by Hugh Cook
"So I did right," said Guest.
"Do you feel as if you did right?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"How can you first prove me right then go on to question my rightness?" said Guest.
"I can," said Sken-Pitilkin, "because you know yourself wrong."
"Wrong!" said Guest, raising his voice for the first time.
"But you have just proved me right!"Sken-Pitilkin sat silent to let the young man settle, then said:
"I watched you during the hanging."Guest absorbed that in silence, then said:
"And?"
"And," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you were moved to pardon Umbilskimp. But you didn't. Why not?"Guest made no answer. He knew the reason why. But Sken-Pitilkin felt the reason had to be made explicit. Had to verbalized - lest it be forgotten.
"You let Jarl kill the man," said Sken-Pitilkin. "You let Jarl kill the man because you were afraid to show mercy. You were afraid of your father's scorn."Guest made no reply. His face was expressionless. He looked out across the river, then picked up a piece of mud and threw it with a jerk. The mud plopped into the river, and, a moment later, was answered by a splash as a fish jumped.
"Since your earliest youth," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you have been killing men in brawls with bandits. Killing men and taking their scalps. Ethnology would pardon such habits, so who am I to condemn? As you said yourself, it is but your cultural heritage.
But to kill men for banditry or piracy is one thing. To kill a man because you fear your father's scorn is quite another. If you cannot master the disciplines of mercy, then I think you unfit to master the sword."Guest absorbed that, too, in silence.
The silence tempted Sken-Pitilkin, and that wizard of Skatzabratzumon was half-persuaded to launch himself into a lecture on avalanches. After all, in the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, the young Guest Gulkan had casually obliterated his father's army by avalanche - and had never thereafter shown so much as an eyeblink of remorse for the deed.Sken-Pitilkin still felt sorely about that avalanche, particularly as Guest Gulkan had used a swordpoint's threat to compel a certain wizard of Skatzabratzumon to use his levitational powers to trigger that downslide of rocks, ice and fractured snow.
So Sken-Pitilkin opened his mouth - then closed it again, firmly.
After all, in Ibsen-Iktus, Guest had been at war, hence could plead necessity. And, besides, it is contrary to human nature for anyone to concern themselves with large-scale tragedies remote from their own persons. To those who are of tender spirit, the death of a small mouse or the agony of a bird in a cat's jaws makes more impact than the death by starvation of some half a million people in a nation a continent removed. Guest had been closely, intimately concerned with the death of the boat-seller Umbilskimp. That death had been consequent upon Guest's own moral cowardice. For he had seen fit to exercise the prerogative of mercy, yet had restrained himself for mere fear of his father's scorn.
Had Guest a fragile child unschooled in the ways of power, then Sken-Pitilkin might have seen fit to mitigate his suffering with words of comfort and of absolution. But Guest was no such child. He was a warlord's son with a soul as ugly as his bat-flap ears. So Sken-Pitilkin, seeing that the young man was truly suffering, was pleased to see as much. And, having done his duty by making Guest's crime of crimes explicit, unavoidable and (with luck) unforgettable, the wizard of Skatzabratzumon rose, dusted down his fishermen's skirts, and departed without so much as a word of farewell.
Left to himself - for Rolf Thelemite and Morsh Bataar were still keeping their distance, their fumbling attempts at comfort having earlier been rudely rebuffed - Guest Gulkan sat alone by the confluence of the Yolantarath and the Pig.
The Pig, which had earlier flowed clear, was running muddy now, for upstream was Guest Gulkan's army, and men, clothes and horses were being washed in the river's waters. The Pig emptied its muddiness in a whirlygig rush into the slow-mud slurge of the ineffable Yolantarath, the name of which river reminded Guest, by poetic association, of Yerzerdayla, the woman who - he supposed - dwelt still in Gendormargensis.
Now that Guest was emperor, more or less, he supposed he could take the woman from Thodric Jarl. Yes, and hang Jarl unless that Rovac warrior would give him the woman, and swear fealty to him, and lick his boots in proof of such fealty.
So thought Guest.
