A hand grasped Jack's elbow and helped him to his feet. When he staggered, the arm attached to the hand slipped around his waist and supported him. It was difficult to believe that the Captain who had been so hard and sure during their bewildering tour of the pavillion could now be so gentle.
Jack staggered again. The world kept wanting to swim out of focus. Trickles of warm blood ran down his back. He looked at Osmond with swift-awakening hatred, and it was good to feel that hatred. It was a welcome antidote to the fear and the confusion.
You did that - you hurt me, you cut me. And listen to me, Jiggs, if I get a chance to pay you back -
'Are you all right?' the Captain whispered.
'Yes.'
'What?' Osmond screamed at the two men who had interrupted Jack's whipping.
The first was one of the dandies Jack and the Captain had passed going to the secret room. The other looked a bit like the carter Jack had seen almost immediately upon his return to the Territories. This fellow looked badly frightened, and hurt as well - blood was welling from a gash on the left side of his head and had covered most of the left side of his face. His left arm was scraped and his jerkin was torn. 'What are you saying, you jackass?'
'My wagon overturned coming around the bend on the far side of All-Hands' Village,' the carter said. He spoke with the slow, dazed patience of one in deep shock. 'My son's kilt, my Lord. Crushed to death under the barrels. He was just sixteen last May-Farm Day. His mother - '
'What?' Osmond screamed again. 'Barrels? Ale? Not the Kingsland? You don't mean to tell me you've overturned a full wagonload of Kingsland Ale, you stupid goat's penis? You don't mean to tell me that, do yoooooouuuuuuu?'
Osmond's voice rose on the last word like the voice of a man making savage mockery of an operatic diva. It wavered and warbled. At the same time he began to dance again . . . but in rage this time. The combination was so weird that Jack had to raise both hands to stifle an involuntary giggle. The movement caused his shirt to scrape across his welted back, and that sobered him even before the Captain muttered a warning word.
Patiently, as if Osmond had missed the only important fact (and so it must have seemed to him), the carter began again: 'He was just sixteen last May-Farm Day. His mother didn't want him to come with me. I can't think what - '
Osmond raised his whip and brought it whickering down with blinding and unexpected speed. At one moment the handle was grasped loosely in his left hand, the whip itself with its rawhide tails trailing in the mud; at the next there was a whipcrack not like the sound of a .22 but more like that of a toy rifle. The carter staggered back, shrieking, his hands clapped to his face. Fresh blood ran loosely through his dirty fingers. He fell over, screaming, 'My Lord! My Lord! My Lord!' in a muffled, gargling voice.
Jack moaned: 'Let's get out of here. Quick!'
'Wait,' the Captain said. The grim set of his face seemed to have loosened the smallest bit. There might have been hope in his eyes.
Osmond whirled to the dandy, who took a step back, his thick red mouth working.
'Was it the Kingsland?' Osmond panted.
'Osmond, you shouldn't tax yourself so - '
Osmond flicked his left wrist upward; the whip's steel-tipped rawhide tails clattered against the dandy's boots. The dandy took another step backward.
'Don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do,' he said. 'Only answer my questions. I'm vexed, Stephen, I'm most intolerably, indubitably vexed. Was it the Kingsland?'
'Yes,' Stephen said. 'I regret to say it, but - '
'On the Outpost Road?'
'Osmond - '
'On the Outpost Road, you dripping penis?'
'Yes,' Stephen gulped.
'Of course,' Osmond said, and his thin face was split by a hideous white grin. 'Where is All-Hands' Village, if not on the Outpost Road? Can a village fly? Huh? Can a village somehow fly from one road to another, Stephen? Can it? Can it?'
'No, Osmond, of course not.'
'No. And so there are barrels all over the Outpost Road, is that correct? Is it correct for me to assume that there are barrels and an overturned ale-wagon blocking the Outpost Road while the best ale in the Territories soaks into the ground for the earthworms to carouse on? Is that correct?'
'Yes . . . yes. But - '
'Morgan is coming by the Outpost Road!' Osmond screamed. 'Morgan is coming and you know how he drives his horses! If his diligence comes around a bend and upon that mess, his driver may not have time to stop! He could be overturned! He could be killed!'
'Dear-God,' Stephen said, all as one word. His pallid face went two shades whiter.
Osmond nodded slowly. 'I think, if Morgan's diligence were to overturn, we would all do better to pray for his death than for his recovery.'
'But - but - '
Osmond turned from him and almost ran back to where the Captain of the Outer Guards stood with his 'son.' Behind Osmond, the hapless carter still writhed in the mud, bubbling My Lords.
Osmond's eyes touched Jack and then swept over him as if he weren't there. 'Captain Farren,' he said. 'Have you followed the events of the last five minutes?'
'Yes, Osmond.'
'Have you followed them closely? Have you gleaned them? Have you gleaned them most closely?'