The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

by Hugh Cook

  "Out!" said Sken-Pitilkin irefully, as the intrusionists came trampling into his educational laboratory with their muddy boots on. "You can't come in here! We're in the middle of a lesson."

  "The lesson is over," said Thodric Jarl, the leader of the intrusionists. "The lesson is over, for life has begun."

  Thus epic heroes are wont to speak, but Thodric Jarl was no epic hero. He was a run-of-the-mill hackman, a mediocre mercenary who had long ago been exiled from Rovac for stealing sheep. (Or so at least Rolf Thelemite was wont to allege, and Sken-Pitilkin had heard the allegations, and had often declared himself inclined to believe them.) Jarl was young, and over-vigorous, and decidedly curt in his manner. Sken-Pitilkin was not at all pleased to see him, and made his displeasure plain.

  "You say the lesson is over?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "The lesson is hardly started yet! But I'll give you a lesson you won't forget, not when I'm through with you."

  "Hush down, you irascible old man," said Lord Alagrace, one of Thodric Jarl's companions in boorishness.

  This annoyed Sken-Pitilkin intensely, for while Thodric Jarl could never transcend his stiffnecked nature, Sken-Pitilkin knew Lord Alagrace of old, and knew that Alagrace could be quite the diplomat when he thought it worth his while.

  After all, sal Pentalon Sorvolosa dan Alagrace nal Swedek quen Larsh was no brute of a Yarglat barbarian. He was the scion of one of the High Houses of Sharla, and the Sharla, as has been noted above, were ever a sophisticated people. Ethnology teaches one the natural limits of peoples such as Yarglat and Rovac. One expects such barbarians to brute their way through the world like slum-born streetfighters. But ethnology could make no excuse whatsoever for Lord Pentalon Alagrace. He knew better, and Sken-Pitilkin thought he should demonstrate as much.

  "Get out of here!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Get out of here, the lot of you!"

  "Who is this unruly old man?" said one of the sworders who had bruted his armpits into the room in company with Jarl and Alagrace. "Shall we kill him?"

  "No," said Thodric Jarl, "we'll not kill him, for he's not worth the bloodspill. He is but a useless old beggar whom the Witchlord chased from Gendormargensis for drowning a child's pet dog, and other crimes equally as cowardly."

  Thus Thodric Jarl in his youth, gross in libel and uncouth in epithet. But even a dog can count its own legs, as the saying has it, and sometimes Jarl had a truth or two to his tongue. Certainly he hit the mark when he called Sken-Pitilkin irascible, for how could that scholar be otherwise when beset by the likes of Jarl?

  But Jarl was wrong to speak of Sken-Pitilkin as being an old man, for Sken-Pitilkin was not old - rather, he was positively ancient.

  Nor was he (strictly speaking) a man, for he was a wizard, and in the process of attaining power wizards make themselves creatures of a different order from the ordinary run of humanity. Sken-Pitilkin began to explain these points to Jarl, but Jarl was in no mood to hear them, and ventured to let fall a curse upon Sken-Pitilkin's venerable head.

  Things might then have become unpleasant but for the intervention of Lord Alagrace, who called for silence then explained the business which the intruders were about. Guest Gulkan's time as a hostage on the Safrak Islands had come to an end, and Lord Alagrace and his companions were here to fetch the boy home to Gendormargensis.

  "And me?" said Sken-Pitilkin, asking his fate.Sken-Pitilkin had no particular wish to return to Gendormargensis, cold city of mud and lice. But he judged it unsafe to return to Drum - his habitual home island in the Penvash Strait - and he thought he would receive precious little charity from Safrak's Bankers if he chose to remain on the island of Alozay once his sole student had departed.

  "Lord Onosh bids you to return to Gendormargensis along with his son," answered Lord Alagrace.

  Details were then gone into, and as the details were gone into, Guest Gulkan became increasingly upset.

  "I'm not going," he said.

  "You're what?" said Lord Alagrace in amazement.

  "I'm not going!" said Guest.

  In the year since his encounter with Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Demon by Appointment to the Great God Jocasta, Guest Gulkan had thought repeatedly about the possibility of winning power as a wizard. Though Sken-Pitilkin had prevented Guest from having further contact with Iva-Italis, Guest had already realized that such prevention could be circumvented in time. In time, once he had a sufficiency of Toxteth at his command, Guest could join the Guardians, Alozay's Toxteth-speaking mercenaries, winning by this manoeuver the certainty of further contact with Iva-Italis.

