Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  With Phoebë lifting her nightly shrinking face over the darkling hills, the prentice-watch found themselves gratefully passing the great fuming censers of Wellnigh House and entering the safety of the cothouse confines.

  “How was it?” one of the house-watch asked.

  “The threwd grows” was Bellicos’ curt reply.

  “Aye,” the house-watchman returned, “don’t it always, these days?”

  7

  MORNING TO MOURNING

  burges small flags for signaling, made in sets of distinct patterns for the representation of letters, numbers, cardinal points, titles of rank or social elevation, even whole words. The color of a burge is first and foremost for distinction, though the meaning of the colors can be inferred if a small multistripe, multicolored flag—known as the parti-jack—is flown with them. Burges are used for both civil and military purposes on land and the vinegar seas.

  As it had been on their previous prentice-watches, Rossamünd’s quarto was rudely awoken before the sun had properly started its own day. In the hurry of breakfast Rossamünd thanked Threnody for her help with his lantern-crook.

  “I could not help myself,” she said a little stiffly. “It is the way of a calendar: strive against the oppressor, relieve those oppressed, work for those who cannot afford a teratologist’s labors, feed them that cannot afford the food, give roof to the roofless, a bed to the bedless.” She spoke her creed with the monotone of rote learning.

  The prentices were blessed with a friendly greeting from Sebastipole as they formed up to leave, a profound contrast to the surliness of Assimus, Bellicos and Puttinger.The leer at the lead, out went the lantern-watch, out into the early gray when the air seems especially clear and still and cheeks hurt with the cold and everyone speaks in a hush; out to quell the lights for the glory of Ol’ Barny once more. Dawning glimmers expanded to an astounding rosy brilliance as they returned—as they must—through the Briary’s brooding shadows.

  Red dawning, traveler’s warning . . .

  Even the hard veteran lampsmen kept quiet and looked often to the leer. Rossamünd was sure he heard suspicious rustlings and rattlings in the winter-barren woods, thick with faintly luminous fogs, but Sebastipole did not give an alarm.

  Out on the raised dike-road of the Harrowmath and free of the claustrophobic thicket, the prentice-watch walked a little easier. From some hidden roost in the wild pastures the occasional lonely trilling of a wagtail echoed about the quiet. At lamppost East Winst 5 West Well 20—only four more lamps till they could consider themselves safe within the fire arcs of the manse’s great-guns—Grindrod allowed them to take their ease. For a moment they sat on the roadside to sip at skins of water, chew on hardened slogg-porridge and listen to the tinkle of a runnel that flowed under the highroad. Called the Dribble, it apparently came from boggy ground to the north, went through a pipe beneath them in the dike’s foundations and down to a small marsh known as Old Man’s Itch in the south. Rossamünd loved its bubbling melody and was grateful they had stopped by it.

  Only Sebastipole did not stand easy, but took a quick drink through a tube stuck into his sthenicon and resumed his silent survey. Something in the gloom of the Briarywood through which they had passed only a little more than an hour before seemed to fix his attention. Noticing the leer’s pointed stare, Rossamünd tried to discover what lay there. Surely not a monster? All he could see was the thick mist condensing up from the grasses and settling over the highroad. However, he did spy a hard-covered transport emerging from the rising fume. It was a boot truck pulled by a fully shabraqued mule hurrying as fast along the Pettiwiggin as the fractious creature could manage.

  “First traffic of the day,” called Bellicos. “Clear the way!” This was redundant, for all of the prentice-watch were sitting easy on steep verges.

  “He cracks on apace!” spat Assimus.

  Though it was still a fair way off, the broad blue and white stripes that covered its windowless sides could be easily spotted. It was a butcher’s wagon; something that belonged in a town or city.

  “He is out of his normal pond,” Puttinger mused.

  “What business has a butcher got in the early morn on haunted roads?” Bellicos wondered aloud.

  “I reckon I’ve seen him and his before,” Assimus posited.

  “Comes and leaves from the manse twice or thrice a year, more frequent yet ever since the old Comptroller-Master-General left.”

