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  The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

  ( Chronicles of an Age of Darkness - 9 )

  Hugh Cook

  The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

  Hugh Cook

  Chapter One

  Name: Onosh Gulkan Birthplace: Hum.

  Occupation: emperor.

  Status: absolute ruler of the Collosnon Empire.

  Description: hairy male of Yarglat race, age 43, slanting forehead gouged by thumb-fat depressions running from hairline to eyebrows, hair and eyes both black, height 14 qua, cheekbones high, ears immense, multiple scars on left leg and torso.

  Hobby: hunting.

  Quote: "The hunt is the ultimate answer to acedia."

  The Witchlord's sons were three in number, and Sken-Pitilkin was lecturing all three when the Witchlord himself intruded on their lesson. Sken-Pitilkin resented the intrusion – and resented it all the more when he noticed the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and the dwarf Glambrax lurking behind the Witchlord. Sken-Pitilkin was ever at pains to keep that pair of troublemakers out of his classroom, for such adulthood in combination with boyhood made a vicious combination.

  "Eljuk, my son!" said Lord Onosh. "You've been drinking!"

  An ugly jest, this.

  For Eljuk had not been drinking at all. Rather, the boy's life was blighted by a cruel birthmark. It stained his lips with purple, and further purple dribbled from the corners of his lips, splattering down his chin in two separate winespills which thickened to a merging at the neck.

  Here, at the outset, we see the flaw which doomed Lord Onosh to destruction. The Witchlord Onosh had been at odds with the world for so long that he had quite lost the art of showing the world kindness and affection. Though Eljuk Zala was the Witchlord's valued favorite, even Eljuk suffered a dozen slights a day from his father's tongue.

  Actually, it was Eljuk's younger brother Guest who had been drinking, and who was subdued as a consequence of his hangover. At this time, Guest was 14, Eljuk 16, and Morsh Bataar (the eldest) a full 18 years of age. But though Guest was the baby, it was Guest who played the man to the very hilt, and often suffered as a consequence.

  Before knowing young Guest, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin had never approved of hangovers; but close acquaintance with the boy had led him to concede that a hangover has many advantages. For it slows speech, subdues energy, abolishes wit, and makes the afflicted individual less likely to respond to the irregular verbs with acts of verbal dissidence or outright violence.

  The wizard Sken-Pitilkin had been taking advantage of Guest's hangover to cram some of the more irregular verbs into the boy's head, and had been thus involved when Lord Onosh had interrupted the lesson, remarking (as has been stated above): "Eljuk, my son! You've been drinking!"

  "Yes, father," said Eljuk. "But Guest is bearing my hangover for me."

  At this the Witchlord laughed – not out of good humor but out of habit. For this joke had often been exchanged between father and son, though a thousand exchanges had failed to make Lord Onosh see that Eljuk found his part in the transaction to be painful.

  "Regardless of who has been drinking," said Sken-Pitilkin acidly, "we have all been studying. We have been studying the irregular verbs."

  The eminent Sken-Pitilkin was dropping a heavy hint, a hint which was meant to suggest to the Witchlord Onosh that he should absent himself from the room lest he further interfere with the lesson.

  "Verbs!" said the Witchlord. "And what then is a verb? A hook for a rat or a knife for a cat? Enough of your verbs, my good fellow! Lessons are over for the day, so – boys, make ready! We're going hunting."

  "Hunting?" said Morsh, absorbing that datum with his customary slowness.

  "Precisely," said the Witchlord, with crisp directness.

  "But, father," said Eljuk Zala, who was the only one who had license to question the emperor's decisions, "it is late in the season."

  "Last chance weather, true," agreed Lord Onosh, "so we must take our chances while we have them. Remember, boys: the hunt is the ultimate answer to acedia."

  That the emperor said often, it being one of his pet sayings.

  Having discharged himself of that expression, he about-faced and departed, so sure in his power that he saw no need to linger to chivvy his boys into action. Unfortunately, when the Witchlord departed, he did not take with him either the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite or the dwarf Glambrax, and that pair of delinquents promptly infiltrated Sken-Pitilkin's classroom.

