Self-motivated puppets were not great objects of fear in most quarters of the world. They had once been numerous, and some few score still walked the earth, almost all of them entertainers, some of them long remembered in song and story.
Mister Fitz was not one of those entertainers. [loc. 137]
Two novellas and a short story featuring Sir Hereward, mercenary knight and artillerist, and his former nursemaid Mister Fitz, a sorcerously-animated puppet who is centuries old and wields arcane magic needles. They roam a fantasy landscape (more Restoration than medieval) and are tasked -- by the Agents of the Council of the Treaty for the Safety of the World -- with destroying specific extra-dimensional entities ('godlets') which may manifest as Lovecraftian horrors or as apparently-benign forces enriching their domains at the expense of neighbouring fanes. If the godlet is on the list, out it goes.
Sir Hereward is young, something of a dandy, the only male offspring of the Witches of Har 'these thousand years', and an admirer of women, especially those with facial scars. Mister Fitz is the competent one, who would roll his eyes a lot if they were not painted on. In these stories they encounter a leopard-shifter, some malevolent starfish, and a pirate crew. Godlets are expelled, villains dispatched, and ladies considered.
Great fun, with an ambience reminiscent of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber -- and very good at plunging the reader into the middle of a well-built world without describing it in any detail. (The gradual revelation that the battle-mounts are not horses, for instance.)
Irritatingly this version is no longer available from Amazon -- they instead guide me to an expanded version with eight stories rather than three. I confess I am tempted, because I'd like to know more about the origins of Sir H and Mr F... but I don't want to pay again for the content I already own.
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