But such imaginings proved strangely comfortless, for still he could not shake free the memories of the hangings. The bodies black against the sun. Old man Umbilskimp, wheezing heavily, making odd fluttering gestures with his hands as Thodric Jarl lumbered toward him.
The sky was darkening, now, the broad sky above the wide reach of the Yolantarath growing heavy with clouds. As Guest sat by the river, he shivered, suddenly cold. For some reason, he suddenly thought there was snow all around. Which was ridiculous.
Despite the lateness of the season, the first snowfall was yet days distant. Still. Guest imagined snow.
There was snow, and it was cold, and now Guest realize that there was an animal padding through the cold of that snow. It was a beast of snow, and was as white as the snow. He knew its weight from its silence.
Then it breathed upon him.
Its breath was hot on his nape.
In all his life, Guest had endured nothing more terrifying than that hot breath breathing on him from out of the silence of snow. He tried to stand, tried to run. But could not. For his arms and legs were bloody shreds, and as the pain of his mutilations hit him he started to scream, and was screaming still when Rolf Thelemite and Morsh Bataar came running to his rescue.
Chapter Seventeen
Babaroth: a town some two leagues (4,000 paces) north of the confluence of the Pig and the Yolantarath. The "Battle of Babaroth," as it is commonly known, took place at the Pig itself.
In that battle, the Witchlord Onosh defeated his enemies with the help of his Rovac-born general Thodric Jarl. The revolutionary leader Sham Cham, chiefest of the Witchlord's enemies, died when an arrow took him in the eye, whereupon the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan led the revolutionary forces in a vigorous retreat.
By the next day, Guest Gulkan had fully recovered from his waking nightmare. Indeed, he disclaimed all knowledge of any such nightmare, claiming that a good night's sleep had obliterated his memories of the trauma of the previous evening.Guest celebrated his full recovery from nightmare's claims by holding a little ceremony in honor of the Battle of Babaroth. In that battle, Witchlord had defeated Weaponmaster; but, Guest Gulkan having made himself his father's master, the Witchlord Onosh was forced to kneel upon the earth -
And to eat a small portion of that earth as a token of his son's supremacy.
Shortly thereafter, as Guest Gulkan's army marched through the stretch of trees which lay between the Pig and the settlement of Babaroth, Sken-Pitilkin was audacious enough to question Guest Gulkan's wisdom.
"Your father's fate lies in your hand," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"You have a choice of how you dispose of him. Is your choice to murder him?"
"I have no thought of murder in mind," said Guest.
"Then," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for the life of me, I cannot imagine what possessed you to make your father eat mud."
"Why shouldn't I?" said Guest. "I have defeated him, and he should acknowledge as much."
"Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But the manner in which you compel his acknowledgement is likely to make it impossible for the two of you to live in peace. If you push him too far, then he will rise against you, even if his resistance serves merely to ensure his own execution."
"How should I treat him, then?" said Guest.
"With affection," said Sken-Pitilkin. "With love. He is your father, after all."
"Love!" said Guest bitterly. "What love has he ever shown me?
I saved his life, yet even then he showed me no love."
"You spared him," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Yet sparing a prisoner is but a casual convention of war. It is hardly love."
"No!" said Guest, with violence. "I save him! In the
river, the Yolantarath! Years ago!"Sken-Pitilkin was taken aback by the Weaponmaster's vehemence. Was the young man losing his mind?
"Guest," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you forget yourself. It was not your father you saved. It was Eljuk. Your brother Eljuk."
"Eljuk!" said Guest. "No, it was my father. I saw the future, you see. There was my father, in the river, in the Yolantarath. He was drowning, Pitilkin. That's why I went into the water. I thought it was my father."
"But it wasn't," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"But I thought it was!" said Guest.Sken-Pitilkin absorbed this, thought about it, then said:
"Well, Guest, whoever you thought you were saving, it was Eljuk you saved. And, anyway, your father offered you a reward for the saving. He was obligated. You could have asked for anything.
But you chose to ask for a ridiculous trifle, a bauble of a title.
You chose to be the Weaponmaster, which makes you a living joke, for all the world knows you to be the master of no weapon."
