by Hugh Cook
"You were sold this boat by Umbilskimp, I suppose," said Guest, who still remembered that salesman, and had not repented of his determination to hang the man.
"Umbilskimp?" said Jarl. "Who's he?"Guest explained.
"Why," said Jarl, when he had heard the explanation out.
"That's very interesting. But, no, it was a man by name of Mung who sold me this particular boat."
Then the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan and the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl pacted with each other, swearing that if the village of Ink were to fall to their power then they would make it their business to see both Umbilskimp and Mung hung high, for both were murderers without a doubt.
Then Jarl proceeded with an inspection of his hulk.
By the time the wizards and the witch had bargained a peace for the shipwrecked travelers, Jarl had concluded – and nobody saw fit to disagree – that there was not one chance on this side of hell of their prodigiously rotten and storm-weakened ship getting them even half as far as the horizon.
"Which means," said Jarl, "that we're not going any further in this rotten hulk."
Which left them with very few palatable choices, for it was almost certain that Governor Sod would be in pursuit of them, and it was almost equally certain that Sod would not be gentle in his handling of them if and when he finally caught up with them.
Chapter Nine
Ema-Urk: an island of the Swelaway Sea, green and low-lying, and the site of much growing of sheep.
Though Thodric Jarl did not trust the people of Ema-Urk to keep the bargain of the peace which Zelafona had bought for the travelers, nothing more ferocious than a straying sheep intruded upon the peace of the travelers as they slept away the worst of their fatigue.
After a night's sleep, the marooned adventurers began to wonder how (if!) they were going to escape from their predicament.
Their ship in its rottenness was unfit even to be made into firewood, far less to put to sea. There was no boat on all of Ema Urk which was worthy of the labor of stealing it, and Jarl did not see how their own could be repaired except by rebuilding it from scratch.
And as Ema-Urk was flat, grassy and treeless, to rebuild their boat from scratch would first require the growth of its very timbers from the seed.
"Hence," said Jarl, "it seems we will be stuck here until in the fullness of time the masters of Alozay hunt us down to this lair."
"They would not dare to kill us, if that's what you're thinking," said Sken-Pitilkin positively. "Even though they're far from the Collosnon Empire, they can't risk arousing the wrath of Lord Onosh."
"They will not kill us," said Jarl grimly. "At least not as far as history is concerned. When the history of this episode is written, it will simply be said that we set to sea and were thereafter unseen. Drowning will be the natural presumption. It will be said that we were seen to leave Alozay on an evening which threatened storm – that much is true. It will be said that the fishes have had our bones. They almost did."
"We could always try talking our way out of it," said Sken-Pitilkin. "If a hunting party does come from Alozay, I'm sure – "
"You might convince them to give us a decent funeral," said Jarl, "but I doubt you could persuade them to do us any greater favor."
"Nonsense," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We can negotiate anything."
"You are a wizard," said Jarl, "and all the opportunities of the last four thousand years have not proved sufficient for wizards to negotiate a peace with the Rovac. I vote that we prepare ourselves for battle."
Here note that this "voting" was a commonplace way for the
Rovac to resolve their indecisions, for, lacking reductive wisdom, these low-brained warriors were often unable to resolve their problems by intellectual analysis. When stuck in such a predicament, they therefore endeavored to fight their way out of it by the process of piling up a great weight of numbers for one side or the other through the abovementioned process known as "voting". Thus did the Rovac often decide their disputes in the way in which battles are so often decided: through sheer weight of numbers.
In this connection, it is worth noting that a similar process of "voting" was commonly used in an even more systematized form by the Orfus pirates of the Greater Teeth; from which it can be proved that your Rovac mercenary is nothing but a pirate in embryo. However, Sken-Pitilkin shared neither the Rovac love for "voting" nor the Rovac joy in battle, and said as much.
"I think," said Sken-Pitilkin, once he had voiced his objections to waging war on any pursuers from Alozay, "that we had better do better than that."
"Why?" said Guest, who was inclined to side with Thodric Jarl. "What's wrong with fighting? If we can sort this thing out by killing someone, then let's do it."
