Flinging whatever came handy at the pestilent creature, the glamgorn blinked at him in recognition. Many of the lighter missiles bounced off harmlessly, almost comically. Some showered around Rossamund, but with the muffled clunk of rock on metal and wood, many stones flew true and the rever's body began to buckle under the mucky, stony sleet.
The flat staccato cough of a volley of firelocks sounded from the heights, accompanied by shouts and a single dull pop. Just as dread for Europe and his old masters rose, a blitz of lightning struck again, three swift strikes hitting the hill above, silencing all else as it shattered the very air.
With a mighty wrench of his fettered leg Rossamund pulled free of Sackhead, clawing and pulling at the cobbles to get himself away. Woodenhead collapsed to its knees but still crawled on. In that instant the young factotum glimpsed Cinnamon through the door gap of the other room, skipping under the third jackstraw's wicked grasp. The nuglung seized the abomination by hip and chest, and in a twinkling tore it completely in two.Without a pause the bogle-princeling tossed the top half of the rever far into the precipitous woods and, swinging the bestial legs, rushed to Rossamund's aid. Leaping lightly over boy and wall, he bore down on the limping jackstraw clutching relentlessly for its prey with a click-clack of its metal talons-battering the vile thing with the riven legs, hitting again and again with such savagery that bits of jackstraw quickly began to flick and spatter.
Arms full of old debris, Freckle sprang onto the top of the adjacent wall, pummeling Woodenhead with stone after stone. When his armload was spent, he jumped down to bounce upon the cloth-man, yipping loudly and with relish as he pounded the thing to bits.
In awe, Rossamund strove to stand, his whole body thudding with hurts, blasted hand slick with gore slithering off whatever they touched. Another pop of a firelock from the woods and he revived. At the left side of the level he saw a sheer flight of crumbling stone stairs that climbed the hill from the edge of the foundation. Running out of the ruin's vestigial entrance, he mounted this stairway, Darter Brown winging to join him. Sucking at the air in rasping gulps, Rossamund clawed up the sheer path. Many yards to the right, half hidden in a grove of pine trees, he caught sight of the woman in the white dress, sagging where she stood-heedless of the world-braced with one gloved hand upon a trunk, her face a sickly gray under its pretty bonnet.
A close clash of weapons and Rossamund had a brief sight of Fransitart higher up the bank, standing at the threshold of an enormous bush of olive that grew beside the steps. White hair flying, musketoon in one hand and his hanger in the other, the ex-dormitory master was sparring sword to gabelung with a fictler who was flailing with a young man's impatience against Fransitart's watchful defense. Across the curve of the incline, a wild Piltdowner man, bloodied and angry-eyed, crouched in the concealment of the tipped and broken landaulet to level a firelock on the old vinegaroon. Snatching up the first projectile handy, Rossamund pitched a pinecone, the seedy bullet humming smartly as it flew, hitting the Piltman on the cheek in a mighty spray of splintering cone at the very instant of firing. In the CRACK! of the shot, Fransitart struck his adversary a telling cut upon the neck and toppled with the dying foe to the ground.
The Piltman staggered off down the hill, tripping on weeds and roots. Rossamund did not wait to know the man's fate but pivoted and dashed to the great olive where Fransitart had fallen, terrified of what he would find.
Between him and his purpose crawled a lone jackstraw, legs torn away, pawing at the weeds and dirt, scaling the hillside with arms alone, metal teeth gnashing, more the mindless unrelenting predator now.
"Enough!" Fury boiling in a red instant, Rossamund snatched at a broken piece of wall embedded in the hillside-a stone as big as his own chest-and heaved it from the soil with both hands. In a spray of worms and wood-lice and soil, he hefted the stone high, and, dropping to his knees, brought it down with all his monstrous might right on the wretched laboring abomination's sack-cloth skull, burying the stone and putrid flesh with it a hand span deep into the mold.
About him silence settled on the woods: no crack of firelock, no clash of blows, just the anxious hush of an aftermath.
"Well done, dear lad…," Fransitart's voice broke through his desolation.
Heart leaping, Rossamund looked up.
The old vinegaroon was limping toward him, clutching at his stomach and using the musketoon as a crutch along the uneven ground. His face was dreadfully swollen about the eyes, his bottom lip split and gory, his hair congealing with red.
With a sob of relief, Rossamund sprang the scant yards and clasped arms with the startled sea dog. "And Craumpalin…"
In the cool of the enormous olive, Fransitart revealed the dispenser, propped in the deep bole of the tree, partially concealed by the roots and a smooth stone about which the olive had matured, making it almost a part of itself. Craumpalin was disconcertingly still, his eyes closed, his beard bedraggled with blood, his breath shallow huffs. A soaking bloodied scarf lay near, and another was bound about his throat.
"Master Pin…" Rossamund dropped to his knees beside the fallen fellow.
"He's been poorly handled, lad.That bang let off by them filthy scupperers gave 'm a prodigious bad gash in th' neck 'ere-" Fransitart drew a line on the left side of his neck with his finger as he spoke out of the side of his wounded mouth. "I reckon 'is legs are broke… but 'e's holdin' together, though 'e'll need a seam-stitcher an' two good splints afore too long."
"I have thrombis and strupleskin." Rossamund reached for his left stoup. "We can stop the holes at least." Only now, in the numb astonishment after hand strokes, did he become properly alive to the sharp hurt of his own hand, finding too a vigorous ache in his shoulders, as if someone had tried to unattach his arm at its socket. He gingerly hooked the partscontainer-baldric and all-from his shoulder. "Could you please find them?" he asked his old master sheepishly.
"What have ye done to yer paw, lad?" The ex-dormitory master scowled at the burnt flesh as he took the stoup.
"I–I broke a potive." The young factotum made a wry face at his old master's sharp astonishment. "Where are your hurts?" he inquired evasively.
"I've got a prodigious crack on me crown an' a smart thump to me chest beams," Fransitart explained as he fossicked for th' right items. "We were pitched cap o'er end down the hill. After clearin' me intellectuals, findin' an' a-haulin' dear Pin into th' bush, I found this 'ere musketoon still fit to fire an' took one of them baskets aimin' on yer miss with it, then swapped a swing o' blows with another. Did th' same again shortly after, then ye showed yerself…"
Underbrush rustled and a small form pushed into the haven of the dense olive boughs.
Fransitart almost dropped the stoup as he reached in fright for his hanger.
"You can keep your blows to be kept to themselves, master seaswimmer!" came a bleeble-blabble voice, its merry speaking at odds with the stern warning.
"Freckle!" Rossamund whispered.
Sheepishly, the glamgorn revealed itself, alone.
Where Cinnamon was the young factotum could not see. In unabashed wonder, the ex-vinegaroon regarded the little barky-skinned bogle wearing a child's longshanks pulled high about its chest rather than the usual swaddle of rags. "So 'ere's th' little fellow…"
"It is we who win this day, yes we do, and the day is won!" Freckle smiled, his huge eyes disappearing in the wrinkles of its grinning. "Oh…" Its gaze alighted on Craumpalin and he became instantly solemn. "Keep your powders in their pots, Rossamund who is Rossamund even more than before; we shall tend all hurts…"