The wizards and the warriors tcoaaod-1

by Hugh Cook

  'At this distance, no,' said Miphon.

  One league further north, they came upon the ruins of Estar's temple. Amongst the charred rubble they found one living man, squatting in the ashes by a fire-scarred idol. His clothing, designed for ceremony rather than for use, was dirty and torn. His hands were blistered by the labour of uncovering the idol from the wreckage. One fingernail was bruised sullen black-red.

  'Who are you?' asked Phyphor in Galish.

  The stranger said nothing, but stared blankly at the idol. It had huge eyes which focused on nothing, broad lips parted to suck and absorb, a vast sagging chin; its fingers were tipped with claws.

  'Name yourself!' roared Garash.

  The young stranger rocked backwards and forwards, humming words without meaning.

  'Stranger,' said Miphon quietly, fingering the idol. 'May we know your name? Please.'

  'Valarkin,' murmured the man.

  'Who burnt this place?'

  'Those who did,' said Valarkin.

  Which, though true, was unsatisfactory.

  Bodies, many half-cremated, littered the ruins. From one, Garash salvaged an amulet.

  'The spider,' said Phyphor, as Garash weighed it in his hand. 'Collosnon soldiers have been here.'

  'This has no power,' said Garash with contempt, tossing the amulet to one side.

  Miphon fielded it. The amulet was an oval ceramic tile with a neckcord – or the charred remains of one -threaded through a small hole. On the front was a black spider on a green background; on the back was a diamond made of a hundred curious hieroglyphs.

  'Can you read this?' said Miphon to Phyphor.

  'No,' said Phyphor. 'But only Collosnon soldiers wear those things. I know that much.'

  Miphon let the amulet fall. Since they lost the donkey, he had learnt to carry essentials only.

  'So the Collosnon have reached Estar,' said Garash. 'Perhaps in time we'll see the master of Tameran march his troops to the Great Dyke.'

  Phyphor thought of all the northing they had made -through territory watched by the Landguard, by way of Narba to the Rice Empire, past Veda to the Harvest Plains, then to Selzirk, then Runcorn, then through the mountain kingdoms into Estar.

  'No,' he said. 'Never.'

  'We fought hard,' said the young Valarkin, speaking up unexpectedly. 'We did our best. But they were too many.'

  'Do the Collosnon rule Estar now?' asked Phyphor. 'Not yet,' said Valarkin. 'They attacked here, but they were only a raiding party. The prince's soldiers caught them at it. There was a fight. The Collosnon lost – but all our people were dead by then. Saving me.' 'Were you a priest here?'

  'Yes,' said Valarkin. Then added: 'I fought in the defence of the temple. I fought well.'

  That was a lie. He had fled when the attack started, hiding in darkness until Comedo's troops had arrived to destroy the Collosnon invaders. ' 'Valarkin,' said Miphon, 'Can you tell us if the wizard Heenmor is still at Castle Vaunting?'

  'We've not talked with the castle since the dragon ravaged the land,' said Valarkin. 'The castle hates us. Because the dragon burnt the country. They blame us for that.'

  The dragon, yes. Phyphor looked at the sky. It was almost dayfail.

  'Don't worry about the dragon,' said Valarkin. 'You can stay here – many travellers did. Our god kept the dragon away. Anyway, it's dead now. Our god destroyed it.'

  'When?' said Garash.

  'The night it burned the countryside. That was the night of its death-agony. Are we to blame for that? Gods are for the care of the dead, not the killing of dragons. The prince was warned.'

  'About what?' said Garash.

  'That there would be dangers. He's to blame. Comedo. We warned him – but he insisted. So the dragon died a noisy death – what difference does it make? Our god killed it. Not instantly – but it's dead all right.'

  'Why is the prince angry then?' said Miphon.

  'Because it burnt Lorford,' said Valarkin, looking at him with angry eyes gimlet-sharp. 'It burnt the palace stables. He can only seat twenty men on horseback now – there was plenty of roast horsemeat the night the dragon fle.w.'

  Hoping the dragon was indeed dead, the wizards began to make camp. Another day should take them to Lorford.

