Name: Eljuk Zala Gulkan.
Birthplace: Gendormargensis.
Occupation: student.
Status: heir to the Collosnon Empire.
Description: timorous Yarglat male, undersized at a height of 9 qua. He is so birthmarked that he appears to have let a mouthful of purple wine dribble from the corners of his mouth then flow to a merging at his throat. But his most remarkable aspect is surely his ears, which are small – a singular oddity considering his father's gargantuan head-flaps and the size of the equally ostentatious protruberances flaunted by his brothers Morsh and Guest.
Hobby: the memorization and word-perfect recital of the more elegant kinds of lyric poetry.
Quote: "I don't really want to be emperor, but I suppose it's no worse than what most people have to put up with."
Thus in his anger the emperor rode forth in pursuit of those bandits who had escaped his earlier attack. Riding with all the ferocity of Obela Ukma, the warrior of legend who had sought to outpace his own mortality, Lord Onosh and his party performed prodigies of roughground speedleaguing in the days that followed.
The first ice of the oncoming winter smashed beneath the hooves of their horses as they chased bandits from highground to low. The stars of the night sharpened to needles, intolerably cold in their burning.
Cold, frost, ice and steaming breath – these things reminded Lord Onosh of his childhood. He punctured a vein to draw blood from his horse, and sucked down that blood, and the heavy taste brought to mind the ordeals of his youth. He looked up at the stars, the stars so cold and remote in the scorn of their burning.
Stars of cold green – as cold and green as jade under water. Chips of blue opal. Lambent red and sullen-sulphur purple.
Those stars – Lord Onosh knelt to a pool of dark water by night, knelt to the stars, knelt to the bright gold and the needlework of liquid silver, to the bloodline-brightness of scarlet and the dull vulcanism of cooling lava. The shadow of his head blotted out the stars as he knelt, and the shadow was faceless, eyeless, noseless, and in that moment Lord Onosh knew.
– I am going to die.
As the Witchlord Onosh knelt to the water by night he realized that he was going to die. He was going to die, and die not far from here. A death by water would take him, thrust him under, haul him down and suck him under. He was going to drown, quenched by water, smothered, suffocated, gulping slime and groping for the light. He was doomed, dead, a dead man with but a day or so to breathe.
Carefully, trying to silence his terror, or at least to control it, Lord Onosh took the leather glove from his right hand and dipped his hand to the water. The water was so cold that it burnt his flesh – as if the flesh lacked skin. The Witchlord cupped water in his hand, then brought it to his mouth. It was cold, so cold that he expected it to brightspark pain from those few teeth which remained to him. But there was no pain.
Lord Onosh held the water in his mouth to let it warm before he swallowed. Then swallow he did, and rose, looking at the men who sat faceless on their horses in the shadows of the stars.
"How is the Blood of the Earth?" said Morsh Bataar, speaking from the height of his horse.
The Blood of the Earth. The old and formal term for water. It spoke of a learning of the Yarglat legends which Lord Onosh had not known his son to possess.
"It is as it should be," said Lord Onosh. Then, testing his son, he said: "The blood is the blood, and the earth is a horse for our horse."
"The wind is its voice, and the wind is the measure of our riding," answered Morsh, catching the legend-line reference and responding in kind.
Then Lord Onosh said:
"As the horse is ours, so the blood is ours."
It was an invitation to drink.
Now to this there was a response that could be lifted from the legend-lines of the Yarglat mythos. A young man ardent in his ambition could answer thus: "My father may drink from the blood of the horse, but I will drink blood." That line, savage in its implications, is amongst the Yarglat one of the traditional challenges of youth to age. But Morsh Bataar said:
"My lord is a great provider, and in the hunger of our victory I will eat."
That also was traditional, but of course it was not a challenge – rather, it was an acknowledgment of fealty.
"Sa-so!" said Guest, who had no learning of legends with which to trifle. "My brother is a horse and my father likewise, but the bandits escape us while we gossip."
Though many had already been brought to collapse by the wrenching rigors of the hunt, the arrogant impatience of Guest's aggression spoke of slaughter-strength confidence with strength yet to spare.
Hearing that shallow arrogance, that impatient slaughterstrength, Lord Onosh knew.
He knew it for a fact.
– This is the man who will kill me. Guest Gulkan was going to drown him, was going to press him under the waters and hold him there until he died, and so he would never get back to Gendormargensis alive. This could not be denied.
