'Commercial gents, perhaps,' Agitis offered, Rossamund understanding him to mean smugglers.
'Or coursers like us,' Rossamund added.
'Perhaps…' was all the fulgar said, little convinced.
Making directly for a sunken bowl of some sickly brown discharge, the mucous drag came to an end. A grotesque threwd brooded in this hollow, forbidding enough to make nervous even the hardened hearts of the peltrymen and troubling Rossamund with its unwontedness. The pool of black muck in the midst was mirror-still, dead, its edge a fringe of wilted lilies and sparse brown rushes. Wind hissed in reeds but barely stirred the surface. Anything could be lurking in there. At the farther end were three posts of rotting wood daubed with white lime and looking like some marker or hasty memorial. Cords of some unidentifiable substance had been strung over and over between the posts and the soft southwesterly blew on them a doleful two-pitch tune.
Europe eyed the scene wearily. 'A feculent place, if ever there was.'
Staying many yards back, Rossamund stared at the water: it looked the perfect home for the sloe saps, and the threwd spoke clearly to him of the fact. 'This is where they hide…,' he murmured to her.
'Not for much longer,' she returned matter-of-factly.
The Furrow brothers sought about the entire rim of the sump, but the trail did not pick up again on any side. 'It'll be a'lurking in yonder welk,' Quietis muttered, bobbing his head at the pond as they gathered by its southern bank. 'O' that I would stake me certainty.' He held up a white porcelain cup he had found, decorated about its rim in delicate blue. But for its missing handle and a disturbing brown crust inside, it was a strangely civilized item out here in the mire. With it the elder peltryman produced a strange blob of black wax wound with greasy string, formed like some fat man with a peculiarly skinny head. 'There's a chest o'er by them song-poles, holdin' some lime and a daub-brush and a wicked-curved knife too. I reckon thy prize has jackornerers encouraging its hucilluctions… Those very lads we saw darting away.'
His younger brother spat. 'Prostematin', muck-moundin' fictlers!' he cursed.
Europe gave a sour look to the thrumming poles. 'I thought such cross-eyed folks liked to stay in those hills,' she observed, looking to the dark, distant eastern downs. 'I wonder if our Monsiere realizes he has fantaisists on his threshold.'
Fantaisists! Rossamund's heart missed beats in his dread. False-god worshippers! What have we found for ourselves? Surely the worms were not a false-god, not out here so far from the vinegar sea. False-gods were meant to be uncontainably massive, invincible, able to turn men to their idiot wills.
With a long-suffering glance at the still, clear evening, Europe bowed her head and stood in thought.
Knowing better than to disturb his mistress, Rossamund laid down the burlap bag and set about building a fire upon a low brown stone nearby. Filling the small billy-pot with water to boil, he stared about uneasily at the unsettling mire. Did I truly come from such a place? he wondered, studying the pool and its slimy banks. It seemed to him too distinctly dreary, too outlandishly hostile to be a font of life.
A single lonely cricket sent out a desultory rasp.
Some distant hooming beast uttered three short, unhappy calls.
Drawn by the barely adequate fire, the peltrymen huddled together, peering uncomfortably at the dour surrounds. Nodding to yellow Ormond as the ever-early star rose into the russet haze above the hills, they muttered uneasily of their desire to depart. About them all the pregnant quiet expanded, trickling with many tiny waters humming faintly with the gloomy monotone of the corded poles.
The treacle made, Rossamund dared to approach his mistress, offering her levinfuse and saltegrade with it, grateful these alembants did not require further preparation; he did not relish remaining here until night in the creatures' dominion.
Nor, evidently, did the fulgar.
Quaffing levinfuse and downing the plaudamentum with her usual inelegant promptness, she strode into the mire, pouncing from tussock to tussock to keep out of the filth, chewing on the purple lump of saltegrade as she went. At the rim of the pool she drove her fuse directly into the water.
Rossamund peered in bafflement at her.
The water about the fuse started to hiss. Little waddling things were soon hastily exiting the pool while a colorless fish bobbed to float dead on its surface.
