The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

by Hugh Cook

  The end result was that Guest and his people had got clean away to the mountains by the time Jarl closed with their previous location. Furthermore, in his retreat, Guest had got away with his brothers Morsh and Eljuk, two captives whose fate Lord Onosh lamented bitterly.

  But at least the mystery of Guest's precise circumstances and intentions appeared to be at an end, for the boy had left behind him evidence and witnesses in plenty - most notably, witnesses in the form of the barge crews and their captains, who had been turned loose after cooperating with the labor of the withdrawal.

  "Then he is gone," said Jarl in satisfaction, "and that is the end of him."

  "But he has escaped!" said Lord Onosh. "And - and my sons!

  Eljuk! Morsh! He's got the boy as prisoners!"

  "Then my lord will have to reconcile himself to the imprisonment of his sons," said Jarl formally, "and perhaps in the fullness of time my lord will also have to reconcile himself to the death of those sons."

  "And to the loss of my empire, mayhap?" said Lord Onosh grimly. "Guest's escaped, and with him those wizards in their treachery. All of Ibsen-Iktus is his unless we hunt him down and break him. Within that mountain fastness, he can gather his forces and prepare to break the very empire with his onslaught."

  "My lord," said Jarl, finding himself hard-pressed to stay calm in the face of the Witchlord's agitation. "Ibsen-Iktus is but a parcel of rocks, useless for all purposes excepting those of suicide."

  "A fastness," insisted Lord Onosh.

  "If my lord means that the mountains are a castle," said Jarl, "why, then so they are, but a very bleak and barren castle, empty of all the necessities required for either siege or outright war. In those mountains, my lord, there is everything a rock could need for the full satisfaction of its appetites, hence rocks live there in great multitudes in the full independence of their rightful kingdom. But rocks - my lord, the boy can scarcely recruit those rocks to his fighting force, nor can he use bare stone to feed the mutinous rabble which serves him."

  "But he could push through the mountains to escape," said Lord Onosh.

  "And what of it?" said Jarl. "Beyond the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus lies the Swelaway Sea."

  "And Safrak," said Lord Onosh, naming the ruling archipelago of that sea.

  "What of it?" said Jarl. "Suppose the boy can make an alliance with Safrak? What then? Safrak's but a rock, a group of rocks, a lesser version of Ibsen-Iktus, rocks up to their necks in water. Small rocks, my lord."

  "Rocks protected by the Guardians," said Lord Onosh, who knew all about the mercenaries which served the Safrak Bank.

  "So Safrak has a Bank, and the Bank has guards," said Jarl.

  "It has dogs, too. I know it for a fact, since the mangiest of them pissed on my boot when I first reach Alozay. I've been there, my lord. And while I was there, I counted. My lord, the rocks are nothing, for there aren't sufficient women, sheep or fighting men in all of Safrak to pose the slightest hazard to our empire."

  "But Guest has my sons," said Lord Onosh. "Morsh. And Eljuk.

  He has them prisoner."

  "Yes," said Jarl, growing weary with the labor of repetition. "He has, and will hold. My lord, I ventured Ibsen-Iktus in the spring. Its barrens are built for starvation. If trapped upon those heights, then Guest must either transfigure his men to goats or see them starve. Failing transfiguration, he must surrender - to us or to Safrak. If to Safrak, then Safrak will yield him up to secure its trade. Yes, and yield up Morsh and Eljuk simultaneously."

  Thus Jarl, who had no taste for venturing into the mountains after Guest, feeling that pursuit would be unprofitable, for the heights of Ibsen-Iktus would grant great advantages of defense to anyone with the will to hold them.

  But Lord Onosh declared that he must have either Morsh or Eljuk by his side. And soon.

  "Else," said Lord Onosh, "in the absence of any obvious and visible heir, my rivals amongst the Yarglat may choose this moment to try to dislodge me from my throne."

  Jarl was not convinced; but presumably Lord Onosh knew the politics of his own people and his own empire better than did a Rovac mercenary, so at last Jarl saw that he had no alternative other than to let himself be persuaded.

  "Very well," said Jarl. "So the empire must have an heir.

