"Factotum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornish D M)

NO!

Smitten dumb in horror, he flicked a caste from his right-hand digital and threw it at the musketeers, a prodigious lob flying clear over the landaulet and the drain.The orange glare of beedlebane flashed among the trunks where the marksmen hid. Another he tossed, and another after that, the blue gust of Frazzard's powder and the yellow-green glare of loomblaze flickering a yard left and right of the orange fire.

"You little muckhill!" someone shockingly close cursed.

Rossamund spun about to catch the butt-end of a firelock in his right shoulder, the hit driving him to earth. In the flaring of pain he saw a person clad in leathers of bosky drab, face concealed behind a sthenicon, looming over him, flourishing a long-rifle high and clearly intent on staving his face with the stock.

Addled, Rossamund did the best thing that occurred to him in the moment and simply caught the swinging rifle butt with both hands, stopping its savage momentum dead.

In shock the lurksman tugged ferociously to get his weapon back, but the young factotum held fast. Thwarted, the lurksman let go and went to draw a blade.

Still gripping the firelock by its stock, Rossamund did not afford him the chance but drove the barrel hard into the man's abdomen. Thrust bodily backward, the lurksman buckled in a whimper of agony about the blow, collapsing in on himself as he toppled and half slid, half tumbled down the steep hillside until he was halted by a tree. With a box-deadened gag, the fellow sagged and did not move again.

Struggling, slipping, dragging himself up the sharp slope, Rossamund could hear the increasing shouts of the hurried advance of a multitude rattling and tramping among the trees. Pivoting his gaze urgently one way and the other, he searched for sign of Europe, of Fransitart, of Craumpalin, of anything…

On his right, about the northern curve from where they had first arrived, he could see the heads of perhaps a dozen violent fellows coming with all haste. Half were masked fictlers wielding gabelungs, war-rakes and long spittendes-every one a wooden weapon that did not easily transmit a fulgar's arcs. With them came savage-looking fellows carrying large round shields and long thorny clubs, braces of pistols and wickedly barbed blades of black. Wildmen they were, their shaggy hair bound in all manner of knots and spikes, wearing thick Piltmen skirts belted high over their bare chests, running barefoot, their lower legs bound in bands of hide. Most sinister yet among all these were heavier figures swathed about their shoulders in matted furs, their heads casqued in round helmets perforated with many holes sprouting horns or antlers. In thickly armored grips they bore immense wooden testudoes, wickedly barbed and knobbled, each as long as a man is tall. Conspicuous among this motley horde was the feather-hatted stranger with the four-barred mask, the silent watcher from the day before clearly commanding those about with emphatic gesticulations.

His line of sight impeded by the camber of the road and trees sprouting all along its edge, Rossamund could hear yet another gang rushing from the left. Closer and closer the stouching parties drew, two jaws of a trap, coming headlong from north and south, caterwauling to steel their nerve. At the same moment the clatter of a small but violent turmoil sounded down past a screen of olives upon a lower slope.

Fransitart? Craumpalin!

Ready to dash to this new commotion, he was stopped as Europe's head and shoulders thrust into view above the matted verge of the roadside. The fulgar hunkered by the rear wheel of the landaulet, leaning on her fuse. Saved by the excellence of her proofing, her expression bleak yet unflinchingly resolute, she glared back and forth rapidly between the all-too-quickly encroaching gangs.

Hollering obscenities at their lonely foe as they drew in sight of her, the wild southern horde swarmed along the road on either side of the broken landaulet. Impassioned by more than common battle fervor and howling like crazed hounds, they pushed the carriage in their rage. It tottered on the brink, and with a great creak and a corporate shout of success tipped between the line of pines and off the road. In a clash of splinters it hurtled rearward down the slope, flattening myrtle saplings as it bore toward Rossamund. Its rear right wheel struck some unseen obstruction in the weeds and needle. The whole vehicle leaped, spraying chests and prizes and lesser effects as it flipped onto its side. Sliding, it smashed to a halt a few feet to Rossamund's left against a row of lower trees.

Driven into the open, Europe leaped away and back along the road, limp forgotten, spinning in a martial dance, frock and petticoats twirling. Fuse twisting faster than eye could follow, she made headlong for the northern party, now charging her too.

Overeager to grapple with their vaunted adversary, some wildmen sprang ahead to point and fire their pistols, their shots joined by those of the surviving musketeers skulking in the trees of the higher bank across the culvert. Once more the Branden Rose was felled, toppling to the bellowing glee of her antagonists and a cry of anguish from Rossamund.