  "So who is Acedia?" said Guest Gulkan, when his father was barely out of earshot. "That's what I can never work out."

  "She's a wanton," said Rolf Thelemite, the Rovac warrior who ever bodyguarded Guest Gulkan, more to protect the world from the boy's temper than to protect the boy from the world. "She's your father's secret wanton, but she nags him stupid, so he runs for the hills at every opportunity."

  "She's no wanton," said Morsh Bataar, who was sitting in a corner with a heap of half-assembled fishing flies at his feet.

  "She's the pastry cook who has the man in fat. He hunts when the only choice otherwise is to diet."

  "Acedia," said the wizard Sken-Pitilkin, "is not a woman's name. The word denotes a state of the psyche, and that state -

  Eljuk Zala, tell us what state the word denotes."

  Now Eljuk Zala was by far the mildest, most scholarly and most intelligent of the Witchlord's three sons, and he was fully cognizant of the fact that the word acedia denoted that bleak and aimless inertia which had ever blighted the Witchlord's life since the death of his wife. But Eljuk Zala had already been too bright and too right far too often that day, and knew that if he came up with the right answer just one more time then his brother Guest would surely make him suffer for it, and probably sooner rather than later. So Eljuk answered:

  "Anger. That's what it means. Acedia means anger."

  "It means no such thing," said Sken-Pitilkin, with intense irritation.

  Then he lectured the unfortunate Eljuk at length on the meaning of acedia and the derelictions of Eljuk's scholarship.

  Sken-Pitilkin's irritation was by no means feigned, for he often felt it an intense strain to have three Yarglat boys under his tutorship. Indeed, the wizard of Drum found all his contacts with the Yarglat stressful, for the Yarglat were not, on the whole, an intellectual people, and there were precious few dictionaries in their kennels or encampments.

  "Well," said Guest Gulkan, when Sken-Pitilkin was done with berating his brother, "if you're through with lecturing, we've got to get ready for hunting. You're coming with us, I suppose?"

  "Me?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Hunt? Not for all the tea in Chay!

  You wouldn't get me to a hunt unless I was tied to a horse and dragged."

  "I'll see if I can find a spare horse, then," said Glambrax, Guest Gulkan's pet dwarf.

  The dwarf was already dancing out of the room as he delivered himself of that smartcrack, hence escaped before Sken-Pitilkin could catch him a whack with the country crook ever kept ready for the disciplining of the mannikin and his master.

  So it was that Glambrax again escaped punishment; and Lord Onosh and his sons readied themselves for the folly of the hunt, while the scholarly Sken-Pitilkin drew up a schedule of self- improvement which was calculated to see him attain mastery of the Geltic verbs jop, chilibisk and dileem, all of which had won a place for themselves in Strogloth's Compendium of Delights. While Sken-Pitilkin sometimes fell prey to acedia himself, he never sought to address his condition through the hunt, for his standard response to the dulling of the lifeforce was to have recourse to the irregular verbs, ever most marvelously refreshing in their inexhaustible variety.

  Sk
en-Pitilkin was so glad to be rid of his Yarglat charges for a few days that he went to the city gates to see the hunt ride out, just to make certain that Guest Gulkan and his brothers actually did quit the city.

  They did.

  There rode Guest Gulkan with his bodyguard Rolf Thelemite at his side, both drinking hard and halfway drunk already. Thelemite and his charge had both lashed themselves to their high and stylish lean-back saddles, by this precaution indicating that they planned to be truly stupendously intoxicated before the day was out.

  Behind that pair of brawlers rode Eljuk Zala Gulkan. As the anointed heir of the Witchlord Onosh, the winestained Eljuk was properly entitled to ride at the emperor's side. But young Guest was ever jealous of his brother's privileges, wishing the heirship were his own. So, fearing his brother's surly anger, Eljuk hung back out of sight.

  Eljuk looked miserably uncomfortable, since his groaning bones were mightily encumbered with amour, weighed down beneath a regular rustyard of iron plates interlaced with chain mail; his head was crowned with a helmet big enough for the boiling of a dog; a sword made for the slaughter of dragons was hauling at his side; and he could scarcely find space to sit in his saddle on account of all the spare amour and weaponry he had attached to it.

