Lamplighter (54 page)

They slowly unloaded the flat cart, which creaked in a kind of inanimate gratitude for the relief of the burden on its aged timbers and axles.

“Ye’re sthtrong and quick for a wee lighter, lad, and that’sth the truth. Young Master Haroldus’th indeed!” To Threnody’s sluggish unwillingness the seltzerman warned, “Take up the sthlack, young hearty, and clap on sthome sthpeed; that’sth no way to stherve yer Emperor!”

“I might wear your colors, sir,” she hissed, snatching some small box, “but I do
not
serve your besotted, bedizzled Emperor.”

“Besthotted, eh? Bedizzthled?” he said as she turned. “Isth that what they taught thee in thy sthequethtury? What doesth ye think taking the Emperor’sth Billion meansth?”

The stores were kept under a trapdoor in a rough-cut pit in the back corner of the outwork. For each new puncheon or cask or crate they carried in, an old one had to be removed and taken up and put on the cart. Even with Threnody reluctant to do the task, restocking was completed quickly and the three were soon strolling home. Along the return, a shrill cry, brief and birdlike, pierced the gauzy stillness four times, tangible alarm in its echoes.

The three workers became very still.

Rossamünd stared about, trying to see everywhere at once.

“It’sth a water hen,” Splinteazle stated in ominous whisper. “They only cry when the worstht of blight’sth basthketsth are about. Sthomething wicked-foul musth surely be out there. We mustht hurry!”

Not much farther on, they found that East Bleak 41 West Stool 5 had been smashed: bent over like nothing more than a broken grass-blade, the lamp’s still dizzing seltzer already soaking into the hard surface of the road.

The smell of monsters—the telltale stink of pungent musk and almost animal filth found them, floating on the quickening breeze.

“Hi,” Splinteazle exclaimed in the barest of whispers, “catch a nosthe full o’ that reek! They’re sthurely sthome of the wortht bugerboosth ye’re ever likely to hide from.”

The next lamp they discovered missing altogether, ripped footing and all from the verge.

“Desthtroying me lovely lampsth!” cried Splinteazle. “Killin’ me bloom!”

Rossamünd became aware of a threwdishly unpleasant, impelling sensation buzzing behind his eyes. It grew with each step, spreading to the base of his head, to the core of his innards; an external, ambient yet powerful compulsion to act, to do something or else suffer displeasure.
From who? Is Mama Lieger doing this?What am I supposed to do?
Rossamünd had no notion, but the dread of this sensation waxed terribly. Oddly, Threnody and Splinteazle did not appear to heed it.

And the closer they drew to Wormstool the stronger the bestial smell became.

Though the cothouse was a mile away and part hidden by the mists, Rossamünd could make out swamp harriers gliding the clearer air above in hungry expectation.The mad baying of the dogs came faintly. Even from this distance they could make out something large, perhaps an ettin pounding against the cothouse. Rossamünd instinctively checked his salumanticum. There was nothing in it that would affect something so enormous.

“The cothousth is attacked!” Splinteazle wailed and set off down the road at a run, pulling the contrary Rabbit with him, the young lamplighters following his lead. A lantern-span closer, they saw more than just an ettin attacking their home. On the road before the tower and in the scrub about its foundations a crowd of monsters prowled, an entire menagerie of them, numbering a score or more of myriad kinds and sizes. They seemed to work in concert, hooting and hissing and yowling up at the besieged lighters within, drawing and dodging shots fired from loophole and roof. This was a theroscade of a kind that Rossamünd had only read. The three rushed on in thoughtless, unspoken agreement, marching into this overwhelming danger regardless.

The powerful ettin, much heftier than the Misbegotten Schrewd, flourished a lantern in its massive hands and with it smashed at the door of Wormstool. An old cart looking very much like Squarmis’ old bone-shaker was lashed to its head with rope and harness leather, providing some protection from musket fire above, the thills thrust out over its back like horns and the wheels looking like weird ears. Pops of smoke were puffing from the slits of every floor of the tower, and from the crenellations of the Fighting Top as well. Much of the fire was concentrated on the ettin, the beast swatting at the balls as a man might at flies. Many of the shots must have been true and deadly, for Rossamünd and his companions were not much farther up the road when the giant nicker tottered, righted itself and threw the lamp at the walls. The post hit the cothouse with a clarion ring, ricocheted and spun off madly to crash on to the road. Stumbling, the ettin staggered away north into the flatlands, clutching at its bloodied head and shoulders. With a dull crunch of splintering wood, the ettin ripped the cart away and hurled this heedlessly too as it fled.

