Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

This is what he would say: "Just south of here, a short voyage distant from the Greaters, a Door awaits us on the island of Stokos. It is the Door of the Stokos Bank, a Door which is linked to similar Banks in places as far afield as Chi'ash-lan and Dalar ken Halvar. Command of this Circle of Banks would answer your most crying need: possession of a source of wealth equal to the demands of financing your war against the Confederation of Wizards. If you will but give me an army, a small one, then I will wrest from the waters of Penvash the device which commands these Doors, and place both the device and myself at your service."

This was what Guest planned to say, for he had been compelled to an acknowledgement of his own limits, of the uncertainties of his previous elaborate scheming, and of the need to cut his ambitions down to size, so his capacities would be equal to those ambitions. Thus, whereas the Weaponmaster had previously set his heart on mastering the Circle of the Partnership Banks in his own right, now he was prepared to compromise, to make an alliance with Elkor Alish, and to accept a subordinate role in any conquest of that Circle.

But he was too late!

For, on reaching D'Waith, Guest found that a ship from Androlmarphos was in port, and the news which had been brought by the ship had already infected the whole town.

Drangsturm had fallen.

Words cannot encompass the enormity of this disaster.

Drangsturm, of course, was the trench of flame which the wizards of the Confederation had built to guard the north of Argan from the monsters of the south.

In earlier discussion with Elkor Alish, Guest Gulkan had asked the Rovac warrior how he planned to master the defense of the continent once he had overthrown the Confederation of Wizards.

To this, the black-bearded Rovac warrior had given a two-part answer. First, he planned initially to compel a certain number of wizards to serve him as his slaves, and to maintain the flames of Drangsturm against invasion by the monsters of the Swarms. Second, he intended to later quest to the heartland of the terror-lands of the Deep South, and there to overthrow the Skull, the entity which commanded the Swarms.

Such was the hubris of Elkor Alish, he who is said to have been ultimately overpowered and slaughtered by certain of the monsters of the Swarms – for, if rumor is to be believed, Alish was killed by one of the Neversh while attempting to stem the invasion of the monsters which forced their way to the north after the destruction of Drangsturm.

When Guest Gulkan first heard the news of Drangsturm's fall,

Elkor Alish yet lived. But Guest did not think for a moment that Alish, or any other warrior, could hold the Swarms in battle.

During his earlier adventuring round the Circle that began in the Old City of Penvash, Guest had gone through a Door which opened onto the wrong side of Drangsturm, the southern side, that side which had always been the province of the monsters of the Swarms.

There he had encountered huge centipedes, from which he and his companions of the moment had fled.

And Guest knew, in his heart of hearts, that there was little to be done in the face of the Swarms except to run.

So, when Guest heard that Drangsturm had fallen, and that the Confederation of Wizards had destroyed itself in a civil war which had set one wizard against another, he realized that all of Argan was doomed. Words could not encompass the enormity of this disaster. The cities of Narba, Voice, Veda, Selzirk, Androlmarphos and Runcorn lay open to the onslaught of the worst of mindless marauding monsters – mindless monsters which were commanded by the malign intelligence of the Skull of the Deep South.

So Guest knew then – and rightly knew – that all would perish. The hotlands of the Far South would be overwhelmed. The ricelands and the wheatlands, all would go. The forests of the Chenameg Kingdom, the horselands of the Lezconcarnau Plains, the walls of Selzirk the Fair and the boulevards of Voice – all would fall to the forces of living death.

For three days, Guest Gulkan lingered in D'Waith, until he had exhaustively researched the news of Drangsturm's fall.

Meantime, discrete enquiry established that Sken-Pitilkin yet lived, and lived on Drum.

With news gathered, and with nothing of use yet left to do in D'Waith, Guest Gulkan persuaded a fisherman to dare the ugly waters of the Penvash Strait, that body of water which lies between the Ravlish Lands and the continent of Argan. It is toothed with rocks, haunted by sea serpents, and frequently beset by storms of great severity – all of which threaten to drown the mariner, or to wreck him upon shores where he will surely fall victim to the savagery of the harp seal (or so it is said, though, despite their bloodthirsty reputation, even harp seals have their occasional defenders).

This was the body of water which Guest Gulkan dared, and the dare brought him home to Drum, where the fisherman was rewarded by Sken-Pitilkin (and was rewarded, too, by being made guest of honor at a three-day poetry reading given by Sken-Pitilkin's sea dragons – though whether he was entirely appreciative of this compulsory honoring of his courage is debatable).

And on arrival -

On arrival in Drum, Guest Gulkan was seven days in conversation with Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin, the wizard of Skatzabratzumon who had been the tutor of his childhood and the guide of his later years.

Now Sken-Pitilkin was a mighty wizard, the greatest wizard of the order of Skatzabratzumon, and the first wizard in the history of the world to have mastered the arts of controlled flight. But the sorry truth is that Sken-Pitilkin had no remedy for the misfortune which had befallen Argan. For he could not repair

Drangsturm, nor could he see any way in which the Swarms could be prevented from sweeping north through Argan. Sken-Pitilkin's gloomy prognosis was predictive of events.

For, in the months which followed, the Swarms completed the conquest of Argan's western seaboard. Only a tiny fraction of the populated flatlands held out against the monsters. This tiny fraction was the province of Estar, where mountainous defense, coupled with great force of arms, allowed the Swarms to be checked and held.

For the moment.

During these months of disaster, Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin were by no means inactive. Do not imagine that they sat idly on Drum while the world went down to disaster! No, they exerted themselves mightily, and a chronicle of their mutual exploits would fill an encyclopaedia.

Their exploits began with a monumental air adventure which took them to the city of Dalar ken Halvar, where Guest recovered the cornucopia, and recovered too the yellow bottle which had been devoted to transporting crocodiles for the benefit of Parengarenga's entertainment industry.

Armed with the bottle, and with the cornucopia, and aided by Sken-Pitilkin's mastery of airpower, the Weaponmaster and his wizard then made war upon the Swarms to the extent which they could.

But the cornucopia proved a singulary ineffective weapon for use against the Swarms. Wizard and Weaponmaster had anticipated unleashing floods of black slime against the armies of the Swarms, but found these monsters scattered widely rather than bunched in tight formations like the armies of humankind. Protected by their very dispersion, the Swarms had no great concentrations which could be destroyed by human agency.

Still, wizard and Weaponmaster did their best, until the very cornucopia expired from sheer over-use – shrivelling to a warped strip of something which looked like burnt black leather.

Then the pair essayed what rescue they could with the aid of the yellow bottle. And one would think, given the enormous capacity of that bottle, and given Sken-Pitilkin's command of the air, that they should have been able to evacuate entire cities.