  Elsewhere, after a day spent crawling and climbing through mountain tunnels, the Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst emerged into the evening air at the foot of the mountain of Maf. Soon he found Durnwold. who had been keeping vigil, waiting for a sign. Durnwold had kept Hearst's horse with him, as well as his own. As the two men rode toward the Salt Road, they saw a campfire burning in the temple ruins.

  Gaining the road, they headed for Lorford; they did not stop to investigate the camp fire, and those warming themselves by its flames thought it wisest not to challenge the two horsemen passing in the night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Name: Johan Meryl Comedo, prince of Estar.

  Occupation: ruler of Estar.

  Status: Class Enemy of the Common People.

  Hobbies: preservation of traditional royal prerogatives by way of rape, torture, looting, arson, sundry oppressions of peasants, incarceration without charge or trial, etc. etc.

  Description: not quite the man his father was.

  ***

  Ten leagues is an easy day for an army, but the twenty thousand paces from the temple to the town of Lorford taxed the wizards severely. Garash, unwilling to drive himself, slowed them up; it was evening when they reached the town – too late to seek entry to Castle Vaunting.

  Valarkin, travelling with the wizards, showed them round this strange town which had been built half by optimists above ground, and half by pessimists below. The pessimists had survived the dragon; the rest of the town was in ruins.

  They took shelter in an underground tavern crowded with drunks celebrating the death of the dragon. This excuse for boozing had already lasted a night and a day, but enthusiasm still ran high. The dragon's death meant peace and prosperity – promising beer money for everyone.

  The dragon had been killed – or so went the story – by Morgan Hearst, a hero from the west. When Valarkin stood up to dispute this, he was jeered at, then beaten up and thrown outside to lie in the street in the company of a few blind drunk gross green Melski males.

  The wizards learnt that some Collosnon soldiers -preparing for an invasion, perhaps? – were raiding in Estar. Nobody lamented the lost temple and its dead priests, but the wiser heads realised that the Collosnon, by burning the temple, had destroyed one of Estar's most powerful defences. Still, they were sure Castle Vaunting could stand against any invaders. What worried them was the flame trench on the southern border, which must delay any Galish convoys coming from that direction.

  One man longing for the Galish to arrive was a drunken sea captain from the Harvest Plains. In the autumn, he had sailed from Androlmarphos with a cargo of luxuries for the Ravlish Lands. Attacked by pirates, his ship had escaped, only to be severely damaged by a storm. He had brought it up the Hollern River for repairs, anchoring just below the fords of Lorford.

  'My troubles were only starting. My screwrot crew deserted to take service with the prince. This end of winter – the winter cost me pretty, never doubt it – the prince seized my cargo's cream. Six boys – six! The best – young slave boys, trained to service. The temple wanted them for sacrifice. To persuade a god to kill a dragon. We all know what killed what in the end. The prince donated them. Easy for him to give, wasn't it? 'There were women, too – but those went to the prince. He's a fine one for taking. And he's not the only one! The Melski have torn the nails from my ship, working underwater. It's grounded on the riverbed. So here I sit till the Galish come so I can sell what's left -then I'll barefoot back to Runcorn and beyond.'

  As an introduction to the habits and practises of Johan Meryl Comedo, this was hardly promising; other stories the wizards heard did nothing to advance him in their favour.

  Come morning, they walked up Melross Hill to the black battlements of the castle
dominating the heights above Lorford. Although it was spring, the cold wind sang a joyless, bitter song as it cut through chinks and gaps in the walls of the hillside hovels of the servants who worked in the castle but were refused shelter there.

  Comedo and his fighting men – and their women -occupied only the castle's gatehouse keep; nobody dwelt in the eight towers of the eight orders of wizards, still sealed against men as they had been through all the centuries since wizards had deserted them. Darkest and tallest was the tower of the Dark Order, the order of Ebber, the order of Shadows, the commanders of dreams and delusions.

  Comedo refused to share his keep with his servants, and would not let them build inside the flat area enclosed by the long battlements as he did not want vernacular elements spoiling the classical flow of his castle's interior. Hence the hovels on the hill. Fleabite children stared from shack-shanty doors as the wizards laboured uphill, buffeted by the wind.

  'The dragon missed what most needed burning,' said Garash.

