rossamund to mince and jelly.Yet, with strangely indifferent lucidity, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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.
Rossamund 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 pa.s.sion 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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 concerned with the small disputes of parochial parish pride as small regions vie and squabble with their neighbors like full-grown states.
PHOEBe"S thoughts were on setting and Maudlin was glimmering verdantly in heaven"s acme when, in the small of the night, Rossamund and Fransitart finally changed watches.
The old salt readily accepted Rossamund"s story of his confrontation with the Swarty Hobnag. "Methinks, lad," he said, gently examining Rossamund"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."
Rossamund 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 . . . ," Rossamund 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, pa.s.sion 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, Rossamund; 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."
Content to accept the simple honest refuge of Fransitart"s wisdom, Rossamund let his head sag under the sway of the claret.What was left of the night was of jabs and tweaks and swirling dreams of monsters rushing at him: horn-ed things, slavering corpse-things, great ettin-beasts coming at him over and over.
To the lowing of distant cattle, the four adventurers got under way early. Before going on, Craumpalin had bound Rossamund"s still aching chest in a bitter-smelling brew. "This will seep into bone and gristle and give thee ease," the dispenser insisted, wrapping him so firmly the young factotum had difficulty bending. Aboard the landaulet he was unable to slouch or slump or sag but was forced to sit as straight as the Branden Rose herself; he felt sorely used and most definitely shot through.
Upon hearing of yesternight"s stouche, Europe"s first response was open displeasure. "You were content then, Rossamund," she had said with forcibly leveled tone, "to let this beast be free to spoil these good people"s graves and eat their long-loved dead like nothing more than scringings from a licensed victualer."
"Of course not, Miss Europe!" the young factotum protested, stung more than all by the realization that he had not properly considered this last night. "I-I had to stay to my watch!"
"Aye, better a safe camp than personal glory," Fransitart added stoutly, frowning in support.
The fulgar regarded the old marine society master as if looks alone might flatten him. "The next time you go to play the teratologist, Rossamund, know your place and seek me for the work!" she reproached him, pressing fingertips to forehead in exasperation. "My capacity to protect you will be greatly diminished if you warn off every prize and make me the poorer for it!"
"Aye ..." Rossamund had kept his voice firm.
On the move again, and with treacle in her humours, Europe had found calm. "It occurs to me a touch peculiar, Rossamund," she declared almost absently, sucking daintily on some common rock salt, "that you were not aware of your bogle-slaying strength earlier in your life."
Rossamund had no answer for this. "I-," he tried, but did not know how to put into words that only under great threat had he discovered more vigor in him than expectation led him to reasonably employ; that this bogle-slaying strength was more like a well within him than a constant state of being; it was something, he was learning, that he could draw from by choice rather than just continuously and thoughtlessly available thew.
The fulgar"s eyes glittered with mild mischief. "What of your younger days playing at slaps or parleys with the other bookchildren? Did you terrorize your fellows with great feats of might, little man?"
"I did not know I had such strength to use," the young factotum replied with a shrug. Freckle had once said a long time gone some obscure clue about Rossamund having to yet learn this strength. He grimaced. I guess I am learning it now.
"Aye," Craumpalin said in support. "Thou cannot spend money thee doesn"t know thee has."
"Perhaps," Europe replied musingly.
Although from the view atop the hawthorn hill it seemed only a few mounded fields over from their night camp, Spelter Innings proved to be well more than an hour distant by the circuitous wendings of the Athy Road. The day-orb peeped above the folded greening and warmed the travelers as they traversed a small arch over a reedy creek. At its end, they were confronted by a stone wall spiked with what appeared to be newly cut thorn-withies. In this was a heavy, cast-iron gate as tall as three tall men, the portal into the town at last.
"Who comes hence!" the heavy-harnessed gaters challenged peevishly, appearing from small sallies hidden by the dense runners. For simple gate wardens they were as impressively dressed as their courtly counterparts back in the halls of the Archduke. Looking terribly hara.s.sed, they showed themselves willing, with muskets c.o.c.ked and fends lowered, to vent their troubles on any awkward foreigner.
