by Hugh Cook
As Guest Gulkan struggled up the bank, his foot broke through the crusted earth. His boot, weighted by the battle-slam intensity of the boy's warcry charge, slammed down on a spike of sharpened bamboo. The spike pierced the boot. Guest's foot was inside the boot. Accordingly, the spike seared into his flesh, and he screamed with intolerable pain. He pulled free his foot, wrenching it clear from the spike. All around, other men were likewise screaming. As they screamed, arrows began to fall amongst them.
The entire slope was pitted with bamboo spikes. There was no quick way up it, and the arrows were soon taking a brutal toll of those whose ambition it was to hack down the Witchlord Onosh.
"Forward, men!" cried Sham Cham.
Then an arrow took him in the eye, and he cried no more.
All around, men were wavering, not knowing what to do. But Guest Gulkan knew. The boy Guest had been born into the household of a mighty warlord, and had studied the theory and praxis of war since he was knee-high to a donkey. He had yet to make himself a complete master of military science, but this he knew for sure – right now, it was most definitely time to be running away. Guest Gulkan promptly took command of the battlefield, and, bellowing like a water-buffalo, he commanded a retreat, and was obeyed. Guest Gulkan got back across the Pig, stumbled through the still-burning wagons, and got onto the flatlands south of there, where he was met by Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus, both of whom were sitting still on their horses.
"Well my boy," said Sken-Pitilkin. "How did you enjoy your first battle?"
"Suck shit and die," said Guest.
Then collapsed, going down in a dead faint in front of Sken-Pitilkin, who looked at Zozimus, who rolled his eyes to heaven then indulged himself in a sigh.
Chapter Fourteen
Locontareth: a community on the southern banks of the Yolantarath, some 460 leagues from Gendormargensis as the crow flies, and rather more as the river winds. Locontareth is near the borders of the empire ruled by the Witchlord Onosh. To go any distance south from Locontareth is to find oneself in hostile territory, though a trade route does run south for 640 leagues from Locontareth to the port of Favanosin.
So it was that the retreat to Locontareth began in the heat of high summer. With the shocked and shaken revolutionary army demoralized to little more than a retreating rabble in its defeat, Guest Gulkan found himself its leader, since nobody else wanted the job – for who wants such a job in a time of failure when political prominence looks to be a likely cause of execution rather than a golden path to glory?
In his swift and unopposed seizure of power, Guest Gulkan was aided by the nature of his birth. Since he had been born into the imperial family, it was only natural that a great many people should automatically think him fit to exercise imperial power; and, since Guest had at his side the wisdom of the wizards Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus, he did not do too badly at it.
Usually, Guest was rumbunctiously uncontrollable in his undisciplined delinquency. But in defeat, and in the first shock of his new position, and sore from his wound, and nagged by pain, and full of fears of gangrene and blood poisoning, he found himself floundering, and so became unnaturally amenable to advice.
As the army looked to Guest Gulkan, so Guest looked to his wizards; and, in this day of greatest need, they did not fail him.
On Sken-Pitilkin's suggestion, the Weaponmaster's men burnt everything they could not carry. They burnt wagons and weapons, fodder and food, clothing and bandages. One or two of the more dimwitted soldiers, obedient to the literal sense of the orders they had received from on high, were caught trying (with varying degrees of success) to set fire to their own dung. Thus lightened, the defeated army retreated on horseback, carrying nothing but that which their saddlebags could hold.
The shortest horseback route required the retreating army to cover over 300 leagues from the Pig to the city of Locontareth.
The land was flat; the way was known; the weather was not unfavorable; and under these conditions a ruthless horseman can cover fifty leagues a day, assuming he has a string of horses which can be interchanged as each from its burden tires, and assuming also that the horseman does not waste time in mourning for those of his mounts who die of their exertions.
But the most ruthless horseman in the world cannot maintain such a pace for long, horseflesh being unable to match the rider's ambition; and in the confusion of its retreat, Guest Gulkan's army was hard pushed to manage twenty leagues a day, to the great and intolerant frustration of its youthful general.
