Fransitart glanced quizzically back to Europe, who nodded.
The old fisher blinked at her. 'I hear-ed this flaysome bugaboo were a nightly beast and no threat to daytime strollers… Besiden which,' he added pointedly to Fransitart in forced whisper, 'I figure with yer pugnacious lady arrived there, that the beastie will soon cease to be a problem at all.' He nodded sagely and tapped his nose with the switch of grass he had been chewing.
'Aye,' his younger compatriot agreed, patting a simple digital hanging from his sable and leuc baldric. On the back of the man's left hand Rossamund discerned an odd smudge over the second knuckle: a small spoor made in a variation on a lesser-case 'e.'
He had never seen such a thing.
'Besiden which,' the young man was continuing, 'we has our stinks and fitter trinkets to see it off with, so we'll fish till then, unbothered.'
The other fellow nodded resolutely and, bowing to Europe, said, 'In point of fact, m'lady, I have heard it that the Gutterfear is scunnered-'
'Scunnered, sir?' Europe leaned forward in her seat, causing the landaulet to rock slightly.
'Aye.' The old fisher blanched, and bobbed another bow. 'Left us, miss, gone north or east or somesuch, spotted with a batch of other seltlings all a-traveling in the same direction, leaving man and beast a'be, such was their determination.'
'Well, I thank you for your intelligence.' Europe sat back. 'We shall continue on our course until I know this for myself. Go on, if you please, Master Vinegar.'
'By the looks, the weather'll turn dirty afore the day is out, me hearties,' Fransitart warned them as he set the horses to walk and the landaulet began to go on. 'Best make yer way under roofs afore long.'
They waved but did not show themselves the least inclined to heed him. The blustering night was spent in a collection of squalid high-houses called Scough Fell, gray hovels made of gray wood and gray thatch built into the gray stony banks either side of the road, guarded by thick gates hung with great conical thurifers-brass censers of night-burnt repellents. Louse-bitten and sleep deprived at the outset of the new day, Craumpalin and Rossamund sought to freshen the sisterfoot on Rufous and Candle's shabraques, but Europe stopped them.
'This is not a pleasant vigil amble,' she insisted tartly. 'Our objective is to attract a nicker, not hide from it, and horse meat is a compelling enticement.'
The four went on their way out soon after, watched keenly by the cheerless, ill-humored denizens peering suspiciously from shuttered gaps or muttering together in hostile assemblies. Muffling themselves against the surprising cold, they broke their fast on the road. An hour on and the Pendlewick forked; the wider divergence to the right quickly became a channel cut into the rusted stone, its sides stained by black dribbles. The left way ascended steeply through knotted pines and cracking boulders, climbing a hill to a stoutly walled town of tall fortified high- houses rising out of the trees. A heavy sorrow seemed to emanate from this hilltop fastness. The forbidding hush in this empty land vibrated silently with unwelcoming vigilant malice, stifling conversation.
A moldering wooden post had been fixed on the prow of rock that split the two roads. Near its top was nailed a flayed skin, blackened with parch and rot, its origin obscure, yet most certainly not human. Rossamund thought he could make out a wide grinning mouth and pointed ears. Scrawled in white and some other dark substance upon the rock about it were the very same 'e' signs they had seen on the young fisher's knuckle the day before.
'Pendle Hill,' Europe declared grimly, her gaze narrowed on the far-off glimpse of shingles and chimneys. 'The very hub of all the fantaisists and the cross-eyed folk.'
'What are all those marks?' Rossamund asked. 'That fisher had one such as this.'
'Allegories,' Craumpalin offered. 'Find them often enough on vinegars…'
Fransitart ruttled disapprovingly. 'They think it'll protect 'em against kraulswimmers.'
Rossamund was none the wiser. 'Allegories?'
'Cult signs,' Europe finally said, pouring herself some claret. 'The little signals the fantaisists in their various septs like to leave each other to say which false-god they fancy.'
'Those fishers were for Sucoth,' Craumpalin added soberly. 'Who is spoke of as the worst of 'em all…'
Ashen-faced, the young factotum scrutinized every threatening vacancy between tree and rock.