“Look at that belugig run! Come now, fellowsth!” Splinteazle cried to Rossamünd and Threnody. “We mustht join the fight!”

Once more Rossamünd felt the malignantly compelling threwd; felt it throb and saw the remaining monsters at the cothouse’s feet respond obediently. Smaller nickers and larger bogles began to scamper up the stairs: things with hunched bodies and long legs, bounding a dozen steps in one leap; gaunt, stilt-legged bugaboos that took each step with the mincing grace of a dancer; bloated bogle-beasties that lumbered after.

“The door is breached!”
wailed the seltzerman, abandoning Rabbit to run to the aid of the assaulted tower.

Mind a whirl of useless garble, Rossamünd followed and Threnody with him, checking the priming of her two doglock pistols. The young lighter could scarce believe that he was willingly throwing himself into the fray. He reached into his salumanticum for a caste of loomblaze.

The tower of Wormstool was close now, no more than a hundred yards away, the clamor of the desperate struggle within audible even down on the road. Not more than a hundred yards from the cothouse near the base of the first lantern, Rossamünd cried, “HI! HI! OVER HERE!” carried away by his desire to help. A pack of monsters still at the foot of the steps and circling about Wormstool’s foundations turned to Rossamünd’s shout. With hoots and howls, they swarmed at the three, loping and leaping down the road with appalling speed.

Splinteazle was ahead of the two younger lighters, brandishing his fodicar in one hand and a salinumbus in the other. The monsters closed and he fired, sending one flailing, spurting to the road-dust. At the shot Rossamünd threw his vial of loomblaze high and wide, wanting to avoid the seltzerman, and it erupted over the heads of two stragglers, their shrieks clear in the general din. Threnody fired too, pistolas thrust forward in classic pistoleer pose, but the power of the doglocks must have thrown off her aim, and they had little effect on the beasts. The seltzerman swung his lantern-crook with all his might, hitting the foremost bogle hard but doing little harm. Was Splinteazle
that
old and infirm? He struck it again with all his force, and Rossamünd watched with a numb kind of horror as once more the blow hardly troubled the gnasher. Cackling and barely hurt, the beast tackled Splinteazle to the ground and, finding all the weak parts of his proofing, rapidly clawed the hollering seltzerman to shreds before Rossamünd knew to act. With a shriek of her own, Threnody flung her fine pistols down and scathed powerfully, stunning Rossamünd but driving the bogles back amazed. Yet it was too late for the old seltzerman.

Numbness turned to terror and Rossamünd hesitated. The will-filled threwd resisted him, undermined his resolve. If the seltzerman could perish so easily, what hope had he?

Undismayed, the gaggle of nickers pounced again, some outflanking them as the rest rushed headlong.The monsters were on them, the stink of the beasts surrounding the two young lighters. Threnody sent forth her frission, which this time left Rossamünd untouched but gave the pack of gnashers a smart jolt. They howled at her in rage. But she could not keep such a barrier up for long, and too soon something sleek and full of claws leaped at her. Shouting wordlessly, Rossamünd leaped to meet the beast. Dancing aside from its swiping talons, he brought the butt-end of his fodicar down with as much strength as he could muster. To his utter astonishment the monster’s back buckled and bent the wrong way under the blow and it fell, naked surprise on its bestial face. But he did not have time to wonder over its end, for Threnody’s fishing faltered and the other nickers sprang, sneering hungrily and more intent on the girl-wit. In the frightening, gnashing whirl of a fight where he was one of the players and life and death stood on his own deeds, Rossamünd did not fuss about where his feet were, what his hands were doing. He just hit. One with a great lump of warts and lard that pronked on two legs like a rabbit’s tried to leap about and get behind them. Threnody scathed again, a little weaker. Rossamünd stabbed at Rabbit-legs as it jumped. The pike-end of the fodicar went straight through its belly, the astounded beast expiring in midspring, collapsing on the road and skidding away. The Hundred Rules that had baffled Rossamünd so continually at Madam Opera’s were suddenly making sense. The young lighter swung his lantern-crook again with ease, giving another bloated monster second thoughts as he caught its lunge with crank-hook and pike-end then shoved the bogle clear away. It glared at him with an odd expression.

