by Hugh Cook
Hearing of the disorder in Gendormargensis, and of the threat of invasion from the south, the Witchlord Onosh thought the moment ripe for his return.
This may be thought presumptuous.
For, surely, Lord Onosh had been defeated; and disgraced; and discredited. Lord Onosh had lost his empire to Khmar, and had been reduced to the rule of the Safrak Islands, paltry pieces of rock in the wash of the Swelaway Sea. How then could he aspire to reconquer the Collosnon Empire?
The answer is simple.
During the long years in which he had lived in exile on the Safrak Islands, Lord Onosh - ever counseled by the wisdom of Bao Gahai, the steadfast companion of his defeat - had prepared for his return.
Preparation had been difficult during the reign of the Red Emperor Khmar, whose rule of terror had restricted speech, thought and movement. But, under the rule of Khmar's son Celadric, the Collosnon Empire had become a milder place; and the Witchlord's agents had taken advantage of freedoms of speech, assembly and movement to sound out inclinations, to spy, to suborn, to bribe and to subvert.
In particular - ever remembering the cause of the disorder which had precipitated his overthrow! - Lord Onosh had cultivated the leaders of Stranagor and Locontareth. He had studied in great length the question of taxation, and had covertly promised the provinces a just share of fertilization.
Regarding the question of taxation, it must be admitted that Khmar's son Celadric had been no better than any of the rulers who had preceded him. There were many good things which could be said of Celadric - one notes in particular his scholarship, and the courageous manner in which he subdued even the most wickedly barbed of the irregular verbs - but it has to be admitted that he had one or two exceedingly vicious vices.
The most vicious of all Celadric's vices was that of architecture. Much has been made of the manner in which so many great men have destroyed themselves with strong drink, or with opium, or with gambling, or with an over-indulgence in orgasmic pursuits - but the great vice of architecture is potentially as ruinous as all of these put together.
There are many individuals, families, companies and cities which have come to ruin through over-indulgence in oak, cedar, granite, marble and mortar; and, though Celadric had not exactly ruined the Collosnon Empire through such indulgence, it must be allowed that he had grievously over-taxed such provincial centers as Locontareth and Stranagor to pay for the aggrandizement of his capital.
Furthermore, the very length of time which Lord Onosh had been away from his former empire had worked to his advantage.
Memories had mellowed and softened to his advantage. Compared to Khmar, he was a golden saint, and his reign a time of peace and plenty. Those who were threatening the invasion of Tameran from the south had made Khmar's daughter Monogail their figurehead - which meant, in effect, that they were proposing the conquer in the name of Khmar. However rational and reasonable that may have seemed in Estar, it met with little favor in the empire's heartland.
So, with Gendormargensis disordered by coup and countercoup, and with a bloodthirsty invasion threatened from the south, Lord Onosh decided to make his move.
Locontareth declared for Lord Onosh, and raised an army for him; and, by the time Guest Gulkan reopened the Circle of the Partnership Banks and made his way to Alozay, Lord Onosh was once more ruling the Collosnon Empire from Gendormargensis.
Had Bao Gahai survived to see the Witchlord's triumph, things might thereafter have turned out differently. But Bao Gahai died within sight of the walls of Gendormargensis. Years earlier, she had made a terrible sacrifice to fulfill the greatest desire of her heart; and this sacrifice had so aged and weakened her that it is a wonder that she had survived for so long.
In sight of the walls of Gendormargensis, Bao Gahai perished, falling victim to one of those contagious fevers which are so much a part and parcel of campaigning. Therefore, when Lord Onosh learnt that his son Guest was upon Alozay, Lord Onosh lacked Bao Gahai's counsel.
As was noted at the outset of this history, the Witchlord Onosh had been at odds with the world for so long that he had quite lost the art of showing the world kindness and affection.
This was the flaw which doomed him to destruction.