She arcs the water!
Soon enough the black element began to ripple and trouble. With a sudden great splashing, the sloe saps emerged, writhing, almost leaping out onto the bank opposite the arcing fulgar.
A caste of beedlebane was instantly in Rossamund's hand; he thought to try his strength but hesitated, uncertain both of his accuracy with such a throw and the deservingness of these things to die.
Three near-unison pops of musketry cracked the air off to the left as the peltrymen tried their aim.
Rapidly the sloe saps rushed together from all reaches of the farther shore. Coiling, writhing over each other, unhindered by three frank musket shots, the wrigglers began to knot together, tightening steadily into a larger and larger ball-like mass. Building higher and higher, the bulk of worms rolled about the western bank of the inky pool, fashioning themselves into some fore-determined shape as they moved.
Collecting herself, Europe sprang from sure footing to sure footing, making straight for the mass as she cried angrily to the peltrymen to cease their shooting.
'I shall do this, thank you!'
Meeting it halfway about the pool, Europe struck at the swarming host as it formed, jabbing her fuse with a ringing zzzack! into the coagulating worms, seeking to arc it to pieces just as she had done to the lesser collection last night. Instantly a sinuous cord of worms lashed out like an arm and swatted the fulgar, hitting her as she twisted to avoid the blow. Flung back several yards, she landed heavily in the mire between Rossamund and the reloading peltrymen, her fuse still caught like a twig in the belly of the beast now grown too big to end in a single blast.
The young factotum ran to his mistress' aid.
Before them an obese figure rose as tall as five tall men, a tapering collection of worms ending in a single sap for the head, its bloated torso seething with a wriggling legion of inky skins. A powerful hostility surrounded it, unlike anything Rossamund had felt before, an oppressive un-threwd, a dread of abysmal airless depths where wicked mindless behemoths crawled and fed. Rossamund gagged and smacked his mouth against a bitter aftertaste stinging the back of his throat.
With a shudder of effort the sapperling lifted its now ponderous bulk, rising upon three stiltlike legs made entirely of worms wrapping tightly about each other, stiffening to bear the weight of their brethren.
'What by the hide of me chin be that?' one of the peltryman hissed in awe as the three moved aside in sluggish amazement to get a better shot.
Hair askew, Europe looked dangerously unamused as, winded, she leaned on Rossamund to stand. 'If it is all right with you, little man,' she added with a sardonic murmur, 'I won't be chatting with this one.'
While the struggling fulgar achieved her feet, the Furrow brothers fired again at the lumbering, squirming collection toiling toward them about the western edge of the pond. Their united shot hit the heaving vermiculate flesh of its belly with livid orange splats.
'Stay your shots, gentlemen!' she snarled. 'You will have your fee; this is mine to kill, and I do not intend to share the prize.'
Faster than whips, quicker than shouted warnings, a massive tentacle of worms spat out from its middle straight at the reloading peltrymen, the sapperling getting thinner as the arm flew farther. Three gaping wormy fingers grasped Agitis Furrow about neck and chest and hoisted him off his feet. With astounding reflexes the peltryman snatched up his boar-spear stuck ready into the soggy loam and began to jab wildly at the great arm as it raveled, pulling him back into the main mass of the sapperling. Flourishing his mighty spear, Agitis skewered the thing right in the fat of its belly as it sought to swallow him whole. The great, heaving mass of wormy flesh received the long spear with a quiver of shock, sliding unflinchingly up it to engulf the entire blade, unhindered by the wide tangs.
'Agitis! Agitis!' his brother shrieked, taciturn composure unraveling, as beside him Bodkin hurriedly primed his weapon. Throwing down his musket, Quietis dashed forward and grabbed one of his brother's flailing legs, heaving, managing to halt Agitis' vile fate for a breath.
With a snarl of 'Thew-brained fools!' Europe steadied on her feet and began to tip one hand over the other in small back-and-forth motion, sending arcs strobing brightly from palm to palm, thin strands of her hair bristling with
