The Foundling's Tale: Factotum Part 21

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 b.u.mbled, curious of the food. The peltrymen exchanged muttered tidings and kept to themselves but for a brief report that the trail pa.s.sed 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+n.

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 spa.r.s.e 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-G.o.d wors.h.i.+ppers! What have we found for ourselves? Surely the worms were not a false-G.o.d, not out here so far from the vinegar sea. False-G.o.ds were meant to be uncontainably ma.s.sive, 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 splas.h.i.+ng, 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 ma.s.s. Building higher and higher, the bulk of worms rolled about the western bank of the inky pool, fas.h.i.+oning themselves into some fore-determined shape as they moved.

Collecting herself, Europe sprang from sure footing to sure footing, making straight for the ma.s.s 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. Instantly 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ma.s.s of the sapperling. Flouris.h.i.+ng his mighty spear, Agitis skewered the thing right in the fat of its belly as it sought to swallow him whole. The great, heaving ma.s.s 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.

"AGITIS! AGITIS!" his brother shrieked, taciturn composure unraveling, as beside him Bodkin hurriedly primed his weapon. Throwing down his musket, Quietis dashed forward and grabbed one of his brother's flailing legs, heaving, managing to halt Agitis' vile fate for a breath.

With a snarl of "Thew-brained fools!" Europe steadied on her feet and began to tip one hand over the other in small back-and-forth motion, sending arcs strobing brightly from palm to palm, thin strands of her hair bristling with static as she strode toward the seething behemoth.

Two arms-if such they could be called-flashed out from different points upon the sapperling's body, one grasping the younger Furrow more firmly about the head, the other seeking the older man. His brother's leg s.n.a.t.c.hed irresistibly from his futile grip, Quietis drew forth a heavy hanger and a tomahawk and, dodging the smaller limb, lashed at the main arm, severing it with three rapid hacks. The ma.s.sive thing shuddered at the wound as it sucked Agitis into its squirming bulk, the peltryman's horrified screams stifled by a wormy gag wrapping about his face.

Unable to simply let the fellow be engulfed, Rossamund dashed forward, almost upending himself in a puddle, and flung the caste of beedlebane at the creature, whipping out another from his digital and throwing that too as the first burst with an orange flare against its thick neck. The sapperling reeled at the small eruptions. Though its gathering of slick hides was too slippery to take to flame, it staggered back yet, two dead worms slithering loose from the ma.s.s and falling to the earth. Scuttling in to try his strength extracting Agitis from the sapperling's inexorable consuming belly, Rossamund was struck by a smaller arm, even as he reached for the peltryman's twisting leg. The confounding clout sent him spinning like a toy to land seat-first in the icy shallows of the vile inky pond.

Retching on the greasy waters, Rossamund flailed for the sh.o.r.e, vaguely aware that Quietis had ducked low and was now under the sagging beast's pendulous abdomen. Pulling himself to slightly firmer sludge, he could see the older pelt-trapper chop at the nearest worm-formed leg, hewing at it over and over.Yet with each blow new worms descended from the belly to cover over and support their wounded fellows.

Face smeared with phlegm and tears, Bodkin let fly another musket shot, striking the sapperling's coiling neck, giving it such a smart it collapsed forward on its weakened leg, Quietis barely tumbling clear. Yet as the creature fell, Rossamund could see Agitis' now motionless body still being consumed, drawn in by abrupt stages through belly-folds of worms until only a single gaitered leg protruded-then that too was gone.

Still tossing arcs from one palm to the next, Europe stood before the sapperling. As it toppled, it fell toward her and she grabbed at the head, letting all her collected charge out with a mighty ZIZzzZACK!-a blinding glare, blasting the members of the head and neck apart in gouts of hissing orange mess and flapping worm bits.

She's done it!

Carried away by the rush of the fight, Rossamund yelled wordlessly in victory as the sapperling floundered, single worms losing grip and rearing individually from the deforming bulk to hiss at her silently.

But Quietis was not finished. Desperate for his brother, he began to slash and gouge blindly at the beast's pulsating belly, seeking to hack his way in.

"AWAY WITHYOU, SIR!" Europe roared with a volume Rossamund had never known her use before. "Had you left it in the first, your brother would not have been taken!"

The peltryman just snarled at her and kept at his chopping. He lifted his orange-gored hanger for yet another cut and a new pair of reforming worm-limbs suddenly sprang out from the sapperling's shoulders. The first took the ferocious peltryman midswing by his sword arm, lifting him, though Quietis would not be so easily subdued and flailed wildly, striking the limb repeatedly with his tomahawk as he was hoisted high.

Exhausted of a more potent charge, it was all Europe could do to keep the second limb from coiling about her as she drew quickly back, slapping zick! zick! zick! at the wriggling fingers that clutched and writhed and tried to end her as they had poor Agitis.

Rossamund hurled his last handy caste of beedlebane, the sharp burst of falsefire scoring the base of the arm that harried the fulgar. It recoiled, leaving the Branden Rose free to withdraw.

Quivering, the worms pulled tightly back together and the sapperling heaved itself to stand once more, keeping its grip on the struggling elder Furrow.

Europe did not give ground too far. Mounting a half-submerged log only a handful of yards away, she put some rock salt in her mouth and began once more to swap an arc from palm to palm. "Your intervention would be timely, little man," she called across to him with preternatural poise.

THE SLOE SAPPERLING.

