by Hugh Cook
"But when," said Guest Gulkan, as they marched south, "when will we break for the east to circle round behind my father?"
"Leave that decision to me," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for if you don't know it then nobody else will."
"But I need to know it!" said Guest.
"Then your good friend Rolf Thelemite will find he needs to know as much himself," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and by such dispersal of intelligence, the entire army will know by the end of the day, which means our stragglers will know, and our deserters likewise, which means Lord Onosh will know the same, and soon. Peace, Guest!
Trust me! Just for once, please, trust me!"
Thus Guest Gulkan's thousand spears marched south for three days, with each and every common soldier earnestly thinking the army bound for Favanosin, and with every straggler and deserter thinking likewise.
Each night the army camped, and on dawn on the fourth day the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin pronounced them sufficiently south to begin to move in a great arc widdershins. The Swelaway Sea was their announced destination, for Sken-Pitilkin did not as yet think it wise to trust the common soldiers with the full truth.
As the army launched itself into this arc, it moved slowly at first, deploying a strong rearguard to prevent straggling. The envanishment of armies is a great art, and one which requires patience, and planning, and meticulous attention to detail.
And in this the wizards were triumphant.
Though Guest was a novice in war, fit for nothing more complicated than the brightsword clash of blade against blade, Sken-Pitilkin was learned in manoeuver; and, though long out of use, his skills remained to him. It is true that in the long-gone days of yore Sken-Pitilkin had lost more wars than he had won, but he had since refined his skills by dint of brooding over his errors, and made no mistakes on this occasion.
Once the force was far enough into its arc for stragglers to have no hope of betraying its intentions, Sken-Pitilkin had Guest Gulkan call his men together and brief them in depth. Their enthusiasm was roused by the prospect of attacking a baggage train and looting it, particularly as their own rations were down to something close to nothing.
So the force completed its arc, reaching the Yolantarath at a position which was, by Sken-Pitilkin's guestimate, something more than a hundred leagues to the east of Locontareth. If Sken-Pitilkin was right, then the Witchlord Onosh would now be somewhere to their west, advancing with all possible haste in the hope of catching Guest Gulkan before he could escape; and, again if Sken-Pitilkin was right, the Witchlord's baggage train would be some distance still to the east, loitering along in the wake of the army.
"One hopes you are right, cousin," said Zozimus, surveying the broad and sluggish width of the Yolantarath, "for we are going to look awfully foolish if you are wrong."
"I am right, I know it," said Sken-Pitilkin, knowing full well that looking foolish would be the least of their problems if he was wrong.
The Yolantarath lay wide and empty under the scrutiny of Guest Gulkan's forces. Guest sat in the sun and thought, trying to absorb the mind-boggling array of tactical and strategic devices to which he had been exposed in the last few days.
As a child growing up in Gendormargensis, Guest had thought of war as a matter of swordsmash and bloodspill, of raw courage and brute strength adventuring. His early forays into the mountains against bandits had helped secure him in this conviction. But by now Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus had opened up appalling vistas of complexity. He saw that the war story was but the surface glitter of the deep and dark-complexioned art of war, and that he in his youth knew virtually nothing of the full complexity of that art.
The Yolantarath lay wide and empty for a day. Then, at midmorning, the long and uneasy wait was broken when a convoy of barges came in sight. They were coming slowly downstream, heading toward Locontareth. This, by every presumption, was surely the Witchlord's baggage train. Sken-Pitilkin directed a couple of men to hail the barges.
"Say that the Witchlord Onosh is here," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Say that he wishes to see the captains of these barges. The barges themselves are to halt at the riverbank."
This message was conveyed to the barges, which obeyed the order. The captains gathered in, which was entirely natural for them to do – for, as far as they were concerned, Guest Gulkan had been defeated and was running for the far horizon, so the territory through which they were venturing was safe and secure.
With the captains came Guest Gulkan's brothers, Morsh Bataar and Eljuk Zala, who had been left in nominal command of this baggage train.
"Guest!" said Eljuk, reacting in shocked surprise when he saw his brother.