  Then I will get back one of the boys, at least, if not both. Give me a dozen men, a case of gold and the right of pardon. That's all I need."

  "The right of pardon!" said Lord Onosh.

  "Certainly," said Jarl.

  "Who are you planning to pardon?" said Lord Onosh.

  "Why, the wizards," said Jarl. "At least the wizards, and quite possibly Guest himself."

  "The wizards!" said Lord Onosh in astonishment.

  Though the Witchlord Onosh was not fully conversant with the details of the long-standing conflict between Rovac's warriors and the wizards of Argan's Confederation, he had nevertheless heard something of that ancient enmity from Bao Gahai and Zelafona (who, as witches, were versed in such knowledge), from Rolf Thelemite (who always pleaded the Rovac's case), and from Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin themselves.

  "Even that," said Thodric Jarl stoically. "My lord, I have no wish to pardon anyone, far less wizards. Yet I think a cure by means of pardons and disbursements is the easiest way to secure our cause. These wizards, in particular, are weak and venial creatures, yet cunning in their argument. By combination of threat and incentive, I can win them to our cause, and easily, and they by their guile will win us Guest."

  In truth, Thodric Jarl would rather kill people than pardon them any day of the year, but on this occasion the doughty Rovac warrior fancied that the odds favored diplomacy. But Lord Onosh was dead against it, saying that his rivals amongst the Yarglat would think him weak if he dispensed his pardons too freely, and that this itself might be cause for a coup.

  Therefore the Witchlord Onosh declared that he would prove his strength by marching his army into the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus and wresting Morsh and Eljuk from the grip of their captors by main force.

  "My lord," said Jarl, in protest.

  "You have another plan," said Lord Onosh, glaring at him.

  "My lord," said Jarl, in one last attempt to stave off a move he saw as precipitous folly. "I would not chance it, my lord.

  Bottle the boy in the hills then threaten him. Try that for a start, my lord. A threat first, and war then only if necessary."

  "No," said Lord Onosh. "We march for the mountains, and we march today."

  "But," said Jarl, "the mountains are high, and cold in their highness. If we mean to assail those heights, we must first prepare ourselves for winter campaigning."

  But Lord Onosh was determined, and so marched his army into the hills in search of the high pass of Volvo Marp, the pass which would give access to the frozen wastelands of the Hidden Valley of Yox. A long and dusty journey it was, a journey begun in the full heat of summer; and the continental summers of Tameran are a matter of sun and sweat, of biting flies and nimble insects born with beaks like needles and an unquenchable appetite for human blood.

  "Grief of a turnip!" said Lord Onosh, pausing on one steep and dusty hillside to wipe the sweat from his brow. "I thought you said the mountains were cold. You spoke of winter campaigning!"

  "In the mountains, my lord," said Thodric Jarl. "But these are not yet the mountains. These are only the hills."

  "This is mountain enough to nearly defy the strength of a horse," said Lord Onosh. "If the heights above will deny also the sun, then I welcome them!"

  Jarl thought this intemperate folly, but had given up arguing with his emperor. Instead, he was fully occupied by the labor of finding the true path to the high pass of Volvo Marp.

  When Thodric Jarl had descended from the mountains to the hills in the days of spring, his mind had been initially clouded by the pain-killing drug fed to him by Ontario Nol. So Jarl's recollections of Volvo Marp were nothing but a foggy blur, and to find the way Jarl had to rely upon certain of the bargemen who
had assisted Guest Gulkan in the great work of portage which had seen the Weaponmaster steal away the contents of his father's baggage train.

  At last they entered into a ravaged valley with steeply canted sides, a valley of fractured stone and buckled erosion, of thornbush bastions and chikle-gikle streams still chill from the snows of their melt-water genesis.

  "This valley, my lord," said Thodric Jarl to his emperor,

  "leads us to the high pass of Volvo Marp."

  "Valley!" said the Witchlord, eyeing the terrain dubiously.

  "You call this a valley? The land is tilted like a stairway, and a steep stairway at that."

  "As the mountains count land," said Jarl, "anything not a cliff is a valley."