Quick as he could, Rossamund s.n.a.t.c.hed a caste of asper-the strongest potive he possessed-from its digital niche and s.h.i.+ed it at the raging monster. The repellent hit the sapperling low on its side with a singular black gust, forcing it to stumble once more as it tried to escape the radiating sphere of acrid oily stuff. That same instant Quietis, shouting in a fury of success, amputated the arm that still held him, falling free, a single worm still gripped to his waist. Yet, as the asper boiled into a blistering inky froth that sent a veritable rain of stricken worms tumbling to the sludge, still another limb formed on the sapperling's opposite flank. s.n.a.t.c.hing the peltryman about his legs before he hit ground, it jerked him high over its lofty bulk and before anything could be done to stop it threw the madly bawling fellow down to the sod with deadly might.

"NO!" Rossamund and Bodkin Ease cried together, the young factotum despairing as to what it would take to best this crawling-fleshed horror.

This at last was too much for the lone surviving peltryman; wailing, Bodkin Ease ran into the mire without pause or a backward look, fleeing in mad terror and misery.

Reduced in size now, yet still thrice a tall man's height, the sapperling shrank from the seething residue of the asper. Oozing back, it seemed to pause, swaying, Europe's fuse still protruding from high on its left flank. All about it, single fallen worms hurt but not slain began to wriggle back to the main ma.s.s. The long-necked head slowly reformed.

Fury growing in his gorge, rising as a growl, the young factotum took a caste of loomblaze in one hand and Frazzard's powder in the other and stumbled toward the creature, ready to use all the might he possessed.

"Wait, Rossamund," the fulgar said calmly as he stepped past her, strands of fine hair standing out crazily.

Certain he could hear the crackle of static in her words and smell it in the air about her, he obeyed, all too alive to the consequences of the reverse.

"Stay," she commanded. "I shall be back."

Stepping lightly off the half log, the Branden Rose advanced through tufts and stumps toward the sapperling once again. At her approach, the worm-thing bent its head as if to regard her properly. After all the desperate mayhem, the scene seemed oddly tranquil in the failing light.

Europe raised her arms, holding them up and out to her sides.

What is she doing? Rossamund paced as far as he dared to the right, seeking a better view.

Without any alerting reflex or countermotion, the vermid thing shot out a grasping limb, s.n.a.t.c.hing the unresisting fulgar about her waist and yanking her in to engulf her just as it had poor Agitis.

"NO!" Rossamund shrieked a second time. Instantly he was to action, hurling both potives to detonate yellow-green and blue about its shoulders.

The sapperling tried to reach out and grasp him too but shuddered, the half-fas.h.i.+oned arm twitching, hesitating, retracting. Its sides appeared to flex and bloat.

Rossamund finally stood still.

The tapered head began to whip about violently.The saps that formed it wilted and fell. The legs collapsed, and the bulk dropped into the filth with a loud squelch. Flickers of static forced their way through the mutual grip of the remaining worms, lighting the bog with a dazzling, strobing brilliance. Of a sudden, the distending ma.s.s of worms sucked inward. An almighty deafening bang, like the cracking of the back of the world, a stupefying flash and the entire creature was flung apart, its bits thrown wide, Europe's fuse flying to strike the ground shudderingly not one yard from Rossamund. A subtle growl like the echo of distant thunder rolled about the sink as a drizzle of orange muck and particles of black hide fell all around.

The sapperling beast was no more.

In its place, amid a mess of worm-parts, stood the Branden Rose, arms akimbo, fist clenched, head down, hair loose and hair tine missing, ruffled but unharmed. She looked up to Rossamund, his cheeks smeared with unabashed tears of relief, then down with vague irritation at the messes that smeared and tearings that dulled her once-sumptuous coat.

"My best Number 3 ruined," she said.

17.

OF FeTES AND FICTLERS.

fictler(s) wors.h.i.+ppers and followers of false-G.o.ds, the name coming from the notion that these folk honor fictions, that is, false notions of the false-G.o.ds.They are typically regarded as a type of sedorner, yet they hold themselves as entirely distinct from sedorners and outramorines-opposites in fact, seeking the false-G.o.ds to rise up to rid the world of the landed monsters, the true foes of everymen. They prefer to call themselves gnosists, that is, "the knowers," for the higher knowledge they believe they possess, yet are not above the use of human sacrifice in their fervor to summon forth their chosen false-G.o.d.

THE celebration at Europe's success and defeat of t the worm-formed sapperling was great. At first those left to wait at Scantling Aire had dreaded the worst. This fear was distressingly amplified when Bodkin Ease emerged from the deep of night, bruised and delirious with grief, yammering death and violence and a great black ettin built of worms and muck descending to destroy them whole. In this light Europe and Rossamund's dawn return was hailed with an effusion of joy, and none was more delighted than Fransitart, who had not slept a nod, lying fully dressed upon his borrowed cot and "fretting like a fussy old panderer"-as Craumpalin reported it.

"Well done, lad" was all the dormitory master would say as he gripped Rossamund firmly by both shoulders.

Told the very hour of their return, Europe's account of the victory-spoken as she drank an entire pail of water straight from the well-had been brief, the merest details and a single dead worm the testament to her success. Taking it as his own, the Monsiere elaborated her tale most handsomely to all who would listen. Through his audience it spread, greatly enlarged and with astonis.h.i.+ng speed, to other knowing souls who, in their turn, transmitted the story of the slaying with all the confidence and gory clarity of actual eyewitness.