Testudoe(s) heavy-ended bludgeon, five to seven feet long, knobbled with metal studs or wooden knots and giving a powerful and nasty blow. A very old pattern of weapon finding its way into Soutland culture from the Lauslands-who took it from the passionate folk of Ing-testudoes are traditionally made of wood and as such provide some protection from the arcs of a fulgar if you should ever choose to take on such a foe.
The first sensation to puncture Rossamund's numbness was the shouting of many voices from every cardinal; angry cries surrounded them, accompanied by the dire pops of several firelocks.
No! Fransitart! Craumpalin! Europe!
Sight still reeling, he felt rough hands grip him hard about each arm, lifting him well off his feet. At once he reckoned Fransitart and Craumpalin had endured the blast to come gather him, but there was something unkind in the handling, and the sweaty pungence that accompanied the two heavy figures hefting him was frighteningly foreign. Senses clarifying in his alarm, Rossamund saw his captors as strangers man-shaped and man-sized, robed in black and wearing white oval masks striped with two blood-dark bars. Rossamund's innards froze.
Fictlers…
With a coughing growl he exerted his strength, and, to a duet of startled yelps, pulled his arms together, throwing both masklings into each other with a fatty slap. Skulls collided, masks cracked. Rossamund wrested himself free as the two would-be captors toppled to the ground. Dropped onto his knees, he spluttered and blinked at the fume of dust and powder smoke rolling about him and drifting down the incline. Thick as it was, the roil was quickly settling, revealing the landaulet between the trunks well above and to the left, the carriage broken and tipped back, its thills now splinders. Some large pallid bulk half hung over the road-edge between two pines. With a choke of grief Rossamund realized it was Candle, ripped and fatefully still. Sobbing in a rising rage, he clawed desperately at the slope, slipping on the mat of needles as he tried to climb, pulling on thistles and barely sprouted treelings. In confused and frantic fear, he cast about the trees for his masters.
No Fransitart.
No Craumpalin.
No Europe.
There was a great furor on the unseen side of the smashed carriage, a desperate struggle of life and limb. Three penetrating zzacks! rang clear, eliciting muffled cries of agony. With this came a splash as a heavy thing slid into the mucky drain and two fellows in white masks scurried back down the road, hands over heads and wearing the scorching of a fulgar's defense.
The Branden Rose emerged swiftly from behind the landaulet, shockingly bloodied and sporting a limp, yet very much alive and alert. Her eyes deadly slits, her fuse already in hand, she did not heed her young factotum struggling through the saplings and berry runners below.
In the intensity of his relief, Rossamund let out a bubbling, choking laugh, yet the sound of it was blanked by the staccato popping of musket fire bursting with white puffs from among the dark conifers high upon the farther bank of the culvert where hidden musketeers plied fire down upon his mistress. Rossamund threw himself to the hillside by the roots of a tree, glimpsing Europe stagger and drop out of sight beyond the matted brink.
Smitten dumb in horror, he flicked a caste from his right-hand digital and threw it at the musketeers, a prodigious lob flying clear over the landaulet and the drain.The orange glare of beedlebane flashed among the trunks where the marksmen hid. Another he tossed, and another after that, the blue gust of Frazzard's powder and the yellow-green glare of loomblaze flickering a yard left and right of the orange fire.
'You little muckhill!' someone shockingly close cursed.
Rossamund spun about to catch the butt-end of a firelock in his right shoulder, the hit driving him to earth. In the flaring of pain he saw a person clad in leathers of bosky drab, face concealed behind a sthenicon, looming over him, flourishing a long-rifle high and clearly intent on staving his face with the stock.
Addled, Rossamund did the best thing that occurred to him in the moment and simply caught the swinging rifle butt with both hands, stopping its savage momentum dead.
In shock the lurksman tugged ferociously to get his weapon back, but the young factotum held fast. Thwarted, the lurksman let go and went to draw a blade.
Still gripping the firelock by its stock, Rossamund did not afford him the chance but drove the barrel hard into the man's abdomen. Thrust bodily backward, the lurksman buckled in a whimper of agony about the blow, collapsing in on himself as he toppled and half slid, half tumbled down the steep hillside until he was halted by a tree. With a box-deadened gag, the fellow sagged and did not move again.
Struggling, slipping, dragging himself up the sharp slope, Rossamund could hear the increasing shouts of the hurried advance of a multitude rattling and tramping among the trees. Pivoting his gaze urgently one way and the other, he searched for sign of Europe, of Fransitart, of Craumpalin, of anything…
On his right, about the northern curve from where they had first arrived, he could see the heads of perhaps a dozen violent fellows coming with all haste. Half were masked fictlers wielding gabelungs, war-rakes and long spittendes-every one a wooden weapon that did not easily transmit a fulgar's arcs. With them came savage-looking fellows carrying large round shields and long thorny clubs, braces of pistols and wickedly barbed blades of black. Wildmen they were, their shaggy hair bound in all manner of knots and spikes, wearing thick Piltmen skirts belted high over their bare chests, running barefoot, their lower legs bound in bands of hide. Most sinister yet among all these were heavier figures swathed about their shoulders in matted furs, their heads casqued in round helmets perforated with many holes sprouting horns or antlers. In thickly armored grips they bore immense wooden testudoes, wickedly barbed and knobbled, each as long as a man is tall. Conspicuous among this motley horde was the feather-hatted stranger with the four-barred mask, the silent watcher from the day before clearly commanding those about with emphatic gesticulations.
His line of sight impeded by the camber of the road and trees sprouting all along its edge, Rossamund could hear yet another gang rushing from the left. Closer and closer the stouching parties drew, two jaws of a trap, coming headlong from north and south, caterwauling to steel their nerve. At the same moment the clatter of a small but violent turmoil sounded down past a screen of olives upon a lower slope.
Fransitart? Craumpalin!
Ready to dash to this new commotion, he was stopped as Europe's head and shoulders thrust into view above the matted verge of the roadside. The fulgar hunkered by the rear wheel of the landaulet, leaning on her fuse. Saved by the excellence of her proofing, her expression bleak yet unflinchingly resolute, she glared back and forth rapidly between the all-too-quickly encroaching gangs.
Hollering obscenities at their lonely foe as they drew in sight of her, the wild southern horde swarmed along the road on either side of the broken landaulet. Impassioned by more than common battle fervor and howling like crazed hounds, they pushed the carriage in their rage. It tottered on the brink, and with a great creak and a corporate shout of success tipped between the line of pines and off the road. In a clash of splinters it hurtled rearward down the slope, flattening myrtle saplings as it bore toward Rossamund. Its rear right wheel struck some unseen obstruction in the weeds and needle. The whole vehicle leaped, spraying chests and prizes and lesser effects as it flipped onto its side. Sliding, it smashed to a halt a few feet to Rossamund's left against a row of lower trees.
Driven into the open, Europe leaped away and back along the road, limp forgotten, spinning in a martial dance, frock and petticoats twirling. Fuse twisting faster than eye could follow, she made headlong for the northern party, now charging her too.
Overeager to grapple with their vaunted adversary, some wildmen sprang ahead to point and fire their pistols, their shots joined by those of the surviving musketeers skulking in the trees of the higher bank across the culvert. Once more the Branden Rose was felled, toppling to the bellowing glee of her antagonists and a cry of anguish from Rossamund.
Snatching the single caste of asper from its digital, the young factotum let it fly through the line of pine trees at the attackers. The caste struck an antlered foe. Boiling black falsefire expanded rapidly to completely engulf the