Lord Onosh had the Gift of Seeing. Lord Onosh knew his death.
– So what does it feel like, this death?
In the face of his death, Lord Onosh found himself angry. He was not ready to die. He was 43, no older. The prime of life! The prime of power! And – and Eljuk! Lord Onosh bitterly resented the thought of Eljuk's death, knowing that his favored son must surely die once Guest had accomplished the Witchlord's murder.
Lord Onosh stood in the dark, tasting his own anger, his rage at his own mortality.
"Does my lord want his sketch pad?" said Guest Gulkan, managing to pack supreme arrogance and insult into a single sentence, while conveying his impatience besides.
"The artists will have work to do," said Lord Onosh, "when they have a corpse to work on."
Lord Onosh hoped that Guest Gulkan would remember those words in times thereafter, and would know that the Witchlord had gone to his death knowingly.
Having delivered himself of these words, Lord Onosh mounted up and led the hunt on at starlight pace, which is slow yet remorseless, and guarantees the capture of any quarry which lingers to sleep by night. Guest Gulkan followed on behind his father, and as they picked their way through the dark, Guest had the strangest sensation… he felt himself half-immersed in a river, his father's head heavy in his hands. Then Guest knew. He had had such visions in the past, and always they had been reliably predictive of the future. The Witchlord Onosh was doomed to die near here, to die in the Yolantarath, drowned in its waters. He was doomed. He was as good as dead.
– So how does it feel, this death? Guest asked himself that question as he followed along behind his father.
He felt… confused. He did not think that he wished his father dead. But even so. His father had denied him so much, had denied him so often. And just that very day, why, anger had brought the two to the point of murder. If Lord Onosh survived this hunt, then Guest was doomed to fight his proxy in Gendormargensis.
– So better that he die.
Thus thought Guest. And the thought was cold, hard, inescapable. Cold as crystal. Cold as a diamond plucked from the heart of a witch. Let Lord Onosh die. Then Eljuk would become emperor. And Eljuk… for some reason, when Guest thought of Eljuk he thought of butter.
So they went on through the night. Lord Onosh knew himself doomed to die by drowning, and knew his son Guest to be his murderer. Guest Gulkan did not yet know that he was to be the instrument of his father's death, but he knew of a certainty that his father would drown, would be swallowed by the Yolantarath, would become mud and worms, a bloated corpse lost in the farrow- furrow toils of the river's filth.
So the Witchlord Onosh and his son the Weaponmaster hunted bandits through the mountains, both possessed of visionary knowledge of an unavoidable death, and at last in daylight they and their company ran the bandits to ground by the banks of the Yolantarath River.
By this time, the mighty hunting party which had left Gendormargensis was strung out over the better part of fifty leagues of wilderness, for only the young and the reckless had been able to keep up with the emperor on this madcap chase.
So it was that the odds were even when the imperial party met the bandits by the riverside.
Then fear fell away from the Witchlord. So he was to die, was he? Well, then it would be over soon, and quickly. The worst thing was the waiting, and the waiting was over.
"Pelagius, my good man," said the Witchlord Onosh, seeing that his master chef had kept pace with the leaders of the hunting party. "It is a good day to die."
Pelagius laughed.
"It is a good day, my lord," said Pelagius. "And I do not think either of us dead before the end of it."
Then Pelagius Zozimus unhooded the falcon which was bound to his wrist, kissed the bird, then loosed it, and laughed again as it rose to the blinding brightness of the sun. Lord Onosh laughed likewise, then the pair spurred their horses and charged, for both of these warriors had been seized of a sudden by a mad intoxication, the exhilaration of an all-or-nothing gamble.
"Hold, Eljuk!" cried Morsh Bataar, as Eljuk Zala spurred his own horse, grimly bent on following his father.
But Eljuk Zala paid no heed, for he was determined to go wherever his father did. So Morsh slashed the rope which restrained the one surviving spare horse which trailed along behind him, then rode in pursuit.
The leading riders went crashing into the ranks of the bandits. Horses fell and men screamed.
"The river!" screamed someone. "He's in the river!"
Who was in the river? Guest Gulkan heard the cry, and remembered his visionary certainty. His father was going to drown.
And suddenly Guest knew:
He did not want to see his father dead.
But it was fated. It would happen whether Guest wanted it to happen or not.
"Then the hell with fate!" said Guest.
And, setting himself against fate, destiny and the course of history, Guest Gulkan spurred his horse. Which reared, and received in its flesh an arrow which had been aimed at its master.
