Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Now that he knew as much, Sken-Pitilkin exchanged Guest Gulkan's company for that of his father.

"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"I'm no lord of yours," said the Witchlord Onosh. "You've thrown in your lot with my son. Will you be my executioner,

Pitilkin? He'll have me killed in Gendormargensis."

"I've seen no sign of that," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"No sign!" said Lord Onosh. "I'm marching under guard, disarmed and dishonored. Is that no sign of impending execution?"

"After war, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, cautiously, "a peace is best enforced by the disarming of one party to the conflict."

"Peace!" said Lord Onosh. "You call this peace? I call it defeat, yes, and bloody slavery."

"Was it slavery to be a judge at Ink?" said Sken-Pitilkin.

"Ink!" said the Witchlord. "The affair at Ink was a mere charade, a charade of justice."

"Was it?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "I think not. Rather, I think your son did you honor by making you an honest judge of an honest affair of law."

"You think me ambitious to be chief justice?" said the Witchlord irritably. "Don't toy with me, Pitilkin!"

"I think the fate of your family no toy to play with," said Sken-Pitilkin. "As you helped me in my time of need, so I – "

"You'll help me, will you?" said Lord Onosh.

"That is my wish," said Sken-Pitilkin, making a partial retreat into formality in the face of the Witchlord's undisguised anger.

"Then," said Lord Onosh, "if you truly wish to help me, then take that country crook of yours, and use your powers of levitation to send the boy Guest hurtling through the air till his head smacks crash against a treetrunk. Smash him, Pitilkin! Well.

Will you? No. You've not blood, meat or marrow enough for murder.

You are but a paltry pox doctor, and you bring me what every pox doctor brings – advice! Well, get on with it! Advise, and be gone!"

"My lord is kind to permit me the honor of advising him," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Let me then advise my lord to think back to a time when he went hunting bandits in the hills near Gendormargensis."

"They are not hills, Pitilkin. They are mountains."

"Hills. Mountains. Whatever. My lord went hunting. His son, his much-beloved Morsh Bataar, fell and broke his leg."

"And?" said Lord Onosh. "What do you want? You want reward for fixing the leg? If so, you've left it a little late in the asking!"

"It is Guest who won reward," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Though he could not swim, the boy risked his life in the Yolantarath. He risked his life to save his brother Eljuk."

"And was rewarded for it," said Lord Onosh.

"Yes, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But when you rewarded him, when you gave him the title of Weaponmaster, there was one thing you did not know."

"And what was that?" said Lord Onosh.

"When the boy went to the river," said Sken-Pitilkin, "he thought he was saving you. The boy had endured a vision. A vision in which you drowned. So when he saw a man in the river, he went to the water to save you."

"Save me!" said Lord Onosh, in rage.

"Why, yes, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, taken aback by the Witchlord's anger. "He wished to save you. What else would he wish?"

"He wished to murder me!" said Lord Onosh.

Then the Witchlord Onosh told the wizard Sken-Pitilkin of his own precognitive vision. While hunting bandits in the high ground near Gendormargensis, the lord of the Collosnon Empire had endured a vision.

"It was death," said Lord Onosh. "My own death. Death by water. A death to take me, thrust me, haul me, suck me. Down in the quench, the smother, the groping slime, the dark. I was drinking, mind. Morsh and me, we had words in the old manner. Then Guest said, he mocked at Morsh and at me, and I knew."

"What did you know?" said Sken-Pitilkin.

"Why," said Lord Onosh, as if it should have been obvious, "I knew he was going to drown me, of course! Right there and then, I knew it! That's why he went into the river, you see. He thought it was me. He meant to drown me, Pitilkin!"

"But it wasn't you," said Sken-Pitilkin. "It was Eljuk. And when Guest saved Eljuk, why, he thought you should give him something."

"But I did!" said Lord Onosh. "I gave him leave to ask for a gift, and he asked. The title. Weaponmaster."

"But that was a trifle," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Another word for nothing. He let you satisfy your obligations with a trifle.

That left you free to give him the larger things out of love."

"The larger things?" said Lord Onosh, with renewed irritability. "What are you talking about?"

"You could have spared him his duel with Thodric Jarl," said Sken-Pitilkin. "You could have given him the woman Yerzerdayla."

"But the boy had just tried to kill me!" said the Witchlord.

Now here was a pretty pickle! On the basis of a fleeting vision of the future, Guest Gulkan thought he should be honored as his father's would-be rescuer. But, on the basis of another precognitive vision, Lord Onosh thought his son should be damned as a would-be murderer!

All of which made Sken-Pitilkin very glad that he himself did not personally suffer visions, whether precognitive visions or otherwise.

"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, attempting to feign a degree of diffidence. "It may well be that the men of your line have some talent to see the future."

"It is a proven fact," said Lord Onosh.

"Well, perhaps," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But plain logic proves the vision wrong. For, though you saw yourself drowning in the Yolantarath, the fact is that you remain undrowned."

"But Guest meant to drown me!" said Lord Onosh. "You see? You understand?"

"No, I don't," said Sken-Pitilkin, in frank confession.

"These are meant to be visions of the future."

"Or visions of intent," said Lord Onosh. "One can see the future's facts or see the future's intent. Guest went to the river. That proves he had intent!" Sken-Pitilkin was amazed that Lord Onosh, who had judged the case of the boat sellers of Ink with such dispassionate acumen, could become so entangled in the coils of illogic when he confronted the affairs of his own family. Of course, every standard text on ethnology makes note of the vexed complexity of family affairs. And as an ethnological scholar, Sken-Pitilkin had long ago absorbed the lessons of such texts. But even so!

"You are uncommonly silent, Pitilkin," said Lord Onosh. "Have you run out of argument?"

"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, "it is a great many years since I was any man's son, and I have never been a father, so – but, ah! This looks to be Babaroth!"

And Babaroth it was indeed, and arrival at that settlement terminated the discourse between wizard and Witchlord.

As Witchlord and Weaponmaster entered Babaroth from the south, they were disconcerted to be met by disheveled riders coming from the north. Some were wounded, all were weary, and they moved with the emphasis of men driven by urgent necessity. Know you this emphasis? All courtesy leaves a man. He becomes direct in his speech, as if every word were paid for in hammered gold. His speech is charged with import, as is that of a condemned man pleading a court for mercy.

Such were the men who entered Babaroth from the north, and Witchlord and Weaponmaster immediately knew – before they had heard so much as a word of the tale of these men – that something dreadful had happened in the north.

When those men addressed Witchlord and Weaponmaster, they did so in Ordhar, not in Eparget. And this was another bad sign. The worst of signs! For Ordhar was the command language used by the Yarglat's subject peoples, whereas the Yarglat themselves spoke Eparget. Looking over that ragged band from the north, Witchlord and Weaponmaster saw none of the Yarglat.

"What is this?" said Guest, fearing that there had been a revolution by the underpeople. "Are you in arms against the empire?"