Name: Thodric Jarl.
Birthplace: Rovac.
Occupation: mercenary.
Status: imperial bodyguard.
Description: blunt and decidedly unplayful Rovac warrior, gray of eye and gray of beard, though he is as yet far from the years of his full maturity – for he is but 24 years of age.
Hobby: cultivating the intimate acquaintance of young women of surpassing beauty (and here note that Jarl is no gluttonous greedpig but, rather, a connoisseur who will kill for the best while ignoring anything which does not meet his rigorous standards of perfection).
Quote: "I would that each was a wizard, for then our victory would be all the sweeter." (Said in the Cold West before he led a thousand men to battle against an enemy which outnumbered his own forces by four to one. Despite the promise of victory implicit in his boast, on that occasion he was defeated, and nine in ten of his men were slaughtered or enslaved.)
Shall we say something about Thodric Jarl? Shall we speak of the color of his eye and the tint of his beard? Shall we tell of his history and his hobbies, or quote him in his rhetoric?
No.
Suffice it simply to say that Jarl was of the Rovac, that the Rovac are as primitive a bunch of blood-letting savages as you are likely to cross swords with, and that Jarl was true to his kind.
Hence Guest Gulkan feared him.
Or should have feared him!
Time flies like an arrow, as the proverb has it, and before midwinter Guest Gulkan returned to Gendormargensis and announced his intention to meet Thodric Jarl in single combat.
The wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin shortly came to see Guest Gulkan and counseled him to flee the city.
"Why in the name of a dog's green vomit should I do a thing like that?" said Guest. Guest had then lately entered upon a phase where he spent a great deal of his spare time in devising new and especially barbarous oaths, and "a dog's greem vomit" is typical of these. Sken-Pitilkin resisted the temptation to abrade the boy on account of his uncouth neologisms, and instead dedicated himself to giving good counsel.
"You must flee from Gendormargensis," said Sken-Pitilkin,
"because, unless you flee the city, you'll have to hack it out face to face with Thodric Jarl."
"I should worry?" said Guest.
"Of course you should worry!"
"Why?" said Guest. "Because I'll get blood on my clothes?"
"Because the blood will be your own," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"You have a choice. Bribe up big to buy off Jarl. Or flee. That's the limit of the choices you have at your own disposal, though Bao Gahai may have others."
This Bao Gahai was a dralkosh, a witch, whose devices had helped the Witchlord Onosh secure power and keep it. Rumor had it that Bao Gahai's strength was faltering, but many feared her still.
"Bao Gahai?" said Guest. "I'll not be seeking help from her."
"Yet she may give it," said Sken-Pitilkin. "She desires your presence, now, today, and to tell you as much is the greater part of my reason for coming here. Well. Are you ready to go?"
"I'm not going to see her!" said Guest.
But Sken-Pitilkin was persistent, and told the boy that Lord Onosh himself wished Guest to consult with Bao Gahai. So at length the young Weaponmaster allowed himself to be persuaded into the presence of the dralkosh who for so long had aided and counseled his father.
The audience took place in Bao Gahai's bedroom, which smelt of camphor, of cats, and of antiquity. Bao Gahai was sitting up in bed with a cheeseboard on her knees. On the cheeseboard was an assortment of nuts – she never ate cheese, for she was allergic to it, just as she was allergic to catmeat and the eggs of seagulls – and throughout the audience she occupied herself by opening those nuts with the aid of a hammer, a chisel and an autoptical brain-hook. By profession she was a pathologist, and though she no longer dissected dead flesh – excitement always got the better of her, and she invariably moved from the dead to the living – she was still possessed by the scarcely controllable urge to dissect something. Hence the nuts.
"As a mark of my favor," said Bao Gahai, once she was alone with the young Weaponmaster, "I have persuaded your father to let the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite remain as your bodyguard, for all that he has recently led you into folly by the way of gambling."
"As a mark of your favor, if I truly have your favor," said Guest, astonished by his own boldness even as he spoke, "you might see to the cancellation of my gambling debts – and Rolf's."
"It's the cancellation of your life that should concern you," said Bao Gahai. "Not the cancellation of debt."
"You think me dead at the hand of Thodric Jarl?" said Guest, alluding to the duel to which he was doomed.
"I think that a strong likelihood, unless you leave the city," said Bao Gahai. "I suggest an extended journey of exploration in the Eastern Marches."
"That would be one way of thwarting Jarl's bloodlust," agreed Guest, with an entirely unwonted cheerfullness.
"You're not thinking of poisoning him, are you?" said Bao Gahai sharply.
"No," said Guest. "Of fighting him merely. Of killing him."
"You," said Bao Gahai, flicking a piece of walnut shell in Guest's direction, "have been taking opium."
"Opium?" said Guest.
"Yes, yes," said Bao Gahai. "You have been taking opium. Or else you have a fever."
"A fever? No? Why would you think so?"
"Because," said Bao Gahai, "there is never any way under any of the seventy suns of the fifty thousand hells of Bancharoth that you will ever kill Thodric Jarl in single combat."
"My sword has slaughtered down a multiple of men in combat," said the Weaponmaster staunchly, "and I have trained long and hard since my last slaughter."
