D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"The Marshal and the Agent flummoxed too: what are we to do now?" she said, apparently more interested in cleaning and admiring her pristine pistolas. "The honorable suffer and the crafty prevail."

Rossamund thought to show it to the house-major, yet what would it matter to him really, besides which he was sure Sebastipole would rather his private messages were not shown about. So Rossamund continued to heed Europe's warning and keep his thoughts to himself.Yet no matter how many nights he lay half sleeping, fretting over a solution, it never came. All he could see before him were limitless days of duty at Wormstool-small, remote, irrelevant.

Surely something good will come from all this wretchedness? One crisp, clear and early evening where the air itself felt as if it could snap with the chill, Rossamund was at sentry on the roof with Under-Sergeant Poesides and Lampsman 2nd Class Theudas.

The Fighting Top was a spectacular perch when no fog was about to hide the scene, a whole-compass view of the Frugelle, flat as flat could possibly be in any direction he cared to look. There were no hills, few very shallow valleys-mere depressions in the earth, and endless withered shrubs and drought-blasted trees. Indeed, from up on the roof, the only notable feature-apart from a tiny wood of swamp oaks to the northeast-was the Wormway itself. The Pendant Wig went west on the left hand, and kinked to east-northeast on the right: the final length of road before all habitation ceased completely and only wide, empty wilds were left. On the horizon, drawn as a deep reddish-purple line, was the western border of the fabled Ichormeer, the Gluepot, the Blood-Marsh, a brooding mark on the edge of vision. He could almost feel threwd radiate from it, reaching even here, like the heat of a bonfire.

Yet tonight, sitting quietly, Rossamund observed the lantern-watch at the lighting instead, already four lamps down the way. How he loved the beauty of the gradual increase in the light of a newly wound great-lamp, the colors shifting from grassy-green through straw-yellow and, if the water was new, to wine-vinegar clear.

As he watched, a fifth lantern began to glow green.

High off the ground, on watch with brave men, he felt his troubles markedly diminished here. A long and distant caw of a crow drifted in on the cold, fennel-perfumed breeze while restless wrens twittered and dashed about in the thistles. Rossamund relished the lightening of his soul. Threnody and he were talking once more, though they were yet to fully heal, and the passing of only a little time left him feeling less troubled about Freckle. He gave an almost contented sigh.

Poesides, who had been staring out to the south with a perspective glass, suddenly scuttled across the narrow walk between the tiles and the wall, crouched behind a rain-butt and waved the two others to do the same. "Stay out o' sight," he hissed excitedly. "There's some li'l bogle-thingy creeping down by the runnet there, not much more than one part of a mile yonder. If it don't spot us we might get a chance to take a few shots at the pot and spare ourselves a nasty end when we're out lighting."

Grinning grimly, Theudas peeked over the battlement. "I see it! The movement by them dwarfish willow-myrtles, aye?"

"Aye!" On his haunches, Poesides edged forward, easing up his firelock, creeping its muzzle on to the rim of the fortification.

Straining his neck, Rossamund could not see what they saw among the low twine of dry long-grass and tangled thickets of parched trees all across broad moorlands. Then he did: something small and furtive not more than two hundred yards away, making quick scutters from root clump to root clump along the shallow bed of a barely running creek, one of the many that curled east then north past the cothouse, to eventually drain into the sluggish river Frugal. In one horrid breath Rossamund realized he was looking at Freckle. The midget glamgorn obviously thought it was being rather cunning, coming at the fortlet from behind, and seemed unaware that it was observed.

Does he still want to take me away?

"Come on, Master Haroldus, get yer firelock up," Poesides chided. "Ye cain't hit naught with it slack at yer side."

"But what would Mama Lieger say?" Rossamund cried.

The under-sergeant hesitated for a mere beat. He gave the young lighter a look as if to say "Who has a care for what Mama Lieger might say!" and lifted the butt of his own long-rifle, leveled it and, nice-and-easy, squeezed the trigger.

Hiss-CRACK!

The shot cracked out across the flats. Water hens burst from some covet away to the right and quit the scene in fright; teals hurried away, their wings whistling loudly; little wrens scattered to all points, their angry chirrups and the hurry of their flight filling the air.

Miss-miss-miss… Rossamund panicked, on the verge of a scream.

Poesides cursed under his breath as he realized he had missed his mark.

Rossamund could have burst with relief.

"Cunning little skink," the under-sergeant growled. "I reckon he ducked that!"

"Let me have a pull," said Theudas. "Where is it?"

"Leftmost of the three thickets, down by that huge thistle-bush," answered Poesides, sitting back down on the angle of the roof, rapidly reloading his long-rifle.

"Ah, I see it…," the younger man muttered, "I think." Making a show of presenting his fusil, a cold sweat of guilty horror clinging in the small of his back, Rossamund had gratefully lost sight of the glamgorn again. For the first time he was glad for his lack of skill with a fusil.The chance of him actually scoring a hit was remote at best at this range. "Shouldn't we just send someone out to grab it or fright it off?" he asked in a hoarse croak, wanting to buy the little fellow some time to escape.

"What!" Poesides exclaimed huskily. "And chance some bigger basket springing at us from some nell? I have seen little blighters cooperatin' with some great gnasher, lure ye along thinking ye're in for an easy marking to add to yer skin and boo! Out of no place: something thrice as big, and ye're the mug being chased right back the way ye came." He primed the pan. "Our li'l mite out there is probably in cahoots with that nasty skulker we almost met out in the fog the other morn," the under-sergeant added as he rammed the wadding home.

"No! I heard that handsome Branden Rose dig got that one," Theudas corrected.

"Well, either way, ye can't let a bogle go free-it just ain't moral."

Rossamund just wished Freckle would get away and save himself. He winced as Theudas took aim.

Hissss-fssst!

A misfire!

Theudas had taken a shot, yet all he got was a flash in the pan, no burst from the breech, nor ball hurtling from the muzzle. "Not again!" he cried. "I don't care what Shudder-crank says, there is something a-foul with the touchhole!" Amid a flurry of uncouth words Theudas wrestled with his weapon to find the fault.

"It's fossicking about in the thicket over yonder… Do you think it suspects it's been found out?" Poesides chuckled, and humming "Stand While You Can" to himself, paused between the third and fourth stanza to let go another shot. "Ah, blight it! It's surely a crafty li'l bugaboo!"

The musket fire brought the other lampsmen, poking their heads through the trap in the roof or out of the unshuttered windows a floor below, to catch sight of the spectacle. Aubergene arrived on the Fighting Top bearing his own long-rifle, but he and the onlookers were to be disappointed.

The glamgorn was gone.

Rossamund sat blank-faced, frazzled nerves tingling in strange and anxious relief.

"Well, either we hit it, or it found some way to scurry off," the under-sergeant said, chewing his bottom lip, " 'cause there ain't been a movement down in the creek for a little while now." Poesides searched through his perspective glass till it was too dark to see, and prevailed on Crescens Hugh the lurksman to aid him.Yet, to Rossamund's secret delight, not a trace of the diminutive creature could be discovered.