by Hugh Cook
A very miracle of luxury was that office, warmed with braziers and furs, and in their reduced condition the Witchlord's ambassadors were at first hesitant even to seat themselves. But Sod commanded them into chairs; and set mulled wine before them; and had hot chestnuts served to them; and then, seeing the gnawing hunger which obsessed them, saw to it that they were served with hot bread, and soup thick with onions and garlic.
"Well," said Sod, when his visitors were done with their eating. "Are we pleasured? Are we sated?"
"My lord has been most hospitable," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Yes," said Sod. "Particularly considering that you have given me cause for hostility rather than hospitality." Then the pale-skinned iceman endeavored to skewer Sken-Pitilkin with the bright-staring gaze of his yellow eyes, and bared his yellow teeth in something reminiscent of a dog's aggression, and said:
"Hostility, yes, for when you were last in the precincts of my Bank, you caused considerable distress. You precipitated a fight.
Or was it you?"
With that, Sod turned his skewering attention from Sken-Pitilkin to Guest Gulkan.
"That was no precipitation of mine," said Guest. "That was Jarl, Jarl did the fighting, on account of some precipitation between himself and yourself."
"Yes, well," said Sod. "What did he tell you of that?"Guest searched his memory, for it was long since he had discussed that subject with Jarl.
"Jarl says," said Guest, slowly, "that he saw you last in Chi'ash-lan. He presumes you to be hiding here with a mighty price upon your head, which would explain the violence of your reaction to his recognition of you."
"Has it occurred to you," said Sod, "that if I do truly wish to keep my presence here a secret, I might do well to encompass your death, and to send out agents to slaughter down Thodric Jarl as well."
"I think you not so stupid," said Guest. "Since last we left this place, why, Jarl and myself, we've been to Ema-urk and the Ibsen-Iktus, the mountains, we've been to Babaroth, to Locontareth, to half the places in between. Even as we sit here, the story of our travels echoes down the roadway. We in our courage have entered into epic, and the sagas will sing us famously a thousand years from hence."
"The boy speaks in truth," said the dralkosh Zelafona. "My sister Bao Gahai herself interrogated the warrior Jarl in depth, and heard from him all that is known of your history. It is a mighty great mystery, you being here, given the vastness of space which separates Chi'ash-lan from Safrak. Still, here you are, and all the world knows it, and if you had hoped to keep the matter a secret then you are far, far too late."
"If a wizard may agree with a witch," said Sken-Pitilkin,
"then let me speak in support of Zelafona. For I myself discussed this mystery with Ontario Nol."
"I know him not," said Banker Sod.
"Ontario Nol," said Sken-Pitilkin, slipping effortlessly into his lecturing mode, "is the abbot of the monastery of Qonsajara.
He dwells in the heights of those mountains known as Ibsen-Iktus, and Guest Gulkan's brother Eljuk dwells there likewise, living as apprentice to the master. The pair of them have had your story in detail, and will keep it fresh in memory for a generation or more.
Thus has your privacy been betrayed, and permanently."
Sod sighed.
"So," said Sod. "It has happened. We must hope that no harm comes of it. Very well. To return to our muttons | | "
Then Banker Sod, the Governor of the Safrak Bank, negotiated with the emissaries who had come to speak for the Witchlord Onosh.
The negotiations proved surprisingly easy.
The final agreement was that Safrak would allow Lord Onosh to hold in fief the minor island of Im-skim-patorta, providing he paid for the privilege. Lord Onosh was invited to bring his men to the hot springs at Spradley Rock, and there to prepare himself and his men for a banquet, and then to proceed to the island of Alozay for that self-same banquet and the formal signing of a treaty which would enshrine the terms of this agreement. Guest and the other ambassadors gladly took this agreement back to the Witchlord Onosh. A fleet of fishing boats accompanied them, for Sod had decided to be generous in providing transport; and he was generous also with the dispensing of bread, and onions, and garlic, and sacks of barley. So it was that, some days and several excellent meals later, the Witchlord and his men found themselves upon Spradley Rock.