Down went the horse, down, a mountain falling, an avalanche of bloody mortality, and Guest was thrown, sent sprawling. Guest Gulkan groped to his feet, mud in his eyes, the world a whirl of watering confusion. A bandit was charging him.
"Ga!" screamed Guest.
The bandit hacked at him with a woodcutter's axe. But an arrow took the man in the throat, and Guest hacked off his head as he died. No time to take a scalp! Lord Onosh was in the river, was drowning, and Guest had to save him. Had to! Panting heavily, Guest charged wildly through the floundering mud, bracing his way through the confusion of battle.
All around was chaos, as knots of disordered men fought each other with screams and curses. Guest tried to blink the mud from his watering eyes, and caught a bleary glimpse of the bright- flashing armor of Pelagius Zozimus. Heard Rolf Thelemite screaming in fear-flushed panic as he tried to hold a brace of bandits at bay single-handed.
Rolf saw Guest.
And screamed:
"Help me!"
Then Guest had to choose.
His friend or his father? Guest chose his father.
Ignoring Rolf Thelemite's plight, Guest struggled through the mud to the banks of the Yolantarath River. Down in the water was a horse, a floundering animal wild-eyed in panic, its body rent with wounds, its blood staining the brown murk of the river. Struggling in the water was a man.
"Blood!" said Guest.
He was bent on saving his father, but – he could not swim!
"Blood of a billion zombies!" said Guest.
Then the Weaponmaster took his sword in a two-handed grip and struck a mighty blow, driving the blade deep into the mud of his father's empire.
"Death or victory!" said Guest.
Then he slithered down the bank and plunged into the water, even as the man in the river's grip lost his hold on his horse and slid beneath the waters.
The waters mobbed around the Weaponmaster. The terror- stricken horse rolled its eyes and did its best to bite him. Guest whacked it with his fist, then waded into the river, first waist- deep then neck-deep, feeling for his father with his feet. Guest stubbed his toe on his father's flesh, grabbed a mouthful of air, then ducked down and seized the man by the hair.
Gods, he was heavy! Guest hauled, pulled, floundered, tried for purchase in the mud, got the man under the armpits – armor his flanks, and heavy, yes! – and boosted the man to the air. Guest gasped for air.
"Father," he said.
The man was safe, had been saved, was safe in Guest Gulkan's grip. But he was starting to struggle! He was screaming, and struggling convulsively. Guest felt his boots slipping. He was up to his neck in the river. A river-wave slapped his face. If his father was not quieted, he would have them both drowned and dead. Guest slipped deeper yet, and panic claimed him.
He screamed, incoherent in the agony of his panic.
The struggling pair were seen by Thodric Jarl, some thirty paces down the riverbank. Since Jarl was faced by imminent battle, he might as well have been distant by infinity. But Jarl summed the situation in a glimpse and found time enough to roar:
"Guest! Guest! Slam him! You must!"
The command came to Guest Gulkan as if from far off, like something shouted through a huge and fumbling thickness of fog.
But once said -
Blam! Guest slammed his father, crunched the screaming face with a fist, crunched it hard. Then dragged the man closer inshore. A monstrous weight he made, but Guest dragged him successfully. Then they slipped into a hole.
Water buried them. Guest slogged along underwater, one pace, two, a third, and up, up out of the hole and into the slash of the sun.
And the man in his arms screamed and thrashed, and clawed at him, and tried to bite off his nose. And suddenly Guest realized it was Eljuk, his brother Eljuk. He had risked his life, and risked it for Eljuk! Eljuk, of all people! And now Eljuk was fighting him in the frenzy of his panic!
"Blue bread and marmalade!" said Guest, enraged.
Then slammed Eljuk in the face with his fist.
Then slammed him again.
Eljuk boggled, and went limp.
Then Guest acknowledged his deep and pressing jealousy of his brother, and slammed him one last time for luck, and was amazed to find how good that made him feel.
Then came the hard and brutal slog-work, the dragging of the semi-conscious Eljuk from the waters and the hauling of the semiconscious Eljuk up the steep and muddy bank of the Yolantarath.
Swearing with every step, Guest encompassed the task. At the top of the riverbank, he dropped the whimpering Eljuk in the mud, kicked him once for luck, then looked around for his sword.
His sword!
Where was his sword? Guest Gulkan was weaponless, and a battle was in progress.
