D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"Though our follower is still nigh on two miles distant," Sebastipole said, never moving his gaze from the distant menace, "it is moving extraordinarily fast. I suggest you pick up the rate-quickstep or double-quick, Mister Grindrod, and leave off the learning and the dousing till a friendlier day."

Grindrod bridled, but nevertheless he said, "Aye, leer, good advice-"

"Not again!" quailed Crofton Wheede, too frightened to care that he had interrupted the lamplighter-sergeant.

"What's the chance of two theroscades within a week?" whimpered Giddian Pillow.

"Steady, lads, steady," Grindrod cautioned. "Ye faced 'em four nights gone and ye'll do it again today if needs be. Now to yer marching-we'll beat this hasty hugger-mugger home yet! The basket is still a goodly way that way," he said, pointing open-palmed, soldier fashion, to his left. "And we have but three parts of a mile to succor and security at the opposite point. Keep yer dressing and eyes forward if ye want to avoid trouble: a threat near or far should never be allowed to ruin good and steady order! By the left! At the double-quick, march!"

So they marched fast, Threnody keeping pace with the best of them. Frequently Sebastipole halted to assess the threat, the lampsmen watching him almost as often, waiting hawklike for his reaction. Each time he simply spurred the prentice-watch on.

"How is it," Rossamund heard Puttinger wheeze in his thick Gott accent, "that the basket does not go for the pile of charbroiled corpses in the Briary?"

"The stinker finds something more to its likin' in the butcher's buggy, I reckon," Bellicos offered.

The butcher's truck rushed past with a noisy clatter even as the prentices themselves fled. The driver and the side-armsman were muffled up to the nose against the chill, their eyes unfriendly, frightened and staring ahead. The donkey was gasping, near blown, but still they pushed it as if all the blightlings and baskets of the Ichormeer pursued them. In its flight it left a faint unfriendly trail of moldering meat smells and the faintest whiff of something foul and horrifyingly familiar-Swine's lard!

A nauseous chill rushed through Rossamund's innards. He wrestled off the horrors, his memory lurching back to rever-men slavering in a vessel's dark hold. But here? He cleared his head with a shake.

"I reckon I recognize 'im," Crofton Wheede gasped. "He's the knackerer from the woods above Hinkersiegh where my sires are from. What's 'e doing all the way here?"

Almost immediately a horizontal gout of smoke erupted from the manse followed by the small thunder of cannon, which sent clouds of startled birds bursting into the gelid morning with a great clamor from every hide and roost on the Harrowmath. The fortress was firing one of its long-guns, seeking the prentice-watch's startled attention. Burges were run up beneath Ol' Barny, small flags lit bright in this clear morning and signaling the same warning Sebastipole had just issued.

Bellicos pointed to the signal and cried out, "There's a nicker on the Harrowmath!"

Behind, Rossamund heard Sebastipole say, as if to himself, "As I said…"

"So yer prescient observation shows true, leer.Well done to ye." The lamplighter-sergeant did not actually sound pleased or impressed.

The prentices kept bravely at their marching, but began to look about wildly, losing what was left of their even gait, quickly ceasing to step-regular altogether. Rossamund stepped directly into Tremendus Tworp's broad back, receiving a blow to his chin and nose from the lad's flabby shoulder blade. Threnody managed to gracefully avoid the collision.

"Reform yer file, ye clod-footed blunderers!" Grindrod barked angrily. He looked back. "Where is the beast?" He looked again through his glass and must have found something, for he said, "What an ugly article…" With a grunt, Grindrod passed the perspective glass to Bellicos.

With eight hundred yards still between them and Winstermill's sturdy gates, some hulking thing was emerging from the fog. It had gained on them alarmingly. Even at a distance Rossamund could see its giant size: a lumbering brute with a great spread of spikes about its head. And how fast its massive legs did carry it! Even as they watched it seemed to draw closer.

"I reckon it's the Herdebog Trought!" wheezed Bellicos with the callous calm of a hardened campaigner. "Even from here I can recognize the basket. I remember it from its rampagings in '87."

"Can't be!" muttered Assimus. "It's meant to have been chased by the Columbines all the way up into the northern marches of the Gluepot and destroyed there."

"It's coming!" Wheede shrieked.

The other prentices whimpered.

"I don't want to die by the jaws of a nicker…," burbled Tworp.

"Cease yer panicking!" Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod bellowed. "I've been in far tighter contests than this."

"Grindrod!" Sebastipole barked, surprisingly clear from his boxed face. "With Puttinger, take the prentices back to the manse as quickly as you think they can stand. Assimus and Bellicos and I shall be rear guard. Go now, Lamplighter-Sergeant-there's not a moment to lose!"

The lamplighter-sergeant repeated the orders as if they were his own. The prentices hurried away; the double pace doubled again, leaving Sebastipole and the two lampsmen to do what they might to put the beast off. At East Winst 3 West Well 22 the prentices paused, panting like overworked dogs. Rossamund looked back, and his eyes went saucerlike.

The umbergog was bearing down at prodigious speed now, pulling itself along with the assistance of its long powerful arms. Less than two lantern-spans were between it and the rear guard. Half as tall again as the ettin Rossamund had met in the Brindleshaws, this nicker was like some enormous malformed deer, its great antlers spreading out above its head like a regiment of pikes. Its hide, knotted and matted in thick curling beards about its chin, throat and down its chest, was like clots of dirty pale brown felt. The black fur about its small, weeping, rage-red eyes radiated down its cheek like points on a wind rose. It gave vent to a bellow like the lowing of a mighty, maniac bull, its hot breath expelled into the cold as billows of yellow steam.

"At the doubled-double now. Lead on, Mister Puttinger." Grindrod hung back. "I'll keep an eye out rearward."

The prentices hustled forward, barely held panic spurring them.The thump of a long-gun pounded ahead of them, and the metal it threw flew close enough for Rossamund to hear its unnerving, shuddering whine.The gunners of the fortress clearly thought the beast close enough to try their aim. The shot struck the earth to the north of the road, tearing a gap in the weeds and sending up a small spray of root-clogged soil well to the right of the charging monster.

Assimus, Bellicos and Sebastipole each discharged their locks though they were well out of range, then retreated at a run.

"Mister Puttinger, take the boys on," Grindrod ordered. "I will stay to aid the rear guard."

"Yes, Lamplighter-Sergeant!" the old lampsman cried obediently.

Threnody made to hold back too as Grindrod dropped behind; she was fearless and clearly itching to do her part.

"Keep up, girly!" Puttinger hollered with quick fury, and grudgingly she picked up her pace again.

The prentices were running now in line, a maneuver for which they had had little training. Soon their formation was only a ragged farce of a file.Yet what they lacked in skill they compensated for in speed. Straggling, struggling to breathe, they were near enough to the fortress now to hear the terrible, distant baying of the manse's dogs lusting to be let at the mighty beast. With this came the distant clattering of alarm posts tumbled out on drums, and the dong-dong-dong of the warning bell hung high in the Specular, the bell tower of the southern gatehouse.Yet as close as they were, Rossamund doubted they could reach the manse in time. The battlements buzzed and milled with agitation as little, far-off people called encouragement from the walls.