  The approaching vehicle did not distract Sebastipole. He pushed at one of the three small, slotted levers on the side of his sthenicon and kept staring beyond it, farther down the road. After a long, far-looking scrutiny, he pushed at the biologue box again from the other side. “We must hurry ourselves, Lamplighter-Sergeant,” the leer said carefully, precisely. “There is good reason for that truck’s speed: it has picked up a follower.”

  “At what cardinal, leer?” Grindrod gruffed.

  “Directly east.”

  The lamplighter-sergeant took out his perspective glass, a privilege of his rank, and took in the view indicated. “Shadows within shadows,” he growled obstinately after a thorough scrutiny. “I see naught to trouble us.”

  “Yet there is trouble there,” Sebastipole persisted patiently. “It remains in the fogs but will emerge soon enough. You must move now, man! There is an umbergog eagerly on that butcher’s slot!”

  An umbergog! Rossamünd was gripped with fascination and dread. Umbergogs were reputed to be among the largest of the land-walking nickers, some bigger even than ettins and far more cantankerous and misanthropic.The only ettin he had met had not seemed mean at all, rather sad and confused. He could see something there, emerging at the edge of clarity, clearly enormous and coming their way.

  “Though our follower is still nigh on two miles distant,” Sebastipole said, never moving his gaze from the distant menace, “it is moving extraordinarily fast. I suggest you pick up the rate—quickstep or double-quick, Mister Grindrod, and leave off the learning and the dousing till a friendlier day.”

  Grindrod bridled, but nevertheless he said, “Aye, leer, good advice—”

  “Not again!” quailed Crofton Wheede, too frightened to care that he had interrupted the lamplighter-sergeant.

  “What’s the chance of two theroscades within a week?” whimpered Giddian Pillow.

  “Steady, lads, steady,” Grindrod cautioned. “Ye faced ’em four nights gone and ye’ll do it again today if needs be. Now to yer marching—we’ll beat this hasty hugger-mugger home yet! The basket is still a goodly way that way,” he said, pointing open-palmed, soldier fashion, to his left. “And we have but three parts of a mile to succor and security at the opposite point. Keep yer dressing and eyes forward if ye want to avoid trouble: a threat near or far should never be allowed to ruin good and steady order! By the left! At the double-quick, march!”

  So they marched fast, Threnody keeping pace with the best of them. Frequently Sebastipole halted to assess the threat, the lampsmen watching him almost as often, waiting hawklike for his reaction. Each time he simply spurred the prentice-watch on.

  “How is it,” Rossamünd heard Puttinger wheeze in his thick Gott accent, “that the basket does not go for the pile of charbroiled corpses in the Briary?”

  “The stinker finds something more to its likin’ in the butcher’s buggy, I reckon,” Bellicos offered.

  The butcher’s truck rushed past with a noisy clatter even as the prentices themselves fled. The driver and the side-armsman were muffled up to the nose against the chill, their eyes unfriendly, frightened and staring ahead. The donkey was gasping, near blown, but still they pushed it as if all the blightlings and baskets of the Ichormeer pursued them. In its flight it left a faint unfriendly trail of moldering meat smells and the faintest whiff of something foul and horrifyingly familiar—Swine’s lard!

  A nauseous chill rushed through Rossamünd’s innards. He wrestled off the horrors, his memory lurching back to rever-men slavering in a vessel’s dark hold. But he
re? He cleared his head with a shake.

  “I reckon I recognize ’im,” Crofton Wheede gasped. “He’s the knackerer from the woods above Hinkersiegh where my sires are from. What’s ’e doing all the way here?”

  Almost immediately a horizontal gout of smoke erupted from the manse followed by the small thunder of cannon, which sent clouds of startled birds bursting into the gelid morning with a great clamor from every hide and roost on the Harrowmath. The fortress was firing one of its long-guns, seeking the prentice-watch’s startled attention. Burges were run up beneath Ol’ Barny, small flags lit bright in this clear morning and signaling the same warning Sebastipole had just issued.

  Bellicos pointed to the signal and cried out, “There’s a nicker on the Harrowmath!”

  Behind, Rossamünd heard Sebastipole say, as if to himself, “As I said . . .”

  “So yer prescient observation shows true, leer.Well done to ye.” The lamplighter-sergeant did not actually sound pleased or impressed.