  A stranger might have thought Eljuk fearful of bandits, but actually it was his dearly beloved brother Guest who stalked his nightmares. Guest had the temperament of a born regicide, patricide, fratricide and all-round homicide. So Eljuk had armored himself, and had armed himself mightily – but the weight of such protection would doom him to heatstroke on a hot day, or to death by suction should he find himself in a swamp, or (should the imperial hunting party encounter a blacksmith with a purse at the ready for the purchase of unwanted iron) to accidental disposal by way of sale.

  While Eljuk feared Guest Gulkan, he lived in mortal dread of Rolf Thelemite. Rolf was a Rovac warrior, and the Rovac were a people so bloody in their predilections that the most ferocious of Yarglat barbarians was a cat-stroking pacifist by comparison. If Rolf Thelemite's account was to be believed (and Eljuk never doubted a word of it) then Rolf had personally slaughtered down three emperors, seven kings, nine dragons, eleven wizards, a neversh, a troll, five orcs, and thirty dozen assorted warriors and assassins.

  Sken-Pitilkin personally thought this a mighty great amount for Rolf to have accomplished, seeing that he was barely 18 years of age, and had spent a full two of those brief years of his in Gendormargensis. But Eljuk took Rolf's every word to heart. Eljuk believed Rolf Thelemite when that Rovac warrior claimed that the golden serpent which he wore as an earring was a trophy which Rolf had torn from the head of the mighty Baron Farouk of Hexagon when that warlord had led an army of a million men against the city of Chi'ash-lan. Rolf said, further, that the intermittent and involuntary trembling of his lower lip was a consequence of flame- damage inflicted by a dragon, and that his habit of blinking quickly (as if he had grit in his eyes) was due to the effort of fighting off a sleeping spell which had been inflicted upon him by a wizard of Ebber.

  Often, Rolf Thelemite described the gruesome death which he himself had inflicted upon that spell-casting wizard, and in his every description of that death he never neglected to leave out small but telling details, such as the succulent taste of the wizard's liver, or the manner in which a pariah dog had made off with the wizard's kidneys before Rolf could taste them also.

  For his part, Guest Gulkan sometimes hinted to his brother Eljuk that he was taking practical lessons in cannibalism from his mercenary acquaintance.

  Eljuk had once pleaded with his father to exile both Rolf Thelemite and Guest Gulkan, fearing that the pair of them would conspire together to encompass his murder. But the Witchlord had merely laughed.

  Of course the Witchlord Onosh was no fool. Lord Onosh was ever conscious of Guest Gulkan's bloody temper and of his monstrous ambition. Which was why (unbeknownst to the world at large), Lord Onosh had bound Rolf Thelemite to the protection of both emperor and imperial heir; and (in equal secrecy) had further charged Morsh Bataar with the duty of bodyguarding Eljuk Zala.

  Had Morsh Bataar's secret mission become public knowledge, it would have occasioned incredulous laughter from all and sundry, for it was generally believed that Morsh Bataar had been blighted by a dralkosh while still in his mother's womb.

  It was said in Gendormargensis that Morsh Bataar was painfully slow of intellect, and this was the case. But while he was thick of voice and slow of mind, success seldom eluded him when he went to work on a problem. True, he was judicious in his choice of problems, for he was possessed of an uncommon degree of self-knowledge, and knew his limitations well.

  Nevertheless -

  Amongst those who are possessed of genius, there sometimes arises the conceit that genius is all. But for the practical purposes of life, there are other qualities of equal importance, and prime amongst them are patience, persistence, reliability and a sense of proportion, all of which Morsh Bataar possessed in good measure. These traits had helped make Morsh a master of the bow, which weapon he carried with him always, and practiced with on a daily basis.

  In his intellect, Morsh Bataar might reasonably be likened to the snail. This most practical of beasts cannot dare to the heights of the eagle or challenge the hare in the sprint; but, given time, it will make its way over any obstacle, not excepting broken glass and razor blades.

