running and shouting orders. We were mid-river in moments, and cranking upstream with a will.
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LAGADEME V
I had only to look at this Ephesionite hireling of ours, trotting at point with Olombo, to feel my jaw start clenching. The comedy of his unavoidable hiring seemed increasingly grotesque the longer I looked at him. So good a spearman! For this utility we were compelled to take him on, even as I clearly saw him for a palpable scoundrel.
He was perfect in the scoundrel's arts of affability. A droll, easy rogue, a phrase-turner, a man keener to hear your tale than hold forth with his own, but if he must, forsooth, enlighten or inform you, why, he was ready to give you the benefit of his experience, in a modest, self-deprecating way, of course.
He was liberal with information, for example, when Olombo—an ebullient man, bless him, and rather too quick to trust just such smooth, plausible, democratic villains as this Nifft—when Olombo told him of our amorous feasting with the beauties of Buttercrock Creek. To this tale Nifft replied, "Charming! Though the entire encounter, of course, would likely have been stimulated by the priaphs. Wherever anyone summons up priaphs to impregnate stock, these lustful demons will, through their aura, impart lascivious impulses to anyone on the periphery of their coital frenzies. Kairnish lore abounds with testimony to this phenomenon."
I'd been seething inwardly, of course, ever since Nifft's first mention—back at Big Quay—of priaphs, and the concomitant revelation that our crew had been a witch's dupes. I saw at once it was the plain truth. The instant it was out, the scales fell from my eyes. Our labile and densely veiled "widow"—in one stroke the utter improbability of her contrived identity stood revealed. The so-called Pompilla with her dizzying sachet! Why, its cloying fumes had almost certainly masked the smell of the obfuscatories she had undoubtedly been dispensing to dull our wits. There was no getting around the humiliation of it—to be witch-duped here in the Astrygals, witchcraft's very eyrie, where any sensible person would come on his guard against that very thing.
Of course I liked Nifft none the more for being the bearer of our disillusion, but I was sure that my assessment of him did not flow from his being the bearer of ill tidings. For there was simply no getting around the circumstances under which I first clapped eyes on him in the fane. That little tableau plainly proved him a spy, a lier-in-wait, and a secret sneaker-behind. To these, given his denial of any knowledge of the fane, I must add the character of a liar. He was all but certainly a miscreant, and he had that miscreant's allure, that raffish grace. I could not help thinking my Persander would consider this Nifft a perfectly fascinating fellow. In short, he was the very type of the life my son had chosen, the gaudy, unsolid world of Game, Easy Gain, and No Thought for Tomorrow. Our Ephesionite Spearman was a native of that Knave's Nation, that fellowship of triflers and wastrels, and it was hard not to feel, with a mother's loving illogic, that he was literally and personally subverting my son's career, stealing Persander's precious love from me month by month—stealing his loyalty to me and to the honorable uprightness I had tried to make him cherish. I all but shouted at the man, "Have done! Leave my son be! What good does his moral ruin do you?"
The highway crested the first of many ridgelines. Behind and below us the Haagsford River, and little Carder's Weir on its bank—just such a small dock town as Big Quay must have been before its hour of destiny—sank from sight. The highway led down across a river valley—the Mucklespring's Vale—so I called a rest while we were still in the meadow zone above the valley floor. We pulled the 'shaw onto the grass, stretched our limbs, and sat down to watered wine and biscuit. I weighed the words I wished to put to Nifft, and, through him, to
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LAGADEME V
I had only to look at this Ephesionite hireling of ours, trotting at point with Olombo, to feel my jaw start clenching. The comedy of his unavoidable hiring seemed increasingly grotesque the longer I looked at him. So good a spearman! For this utility we were compelled to take him on, even as I clearly saw him for a palpable scoundrel.
He was perfect in the scoundrel's arts of affability. A droll, easy rogue, a phrase-turner, a man keener to hear your tale than hold forth with his own, but if he must, forsooth, enlighten or inform you, why, he was ready to give you the benefit of his experience, in a modest, self-deprecating way, of course.
He was liberal with information, for example, when Olombo—an ebullient man, bless him, and rather too quick to trust just such smooth, plausible, democratic villains as this Nifft—when Olombo told him of our amorous feasting with the beauties of Buttercrock Creek. To this tale Nifft replied, "Charming! Though the entire encounter, of course, would likely have been stimulated by the priaphs. Wherever anyone summons up priaphs to impregnate stock, these lustful demons will, through their aura, impart lascivious impulses to anyone on the periphery of their coital frenzies. Kairnish lore abounds with testimony to this phenomenon."
I'd been seething inwardly, of course, ever since Nifft's first mention—back at Big Quay—of priaphs, and the concomitant revelation that our crew had been a witch's dupes. I saw at once it was the plain truth. The instant it was out, the scales fell from my eyes. Our labile and densely veiled "widow"—in one stroke the utter improbability of her contrived identity stood revealed. The so-called Pompilla with her dizzying sachet! Why, its cloying fumes had almost certainly masked the smell of the obfuscatories she had undoubtedly been dispensing to dull our wits. There was no getting around the humiliation of it—to be witch-duped here in the Astrygals, witchcraft's very eyrie, where any sensible person would come on his guard against that very thing.
Of course I liked Nifft none the more for being the bearer of our disillusion, but I was sure that my assessment of him did not flow from his being the bearer of ill tidings. For there was simply no getting around the circumstances under which I first clapped eyes on him in the fane. That little tableau plainly proved him a spy, a lier-in-wait, and a secret sneaker-behind. To these, given his denial of any knowledge of the fane, I must add the character of a liar. He was all but certainly a miscreant, and he had that miscreant's allure, that raffish grace. I could not help thinking my Persander would consider this Nifft a perfectly fascinating fellow. In short, he was the very type of the life my son had chosen, the gaudy, unsolid world of Game, Easy Gain, and No Thought for Tomorrow. Our Ephesionite Spearman was a native of that Knave's Nation, that fellowship of triflers and wastrels, and it was hard not to feel, with a mother's loving illogic, that he was literally and personally subverting my son's career, stealing Persander's precious love from me month by month—stealing his loyalty to me and to the honorable uprightness I had tried to make him cherish. I all but shouted at the man, "Have done! Leave my son be! What good does his moral ruin do you?"
The highway crested the first of many ridgelines. Behind and below us the Haagsford River, and little Carder's Weir on its bank—just such a small dock town as Big Quay must have been before its hour of destiny—sank from sight. The highway led down across a river valley—the Mucklespring's Vale—so I called a rest while we were still in the meadow zone above the valley floor. We pulled the 'shaw onto the grass, stretched our limbs, and sat down to watered wine and biscuit. I weighed the words I wished to put to Nifft, and, through him, to
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