Eljuk's lower lip trembled as vehemently as Rolf Thelemite's was wont to do. Guest half-expected saliva to dribble from Eljuk's mouth and flow down his chin, following the tracks of his purple birthmark. But the Weaponmaster's sadistic expectation was not to be gratified, for Eljuk was dry-mouthed with fear.
While Eljuk was near-paralysed by fear, the barge-captains were not. Those worthies grabbed for their weapons, but were overpowered.
"Guest," said Morsh Bataar, standing unmoved amidst the confusion of the struggle.
"It is me," said Guest, grandly. Then: "Good to see you,
Morsh? How's the leg?"
"The leg serves its purpose," said Morsh formally. "But you?
What purpose do you serve?"
"The purpose of justice," said Guest. "I serve the purpose of a just manuring for Locontareth. I will be emperor, and spread my shit from Gendormargensis to the sea."
"You are quite mad," said Morsh. "A dog has bitten you, and you're foaming at the mouth."
"No, no," said Guest. "It's not me who was bitten, it was Glambrax, and anyway, he's not foaming either. He's still in Locontareth, or was – he was with us but deserted."
"Then the dwarf has at least a little sense," said Morsh.
"But you have none."Guest took his brother's rebukes in good part, for Morsh Bataar was known to be slow in his wits, therefore it was only natural that he might be slow to appreciate the glories of Guest's life as a large-scale bandit.
In the best of good humor, Guest declared his brothers hostages, and declared the captains of the barges to be hostages as well. Then, finding out that Eljuk's new tutor was on one of the barges, he had the man hauled before him.
"What is your name?" said Guest.
"My name, young sir, is Eldegen Terzanagel."
So spoke the tutor, a text-master whom Guest judged to be aged somewhere between 40 and 50. His hair and beard were both dyed gray, and were severely cropped. Everything about him spoke of discipline, probity, and order, and Guest hated him at sight.
"I lately had a letter from Bao Gahai," said Guest, casting back in his memory for the details of that epistle. "She claimed you to be teaching my brother the irregular verbs."
"I am assisting him in his studies," said Terzanagel.
"With the aid of books?" said Guest.
"But of course," said Terzanagel.
"Then bring forth your books," said Guest, "for I am eager to receive instruction."
The innocent Terzanagel was fool enough to take the Weaponmaster at his word, and shortly Guest was busy organizing a ceremonial Burning of the Books by the banks of the Yolantarath.
Once Guest had burnt Terzanagel's grammars, geographies, dictionaries, histories, biologies, genealogies, hagiographies, and mathematical treatises, he at last asked the obvious question:
"What now?"
Up till then, the Weaponmaster had not thought any further than the capture of the Witchlord's baggage train; but now that he did start thinking it seemed to him that he was in a pretty pickle. Guest Gulkan had but a thousand spears under the command of his sword. As far as he knew, the tax revolt was effectively shattered, and all the empire was with the Witchlord, or would be with it soon. He had lost his chance of escaping to Stranagor, or to Nork, or to Favanosin. A couple of bargees had already dived overboard and had escaped downstr
eam in the flow of the Yolantarath, so Guest could not conceal his position for long.
"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "now we portage these stores to the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus. The mountains are but a hundred leagues or so in the distance, and with these stores we can hold out there forever."
"A hundred leagues!" said Guest.
"It is no great distance with the help of horses," said Sken-Pitilkin equitably.
And after Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus had explained to him the details, Guest Gulkan began to see that his wizards were right. If they retreated to the valley of Yox with this burden of stores, then Lord Onosh would be hard-pressed to dig them out. But:
"We'll be trapped there," said Guest.
"No," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for if we have no alternative then we'll withdraw to the waters of the Swelaway Sea, and throw ourselves upon the mercy of the Safrak Bank."
And, with that reserve plan having been explained to all of Guest Gulkan's force, the great retreat began.