Spradley Rock was the least of the Safrak Islands, excepting for a few nameless rocks, and it was a place of no great consequence, being as it was no more than a low-lying and industriously rockgardened outcrop of geology featuring much sand and many hot springs.
It was then deep winter, and on most days the cold and blighting winds were sweeping the Swelaway Sea with the bitterness of sleet, yet the winter weather was fine and blue when the Witchlord Onosh and his company came to the hotspring waters of Spradley Rock, and those hotspring waters were unstinting in their welcome. Green were the pools of those waters, green fringed with iron-brown and yellow, and the smell of sulphur was heavy on the air as luxuriating steam uprose in clouds so plentiful that they suggested the island to be in the process of volcanic eruption.
The witches Zelafona and Bao Gahai were allowed a small and isolated pool of their own, while the men piled into the greater waters, where they washed away the blood of battles, the muck of the horseplains, fishscales and cockroaches, beetles and slugs.
Bulked huge within their heapings of wool, of furs, and of sundry rags, the men had looked like great bears, but once stripped down to their skins they proved painfully thin and meager.
Now the Yarglat do not usually take baths, considering the womb's nine-month bloodbath to be washing sufficient to last any man for a lifetime; and, furthermore, there is amongst the Yarglat a strenuous taboo which forbids one man to be seen naked by another. Yet when the Witchlord Onosh commanded universal bathing, he was not disobeyed; for the Yarglat had largely deserted his army, leaving him with a force comprised of the Rovac, of the Sharla, and of representatives of sundry other peoples.
Besides, the men of that company were so far from their former lives that they might as well have found themselves in a different world entirely, and so they adapted to new customs with the ease of those who have been killed and reincarnated.
Many strange things were revealed in those pools, such as scars, and boils, and ulcers, and Rolf Thelemite's third nipple, and the fact that Morsh Bataar had not one omphalos but two.
Revealed too were a great many tatoos, most of them being of uncompromising obscenity. But the most obscene and grotesque sight you ever did see in your life was Pelagius Zozimus, he of the withered neck and the spindly shanks, he with the skin clinging close to his ribs and a revolting little slug-pot of a beer belly bulging from his abdomen, he with his stick-thin arms from which the muscles stood out like knobbly tumors.
In the deepest and hottest of the pools of Spradley Rock, Guest Gulkan scrubbed his father's back with sand, while listening to the cackling laughter from the pool where the two witches soaked themselves. From somewhere came a shout of male outrage followed by the evil chuckle of the dwarf Glambrax – then by a riotous whooping pursuit, and then at length a very cold splash as expedient justice was administer to a delinquent mannikin.
Then arose a very strange sound, much like a drunken dog serenading in competition with a wildcat. This curious sound was that of Pelagius Zozimus in the act of singing. At least, Zozimus thought he was singing: though in that he was doubtlessly in a minority of one. This bravura performance by the slug-chef Zozimus can only be compared to that of the skavamareen; and if you know not what a skavamareen might be, then please note that it is best compared to a wizard of Xluzu in his musical passages.
An army of Yarglat barbarians would have lynched Zozimus immediately, but lesser peoples such as the Sharla and the Rovac are more tolerant. While Zozimus was thus caterwauling not one word of singe word of complaint came from anywhere amongst that whale-lazy multitude of simmering barbarians; and from t
his it may be known of a certainty that the Witchlord's army had entirely lost its fighting spirit.
Though he was of Yarglat birth, Guest Gulkan shared in this general tolerance, and so instead of rushing for his sword and decapitating the delinquent Zozimus, Guest kneaded the bones of his father's vertebrae with handfuls of sand, while the bloodflush heat soothed away the rigors of the long retreat from Locontareth.
Thus it was that the last rigors of the winter-weather retreat were eased away on Spradley Rock. On that island, a great langour came upon the Witchlord's warriors as they relaxed in the balm of the great heat, while clouds of steam ascended to those greater clouds of white which hung suspended in the clear and limitless blue of a clearwind winter's day.