  "Then I think you still in error," said the Witchlord, surveying the steepness which lay ahead, "for I count this as a cliff!"

  But regardless of how the Witchlord counted it, they had no choice but to climb it.

  And as they climbed it grew cold; for on the heights the unyielding ice and snow persists the full year through. Worse, the steepness of the track was such that the greater number of the horses had to be abandoned. Thereafter, the Witchlord could not ride, but must necessarily walk.

  And the nights!

  Stripped to the lightness of their summer campaigning, the Witchlord's forces found the mountain nights near unendurable in their cold. True, they all knew the harshness of Tameran's winters, but they were always forewarned of those winters, and went into them heavily padded, in imitation of the bear.

  Only Thodric Jarl's experience allowed them to survive the sudden weather-shock of the heights of Ibsen-Iktus. For Jarl had campaigned in the Cold West, and proved equal to the task of high- mountain survival. He counseled the mutual huddling of bodies at night; the improvisation of insulating pads from lightweight cloth stuffed with leaves; the making of fires; and the cunning practice of covering a half-burnt fire with a great heap of loose stones, and thereafter using those stones as a warm bed to assist with survival through the bitter frosts of night.

  So the Witchlord and his Rovac general forced their army to the heights of Volvo Marp, the first of the great challenges of the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus.

  And Guest Gulkan and his forces were waiting upon the heights of that pass - or seemed to be - in a position they had heavily fortified. Lord Onosh and Thodric Jarl could see banners flying from the fortifications; and men appearing at random; and the smoke of fires rising in the thin air. So the Witchlord and his Rovac-born general organized a slow-motion advance through the air of the heights, the air which was so bitterly thin and difficult to breathe; and Guest Gulkan sent an avalanche crashing down on them from above.

  Down came the avalanche, a whale in its roiling, a dragon in its roar. Boulders bounced, some huge as houses, mulching the strength of the army.

  A few survived.

  Those few were the few who had been closest to Guest Gulkan's fortifications when the avalanche was launched. Naturally, those few were those who were greatest in courage, and most eager for battle - and these included the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl and the Witchlord Onosh.

  Jarl was unhurt, but for a slight wound inflicted by a splinter of ice which, sent shattering through the sky by the impact of a house-sized boulder, had driven through leather and chain mail to nick the Rovac warrior's back just beneath his left- sided shoulderbone. But a more serious blow had been delivered to his pride, for he had been defeated by Guest Gulkan, who was but a boy, albeit a boy protected and counseled by wizards.

  Of course, the wizard Ontario Nol was as much to blame for Jarl's defeat as anyone, for it was Nol who had drugged Jarl into a state of stupefaction to keep him quiet on their earlier journey through the uplands of Ibsen-Iktus; and so it was that a clear- eyed Guest Gulkan had been able to scan the landscape for possibilities of ambush while Thodric Jarl had been concentrating on the difficult business of putting one foot in front of the other.

  As for Lord Onosh, he was entirely unhurt, at least so far as flesh and bone was concerned, but he was so shattered in his wits that he could not speak for two days, and it was even longer before he had sufficient control of his hands to hold a cup in his hands. Because of course, to Lord Onosh, that avalanche had struck like the wrath of the gods themselves, precipitating grotesque outrages of death out of a clear sky.

  An avalanche is such a terrible weapon of mass destruction that, in the past, the making of avalanches has often been explicitly outlawed in the treaties which civilized nations have made to regulate the conduct of their wars. But both Lord Onosh and his son Guest Gulkan were of the Yarglat, hence their actions owed nothing to civilized usage.

  And so it was that the Weaponmaster smashed the Witchlord's army with the savagery of a landslide, and thus made himself the lord of the battlefield, and made prisoners out of both his father and his Rovac-born general.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ul-donlok: valley in the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus. The upper part of this valley is ruled by Ontario Nol, a wizard of the order of Itch. Nearer the Swelaway Sea is the realm of King Igpatan, a monarch famous for his extensive collection of moths, and for the unpleasant nature of his frequent birthday celebrations.