  The hovels had been built right to the edge of the flame trench which moated the castle. Unlike the fire dyke on Estar's southern border, this trench had never filled with rubble, despite lack of maintenance; it dropped so deep that one could count a falling stone from one to ten before it hit bottom. Where water and wastes were discharged, sprawling green moss followed the moist trail downwards, but far before the bottom of the trench it was too hot for moss to grow.

  Writhing red and orange flames simmered at the bottom of the fire dyke. It had been built to last even should the Swarms besiege the castle for five thousand years on end; the passing centuries had not quenched those flames, and, if the right Words were said, they would blaze upward to fill the entire trench for fifty days or more.

  Though the flame trench was at its most passive, it was still hot enough for the shack-dwellers to be able to cook meals in metal pots descending on chains a fraction of the way into the depths. A woman emptied a tub of washing water to the gulf; falling, the water boiled to steam.

  T suppose the schtot find living so close to the heat makes infanticide easy,' said Garash; 'schtot' was a pejorative from the Galish Trading Tongue, which he was trying hard to master.

  'I suppose so,' said Phyphor, not really listening – he was thinking about the love-labours wizards had lavished on these fortifications built for their personal protection, and what shoddy work they had done on the barriers made during the Long War to stop the northward spread of the Swarms.

  'Let's go and test this prince's temper then,' said Garash.

  'We'll do no testing unless we have to,' said Phyphor. 'And I'll do the talking. Remember that.'

  As they crossed the drawbridge, the wind tried to strip them naked. Ahead rose the seventy levels of the gatehouse keep, pierced by narrow windows and garnished with an eclectic array of corpses in various states of decomposition.

  'What charming taste!' said Garash, eyeing the dangling bodies.

  'What did you expect?' said Phyphor. 'Sophistication?'

  'I expect nothing,' said Garash. 'But I mark the prince is a butcher. Perhaps it might amuse him to add a couple of wizards to his corpse collection.'

  'Only two?' said Miphon.

  'Make it two wizards and a pox doctor,' said Garash. 'If you want to draw distinctions,' said Miphon, 'Make it one of Nin, one of Arl, and one fat slobbery greedbox.'

  'I eat to my best because I've got a mind to nourish,' said Garash with dignity. 'Unlike some.'

  'Enough,' said Phyphor, for they had reached the archway at the end of the drawbridge.

  Coming in out of the wind, the wizards smelt the stench of rotten meat, decayed vegetables and sewerage, a first token of the squalor of Comedo's court. Looking through the archway – which, though it could be sealed by portcullises, ran the length of the ground floor of the gatehouse keep – they saw some men rebuilding charred wooden buildings in the central court, where the dragon had fired stables, kennels and a banqueting hall.

  'Well well,' said one of two guards, stirring himself to stand erect. 'What's this now, walking in on its hind legs?'

  'Let me pass,' said Garash.

  'Not so hasty,' said the guard. 'Not so hasty.'

  'My companion may be hasty,' said Phyphor, 'But he has reason. We do have business which should not be delayed. Let us pass.'

  The guard rubbed his nose.

  'Let you pass? Indeed I'll let you pass, pass left or right or pass back the way you came, or pass water if you wish, but if you try to pass me by you'll pass beyond the sight of men, right quickly, unless you've got the password or some other passable credentials.'

  'I am a wizard,' said Phyphor, letting his iron-shod staff thud against the flagstones.

  'A wizard, hey?' said the guard. 'Well, by the Skull of the Deep South, a wizard. I'm sorry to tell you, though, we've got no pox for curing. We've had poxy weather and poxy food, a poxy dull winter and the spring not much better, but the actual smelly little article we don't have in quantity.'

  Phyphor thumped his staff again on the flagstones.

  'Man,' said Garash, pushing forward, 'Man, do you know – '

  Phyphor put out an arm to hold Garash back.

  'Well, by my grandmother's sweet brown eye,' said the guard, 'We do have a windy temper here, don't we Bartlom?'