At his back Threnody’s sometimes clumsy, sometimes competent striving continued. For all her inexperience, she was actually gaining him space and protecting them both from being overwhelmed.

The monsters pulled away, dismayed at the ferocity of such tasty little morsels, rethinking their foe. Rossamünd and Threnody stood back to back and watched in turn. Of the eight or so bogles that had sought their lives, perhaps half had perished: one shot by Splinteazle, two struck down by Rossamünd, one or possibly two hurt by the loomblaze and another drooling and broken and sitting harmlessly by the highroad, a victim of Threnody’s successful witting.

“Do you feel it?” she gasped.

“Feel what?”

“The threwd!” Threnody opened her eyes. “Working entirely on the destruction of this place. It snatches at me every time I wit!”

Rossamünd nodded. “Aye, I feel it.”

Indeed, the malign feeling waxed strongly even as they spoke, and the monsters prowled closer.

BOOOOM!
An almighty crash reverberated about the Frugelle, startling flocks of complaining birds to wing. Down the road smoke began to issue from Wormstool, belching from a fourth-story loophole. A tongue of flame licked out and up the outside wall. A lighter stumbled out of the high door of the cothouse and started down the steps. A large nicker with great, snapping jaws emerged and pounced on the retreating lampsman, crushing him down onto the stairway, jumping on him over and over till his screams ceased and red flowed.

Threnody stared in dumb shock.

Taking shrewd advantage of the distraction, the four remaining monsters rushed the two young lighters. Shrieking fiendishly, they charged in, then skittered away again when Threnody rallied and finally strove. They were testing her. She began to growl in frustration as time and again they fooled her into scathing pointlessly, wearing her down. Rossamünd threw another charge of loomblaze at the largest bogle, the one with peglike teeth in its spadelike jaw, but missed. The fiery chemistry burst bright but uselessly in a thicket of bushes beyond the road, and the dry branches eagerly took to flame.

Observing the commotion, the slayer of the lighter on the steps descended and pranced up the conduit, joining its fellows on the road. The largest of them, this new beast strutted on its thin legs and slavered through its long snout at the two young lighters. It regarded them beadily then called across to them in a weird, slobbering voice, “What are you, pink lipsss?”

“I hate it when they talk!” Threnody seethed.

“What are you, pink lipsss!” it slobbered again. “Why do you ssside with themmm?”

“I think it’s talking to you, lamp boy,” Threnody muttered. “Maybe it’s been chatting with your Freckle friend.”

Rossamünd swallowed hard but did not answer.
Pink lips?
This was the meaning of Rossamünd’s name—rose-mouth, pink lips. How did it know his name? Perhaps it had indeed been talking to Freckle? He looked to the tatters of Splinteazle’s corpse beyond the monsters. His resolve hardened. He held out his fodicar, presenting arms as at a parade, inviting a challenge.

With a vicious snarl the slobbering nicker lunged at them, the other monsters rushing with it, whooping and yammering. Threnody witted, laboring to keep her frission under control. For a moment she checked the charge, Rossamünd standing with fodicar and loomblaze ready, by her side. The monsters writhed and backed away. Suddenly the girl gasped, and without warning her frission faltered. The beasts were at them again, the slobberer foremost, and Rossamünd sprang too. He hurled the potive with wicked aim, missing the slobberer and hitting a stocky bogle running just behind it. The wretched thing’s head was splashed and engulfed with the cruel false-fire and it fell screeching. As he met the slobberer, fodicar swinging, so Threnody’s frission returned and the small gnashers reeled. He swatted at the slobberer with the same thoughtless, clearheaded fluidity, hitting it smartingly on its shoulder. The thing shrieked and flailed its arms, swatting Rossamünd in the chest and throwing him back-first to the road. Threnody’s witting caught him and his vision dimmed, threatened blackness; but this was no time for stopping, for lying tamely down just because of a hurt. With a yelping kind of growl, Rossamünd shook himself and rolled on to his side, his vision clearing. What had seemed to him like a dangerous pause had been just an instant. The slobberer bore down on him. Rossamünd whipped his lantern-crook around, smacking the nicker’s ankles. Its long legs were tripped out from under it and the thing toppled, a puff of dust erupting from its fall. On his feet in a beat, Rossamünd took his advantage and struck the fallen monster wildly, not caring where, just hitting, hitting, as Threnody’s frission lashed out again.