D Cornish - Factotum

Surrounded by puddles of its own gore, but its wounds almost entirely gone, the Grackle remained motionless; only the tips of its tentacles undulated minutely, bending toward the battered dog.

Snarling, the tykehound leaped once more, rushing the sea-monster from the left with astounding fortitude, seeking to catch the Grackle exposed as it twisted to face this new assault.

Worried now as much for dog as for monster, Rossamund could barely watch, and half closed his eyes as the Derehund bit terrible hold of the nadderer's lower tentacle. Tugging powerfully left then right then left then right, Skarfithin tried to overset the Grackle and bring it down. The monster tottered perilously and toppled sideways.Yet it did not collapse; rather, one of its arms now became a leg, a stumped foot became a clubbed hand and the perversely vertical mouth was now more properly horizontal. Still the maddened dog tore and tugged, its jaw locked on soft tentacle flesh, until Rossamund was sure it would tear the entire limb from the poor Grackle's trunk. With a hiss the nadderer rolled completely onto its other end. Weirdly deft acrobatics had it standing upside down, both arms now legs, both legs now arms, and Skarfithin was lifted high as the lower tentacle became the head.

Still the Derehund would not let go. Dangling, its growls like small thunder heaving in its throat, legs scrabbling and twitching impotently, it kept its hold.

The disconcerting maw of the Grackle gaped wide, its sphincterlike lips quivering, revealing row on row of rasping ridges. Its teeth! With a shrug it flexed its surprisingly powerful head-tentacle-dog and all-and swung the tenacious Skarfithin right into its open mouth. The rippling lips closed about its middle with a wet slap and a collision of bones.

The crowd was stunned silent.

The Handsome Grackle had bit Skarfithin, the Blackheart of Dere, clean in two…

In the quiet Rossamund could hear a faint, breathy wailing coming from the victor as it flicked the dog's now lifeless head and shoulders splatteringly down.

Skarfithin had lost-and with it almost every soul in the room; though by the count of the losers, Pater Maupin and any other associate of the pit had done well. Mute shock quickly became a murmur of malcontent.

Clearly unsatisfied at the outcome, a brave soul leaped from the stalls down into the pit. He was a strangely dressed fellow in an odd, folded hat of red cloth, gathered over itself and tilting over one ear. For proofing he wore a short-sleeved frock coat of buff dyed dull olive, undershirt puffed over his elbows, thick black vambrins protecting forearm and hand, a red sash about his waist. The fellow wore no protecting boots, rather soled hose, one leg white, the other bright yellow and patterned with the figures of twisted black laurel-fronds.This was a sabrine adept; skilled at swordplay, they were said to taint their swords with venal pastes. Instead of the telltale black, however, this adept clutched a thin blade of glaucous translucent white, handle down. Its curved cutting edge reared behind his back.

A spathidril, Rossamund realized in horror, the most deadly of all blades.

The adept betrayed no urgency, but stared almost in abstraction at the Grackle, approaching it one halting dance-like step at a time.

Neither pit-bobs nor the rouse-master tried to stop the adept, and the people began to mutter approvingly, eager for him to go to his deadly work and avenge their losses.

Bloody-mouthed and so terribly alone among all this hatred, the Grackle seemed to sense something truly dangerous about its new foe. Shuffling backward to the tunnel from which it had come, the nadderer's tentacles rippled in clear agitation, thrusting in the adept's direction, then retracting sharply as if they tasted something foul.

With an awed gasp from the chancers, the adept suddenly whipped forward, sword a wan blur betwixt man and monster, and sprang back to stand tall once more, noble, supercilious.

What just happened?

The Handsome Grackle seemed unaffected, yet the swordist had all the swagger of the victor.

Rossamund looked more closely at the nadderer. Its tentacles were tight now, their ends blurring with a stunned vibration. As he watched, a terrible incision began to open from the left shoulder of the beast and down deep into its trunk. The Grackle wheezed gore and collapsed to the hard floor.

Its shocking wound did not heal.

It did not rise again.

Cheers!

Rapturous, delighted ovation!

Smiling with what seemed to Rossamund feigned satisfaction, Pater Maupin stood again in his proud peacock silks and white periwig and bent down to shake the hand of the adept.Torn gambling chits fell like celebratory rain as every throat cried its approval of the swordsman-every throat but one.

The stark blank inside Rossamund had no accompanying voice. Yet if it had, he could not speak such a thing in this invidical place. I should have intervened… He ached inwardly, doubling his fist about the caste of botch powder he had half consciously selected from his digital.

With tumblings of bolts and locks, the farther pit door was opened and the stricken tractor in blue buff collected what little was left of his once-mighty fighting hound. The adept was helped back up into the stalls by many reaching, congratulatory hands. The heavy corpse of the slaughtered Grackle was dragged away by a quarto of pit-bobs.The gory floor was quickly scrubbed by laboring lads, the ticket tearings swept away and the pit readied for the next bout.

What other undeserving creatures languished beneath the gambling house? How can I leave them all there? The young factotum was in torment.Yet how could he hope to ever set them all free?

Another dog was brought, this time a white-and-gray stafirhund led by a tractor in an orange-and-white apron.

"Patient souls!" came the rouse-clerk's cry as he swept an arm to point dramatically to the jowly, slobbering dog, "I give you our own darling-Truncheon, the Bogle-biting Bitch-queen of the Batch!"

Applause and catcalls from the stalls.

Up went the iron divide, Splitting the pit into two once more. Thunk! went the opening of the bogle-admitting door.

In full expectation of some great slavering wretchling, Rossamund was utterly unprepared for what emerged.

His mouth went dry, his forehead fever-damp.Yet with an unpleasantly dark elation, he quickly discovered it was not in fact his little bogle friend but some other similar creature. Its wizened little face was broader, hairier, more lopsided, and its body longer. Dread writ clear on its squinty broad-nosed face, it was so much slighter than the dog baying and leaping at the divide; this was a mismatched bout to appease the crowd, reinvigorate their interest and keep them at wagering.

"Lords, ladies, all gentlefolk," the rouse-clerk cried. "This one calls itself Gingerrice!"

People hoomed and hissed.

"It names itself, upstart wretcher!"

"Filthy basket, how dare it!"

"Do not be fooled by its stuntedness," the clerk bawled, raising his volume theatrically. "It is sturdy enough to contest our darling Bogle-biter. What will be your wagers?"

In the clamor to make an easy gain, the patrons near toppled over each other to have their calls heard, pay their wagers and get their tickets.

Perversely inspired by the dashing display of the sabrine adept, Rossamund knew what he would do; consequences come as they will, he was not going to watch the end of such an innocent.

At the shrieking drop of metal, Rossamund lifted himself as if to join the upsurging cries of his fellow watchers waving paddles, shaking fists, but with a surreptitious yet powerful flick sent the botch powder hurtling at the dog. Innocuously small, the caste of botch powder struck the stocky stafirhund square on its crown and popped with a pleasing purple-and-yellow puff before the beast had even reacted to the revelation of the shrinking glamgorn.The dog gave a puzzled yelp and, taking several waddling steps rearward, looked about the pit stupidly. Then, head lolling, the Bogle-biting Bitch-queen of the Batch simply lay down as if it were taking a well-earned nap and moved no more.