"Unfortunately," said Sken-Pitilkin, who knew the Rovac manner well, "Thodric Jarl isn't talking about sorting things out. He's talking about fighting to the death then dying."
"Oh," said Guest, his enthusiasm suddenly quenched. "What do we do then?"
There was a silence as everyone pondered this question. Then the necromancer Zozimus spoke.
"Well," said Zozimus, "I think the time for desperate measures has more or less arrived. I've done my share, you can't deny me that, so now it's your turn."
"My turn?" said Guest in bewilderment.
"He wasn't talking to you," said Sken-Pitilkin. "He was talking to me!"
And of course this was true. Zozimus, having commanded a corpse into battle at the docks of Alozay, thought he had well and properly done his share. Now it was time for Sken-Pitilkin to try something.
As the two wizards were cousins, and knew each other well, and kept a close eye on each other's affairs, Pelagius Zozimus had taken cognizance of the experiments which Sken-Pitilkin had been making, the experiments which had seen Alozay beset by explosions and by tornadoes. Now Zozimus clearly thought it time for Sken-Pitilkin to move from experiment to mature creation, despite the unavoidable perils which were implicit in such a move.
"What are you two hatching up?" said Thodric Jarl suspiciously.
"An airship," said Zozimus crisply. "A ship with which to conquer the air. My good cousin Sken-Pitilkin had done all the experimental work and is ready to proceed with a full-scale model."
"Cousin," said Sken-Pitilkin, who had the gravest of reservations about making the leap which Zozimus proposed, "this is no time for joking."
"I'm serious," said Zozimus.
Then Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin lapsed into the High Speech of wizards, and in that tongue he berated Zozimus, telling him that any attempt to fly a full-sized ship through the air would result in their certain deaths.
"Because," said Sken-Pitilkin, still speaking in the High Speech of wizards, "I have been unable to control the sustained destruction which is necessary for such flight. Any ship which I make will explode, or burn, or shake itself to death, or rupture in outright whirlwind. I cannot control the destruction!"
"Ah," said Zozimus, "but I can guess why, already. You have not provided your sustained destruction with a safety valve."
"A safety valve?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "What are you talking about?"
"A safety valve," said Zozimus, "is a valve built into a pressure cooker. Now pressure cookers – "
"Oh, pressure cookers!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Now I remember!"Sken-Pitilkin remembered very well, even though his cousin's experiments with pressure cookers had taken place a good three generations earlier. In the course of his experimenting, Zozimus had blown up three kitchens, and had almost blown up himself. On one notable occasion -
But enough of this! Life is far too short for us to be giving a full account of the derelictions of Pelagius Zozimus, that over- rated and over-paid slug-chef who ever won greater resources for his kitchens than all the irregular verbs in the world could command in nine times ninety generations. Sufficient to say that Zozimus's experiments with pressure cookers had been exhaustive, not to say exhausting, and Sken-Pitilkin remembered as much, and the truth of the memory was clearly written o
n Sken-Pitilkin's face.
"Yes," said Zozimus, reading his cousin's expression. "You remember well. Well, then. I ventured. I experimented. And I learnt! What I learnt through the design of pressure cookers is that great forces must be given a means of escape. If the force grows too great, then it must blow its way clear through a weak point in the device, thus preserving the integrity of the device."
Then Zozimus explained that, in his judgment, the flame trench known as Drangsturm was a perfect example of the control of great destructive forces. If the destruction temporarily got out of hand, then great gouts of flame would be thrown high in the air, thus bleeding off the surplus force with no harm to the fabric of the device which generated that force.
"I see," said Sken-Pitilkin. "So you think I should govern the forces unleashed in my airship by – by what? By arranging for bits of the ship to be selectively smashed to smithereens by an excess of such force?"
"No," said Zozimus. "I believe you should arrange for excess force to be bled off in the form of rotational energy." Sken-Pitilkin thought about this, trying to work through the logical implications of Zozimus's suggestion.
