D Cornish - The Lamplighter

They slowly unloaded the flat cart, which creaked in a kind of inanimate gratitude for the relief of the burden on its aged timbers and axles.

"Ye're sthtrong and quick for a wee lighter, lad, and that'sth the truth. Young Master Haroldus'th indeed!" To Threnody's sluggish unwillingness the seltzerman warned, "Take up the sthlack, young hearty, and clap on sthome sthpeed; that'sth no way to stherve yer Emperor!"

"I might wear your colors, sir," she hissed, snatching some small box, "but I do not serve your besotted, bedizzled Emperor."

"Besthotted, eh? Bedizzthled?" he said as she turned. "Isth that what they taught thee in thy sthequethtury? What doesth ye think taking the Emperor'sth Billion meansth?"

The stores were kept under a trapdoor in a rough-cut pit in the back corner of the outwork. For each new puncheon or cask or crate they carried in, an old one had to be removed and taken up and put on the cart. Even with Threnody reluctant to do the task, restocking was completed quickly and the three were soon strolling home. Along the return, a shrill cry, brief and birdlike, pierced the gauzy stillness four times, tangible alarm in its echoes.

The three workers became very still.

Rossamund stared about, trying to see everywhere at once.

"It'sth a water hen," Splinteazle stated in ominous whisper. "They only cry when the worstht of blight'sth basthketsth are about. Sthomething wicked-foul musth surely be out there. We mustht hurry!"

Not much farther on, they found that East Bleak 41 West Stool 5 had been smashed: bent over like nothing more than a broken grass-blade, the lamp's still dizzing seltzer already soaking into the hard surface of the road.

The smell of monsters-the telltale stink of pungent musk and almost animal filth found them, floating on the quickening breeze.

"Hi," Splinteazle exclaimed in the barest of whispers, "catch a nosthe full o' that reek! They're sthurely sthome of the wortht bugerboosth ye're ever likely to hide from."

The next lamp they discovered missing altogether, ripped footing and all from the verge.

"Desthtroying me lovely lampsth!" cried Splinteazle. "Killin' me bloom!"

Rossamund became aware of a threwdishly unpleasant, impelling sensation buzzing behind his eyes. It grew with each step, spreading to the base of his head, to the core of his innards; an external, ambient yet powerful compulsion to act, to do something or else suffer displeasure. From who? Is Mama Lieger doing this?What am I supposed to do? Rossamund had no notion, but the dread of this sensation waxed terribly. Oddly, Threnody and Splinteazle did not appear to heed it.

And the closer they drew to Wormstool the stronger the bestial smell became.

Though the cothouse was a mile away and part hidden by the mists, Rossamund could make out swamp harriers gliding the clearer air above in hungry expectation.The mad baying of the dogs came faintly. Even from this distance they could make out something large, perhaps an ettin pounding against the cothouse. Rossamund instinctively checked his salumanticum. There was nothing in it that would affect something so enormous.

"The cothousth is attacked!" Splinteazle wailed and set off down the road at a run, pulling the contrary Rabbit with him, the young lamplighters following his lead. A lantern-span closer, they saw more than just an ettin attacking their home. On the road before the tower and in the scrub about its foundations a crowd of monsters prowled, an entire menagerie of them, numbering a score or more of myriad kinds and sizes. They seemed to work in concert, hooting and hissing and yowling up at the besieged lighters within, drawing and dodging shots fired from loophole and roof. This was a theroscade of a kind that Rossamund had only read. The three rushed on in thoughtless, unspoken agreement, marching into this overwhelming danger regardless.

The powerful ettin, much heftier than the Misbegotten Schrewd, flourished a lantern in its massive hands and with it smashed at the door of Wormstool. An old cart looking very much like Squarmis' old bone-shaker was lashed to its head with rope and harness leather, providing some protection from musket fire above, the thills thrust out over its back like horns and the wheels looking like weird ears. Pops of smoke were puffing from the slits of every floor of the tower, and from the crenellations of the Fighting Top as well. Much of the fire was concentrated on the ettin, the beast swatting at the balls as a man might at flies. Many of the shots must have been true and deadly, for Rossamund and his companions were not much farther up the road when the giant nicker tottered, righted itself and threw the lamp at the walls. The post hit the cothouse with a clarion ring, ricocheted and spun off madly to crash on to the road. Stumbling, the ettin staggered away north into the flatlands, clutching at its bloodied head and shoulders. With a dull crunch of splintering wood, the ettin ripped the cart away and hurled this heedlessly too as it fled.

"Look at that belugig run! Come now, fellowsth!" Splinteazle cried to Rossamund and Threnody. "We mustht join the fight!"

Once more Rossamund felt the malignantly compelling threwd; felt it throb and saw the remaining monsters at the cothouse's feet respond obediently. Smaller nickers and larger bogles began to scamper up the stairs: things with hunched bodies and long legs, bounding a dozen steps in one leap; gaunt, stilt-legged bugaboos that took each step with the mincing grace of a dancer; bloated bogle-beasties that lumbered after.

"The door is breached!" wailed the seltzerman, abandoning Rabbit to run to the aid of the assaulted tower.

Mind a whirl of useless garble, Rossamund followed and Threnody with him, checking the priming of her two doglock pistols. The young lighter could scarce believe that he was willingly throwing himself into the fray. He reached into his salumanticum for a caste of loomblaze.

The tower of Wormstool was close now, no more than a hundred yards away, the clamor of the desperate struggle within audible even down on the road. Not more than a hundred yards from the cothouse near the base of the first lantern, Rossamund cried, "HI! HI! OVER HERE!" carried away by his desire to help. A pack of monsters still at the foot of the steps and circling about Wormstool's foundations turned to Rossamund's shout. With hoots and howls, they swarmed at the three, loping and leaping down the road with appalling speed.

Splinteazle was ahead of the two younger lighters, brandishing his fodicar in one hand and a salinumbus in the other. The monsters closed and he fired, sending one flailing, spurting to the road-dust. At the shot Rossamund threw his vial of loomblaze high and wide, wanting to avoid the seltzerman, and it erupted over the heads of two stragglers, their shrieks clear in the general din. Threnody fired too, pistolas thrust forward in classic pistoleer pose, but the power of the doglocks must have thrown off her aim, and they had little effect on the beasts. The seltzerman swung his lantern-crook with all his might, hitting the foremost bogle hard but doing little harm. Was Splinteazle that old and infirm? He struck it again with all his force, and Rossamund watched with a numb kind of horror as once more the blow hardly troubled the gnasher. Cackling and barely hurt, the beast tackled Splinteazle to the ground and, finding all the weak parts of his proofing, rapidly clawed the hollering seltzerman to shreds before Rossamund knew to act. With a shriek of her own, Threnody flung her fine pistols down and scathed powerfully, stunning Rossamund but driving the bogles back amazed. Yet it was too late for the old seltzerman.

Numbness turned to terror and Rossamund hesitated. The will-filled threwd resisted him, undermined his resolve. If the seltzerman could perish so easily, what hope had he?