In the brilliant pink light of the flammagon flare swarmed slithering black saps, more like worms than serpents, working in disconcerting union, their slick, pulsating hides ridged and bulging, far stranger than any terrestrial nicker or bogle Rossamund had known before. Exclamations of disgust and wonder came from the watching cottagers witnessing from the windows below.
In defense of their fellows, the other forms fell apart into a mass of saps, how many hundreds Rossamund could not count. A score tried to surge Europe, to engulf her with their coils and their spiny sucking mouths. With a hurtling sweep of her sizzling fuse she kept them bayed, leaping lightly onto the boulder and sending the half-full basin tumbling. Gaining the higher vantage, she seemed for a moment on an island awash in a seething inky sea, swatting down every slick, black, lashing fluke with flash after flash of violent light.Yet a fight did not prove to be the wriggling things' primary desire. Protected by the aggression of a few, the great bulk of the foul worms slid away with astonishing speed into the benighted meadow.
A musket shot coughed, and another. An eruption of gun-smoke fouled the air before Rossamund.
"Stop!" he hollered, sliding upon his stomach down the incline of the roof, barely catching himself on the lip of the tiles, his thrice-high tumbling to the ground far below, the flammagon spared such treatment by the tangle of its strap about Rossamund's shoulders. Craning his neck to look beneath the eaves, he was confronted by the startled upside-down face of a determined Master Parfait, still with smoking long-rifle in hand. "YOU'LL HIT HER!"
The admonition did nought to halt the disgruntled parmister, who, already in the throes of reloading, primed his pan and thrust his musket out of the upper window to take aim. Rossamund would have none of this, and stretching precariously, humours swelling in his head, he snatched the barrel of the firelock and wrested it from the uppity fellow's misguided grasp with a smart tug.
A muffled girlish shriek from a lady-watcher at another window and Rossamund looked up to see in the sinking glow of the flammagon that the remaining saps harrying Europe had wound themselves together into a single form. The bulging, oversized creature bent up, whipping its single worm head at the fulgar and forcing her to spring in elegant retreat off the rock.
Rossamund scrambled, almost toppling, to the scale and blundered down, leaping the last third in anxious hurry as he saw the secondhand flash and heard another arcing zzzock! Pouncing around the corner, stolen musket still in hand, he saw Europe standing higher up the slope, her back to the settlement wall. Brandishing the fuse like some ancient heldin's spear, she drove it right into the heart of the collective triple-sized worm. With a satisfying zzzzack! the foul things flailed apart, their grip on each other loosening in their demise. They fell twitching dead to the grass, until only one remained upright, skewered through its mouth by the fulgaris, its slimy hide hissing and bubbling where it had split apart under Europe's eclatics. With a grimace, she withdrew the fuse from the charry mess and scowled out to the moonlit pastures.
Rossamund could not find any others near; nor, as he clambered atop the very rock from which Europe had first fought, did he spy any hint of motion on the meadow. "They've escaped," he declared redundantly, unsure what to feel, touching his nose against the musty metallic stink hanging in the air.
"Exactly why I have already sought a pathpry," said the fulgar tetchily, stepping beside him and handing him his hat. "Tomorrow, first peep of dawn-if your masters have proved successful-we shall track them to their lair." Stalking the mound, she set to finishing those saps that yet twitched with the weak ebbing of their previous animation, until all were dead. "Oh," she said placidly, standing over one lifeless worm lying by the foot of the mound, a neat bullet wound in its flank, "they actually managed to hit one."
"I tried to stop them." Rossamund grimaced, holding up the purloined firelock.
"Hmm" was all the fulgar answered.
Monsiere Trottinott was thoroughly impressed, and all the citizens of Scantling Aire were amazed at the feats performed by the Branden Rose.
"The job is but part done, sir," she replied to the Monsiere's breathless enthusiasm as they entered the safety of Scantling Aire's yard. "There is one dead out there, pierced by a musket hole that one of your wayward franklocks ought to claim"-the Monsiere looked ashamedly to the floor-"though I do not think the ichor of such unnaturally foul things would be any use for puncting-nor would I risk it if I were you."
The defense declared a great victory; it was universally agreed that the sloe saps-as folks began to call them-were unlikely to return.
As a precaution, Rossamund set small purple cones of repellent-compounded ash of Mehette-atop the rocks where the pudding basins of blood-curdle had previously rested. Found by the box in the saumery, the repellent had a familiar noxious reek that summoned a powerful memory of Licurius doing much the same about the night camp long ago.
With admirable persistence, Autos insisted upon helping, bearing candle and taper to light each cone and following so zealously close that the young factotum was grateful for the darkness to disguise his discomfort in handling it. The faint grassy breeze coming off the meadows shifted and sent the merest whiff of Mehette-fume up Rossamund's nose, stunning him, his vision flashing, intellectuals reeling, sending him staggering away from the vile stuff in a fit of coughing.
"It must be very strong," Autos marveled, thumping Rossamund on the back as if food were choking him.
"It-is-," Rossamund squeezed out between gags, sight blurred with tears, bent double and rocking under the well-intentioned blows. "K-keep… b-back!"
Granted sleep for the remains of the night, he was shown by a plump-faced dame in earth-brown shirts up to one of the cottages' higher rooms. Its crude walls were white and lumpy, its shallow wood-beam ceiling angling down to a dormer window that looked west onto a field of vibrant stars and black land. Rossamund found that a simple wool-stuffed pallet had been laid for him on the floor at the foot of a remarkably downy boxed bed where Europe reclined still fully harnessed, already sighing in the depth of easy sleep. In the fresh of the morning, Fransitart and Craumpalin arrived by the Monsiere's coach midway through breakfast and treacle testing, their relief at Rossamund's well-being evident in their gruff greetings. Accompanying them were three hard-looking fellows in woodland-hued proofing of leather and buff, animal pelts draped over their shoulders. They bore barbed boar-spears and elegant fusils with muzzles fashioned in the form of snarling bestial mouths. These were peltrymen from Lambingstone-or so they said of themselves-working the folds of Broad Trim and happy to accept the lucrative terms offered by Europe through her two crusty mediums. The eldest of them spoke for all with a thick accent Rossamund at first found hard to follow. Introducing himself as Quietis Furrow, he first presented his brother, Agitis Furrow, and then their young prentice, Bodkin Ease, who wore an olfactologue upon his face much like the box of a sthenicon except that it covered only his mouth and nose. Buff-brown faces clenched in permanent squint beneath greasy, battered tricorns, they greeted the Branden Rose and the Monsiere with deep, frowning nods that did for a bow and listened silently, expressions sharp, shadowed eyes bright to the recounting of the night.
"Thee can keep thy dollars and scruples, missus, till job's did done," Quietis Furrow said when part of their fee was offered. "That'n way thee'll know we 'tend to see this all right through to satisfaction."
Europe happily accepted this, saying, "Your integrity is laudable, sir."
"Hark!" Trottinott declared warmly. "Happy the day spent dealing with straight country lads. A boon on those who found you!"