Yet, as Guest soothed away the horrors of the past and prepared for the future, he could not suppress a certain unease about that future. For, under the terms which Safrak had imposed upon Lord Onosh, his company must surrender its weapons before taking itself and its treasure to the mainrock Pinnacle to indulge in the banquet which would precede the signing of a treaty and the handing over of that treasure; and Guest did not at all like the idea of being without his sword.
Still.
With bathing done, he got out from the water and dressed himself in the clean linen which Safrak had so kindly provided for the Witchlord and his men. How Safrak had come up with clothing for so many at such short notice was a mystery, but the feat had been managed.
As Guest and the other warriors rose from their bath, the sagacious wizard Sken-Pitilkin descended to the waters, hoping to have a private bath in the luxury of undisturbed peace. Only now did he realize that, by waiting, he had made a grievous error – for it would be quite some time before the fair island of Spradley recovered from this invasion. The pools which had formerly been clear and clean were now stewpots of murk topped with generous heapings of foaming scum, and layered at the bottom with a thick sediment of dead lice, parboiled fleas and other wildlife. Indeed, the water had turned the most putridly bilious mix of blue and green, for all the world as if a battalion of drunkards had taken turns at vomiting into it.
Nevertheless, Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin made the best of it, and washed his pallor (natural to one born in Galsh Ebrek, where the Yudonic Knights tend to be pale in the absence of sun, their native color being if anything the pink of their blood), and found himself flushed to an uncommon red by the heat of the water, for all the world as if he were a very Ebrell Islander in his breeding.
Then Sken-Pitilkin joined the others in putting on clean linen. He found the company changed to a truly imperial splendor.
Each of its members looking a good ten years younger now that the muck, filth and stale battle-sweat had at last been washed from their faces.
Then that great company took itself off to the island of Alozay in a fleet of boats, most of which had been provided by the Safrak Bank. When they reached that island, they ascended the mainrock Pinnacle by great winch-baskets of creaking wickerwork, which were hauled up from the docks by ropes.
Lord Onosh had found five mountaineers to survey the mainrock
Pinnacle, though he had found them with difficulty, for the sport of mountaineering had long been outlawed in the Collosnon Empire as a reckless abomination – and quite rightly so, for it is entirely unnatural, this business of crawling like a beetle up great mounds of rock, and kicking down boulders to bash in the skulls of one's fellows (which amusement is one of the principal attractions of mountain climbing as practiced by the Yarglat, for they climb in a competitive fashion, and count themselves unsatisfied if they finish their mountain without nine in ten of their number having met their deaths upon its slopes). The mountaineers pronounced the approach to the mainrock Pinnacle to be difficult in the extreme, for the heights overhung the docks, and there were no chimneys by means of which a climber could easily ascend to those heights.
Lord Onosh chose to be winched upwards in the company of his mountaineers, so their reports were delivered to him privily while he and his climbers were safe in the isolation of their creaking wickerwork.
Then they got to the top, and found that the great winch- baskets had been dragged to the heights by bluff and hearty washerwomen working a windlass. Lord Onosh was dismayed to realize that his life had been entrusted to something as weak as a woman.
But these women were like unto bears, for in truth the strength of your average washerwoman is nothing short of marvelous, for she spends all day thumping and pummelling, and hefting great burdens of wet and dripping wool. Thus some washerwomen of prodigious strength feature nobly in the myth-cycle concerning the ancient war between men and women, and the greatest of these washerwomen was Bilch.
According to legend, the washerwoman Bilch was of such great strength that she once split the skull of an apprentice boy with a single blow from her open hand, and split it with such violence that his eyes flew a full seventy paces in different directions, and his upper teeth were propelled downward into the rock where they buried themselves to the depth of a spear, and his upper teeth were hurled upwards with such a great velocity that they slaughtered a flight of sparrows, so that Bilch stood victorious over the apprentice boy with a great rain of dead birds falling all about her.
Whether this is true or not – one suspects some slight degree of exaggeration may have colored the facts – it is nevertheless a firm fact that the strength of washerwomen has become legendary for the best of all possible reasons. Each of them has the muscles of a very bear-wrestler, and a man may trust himself to the strength of those muscles in good conscience, whether in bed or out of it.