"You?" said Bao Gahai, with a laugh barely to be distinguished from the sound of nutshells snappling. "You? You have trained? With whom? With Rolf Thelemite, maybe?"
"The very man," said Guest. "And he is a Rovac warrior, is he not?"
"For sure," said Bao Gahai. "Rolf Thelemite is a warrior, as a sparrow is a bird. But I think the gray-bearded Jarl to be a very eagle in his pride, and I think the sharpness of his talons a fit complement to that pride."
Then Bao Gahai started to laugh.
She laughed and she laughed. Her full-fledged throttling was hideous, sounding for all the world like a man being strangled. Guest Gulkan took Bao Gahai's laughter as a cue to leave, and swiftly made his escape. But Bao Gahai sent Sken-Pitilkin to persecute young Guest with books, and with papers, and with irregular verbs; and to divine his intentions if this should prove remotely possible. The dralkosh did not believe for one moment that Guest actually intended dueling Jarl, so presumed he had a secret plan in hatching.
But Sken-Pitilkin found no hint of the existence of any such plan; and found, too, that the boy Guest was decidedly reluctant to settle to his lessons, for his sword seemed to have fascinated him like a bewitching love.
A date for Guest Gulkan's duel with Thodric Jarl had been fixed, and on morning before that day of destiny – to be precise, on a morning some ten days after the Weaponmaster's return to Gendormargensis – Sken-Pitilkin came to Guest's quarters and found the boy busily sharpening the long razorblade of his sword's cutting edge.
"It is written," said Sken-Pitilkin, shivering in the unheated coldness of Guest Gulkan's room, "that an icicle is but a poor room-mate. Blood, boy! Why don't you heat the room?"
"I am hardening myself body and soul," said Guest, with a studied seriousness which appeared devoid of any hint of irony. "I am hardening myself to meet with Thodric Jarl. Besides, the exercise of the sword warms me to a sufficiency."
"But I am old," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and my bones chilled with my age. It is written that the old should not suffer from the folly of the young."
"Where is that written?" said Guest. "In a book?"
"Where else?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Books truth nothing," said Guest, studying his swordblade by the winterlight which shivered through the open window. "Anyone can write anything in a book."
"So they can," said Sken-Pitilkin, settling himself of a chair and pulling Guest's best solskin horseblanket around him.
"The date of your death, for example. In the books of the city's best bookmakers, that date is written as tomorrow. But there are other things well-written in the books of the world. Irregular verbs, for instance. What say you leave that sword, and make some verbs mere chopmeat with the razor of your intellect."
As scholars have always known, languages should ever be the first learning of the man who may be destined to hold great power. recognizing this truth, the unscholarly Lord Onosh had ordered Sken-Pitilkin to labor young Guest into a linguist. But Guest hated the foreign tongues, their hookworm alphabets and their irregular verbs; and, failing to recognize their imposition as a sign of his father's love for him, he reacted as if Lord Onosh had personally invented all foreign syllabaries for the express purpose of torturing an unscholarly boy.
"Your passion for verbs is obscene," said Guest, momentarily laying aside his sword.
"Obscene?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Surely," said Guest, sliding shut the translucent paper screens designed to exclude the winter air from his quarters.
"You lust for them. You lust like a very antelope. Irregular verbs! To grope, squeeze, suck and horsewhip such! A sick passion!
As for me, I'd rather kiss a toad. I'd think that the lesser perversion."
"Then that's unfortunate," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for your father wishes me to corrupt you with the choicests of my passions."
"Then let's at least leave the irregular verbs till I have killed myself my man," said Guest, again picking up his sword.
"Before battle, I must purify myself, and abstain from all perversions, irregular verbs included."
By way of reply, Sken-Pitilkin reached beneath the horseblanket which he had snugged across his knees, and took a book from beneath his skirt. These skirts were a foreign fashion, and Guest thought they must be desperately cold, though he was wrong in his thinking, for they were exceptionally practical and comfortable, and Sken-Pitilkin ever demonstrated great wisdom by wearing them. Having retrieved the book, Sken-Pitilkin began to unwrap its layers of waterproofing oil-cloth. Guest Gulkan pretended to ignore the book in favor of the admiration of his own reflection in his swordblade. By manipulating the blade he could screen out the greatness of his ears – and concentrate instead on eyes and lips. The young Weaponmaster twisted his lips into a ferocious sneer then rolled his eyes in imitation of a horse gone mad.
All of which severely tempted Sken-Pitilkin, who sorely longed to fetch Guest a sharp crack with his country crook. But, of course, the boy had long since outgrown such convenient discipline.
"If you will not light a brazier," said Sken-Pitilkin, cool even though he was snugged beneath the horseblanket, "at least pass me a little wine to warm my veins."
"What makes you think I've got wine on hand?" said Guest.
"When are you ever without it?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
This was a telling point, and Guest shortly uncovered some wine, and a block of rather grubby cheese to go with it. Knowing Bao Gahai to be allergic to cheese, Guest had acquired a great store of it, thinking to devise some plan for her poisoning. But he had failed in this enterprise, and so was put to the trouble of eating the stuff.
"Careful," said Guest, as Sken-Pitilkin helped himself to wine and cheese. "Be careful, lest you spill your drink on that precious book of yours."