  But -

  "You're going, all right," said Thodric Jarl, and grabbed Guest by the scruff of the neck as if to drag him from the room then and there.

  An ungainly struggle followed, during which the daring Sken-Pitilkin, by dint of swift action and heroic enterprise, managed to save those precious books and manuscripts which were in danger of being trampled to death in the skirmish.

  The victory went to the Rovac, for Jarl was accomplished in battle, and he overpowered Guest Gulkan's brutality, then sat on the boy while Lord Alagrace lectured him.

  "You are coming home," said Lord Alagrace.

  "But I am a hostage," said Guest.

  "Your father has no more need of any hostages in the Safrak

  Islands," said Lord Alagrace, putting into words a truth of which Guest was already fully aware. "Nor had he ever any such need. You were put here to keep you safe from your own violence. But now the empire has need of that violence. So back you come! Back to Gendormargensis and the battles which threaten the empire. You're coming home."

  "Me!" said Guest. "I'd rather die!"

  "If that's your choice," said Thodric Jarl, "I'll cut your throat on the spot. Well? What do you choose? Your father or your death?"

  When put on the spot like that, Guest Gulkan chose his father, and by evening all those who had come to Alozay with Guest Gulkan were readying themselves for the return - those personages being the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, the witch Zelafona and her dwarf-son Glambrax, and the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite, redoubtable in the drinking of beer and the boasting of battles.

  In honor of the occasion, Pelagius Zozimus had dragged out his marvelous fish-scale armor, gear of war surely more befitting an elven lord than a miserable slug-chef. Naturally,

  Zozimus completed his style by matching the armor with a sword as beautiful. The dralkosh Zelafona, though warmly trussed in leathers and wool, adorned the shredded gray of her coiffure with a scarf of bird-plume silk. Her dwarf-son Glambrax swaggered through the Grand Palace in miniaturized chain mail and battle- leathers to match, perking his appearance with an elaborate hat made from complicated folds of cloud-pattern paper.

  As for the rest, they were scarcely to be distinguished one from the other - a rabble of sworders in boots and thew-leathers, ostentatiously boot-thumping along with a great weight of woven iron upon their shoulders. In that company, Sken-Pitilkin distinguished himself by the dignified common sense of his fisherman's skirts.

  So that company gathered its numbers and marched in triumph to Gud Obo, the Winch Stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle. In triumph? Yes! For they were led by Thodric Jarl, and that dour and merciless warrior of Rovac was quite incapable of accomplishing even the simplest of tasks without making a mighty occasion out of it. In those days of his youth, Jarl was a man mesmerized by the spell of his own warriorhood. He could scarcely dice a carrot or slice an egg without first incanting runes of battle for the benefit of his butter knife.

  In those days of his youth, Thodric Jarl was a man made for life in a world of myth; and to hear him talk of the years of peace which he had endured in Gendormargensis, why, you might think he had spent those years in a state of conscious torture.

  But now! Now war was ready, therefore -

  But we have all heard the boasting of warriors before, and there is no point in detailing the obsessions of Rovac as presented by Thodric Jarl. Suffice it to say that, in the briefness of th
eir reacquaintance, Jarl had already managed to irritate Sken-Pitilkin beyond measure by his posturing, and Sken-Pitilkin had been moved to suggest that the wind-flapping gap between Jarl's labile lips should best be repaired with a stout needle and a decent length of cat gut.

  As Rolf Thelemite and Guest Gulkan went swaying down in a winch basket for what might well be the last time - though Guest was grimly determined to return some day to Alozay, and have an accounting with the demon Iva-Italis! - they discussed the extreme hostility which had already marked the forced fellowship of Thodric Jarl and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. And they staked hot gold on when the Rovac warrior would have the killing of the wizard.

  Not if, but most definitely when.

  Chapter Eight

  Swelaway Sea: Tameran's inland sea which lies a little over 200 leagues south of the city of Gendormargensis and is home to the Safrak Islands. The Swelaway Sea is drained by the Pig River which flows north-west to the Yolantarath.