The sword? It was twenty paces distant, for the Yolantarath had carried the two brothers downstream as they struggled in the water. Guest went for his sword and won it. No sooner had he won the weapon than a man was upon him.
"Ahyak Rovac!" screamed the man.
"Rolf!" cried Guest, recognizing that battle-cry.
It was indeed Rolf Thelemite, so bloody from a gash in his forehead that he was unrecognizable, and was fighting blind. He fell into Guest's arms, and, with the battle dying down, Guest began to search his friend for wounds.
Apart from minor gashes (bloody, spectacular, but no immediate threat to life) Rolf Thelemite appeared to be in one piece. By the time Guest had assured himself of that, the battle was over – with all the bandits dead, for none had been given quarter.
"Your brother," said Rolf, recovering himself somewhat. "Your brother. He's dead."
"Eljuk?" said Guest. "But I just pulled him out of the river!"
"Not Eljuk!" said Rolf. "Morsh!"
Then Guest helped Rolf Thelemite to his feet, and the two went in search of Morsh Bataar. Rolf had seen Morsh go down and his horse fall on top of him, so presumed the young man to be dead. But when they found the body it opened its eyes then spoke to them.
"Will you shift this horse?" said Morsh Bataar. "For it's died on top of me, and I think my leg is broken."Guest and Rolf called for help, and the Witchlord Onosh came over to them, called others to their aid, and had the horse shifted.
"It hurts like a red-hot poker," said Morsh Bataar, tears of pain in his eyes. "It's the leg. The left leg."
Lord Onosh drew his scalping knife and cut away the clothing which guarded the left leg. The thigh was prodigiously bruised and swollen with blood, and Morsh Bataar was crying from the pain.
"It's death," said Morsh, acknowledging the truth of his own injury.
Lord Onosh rose without a word. He knew the injury was as good as death. Unless -
"Zozimus!" roared the Witchlord.
The wizard Pelagius Zozimus advanced and saluted his emperor.
There was blood and mud on the wizard's fishscale armor, but Zozimus looked nonetheless lordly.
"My lord," said Zozimus.
"Zozimus," said Lord Onosh, pointing at Morsh Bataar. "I charge you with the healing of my son."
Pelagius Zozimus bent to the injury. When he was ready to speak, he rose to his full height address his emperor on equal footing.
"Your son is a dead man," said Zozimus bluntly. "There is not the skill in Gendormargensis to heal him."
"You are a wizard, are you not?" said Lord Onosh. "A worker of magic. A worker of miracles. Is the emperor to be denied a miracle on his request?"
"I am no god to undo what the gods have fated," said Zozimus.
"I have but some poor and wretched art of necromancy at my command. I have it at my power to have the corpses of this battlefield stumbling in their blood, their shambles but a parody of life. And that – and that is all."
"It cannot be all," said Lord Onosh.
"My lord," said Zozimus, "were wizardry an art of miracle, would I abandon wizardry for cookery? Not so. Yet such was my choice."
"Choice, choice," said Lord Onosh. "Look at me! What choice have I got? My son's life or my wizard's. He lives or dies, but if he dies then you die too."
"We must get him to Gendormargensis," said Guest, who was bent on seeing Morsh healed, and who associated healing with warm rooms and sickbeds.
"No!" said Zozimus sharply.
"You heard my father," said Guest, angered so much that he was almost ready to slaughter down the wizard on the spot. "His life or yours."
"Or both," said Zozimus. "I heard him. But we must not move the boy. To move him is to kill him."
"He can't stay here!" said Guest, looking around at the sprawling river, the blood-punctuated mud, the bleary sky, the horizon encumbered with mountainous hills, and the silent swordsmen now starting to shiver as their sweat cooled toward slime.
"Give him a chance," said Zozimus, speaking harshly from a throat still dry from battle. "Give Morsh a chance. If Morsh stays here then he does have a chance – albeit a slim one. But if you haul him back to Gendormargensis then he dies of a certainty, and I die with him."
"Then he stays," said Lord Onosh. "And I stay with him. To work, Zozimus! Get on with it!"
"A tent," said Zozimus. "I need a tent. Guest! Backtrack!
Along our track you'll find horses with tents. Morsh himself had one such last night, though it was not in his keeping this morning. Ride back and find such, for such is your brother's survival."
"I go," said Guest, bowing to Zozimus's imperative.