Chapter Fifteen
Volvo Marp: a high pass connecting the riverlands of the Yolantarath with the uplands of the Ibsen-Iktus Mountains. The climb to Volvo Marp is steep, and takes one to such perilous heights that it is difficult for the newcomer to find air enough to breathe. Beyond this pass lies the Hidden Valley of Yox, a barren rift bereft of trees and unyielding of water; and a transit of this wasteland allows an assault upon Zomara Pass, the conquest of which will bring the traveler into the valley of Ul-donlok, home of the wizard Ontario Nol.
The Witchlord Onosh and the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl thought their defeated enemies would surely make a stand at Locontareth, and in this expectation they marched in good order downriver, hoping to tempt the rebels from the city and smash them in a decisive battle.
"If that proves not possible," said Jarl, "then we will take the city by siege."
Thodric Jarl rejoiced in sieges. To him, a siege was even more satisfying than a pitched battle. After all, in the heat of battle, one's enemies are apt to fight with hope in their hearts – and rightly so, for battle is the province of chance. But the slow, sure, remorseless, clutching, clamping, throttling procedures of siege give the victim far fewer resources by way of hope. Those besieged are by definition defeated already, so in many ways a siege is like having your enemy staked out helplessly beneath the burning sun, and putting your boot to his throat, and putting your weight to the boot.
Then crushing down.
So while Thodric Jarl advanced upon Locontareth, he was diligent in planning for siege, and sifted from the ranks of his army all those who were habitual citizens of Locontareth, or who had been through there often in the course of military service or activities of trade. The Witchlord Onosh, who lacked Jarl's experience of siege, monitored Jarl's preparations with all the diligence of an ideal student granted the privilege of watching his master at work.
Only on arrival at Locontareth did Thodric Jarl and the Witchlord realize that Guest Gulkan had fled. The city opened its gates to them, so they were spared a battle – but the important thing was to catch Guest, for the boy must be captured and quelled lest he prolong the revolution.
So Thodric Jarl began to research Guest Gulkan's whereabouts, and the first people to help him with these researches were the dralkosh Zelafona and her dwarf-son Glambrax, who were discovered living in an abandoned dog kennel in the shadows of the ruling hall of Locontareth.
From that dog kennel, mother and son had been running a vigorous business, selling roast rats and an ersatz brew cooked up from acorns. This is scarcely surprising, for the witches of the Sisterhood were ever able in business, and indeed it was the supreme commercial skills of the Sisterhood which first led witches into conflict with wizards, for since its very inception the Confederation of Wizards had struggled to dominate trade and commerce in all those lands under its dominion.
Thus it happened -
But that is ancient history, for the great pogrom against the witches is long over, and this text concerns itself not with the days of antiquity but with things still fresh in the minds of living men (and living women, too, if women be admitted to have minds, which seems a reasonable proposition, for all that nearly half the world disputes it).
With Zelafona discovered, and with Glambrax uncovered likewise, it was soon found that they had played no part in the recent troubles, for Zelafona had early disguised herself as a beggar woman, and Glambrax had soon betrayed his forced oath to the revolutionary Sham Cham, deserting from the revolutionary army to be at his mother's side.
Thus Jarl was forced to seek other sources of intelligence, which he did. And thus the gray-bearded Thodric Jarl discovered that the young and athletic Guest Gulkan had fled to Stranagor, and to Nork, and to Favanosin, making his way to all three destinations simultaneously.
"If Guest has gone toward Nork," said Jarl, "then his swords will be of little danger to our peace. The country thereabouts lies in barbarous wilds of forest and hill, fraught with bogs and bear barrows. In such a wasteland, he'll find no allies apt for recruitment. Rather, he may have to fight for a bitter season simply to win his way to the coast. At best he can secure his escape, and no more."
"So," said Lord Onosh, absorbing this.
"If, on the other hand, the boy has fled to Stranagor," said Jarl, "then we face a far greater danger. The countryside between here and Stranagor is rich and well-populated, with much discontent there to be found."
Jarl did not itemize the reasons for that discontent, for some margin of diplomacy remained to the Rovac warrior despite his upbringing, and the sorry truth is that the discontents of Stranagor flowed largely from the derelictions of the Witchlord's tax policies.
"And Favanosin?" said Lord Onosh, pursuing the question of Guest's third option.
