combe west-by-northwest, not much more than two miles away.
Spelter Innings.
Rearranging himself and about to descend, Rossamund caught movement in the field across the way. Before him the earth dipped abruptly to a plant-choked runnel, the other bank rising to a larger, almost perfectly round hillock. In Phoebe's stark light, bright enough to obliterate the sight of many stars, the young factotum could see this hillock was sprouted all over with slender square-sided markers of stone tapering to pyramid points or blank orbs. Crownstones! A whole mass of them! This was a boneyard, perhaps the very one identified in the first singular for the corpse-eating Swarty Hobnag-the one already filled by some other teratologist.
Something shifted in the necropolis, a careful, contained action in the shadows of the stones. At the base of an unremarkable crownstone, some stooped figure was pawing at the soil. In full sight from Rossamund's vantage, it clearly thought itself hidden from view of the middling distant town. Even in the three-quarter lunar light the young factotum had the awful dawning it was not an everyman.
Was this the Swarty Hobnag? Surely not… Surely it was just a corser or an ashmonger. Which is worse?
Drawing cautiously down the hill in the hide of the long grass, moon shadows as his ally, Rossamund could feel a faint, unpleasant threwdishness tingling in his backbone and shivering along both arms.The furtive digger pivoted unexpectedly and stared suspiciously at the slope, its attention fixing disconcertingly close to where the young factotum huddled. Distorted blunt-jawed face plain in the moon-glow, it let out a very un-humanlike hiss, then returned to its gruesome excavation.
Surely it was the Swarty Hobnag!
Clearly the teratologist who had taken the singular for its annihilation was in no hurry to complete the labor… or had met his end at the creature's hands.
He thought to go for Craumpalin's help, but feared the creature might leave in the time it would take to climb down and come back. Rossamund sneaked closer, determined to confront the creature before Europe did and drive it away. As carefully as he could, he scampered down to the trickling runnel and pushed through the thick fennel, releasing its pungent licorice perfume into the night. Catching hold of the rough top of the boneyard's drystone wall, Rossamund heaved himself over, to land in the stubbly rabbit-mown lawn of the necropolis.
A caste of beedlebane was in Rossamund's grip in a trice as he toiled up the incline. Rounding the memorial obstacles, he was startled to find the creature so close, so stocky, so real and apparently awaiting his approach.
'UHH!' He gave voice to wordless dismay.
The Swarty Hobnag unbent to its full height. Even on stout legs it was a foot taller than Rossamund, its gangling forelimbs thick and prodigiously muscled, all fingers ending in obtuse claws. Its face was bluff and chinless, its skin parched black.Thin nostrils in a small, sharply pointed nose flexed and narrowed as the monster sniffed and snorted. Its lips parted obscenely, rolled back over blenched gums and protruding carnivorous teeth as once more the creature hissed.
'Go back to the wilds!' Rossamund demanded. He had traded words with an urchin-king; he could banter with a lesser nicker. 'The lands of everymen are not for you!'
The creature stared at him with jet-dark eyes made luminous by Phoebe's unsympathetic luster. Tainted threwd seethed from the bogle, a broken, confused malice as clear now to the young factotum as the rising reek of the opened grave.
'The long-gone have not been put here just for you to eat,' Rossamund pressed, self-doubt beginning to gnaw.
'What are thee to prat at me about mine own doings!' the Hobnag coughed, its voice somewhere between a belch and a wheeze. 'What are thee with thy rosy cheeks, thy puffy lips and thy dandy naughtbringerling drapes? Thee clearly lives false among the menly ones. Dost they love thee like thee was their own?' it heckled, then spat.
'I am Rossamund, known to the Lapinduce, whose realm you are spoiling, watched over by the sparrow-duke, and servant to the Branden Rose,' Rossamund retorted, the words just spilling out. 'Nought but bad can come from your worthless digging. My mistress will not be so kind.'