For, when Lord Onosh heard that Guest was on Alozay, and was leagued with wizards, and was often in conference with the demon Iva-Italis, and was in discourse with the Shabble whom Italis held as a prisoner, and was arming the soldiers of Parengarenga with the swords of Stokos, why, Lord Onosh did not think to praise his son, or congratulate him on his success, or make him a gift of some of the more transportable pieces of Celadric's architecture.
No.
When Lord Onosh heard that Guest had arrived upon Alozay, he interpreted this arrival as invasion, and feared the conquest of Alozay to be but the opening move of the conquest of Tameran. And, once Lord Onosh began assembling an army to strike against Alozay, what option was then left to his son?
Of course, Guest defeated his father with ease.
For, as has been made plain by this history, the greatest and most difficult part of the art of war is the manoeuver of armies.
But Guest Gulkan had a yellow bottle which was equal to the accommodation of an army; and Sken-Pitilkin had an airship which was equal to the transport of the bottle.
I remember.
It was in spring that Guest Gulkan shattered the Witchlord's forces in the Battle of Sipping Cross, and marched on Gendormargensis.
Since the slow and weary business of loading an army into and out of the yellow bottle was one which could take days to accomplish, Guest Gulkan did not dare try such a stratagem when he was so closely engaged with his father's forces. He expected his father to leave men in ambush; or to turn and meet him in force; or, at the very least, to stand at Gendormargensis and fight.
So, shunning air transport, Guest Gulkan took his army overland for the last few leagues which stood between himself and the city.
On reaching Gendormargensis, Guest found that Lord Onosh had fled, taking his army with him. The city was in no stage to stand in siege against the invaders, for it was in the grip of a cholera epidemic, cholera being one of the recurrent scourges of the Collosnon Empire. And here it must be admitted that, regardless of Celadric's great expenditure on architecture, Gendormargensis remained a city in which sewage disposal was of a very rudimentary nature.
On account of the epidemic, the victorious Weaponmaster did not enter the city, but pitched his tents on the mudlands beyond the walls. On Sken-Pitilkin's advice, those tents were pitched a good half-league upriver from the city.
"Cholera," said Sken-Pitilkin, "is spread by filth within water. it would be far less common if you could train your people to boil their drinking water and wash their hands after going to the toilet."
"Are my people babies that I should be teaching them how to piss and dung?" growled Guest.
"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, staring at Guest as if the Yarglat warrior was a new and remarkable species of frog, "it is a barbarian! It growls in the face of science and bares its fangs at wisdom."
"I," said Guest, with dignity, "lack a pox doctor's perverted interest in the functions of the anus."
"Ah," said Sken-Pitilkin, "then you renounce all claims to civilization. For civilization is essentially a device for the tidy disposal of bodily excretions."
"Really!" said Guest. "I thought the name for such a device was a brothel!"
Thus Guest and Sken-Pitilkin debated outside the walls of Gendormargensis. They continued the debate long into the night, for Guest was too tense to sleep, and too much the professional to drown his tensions with drink.
The next morning, Guest Gulkan pursued his father's retreating army, and at noon he came upon his father's baggage train. It was an incredible scene of spilt rubbish, mud, mired wagons, slaughtered oxen, bonfires, drunks and deserters. Guest Gulkan knew at once that his father's army had given up, for many of the bonfires were made from bunched spears, from arrows, and from other gear
of war. It is difficult to accept the surrender of men who can simply snatch weapons from the battlefield, and in consequence of this difficulty it is common to murder those who surrender. By making sure that not one whole weapon remain to them, the Witchlord's men were endeavoring to have their surrender accepted.
"They have disarmed themselves," said Guest, surveying the scene.
"Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "As your father disarmed himself before venturing to Alozay."
"I remember," said Guest.
Of course he remembered. His father had caused weapons to be hidden in treasure chests, then had used those weapons against his hosts. But where were the treasure chests now?
"It would be most economical of time," said Guest, "if we were to slaughter these prisoners."