  Morsh was also uncommonly stable of temperament. He lived free of the black humors which afflicted Lord Onosh; free of the night terrors and daylight nervousness which unsettled Eljuk Zala; and free also of the drastic flux of anger and impulse which made his brother Guest such a trial to his elders.

  In the capacity of bodyguard, Morsh Bataar rode behind the over-armored Eljuk Zala. Apart from his bow and a telescopic bamboo fishing rod, Morsh carried no weapons of note, believing Eljuk to be in possession of more than enough steel for the pair of them. Nor did Morsh bother himself with any nonsense of amour, for he thought the weather to be more of a threat to life than any rabble of bandits who might be encountered in the mountains.

  Morsh Bataar was officially assigned to Eljuk Zala as a servant, and in truth he looked every bit the nondescript menial, since his burly body was hidden beneath layers of second-hand furs and his face was shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat the color of filth, a hat pierced by a full three dozen fancy fishing flies. He was mounted humbly on a shag pony, with a burdened baggage animal of like breed trailing behind him, and a spare mount bringing up the rear.

  Behind this beggarly figure there rode a great and glorious warrior, the glitter of the sun sheening and shining on his amour and a falcon leashed and hooded on his gauntleted left wrist. This was Pelagius Zozimus, the emperor's master chef, who spied Sken-Pitilkin standing by the gate.

  "Ho! Cousin!" cried Zozimus, leaning down from the height of his horse. "You're not hunting with us?"

  "Get down from that horse, you old fool," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "You're a thousand years too old for such nonsense."

  But Zozimus merely laughed at this accusation. The wizardly master chef was dressed for the hunt in glittering fish-scale amour which had been in his possession for the better part of a millennium; he was helmeted with silver and gold; he wore at his side a blade of Stokos steel which was sheathed in a scabbard bright with jade and opals; and he looked in his glory like one of the elven lords of legend come to life.

  "You'll break a leg!" cried Sken-Pitilkin.

  But Zozimus laughed again, and rode on, and after him came a considerable cavalcade, for the emperor was not going to the hunting grounds alone. A great host they were, and they racketed out of the city like a rabble of commoners hustling along to a lynching. They cursed, laughed, joked and gossiped in as many as a dozen different tongues, most commonly Ordhar – the simplified command language with which the Yarglat dominated their subject peoples – and the native Eparget of the Yarglat's northern homelands.

  Thus the Witchlord Onosh rode forth
from the city of Gendormargensis to go hunting in the hills. And, as has been indicated above, his entourage consisted of rather more people than the few individuals who have so far been mentioned by name.

  An emperor does not groom his own horse or wash his own linen. Nor does he clean his own boots – or, for that matter, his own fingernails. So when Lord Onosh went hunting, he customarily took with him half a thousand assorted shamans, slaves, servants, warriors, counselors, cooks, concubines, magicians, astrologers, winemasters, poets, painters, bootmakers and button-painters.

  Nevertheless, the imperial hunting party was nothing like one of those shambling circuses which traipse around behind the effete lords of the debauched and dissolute south. Even in his days of triumph, Lord Onosh never forgot that he was of the Yarglat, a people who conquered by horsepower, who ruled by horsepower, and who must trust to their horsepower to survive if the fates ever turned against them.

  All who went with the emperor could ride hard and long when the day demanded it; and so, despite its complement of concubines and bootmakers, the hunting party rode east from Gendormargensis like the advance guard of a wind-riding army. Swiftly the hunt campaigned deep into the mountain wilds, disregarding the lateness of the year and the inclemency of the weather.

  When Lord Onosh had won the rule of the Collosnon Empire (something he had done by adroitly masterminding a potent combination of witchcraft, conspiracy and murder) he had made Gendormargensis his capital, as had all the rulers of the empire before him. The city commanded the strategic gap between the Sarapine Ranges and the Balardade Massif, and hence was ideally placed to control all intercourse between the eastern hill country and the widespreading western flatlands dominated by the Yolantarath River.

  Since no wild animal of any consequence had been seen anywhere near Gendormargensis for a generation or more, when Lord Onosh went hunting he necessarily rode into the mountains in pursuit of bandits.