Nevertheless, despite his impatience, Guest Gulkan tempered the pace of his retreat by having his army take the time to set fire to all of worth which fell to their possession. They burnt barges and villages, temples and shrines, thickets and woods, and daily fired the grass to scorch the very earth in their wake.
Thus Guest Gulkan and his people retreated downriver, leaving behind them a swathe of devastation suggestive of a very dragon in its angers.
"Your father must feed upon ashes if he would chase us," said Sken-Pitilkin, "else delay while he puts together a baggage train for the support of his army."
It seemed that Lord Onosh chose the latter path, for no word of pursuit reached Guest Gulkan, even though his scouting patrols maintained the vigilance of war in his wake.
Those patrols went forth at Guest Gulkan's sole suggestion, for as the days went by, and as he began to realize that he was unlikely to die from his boot-spike wound, he began to get a grip on himself and his new position, to remember what he had learnt in his years of growth in Gendormargensis, and to gather about him a small corps of responsible veterans who served him as his principal officers, and helped him manage the difficult business of retreat. In these days of difficulty, Guest Gulkan "lived in the skin of a horse", as the Yarglat saying has it; and, after the first few days of confused retreat, his army was no longer a mindless blob of compacted protoplasm, but was rather a dynamic organism armed and barbed. Never did his army sleep in its entirety. Instead, it maintained its vigilance with sentries, passwords and patrols.
In his retreat, the Weaponmaster commanded thrice a thousand horse. He did not bunch his spears around him, but spread his army across the countryside that it might feed with ease upon the land and maximize its destruction of the same. Only as the army approached Locontareth did it close in, as Guest concentrated his strength to smash anyone who might think to stand between him and his city of refuge. Guest in his eagerness rode with the advance guard, and so was amongst the first to sight Locontareth.
"There it is," said he, pointing at the distant city. "Our journeys are nearly at an end."
"Only if we choose to halt here," said Sken-Pitilkin, who had matched the rigors of Guest Gulkan's horse-coursing, and sat saddled a swordlength distant from him now.
"Of course we halt here," said Guest. "It would be utter folly for us to head back to Gendormargensis."
"Gendormargensis is of all places the furthest from my mind," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I was thinking not of Gendormargensis but of the sea. From Locontareth, it is barely 300 leagues to Nork."
"Where is Nork?" said Guest.
"It is on the coast," said Sken-Pitilkin. "There are ships.
The Hauma Sea – "
"It was never my ambition to play fish or be fish," said Guest shortly. "I've no thought of Nork and none of the sea. This is not a retreat but a – a withdrawal, a tactical withdrawal, that's the term. At Locontareth we stand and turn. The city is our strength, and us the masters of the world if we can make good use of our strength."
Neither Sken-Pitilkin nor Zozimus fancied the idea of being besieged in Locontareth by an angry Witchlord aided by the devices of Thodric Jarl. The Rovac were noted for their mastery of the art of the siege, so with Thodric Jarl in charge the city was sure to fall. Neither of the wizards thought Guest Gulkan a potential world ruler in embryo: rather, they thought him a wild boy who would be lucky to escape with his skin.
But Guest Gulkan was grimly determined to hold Locontareth as his own
, to smash his father in battle, and then to turn the tide of war and make himself master of the empire (first) and then the world (very shortly afterwards).
With the great retreat nearing its end, and with the perceived safety of the city gates at hand, Guest found himself less and less in need of advice from his wizards. Furthermore, since the boy was sorely fatigued, and since he was under great stress, and since he was still in grievous daily pain from the wound in his foot, his temper had shortened to the point where it was difficult for either of the wizards to argue with him effectively, so they in their wisdom soon abandoned that futile enterprise.
So it was that Guest Gulkan's retreating army marched to Locontareth: only to find that the city had barred its gates against them, and had declared itself for the Witchlord Onosh!
"I will burn this town to its bones!" said Guest, seeking to fight off shocked dismay with a display of anger.