"If the boy has truly withdrawn to Favanosin," said Thodric Jarl, "then I think him planning to ambush us on the road, or to cheat our troops down that road then fall in force upon Locontareth itself."
"So what would you suggest?" said Lord Onosh.
"The greatest danger is Stranagor," said Jarl. "So I suggest we send a full two-thirds of our army to seize, secure or besiege that city, as the case may be. Meanwhile, we should send probing patrols in strength toward Nork and Favanosin, at least to be sure that no thousands lie waiting there in ambush."
Thus it was done; and so the Witchlord's forces had been greatly diminished by the time the news came that Guest Gulkan was in their rear.
"He has made an error," said Thodric Jarl calmly. "To launch himself upon a civil war he must rouse a major city to his cause, whereas it seems he had chosen to turn bandit. As such, he becomes a nuisance, but is no longer a danger. I suspect he has taken the advice of wizards, which cowards have more concern for their own skins than for the conquest of empire."
Here a difference in perspective. While Guest Gulkan's tutelary wizards had been very much concerned with securing the safety of their own skins, the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl and the Witchlord Onosh had been concerned rather with the possibility of finding themselves with a full-scale civil war on their hands. By their standards, Guest and his wizards had proved to be pusillanimous cowards by flinching from the challenges of civil war.
"What now?" said Lord Onosh, when it was discovered that Guest had crept round behind his father, and, like a mouse triumphant in its devastations, had successfully gnawed away his father's baggage train to nothing.
"Now?" said Jarl, who saw no need for the question, since he thought the rightful disposal of a nibbling mouse to be far too obvious to require anything in the way of debate. "Why, now we turn. We turn. We march. We catch them. We smash them. But all this we do with care, because there is a danger that they will try to trick their way around our flanks."
Though Jarl had by now decided that Guest, Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus were a trio of cowards, he nevertheless realized they had been trickier than he had expected, and might be trickier still before this game was through. Accordingly, he left a strong force in Locontareth,
and advanced cautiously with scouts riding far out on his southern flank, and with scouting parties riding the northern bank of the Yolantarath just in case Guest had sneaked his army across the water and was attempting some ambitious manoeuvre beyond the visible horizon to the north.
The end result was that Guest and his people had got clean away to the mountains by the time Jarl closed with their previous location. Furthermore, in his retreat, Guest had got away with his brothers Morsh and Eljuk, two captives whose fate Lord Onosh lamented bitterly.
But at least the mystery of Guest's precise circumstances and intentions appeared to be at an end, for the boy had left behind him evidence and witnesses in plenty – most notably, witnesses in the form of the barge crews and their captains, who had been turned loose after cooperating with the labor of the withdrawal.
"Then he is gone," said Jarl in satisfaction, "and that is the end of him."
"But he has escaped!" said Lord Onosh. "And – and my sons!
Eljuk! Morsh! He's got the boy as prisoners!"
"Then my lord will have to reconcile himself to the imprisonment of his sons," said Jarl formally, "and perhaps in the fullness of time my lord will also have to reconcile himself to the death of those sons."
"And to the loss of my empire, mayhap?" said Lord Onosh grimly. "Guest's escaped, and with him those wizards in their treachery. All of Ibsen-Iktus is his unless we hunt him down and break him. Within that mountain fastness, he can gather his forces and prepare to break the very empire with his onslaught."
"My lord," said Jarl, finding himself hard-pressed to stay calm in the face of the Witchlord's agitation. "Ibsen-Iktus is but a parcel of rocks, useless for all purposes excepting those of suicide."
"A fastness," insisted Lord Onosh.
"If my lord means that the mountains are a castle," said Jarl, "why, then so they are, but a very bleak and barren castle, empty of all the necessities required for either siege or outright war. In those mountains, my lord, there is everything a rock could need for the full satisfaction of its appetites, hence rocks live there in great multitudes in the full independence of their rightful kingdom. But rocks – my lord, the boy can scarcely recruit those rocks to his fighting force, nor can he use bare stone to feed the mutinous rabble which serves him."