  The prentices kept bravely at their marching, but began to look about wildly, losing what was left of their even gait, quickly ceasing to step-regular altogether. Rossamünd stepped directly into Tremendus Twörp’s broad back, receiving a blow to his chin and nose from the lad’s flabby shoulder blade. Threnody managed to gracefully avoid the collision.

  “Reform yer file, ye clod-footed blunderers!” Grindrod barked angrily. He looked back. “Where is the beast?” He looked again through his glass and must have found something, for he said, “What an ugly article . . .” With a grunt, Grindrod passed the perspective glass to Bellicos.

  With eight hundred yards still between them and Winstermill’s sturdy gates, some hulking thing was emerging from the fog. It had gained on them alarmingly. Even at a distance Rossamünd could see its giant size: a lumbering brute with a great spread of spikes about its head. And how fast its massive legs did carry it! Even as they watched it seemed to draw closer.

  “I reckon it’s the Herdebog Trought!” wheezed Bellicos with the callous calm of a hardened campaigner. “Even from here I can recognize the basket. I remember it from its rampagings in ’87.”

  “Can’t be!” muttered Assimus. “It’s meant to have been chased by the Columbines all the way up into the northern marches of the Gluepot and destroyed there.”

  “It’s coming!” Wheede shrieked.

  The other prentices whimpered.

  “I don’t want to die by the jaws of a nicker . . . ,” burbled Twörp.

  “Cease yer panicking!” Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod bellowed. “I’ve been in far tighter contests than this.”

  “Grindrod!” Sebastipole barked, surprisingly clear from his boxed face. “With Puttinger, take the prentices back to the manse as quickly as you think they can stand. Assimus and Bellicos and I shall be rear guard. Go now, Lamplighter-Sergeant—there’s not a moment to lose!”

  The lamplighter-sergeant repeated the orders as if they were his own. The prentices hurried away; the double pace doubled again, leaving Sebastipole and the two lampsmen to do what they might to put the beast off. At East Winst 3 West Well 22 the prentices paused, panting like overworked dogs. Rossamünd looked back, and his eyes went saucerlike.

  The umbergog was bearing down at prodigious speed now, pulling itself along with the assistance of its long powerful arms. Less than two lantern-spans were between it and the rear guard. Half as tall again as the ettin Rossamünd had met in the Brindleshaws, this nicker was like some enormous malformed deer, its great antlers spreading out above its head like a regiment of pikes. Its hide, knotted and matted in thick curling beards about its chin, throat and down its chest, was like clots of dirty pale brown felt. The black fur about its small, weeping, rage-red eyes radiated down its cheek like points on a wind rose. It gave vent to a bellow like the lowing of a mighty, maniac bull, its hot breath expelled into the cold as billows of yellow steam.

  “At the doubled-double now. Lead on, Mister Puttinger.” Grindrod hung back. “I’ll keep an eye out rearward.”

  The prentices hustled forward, barely held panic spurring them.The thump of a long-gun pounded ahead of them, and the metal it threw flew close enough for Rossamünd to hear its unnerving, shuddering whine.The gunners of the fortress clearly thought the beast close enough to try their aim. The shot struck the earth to the north of the road, tearing a gap in the weeds and sending up a small spray of root-clogged soil well to the right of the charging monster.

  Assimus, Bellicos and Sebastipole each discharged their locks though they were well out of range, then retreated at a run.

  “Mister Puttinger, take the boys on,” Grindrod ordered. “I will stay to aid the rear guard.”

  “Yes, Lamplighter-Sergeant!” the old lampsman cried obediently.

  Threnody made to hold back too as Grindrod dropped behind; she was fearless and clearly itching to do her part.

  “Keep up, girly!” Puttinger hollered with quick fury, and grudgingly she picked up her pace again.

  HERDEBOG TROUGHT

  The prentices were running now in line, a maneuver for which they had had little training. Soon their formation was only a ragged farce of a file.Yet what they lacked in skill they compensated for in speed. Straggling, struggling to breathe, they were near enough to the fortress now to hear the terrible, distant baying of the manse’s dogs lusting to be let at the mighty beast. With this came the distant clattering of alarm posts tumbled out on drums, and the dong-dong-dong of the warning bell hung high in the Specular, the bell tower of the southern gatehouse.Yet as close as they were, Rossamünd doubted they could reach the manse in time. The battlements buzzed and milled with agitation as little, far-off people called encouragement from the walls.