"The book is mine," said Sken-Pitilkin, studying the cheese from several different angles, as if suspecting that it might be poisoned, "so let me do the worrying."
"I worry for my father's sake," said Guest. "For that book is the chiefest of his torturers. Should it die in the bloodflow of your downspilt wine, he'd be ten years searching for an instrument of equal punishment."
"This book is not torture but love," said Sken-Pitilkin, wiping the cheese on the horseblanket, "as I've told you not one time but fifty. Sit! Squat yourself down, boy, then let us begin." Guest Gulkan sat, and squared himself to face the book, looking for all the world like an inexperienced gladiator forced to do battle against a dragon with a toothpick as his sole armament. The book, of course, was Strogloth's Compendium of Delights.
The eminent Strogloth – and who he is is unknown, which is just as well, as there is many a young scholar who would dearly like to murder him – had searched great heaps of grammars for their irregular verbs, working in the spirit of one of those pornographers who reads immense libraries of law and religion with the sole purpose of extracting nuggets of brutal licentiousness.
The result? Spectacular!
"We will begin," said Sken-Pitilkin, chewing on the cheese, which was not too bad, "with the conjugation of the verb porp.
Which means…? Guest? Guest, what is meant by the word porp?"
"You tell me," said Guest, "for the irregular verbs are your perversion, not mine."
"A perversion, yes," agreed Sken-Pitilkin, speaking with great self-restraint. Then, feeling the boy had had things all his own way for just a little too long: "But are you not a pervert? Is not the killing of men and the taking of their scalps a perversion of sorts?"
"It is culturally appropriate," said Guest. "You told me so yourself when we studied ethnology."
"Ah, ethnology," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A mistake."
Here it must be conceded that Sken-Pitilkin had indeed made a grievous error when he introduced young Guest to the science of ethnology; for Sken-Pitilkin had forgotten how much of that science deals in great and enthusiastic detail with vivisection, cannibalism, head hunting, ritual murder, torture, louche initiation rites, and, above all, with sex customs.
"An ethnologist would say," said Guest, gaining enthusiasm as he saw he had the advantage, "that hunting men and killing them for their scalps is a vital part of my cultural heritage. For you as an uitlander scholar to criticize or condemn this practice would represent intolerable interference in the internal affairs of the Collosnon Empire."
"No," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you are wrong, for now you have confounded a theorem of ethnology with a practical political doctrine."
"I have not!" said Guest.
But he had, and Sken-Pitilkin explained his error to him in excruciating detail.
"You understand?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "No! Of course you don't! Never mind. Let us proceed to delight, for the irregular verbs yet await us."
"Irregular verbs!" sneered Guest. "My praxis is combat, not scholarship. My destiny is to do battle, to kill men, to drink their blood and take their scalps."
"Perhaps, perhaps," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But I rule this particular battlefield, so you will conduct yourself like a prisoner of war and obey me as the chiefest of your jailors. The verbs!"
"The verbs have awaited us for years already," said Guest.
"Let them wait till tomorrow for, with my man as yet to kill, I'm in no mood for study today."
"Words are weapons," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And tools. If you aspire to be surgeon to the body politic, then you should look to your armamentarium."
"Swords are weapons far better," said Guest. "For language cannot chop heads."Sken-Pitilkin studied the young man carefully, for he was sober yet spoke with a drunkard's enthusiasm. He was drugged. Or somehow intoxicated. Perhaps, just perhaps, he was intoxicated by his own over-enterprising ambition. Certainly he looked far, far too buoyant, considering that he was due to shortly face the murderous Thodric Jarl in a duel he was certain to lose. Sken-Pitilkin wondered if Guest had any true conception of the true nature of his own predicament.
"You know, my boy," said Sken-Pitilkin, "it would be very easy for you to make your peace with Thodric Jarl, if you did but humble yourself before him. Your life is full of so much promise that it would be foolish for you to do otherwise."
"My life," said Guest, "has no promise whatsoever."
"No promise?" said Sken-Pitilkin in surprise. "But don't you realize that you're surely going to end up with the imperial throne? That's your fate of a certainty, as long as you can master your temper and learn up a little diplomacy, and just a fragment of self-control to match it."
"You do but fantasize," said Guest, "for I am but a motherless boy with no future here or elsewhere, as all the world is at pains to tell me, thrice five times a day between dawning and darkness.
But even though I must live here as a worthless bastard with all the world leagued in scorn against me, I will not surrender my pride by crawling to Thodric Jarl, no, nor by bribing him either."
So spoke Guest Gulkan, revealing depths of resentment which surprised Sken-Pitilkin, who cast about for some form of words which might improve the boy's self-confidence.
"You lie so smoothly I wish I'd taught you the skill myself," said Sken-Pitilkin, failing to find the words he sought. "Very well. Since your mastery has already encompassed the art of the lie, and since today finds you lacking the courage to tackle the smallest of the irregular verbs, though it be a naked verb, and hairless, and feeble in its antiquity – then, that being so, let us turn our minds to the study of geography."
"Not if that means maps," said Guest.
"You are in luck," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for all my maps are back in my own quarters."
"All right then," said Guest. "Geography it is."