  Since Thodric Jarl would brook no delay - war was afoot, and he did not wish to miss out on his share of battle-blood glory - the travelers joined their boat at the Palace Docks that very evening. The sky was dubious, threatening bad weather, but Jarl was hot to be gone regardless.

  They descended to the docks, then there was a delay, for word came that the Governor of the Safrak Bank wanted to say goodbye to Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin. When the Governor materialized, Guest was the first to notice him.

  On Guest's first introduction to Banker Sod - an event which had taken place on a day now more than a year in the past - the Weaponmaster had been taken aback by Sod's racial configuration.

  For Sod was an iceman, and had an iceman's pale skin. That skin was thickly furred with white bodyhair, which contrasted vividly with the golden hair of his head. His eyes and teeth were of a yellow to match the hair of his scalp, but his fingernails were black.

  Over time, Guest had got used to Sod. He had also grown used to the sight of Damsel, Sod's tender daughter, whom he had seen at times in the mainrock Pinnacle and the city of Molothair. From wondering at Damsel's strangeness, Guest had gone on to wonder at what she might be like to have as a girlfriend.

  Since Sod was now so much a part of the background of his life, Guest scarcely registered his approach. But when Jarl saw the man - why, Thodric Jarl looked as if he had suddenly been dropped in boiling water.

  "Gentle god!" said Jarl, voicing in his startlement the mightiest of all his oaths. "It's Sod!"

  "Jarl," said Sod, acknowledging recognition with displeasure.

  "But you - but - man, it was - Chi'ash-lan it was - "Sken-Pitilkin looked from Jarl to Sod, from Sod to Jarl.

  There was something decidedly odd here. Obviously Jarl had seen Sod in earlier years in Chi'ash-lan, and obviously Banker Sod was not pleased at all to be so unexpectedly identified here on the island of Alozay. Sken-Pitilkin, fearing that this unexpected and inexplicable act of recognition somehow contained the seeds of a most unfortunate breech of diplomatic protocol, tried to hush Jarl.

  But it was too late.

  Sod had already decided that he was most displeased at being recognized, and that in particular he was displeased at having been recognized by Jarl.

  "I want that man," said Sod, indicating Thodric Jarl.

  Sundry Guardians moved to arrest Thodric Jarl.

  In hindsight, it may be said of a certainty that Banker Sod had over-reacted. In hindsight, it may be said of a certainty that Sod would soon have realized as much, that diplomacy would have had its way, that Jarl would have been released, and the whole thing smoothed over and forgotten by the next day.

  But Thodric Jarl was in his rune-warrior mode, so drew his sword as if to hold the world at bay. He was outnumbered by twenty to one - after all, he was a single man alone, and Sken-Pitilkin certainly had no intention of fighting on his behalf - yet he challenged the Guardians with the stoneblooded resolution which befits a man born more for myth than life.

  "Jarl!" said Sken-Pitilkin sharply. "No fighting!"

  But it was too late, for the nearest Guardian had already drawn his weapon in a matching gesture. Their razors clashed, and scratched each other with a sound like the claws of a sliding cat screaming across the tiles of a wet rooftop.

  "That's enough!" roared Sken-Pitilkin.

  The two swordsmen broke apart, both as yet unblooded. They eyed each other, breathing hard.

  "My good lord Banker," said Zozimus, addressing Banker Sod in the urbanest of all imaginable tones, and doubtless intending to build some swift diplomacy upon the foundations of goodwill so diligently established by long months of slug chefery.

  With the mercy of Sod's grateful belly thrown into the equation, there was a near-certain hope of peaceful resolution.

  But one of the younger Guardians had already drawn a knife, and even as Zozimus spoke that Guardian threw that knife.

  The knife went whizzing through the air, slicing - not at Jarl! - but at Sken-Pitilkin!

  With the roar of a Word, Sken-Pitilkin raised his country crook. Caught in a vortex of levitational energies, the knife snapped upwards, shattering into fragments in the buffeting upsweep of the compulsion which commanded it.

  "Ahyak Rovac!" screamed Rolf Thelemite, drawing his sword with a shearing swipe which plucked the scarf from Zelafona's hair.

