Autos paled, blushed, then scowled-torn between horrified belief in her words and the desire to remain and appear very brave.
"She is jesting, young master," Rossamund finally said when it became clear his mistress was going to leave the poor fellow in his distress, frowning to hide his own satisfaction at her compliments.
"Just barely," the fulgar breathed.
Autos pulled himself up and puffed out his chest, his brow deep-furrowed, his eyes holding insult and hurt. Snorting through his nose like some panting horse, the boy looked on the brink of a petulant retort.Yet the anxious calls of the Monsiere finally gained the attention of the young heir of the Patredike with their uncommon rancor, provoking him to pivot quickly and hurry a retreat.
Europe clucked her tongue and addressed Rossamund as if nothing had occurred. "Now, throw the bucket out farther; it shall be the first incentive of our little trick… Mind your pitch!" she added quickly as Rossamund wound back for the toss. "… Not too far."
In his keenness to oblige, he fumbled his toss so that the empty bucket so that it fell a paltry distance.
"Perhaps a mite farther than that…," Europe offered, touching her lip with her long forefinger to hide a grin.
Rossamund gritted his teeth on an embarrassed retort.
The second attempt a better length, they walked back to Scantling Aire.
As they climbed the settlement's mound to where the Monsiere and his party waited, Europe's manner was all innocence and serene expertise. "At night's fall my factotum and I shall sit ourselves up there and watch," she declared to the Monsiere as she stepped up to him, pointing to the roof of the southeastern cottage, partly obscured by the thick growth of a pine. "Have a scale set upon the southern wall that I might climb and descend again quickly at need."
Though Trottinott and his embarrassed son were to remain with them through the night, Europe would not allow them to join her on the roof, insisting they sit and watch from the small windows of the round houses' upper stories. "I do not want to be accountable for your hurts should you stumble into my way," she warned. "And please do not shoot at anything until I have endorsed such activity." She arched a brow at the Monsiere's long-rifle. "I will not like a musket ball in my back, and whoever delivers it will like it even less."
Smiling uneasily, Trottinott nodded.
Autos stayed behind his father. At day's end, with the clear sky a glorious dusty pink, the husbands, sons and fathers of Scantling Aire returned home to a mood of increasing hope: the Branden Rose had come to deliver them all from their terrors. Sending the large roof-dwelling skinks scuttering to hide, Rossamund and Europe climbed the triangular scale to sit on the slightly shifting tiles. Screened by resin-scented needles, they had an excellent sight of the six baited pudding bowls below. From such a height the spreading pastures, broad and flat to the north, appeared to sink to the east down to a far-off patch of murky ground and the smudge of low hills well beyond. At middle distance, shepherds bearing long, faintly glimmering limn-thorns could just be made out goading white fluffy lumps by the hundred before them, driving them north. To the right, away to the south, Rossamund spied the twinkling window lights of Patredike.
Breathing deeply of the tepid evening, the young factotum checked the priming of the flammagon supplied from the Monsiere's own modest armory. He wondered absently if his old masters were even now returning with a cunning lurksman or other patefract in tow.
A hamper had been packed by the Monsiere's kitchen-under instruction from his wife-and as evening came, he shared this with all the cottagers and the two roof-borne watchers too.
"The long night begins," Europe murmured, sitting cross-legged on the tiles and nibbling deftly on cold quail's wing and taking sips of fresh-brewed plaudamentum in between. "Let us hope our prey is an early riser…" After a moment she added with hushed words, "When we come to the fight, I think it best-if you are resolved to action-that you stay to using potives, little man; we do not want to startle these simple people with uncommon feats of thew." She lapsed to silence.
Similarly mute, Rossamund shifted the flammagon over his shoulder, ate and watched.
16
Peltrymen though once used to mean trappers, this term is more and more coming to include venators-that is, hunters; indeed, it is becoming the catchall word for any woodsman. One of the notable historical details of peltrymen is that the ambuscadiers of armies of the Half-Continent model their own harness on the accoutrements of peltryfolk, a practice originating from the recruiting of skirmishing volunteers from the people best suited to skulking and ambushing: woodsmen and peltrymen.
Tail-sore Rossamund had been sitting stoutly for a goodly long time on the roof peak, right hand stiff from clutching the high chimney, legs twitching from holding his weight against the incline of the tiles. Attention drum-skin taut, his hearing pricked to every sound that disturbed the night's hush: the snuffles and hoof-stamps of animals tethered in the Scantling yard; the muffled conversation of folks watching from the attic just below them; the merest creak of pine bough; and beside him, Europe's near-imperceptible breathing. Indefatigable in her concentration, the heiress of Naimes had barely stirred for the entire watch. The priming in the pan of his broad-barreled flammagon already checked many times, Rossamund refused the compulsion to do so again and kept his drowsy eyes moving from shadow to shadow out on the meadow.
The color of rich cheesecake in the thin olive sky, rising Phoebe was a full hand span above the horizon and Maudlin green, already hoisting herself up heaven's darkling dome when something barely distinguishable shifted out in the gloomy fields. It came first as an unusual threwdish twitching, still far off, arresting Rossamund's tiring attention before he saw a subtle yet rapid motion.
"They come," Europe exhaled, so softly it might have been the night breezes.
Shapes amorphous and shifting were approaching along the line of the blood-curdle trail, writhing shadows that refused to solidify into anything recognizable despite the creamy lunar light. At first Rossamund thought they might be a pack of little blightlings rushing in a horde. But when they reached the foot of the settlement, the shapes resolved into five large ambiguous silhouettes, each bending over its own pudding basin. At this the young factotum next thought them a tribe of brodchin-beasts like the horn-ed nickers that had attacked in the Briarywood near Winstermill.
As the creatures settled themselves to feed, Europe slid silently to the scale and, with infinite care, eased onto it, sucking an impatient breath as it softly creaked. Her right eye clear in a dapple of moonlight, she gave Rossamund a brief but pointed look, then descended with deft alacrity.
Near as fast as the lightning she held, the Branden Rose was out from the shadows of the south side of the cottage foundation. Springing between wall and pine trunk, fuse in hand, she was on the first shadow before it was aware of the danger. Rossamund watched her spin about the rock that held the basin to strike the shadow high on its back. Zzick! The briefest green-blue glare and everything went strange. Rather than bellow or collapse, the obscure figure burst into many parts. At first Rossamund thought the fulgar had simply hit it with such potency that it had been blown to splinders, yet he quickly realized, as the various parts sought to flee or fight individually, that their foe was something else entirely.
Bracing himself on the tiles, he fired the flammagon high, giving his mistress better sight as she swung at one of the pieces, striking it with another glaucous flash.