He was relieved that they were to abandon verbs for geography. For geography was not quite so very bad, at least when there were no maps to be studied. Sken-Pitilkin had trunkloads of maps, charts and plans showing the margins of earth and sea, the sewer systems of foreign cities, the whims of the wind, the fruiting of the harvests, key infestations of dragons and the geographical range of the platypus. But while Guest knew the theory of maps, he had yet to master the art of conjuring truth from a scrabblework of isograms. Usually, when given a mapwork problem, he would stare at the parchment all day and get precisely nowhere. Guest Gulkan had such difficulties partly because so many things on Sken-Pitilkin's maps were entirely alien to his experience. The sea, for instance. He was exasperated by geographical figurations which suggested that in places the sea ran on for thousands of leagues without interruption, because surely the existence of such an immensity of water was contrary to both reason and sheer probability.
And a shortage of illustrations made it difficult to match these alien places with their flora and fauna. The elephant and the platypus were both delineated explicitly in Sken-Pitilkin's Book of Beasts, the one being a very large mouse with deformed teeth and a nose of surpassing length, and the other being a rat in the form of a duck.
But what of the quokka? And the jellyfish?
Of these Guest Gulkan was unable to form any clear conception.
Yet he hoped never to meet such a monster as a jellyfish in the flesh, for it had been described to him as a translucent beast in the form of a blob from which depended a million fine-stranded tentacles which stung and killed. The monster was alleged to be otherwise without features, possessed of no eyes, nose, ears, arms, head, neck, trunk or external organs of generation. Guest Gulkan had met with the jellyfish twice already in nightmare, and on neither occasion had he been able to argue the brute out of killing him. On no account did he want to meet the thing a third time in the world of the real.
He said as much.
"Fear not the jellyfish," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A far more dangerous creature is the woman. Far many more men have been killed on account of women than ever met their deaths in the tentacles of a jellyfish. You in your own flesh look to become one of them."
"It's not come to killing," said Guest. "Not yet."
Though the young Yarglat barbarian knew there would almost certainly be a killing when he met with Jarl on the morrow, he had no appetite for argument with his tutor.
"Then don't let it!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Pay out your gold!
Bribe the Rovac! Buy yourself a victory! For it won't be Jarl who dies. Oh no. If it's blades in earnest, it's you who dies. And you're running out of time to do something about it."
"You underestimate me," said Guest. "I have my sword, and I've spent my life training in its use."
"Your life!" said his tutor. "Boy, you're still wet from the egg! If you don't trust me, then trust the city. All over Gendormargensis, men are placing bets, and the odds predict your speedy death in battle."
"When we fight," said Guest, tempted into the heat of argument despite himself, "it won't be me who does the dying. I've killed men and, and I've trained for killing more, and what's Jarl so special about?"
"A man is a man," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And a boy a boy."
"I'm no boy!" said Guest in fury, though of course at the age of 14 he was very much a boy.
"A boy, verily, to be so easily provoked," said Sken-Pitilkin calmly. "Why, you're as irregular in your humors as one of the Akromian verbs."
"Jarl will be boy enough to bury when I'm through with him," said Guest. "You want to be rich? Then bet on my fortunes!"
"I'm not a gambling man," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But as soon as our lesson is over, I'm going to wager a month's salary on your early death. I'd be a fool to pass up a chance of profit so certain."
"Certain!" said Guest, rising to his feet. "I'll show you what's certain!"
With that battle-smash threat, the young Weaponmaster boiled out of his room, driven by the steam generated by the heat of his anger. However, once having boiled in such an impressive fashion, he found his wrath evaporating almost as swiftly as it had been generated.
So where to now?
In the harshness of its winter, Gendormargensis was no place for idling out of doors. Its bleakness was ruled by the wind-slam rain which slushed the streets to a turgid muck, the frigidity of which beaked eagerly through the cracks and chasms in the Weaponmaster's filthy boots. Though Guest was an emperor's son, the congenital disorder of his gear ever made him look like an impoverished refugee from six years of mountain-path campaigning.
Ever so slowly, the young Weaponmaster began to feel ever so slightly stupid. Should he go back inside? And lose face by apologizing? Never! Even so… he half-wished Sken-Pitilkin would exert his authority and order him back inside. But his elderly tutor appeared to have given up on him, at least for the moment. Guest Gulkan summed his options, and quickly, the weather being a disincentive to extended meditation. He could quest to Rolf Thelemite's sickbed and seek to rouse the man from his convalescence. Or he could at last yield to the advice of his betters, seek out Thodric Jarl, and bribe that Rovac mercenary to throw their fight in Enskandalon Square. Or, if still bent on dueling Jarl to the death, he could practice those sword-skills which he had been honing for so long.
Or -
But here Guest Gulkan left off thinking, for an oncoming messenger was hailing him.
"Ho! Gulkan my man!"
It was the dwarf Glambrax, his pet dwarf and his father's favorite fool.
"Ho!" said Guest.
"Ho-ha!" said Glambrax.
"Ho-ha-ho-ho!" said Guest.
This went on for some time, the pair bawling at each other in the strumpeting wind like a couple of madmen, for this was a nonsense-game they had brought to perfection in the last year or so. But at last Glambrax swapped nonsense for sense.
"Zelafona, my man," said Glambrax, thus venting to the winter air the name of the witch who had mothered him.