  'Yes,' said Bartlom. 'We'll see some magic if we're lucky. I've heard of pox doctor magic. The pox doctors, you see, turn sheep into lovers and pigs into whores." 'We did have a real wizard once,' said the first guard. 'His name was Heen or Hein or Hay, or some such, if you please. Twice my height, yes. his face as white as ice, his eyes as black as night. He had a snake which killed with a single bite. You're not wizards. You may be pox doctors, but we've no requirement for quacks today. So you can't come in, unless you care to turn me into a frog or a fish.'

  'Why change you?' said Garash. 'Nature decided you should be born a pig, so who are we to interfere?'

  'That's not nice, Mr Pox,' said the guard, frowning. 'He's not nice at all, is he, Bartlom? Would his tongue improve with cooking, perhaps?'

  Phyphor lost patience. His staff swung through the air: once. No exercise of magic could have inflicted a worse injury. Bartlom started to lug out his sword. Phyphor felled him with a blow to the head. He went down and stayed down.

  'You did that nicely,' said Garash. 'Like swatting flies.'

  'Was there no other way?' said Miphon.

  'Why worry about scum like that?' said Garash. 'Their lives are worthless anyway. Time only teaches them to waste time.'

  'Come!' said Phyphor, venturing in under the first portcullis.

  Somewhere, someone was shouting, his voice echoing in the distance: 'Andranovory! Get your drunken arse up here!'

  They were now well and truly in Prince Comedo's domain.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rovac (noun): a group of 27 islands in the Central Ocean; inhabitant(s) of those islands; their nation; their language; (adjective): of or concerning the said islands, inhabitants, nation or language.

  The Rovac nonsense: dismissive term used by wizards to describe the long-standing historical dispute between the nation of Rovac and the Confederation of Wizards.

  Rovac staunch (noun) (obsolete): ritual drink formerly employed by the warriors of Rovac during initiation rituals, consisting of equal parts of blood, cream, alcohol and water.

  ***

  Taking directions from a serving boy whom they woke from a drunken sleep in a slovenly guard room, the wizards climbed to the seventh level of the gatehouse keep, occasionally disturbing rats; these first seven levels alone could have housed a thousand people, so probably the upper levels were deserted.

  On the seventh level, a door opened to a hall where three men sat guarding Comedo's chambers: two at chess, one watching. Ignored by the guards, the wizards looked around the room, which doubled as an armoury.

  On the walls were weapons: swords double-edged and single, stabbing and slashing, sparring and dueling; cutlasses, broadswords, cla
ymores; dirks, stilettos, skinning knives, throwing knives and foreign dueling daggers with one edge deeply serrated to catch and break a rapier blade. There were quivers, arrows, quarrels, stave bows, crossbows, composite bows. And also: spears, javelins, halberds, pikes, battleaxes, knuckledusters, cut throat razors, maces, billhooks, throwing stars, morning stars and dissecting kits. And armour: chain mail, scale mail, breast plates, greaves, gauntlets, helmets round or horned or spiked. And shields: from bucklers to full-length body shields.

  The collection indicated how rich Castle Vaunting had become from centuries of taxing the Salt Road in money and in kind.

  T have you,' said one of the chessplayers.

  Or, to be precise, he spoke a word known to all chess players: damorg. The same word in all languages, it must have spread with the game.

  The other player conceded defeat, and the three guards turned their attention to the three wizards.

  'Name yourself,' said one of the guards, a haughty man with an elegant cloak. His square-cut beard was black, as was the oiled hair he held in place with combs of whalebone.

  'Where's Comedo?' said Garash, before Phyphor could speak.

  'Where he chooses to be,' said the guard. 'And you'll be out on your arse unless you can give a good account of yourself. I'm Elkor Alish, captain of the personal bodyguard of the prince of Estar, so I'll ask the questions here. Those who will not answer to me must answer to my sword, Ethlite. Be sure that Ethlite has a sharper tongue than I do.'

  'Don't threaten us,' said Garash.

  'Who are you then?'

  'My style is Garash. A wizard of the order of Arl. Power is at my readiness to diminish you from the face of the sun with a single blast of fire.'

  Alish threw his chair at Garash. As Garash ducked, Alish drew his sword. Garash snatched at the chain round his neck. The sword was faster.

  'Drop your hands,' said Alish, holding steel to Garash's throat. 'Drop your hands, or you'll feel the sharp edge of some poetry in motion.'