than a nuglung, less powerful. Again he remembered the almanac's warning, that it was best not to get too close to one.
Well, he wondered, what would the writers of Master Matthius' Wandering Almanac say if they were watching me now?
'Give it to meeee,' hissed a new and broken voice.
Rossamund started. The yellow eyes of Freckle blinked several times rapidly.
This new voice had come from the lonely crate on the steerboard side of the hold.
'Quiet, you!' Freckle warned.
'Give it to mee toooo.' The broken voice came again, full of creepy, lugubrious longings. 'And to meee-we want to suck out its marrow… ooh yes, and squish its eyeballs a'tween our rotted teeth.' The crate from which it spoke rattled vigorously.
Rossamund peered at it. A hunched darkness thrashed about spasmodically within. Fortunately its cage was chained fast to a thick oak beam. Nevertheless he shuddered and began to pry at the lashings that gripped his wrists.
Freckle's voice became commanding and hard, contrary to his normal soft singsong. 'His marrow is too well needed inside his bones, and his eyes are too busy at looking and weeping to need your gnawings!' The glamgorn's golden eyes disappeared. 'Now to quiet with you!' His voice spoke from the other side of its box.
There was a thwip! and a curse and an extraordinarily loud hiss from the lonely crate. 'That struck us in the eye! Now we must have an eye, an eye for an eye, an eye… lov-er-ly eye…' Rotten lips smacked together.
'I know it did, and this I know, for it was sent on its mission so,' Freckle said proudly. 'And even less eyes will you have if you don't be leaving us be!'
There was another loud hiss. 'You'd not be so brave if we weren't bound so hard, scrumptious morsel. We plan to chew on your twiggy bones too… oh my, and me too…'
It became quiet.
Freckle's yellow eyes reappeared.
'What is that?' Rossamund whispered, still picking uselessly at the rope.
'That is an ill-made rever-man, all bits and bobs and falling apart. Those wicked ones who made him do not know their wicked business. He's not knit too well at all, and none too sharp in the knitted noggin neither. Oh how he hates, full of grieving over half memories and wild hungers! They hate we natural ones most of all, 'cause we are made all right and they are made the everyman's way-all wrong…'
A rever-man! A revenant! Rossamund knew of these things. They were put together by wicked people taking bits of dead bodies to make new creatures from them, all rotting limbs and ravenous. So that was Poundinch's secret trade, the reason for his suspicious conversations and the crazed flight from the Spindle. At last Rossamund had discovered the truth. Rivermaster-or Captain, if that was how it was to be now-Poundinch was a smuggler for the dark trades, a trafficker of corpses and half-made undead. That was why he pretended to haul such odoriferous cargoes as swine's lard and pungent herbs, to hide the stink of the contraband.
The foundling shuddered once more. He had to get away!
The hold of the Hogshead had now taken on a greater aspect of foul wickedness. Had it not, it still held a rever-man. Rossamund did not care how poorly made it might have been. He did not like the idea of being confined so closely with one. Its rotten reek was beginning to overpower the other rancid airs in the hold-even that of the swine's lard.
'Cut me loose!' he hissed to Freckle. 'I have a knife still, hanging on my baldric. See?'
'Yes, I most definitely do see and see I do.' There was a tug on Rossamund's scabbard. 'Yet my own hands are enough to do a knife's work. Hemp and wood are one thing, Rossamund, but iron just another. I can loose your bonds but mine I cannot, unless you have learned your strength as well?'
The foundling frowned. He was not strong enough. What was the glamgorn talking about? His hopes dimmed, and he sat for a time in a gloom. Gradually he became aware that his bottom was beginning to sting, as if he were being bitten by a thousand little ants.
'Ow! Ow!' Rossamund realized he was experiencing the caustic nature of seawater for the first time. He had been sitting in the bilgewater long enough for it to start to eat at his skin. He stood as best he could, the rope bindings preventing him from achieving more than an awkward stoop. His backside stung.
A wicked, strangled giggle came from the lone crate.
'Not good for clothes nor delicate pink skin either,' observed Freckle, ignoring the rever-man's malicious glee. 'That's why I like my barky hide. It hides me better from sneaky eyes and stops the stinging of the water.'
'Aye, I wish I had your skin,' Rossamund agreed with a sagacious nod, 'but just on my rear end.' Wanting to pick up a previous thought, he continued. 'Mister Freckle? Which nuglung do you serve?'
Freckle sniffed in a breath. 'My, my-there's an everyman question if ever a question was one. No prying in private things! I've not asked you your private things and you shouldn't go asking upon my private things. They've taught you far too well, I can well see, too well.'
Rossamund hung his head in shame. Somehow it made sense that this glamgorn would not want to be telling an everyman child-even one as friendly and open as Rossamund hoped he was being-much of secret bogle ways. The foundling was certain that if he were a bogle, he would not want to say a great deal to a person either-not unless he knew without a doubt that the person could be trusted. He apologized with a mutter, but pressed on to another mystery. 'Please, at least, tell why my crying means you know my name?'
The glamgorn laughed his strange laugh. 'Knowing, knowing-sometimes there has to be trusting too…' Freckle's golden eyes frowned, then became kindly once again. 'I can see you ain't ready and I know there is a time and a place, a place and a time. I might be lowly, but even I know what to say and when not to say it. Yet the time might come for knowing things, and when the need of knowing's nigh, you'll know then what I do now.'
This was no help at all. Rossamund wanted to push for more when there came the familiar thumping of boot steps on the deck above.
What now? Rossamund quickly became quiet and the glamgorn's eyes retreated into the obscurity of his prison.
Rossamund followed the steps as they thudded overhead and trod toward the hatch. It opened and Captain Poundinch peered down, his attention darting to each crate before stopping upon the foundling. 'Well, Rosey-me- lad, I see ye're still in whole pieces.' He grinned leeringly. 'I've come back sooner than I said, I know, but I figured ye'll do yer thinkin' just as well upon me other tub, th' frigate Cockeril, as 'ere. Ye'll like 'er, she's a mite more spacious than th' poor ol' 'ogshead.'
He waggled a short-barreled pistola hidden beneath his coattails. Eyeing the firelock in fright, Rossamund saw that its barrel was wider than usual-a weapon designed to knock a person down, to bludgeon him to death despite any type of proofing. 'And I reckon this might serve as th' best gag for our little stint to the Cockeril. No 'ollerin's or screechin's from ye, an' there'll be no shootin's from me.'
Poundinch released the knot that held Rossamund's wrists to Freckle's crate and jerked the foundling after him and back up the ladder. 'So follow me lead and a simple jaunt from 'ere to there is all for ye and me to enjoy.'
Rossamund strained his neck to try for a glimpse of Freckle. The glamgorn's now sad eyes showed briefly.
'Farewell…' the foundling mouthed, just as he was hefted clear off the ladder by the easy might of the lumbering captain. He caught one last sight of Freckle blinking a solitary sorrow-filled blink.
15
Glamgorn (noun) one of the smaller kinds of monster, a true bogle. They come in all manner of shapes, pigmentation and hairiness: big eyes, little eyes; big ears, little ears; big body, little limbs; little body, big limbs; and
