Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

The impossible clarity of the mountain heights. Breathless heights where every step is a staircase. Blue transparencies of sky. A drift of snow grown gray with wind-blown grit. A bridge of ice, humped across a river. The chickling trickle of melt-water sheeking and sharking beneath sheets of ice. A windless day with an unfelt wind high, high above blasting dragon-licks of snow from sky-scarp heights.

And he remembered -

Avalanche!

A roiling roll-roar of rocks went toiling in spuming plummets from the heights, causing the ground to shake beneath his feet. A real memory, this. Caught by the living life of that memory, Guest saw the wizard Sken-Pitilkin. There was blood on the wizard's forehead – blood beaded in drops. The wizard Sken-Pitilkin was literally sweating blood, and his face was pallid as unbaked dough. Guest remembered.

Under a swordpoint's compulsion, Sken-Pitilkin had sent an avalanche rolling downhill, and then had retched violently, bringing up green bile from an empty stomach.

"But I had to!" protested Guest.

And with that protest, the Weaponmaster was free from the Great God's efforts at possession.

The Great God Jocasta had tried to sound out Guest Gulkan's most potent memories, seeking thus to make an accurate index of the Weaponmaster's mind, and so to facilitate his possession. But Guest's most potent memories were memories of shameful deeds which he had later repudiated. Guest had invested a lifetime's effort in protecting himself from his own memories by suppressing them, justifying them or minimizing them. So when Jocasta probed Guest's deepest memories, the unfortunate Great God ran into defensive structures built up by a lifetime's effort. And so, weakened as it was by Stogirov's onslaughts, the Great God was unable to possess the Weaponmaster.

"You will yield," said Jocasta, trying to sound convincing.

"Yield!" said Guest. "The hell I will!"

Then the wrathful Weaponmaster grabbed a sword from a vacillating soldier who was trying – and failing – to figure out just what was going on here.

Having grabbed that sword (and accidentally breaking several of the soldier's teeth in the haste of his grabbing) Guest Gulkan attacked the Great God with that weapon. Guest attacked with all the vigor of a musician of Sung assailing that elephant-sized metal drum which is known as a klambakora. Steel clanged uselessly against the Great God's flanks. But Guest's defiance served to convince the Great God Jocasta that possessing the Weaponmaster was not a possibility, at least not for a shaken and battle- weakened Great God. Accordingly, Jocasta decided upon retreat.

Jocasta lurched through the air, bumped the Weaponmaster, hit him hard. Guest went down. Jocasta hesitated. Having been hit so heartily, might the Weaponmaster perhaps be weaker than before?

The Great God hung over its fallen prey, humming.

And Guest felt cold again.

Very cold.

The coldness solidified to actual ice, and he found himself back in the arena of Chi'ash-lan where once the Great Mink had torn off his arms and legs at the behest of Banker Sod. Once upon a time. But once upon a time was now! He screamed as the mauling strength savaged his perfections. The glunching bones broke slick and wet, smunch and crunch. Flesh to pulp, bone to slivers.

Then the image faded, and Guest found himself being bounced along the dirt under the harsh sun of Dalar ken Halvar. His father had him by the hair, and was dragging him away from the Great God Jocasta.

"Enough!" yelled Guest, as the pain of being hauled by his hair washed away the pain of the waking nightmare he had just endured. "Let me go!"

So the Witchlord let go of the Weaponmaster, and Guest slumped to the ground. He felt a twinge of cold, a touch of frost, an insinuation of ice, as the Great God Jocasta again made a determined effort to seize control of his mind.

"You won't," said Guest grimly, recovering his fallen sword and getting to his feet. "You can't."

But before Guest Gulkan could mount yet another fatuous attack on the Great god Jocasta, Yubi Das Finger came out of the Bralsh. A striking figure was Yubi Das Finger! For this Banker was dressed in motley, with the motley being rigorously littered with shiny ceramic animals, his whole outfit being topped off by a damaged face and a golden skullcap fringed with tiny glass beads.

Yet Guest spared him only the briefest of glances – for he had encountered the man before in his various sparse yet informative dealings with the Banks. Rather, Guest concentrated his attention on those who were following on behind Yubi.

The honorable Das Finger was leading a dozen sweating slaves who were carrying a huge black cauldron, a cauldron which looked to be one of the orking pots of Galsh Ebrek. On Yubi's command, they upended the pot and dropped it over the Great God.

"We have it," said Yubi, with satisfaction. Guest gaped.

It had never occurred to the Weaponmaster that something as mighty as a Great God could be secured and imprisoned by any expedient so simple as dropping a pot on top of it. But of course the Great God Jocasta had been direly injured by the firebolt weapon so generously employed against it by Anaconda Stogirov, and Yubi Das Finger's tactic appeared to be working.

For Jocasta strove against the pot, trying to lift it directly upwards. But the Great God could not raise it from the ground by more than a fingerlength. Next, Jocasta tried to burn a hole in the black iron. The metal grew red hot, but it did not melt or yield.

Yubi Das Finger spat on the glowing iron. His saliva sizzled into silence.

"Let me out!" roared Jocasta, using the Galish Trading Tongue.

Yubi knew that language, but made no reply. Instead, the scar-faced Banker giggled manically.

Thwarted, Jocasta lifted the iron pot clear of the ground – only a fingerlength clear, but a fingerlength was sufficient – and began to carry that burden on an erratic course of retreat which sent the iron pot caroming into a succession of ox carts and bamboo huts.

"It's getting away!" said Guest in alarm.

"Yes, my friend," said Yubi Das Finger. "The thing is getting away from us. So tell us, little friend – what is it, exactly? A friend of yours? You brought it through the Door, didn't you?"

Yubi Das Finger had spoken of the Door! Admittedly, he had spoken in the Galish, which few people in Dalar ken Halvar were likely to know. But even so! A Banker does not speak of Doors or of Circles in public, and Yubi was a Banker born and bred. The error was a measure of the extreme stress of the moment.

"The – the thing is a god," said Guest. "A Great God, that's, that's what it says, it alleges. But we didn't bring it here, it, it followed us!"

"A god, is it?" said Yubi dubiously.

Yubi Das Finger was no theologian, but he thought it most unlikely that any god of any description could be confined under an upturned orking pot for even as short a time as half a heartbeat. He presumed, therefore, that the thing under the pot was an artefact of some description, possibly a weapon of war left over from the Days of Wrath or from some conflict more ancient yet. That then was how Yubi described it to the public.

"It's a mad machine," said Yubi, to all who wanted to know.

"A mad machine, which we'll have to destroy."

Whereupon assorted heroes did their best to kill the thing, or at least to disconcert it. They beat its iron pot with the butts of spears, setting up a great racket. The pot lurched, crushing a soldier against an ox cart. As he screamed piteously, the pot continued on its way, navigating hazard by hazard through the streets of Childa Go.

Childa Go, Dalar ken Halvar's fishing-shack quarter, was heavy with the smell of drying fish. As Guest plodded along behind the iron pot, keeping at a respectful distance – for he had no wish to be burnt or crushed himself – the smells awakened strong memories of his past adventures in Dalar ken Halvar. He heard a sharp explosion as a piece of bamboo burst in a cooking fire, and remembered the excited hubbub of Dog Day festivities, when the city was one uproarious turmoil of competitive confusion.