"But," said Sken-Pitilkin, once he understood the import of his cousin's proposal, "that would mean my ship would spin round and round like a – a – like something that spins round and round, what do you call those things, a – "
"A windmill," said Zozimus.
"Yes, a windmill, or one of those, those, you know, those octopus things, those things that whirl round and round on a stick, round and round – "
"A species of firework," said Zozimus.
"Yes, yes," said Sken-Pitilkin, "fireworks, that time in Tang, you remember, round and round, round and round, sparks and smoke in all directions, and then, then – bang!"
"There would be no bang," said Zozimus positively. "There would merely be a trifle amount of… rotation."
"Whirlygigging," said Sken-Pitilkin, direly suspecting that "rotation" was at best but a weak euphemism for the consequences of the arrangement which Zozimus was proposing. "Whirlygigging, round and round like an octopus. The ship would burst. Or at the least – I'm sure at the very least we'd all be hideously sick. I won't have anything to do with the idea."
Yet in time – and a remarkably short time it was – Sken-Pitilkin was persuaded. The precise time of his persuasion was noon, for by noon the master chef Zozimus had prepared a delicious meal, working with slugs and watercress, with sheep bones and freshwater crabs, with puffballs and mushrooms, with chopped worms and tadpoles, all brisked and enlivened with touches of this and that from his secret emergency herb hoard and spice stock. And with this meal complete, Zozimus gave Sken-Pitilkin an ultimatum:
"Design an airship or starve."
Thus a decision was reached in favor of flight, and after lunch the brave Sken-Pitilkin went to work, converting the ruinous hulk of a watership into an airship. He exercised his power in the manner of wizards, converting certain timbers of this ship into artefacts possessed of magical power – artefacts which the universe itself would seek to destroy if it got but half a chance. Sken-Pitilkin wrought these devices in such a way that their magical nature could be shielded or unshielded at his command.
When each device was unshielded, the universe would seek to destroy it, and the destructive forces thus unleashed would be used for controlled flight, with any uncontrollable excess being bled off into the "rotational energy" which Zozimus had suggested.
At last the thing was finished – but the great Lord Alagrace flatly refused to get into it. The parcel of soldiers who had bodyguarded the great Thodric Jarl all the way to Alozay likewise refused to dare Sken-Pitilkin's device.
Thus, in the end, on its maiden flight the airship was crewed by the wizard of Skatzabratzumon known as Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, by the wizard of Xluzu known as Pelagius Zozimus, by the witch Zelafona and her dwarf-son Glambrax, by the mighty Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite, by the cow-tattooed Thodric Jarl, and by Guest Gulkan, youngest and most undisciplined of the sons of the lord of the Collosnon Empire.
Name them and know them!
For they were heroes, one and all!
Pioneers of flight!
Linked in a daring enterprise unparalleled in the history of experimental wizardry!
And possibly linked – Sken-Pitilkin could not help from thinking as much – in being destined to share a common grave.
A full day and a bit before they were to depart, Sken-Pitilkin gathered the would be air-adventurers together and indulged himself in a speech.
"Man has never ventured to the heavens in a ship such as this before," said Sken-Pitilkin. Then, glancing at Zelafona: "Nor woman neither. We can but guess what shocks the buffets of the heavens will impose on human physiology."
"A guess is as good as a goose on a blind night," said Guest, venturing one of the proverbs of Rovac which Rolf Thelemite had taught him.
"Pardon?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Nothing," said Guest.
"You said something," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I distinctly heard you, and though what you said was less than distinct I'm perfectly sure you didn't say nothing."
"I said," said Guest, "that maybe if it's so dangerous we shouldn't risk it."
"I wouldn't say it's as dangerous as all that," said Sken-Pitilkin, who thought it unwise to share the full strength of his forebodings with the young Yarglat barbarian. "But I suspect it's better undertaken on an empty stomach."
"You mean," said Guest, "we shouldn't eat?"