But, on investigation, the young Weaponmaster found that he lacked the forces required to make good his threat. Though he had three thousand horse, many of these were from Locontareth, and had no belly for burning their own hearths. Indeed, some thought to stay, and throw in their lot with the Witchlord Onosh. Guest threatened them.
"My father has sworn a great buggery of bayonets," said Guest. "If you stay and stand, and throw yourself on his mercy, his greatest mercy will be castration at a minimum."
But such rhetoric had little effect. For most believed that the Witchlord's wrath would be softened by Locontareth's surrender; and believed, too, that further retreat offered them nothing but pain, struggle, exile, hunger, fear, danger and death.
In the end, Guest saw that those from Locontareth would be useless to him in a fight, therefore let them enter the city.
Then he marched on with a thousand men. A great many of these were slaves; or escaped criminals; or deserters from the Witchlord's army; or men in flight from girlfriends, wives, mothers or lovers.
Rough stuff they were, but great armies can be built from such, if great generals be on hand to lead them. Guest Gulkan, who thought himself by then a very considerable general – for he was inclined to discount the value of the great amount of advice which had been given to him by his wizards, and was increasingly inclined to attribute the coherence of the retreat from Locontareth to his own wisdom – marched his diminished army westward for a day from Locontareth, then halted, and held a council of war.
The venerable Sken-Pitilkin, drawing himself up to his full height and striving for further height by making emphatic rhetorical gestures with his country crook, still counseled that they should march to Nork and flee by sea. But Guest refused.
To Guest, Nork was nothing but a name, and he rightly took the place to be small, and inconsequential, and distant, and difficult of access, and a proper base for nothing other than despair. But Guest was still possessed hot hopes of victory, and so the great city of Stranagor was much in his thoughts.
"I was born there, was I not?" said Guest.
"So rumor claims," said Sken-Pitilkin, "though I do not know the circumstances of your birth."
"Neither do I," said Guest. "But I have heard men claim me born at Stranagor, so think that city auspiciously omened for my victory."
Stranagor, the ruling city of the mouth of the Yolantarath, was much a mirror-image of Gendormargensis in terms of power and influence. If Stranagor would accept the rule of the Weaponmaster, then he might yet hope to match the Witchlord on the field of battle, and to win for himself a great victory.
"I will make for Stranagor," said Guest, "and hope to hold that city in independent revolution against my father. Unless you have any better idea."
"Well," said Sken-Pitilkin, "when your father comes to Locontareth, where will he seek us?" Sken-Pitilkin, of course, was still thinking of flight rather than of hopes for future victory, for the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon lacked the sanguinary optimism of the unruly boy who had been for so long his student.
"Why," said Guest, "when the Witchlord seeks us, he will seek where we have gone, of course. He will have no trouble in finding us fled to Stranagor. There is no army which does not leave stragglers in its wake. But what of it? Let him pursue us to Stranagor. For I will rally that city to my banner, and bring the Witchlord to battle, and trample him into the murk and mire, then feed his head to my dogs, and let my women keep his organs as trivial souvenirs."
As Guest Gulkan then owned no banner, no dogs and no women, Sken-Pitilkin thought him over-optimistic. Still, clearly the boy was in a mood for battle. Sken-Pitilkin said as much.
"I think you in a mood for battle," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Why, of course," said Guest. "For I am a mighty general, a leader of men, a master of weapons with the defeat of Thodric Jarl already to my credit. A mood for battle! What other kind of mood should I be in?"
Several suggestions slipped neatly onto Sken-Pitilkin's tongue. A mood for panic, for example. A mood of contrition, perhaps. But Sken-Pitilkin swallowed these suggestions unsaid, then spoke out of the wisdom of his geographical expertise, and said:
"So, you wish to meet the Witchlord in battle, do you? Then what say we were to circle back behind him?"
"Circle back!?" said Guest, as if scandalized.
"Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "You know the circle, do you not?
