Fransitart almost dropped the stoup as he reached in fright for his hanger.
'You can keep your blows to be kept to themselves, master seaswimmer!' came a bleeble-blabble voice, its merry speaking at odds with the stern warning.
'Freckle!' Rossamund whispered.
Sheepishly, the glamgorn revealed itself, alone.
Where Cinnamon was the young factotum could not see. In unabashed wonder, the ex-vinegaroon regarded the little barky-skinned bogle wearing a child's longshanks pulled high about its chest rather than the usual swaddle of rags. 'So 'ere's th' little fellow…'
'It is we who win this day, yes we do, and the day is won!' Freckle smiled, his huge eyes disappearing in the wrinkles of its grinning. 'Oh…' Its gaze alighted on Craumpalin and he became instantly solemn. 'Keep your powders in their pots, Rossamund who is Rossamund even more than before; we shall tend all hurts…'
A heavy boom of thunder rumbled some distance to the north, exciting a discord of startled crows high in the trees. From somewhere far off came a faint cry of anger.
'Miss Europe!'
'Bind yer hand first, lad,' Fransitart advised, holding out some bandages to him, 'and then go find 'er-she probably reckons us all dead…'
'Yes, yes!' Freckle enjoined, squatting at Craumpalin's side. 'Find your angry mistress and flutter not for your seaward fathers; they will have their bashings mended.'
'My hand can wait,' Rossamund insisted, and dashed away.Tugging his torn and bloodied vent from his neck, and his stock with it, he clumsily wrapped his stinging palm as he went. Halting momentarily to listen and to tie off his bindings, he climbed watchfully to the road. Drawing near the epicenter of the ambush, he peered over the brink of the way, gaping saucer-eyed at the wreckage the fulgar had brought. Bodies lay shattered, some flung down into the pines or foul culvert slime, some still quick, sniveling, trying to claw themselves away.
A sullen hint of asper hung yet over the road, lingering threateningly above the steaming remains of those it had slain-that he had slain-as if to make certain they stayed dead. Yet no other threat seemed obvious in the dreary silence of the woods. The higher bank across the drain was unnaturally still. A white mask lay in the shadows and some yards to the right the splintered, smoldering stumps of several lithe pines spoke of the gap-leaping success of the fulgar's deadly lightnings.
In the hush of whispering needle leaves and squeaking, softly clacking boughs, no new contestant stepped upon the path or took a shy at him from cover. Darter Brown alighted on the chest of a fallen fictler splayed upon the path. Hopping forth and back on its grisly perch, the sparrow flicked his wings, perhaps to show that all was safe.
Satisfied, Rossamund ran beside the road, skirting the sooty fizz of asper, returning along their original route, finding more ruined fictlers and wildmen thrown down in the dust and needles. Among the fallen, he found an uncanny figure stained red, spent pistols still in scarlet hands, lifeless face aghast.
The reddleman! This frowsty discolored dye-seller had been lurking them after all.
A glaring blue flicker lit up the darkening trees ahead about the bend. Scrambling onto the road itself, he hurried stoutly to it, half in hope, half in fear.
The Branden Rose hove into view, grimed with gore, hair askew, proofing starkly bruised, boots scuffed, the weep of dark green tears lining each cheek like ghastly spoors. The fulgar was bent over a slouched figure, Featherhead, the chief of the fictlers, feathered hat discarded on the road. Four-bar mask plucked away from his very normal, very human face, now clenched in pain, his eyes were rolling with blank fear. One arm was raised feebly to keep the fulgar bayed.
Yet even in defeat, the abysmal foulness Rossamund had first felt when they had passed the fictler-lord standing on the side of the road the day before still issued from the fallen fellow.
Rossamund's stride quickly slackened still several yards from Europe and her captive and, taking a few cautious steps more, he halted.
With a small cheep! Darter Brown settled on his shoulder.
Laying the fuse beside her, Europe squatted to grip the stricken fellow by both sides of his battered head, her knuckles white. Through gritted teeth she seethed a single vehement word. 'Who!'
Shuddering involuntarily, the fellow fought the fulgar's coercion, his eyes revolving convulsively. His arms jerked, his legs kicked and bent.
She arcs him! Rossamund realized in horror.
'WHO!' the Branden Rose spat with venomous volume.
The fellow's nodding, shuddering head was almost contracting into his body as his eyes rolled back into their sockets. 'M-M-Maupin…,' he gurgled, and, with a strange crick of the neck, expired.
Rossamund felt his innards contract into a sickly chill.
The reach of their foes was long indeed.
I have caused all this, he groaned inwardly, barely able to comprehend so powerful an appetite for revenge that could summon such an ambush and put it into action.
Finally Europe looked up. The whites of her eyes were entirely bloodshot-solid red like a falseman's orbs-as she fixed weary attention on Rossamund. 'There you are, little man.' Though she breathed fitfully as she spoke, her voice was as hard as iron. 'You have lost your hat, I see.'
19
Belch pot also known as a kluge pot-for no known reason remembered in history, in the Gottskylds, where it is reputed to have been devised, it is known variously as a kaputtenkessel (breaking kettle) or furzentopf ('farting pot'). Infamous devices used by bandits, rough wild folk, and some armies too, belch pots are makeshift artillery made of great clay pots or iron cauldrons filled with black powder and jagged, thorny flotsam, half sunk in the soil and set off by a burning fuse. Any soul caught direct in its burst is sure to be flayed to splinders. Used to shape and channel the direction of a charge of fulminant, they are typically destroyed in the blast; a favorite of irregular fighters all through the Sundergird, the clay version being particularly inexpensive and simple to fashion.
In the gaping, harrowed aftermath, Rossamund and the Branden Rose returned along the culvert way, the fulgar gripping the Featherhead's mask like a rare proof. 'Such are the benefits of good fighting weather' was all she said of the butcher's bill of bodies. Beyond brief inquiry after Rossamund's health and the well-being of the two old vinegaroons, Europe remained disconcertingly silent, her expression taut with unsympathetic vigilance. She stepped callously over one hefty fellow still shuddering for breath, horned helmet wrenched loose to reveal within the nimbus of a fur collar his thick-jawed face, skin near white like that of the woman in the summer dress. A Heilgolundian. Hailing from far south beyond the Pontus Canis and across the Gurgis Main, where people fade for lack of sun, this dying man had come a long way to perish so uselessly.
Reaching for his stoup of tending scripts, Rossamund realized they were left with Fransitart and Freckle.
'Leave the hurt, little man!' The fulgar glowered at Rossamund fleetingly. 'Others of their own will come back to retrieve them soon enough… or the crows to peck-it is of little concern to me which.' Whether she swooned from unseen hurts or turned an ankle on some detritus on the road as she pivoted back to rebuke him, Europe abruptly buckled at her knees and staggered. She tottered backward, twisting partly as if to catch herself, her fuse clattering on the ground.
Rossamund sprang to her, his arms wide, catching the fulgar before she went down, bearing her weight, surprised at her lightness.
Gripped in his impromptu embrace, Europe regarded him silently, her scowl tempered by surprise.
So close to her, Rossamund could plainly see wounds through smears and tears: a bullet graze on the left