"Precisely," said Sken-Pitilkin briskly. "That's the main point I want to get across today. We can't know anything of the physiology of flight unless we look by analogy to the physiology of seafaring. As travel by sea is apt to induce a sickness of stomach, so may the air by analogy produce a like-belly illness.
Hence starvation is the order of the day. Or of three days, ideally – however, we've not time for such a fast, so a day's deprivation will have to suffice."
"What about drinking?" said Guest. "Can we drink?"
"What do you have in mind?" said Sken-Pitilkin. Guest told him, and was advised that it would be unwise in the extreme for him to proceed with his stated intention of consuming three beers, two gins and a brandy before boarding Sken-Pitilkin's airship.
"Besides," said Sken-Pitilkin, "I doubt whether there is either gin or brandy to be had on Ema-Urk."Guest Gulkan and Rolf Thelemite both assured him that both were to be had, and in quantity. They had assured themselves of this already.
"Then," said Sken-Pitilkin, "I adjure you to abstain from such."
"Adjure?" said Guest. "What on earth does that mean?"
"It means," said Sken-Pitilkin, "that I'm ready to kick you unless you show good sense and abstinence."
Then those who were doomed to join Sken-Pitilkin in the experimental flying ship launched themselves upon a one-day fast.
All but for the Weaponmaster.
Despite the timely warning issued by the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, and despite the threat of reprisals courtesy of Sken-Pitilkin's boot, the young Weaponmaster chose to indulge in a pre- flight dinner which included rhubarb sausages anointed with cod liver oil. This dish was especially invented for the occasion by an over-enthusiastic Pelagius Zozimus, whose deviations from gastronomic routine tended to be not only frequent but disastrous.
Rhubarb sausages with cod liver oil!
As heaven is my witness, this is what Zozimus cooked!
And Guest, in the folly of his youth -Guest ate it!
In his wisdom, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin refused to allow his intestinal peace to be vandalized by such a dish, and leavened his fast only with a small crust of dry bread and a pannikin of boiled water. But Guest ate the rhubarb sausages with a truly barbaric enthusiasm, swallowed a second helping of cod liver oil, and went on to consume two steaks cut from the more blubbery parts of a whale (steaks which had been cut from the beast some three years earlier, and which had been imported to Ema-Urk at the bottom of a barrel of vinegar), then follow
ed these steaks with a dish of exceedingly greasy pork, an entire apple pie heaped with whipped cream, and, as a special after-dinner treat, the ears of five dogs (the ears of dogs being a special delicacy much favored by the gourmets of the islands of Safrak). He then proceeded to his drinking – only the beers he drank were seven in number, not three; the gins he consumed were set before him in quadruplicate; and his brandy was double.
Here Guest Gulkan was true to his Yarglat heritage. The Yarglat are capable of subsisting on the most parsimonious of diets when necessity demands; and when at war will content themselves at need with a single cup of fresh hot blood tapped from a vein in a living horse. But their indulgences are in keeping with their deprivations; and what they eat, and the quantities in which they eat it, is scarcely believable even to those who have seen such feats repeated thrice or thirty times; and their drinking matches their eating.
Never have the Yarglat been able to hold any great banquet without one person at least dying simply from overdrinking. The uninitiated may think this an exaggeration – but death from abuse of liquor has ever been a leading cause of death amongst the heroes of the northern horsetribes. Furthermore, history can name of a certainty at least four rulers of the Collosnon Empire who died of over-drinking, and a further three who expired through sheer gluttony: Dobdask, who expired while trying to eat an entire horse to win a bet with one of his generals; Henza, who collapsed while eating one of his generals; and Yeldanov Ax, who died as a consequence of disembowelling a whale and eating a considerable portion of the gut, an eccentricity which tends to support those rumors which claim him to have been somewhat deranged.
So Guest Gulkan indulged himself as the Yarglat will, and in what was left of the night he tried to digest that which he had ingested. Guest's attempts at digestion were not entirely successful, and in the gray light of the morrow's dawn he looked rather queasy. The chip-chop motion of the Swelaway Sea was making him uneasy: he had to avert his eyes lest it make him positively sick.