"You recognize me full well, you uppity gregorine!" Europe bit in turn, causing every single gate ward to blanch. "Next you will be asking me for patents of my degree and proofs of my station! Know your place! Open up and let us through!"
In contrast to the sour welcome, Spelter Innings was a gorgeous town, nestled in the shallow folds between the meadows. Bustling with morning activity, every street and lane was a flourishing avenue of spring blossoming almond, lime, cherry and plum, filling the morning with perfumed glory, sweetening the fragrant wood-smoke. Local geriatrics sat on the small bal.u.s.traded porticoes of their simple high-houses built right up against the main way, watching the pa.s.sing of all below, with a friendly "halloo" to their neighbors and a mistrustful stare for strangers.
Curiously, as they pa.s.sed from the town by its farther gates, Rossamund spied a reddleman among the traffic, the dye-seller walking in the same direction. Is that the same fellow we found under the Catharine wheels? Yet this was not possible; how could a foot-going vendor overtake them?
Catching his shrewd inspection, the bedraggled hawker called, "One sparkle gets a fine bit of madder for the rich gent!" and held up a pot in hands tainted bright scarlet. There was something slightly off-beam in the fellow"s eyes, something frantic and overexercised.
The young factotum ducked his head and pretended not to hear.
Leaving the red-stained dye-seller far behind, they continued deeper into the wide, fertile peace of the Page, traveling under a dome of near infinite blue, clean white clouds plumping on the horizon ahead. Trees here were far and few, lonely, wind-bent pines and myrtles pruned by hungry herds into elegant parasol shapes. It was only when they were well into the day that Rossamund realized that Darter Brown had not shown himself. The young factotum began to half consciously search the skies for his miniature friend, scrutinizing every bush or spray of weeds, but not a glimpse could he find.
They went through several hams not properly marked on Craumpalin"s map, homey sheltered nooks built in shallow dingles fenced with guarding pines and turpentines and the rubble of ancient stones, each settlement bearing a peculiar name like Windle Comb, Plummet Fulster or the Larch.The folks of these places reckoned themselves so unfailingly safe they went about in only day-clothes, with at best a single garment of proofing. It was a stark contrast to the vigilant rural settings Rossamund had encountered in the Idlewild. The night was spent in the major civil center of Spokane, a bustling place of high slate houses approaching the gravity of a small city.
In the cheerful clarity of a fresh day, Rufous and Candle took them faithfully north out from Spokane along a busy road called Iron Street that cut high muddy-sided channels through steep wood-fenced meadows of fallow loam or rippling green. Stunted self-sown blossom trees prettied the verges of their path with their pink plum blossoms or sprouted from the lee crest of a hill. Here and there were prominences clearly artificially enlarged into broad oblong mounds of ancient stone, some topped by stocky tumbledown towers, the relics of another people"s departed glory decaying beneath teeming weeds.
Rossamund spent much of his time distractedly looking out for Darter Brown, but could find no hint of him, and of the many little birds he saw, none flew up to greet him.
In twinkling twilight they found a village called the Broom Holm, a timber and mutton town built near the northwestern tip of what Craumpalin"s chart named the great forest of thornwood and protected with the more usual high stone curtain. The most remarkable feature of this modest settlement was the grand copper-domed tower of a tocsin that rose well above its other humbly proportioned structures, a self-important display of the success and circ.u.mstance of this parish.
Tail-sore and bleary, the four found their rest at the White Hare, a three-story wayhouse established to service the vigil jaunts of wealthy city folk, providing all the luxuries they expected.
"I could grow right partial to such traveling comforts," Craumpalin observed, smiling a little dreamily as he surveyed the plush room, all creams and whites and subtle greens. "Never in me life have I known such a run of cozying beds."
"Aye," said Fransitart, clearly at ease. "It ne"er stops amazin" me to think souls live all their days like this."
"The reverse never stops amazing me," Europe returned.