"Doubtless," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But you have cholera in your capital, and an invasion yet threatens from the south. Have you soldiers so many that you can be murdering them?"
"True," said Guest.
Then took the trouble to accept the surrender of those who sought his mercy. Having accepted their surrender, he then went to the much greater trouble of searching them for weapons, and digging in the mud, and launching great interrogations.
At last, Guest declared himself satisfied.
"There are no weapons here," said Guest. "I've looked. I've looked everywhere."
"There are the bonfires," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Fires?" said Guest. "Fires, yes, doubtless, but - what can one hide in a fire?"
"Think," said Sken-Pitilkin.Guest Gulkan obeyed, and, after due consideration, ordered that the ruins of the bonfires be raked apart. His subsequent excavations discovered swords; and spears; and helmets, shields, chain mail, knives, clubs, throwing stars, caltrops, battle axes.
Enough for an army.
Once Guest's inevitable reprisals had added another field of blood and butchery to history's scenery, the Weaponmaster pursued his father, and the pursuit soon took him into the hills.
I remember.
It was cold in the hills.
By now, Lord Onosh was running in earnest. But however he ran, he could not escape from his son. In desperation, the Witchlord Onosh split his forces, sending parties in five different directions in the hope of evading pursuit. But the Witchlord's doom was so patent that some of his people deserted with the express intention of betraying him.
Guest Gulkan accepted the intelligence which was brought to him by the deserters, then had them put to death.
"For," said Guest, "treason is a capital crime, and, besides, it is these deserters who are putting me to the necessity of killing my father."
In the face of these judicial murders, Sken-Pitilkin said nothing, for Guest's mood had become changeable, and the wizard thought it unwise to challenge him when he had entered into one of his sanguinary phases.
And you think you would have done otherwise?
Well, perhaps you would have. But perhaps you would have died on account of your attempted diplomacy. In any case, this is not the tale of what might have been. This is the story of that which was. I remember.
I remember it was cold.
It was cold in the hills, cold in those days of spring, and colder yet by night. In the weariness of the long pursuit, men slept in the saddle. The pursuit went on by day and night, until bad weather set in, bringing abolishing rain, and clouds which reduced the night to an utter darkness.
I remember.
The trees, by night, wrathed by the rending winds. The campfires, driven and shriven by the bone-bleak wind. The muttered discontents of the fingerjoints, old bones protesting against the cold, against the unrelenting rigors of campaigning. Bao Gahai had died in the course of the Witchlord's war with the Weaponmaster, and was there any guarantee that a wizard would prevail in health where a witch had failed and perished?
Dawn, at last.
Dawn, and the rain dying away, and a weak light filtering through the breaking clouds. The ground mired with mud, and wet with petals, the petals of spring blossom brought down to earth by the drenching rains of the night.
Then Guest Gulkan took the saddle and led his people in pursuit. And many men marveled to see the confidence with which he led the way, wasting no time on spying for tracks.
But of course Guest Gulkan had often hunted in these hills.
He had hunted with his father, back in the days when Lord Onosh had sported after bandits. Guest knew the habits of the hunted, and knew too the lie of the land. Lord Onosh had fled through the hills in a great arc, and that arc had taken him into a valley which led down toward the Yolantarath River. The steep scarps of the valley's rocky sides meant that Lord Onosh would now be inevitably channeled down toward the flatlands, like many parties of bandits before him.
So Guest pursued, leading his men with a certainty which the ignorant attributed to precognitive powers - powers which came, or so said a wild rumor, from the fact that he had been mothered by a witch.
But, as they drew nearer and nearer the Yolantarath, Guest allowed the pace to slacken; and Sken-Pitilkin, deducing from this slackening a lessening of Guest's wrathfulness, ventured to open a conversation.
"You remember this," said Sken-Pitilkin, opening a conversation with the Weaponmaster in the hope of later being able to raise the matter of his execution of the men who had betrayed his father.