'Hark thee, the little blithely hinderling, quothing thy poxy masters!' it spat. 'I fully ken whose borders I invade, Pinky! What might the Largoman do to me so far from his hiding hole? Has he sent thee to chasten me?' it continued in a mockingly saccharin voice. 'Or hast thy sparrow-prince doomed thee to bring us all to harmony?'
'There is a writ taken against you…'
'Bah! Thou blithely ones always wheedle and nag at me!'
'You will be found and killed,' Rossamund pressed, regretting already entering into parley with this wretched thing. 'You must go-'
'Humbuggler!' it barked. 'Why don't thee!'
At this the foul thing sprang from the hole it had fashioned. Without hesitation, Rossamund threw the beedlebane. Yet the nicker leaped higher, narrowly clearing the glaring sickly orange burst of the potive as it struck the globe of an intervening crownstone with a whoomp! In that single bound, the Hobnag covered the five-yard gap between them and more still, landing adroitly behind Rossamund. Before the young factotum could turn, it struck him hard in the side with a mighty backhanded swat, lifting him clear off his feet and sending him smacking, back and shoulders, into a crownstone ten feet uphill. The carven rock cracked with the blow of Rossamund's fall, and the heavy top slipped and tottered. Rossamund sagged back against the memorial. Weird lights crowded his vision's edges, and an iron taste rose in the back of his throat.
Head craning to see the fall of its victim, the blunt-faced monster shambled up and past the bubbling remains of the burst beedlebane, thinking perhaps its diminutive foe done in.
Dragging himself out of the blankness that sought to submerge him, Rossamund pulled up his legs to stand, pains flashing all about his battered body. With a dry, stony pop! the top of the crownstone came loose and toppled directly over the young factotum. Rossamund's senses were a sudden clarity as he reached into his strength and caught the heavy thing in both arms, holding it before it could squash him. He heaved to his feet, the stone still in his grasp, as the cunning Hobnag rushed him with loping leggy strides. Head craning back and jaws stretched impossibly wide with teeth fully exposed, it charged like some jutting jagged saw, seeking to carve Rossamund to mince and jelly.Yet, with strangely indifferent lucidity, Rossamund stepped aside, swinging the crown-piece like some battering post, striking the nicker on throat and jaw to send it colliding with the broken base.The foul creature reeled and stumbled, lurching back down the boneyard hill. Tripping on another crownstone, it came to a stop, parched black skin on its left temple torn to reveal lurid flesh seeping in the moonlight.
'So thee has found thy strength…,' the Hobnag muttered, facing him cautiously now.
Chest heaving, hurting sharply with every gasp, Rossamund caught his breath.Though the shadowy hint of its face was a dismal blank, the young factotum somehow perceived a kind of bafflement in the wretched thing.
'I want food, not fighting,' it seethed, and with that it sprang nimbly away and hared across the flank of the hill, attempting escape between the stones.
Mindlessly, Rossamund dared his strength and with an almighty heave flung the crown-piece at the retreating creature, throwing it astonishingly far to catch the Hobnag a glancing cuff upon its hip. An audible crack! broke the night quiet and the wretch tumbled to the mold, pitching head over end to disappear among the grave-markers. Seizing a caste of Frazzard's powder, Rossamund hurried as fast as his own bashed body would allow through the tall slender crownstones like some avenging heldin glorified so often in his old pamphlets. Not far on, where he thought he saw the nicker fall, he found the crownstone piece, but the Hobnag was gone. He spied a glimpse of it, staggering through the stones toward the iron-bound entrance on the opposite side of the hill.
'What good does it do to make everymen your prey?' the young factotum cried futilely after it.
'Humbuggler!' he heard it hiss at him in turn. Struggling over the iron-arched gate, the thing was gone into the night.
Rossamund thought to follow it, but he did not have a single notion what he would do if he caught up with the creature. To kill in the passion and mayhem of a fight was one thing, to destroy by cold choice another, and that he did not think he could do.
His perception swam and oblivion crowded.