Thus Guest went, and Zozimus was much relieved to see him go, for there was no telling how much damage the boy might have done in his fear for his brother's life. Then Zozimus called for horseblankets; and firewood; and for dead horses to be heaped up as a temporary windbreak while shelter more permanent was sought.
When Guest had gone, Morsh Bataar said through the tears of his pain:
"The man's not as tough as he thought."
Here Morsh was speaking of himself. The Yarglat do not readily admit to pain, and only by thus referring to it in the third person could Morsh Bataar admit to the grief of his agony.
"We none of us are," said his father.
For the Witchlord Onosh had known pain and knew the truth of it: there is no thing worse.
Then:
"It hurts," said Morsh Bataar, in frank confession of his pain.
Then, unable to help himself, Morsh Bataar cried out, gasping with pain – gasping in the inarticulate agony of the flesh. Lord Onosh wiped the cold sweat from his son's forehead, and Pelagius Zozimus, unable to bear this sight for any longer, withdrew to the riverbank to think.
The gray-bearded Thodric Jarl went with him, hoping he would try to escape, for Jarl had a deep-felt hatred of wizards, and would welcome any excuse to murder him.
"The break is bad," said Zozimus, who usually shunned Jarl as if the man was death incarnate – as well he might prove if things took a turn for the worse.
"Very bad," said Jarl, with grim satisfaction.
"Still," said Zozimus, "men have lived through as much."
"No men that I know of," said Jarl.
"Then Morsh Bataar will be the first," said Zozimus, trying to pretend to a confidence which he did not actually feel.
Pelagius Zozimus was no healer, for he had never studied to be either bonesetter or pox doctor. Zozimus was a wizard of the order of Xluzu, a necromancer whose skills allowed him to animate the dead. This filthy and dispiriting work he had long ago abandoned in favor of cookery, for he disliked death. Equally, he disliked disease, injury, deformation, and every other debasement and degradation of the flesh.
Yet -
Zozimus had ever been a great scholar, and in the course of learning about death he had learnt much about life, for the study of death is necessarily the study of corpses and skeletons, which is an excellent way to learn about the living.
In the Castle of Ultimate Peace, a mighty fortress by the flame trench of Drangsturm, the order of Xluzu had long maintained great collection of skeletons, which included the bones of a sailor who had died of rabies after being bitten by his mother-in- law's dog. In youth, this sailor had broken his thighbone after falling from a mast, and had spent four months lying in his bunk while he recovered from the injury.
In the course of the sailor's cure, a huge bolus of bone had knitted together the fractured ends of his thighbone, which had been out of alignment by as much as the width of two fingers. The result had produced a very strange skeleton, but when healed the leg had been normal enough to facilitate the bestriding of decks and the kicking of dogs.
So Jarl's pessimism was not necessarily predictive.
If Morsh Bataar was lugged to Gendormargensis, he would doubtless die from the rigors of the journey, but if he could be kept just where he was, if he could be clothed and cleaned and warmed and fed, sheltered from the elements and -
"You know," said Jarl, "while you sit here, Morsh is dying."
"So you tell me," said Zozimus.
"He's dying of pain, you fool," said Jarl, unable to restrain himself any longer. "Pain is the breaking of men, and kills when wounds alone would not."
Jarl wanted to see Zozimus fail and die. But Jarl had ever liked Morsh Bataar for his steadiness and his leisured good humor, and did not want to see him die in a delirium of agony.
The relief of his pain would probably not save his life, but might at least ease his parting.
Zozimus took the hint.
"Opium!" said Zozimus, slapping his thigh as he named the best kind of pain relief he knew. Then: "Send to the city for Sken-Pitilkin!" said he, knowing his fellow wizard was never far away from a supply of the peace of the poppy. "Send for Sken-Pitilkin," said Zozimus, "and tell him to bring us his opium."
"Your word," said Jarl, "is my command."
And he turned to obey.
So Sken-Pitilkin was sent for, and brought as directed, arriving late in the afternoon of the following day after a ride so rigorous it had almost killed him. There was no problem in finding the campsite, for by now there were hundreds encamped by the river, with a steady steam of incoming stragglers filtering out of the hills. To feed this multitude, Lord Onosh had commandeered a string of barges which had been coming down the Yolantarath, deeply laden with some of the spoils of the autumn harvest in the east. Guest Gulkan himself greeted Sken-Pitilkin on his arrival, and led him to Pelagius Zozimus. No longer was Zozimus glorious, for his bright-shining armor had been mired by the splattering muck of the encampment, and the dervish wildness of his bloodshot eyes, combined with his unkempt condition, made him look three parts lunatic.
