Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

When each device was unshielded, the universe would seek to destroy it, and the destructive forces thus unleashed would be used for controlled flight, with any uncontrollable excess being bled off into the "rotational energy" which Zozimus had suggested.

At last the thing was finished – but the great Lord Alagrace flatly refused to get into it. The parcel of soldiers who had bodyguarded the great Thodric Jarl all the way to Alozay likewise refused to dare Sken-Pitilkin's device.

Thus, in the end, on its maiden flight the airship was crewed by the wizard of Skatzabratzumon known as Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, by the wizard of Xluzu known as Pelagius Zozimus, by the witch Zelafona and her dwarf-son Glambrax, by the mighty Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite, by the cow-tattooed Thodric Jarl, and by Guest Gulkan, youngest and most undisciplined of the sons of the lord of the Collosnon Empire.

Name them and know them!

For they were heroes, one and all!

Pioneers of flight!

Linked in a daring enterprise unparalleled in the history of experimental wizardry!

And possibly linked – Sken-Pitilkin could not help from thinking as much – in being destined to share a common grave.

A full day and a bit before they were to depart, Sken-Pitilkin gathered the would be air-adventurers together and indulged himself in a speech.

"Man has never ventured to the heavens in a ship such as this before," said Sken-Pitilkin. Then, glancing at Zelafona: "Nor woman neither. We can but guess what shocks the buffets of the heavens will impose on human physiology."

"A guess is as good as a goose on a blind night," said Guest, venturing one of the proverbs of Rovac which Rolf Thelemite had taught him.

"Pardon?" said Sken-Pitilkin.

"Nothing," said Guest.

"You said something," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I distinctly heard you, and though what you said was less than distinct I'm perfectly sure you didn't say nothing."

"I said," said Guest, "that maybe if it's so dangerous we shouldn't risk it."

"I wouldn't say it's as dangerous as all that," said Sken-Pitilkin, who thought it unwise to share the full strength of his forebodings with the young Yarglat barbarian. "But I suspect it's better undertaken on an empty stomach."

"You mean," said Guest, "we shouldn't eat?"

"Precisely," said Sken-Pitilkin briskly. "That's the main point I want to get across today. We can't know anything of the physiology of flight unless we look by analogy to the physiology of seafaring. As travel by sea is apt to induce a sickness of stomach, so may the air by analogy produce a like-belly illness.

Hence starvation is the order of the day. Or of three days, ideally – however, we've not time for such a fast, so a day's deprivation will have to suffice."

"What about drinking?" said Guest. "Can we drink?"

"What do you have in mind?" said Sken-Pitilkin. Guest told him, and was advised that it would be unwise in the extreme for him to proceed with his stated intention of consuming three beers, two gins and a brandy before boarding Sken-Pitilkin's airship.

"Besides," said Sken-Pitilkin, "I doubt whether there is either gin or brandy to be had on Ema-Urk."Guest Gulkan and Rolf Thelemite both assured him that both were to be had, and in quantity. They had assured themselves of this already.

"Then," said Sken-Pitilkin, "I adjure you to abstain from such."

"Adjure?" said Guest. "What on earth does that mean?"

"It means," said Sken-Pitilkin, "that I'm ready to kick you unless you show good sense and abstinence."

Then those who were doomed to join Sken-Pitilkin in the experimental flying ship launched themselves upon a one-day fast.

All but for the Weaponmaster.

Despite the timely warning issued by the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, and despite the threat of reprisals courtesy of Sken-Pitilkin's boot, the young Weaponmaster chose to indulge in a pre- flight dinner which included rhubarb sausages anointed with cod liver oil. This dish was especially invented for the occasion by an over-enthusiastic Pelagius Zozimus, whose deviations from gastronomic routine tended to be not only frequent but disastrous.

Rhubarb sausages with cod liver oil!

As heaven is my witness, this is what Zozimus cooked!

And Guest, in the folly of his youth -Guest ate it!

In his wisdom, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin refused to allow his intestinal peace to be vandalized by such a dish, and leavened his fast only with a small crust of dry bread and a pannikin of boiled water. But Guest ate the rhubarb sausages with a truly barbaric enthusiasm, swallowed a second helping of cod liver oil, and went on to consume two steaks cut from the more blubbery parts of a whale (steaks which had been cut from the beast some three years earlier, and which had been imported to Ema-Urk at the bottom of a barrel of vinegar), then followed these steaks with a dish of exceedingly greasy pork, an entire apple pie heaped with whipped cream, and, as a special after-dinner treat, the ears of five dogs (the ears of dogs being a special delicacy much favored by the gourmets of the islands of Safrak). He then proceeded to his drinking – only the beers he drank were seven in number, not three; the gins he consumed were set before him in quadruplicate; and his brandy was double.

Here Guest Gulkan was true to his Yarglat heritage. The Yarglat are capable of subsisting on the most parsimonious of diets when necessity demands; and when at war will content themselves at need with a single cup of fresh hot blood tapped from a vein in a living horse. But their indulgences are in keeping with their deprivations; and what they eat, and the quantities in which they eat it, is scarcely believable even to those who have seen such feats repeated thrice or thirty times; and their drinking matches their eating.

Never have the Yarglat been able to hold any great banquet without one person at least dying simply from overdrinking. The uninitiated may think this an exaggeration – but death from abuse of liquor has ever been a leading cause of death amongst the heroes of the northern horsetribes. Furthermore, history can name of a certainty at least four rulers of the Collosnon Empire who died of over-drinking, and a further three who expired through sheer gluttony: Dobdask, who expired while trying to eat an entire horse to win a bet with one of his generals; Henza, who collapsed while eating one of his generals; and Yeldanov Ax, who died as a consequence of disembowelling a whale and eating a considerable portion of the gut, an eccentricity which tends to support those rumors which claim him to have been somewhat deranged.

So Guest Gulkan indulged himself as the Yarglat will, and in what was left of the night he tried to digest that which he had ingested. Guest's attempts at digestion were not entirely successful, and in the gray light of the morrow's dawn he looked rather queasy. The chip-chop motion of the Swelaway Sea was making him uneasy: he had to avert his eyes lest it make him positively sick.

Nevertheless, he joined his fellow air-adventurers; and, once all had made their wills and had handed these into the care and keeping of Lord Alagrace, they bravely climbed aboard the airship.

All but Rolf Thelemite.

"Climb aboard, three-nipples," said Thodric Jarl, all graybearded harshness in the gray dawn.

Three-nipples? What kind of nickname was that?

As the other travelers were still wondering, Jarl disembarked, caught Rolf by the single gold-snake earring which hung from his left ear, and dragged him aboard the boat.

"Sit!" said Jarl, compressing a lifetime's scorn into the single word.

Rolf Thelemite sat. His lower lip was trembling. It communicated its anxiety to the lip above it. Rolf's eyes blinked, so fast and so fiercely that at last he had to close them altogether. Jarl said something to him in the Rovac tongue, and he bit his lower lip. Hard. Drawing blood.