'Take us right, Master Vinegar, if you please.'
Past the mile-long channel and deeper into the Witherfells the hilltops grew rounder, the valleys less steep. Turpentine and pine grew thickly on the slopes, their roots tangled with spreading thorny blackberry, the ceaseless rushing of the wind in their upper stories drowning the clop of hoof and jink of horse harness. With the day's decline, Rossamund's inkling of hostile scrutiny grew until Fransitart warned of someone ahead, a single watcher standing at a major divergence of ways on the right-hand margin of the road. It was an arrogant figure wrapped in a heavy coachman's cloak of the deepest purple, face masked with a white oval striped with four level bars, head crowned with a high-fronted hevenhull stuck with five large white feathers tipped with red.
'Blighted fictler!' the ex-dormitory master hissed.
Craumpalin cocked the hammer of the musketoon resting in all appearance of ease in his lap.
'Just keep us steady ahead, Master Vinegar,' Europe instructed, sitting erect in queenly composure. 'Not too swift, not too leisurely either.'
Head down, Rossamund kept his eyes on the bizarrely dressed fictler. An abysmal foulness issued from the figure, filling the young factotum with an appalling terror of black and suffocating deeps. Pulling a thennelever of glister dust from his right-hand stoup, Rossamund wrestled against the near-whelming urgency to hurry the landaulet along.
The disquietingly blank face regarded them boldly as they passed, the clatter and hiss of the wind-tossed treetops, the clop of hoof and the squeak of axle and harness the only sounds. Fransitart tipped his hat saucily to the figure, but it did not speak, or gesture, or shift its feet; it simply watched.
Rossamund peered into the shadowy pine wood fully expecting an ambuscade, yet it seemed empty, untenanted but for the single doleful caw of a crow.
The four wayfarers went by unmolested.
'Hmm, very peculiar,' Europe said once they were past.
Looking behind as they rounded a bend and the road cut again into rock, Rossamund found the feather- headed figure still there, still looking after them, unmoved.
Not far on they came to a fortified bridgehead and a high gray tower, gated and well guarded. Its Branden- mottled gate wards proved unfriendly and taciturn, allowing Europe and her staff to pass only after punctilious inspection of the appropriate documents. Through the arching tunnel of the fortalice they came to a deep ravine and on the other side, upon a massive wedge of rock, stood a small grim city. Behind its high wall rank upon rank of tall white buildings rose up from the sheer rock, their roofs lead-gray or grimy clay-red. Many lofty stacks fumed from amid the usual bristle of slender chimneys, guttering dirty smokes into the wind. Great murders of crows and pied daws circled among them or gathered on rooftops to call to each other with strangely melodious songs.
'Pour Clair,' Europe said matter-of-factly.
They traversed the gap upon a thin curving bridge of stone spiked with a line of great-lamps that terminated at a whitewashed double-turreted gatehouse.The steady rumble of a rushing, spouting torrent rose from the giddying rift beneath, its growling an ever-present undertone in all the township's bustle.
By Europe's direction Fransitart took them along precipitous ramps and awkward lanes to the civic hall. Named the Fallenthaw, it was tall and narrow like every other structure in this cramped, perilously situated place; its foundations were bare stones, its upper walls whitewashed, its dark roof lead shingles. It began to rain as they were admitted by stern wardens to proceed easily into the tight courtyard of white daub and dark wood pillars. Here, under a long portico drumming with the downpour, a trio of silk-wigged and silk-suited representatives of the district lords promptly met with the Branden Rose. After anxious, becking greetings, they confirmed the suppositions of the bumpkin fishermen: the dread oppressor, Gathephar, had vanished, not seen nor heard for nigh on a fortnight, where once it was troubling people twice or thrice a week.
'I am sorry, m'lady, but the job is no more and its prizes withdrawn,' the senior envoy explained with clerical immovability. 'We did send to Brandenbrass knavery to cancel the singular as soon as it was apparent a knave was not needed,' he continued more nervously, passing to the highly unamused fulgar the proper reply from the coursing
