by Jack
‘Well I never ...’ Wells breathed heavily in dread fascination, reprieved and vaguely aware of the reverberations of the shattering struggle quivering through his feet and bowed shins. ‘Saved by a monster.’
Barely visible now among the trees, it seemed the Shiggeloth was trying to wrap its great vertical maw about its opponent’s long-bearded head as if to swallow it whole. Smaller it might be, but more quick and cunning too, winding its quasi-tentacle arms about its foe, pinning the Gutterfear’s arms to its mighty trunk. Staggering and writhing to get an advantage, the shaggy giant barked thunderously in dismay, its tiny glittering black eyes wide and rolling.
With profound yet rapid calm, Door placed Viola in Sprawle’s care and kneeling, took aim with his longrifle and fired at the wrestling behemoths, striking the Shiggeloth upon its elongated crown.
The tiny sting of an insignificant wasp, this single frank shot still caused the sea-horror to recoil as if from a much mightier blow, loosing for a beat its grip on the Gutterfear. The shaggy defender took this merest chance and snatched the famuli by its unwrapping arms, tugging the Shiggeloth away. Grasping one of its triplicate legs, the Gutterfear lifted the squirming bulk high, bent it with a foul squelch deleteriously in two, and threw it back into the pines. The half-broken Shiggeloth fell with an astonishing crash that flattened entire trees and sent splinters bursting lethally all about. One such deadly sliver sped straight at Wells, striking him sharply on the right shoulder, and though its needle point was foiled by the excellence of his well-proofed frockcoat, its force smote him to the needle-matted ground. It was the Gutterfear’s turn to pounce, scrabbling up the further slope to where the Shiggeloth even now was recovering with preternatural vigour. Pinning its enemy with its brawny calloused knees, the Gutterfear reached far into the sea-monster’s quivering mouth and with an inordinate wrench of his powerful arm, seemed to pull the Shiggeloth’s insides out.
The surviving fictlers wailed at the overthrow of their adored one. Yet they were not undone, for even as Sprawle helped him to his feet, Wells could see the feather-crested leader below, rallying scores of his helots about him; he could hear the fellow calling for his brethren to forget their fallen prince and the now-feeding Gutterfear — Sucathes has many such servants — and seek the end of these ignorant defilers. In their raging distress, the fictlers threw themselves up the incline to overrun this arrogant handful who dared thwart the sacred venerations of their unhallowed lord, swarming around Cilestine who, skipping between black trunks, danced destruction amongst them. Despite her ferocity, a great host streamed up through the woods, cackling like crazed things, firing fusils and pistols at their prey.
From the cover of a knot of youthful pines sprouting from a tall statuesque boulder, the three men plied fire down from their advantage of height, felling several fictlers whose places were promptly taken by another, four score or more white masks coming on undaunted.
‘We have certainly kicked the wasp’s nest, haven’t we,’ Wells declared over the din, reaching out and firing his own long-barrelled pistol into the massing foe, striking a fictler square in their chest.
Hard hit, the fellow fell forward on hands and knees while his cult-mates stepped around him, shook himself and stood again.
‘I think these dullards’ humours are charged with more than mere nerves,’ Sprawle returned as one of his own targets rose once more to come on. The lurksman tossed grenadoes amongst the advancing helots — one, two, three, popping in cruel gusts orange or mauve, felling maybe a dozen at a time; yet still their adversaries pressed forward, bawling in fury as they came.
At threat of being overwhelmed, Wells and his companions were forced again to flight, hurrying across the easier level of the ridge, the sleuth’s legs an agony he could not afford to heed. Twice as they ran, Sprawle pivoted in an almost offhand manner to return fire; twice a fictler fell, never to rise again, while hidden now in the trees far behind and echoing through the hills, they could hear the Gutterfear still bellowing as if to challenge any other sea-born intruders to show themselves. Finally they came to a gap in the thick trees: the summit of another shallow gully, a natural drain for a spring that bubbled out from its subterranean flow and chuckled down to an ancient stone bridge and a proper road that curved away ahead.