But we recall that Lord Onosh was but a Yarglat barbarian, and hence he was ignorant of the world's great literature, and in particular he was ignorant of the story of Bilch, and so was dismayed to find himself being hauled to the heights by mere women, and washerwomen at that.
Nevertheless, the Witchlord's anxieties passed once he reached those heights.
But the anxieties of his son were redoubled, for the Toxtethspeaking Guardians were everywhere, and their weapons were sharp, and Guest sensed them to be in a mood for war, and he was more uneasy than ever to find himself in such company with his own weapons lacking.
Still, all began well. Rooms had been prepared for the guests, including a big strongroom in which they could store their treasure chests. A guardroom adjoined that strongroom, so the Witchlord's most trusted boxers, wrestlers and bone-breakers could sit in guardianship of that treasure. With gold thus secured, the banquet began, and began well, and went along swimmingly till late into the night.
By which time Pelagius Zozimus had got very drunk, and was regaling all and sundry with a number of stories which he found intensely amusing, such as the tale of how he had once accidentally poisoned his companions with an ill-chosen fungus – a story which was not by any means amusing to those who had had to live through that near-catastrophe!
Nevertheless, the assembly received such stories in the best of all possible humors possible.
And, late in the night, as the banquet began to break up, all who were still sober enough to display any emotion whatsoever seemed still in excellent humor. Lord Onosh left early, saying he must check on his treasure then get to bed, for he was not as young as he used to be; but Guest sat long at the table with Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, and with the witches Zelafona and Bao Gahai.
And it seemed to Sken-Pitilkin – who had not joined the incautious Zozimus in overindulgence – that their hosts were uncommonly attentive in watching over wizards and witches alike, as if fearing that Lord Onosh might use these practitioners of power to make some move against the security of the mainrock
Pinnacle and the integrity of the Safrak Bank; and Sken-Pitilkin began to feel increasingly uneasy himself, and hoped that he would not find himself falling a victim to the paranoia of Bankers.
Chapter Twenty
Damsel: daughter of Banker Sod (the Governor of the Safrak
Bank). In appearance, she shares s
ome of her father's attributes: pale skin heavily larded with white body-hair, golden eyes and golden teeth, a thicket of golden hair upon her head, and fingernails of jet black. But she has other attributes of her own which are most definitely female. Her perfume, for example, which suggests more the flesh than the flower. This comely lass is, in the Weaponmaster's estimation, seriously infatuated with the said Weaponmaster, and urgently desirous of making his erotic acquaintance.
Early in the evening, the young Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan was seated early in the evening with his brother Morsh Bataar on one side and the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite on the other. But Morsh made an early night of it, and Rolf drank so strenuously that he slid under the table at about the same time, and was removed by diligent servants.
In his loneliness, Guest was joined by Damsel, the daughter of Banker Sod. She he had seen from a distance during his earlier sojourn on Alozay, when she had been but newly nubile. Then, she had been rumored as a virgin; but her matured confidence made Guest disinclined to think her a virgin any longer.
Damsel was like her father Sod in that she was a pale-skinned person of iceman race, with black fingernails and thick white bodyhair, with the hair of her head bright in its gold, with her eyes yellow and her teeth being of a matching lustre. A strange combination! Yet, after long deprivation, Guest found her comely indeed.
These two lasted out the length of the banquet together, by which time Guest had come to the conclusion that Damsel was seriously infatuated with him, and was urgently desirous of making his erotic acquaintance. Therefore Guest did not resist too strenuously when at last Damsel of the buxom buttocks suggested he might like to take a break from his social exertions by resting himself on her bed.
Soon he was in her boudoir, testing the warm honey between her thighs. Perched upon his body, she oiled and oozed, gasped and clutched, and then – greatly to his disconcertment – squealed like a mouse in agony.
Had he hurt her? Apparently not, for she did not seek to dismount; and, once their wrestling was done, she proved an impeccable hostess. She fed him wine to follow that which he had drunk already at banquet, and listened with unstinting patience to his generously drunken boasts. For Guest, who had told Damsel of his past during the banquet, was now engaged in telling her his future.