Snatching the single caste of asper from its digital, the young factotum let it fly through the line of pine trees at the attackers. The caste struck an antlered foe. Boiling black falsefire expanded rapidly to completely engulf the fellow, spreading farther yet to swallow those about. Horrified, Rossamund watched as those caught in the oily vapor were blistered black, screeching their pain. Three fellows stumbled off the road and tumbled down the bank, to land steaming and lifeless.

However, the general press was not thwarted, and almost as a single creature the reckless mass of bravoes rushed to where the fulgar must have lain vulnerable on the road.

With an almost joyful "HA!" Europe abruptly appeared, springing to her feet and thrusting her fuse into the sky. A mighty lightning bolt spat down from the murk and struck the fulgaris, coruscating down the fulgar's upraised arm. Passing right through her, it stabbed out blindingly from her outstretched hand. The writhing bolt struck the massed company, leaping from one man to the next, calling more lightning from the roiling heavens independent of the fulgar's summoning, smashing all about her. Rossamund cowered at the roar, stumbling against the bole of a pine, hands over ears, sure that they and the whole world with them would rupture. Bolt after bolt stabbed with bursting, crushing thunderings-five-six-seven-eight, slaying most fellows instantly, leaving others shattered while the remaining few recoiled, some already scampering away.

Even as reverberations of thunder rolled about the wold, Rossamund was struck hard from the left, a potent blow skewering him in his kidneys, sending him sprawling to the mold. Seeing stars, he felt a rough-clothed arm pinch him about his neck in a malicious embrace, pressing his face into the leaf litter and dust. An all-too-familiar threwdless dread constricted in his soul. Rever-man! A second great strength pinned him in the small of his back, holding him to the ground while a cruel, cold grip took hold of his arms. He flailed his legs, bucking with all his might, near dislodging his captors' callous clutches. He got one brief and terrifying hint of an expressionless, empty-eyed face before a coarse sack was jerked forcibly over his own head and then cords wrapped about his throat to be pulled choking tight.

Swallowing hard against the pressure on his gourmand's cork, Rossamund refused to let this be his end. Somehow he managed to get a toe-hold in the slippery needles and with every mite of his thew pushed, wrenching sideways, breaking the hold on his wrists. Kicking out savagely, his left foot connected with something yielding. Instantly realizing he was free of constraint, he flung himself down the slope, tumbling, hitting the ground hard over and over with shoulders and back. His career stopped with a neuralgic jolt, leaving him winded and sitting on flatter land. Tearing the cord from his throat and the bag from his head he saw that he had landed in the very midst of the tumbledown foundations of some roofless dwelling. Built on a small cobbled shelf, it was clearly long abandoned, its crumbling sandstone stained and moldering.

The stuttered cough of firelocks resounded flatly from the trees above, followed by a shout diminishing in volume and a powerful zzack!

Europe!

Crashes in the nearby underbrush descended swiftly toward him. Scrabbling to stand and drawing a caste of Frazzard's powder, Rossamund spied a misshapen figure plunging down the hill. Pulling his clammy vent about his mouth and nose, the young factotum recoiled as the assailant burst through a stand of juvenile pines at the edge of this level shelf. But for the threwdless emptiness of this being, he might have thought by its filthy frock coat and jauntily tilted tricorn that he was beset by a drunkard. Formed from cloth and wood and metal springs as much as of fleshly parts, this thing was not the headlong, bloodthirsty bits of meat the revermen he had met before had been. It seemed careful, almost calculating, as it regarded him from the black holes in its sack-cloth head, its eyes perpetually open in an exaggerated expression of horror.This was a jackstraw, the acme of a black habilist's arts.

Regardless, the swift familiar hatred expanded within Rossamund's bosom. Drawing away, he had the strangest impression of a subtle almost-witting, not the stark frission of a neuroticrith, rather something communicative fluttering on the boundaries of sensation.

Gurgling, the jackstraw sprang at him, reaching with arms ending in long fiendish blades scissoring where palm and fingers should have been, their filthy corroded edges glinting dully.

Reeling, Rossamund pitched the Frazzard's at the thing's head with a deft flick, the repellent bursting with blue-flashing detonations right upon its sack-draped face. The jackstraw stumbled briefly yet righted itself, dribbling fizzing mucus from a rent scorched in the cloth. The young factotum retreated through the remnants of a door, reaching into his stoup for a lepsis of greenflash, putting a broken stub of a wall between him and his hunter.

In a glimpse of something incongruously pale above, he spied the white woman in the summer dress who had first hailed them on the road, now standing several yards farther up the incline, her eyes knotted closed in an expression of severe-almost ravenous-concentration. Arms bent out at the elbows, both her hands were stretched and grasping at the blank air with jerky and ferocious passion.