The fourth day of the knave was gray and threatening, spring yearning for winter"s return. Europe"s mood-already mildly amiable-lifted that little more. Out the other side of the Broom Holm, the pastured meadows gave over to wide spreading vineyards, roll upon roll of land striped with dark parallel lines of grapevines. Sighted briefly between cedar hedgerows and the folding land stood the ancestral homes of the landed peers. Some were blocky, fortified greathouses standing watch over anciently righted holdings; others were grandly modern palaces of the new rich whose only concession to the rumored a.s.sault of monsters was to have their lowest windows set higher than a tall man could reach.
The d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting of Naimes inhaled deeply and looked about complacently. "How I much prefer this open-seat travel to going cooped in a stuffy cabin, to feel the wind"s breath on my brow and the taste of the land on my lips."
"Can"t say I smell more than dirt," Fransitart offered, scowling over his shoulder at the dark billows that were blowing up from the southwest and bringing with them a sweet sea tang. "We salts bain"t much use for snufflin" things-the sea encourages us ter forget that sense as soon as is naturally possible."
Europe arched a brow and sniffed.
Fixing his sabine scarf about his throat a little more warmly, Rossamund grinned. Come weather fair or foul, he too could travel all his days like this, floating somewhere between destinations, the cares of before left behind, the cares ahead yet to come. Smiling at the flattening vales of ordered green, one eye still out for a glimpse of Darter Brown, he became steadily alive to a hidden and unfamiliar disquiet. "The land is not as restful as the rich builders with their low windows reckon on," he said, gaining only puzzled glances from both his old masters and new mistress.
The Branden Rose peered at her diminutive employee with shrewd calculation. "You speak evidently of the subtleties of the threwd, little man."
"Aye, Miss Europe." He looked at her earnestly. "It is only slight, but it is not kindly."
"Hence our need to come here, yes?"
"Aye," he returned inaudibly.
Attending to the directions given by Craumpalin from the written pilot provided to Rossamund when he accepted the singular, Fransitart turned them off Iron Street and took a tributary drive marked by a thin white stone. In excellent repair-probably through private funds-this path made for good speed, and the landaulet fairly clipped by flat pastures interspersed with vines and orchard groves in full and glorious flower.Watching their flocks in sheep-mown fields, heavily armed and harnessed shepherds peered at the rapidly pa.s.sing newcomers and did not return Craumpalin"s curt wave.
As the gray day dimmed toward its conclusion, they came into view of a large handmade hill, its broad, level summit ringed thickly with cedars, from behind which rose the chimneys, ridge-caps and gables of an enormous manor.
"Our destination, I am thinking," Europe observed.
Finding a somewhat precipitous ramp rising along the northern flank of the hill, Fransitart encouraged the weary horses to climb this last obstacle. Through open gates at its summit they entered unchallenged into a broad, partially paved square with service buildings on every side and a neat garden copse of large ornamental pear trees and a spreading cedar in the middle. Veering left and scattering chickens, Fransitart brought them to a halt before the outspread steps of a stately facade of pink stone and a great many windows.
Striding down to them from the doubly high front doors, the anonymous pastoralist of the second singular, splendidly attired in a wide frock coat of expensive indigo, met them. "Welcome! Welcome well to the Dike!" he cried, his arms gratifyingly wide. Introducing himself with a long bow as Monsiere Decius Trottinott, Companion Imperial of the Gate and heir of the Patredike, their host handed Europe from the landaulet as his yardsmen took Rufous and Candle, the carriage and the luggage too into their charge. Without even a glance at any doc.u.mentation, Monsiere Trottinott welcomed the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting and her faithful staff openly to his bastionlike home and holdings.
"You can well imagine how hopeful I was when the communication arrived from the coursing house that it was the great Branden Rose who consented to effect my solution," he declared with gusto. "How gratified I was when I received communication from your own gracious hand confirming the same!"
Europe received his enthusiasm with queenly equanimity, neither falling into aloof superiority nor letting herself be caught up in the tide of his candid delight.