"If I'm to be Zelafona," said Guest, "then I'm naturally woman, not man, though I doubt I'd be woman of yours."
"Zelafona," said Glambrax, ignoring this sally in favor of his business. "She wishes to see you."
But Guest had no wish whatsoever to see Glambrax's mother, who, after all, was Bao Gahai's sister. Doubtless she had good advice for him, but he was brim-full to the ears with good advice already, was drowning in the stuff, considered it noxious, said as much, and proposed that he detoxify himself with some hard spirits in the nearest tavern of convenience.
"With Rolf," said Glambrax.
"Oh, if we can liberate him, then yes," said Guest. "By all means with Rolf."
So they took themselves off to the infirmary where the convalescent Rovac warrior was laid up in bed, recovering from the aftermath of an attack of scarlet fever. They found Eljuk Zala seated by Rolf Thelemite, reading to him from one of Sken-Pitilkin's books of geography. Guest Gulkan and Glambrax wrested the book from Eljuk Zala and pitched it into a half-full chamber pot, then swept the invalid and his nursemaid away to the nearest tavern. There Guest got very drunk, his companions got almost as intoxicated, and Guest in his bravado told all the world how he would hack Jarl to pieces on the morrow, then take the fair Yerzerdayla as his own, and bed her with all the ferocity of strength at his disposal.
When the next day blurred to life, Guest Gulkan woke but slowly. He was sullen and hungover as he made his way through the dull morning light to Enskandalon Square, where he was scheduled to meet Jarl in combat.
Lord Onosh was there already, waiting for his son. With Lord Onosh was the dralkosh Bao Gahai, in company with her sister Zelafona and Zelafona's dwarf-son Glambrax. Others were there also: a full two hundred assorted warriors, servants, tribesmen and beggars, together with vendors selling hot chestnuts and cups of warmed-up horseblood diluted with hard liquor.
Present amongst that gathering was Eljuk Zala, and there too were the wizards Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus.
Conspicuous by his absence was Rolf Thelemite, who was spending that morning in his bed in the infirmary, dead to the world as a consequences of his over-indulgences of the night before.
On arriving at Enskandalon Square, Guest Gulkan did not address his father, but instead ignored him entirely as he stripped off his furs and began practicing some swordstrokes. It was immediately obvious to the Witchlord Onosh that Guest Gulkan had been training intensely while encamped by the Yolantarath. But it was also painfully obvious to Lord Onosh – and to most other onlookers – that the boy's improvements fell far short of making him battle-worthy against such a formidable opponent as Jarl.
We must remember that Guest Gulkan was still a boy of 14, and though his stature could be mistaken for that of a man, he was a very child in his folly when he thought to match himself against the battle-hardened brutality of a grown man a full ten years older that himself.
When Guest was done with his swordpractice, he at last turned to his father and grinned.
Then the Witchlord Onosh saw that his son Guest had no plans of dying that day, but instead thought he would hack down Thodric Jarl and walk from that place in triumph. Unfortunately the young Guest Gulkan had become over-confident in battle through his success in killing bandits – poor wretches who were usually half- starved and often half-mad and leprous into the bargain. His over-confidence had been boosted by the marked improvement he had lately made through his training.
"Father," said Eljuk Zala, tugging at the Witchlord's sleeve to win his attention.
"Eljuk," said Lord Onosh, acknowledging the presence of his favorite son.
"He thinks he can win, doesn't he?" said Eljuk.
"It would seem so from the grin," said Lord Onosh.
The Witchlord's voice was measured. It was not easy for him to stand here waiting for a Rovac warrior to come forth to hack down his son. But one does not win an empire through softness of spirit, nor can an empire be held by one who fears to do the hard things, or to have them done on his account.
"But," said Eljuk, "but he's going to die. Isn't he?"
"We are all of us going to die," said Lord Onosh. "The only question is, when."
"I – I don't want Guest to die," said Eljuk.
The plaintive tone of Eljuk's voice made Lord Onosh turn and look at him. The Witchlord's scrutiny revealed to him a surprising fact: Eljuk had been crying.
"You really want him to live?" said Lord Onosh.
"But of course," said Eljuk, as if it was obvious. "Of course I want him to live. What else would I want?"
The innocence of that response almost made Lord Onosh weep.
As Lord Onosh knew full well, if Guest survived this day of testing then he must necessarily and inevitably kill his brother Eljuk. Guest had the will to power and the bloody resolution necessary to seize and hold an empire, whereas Eljuk -
Poor Eljuk.
"You've never denied me before," said Eljuk.
"No," said Lord Onosh. "I haven't."
Lord Onosh had never been able to deny the boy anything. Not since he had sentenced the boy to die.
Character shows itself early, and when Eljuk had been but a small boy his father had seen that Eljuk would never be emperor.
He was too conciliatory, too sentimental and far too selfeffacing. Whereas Guest had a will to power and a violence to match it, and hence could definitely be emperor, though in all probability a bad one.
Possibly: a very bad one.
