Rossamund sped among the trees on a wild zig-then-zagging course, blundering over roots and rocks, seeking to put as much reach between his pursuers and himself as he could.
A piercing, iron ringing told him that the gate had in some way been forced, that the dandidawdling wit was through, and free to hunt him down. A powerful sending washed through the woodland park-detection and attack as one, its febrile fringe arresting Rossamund enough to trip him again and send him flailing face-first into the fresh wet turf in a spray of chance-won coins. The wit must have possessed perverse determination to be employing his antics with such frequent potency.
What can I do against such a foe?
A little blur above him and Rossamund caught the soft cheep! of Darter Brown alighting momentarily on a low perch in the dark. He could barely make out the little fellow eyeing him, turning its head to then fro. A tight thrum of wings and the sparrow was gone. After a moment a determined piping echoed out of the dark only a short span ahead. Rossamund sprinted to the noise and Darter Brown dashed on yet farther to tweet again from the night. They kept at this until Rossamund's breath began to rasp in his windpipes and he longed to drop and vomit. He slowed to a hurried, hip-arching walk, realizing that it had been some little time since he had felt the wit's frission.
He became still-just for a breath-to listen.
No footfall sounded in the soft sprays of clover and soursobs, just the creak of gentle shifting in the trees, of branches softly clacking against one another up in the dark, squeaking at their knotty joints. With it hummed the drone of the city in its small-hour motions, already so muffled from within the park that it seemed far off, and not just a bend in the path away. In the ringing quiet, he became aware of threwdishness about him, a quiet yet intent wakefulness. I'm in the Moldwood, he realized with a start.
There comes a point in concealing darkness that, even when one is desperate not to be seen, the need to see is far greater, and so possessed, Rossamund hurriedly dug Mister Numps' limulight from the pocket of his frock coat and slid back the lid. Its gentle, blanched-blue effulgence picked out trunks and leaves and round-fronded grass. It took but a moment to get sight of a clear path, and, snapping the lid closed, the young factotum ran again, hampered by the increasingly uneven ground. In the meager light reflected off low clouds he could just make out a mass before him and felt the earth tilt and rise up the flank of a small hill.
Pulling on roots and weeds, even thick nettles-whatever he might to help his climb-he scaled the modest mound and upon achieving its summit was struck with the most profoundly piercing scathing he had yet felt. So strong was this witting attack that lights burst in his vision, joined by an inner blaze of woe and torment. The world truly did tilt now; Rossamund toppled down the lee side of the hillock, only vaguely aware of the heavy fall as he came to a jarring stop at what he could only presume was the bottom. He lay, senses tumbling, vision popping with disorienting flickers, and felt a gentler sending from the wit. The previous had been pure violence, but now, supine and struggling, he was being pointedly sought. With a savage growl he forced clarity into his head, got to his knees and, leaning on a sapling, stood.
A clear footfall.
His innards froze. Breath held in dread, his ears keened with a pulsating, shimmering whine.
Coney in their covets,
Bunnies in their holes,
But who shall ferret my meal?
… came a doggerel song, a tuneful taunt from the shadows above.The dandidawdling wit appeared at the crown of the hillock, his skin soft-lit by luminous fungi sprouting in nook and bole, a revealing pallor in the bosky black. He slid down the bank with easy grace; with such power the pernicious servant of the rousing-pit had nothing to fear-he was the supreme monster here.
Rossamund quickly pressed out a caste from his digital and flung it, the blue fire of loomblaze flaring as it ruptured against the pastel trunk of a sycamore where, but a blink before, the wit had been.
'O-ho, little rabbit, with your ledgermain tricks!' came a voice in the flickering dark. His relentless attacker seized Rossamund in another unseen inward grip. 'I do not know what pox-riddled alehouse you thought you had found tonight, little rabbit, but ours is not a place to fling stinks. Nor are we so easily swindled by a fast pair of legs.There shall be no getting away as easy as you please; my masters will have your soft coney flesh…'
The young factotum fell again, retching into the dripping grass and faintly luminescent toadstools, heartily exasperated with so much groveling. Cringing and trapped on his wet mud-mucked knees, he suddenly felt a great threwd approaching, pressing through the frission. It brought with it a glimpse of clarity, and Rossamund was master of himself enough to look up. Something was coming from deeper in the park, something ineffably old and potent stepping from the darkling trees.
