up past the steep brim of his almost new, lustrous black thrice-high through the overhanging branches at the wan measureless blue of evening.Without realizing it, he gave a nervous sound, almost a sigh.
'Are we keeping you up, Master Come-lately?'
This was Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod. Even when he hissed angrily, the lamplighter-sergeant seemed to be shouting. He was always shouting, even when he was supposed to be talking with the habitual hush of the night-watch.
Rossamund snapped back his attention. 'No, Lamplighter-Sergeant, I just…!'
'Silence!'
Ducking his head to hide a frown, Rossamund swallowed at an indignant lump and held his tongue. Can't he feel the horrors growing?
From the first lamp of the afternoon until now, the prentice-watch had stopped at every lamppost to wind out the light using the crank-hooks at the end of their blackened fodicars to ratchet the winch within each lamp. Bundled as best they could be against the bitter, biting night, they halted once again, stamping and huffing as Grindrod called Punthill Plod forward. The boy pumped the winch a little awkwardly and wound out the phosphorescent bloom on its chain, drawing it out into the glass bell of the seltzer-filled lamps, where it came alive with steadily increasing effulgence. The prentices not working the lamp looked on while Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod spelled out each rote-learned step.
The little thrills of threwd prickled all the more, and Rossamund could no longer watch so dutifully. Something was coming, something foul and intending harm-he could feel it in his innards.
There it was: the clatter of horses' hooves, wild and loud. A carriage was approaching, and fast.
'Off the road, boys! Off the road!' the lampsmen called in unison, herding the prentice-lighters on to the verge with a push and a shove of their fodicars. Buffeted by the back or shoulders of several larger boys, Rossamund was shoved with them, almost falling in the scramble.
'The wretched baskets! Who is fool enough to trot horses at this gloamin' hour?' Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod snarled, mustachios bristling. 'See if ye can eye the driver, lads-we might have a writ to write back at Winstermill!'
From out of the dark ahead six screaming horses bolted toward them, carrying a park-drag-a private coach- with such bucking, rattling violence it was sure to break to bits even as it shattered past the stunned lighters.
The prickle of threwd at Rossamund's back became urgent.
'There's no coachman, Sergeant!' someone cried.
Rossamund's internals gripped and a yelp of terror was strangled as it formed. A dark, monstrous thing was rising from the rear of the park-drag. Massive horns curled back from its crown; the slits of its eyes glowed wicked orange. Threwd exploded like pain up the back of Rossamund's head as the carriage shot by, the stench of the horn-ed thing upon it rushing up his nostrils with the gust of their passing.
Some boys wailed.
'Frogs and toads!' Grindrod cursed. 'The carriage is attacked!'
More horn-ed monsters could be seen, horrifyingly large, as the coach-and-six smashed on. They clung to the sides of the carriage, worrying and wrestling with the passengers within. The weight and fury of the beasts were so great the whole carriage tipped on to two wheels as it sped. A yellow-green flare of potive burst from a window, flinging one vile nicker from the vehicle in a high, hissing arc and leaving a fizzing trail of reeking fume that rained fur and flesh on the prentices. Head aflame with false-fire, the monster crashed into the briars, a charred ruin. Even as this one flew, another beast leaped from the park-drag to the back of the lead mare. As large as the horse itself, the blighted creature bit into the mane and neck of the hapless, panicked nag. The horse shrieked its dying whinny and fell beneath the grinding hooves of its fellows. The whole vehicle careered and lurched as the team was brought down, sheer momentum tumbling the carriage from the Wormway. With a sickening clash of shattering wood and grinding bones, it skidded and smashed into a dense thicket of tall trunks on the farther side of the road.
For an agony of seconds there was a terrible stillness, the only sounds the mewling of a single mortally injured horse and Grindrod's muttered encouragements to the prentices.
Rossamund struggled to accept what he had just seen, he and his fellow lantern-sticks agog at the barely lit suggestion of wreckage and mutilation barely fifty yards away among the trees.
'Ground crooks and present arms!' Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod gruffed, rousing the prentice-lighters from their stunned dumbness. 'Form two ranks for firing by quarto, prentices in front, lampsmen at back! Master Come- lately, stand to our right with yer potives. Show yer flints bravely, lads!'
Driving their fodicars into the roadside to make a hedge of steel, the prentice-watch formed up in two lines behind these, facing the carriage wreck. With the coldly lambent light of the lamp at their backs, the six other boys crouched at the front, the four men stood behind.
Putting himself to the side of this formation, Rossamund gripped two scripts in a trembling hand, a double dose ready for throwing. One was a cloth salpert of Frazzard's powder to stagger and blind; the other a fragile porcelain caste of loomblaze, a fiery doom. He desperately wished they had a leer with them to peer into the gathering dark and tell better where the monsters were.
Indistinctly lit at the edge of the great-lamp's nimbus glow, great horn-ed shadows stirred and began to stalk about the partly smashed cabin of the coach.
'At least five of the baskets, and as big and cruel as ye never should hope to meet,' Lampsman Bellicos hissed in awe.
'Aye,' Grindrod growled, his voice all a-hush now. 'I bain't seen naught like 'em before. Have ye, Assimus?'
Lampsman Assimus grunted. 'Where did they come from, I wonder?'
The lamplighter-sergeant's pale eyes glittered. 'We'll have to work some pretty steps tonight if we're going to preserve the lads.'
A murmur of dismay shuddered through the prentices.
Two or three of the huge, hunched shadows ripped and gnawed at the stricken horses. Others clawed at the broken carriage, trying to get to the tasty morsels within who, obviously still alive, could be heard crying out.Women's voices.
'That changes things! Other lives are in the balance now, and protecting 'em is our duty,' Grindrod said firmly. 'Ply your firelocks briskly, hit yer mark; a coward's mother never weeps his end. Master Lately! Time for ye to produce the worst yer salt-bag has to offer.Ye must defend us as we reload, boy! Prentices! Present and level on that blighted slip jack stumbling there!'
One of the horn-ed nickers had appeared on the road. Its silhouette was clear against the pallid glimpse of sky showing where the Pettiwiggin entered the wood.
'Ranks to fire together in volley!' With a rattle of unison action, prentice and lighter leveled their fusils on this creature even as it became aware of them. At the muted metallic dicker of many cocking flints, it fixed them with a gleaming, cunning gaze that seemed to say, You're next…
Potives already in hand, Rossamund adjusted his salumanticum so that it would not tangle a good throw.
'Stay to the line!' Grindrod continued, low and grim. 'Reload handsomely if ye want to live-it may come to hand strokes soon enough, but I will see ye to yer billets safe tonight!'
Rossamund's throat gripped at his swallowing: to come to hand strokes-to fight hand to hand with a bogle- was to grapple with terror itself. Smaller, weaker-seeming bogles than these could make pie-mince of a large man. He knew what hand strokes would mean: gashing and iron-tasting terror. It was only barely learned duty that kept him to his place.
Grindrod raised his arm, the prelude to the order to fire, yet before he could complete the command a great churning disorientation tumbled over the prentice-watch.
Rossamund reeled as the world was turned right ways wrong and outside in.
The prentice-watch fumbled their weapons and some cursed in fright.
'They've got a wit in there…,' managed Lampsman Bellicos through spasming, grinding teeth.