  So Lord Onosh was defeated at the high pass of Volvo Marp; and was led as a prisoner through the high and bitter valley of Yox; and was taken over Zomara Pass; and thus came in chains to the valley of Ul-donlok and the monastery of Qonsajara, home of the wizard Ontario Nol.

  In chains?

  Yes, for Guest had found a renegade goldsmith amongst his ranks, and had caused the man to make miniature chains of fine- link gold out of some jewelry taken from the dead; and, wearing these largely symbolic tokens of his defeat, the Witchlord Onosh came to the monastery of Qonsajara.

  His son played tourist guide for the visit.

  "This," said Guest, with a gesture in the direction of the vast decrepitude of the building's tiled facade, "was once consecrated to dorking, but those dedicated to that sport found the climate too cold for their nakedness."

  Then Guest Gulkan gave the Witchlord a potted history of the many orgies of Qonsajara, showing off the place as if it was his own creation. Indeed, young Guest was greatly proud of the hugeness of this behemoth of a building, with its monumental frontage half a thousand paces in length, the whole of it adorned with obscenely ornate faded ceramic tiles dedicated to the liquidity of the hulakola, the heat of the yinx, the mystery of the omphalos, the snakings of limbs of passion and silk, the lividity of tongues, the yearning of muscles and the fondling of curves, the sensuality of all of which was amplified by the very harshness of the bleak and shattered upland landscape in which the building was set.

  Just as the Witchlord Onosh took no pleasure in Guest Gulkan's building, so the Witchlord took no pleasure in being held captive, and this Guest found most strange.

  After all, as far as the Weaponmaster was concerned, he was being most magnanimously hospitable in victory. Apart from the symbolic imposition of golden chains, young Guest had done his father no harm, and thought himself a very great man to be letting his father enjoy the unhindered possession of such superfluous luxuries as two eyes and a nose. After all, what had Lord Onosh ever done for young Guest? Nothing. He had never offered him anything in the way of power, authority or prestige. It was the purple-birthmarked Eljuk who had been groomed to inherit the empire, whereas poor Guest had ever been told that he would inherit precisely nothing.

  Yet surely he deserved to inherit!

  As far as Guest was concerned, he was a mighty warrior who in the days of his earliest youth had repeatedly fought for his father against bandits, who had once risked his own life to save his brother Eljuk from the river, and who had brought great credit to the imperial family by defeating the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl in fair combat in Enskandalon Square in Gendormargensis.

  All this Guest had done, yet his father had repaid him with theft and exile. His father had denied him access to Yerzerdayla, the prize he had won throu
gh combat with Thodric Jarl, and in Guest Gulkan's eyes this denial constituted an act of positive theft. This wrong had been compounded by the fact that his father had meanly and unfairly exiled him from the imperial capital and all its pleasures, sending him into exile in far-off Safrak where he had been denied all of life's consolations excepting the company of the irregular verbs. Guest Gulkan had almost died on the journey to that island, for the boat which had taken him across the Swelaway Sea had been rotten, and had almost sunk. And on arrival - why, on the cruel and loveless island of Alozay, the exiled Guest had endured the horrors of a plague of influenza. There, too, he had been confronted by a demonic demon, the notorious Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Demon By Appointment to the Great God Jocasta. Then he had been forced to fight his way free from the island; and to escape across the Swelaway Sea in another death-trap of a boat; and then to risk a terrifying sky-hurtling journey across the mountains.

  And then, in the mountains themselves, he had almost died on account of the effects of a sudden ascent to great altitude.

  And it was all his father's fault!

  To Guest, then, it was entirely right, logical and just that he should have thrown in his lot with the tax revolutionaries led by Sham Cham, for Guest had grievances to avenge, grievances which were well worth killing for. The theft of the flesh of the woman Yerzerdayla, for example! Not to mention such matters as the inheritance of the empire.

  Consequently, Guest prided himself on the magnanimous greatness of heart which he showed by not killing his father, or torturing him either, or spitting in his face, or cutting off his hair, or grinding his nose into the mud, or doing any of those other things which the ingenious Rolf Thelemite suggested with such unrestrained enthusiasm.