Surely just a desperate phantom…
Yet the dandily dressed wit must have seen this tall and horned beast too, for he touched hand to temple and reached a hand toward it as it loomed on the other side of the dell.
Even where he knelt crumpled, Rossamund caught the nauseating peripheries of strong, focused witting. Expecting the great bestial thing to stumble and fall, he croaked in awe as it simply came on, bounding on all fours right over him.
The wit scathed again-a careless demonstration of puissance that caught Rossamund too-but in a half-dozen awkwardly loping steps the horned thing was upon him. The witting reached its excruciating climax and the nicker- far taller than any man-reared, seizing the wit by his face and lifting him high. Before the fellow could do anything to extricate himself, he was shaken brutally like nothing more than a doll throttled by a tantrumming child.The wit's limbs flailed as he was swung violently back and forth by his neck. Loud meaty cracking broke the strange, shocked silence, a dreadfully flat sound among the bending trees. The wit's voluminous neckerchief unraveled and slipped to the mold, and the spangled silver wig fell from the telltale calvous head. With one last, ruinous snap! the monster flung the utterly broken wit aside, the body crashing lifelessly into a low olive bush.
There came a peculiar clicking noise from the horned thing's mouth. 'Souls should choose better than to sing of ferreting conies and bunnies in my wood,' it declared extravagantly with rasping yet resonant voice.
In the weak blue fungal glow Rossamund could see it turn, head lowered, back arched, glaring directly at him through its steeply arching brows. Brain-bruised and sorely used, the young factotum scooted backward on his rapidly saturating end, boot-heels slipping unhelpfully on slick lawn. With a mere handful of wide-stepping strides the creature sprang toward him, halting abruptly to bend and peer right into the young factotum's eyes.
'Why have you disturbed me, manikin?' it demanded, its blunt mouth terrible with curved, overlong rabbitlike incisors. Threwd seeped from every follicle, every fiber, a mighty and terrible threwd that was masterfully and powerfully restrained. The air became heavy with a sickly sweet fragrance, a merging of animal-stink and spring- blossom perfume. 'Why have you brought our foes to my serene courts and made my night so busy?'
'I–I,' Rossamund tried, astonished by the creature now clear before him. What he thought were horns were in fact ears-elongated rabbitlike ears; its blunt bestial snout ended in a soft, twitching rabbit's nose. 'You-you are a rabbit…!' the young factotum breathed reflexively.
The rabbit-beast stood back and straightened, looming high over him. 'That I am, ouranin.' It drew close again. 'Haraman, the wild Piltmen called me; out in the parishes where I seldom visit any more I am Rabbit o'Blighty; in the east they speak of me in dread as the Kaminchin; and in writings of the quidnuncs I am regularly named Cunobillin, or at times the Great Lagornis. Many more names everymen have given me through history, but in these current times I am the Lapinduce-the Duke of Rabbits, true master of this festering city!'
Rossamund was struck mum.
Here, regally upright before him, was an urchin, a monster-lord, an ancient ruler of the nickers and bogles.
Before Rossamund could say or think or do any more, the Lapinduce reached down and gripped the young factotum by the back of his collars, hoisting him from the soggy ground.The front of his weskit, frock coat, solitaire and undershirt all rucked to cut into his gourmand's cork. Kicking and twisting in the irresistible grip of this lord of monsters, Rossamund clutched his strangling collars away from his windpipe, yet his own well of strength did not avail him.
The Lapinduce, Duke of Rabbits, held him fast.
Giddiness surged through his intellectuals, the inner wounds of the dead wit's onslaught setting his eyes aching. The young factotum ceased his flailing and swung in dizzy dismay, each rocking stride of this mighty urchin carrying him farther into haunted sanctums of the threwdish park.