Thus did Sken-Pitilkin vent his scorn upon the Weaponmaster, hoping to break the young man out of his mood of bitter self-pity.
For surely honest anger was preferable to such self-pity. But such was Guest's distress that he absorbed Sken-Pitilkin's dire and unpardonable insult without so much as the flicker of an eyelash.
"I chose the title," said Guest, "because it was an ornament, a bauble, a trifle, a toy. But as for the larger things, like my life, say, like the woman Yerzerdayla - my father should have given these for love."
Now Sken-Pitilkin began to understand the depths of Guest's suffering. After saving his brother Eljuk, the boy Guest had not asked for any great thing by way of payment for services rendered, for he thought his father should give him the great things out of love. But his father had given him nothing.
Now that he knew as much, Sken-Pitilkin exchanged Guest Gulkan's company for that of his father.
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"I'm no lord of yours," said the Witchlord Onosh. "You've thrown in your lot with my son. Will you be my executioner,
Pitilkin? He'll have me killed in Gendormargensis."
"I've seen no sign of that," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"No sign!" said Lord Onosh. "I'm marching under guard, disarmed and dishonored. Is that no sign of impending execution?"
"After war, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, cautiously, "a peace is best enforced by the disarming of one party to the conflict."
"Peace!" said Lord Onosh. "You call this peace? I call it defeat, yes, and bloody slavery."
"Was it slavery to be a judge at Ink?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Ink!" said the Witchlord. "The affair at Ink was a mere charade, a charade of justice."
"Was it?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "I think not. Rather, I think your son did you honor by making you an honest judge of an honest affair of law."
"You think me ambitious to be chief justice?" said the Witchlord irritably. "Don't toy with me, Pitilkin!"
"I think the fate of your family no toy to play with," said Sken-Pitilkin. "As you helped me in my time of need, so I - "
"You'll help me, will you?" said Lord Onosh.
"That is my wish," said Sken-Pitilkin, making a partial retreat into formality in the face of the Witchlord's undisguised anger.
"Then," said Lord Onosh, "if you truly wish to help me, then take that country crook of yours, and use your powers of levitation to send the boy Guest hurtling through the air till his head smacks crash against a treetrunk. Smash him, Pitilkin! Well.
Will you? No. You've not blood, meat or marrow enough for murder.
You are but a paltry pox doctor, and you bring me what every pox doctor brings - advice! Well, get on with it! Advise, and be gone!"
"My lord is kind to permit me the honor of advising him," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Let me then advise my lord to think back to a time when he went hunting bandits in the hills near Gendormargensis."
"They are not hills, Pitilkin. They are mountains."
"Hills. Mountains. Whatever. My lord went hunting. His son, his much-beloved Morsh Bataar, fell and broke his leg."
"And?" said Lord Onosh. "What do you want? You want reward for fixing the leg? If so, you've left it a little late in the asking!"
"It is Guest who won reward," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Though he could not swim, the boy risked his life in the Yolantarath. He risked his life to save his brother Eljuk."
"And was rewarded for it," said Lord Onosh.
"Yes, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But when you rewarded him, when you gave him the title of Weaponmaster, there was one thing you did not know."
"And what was that?" said Lord Onosh.
"When the boy went to the river," said Sken-Pitilkin, "he thought he was saving you. The boy had endured a vision. A vision in which you drowned. So when he saw a man in the river, he went to the water to save you."
"Save me!" said Lord Onosh, in rage.
"Why, yes, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, taken aback by the Witchlord's anger. "He wished to save you. What else would he wish?"
"He wished to murder me!" said Lord Onosh.
Then the Witchlord Onosh told the wizard Sken-Pitilkin of his own precognitive vision. While hunting bandits in the high ground near Gendormargensis, the lord of the Collosnon Empire had endured a vision.
"It was death," said Lord Onosh. "My own death. Death by water. A death to take me, thrust me, haul me, suck me. Down in the quench, the smother, the groping slime, the dark. I was drinking, mind. Morsh and me, we had words in the old manner. Then Guest said, he mocked at Morsh and at me, and I knew."