When Lord Onosh had realized the strength and ferocity of Guest Gulkan's bloody temper, he had seen that everything possible must be done to postpone the boy's ascension to the imperial throne, in the hope that the passage of years would mature him and mellow him. So Lord Onosh had named Eljuk as his heir, thus dooming Eljuk to die. It is one of the invariable rules of human affairs that power always ends up in the hands of those who want it most; and so, since Eljuk had the misfortune to lack all taste for dominance, it was a foregone conclusion that he would inevitably be murdered, if not by his brother then by some other.
Eljuk might – might! – have survived as ruler of some trifling little peacetime principality where he could have been played as a puppet by wise and remorseless councilors. But life amongst the Yarglat did not facilitate charades of puppetry. In seeking to rule the Yarglat, Eljuk must surely die, and Eljuk -
Eljuk did not realize that he had been sentenced to death, and that was the measure of his folly, a measure of his total unsuitability to hold the throne.
"Eljuk," said Lord Onosh, "when I am dead… "
"May you never die," said Eljuk piously.
"Birth is death," said Lord Onosh harshly. "As I was born, so must I die. Then – Eljuk, when I'm dead, there won't be anyone to stand between you and the world."
"There'll be Guest," said Eljuk.
"Guest, yes," said Lord Onosh. "So what if – Eljuk, brothers quarrel. Two brothers, one kingdom. The story plays a thousand times in history. It never has a happy ending."
There was a stir amongst those gathered in Enskandalon Square. Thodric Jarl had arrived.
"Save Guest," said Eljuk. "Then – then write it down for me.
Don't tell him, but write it down. Write that – that I asked you.
Then when I'm emperor I'll show him what you wrote. Then he'll know I saved him. A debt, you see."
Lord Onosh doubted very seriously that any such posthumous revelation would could for much when an empire was at stake.
Still.
What else could he do?
Eljuk would never be able to hold the empire. He was too… too innocent. Too nice. Whereas Guest… well, Guest was a fool, a brash and ignorant over-confident fool. He drank too much, kept bad company, piled up gambling debts, was rude to powerful people such as Bao Gahai, and according to Sken-Pitilkin's account he was a scholar of truly grotesque incompetence.
But despite all these defects the young Weaponmaster had demonstrated a ruthless resolution that his brother Eljuk lacked.
He had set his heart on hacking down Thodric Jarl; he had trained for the purpose; he had avoided all temptation to escape from the duel by bribery; and here he was today, bent on consummating his folly.
Lord Onosh summoned Sken-Pitilkin with a finger and made his wishes known.
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, once he understood what his emperor wanted.
"You won't do it?" said Lord Onosh, detecting a note of resentful resistance in Sken-Pitilkin's voice.
"My lord, this – this boy Guest, he's, in his impetuosity he pitched a book to a chamber-pot."
"It was your book, I suppose," said Lord Onosh, suppressing his extreme irritation at finding his tame wizard bothering him with such a triviality on such an occasion.
"It was, my lord. It was – "
"Give me your bill and I'll pay it," said Lord Onosh.
At which Sken-Pitilkin gave up all hope of making the Witchlord Onosh understand the gravity of Guest Gulkan's crime.
For the book which had fallen to the chamber pot had been a book of geography; and ancient; and stocked full of wisdom; and decorated in its margins with a multitude of irregular verbs; and it had been ruined entirely by its drenching, and was quite irreplaceable, for gold would not serve as its replacement, no, nor ivory either, nor silver, nor any measure of shimmering silks and unbroken hymens.
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin remotely. "I hear, and to hear is to obey."
"Good, good," said Lord Onosh testily. "Then get on with it!"
Thus commanded, Sken-Pitilkin positioned himself near the fighters, and prepared to put his powers of levitation to work.
This he did discretely, without anyone in the audience realizing what was happening. So, when combat was joined, Thodric Jarl's feet were hooked from under him by the arts of Sken-Pitilkin's magic, and down went Jarl in the snow and slush. Guest Gulkan promptly tried to hack off Jarl's head, whereupon Sken-Pitilkin secured the sideways deflection of the Weaponmaster's sword, ensuring that it did but hack a bloodline in Jarl's gray-haired scalp.
There was supreme art in that studied deflection, but not one person in the audience understood that art. To the audience, it seemed merely that Jarl had slipped, and that Guest had blundered away his chance to decapitate the fallen Rovac warrior.
Thodric Jarl was down on the ground, bleeding profusely from the cut in his scalp. Blood poured from his head, sluiced through his hair, teemed down his face in rivulets then clogged in the gray of his beard. The Witchlord Onosh promptly declared that Jarl had been defeated, and that Yerzerdayla was therefore Guest Gulkan's prize.
"But," said Lord Onosh, "as the boy Guest has recently been guilty of a scandalizing delinquency, it is fitting that his possession of Yerzerdayla be tied to his punishment for that delinquency."
Then the Witchlord Onosh publicly denounced the boy Guest on account of the fact that he had seen fit to dunk one of Sken Pitilkin's codicological treasures in a chamber pot. The emperor announced Guest's punishment:
"On account of his delinquency, the boy is not be permitted to take possession of the woman Yerzerdayla until he is 18 years of age."
Lord Onosh declared that Yerzerdayla would meanwhile "reside in chastity" under his own roof.
The Witchlord Onosh felt that he had resolved things rather nicely, winning a margin of four years or so in which to arrange for Guest to discretely surrender Yerzerdayla to Thodric Jarl. But in the interim, he must move quickly to separate Guest and Jarl, lest they find some excuse for a rematch.