"What took you so long?" said Zozimus, when Sken-Pitilkin arrived.
For in all that time Zozimus had seldom strayed out of earshot from Morsh Bataar, and much which the sleepless wizard had heard while within earshot had been far from pleasant.
"What took me so long?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Why, first I had to be born, and then – "
"That's nonsense enough," said Zozimus. "Have you brought the opium?"
"Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But I must see our patient before I dispense it."
"It is peace," said Zozimus impatiently, for after listening to Morsh Bataar's agony he wanted peace for the man more than anything else.
"It is peace," agreed Sken-Pitilkin. "But sometimes death is the measure of that peace."
Then the two wizards went to see Morsh Bataar.
From the gruesome account of Morsh Bataar's injury which had been delivered to him in Gendormargensis, Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin had got the impression that the boy's broken thighbone had ruptured through the skin, an injury which would have virtually guaranteed his death.
But on being admitted to the tent which sheltered the boy, Sken-Pitilkin found the skin unbroken. Battalions of leeches were feasting on the thigh, doing their best to suck every drop of blood from the injured limb.
"It was Jarl who insisted on the leeches," said Zozimus.
"We've had half a thousand people looking for them, and still they look for more, though leeches in such quantity must surely kill."
"The blood must be drawn from the wound," said Sken-Pitilkin equitably, "and the leech is a precision instrument superbly designed for that express purpose. How do you feel, Morsh?"
Morsh Bataar spoke his pain in pain, spoke it in a mewling cry which evidenced long torture and the imminence of death. His pain was the measure of his strength, for a weaker man would have long since lost the power of protest.
"The opium," said Zozimus impatiently.
"There is more to healing than ramming strong drugs down the throats of your patients," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"But Jarl said – "
"Since when do wizards command themselves by the sayings of the Rovac?" said Sken-Pitilkin sharply.
"I am in danger of my life," said Zozimus, "hence will command myself by whoever knows best."
"Then be commanded by me," said Sken-Pitilkin, endeavoring the calm the Witchlord's over-agitated slug-chef. "Be commanded, for I fancy that I have more of the healing arts than have you."
"So you say," said Zozimus. "But Jarl says that pain will be the death of the boy even if nothing else kills him."
"The pain," said Sken-Pitilkin, "is consequent upon the fracture. The boy's bone is broken."
"That much I have divined," said Zozimus stiffly.
"The bone of the thigh lies broken in the flesh," said Sken-Pitilkin, continuing in his best classroom manner. "With the bone broken, the muscles of the leg strive to shorten the leg. Thus broken bone is pulled against broken bone, and the result is an agony your most expert torturer would be hard put to better."
"Why," said Zozimus, in sarcastic imitation of admiration, "you speak with the fluency of a very pox doctor!"
"Thus have I made my living in the past," said Sken-Pitilkin, admitting this secret without shame. "It is the truth, Pelagius. A broken bone is no big thing in itself, but the gritting together of the ends of the bone is living hell."
"So," said Zozimus, seeing the nature of the cure now that he understood the problem, "we must separate the ends of the broken bones to ease the pain of our patient. Do you think your wizardry the equal of the task?"
"I would not trust my wizardry with a tenth of it," said Sken-Pitilkin, who, as a wizard of Skatzabratzumon – an order dedicated to the mastery of the mysteries of levitation – had no special powers relevant to the cure of the flesh. "Still, mere mechanical skill may succeed where wizardry fails. I believe I can build something efficient for our purposes. Guest! Guest Gulkan!
Where are you, boy?" Guest Gulkan manifested himself in response to this shout, and, at Sken-Pitilkin's orders, mustered up a raiding party. Sken-Pitilkin led this party aboard one of the barges tied up by the riverbank – the barges earlier commandeered by the Witchlord for the feeding of his multitude – and this barge they then looted thoroughly.
"What now?" said Zozimus, once the looting was done, and Sken-Pitilkin had a great heap of rope, sticks, spars, planks and sailcloth at his disposal.
"Now?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "We build!"
As the power to levitate objects can be enhanced by the adroit use of pulleys, levers and inclined planes, wizards of the order of Skatzabratzumon had long been diligent in their studies of such devices, and Sken-Pitilkin was well equipped to oversee the building of a stretching machine. Under his supervision, men worked through the night, and by dawn had finished the thing. The contraption looked very like a torturer's rack, and worked on exactly the same principle.