It is that geometrical form which has the shape of the moon at its full. By inscribing just one half of such a shape upon the surface of this continent, we can by judicious timing bring ourselves to the Witchlord's rear."
"And bugger him," said Guest.
"If you must put it like that," said Sken-Pitilkin, resisting a near-uncontrollable urge to indulge himself in a sigh, "then, yes, once behind the Witchlord we can bugger him. To be precise, we will fall upon his baggage train. He will have a baggage train, you know. There is no big army which moves without one. Each has its baggage trailing behind like the intestines dragging in the street behind a madman who has disembowelled himself. Let us thus then circle back and fall upon this baggage train."
"Circle back!" sneered Guest. "Circle back! Fall upon him!
Fall, yes, and bugger him! What on earth are you thinking of?"
"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "exactly what I have said. Why sneer you?"
"Because," said Guest, "this skulking business of sniffing round in circles, of falling upon the unwary and indulging in buggery, why, it strikes me as being unsavory in the extreme, and I want no business of buggery in my biography."
"Boy," said Zozimus, who had till now sat silent in the somewhat travel-stained splendor of his elven armor, "boy, this is serious!"
"Serious!" said Guest. "Then know that I am serious! The manoeuver you have proposed is one apt for the purposes of a brigand band or a scouting squad. You cannot thus manoeuver an army. We still have a thousand spears, and a thousand spears cannot slip, skulk and circle."
"Why not?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
He asked the question with a frank directness which set Guest Gulkan back on his heels. Why not, indeed?
"Because," said Guest at length, "it would be very difficult."
"True," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But a wizard could do it even if a boy could not. A thousand spears can be as adept in tactical agility as a brigand band, if only assuming that they have a genius to command them. Besides, the alternative is the complete dissolution of your army, particularly if you are bent on marching to Stranagor."
"Dissolution?" said Guest.
"Why, of course," said Sken-Pitilkin. "For you have no baggage train of your own, therefore your men must either starve or desert on the march to Stranagor, which I figure to be a march of not less than half a thousand leagues."
"It is more," said Zozimus.
"I did but speak in round figures," said Sken-Pitilkin irritably. "I know it is more! Say, 600 leagues by horseback.
More, much more, if we follow the bends of the river. Twice the distance of our retreat from Babaroth to Locontareth. Guest, your army has suffered a dou
ble-blow already. The loss of a battle and the desertion of a city. You must give them victory, Guest, and soon. Else you will lose your army entirely."
Thus the wizards Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus began the great task of convincing Guest Gulkan to their plan, a process which took the better part of an entire night. Then, the boy Guest being finally convinced, the three of them set to with a will, and organized furiously.
They began with a ploy designed for deception.
At the Weaponmaster's behest, a small group of men who owned Stranagor as their birthplace were sent forth on a march to that city. As these set out for far-distant Stranagor, half a dozen soldiers defected to the nearby city of Locontareth, taking with them the news that Guest Gulkan was escaping to Stranagor with those who were bound for that city, heavily disguised to avoid detection.
Another small party set out for Nork – and their destination was likewise betrayed by paid defectors carefully rehearsed by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin.
Then Guest, his wizards and the rump of his army headed south along a rough and ready trading track – only a bankrupting extravagance would have called it a road – which led in the general direction of Favanosin. Initially, the soldiers were told that Favanosin was their destination. Naturally, some stragglers fell out and were left behind, with the news of Guest Gulkan's flight to the south fixed firmly in their minds.
Thus, counseled by his wizards, the Weaponmaster managed to split himself in three – surely one of the most extravagant feats of wizardly magic to be found in the history of the Confederation of Wizards. Thanks to this wizard-war legerdemain, Guest was simultaneously running north-west to Stranagor, south of west to Nork, and due south to Favanosin, and there was hope that random rumor might have him running in a dozen different supplementary directions as well. One thing was for certain: by the time the Witchlord Onosh and Thodric Jarl reached Locontareth, the true truth of the boy's direction would be beyond retrieval.