Accordingly, that evening the young Guest Gulkan was summoned into his father's presence. There he found Zelafona, the aged but elegant sister of Bao Gahai, and her dwarf-son Glambrax.
"Guest," said Lord Onosh. "You are leaving Gendormargensis.
Tonight. Glambrax and Zelafona are going with you."
"Leaving?" said Guest. "But why?"
"Because," said Lord Onosh, "Thodric Jarl has sworn a bloody oath to kill both you and Sken-Pitilkin. In fact, unless my spies misheard him, he swore to butcher every wizard in the world."
"Then," said Guest calmly, "you would be well within your rights to chop him into dogmeat, for every wizard in Gendormargensis lives in your protection."
"So they do, so they do," said Lord Onosh. "So, for their protection, my wizards are joining you in exile."
"Exile?" said Guest in alarm. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm sending you out of the empire," said Lord Onosh. "Have you heard of a place called Alozay? Have you heard of Molothair?"
"No," said Guest.
"Sken-Pitilkin swears he has taught you of both," said Lord Onosh. "And in detail. Molothair is a city, and Alozay an island.
The city of Molothair sits on the island of Alozay, and serves as the capital of that archipelago known as Safrak. You can place Safrak on a map, I trust?"
"I can place anything on a map," said Guest. "A cup, a plate, a pot or a branding iron. Give Molothair or Safrak into my hand and I will place them on any map of your choosing."
"Come," said Lord Onosh impatiently, "you must know the places which we're talking of, for Safrak – oh, never mind! Sken Pitilkin's the geographer, let him then lesson you. You'll have plenty of time for lessons on your journey."
And with that Guest Gulkan was dismissed, and was sent away to pack up for his journey into exile.
Name: Guest Gulkan.
Birthplace: Stranagor.
Occupation: student.
Status: barbarian-in-training.
Description: aggressive Yarglat male who lives his life as if determined to play the role of barbarian to the bloody hilt.
Hobby: the tasting of beer (often, and in bulk).
Quote: "It wasn't me and I didn't really mean to do it, and anyway the bitch bit me." (Said at the age of eleven, when he was caught barbecuing Viranessa, the silky-haired lap-dog which had long been the prize possession of his brother Eljuk Zala.)
So it was that Guest Gulkan departed from Gendormargensis in the depths of winter and made the arduous journey to the islands of Safrak. He did not go alone but was accompanied by two wizards, a witch, a dwarf and a bodyguard – the people in question being the wizard of Xluzu named Pelagius Zozimus, the wizard of Skatzabratzumon named Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, the aged but elegant dralkosh named Zelafona, the dwarf Glambrax and the doughty Rovac warrior named Rolf Thelemite.
Though Rolf was not properly recovered from his attack of scarlet fever, they nevertheless made good time on their journey out of the Collosnon Empire.
From Gendormargensis they traveled, making the journey down the frozen Yolantarath River on a sleigh drawn by the fur-dogs known as ubeks. Some 200 leagues south-west of Gendormargensis, and just downstream from the trading town of Babaroth, the Yolantarath is intersected by the Pig River. Guest Gulkan and his companions pushed their way up the Pig. "Push" is very much the operative word, for the winter-frozen river was pocked with tree trunks and derelict rocks, and the clearness of its ice was rutted by the journeying of many traders.
Yet the difficulties of the journey did not depress the Weaponmaster. Rather, Guest Gulkan began to lighten up, his mood becoming buoyant – then weightless. The elevation of his spirits was scarcely surprising when one considers the claustrophobic tensions the boy had long endured in the imperial court of Gendormargensis.
The family history was not a happy one.
To seize power and secure it, the Witchlord Onosh had been put to the trouble of killing his father, his mother, his paternal grandfather, his twin sisters and his solitary brother, two uncles, four cousins, an aunt and five imperial concubines; and he had also secured the death of a nephew and the nephew's favorite horse.
All this was par for the course as far as the Yarglat were concerned – except for the gratuitous murder of the horse, which was generally considered to be excessive, and indicative of a streak of mean-spirited vindictiveness unbecoming in a warrior.
But Guest -
Perhaps there was an unexpected streak of mercy in Guest Gulkan's soul, for he had long been troubled by the possibility that he might one day be forced to inherit his father's bloody responsibilities, and to secure the empire yet again with a fresh set of blood-slaughter murders.
The journey the Weaponmaster was presently making was steadily taking him away from all possibility of any such conflicts, and so he was full of jokes and levity as he and his companions traveled up the Pig, arriving at last at the village of Ink on the shores of the Swelaway Sea.
There Guest gazed to his full upon the Swelaway Sea. He took so long about it that you might have thought him busy trying to drink it entire, rather than merely look at it.
At last he knelt by the waters, tasted them, then rose with a regretful sigh.
"What is it?" said Rolf Thelemite.
"It is but water," said Guest regretfully. "If only it were liquor, then there might be some use for it."Guest was trying to deny the obvious effect that the sight of this massive body of water had had on him. For Guest at that age was very full of himself, and held in very poor esteem those minor parts of the universe which lay outside his own hard-striving corpus. Yet the Swelaway Sea, by the very act of its own existence, indicated by its vast indifference that there was more to the cosmic order than the blood and bones of one Guest Gulkan, and was uncomfortably suggestive of the possibility that the boy Guest might ultimately be but one utterly trifling and inconsequential part of a larger whole too vast to be comfortably contemplated.