"Perhaps," said Guest carelessly. "Or perhaps I dreamt of it. Have you ever thought this might be a dream, and you but a dream in a dream?"
It goes without saying that Sken-Pitilkin had heard of this tired old philosophical conceit some twice times ten thousand times in the past.
"A dream has a purpose," said Sken-Pitilkin. "It's purpose is the cleansing of the mind. Having a purpose, it is simple. Since life is both complex and disordered, we can say of a certainty that it has no purpose, hence is no dream."
"So you say," said Guest, "but your philosophy opens you to deception. If the world were a dream, perhaps it might have been designed for your own deceiving, in which case it would have been purposely designed to be complex and confusing, in order to convince you that it had no purpose."
Thus argued Guest Gulkan and his erstwhile tutor as they made their way down toward the Yolantarath River. Sken-Pitilkin, naturally, was able to easily and adroitly defeat his every argument; but Guest in his ignorance was unable to realize that he had been defeated, and repeatedly declared that a world undreamlike might yet be a dream, assuming it to have been designed for deception.
"That much you've said some three times already," said Sken-Pitilkin, when Guest had said it for the seventh time.
"Which makes it true," said Guest.
"No, not at all," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A thing said thrice is no more true than a thing said once, and to propose otherwise is a nonsense."
"On the contrary," said Guest Gulkan. "Words are the shaping of the world. You told me that yourself. It follows that to say is to shape, and a thing thrice-said gains truth by repetition."
This is typical of the Weaponmaster's erratic style of debate, which, for all it owed to formal logic and systematic learning, resembled nothing so much as an energetic washerwoman trying to hammer home a nail by flailing at it with a wet eel.
"You are confounding a theorem of Practical Politics with a theorem of Axiomatic Philosophy," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And thus it is proved that you are talking nonsense, whether you know it or not."
"Knowledge is unitary," said Guest. "You told me so yourself."
Knowledge is unitary. What does that mean? Guest Gulkan was not sure. But his tutor had often used this grand-sounding phrase to win their debates (or at least bring them to a conclusion) and Guest thought there was no harm in trying it.
"Knowledge is unitary, yes," said Sken-Pitilkin, "but even so, books are not fishes, songs are not sums, and politics is not philosophy, nor did I ever tell you it was."
"On the contrary," said Guest. "You have several times named philosophy as the very heart of politics, which is a nonsense,
but is still what you told me."
"The nonsense is not mine but yours," said Sken-Pitilkin, striving with imperfect success to preserve an amiable tolerance in the face of such intellectual folly. "Political method is not philosophical truth, and I never said it was."
"The heart," said Guest, stubborn in dissent. "You claimed philosophy to be the heart of politics."
"One thing becomes not another simply by being placed inside it, whether at the heart or elsewhere," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A stone ditched in the river does not become water. Likewise, your sword would win no degree of equinity by being thrust the fullness of its length into the flesh of a horse, even if it should penetrate to the very heart."
"But that heart itself would be horse," persisted Guest.
"Heart, kernel, pith, gist, essence. The heart of a thing is the essence of a thing, and you claimed philosophy as the heart of politics."
"That is sophistry, and you know it, or should know it, or will know it by the time I'm finished with you," said Sken-Pitilkin. "In any case, I never said that philosophy is at the heart of politics, merely that it should be, which is quite a different matter entirely. I am a philosopher. Am I ruling Tameran? Am I so much as listened to when I venture political advice?"
"You'll be listened to ardently," said Guest, "if you can tell me how to make a peace with my father."
"If we are in luck," said Sken-Pitilkin, "then your father will out-distance you, and you will have no need to worry about either war or peace."
So spoke Sken-Pitilkin, for he was sure by now that Guest was deliberately easing off the pace of the pursuit in the hope that his father would run, and would make his escape, and would not force father and son to a final confrontation.
But, when Guest and his forces eventually reached the Yolantarath, there was Lord Onosh, braced for a final stand. And as for the course of that final stand - why, we have seen that already.