  And a moment later, the gloom of the Palace Docks was alive with the dragon-slash of sword-silver combat. In the thrashwork embroilments of battle, Sken-Pitilkin came face to face with a Guardian. The hackwork hero chopped at the wizard with his tooth of iron, but iron met country crook, and it was the iron which shattered. The country crook twisted in Sken-Pitilkin's hands, subtle as a licorice strap in the hands of an energetic child. It thwacked the Guardian.

  The man fell stumbling backwards, fell to the grip of Pelagius Zozimus -

  And -Sken-Pitilkin winced, the sound of a bone-breaking crack etched once and forever in his memory.

  Zozimus held out a hand.

  Zozimus spoke a Word.

  The fresh-created corpse of the Guardian uprose, and stood on tottering legs before its master, the necromancer Zozimus. Then Zozimus drew his sword, and passed the weapon to the corpse. Which grasped it.

  Zozimus raised his hands.

  He spoke a Word.

  The corpse turned, and raised the sword for war. It raised the sword against its former comrades.

  Now Zozimus had spent most of his time on Alozay in the kitchen. As lord of the larder, Zozimus had dedicated himself to cooking up slugs and such, and had been grossly over-rewarded for his enterprises in this direction - for Safrak's Bankers had proved ready to part with good gold to satisfy their bellies, though they never unclenched so much as silver to appease the appetites of their minds.

  However, though Zozimus customarily worked as a chef, and hence was able to find a ready welcome in whatever city, palace, pit, dungeon, ship, school or brewery in which he happened to find himself, the truth of the matter was that Zozimus was a necromancer.

  A necromancer, yes!

  Zozimus was a wizard of Xluzu, able to arcanely command the dead. Upon the Palace Docks, Zozimus commanded the corpse of the first of those who fell in battle, and sent that corpse against its erstwhile companions. The sight of one of their own fighting against them when dead was enough to rout the Guardians, who mostly dived from the docks and began swimming to the low-lying city of Molothair.

  "So," said Jarl, panting harshly, "we have the docks in our possession."

  From the way he said it, Sken-Pitilkin momentarily thought the Rovac warrior had no intention of stopping there, but meant to scale the winch-ropes and take the mainrock at the storm.

  "Possession?" said Zozimus. "I've not seen a deed to prove it!"

  As Zozimus so spoke, the shambling corpse which had been at his command came striding down the docks. Zozimus spoke a Word.

  The corpse passed him its sword - an implement now drenched with blood. Then it went ramshackle-walking onward down th
e docks, its head flopping limp and useless to the left. At a misstep, it went went wheeling into the darkened waters, throwing up a floundering spray as it fell. Pelagius Zozimus ignored it, for he was busy scraping his sword with his boot. With the sword scraped - a poor expedient, but this was a battlefield, not a barracks in preparation for paradeground display! - Zozimus sheathed it, then led the way aboard Jarl's ship.

  It was then that time of day when things have grown so dark that one can scarcely see. However, the shadowing of the evening has proceeded by such imperceptible degrees that mind and eye have been fooled into accepting the shadows for the day. So one lives in a world which is coaldust mixed with deepest cloud, a world of darkness relieved merely by the bonechina brightslash of a rag of flapping sail or a torn piece of paper random in the wind.

  In such shadow stood Sken-Pitilkin, the last to quit the docks. The choppy waves jostled the bulwarks of the docks, chill- slapped in syncoptic half-patterns, arrhythmic spray-bursts. The loudest sound was the creaking rubmark protest of Jarl's ship, straining at its ropes, chafing its fenders against the lowermost of Alozay's wave-mucked fortifications. In the gathering wind of the evening's night, the mounded death on the dockside was unstill, for hair was feathered, a belt flapped loose, and one gust unexpectedly scooped the weight of a helmet and rattled into the inkblack darkthickness by a sagging winch-basket.

  In that windy darkness, Sken-Pitilkin endured a moment of unaccustomed desolation. Beset by wind and shadow, unsettled by death and by the prospect of a wild night on the bat-wing seas, the wizard of Drum wished himself back on Drum, back with his cats and his sea dragons, his library and his toasting rack.

  But Drum -

  "Come on, Sken-Pitilkin!"

  But Drum was far, was far, far -

  "Sken-Pitilkin!"

  Drum was far distant from the Swelaway Sea, and return was denied by the wrath of the Confederation. So Sken-Pitilkin, irrevocably entangled in the fate of the Collosnon Empire -