‘There!’ Sprawle insisted, pointing to the cover of the bridge and a large monolith of dark rock to the right of it.
Partners with him on many a quest, his fellow adventurers did not quibble but scurried and skipped down the course of the runnel, while Sprawle held back. Worming a delaying primer into the new cracked neck of a grenadoe, he laid it in the bole of age-ed turpentine a little way down the furrow. Returning to the top of the ridge he made sure to catch the attention of their pursuers then ran off to the left. Some fictlers followed him, but most thought themselves too clever to be so simply fooled and led by their grammaticar continued on the path after Viola and her two guardians.
Scaling the footings of the bridge to the road, Wells and Door — Viola in arms again — took cover as best they could to wait for their comrades; the sleuth would rescue this girl, but not at the complete abandonment of his friends.
Placing Viola in the shelter of the boulder and covering her quaking, inadequately covered frame with his outer coat, Door knelt again in the shadow of the stone to load his longrifle. Levelling it on the gully, he waited. All too soon the fictlers showed themselves, the feather-crested grammaticar directing his minions to range out about him and flank their prey from the heights above the road, levelling their own firelocks to send balls spanging about.
Door fired.
In the nick of time the grammaticar must have seen the flash in the pan, for the hateful figure veered sharply, avoiding the shot while a less fortunate helot stepping where he had just been, fell.
A clatter of hoof and cart sounded to the right and scuttling to hide behind the wall of the bridge, Wells aimed his hauncet ready to face whatever came. A simple donkey cart slewed about the acute bend beyond the crossing driven by a rather gaunt fellow with honest eyes but an ill-favoured face whose liniments were currently contorted in a grimace of panic. Under fire from fictlers on the ridge, the driver’s battered copstain hat was set flying. Better hat than head! The companion who rode precariously beside him was facing the way they had come, flourishing and firing a pistol in each hand, and Wells instantly recognised the heavy drapes of Sprawle’s scarlet hood.
Dear Sprawle!
A sudden flash and thudding report. The grenadoe at the summit of the gully detonated, engulfing a mass of fictlers, sending survivors reeling away, silencing musket-shots for a breath.
‘The timing of your fuse is as excellent as ever!’ Wells cried to his friend and leapt up to grab at the bit strap of the nearest ass as the cart slowed on Sprawle’s clear command. ‘I see you have brought a jaunty fit to extract us from this stouche!’
The owner of the cart seemed none too pleased with such an arrangement, yet an angry retort from Wells seemed enough to cause him to turn a more agreeable cheek. He was a peculiar fellow, this smudgy cart driver; lies and truth swept in turn over his visage like the swell on a shore, yet his shrewd gaze spoke of a forthright soul.
A shriek from the rise of the gully heralded the return of egret-masked Cilestine, the surviving Pail sister dashing about the spreading fume of Sprawle’s grenade, came dextrously down the slope to her comrades. Plainly thinking her a foe, the cart driver drew forth a heavy volley gun of seven barrels, only to be stopped by Sprawle before he could do any more harm. Battered and bleeding, the sagaar returned to them as one come back from the dead.
‘There are more,’ the sagaar breathed heavily, taking a moment, sipping
‘Then let us take this jink out of here,’ Sprawle declared, moving to alight in the cart.
In an abrupt act of compliance the cart driver helped Door to lift Viola in his humble transport, making room in the oddly odiferous tray of his cart for them all.
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��Well done, sir,’ the sleuth declared, introducing himself quickly. ‘How is it you are here?’
‘Fetching stooks,’ the man said — a patent lie.
Despite this Wells let himself be handed hastily to the seat next to the troubled driver. He caught one glimpse of the long notched iron pole, the folded winch-frame and several species of spade in the fellow’s cart-tray and fathomed exactly the nature of his trade. Here was a corser. In any other circumstance the sleuth would have avoided such a man, but need drove and whatever qualms he might have, here was not an occasion for them. They did at least among the dark trades, have a code of ethics; their hinge, or whatever it was called.