"Tenderly, now," said Sken-Pitilkin, as his team of well- briefed assistants gathered around the recumbent Morsh Bataar.
"Guest. Thodric. Secure the harness."
Working as carefully as they could, Guest Gulkan and Thodric
Jarl secured Morsh Bataar's shoulders and the foot of his injured leg in the padded imprisonment of leather harness-work.
"Ready?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Very well. On my command, begin to pull. Steady but sure."
"Don't!" cried Morsh Bataar, piteous in his fear. "Don't hurt me!"
"This is not pain but its cure," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Guest.
Thodric. Are you ready? Well – remember you work against muscle, so be ready for resistance. On the count of three. One. And two.
And three."
Then Thodric Jarl and Guest Gulkan applied their strength, the one hauling on the foot of the injured leg, the other pulling back on the shoulders.
Morsh Bataar screamed.
"Steady, boys!" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"You're hurting him," said Eljuk Zala, advancing on Guest Gulkan as if to attack him. "Let him go! You're hurting him!"
At that, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin reached out with his country crook, slipped it round Eljuk Zala's neck, then dragged him backwards. Taken by surprise, Eljuk fell backwards, whereupon the nimble-witted Pelagius Zozimus sat on him.
"Keep it steady, boys," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Now. Slow but sure. Use your strength. He's a strong man, and you work against his greatest muscles. Strength, boys!"
Then Thodric Jarl and Guest Gulkan stretched Morsh Bataar in earnest, and as the two ends of grating bone were dragged apart the most amazing relief came into Morsh Bataar's face.
"A little more," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Just a little more.
Right. Hold him! If you let him go, you kill him!"
This was the devilish part of stretching the patient. Once stretched, he must stay stretched, for the broken ends of his own thighbone were weapons which might kill him if he was released from the tension under which he had been placed. Quite apart from the question of pain, the sharp edges of broken bones can be wicked devices for the severing of blood vessels.
"Gather round," said Sken-Pitilkin.
The dwarf Glambrax and the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite knelt alongside Morsh Bataar, slipped their hands under his body and awaited the order to lift.
"Pelagius," said Sken-Pitilkin, seeking to command his cousin into action.
"The boy," said Zozimus, who was still sitting on Eljuk Zala.
"This boy Eljuk. He's not safe to let loose."
"Then I'll sit on him," said Sken-Pitilkin, and matched deed to word so Pelagius Zozimus could join Glambrax and Rolf Thelemite alongside Morsh Bataar. "On the count of three," said Sken-Pitilkin, speaking from his new-found throne. "One. And two. And three."
Morsh Bataar groaned as he was lifted, then cried out sharply as he was set down on the stretching machine with a slight bump. A slight bump it was to those who were handling him, but Morsh himself – why, poor Morsh felt as if he had just been dropped off a mountain.
"Easy, Morsh," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We're almost done."
Then, while Guest Gulkan and Thodric Jarl maintained the tension on Morsh Bataar's foot and shoulders, keeping the broken ends of his thighbone apart, Sken-Pitilkin supervised the attachment of boot-harness and shoulder-harness to hooks. Ratchets and wheels were used to put both sets of harness under strain, so Morsh was being stretched by foot and shoulders.
"Enough," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Guest. Thodric. Release your hold. Now."Guest Gulkan let go of Morsh Bataar's shoulder harness and Thodric Jarl released the foot harness.
"Sweet blood," said Jarl, studying Morsh Bataar's face for signs of pain. "It works."
"It works," confirmed Morsh Bataar. "Thank you."
Then he essayed a smile, or tried to. It was more of a grimace than a confirmation of pleasure, but it was a very miracle considering the torments he had been through. Indeed, Morsh Bataar's mere survival was little short of sheer miracle. But then, the Yarglat are tougher than other peoples, or so they say – though pain is the same for us all, as the very Witchlord himself had acknowledged.
"Well," said Sken-Pitilkin, rising from his seat. "Now we can fetch our emperor to survey the scene of our triumph."
The seat the wizard had risen from was of course the hapless Eljuk Zala, the anointed heir to the Collosnon Empire. Eljuk rose from the mud unsteadily, a swollen leech hanging pendulously from his nose. As he tried to exit from the tent, the Witchlord Onosh entered, and the two collided.
"Ho, boy!" said Lord Onosh. "You need to blow your nose!