With the Swelaway Sea having thus been encountered (yes, and do you remember the first time that you in your own person encountered the immensity of the sea, whether salt sea or fresh?) the travelers walked into Ink and addressed themselves to the question of the acquisition of a boat.
At Ink, a place much to be noted for the barking of its dogs and the smell of its dead fish, for the multiplicity of its turds and the squaloring of its five billion trouserless children, the adventurers were (this at least was the plan) to trade their sleigh, their fur-dogs and their gold for a small fishing boat.
The Witchlord Onosh in his mercy and his wisdom had provided the travelers with gold in plenty – certainly enough, in combination with their other discardable possessions, to buy them a boat for the passage to Safrak. Unfortunately, Rolf Thelemite persuaded the Weaponmaster Guest to join him in the pursuit of a bargain and save their cash for pleasure rather than transit.
Fortunately, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin vetoed the purchase of any bargain, and they spent their gold on an expensive but seaworthy boat.
The boat, which was named the Lathmish, was sold to them by a man named Umbilskimp, an old man who suffered bitterly from chilblains and emphysema. It came with a money-back warranty which guaranteed it to be good for five years or fifty return trips across the Swelaway Sea. Both Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin checked the wording of the warranty, and checked it closely – and, on being satisfied, they herded Guest and Rolf aboard the boat, and set to sea.
But when the travelers were well launched upon the cold gray chop of the Swelaway Sea, the boat began to leak; and before they were so much as half-way to Alozay they found their craft was leaking like a fish hacked open by a landing hook.
Fortunately, the travelers managed to get their leaking wreck of a boat as far as the island of Ema-Urk before it actually sank. Once the thing had been grounded, an inspection of the hull proved it to be one spongy mass of sodden rot, which the boat salesman must have known.
"He is a murderer!" said Guest, denouncing the venial Umbilskimp. "And if I get him in my power then I will hang him!"
"An excellent sentiment," said Sken-Pitilkin, who usually deplored violence, but who on this occasion found himself in total agreement with Guest's vow of vengeance. "Let us report the man as soon as we get to Alozay, and perhaps they will have the grace to give us satisfaction."
And when a passing boat had at length given them passage to Alozay, they did just that – reporting the delinquent Umbilskimp to Banker Sod himself.
But Vernon Brigadoon Sod, the man of iceman race who headed the Safrak Bank and dominated the island of Alozay, declared the affairs of Ink to be no concern of his.
"In Safrak," said Sod, "we see our law as being concerned with the rule of the Safrak Islands. No more, no less."
"Then who rules Ink?" said Guest.
"Nobody," said Sod. "Ink is a free village, just as Port Domax is a free city. If you must have vengeance upon this fellow Um – Umbik -
"
"Umbilskimp," supplied Guest, who had vowed never to forget the man until the man was dead.
"If you must have your vengeance," said Sod, "then you must secure it for yourself, and you will not be securing it while you are resident upon Alozay."
So Guest arrived upon Alozay, Safrak's ruling island and the site of the capital city of Molothair, and his arrival was marred by the fact that he was cheated of his legitimate revenge upon the salesman who had almost encompassed his murder.
He vowed again that he would not forget the fellow.
Meantime, back in Gendormargensis, the Witchlord Onosh sat closeted with Thodric Jarl and Eljuk Zala, trying to work out how to deal with the problems in Locontareth.
The city of Locontareth had long been a c entre of unrest, and there were rumors which suggested that one Sham Cham of that city was exercising his talents in stirring up a tax revolt. Acting on Thodric Jarl's suggestion, Lord Onosh had tried to dispose of the matter with the minimum of fuss, by sending killers to ensure that Sham Cham passed away quietly in his sleep.
Lord Onosh had just lately received news that the killers had been killed in their turn, and that a very lively and decidedly unkilled Sham Cham now slept with half a dozen man-eating guard dogs in his room.
"It looks," said Lord Onosh gloomily, "as if this will be Stranagor all over again."
"Stranagor?" said Eljuk Zala. "What's that got to do with it?"
"My, ah, my – how did I phrase it? – my Provision for the Permanent Abolition of Riverside Vermin," said the Witchlord Onosh. "That was it. The vermin being the Geflung. It was a revolt, a tax revolt. You don't remember?"
Eljuk Zala confessed that he had no recollection of ever reading or hearing about any such revolt.
This disturbed the Witchlord greatly, for nobody could be ignorant of the late and lamentable tax revolt in Stranagor unless they were ignorant of the affairs of the empire as a whole, and such ignorance was dangerous in the empire's anointed heir.
Nevertheless, the Witchlord Onosh did his best to conceal his disappointment as he explained.
"In the country around Stranagor," said Lord Onosh, "live the Geflung, who – "
As the Witchlord began to explain things to Eljuk Zala,
Thodric Jarl turned his own attention to a map of the Collosnon Empire and began planning a war against Locontareth, something he was sure the empire would find itself engaged in before too terribly long – if not in the coming year, then in the year after.