‘Come on, my chums,’ Bunting growled, spying white masks skulking yet in the gloom at the summit of the wooded gully. ‘I don’t want to die out here!’
No sooner were the five clambered aboard than the cart lurched to a start.
‘Fear not, my man!’ Wells returned with forced flippancy to the cartman as he clutched his hat to head. ‘If you’re born for the gibbet, you’ll never drown.’
With a shake of his head Bunting snorted darkly, flogging poor Hammer to set a better pace for Anvil.
Not a moment too soon. Fictlers dashed across the heights on the left in an attempt to outflank the escapees, firing vigorously on them, balls smacking the frame of the cart and slapping painfully on good proofing.
‘How many are there!’ Bunting cried.
Too intent on their pursuit, on reloading Sprawle’s pistols, Wells did not answer, yet wondered the same himself. White masks were everywhere on the slopes behind, undaunted and unrelenting. How gravely I have underestimated them, the sleuth berated himself bitterly. An idiot fringe they might have been in social reckoning, but these fictlers were a genuine and organised threat.
First one ball then another struck Door. He fell back with a huff among the obscured bundles of corpses, his proofing saving him from immediately mortal harm. Shaking himself, the hefty fellow simply sat up, levelled and fired, piercing a fictler sprinting along in plain sight through the eye-slot of his mask. In a patter of returning shot, Door coolly reloaded and fired again, bringing an end to another foe.
Still the implacable fictlers came on.
Leaping abruptly from the cart, Cilestine gave a parting glance to her comrades — there would be no returning for her this time. Rapidly she scaled the ridge to the heights on the right and crisscrossed back through the trees. They lost sight of her in the woods, but her angry screeching shouts rang out through the folds of land over the racket of the dashing cart.
Careering about one turn then another, they picked up pace as the gradient of the road steepened and the pursuit seemed to falter. Bunting kept his donkeys at pace, too far was not far enough from such dire mayhem.
‘You always in such straights?’ he called over the racket of their haste to the one named Wells, juddering along on the seat beside him.
The stunt fellow seemed a mite put out by this. ‘No, as it happens,’ he returned rather tightly. ‘Today has been especially hard ... Do you always venture out to such awkward places to find corses?’
Wells peered over his darkened spectacles and Bunting had a brief sight of the weird blue-on-red eyes of a falseman.
Bunting suddenly felt rather trapped. ‘I —’ As true as he tried to be to the hinge, it would never be true enough for such a fault-spotting chap as rode with him now. How low can my days drop?
Of a sudden, Wells pitched forward from his seat by Bunting, clutching his neck, gore sputtering through the man’s oddly elegant fingers. Bunting tried to grab at him without losing grip of the reins but Wells fell from his seat to the road, the hurry of the cart quickly leaving him behind.
Sprawle would have none of this. ‘Girl be dashed!’ he seethed and sprang down from the back of the cart and ran to his stricken friend.
Glancing about wildly, Bunting caught a glimpse of some grand-looking fictler standing on a rock behind, his thricehigh splayed with gaudy feathers and a musket in hand. ‘How did they catch us so fast!’ The corser slowed.
‘Leave!’ Wells barked angrily, sprawled on the dirt, spitting dark thick blood. ‘Go, Mister Door! Go! Return her ... to her mother ... GO!’
Fictlers caterwauled in the trees.
‘GO!’ the one called Door cried, the agony clear in his stifled voice but obedient none-the-less, urging Bunting onwards.
Whipping reins cruelly, the corser set Hammer and Anvil back to their ungainly gallop, the girl, Viola, cringing in the jumble of stooks and covertly wrapped corses, pressing herself into the corner of the cart-tray below and beside him. Merciless in his fear, Bunting kept his beasts at their jaunting pace, looking back to see Sprawle standing in defence over his friend, throwing a caste high and long at the oncoming fictlers, then stand and deliver with his pistols.