Well, Zozimus! How is my son! How are you, Morsh? You're looking better. Much better. Grief, what a contraption! What have we here,
Zozimus? A siege engine, is it? Is young Morsh to be catapulted to Gendormargensis, or must we drag him?"
"As I said to my lord earlier," said Zozimus, "to move Morsh to the city would be to kill him."
"Ah," said the Witchlord briskly, "but that was before he was lashed to this brilliant machine. I can see the sense of it. Surely now it's only sanity to shift him."
"My lord," said Zozimus, "when the wounded are dragged from the battlefield, then every bump is agony – and by my computation there are half a billion bumps between here and the city."
"So it will hurt a little," said Lord Onosh. "Still, Morsh is a strong man, is he not?"
"Hostaja," said Zozimus, appealing to his cousin. "We can't move the boy, can we?"
Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin considered the question.
"I have not the full skill of an accomplished bonesetter, nor the full depth of a bonesetter's proper experience," said Sken-Pitilkin, "so I cannot answer definitively. But I know for a fact that where the bone has broken there must surely be blood. Blood clots to lumps, so to move the boy may be to break free such lumps. Once free in the flesh they can travel, and jam in the heart, with death as a consequence."
"Then what do you suggest?" said Lord Onosh.
"I suggest that Morsh is safest here," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I vote for no certain decision on chances, but suggest that he stands four chances in five of a quick death should he be shifted to the city. I would not wish to move him much before midwinter, not with the bone so savagely broken."
"Then," said Guest Gulkan bravely, "if Morsh must stay, then I will stay with him, and guard his solitude till then."
It immediately occurred to Lord Onosh that Guest Gulkan might well be volunteering to stay with his brother because he was afraid to return to Gendormargensis. As soon as Guest got back to Gendormargensis, he would have to meet Thodric Jarl in combat, and that combat would in all probability be the end of him.
"Guest," said Lord Onosh, "on the day of our battle against the bandits you saved the life of Eljuk Zala."
"So I did," said Guest, who was no great exponent of the art of modesty. "I dragged him from the river at the risk of my very life."
"That was well done," said Lord Onosh. "As a compliment to your bravery, I offer you any boon within reason."
"Does this mean – "
"It does not mean that you may lay claim to the woman Yerzerdayla. But else you may ask."
The Witchlord fully expected Guest Gulkan to be excused from his coming battle against Thodric Jarl. Now that the tempers of all concerned had had time to cool, Lord Onosh had no wish to see Guest spitted on Jarl's sword, particularly not since Guest was the best hope for the continuation of the family line and the preservation of the empire.
"My lord," said Guest. "I have long wished to be known as the Weaponmaster."
"Since you were a child," agreed Lord Onosh.
"But you have ever denied me such a title," said Guest.
"I have denied it for a very good reason," said Lord Onosh.
"The very good reason being that you are the master of no weapon."
"Yet," said Guest, "it is the title I claim. That is the boon I wish from you."
Lord Onosh was quite taken aback by this. Nevertheless, he granted Guest Gulkan what he wanted. And all the way to Gendormargensis, Lord Onosh wondered exactly how his son hoped to survive the encounter with Thodric Jarl to which he had doomed himself.
While the much-wondering Witchlord made his way back to Gendormargensis, the young Weaponmaster trained with his sword on the banks of the Yolantarath. Ever and again Guest Gulkan slashed and sliced, imagining how the mighty razor of his courage would cut down Thodric Jarl to size.
When he was weary with training, Guest made his way back to his tent. Already the campsite stank, and already some dog had managed to die in the middle of it. Rain fell continually, pocking the boot-craters in the slimy gray mud. Guest Gulkan's neighbor's tent lay mortally wounded in the mud.
He looked around.
He saw a bit of river escaping in the general direction of the distant ocean. Mucky gray cloud – much of it. He didn't see the wind, but it saw him. Changed direction smartly. Bucketed his face with cold rain.
"Great," said Guest, glowing with confidence and selfsatisfaction. "Just beautiful."
What was beautiful above all else was the flatness of the land, the flatness which gave mobility to the horse-troops of the Yarglat, the flatness which had made them the conquerors of the Collosnon Empire.
"This," said Guest, striking a theatrical pose, "is the empire. And I, the Weaponmaster, will make myself lord of it."
No thunder boomed to complement his words, but such was the intensity of Guest's imagination that he fooled himself into believing that he heard such thunder; and he told himself it was a very good omen, and proof of the favor of the gods.