"What did you know?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Why," said Lord Onosh, as if it should have been obvious, "I knew he was going to drown me, of course! Right there and then, I knew it! That's why he went into the river, you see. He thought it was me. He meant to drown me, Pitilkin!"
"But it wasn't you," said Sken-Pitilkin. "It was Eljuk. And when Guest saved Eljuk, why, he thought you should give him something."
"But I did!" said Lord Onosh. "I gave him leave to ask for a gift, and he asked. The title. Weaponmaster."
"But that was a trifle," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Another word for nothing. He let you satisfy your obligations with a trifle.
That left you free to give him the larger things out of love."
"The larger things?" said Lord Onosh, with renewed irritability. "What are you talking about?"
"You could have spared him his duel with Thodric Jarl," said Sken-Pitilkin. "You could have given him the woman Yerzerdayla."
"But the boy had just tried to kill me!" said the Witchlord.
Now here was a pretty pickle! On the basis of a fleeting vision of the future, Guest Gulkan thought he should be honored as his father's would-be rescuer. But, on the basis of another precognitive vision, Lord Onosh thought his son should be damned as a would-be murderer!
All of which made Sken-Pitilkin very glad that he himself did not personally suffer visions, whether precognitive visions or otherwise.
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, attempting to feign a degree of diffidence. "It may well be that the men of your line have some talent to see the future."
"It is a proven fact," said Lord Onosh.
"Well, perhaps," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But plain logic proves the vision wrong. For, though you saw yourself drowning in the Yolantarath, the fact is that you remain undrowned."
"But Guest meant to drown me!" said Lord Onosh. "You see? You understand?"
"No, I don't," said Sken-Pitilkin, in frank confession.
"These are meant to be visions of the future."
"Or visions of intent," said Lord Onosh. "One can see the future's facts or see the future's intent. Guest went to the river. That proves he had intent!" Sken-Pitilkin was amazed that Lord Onosh, who had judged the case of the boat sellers of Ink with such dispassionate acumen, could become so entangled in the coils of illogic when he confronted the affairs of his own family. Of course, every standard text on ethnology
makes note of the vexed complexity of family affairs. And as an ethnological scholar, Sken-Pitilkin had long ago absorbed the lessons of such texts. But even so!
"You are uncommonly silent, Pitilkin," said Lord Onosh. "Have you run out of argument?"
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, "it is a great many years since I was any man's son, and I have never been a father, so - but, ah! This looks to be Babaroth!"
And Babaroth it was indeed, and arrival at that settlement terminated the discourse between wizard and Witchlord.
As Witchlord and Weaponmaster entered Babaroth from the south, they were disconcerted to be met by disheveled riders coming from the north. Some were wounded, all were weary, and they moved with the emphasis of men driven by urgent necessity. Know you this emphasis? All courtesy leaves a man. He becomes direct in his speech, as if every word were paid for in hammered gold. His speech is charged with import, as is that of a condemned man pleading a court for mercy.
Such were the men who entered Babaroth from the north, and Witchlord and Weaponmaster immediately knew - before they had heard so much as a word of the tale of these men - that something dreadful had happened in the north.
When those men addressed Witchlord and Weaponmaster, they did so in Ordhar, not in Eparget. And this was another bad sign. The worst of signs! For Ordhar was the command language used by the Yarglat's subject peoples, whereas the Yarglat themselves spoke Eparget. Looking over that ragged band from the north, Witchlord and Weaponmaster saw none of the Yarglat.
"What is this?" said Guest, fearing that there had been a revolution by the underpeople. "Are you in arms against the empire?"
"My lord," said one of the Ordhar-speaking underpeople, "we are the empire! It is the Yarglat who have been making war upon us!"
Then both Witchlord and Weaponmaster began to understand what had happened.
Thanks to their disappearance into the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, both Witchlord and Weaponmaster had now been gone from their empire for some time. As far as the Collosnon Empire was concerned, the Witchlord Onosh had disappeared from the realms of the visible creation during the summer, and had not been seen or heard of since; and it was now autumn.