  “Leg it, lads! Leg it!”

  Soldiers began firing from the ramparts, their muskets cracking hot but doing little more than fouling the air with their fumes. A few spent balls thwipped through the tangled grasses on either side of the road, posing more danger to the boys than the beast, and the ragged shooting soon stopped.

  Ahead of them the butcher’s truck kept at its cracking pace, the winded donkey whipped to push beyond all endurance. It neared the Approach and the succor of Winstermill, and Rossamünd bitterly wished he was upon it; yet instead of going up the steep ramp, the truck clattered on to disappear into the Bowels beneath the fortress.

  At the head of the prentices’ line, Crofton Wheede stumbled as the road changed from tamped clay to pavers of dressed stone. He tripped out of file, dragging Giddian Pillow with him. The other prentices avoided the tumble, but Rossamünd proved less nimble.Wheede’s toppling fodicar caught him about the shin and pulled him down. He saw a glimpse of gray sky and whirling horizon and hit the ground with a lazy puff of fine road-dust, his hat spinning off into the Harrowmath grass. A deft roll and Rossamünd was up on his feet again looking east, then west, then east again. Threnody slowed, this time to help him, fright now clear on her face, but the other prentices ran on, screaming panicked encouragements over their shoulders.Wheede and Pillow scrabbled to their feet and were off like hares from a covert, pelting after the others without a rearward look, deserting fodicars, fusils, knapsacks, even a mess-kid in their renewed flight. Red-faced and gasping, Puttinger half turned but, seeing the lads back on their feet, continued his own retreat.

  With quick glances left and right, Rossamünd could see that he was not going to get away. None of them were: not Sebastipole nor Grindrod nor the lampsmen dashing after them, not even Puttinger and the fleeing prentices. Only the butcher’s truck was safe—the very one that had brought this terror. Surely there was something he could do other than run uselessly? Surely he could attempt something to help his fellows escape?

  From his salt-bag he took out one of two leakvanes he carried. The small box contained two scripts separated by a heavy film of treated velvet. When mixed these burst into a repellent of the foulest kind. He had never used a leakvane, nor seen one till he joined the lighters, and under less testing circums
tances might have hesitated to try it.Yet, with carelessness born of necessity, Rossamünd pulled the red velvet tab that kept the two volatiles apart and hurled the box as far as he could—a surprising way for so small a lad. The leakvane landed with a skipping bounce on the Pettiwiggin, falling between him and the retreating lampsmen. Rossamünd had no idea how long it would take for the chemistry to erupt from it and only hoped it would not go off till after the men had passed over.

  The guns of Winstermill spoke again, five deep, rippling coughs, booming so close in succession they were almost one sound. The distinct and frightening howl of twenty-four-pounder cannon shot came high and to the right.Three shots went well wide. One glanced off the umbergog’s right arm to ricochet crazily into the Harrowmath hay. The last was a direct hit. It struck squarely in the monster’s ribs with a thick, dull slap, forcing a coughing belch from the Trought. The creature’s flesh rippled violently under the blow, but the shot did not penetrate and dropped uselessly to the road. The umbergog staggered and bellowed at the buzzing walls of Winstermill. A thin cheer of many smaller voices answered it faintly from the battlements.

  Before the beast the four men of the rear guard fled, and as they ran the leakvane burst prematurely ahead of them with a hissing pop. Too soon it sent out a foul, warding steam, a smoking hedge that hung between Rossamünd and the senior lighters. They waved their arms angrily and the prentice could hear Grindrod’s indignation carry on the wind.

  “What are ye doing, ye twice-stunted ape!” he roared. “Are ye trying to trap and kill us?”

  The leer leaped through the repellent and, following his lead, Bellicos darted about the side of the boiling smoke. So encouraged, Assimus and the lamplighter-sergeant hastily followed.

  The fortress guns boomed a third time.The tearing shriek of their shots quickly followed.