Sobbing, Door loaded and fired, loaded and fired from the back of the cart — each shot a kill, yet to little avail as the massing fictlers jumped from all points along the road and closed about the still flailing Sprawle and Wells surely dying on the road.
Abruptly the road about them erupted in a great magenta cloud obliterating all sight of the rushing foe, and the desperate end of those bizarre fighting men.
Viola shrieked.
A handful of fictlers or more were running along the right-hand bank, keeping impossible pace with the jauntily speeding cart.
‘How do they run so fast!’ Bunting cried as he lashed his poor team to greater exertions. Long had he striven to preserve his own hide and he was not about to lose it in such a meaningless fashion.
Just as the cart was pulling ahead, the fictlers veered and sprang from the bank at them. Door’s musket spoke and one masked adversary fell in mid-spring. Another misjudged and struck hard the side of cart, falling to the road where the right wheel jolted shockingly as it rode over the hapless fellow. Yet four of the mindless cultists had succeeded in their aim, landing in the tray of the cart or gaining a hold on its side. Two collided squarely with Door, the three toppling together onto the bundles of corse and twigs. The franklock twisted mightily in their corporate grip, striking one fictler savagely before being stunned as the second tore the sthenicon from his face and felled him under a whirl of blows of knife and handle.
A white mask loomed all too close and Bunting was clutched rudely about the throat. A pale knife blade danced before his face; ‘No one violates the sanctuary of Sucathes the Devourer and lives!’ hissed in his ear. From the corner of his popping flickering vision as the wind was choked from him he could see the fourth fictler struggling with Viola, trying to heave her out of the tray. For a wee lass she put up a prodigious fight.
‘I haven’t violated nothing, ye hackmillion sprattling!’ Bunting spat.
Letting go the reins, the corser grasped the knife-wielding hand and gripped the hold about his throttle [throat], and pulled — a life of digging up the dead got you nothing if not great strength of arm. In the scant reprieve, the corser snatched up his heptibus and thrusting its muzzle backwards under his arm into what he presumed was his assailant’s belly, discharged all seven barrels at once. The clutching at him vanished as the fictler was flung savagely out of the cart.
Pivoting in his seat, the corser could see that Viola was overcome, the fictler even now lifting her to toss her over the side. Yet the vile fellow’s ambitions were brought instantly to nil as the butt of the heptibus stove in the back of his cranium.
As if realising he alone was left, the last fictler looked up, bloodied knife poised above its masked head. With a harrowing growl, Door bloodied and half-broken, snatched the cultist by his collars and with a great heave of his legs, flipped the fellow up and out of the cart, sending him toppling and crashing down the bank of the stream on the left.
‘Get her home to her ma,’ Door wheezed, pierced by many wounds despite the quality of his proofing, and lying terribly still amongst the morbid wrack.
Needing no second invitation, Bunting drove Ha
mmer and Anvil like a wild thing, the cart shaking violently, tipping dangerously on the sharper bends, driving on and on until the sounds of battle were far behind. Only when they were clear of the darksome knotty path and Viola’s shuddering sobs had subsided as she tended the ailing lurksman, did Bunting ease his donkeys’ pace. Yet seeing phantoms of white-masked faces in every nook and shadow, he did not stop, not at the descent of evening nor at the fall of night to get in and away from monstrous night-lurking threats as was common practice, not even to find poor Door better care. Them fictlers could get us yet! No, he kept steadily on, pausing only to give the donkeys brief respite. It was only when they trod at last in broader downs and more regularly settled lands that he felt that they were properly safe and relented. It was here that he found that the fellow called Door was dead.
A windfall addition to my toll at least, Bunting thought dismally.
‘W-what has become of them?’ the girl had asked yet again of her saviours.
But Bunting had no reply. Surely the fate of those brave, done-for fellows was clear ...