Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Yolantarath River: river which runs south-south-east from Gendormargensis to Locontareth by way of Babaroth. After passing Locontareth the river tends toward the north-east, and eventually the leisure of its flatland wending brings it to the seaport of Stranagor and the chilly waters of the Hauma Sea.

Ontario Nol cautioned the air-wrecked adventurers not to venture through the realms of King Igpatan, since that monarch was of a very uncertain temper, and often celebrated his birthday by torturing to death a randomly-chosen stranger. As King Igpatan honored each of his fifty previous incarnations with a separate birthday, his kingdom was not an attractive tourist destination.

The dwarf Glambrax suggested that they fly out. Rolf Thelemite professed himself game for such an adventure – though his lower lip trembled and his gold-snake earring shook as he said it – but all the others denounced the proposition.

"I'd sooner swim through pigshit," said Thodric Jarl, "or drink my way through a world of menstruation."

"And I," said Guest, "I'd sooner be dorked by an iceman or kissed by a dwarf."

So spoke the Weaponmaster, then had to fight off a vigorous attack from a kiss-inclined Glambrax.

The key to any further air adventures was of course Sken-Pitilkin: and he declared himself strenuously opposed to the construction of any more airships. He was still having nightmares about the journey which had seen them slammed from Ema-Urk to the heights of Ibsen-Iktus, and was in no hurry to risk his life again in such folly.

Accordingly, when a vote was taken – Sken-Pitilkin being so opposed to the construction of an airship that he gladly joined in this piratical Rovac-favored form of decision-making by brute force of numbers, since he was sure it would give him the answer he wanted – all were in favor of exiting from Ul-donlok by venturing over the mountains. The decision was unanimous, Thodric Jarl having used a few words of threat to talk Rolf Thelemite out of his airbent-folly.

Unanimous? Well, almost. To be precise, there was one abstention, for Glambrax abstained on account of the fact that Guest was sitting on him when the vote was taken.

So it was that weight of numbers carried the day, and it cannot be denied that at least on this occasion the decision thus arrived at represented the full force of wisdom.

After the air adventurers had spent a full fourteen days resting and acclimatizing, first at the village and then at Qonsajara itself, Ontario Nol pronounced them fit to proceed. The venerable wizard of Itch chose to personally guide the travelers through the mountains. He saw to their provisioning, procured them three mules, and dosed Thodric Jarl with a potent medicine which suppressed the pain of his bone-breakages and thus enabled him to tackle the trek.

The medicine given to Jarl also had the effect of reducing him to a stuporous zombie-like condition in which he heard little, saw less, and lacked the intellectual agility to wonder at his own diminished mental competence. Thus did Ontario Nol insure himself against attempted murder.

Protected by such insurance, Nol led the air adventurers from the monastery of Qonsajara, and guided them to the high pass of Zomara at the western end of the valley of Ul-donlok.

"Gods!" said Glambrax, as they labored toward the heights of that high pass, "I'd want my own weight in gold before I'd chance this climb again!"

Such were the rigors of the journey that none of his companions picked up the conversational opening, and all the obvious sallies about the height, weight and worth of a dwarf's chancing and climbing went unsaid.

Truly, it was a brutal ascent.

It was cold upon the heights, and no living thing grew there saving the blue-green lichen. The touch of the wind was a razor and the sun a laceration to the eyes. Upon the heights, Guest Gulkan found his head reeling as if he were drunk; and several times the Weaponmaster stumbled and almost fell as he descended with his companions to the valley of Yox.

As for Thodric Jarl, why, he in his drugged condition was so helpless that he had to be roped between Rolf Thelemite and the dwarf Glambrax; and he was so dead to the world that he was quite oblivious to the donkey-jokes which the wizards made at his expense. For, regardless of the demands of the journey, the drug- disabled Thodric Jarl was too rich a target to neglect.

"A very pet lamb in his feebleness," observed Ontario Nol, with the greatest of satisfaction.

And Sken-Pitilkin said -

But let us not record here the delicious witticisms which were ventured by the scholarly Sken-Pitilkin, for the Rovac have cause for rage sufficient already, and there is no point in nourishing that breed of pirates fresh with excuse for murder.

So the aeronauts crossed the high pass and headed downward into the next valley. The descent was short, for the valley of Yox was higher still than Ul-donlok. Yox was a desolation of icelocked frigidity where snow still lay on the ground. Its heart was a long and narrow iceblock lake which looked as if it would not unfreeze until the sun grew old and swallowed the very planet in the swollen bloating of its heatstroke age.

At the valley's north-eastern end was the high pass known as Volvo Marp. Fortunately, Volvo Marp was marginally lower than Zomara Pass, and the travelers crossed it with comparative ease.

As the air adventurers were about to commence their descent – which would take them beneath the ominous threat of a prodigious overhang of unstable ice and rock – Ontario Nol bade them farewell. The venerable wizard of Itch took one mule to carry his own supplies on the return trip, but left the air adventurers with the other two animals; and left, also, the pain-medicine with Thodric Jarl.

Thus left to their own devices, the aeronauts descended. Guest Gulkan endured more than a few twinges of suspicion as he dared himself beneath the unavoidable overhang, for conceivably Nol could use some power of his to precipitate that overhang into an enormous avalanche, and Guest half-feared him capable of such betrayal.

However, adventurers descended safely, won their way clear of the last of the snow and the ice, then began the sweaty, unromantic labor of making their way through the steep-cut hills to the Yolantarath riverplain.

On that journey, the pain-killing medicine carried for the feeding of Thodric Jarl at last ran out; and the Rovac warrior recovered both wit and competence, which was by no means an improvement, for he regained his narrow paranoia along with his intellectual agility. Glambrax swore that Jarl, fearful of the pickpocketing abilities of wizards, was at pains to count his own testicles every time he went for a piss.

Paranoia notwithstanding, Jarl kept his temper in check; for the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin enjoyed the protection of the Witchlord Onosh, and Thodric Jarl was solemnly sworn to the Witchlord's service. Hence Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, unlike the almost-murdered Ontario Nol, enjoyed the protection of a privileged position, and were theoretically safe from the murder which dwelt impatiently within the Rovac warrior's blade.

In the peace of that protection, the journey from the heights to the river was almost without incident.

True, Guest Gulkan almost got the whole party murdered when he tried to seduce the virginal priestess who presided over the decidedly tantric rites of a village of benighted charcoal burners. In that same village, Glambrax was bitten by a rabid dog which was foaming at the mouth. Zelafona hustled her son to the nearest stream, where she supervised the washing of his wound with water and the scrubbing of the same disfigurement with soap – a good initial treatment for rabies, and the sooner done the better.