Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

It had not proved sufficient.

So, when war swept the mainrock, Hrothgar had rebelled against his masters, and had dared a theft. Of what? Guest could not say. But the thief had been caught – and Sod, who had caught him, was determined to inflict the death penalty. Sod leapt at Hrothgar. Sword clashed with sword. Hrothgar stumbled, recovered himself, then hacked at Sod. But to Guest's dismay, it was Sod who prevailed. Hrothgar was driven back – and the demon grabbed him. Clutched him. Dragged him in! Hrothgar could be seen inside the demon's monolithic cube of green. His mouth gaped in dismay. Then his body started to spin. As it span, its arms and legs disintegrated into a blur of blood.

This process was utterly silent.

That was the hideous thing. The whole whirling, blurring, bleeding, chopping, disintegrating process made not a single sound. The dying Hrothgar was cut off from the world entirely, locked into a nightmare on his own.

The slug-chef Pelagius Zozimus once proposed constructing a machine with highly-sharpened steel blades which would whirl round and round and round (driven by a slave tramping on a treadmill, or, alternatively, by a water wheel). Such a machine – he proposed calling it a food blender – would be used to effortlessly finechop a mix of apples, steaks and celery for the making of hamburgers.

Hrothgar looked as if he had fallen into a gigantic version of just such a food blender, and his disintegration was proceeding apace.

Even as Guest watched, the top of Hrothgar's skull was trimmed off, and his brains began to spill out. He whirled in screaming silence, then disappeared in a clouding blur of blood and bile and macerated flesh.

Then, abruptly -

A splurging outsurge of the finechopped corpse-mix hosed from the demon at pressure, accurately targeting Guest Gulkan's face.

Blood-blinded, the Weaponmaster ducked, but the hosing found him nonetheless. He turned, tried to run, slipped on the weltering blood, recovered himself -

And was hard-slammed by Sod.

Struck by Sod's body weight, the Weaponmaster fell. His sword went flying, and Sod kicked him.

At the far end of the Hall of Time, the dwarf Glambrax saw what had happened, and charged with a cry of fury, hoping to cover a hundred paces before Sod could do Guest Gulkan a fatal injury.

Even as Glambrax charged, the Witchlord Onosh came panting upstairs from the depths below, panting into the Hall of Time with the staunchest of his warriors around him as a bodyguard.

Downstairs, others were fighting a delaying action against a great wedge-mass of almost-victorious Guardians, who were triumphant in the certainty of victory, and who were baying for blood and slaughter.

Lord Onosh: a Yarglat barbarian whose bat-wing ears indicate his close genetic relationship to Guest Gulkan. "It's a wise man who knows his own father," or so say the wise, but, even in the folly of his youth, Guest has but to glance at the Witchlord's ears to know the truth of his fathering.

Lord Onosh was fatigued beyond his age. In the dying lantern light, sweat slid redshining down the furrows in his slanted forehead. He gave an overwhelming impression of weariness. He had been defeated once too often, and his resources of courage were almost exhausted.

With the Witchlord were the wizards Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus. They too were similarly wearied, for they had exerted themselves to the full while trying to fight a way through to the Palace Docks.

They had failed.

Wizards and warriors alike, they had been defeated. The Guardians were too many. So the Witchlord Onosh, in company with his wizards and his other retainers, had been forced to retreat upwards into the less-populated areas of the mainrock Pinnacle.

On winning his way upward to the Hall of Time, Lord Onosh summed it with the briefest of glimpses. He saw the dwarf Glambrax scuttling away toward the green lightblock at the far end of the hall, saw one or two people scuffling near that lightblock, and saw other than that pretty much what he had expected. As far as he was concerned, the Hall of Time was just one more hole in the night. A hole where he planned to rest, at least for a few moments.

Thinking thus, Lord Onosh slumped against the nearest wall, and closed his eyes. Such was his weariness that he sagged immediately into sleep – but he had slept for scarcely moments when he was shaken awake.

"What is it?" said Lord Onosh, opening his eyes to see that it was Bao Gahai who was rousing him.

"It is Rolf Thelemite," said Bao Gahai. "He has news."

Lord Onosh hauled himself to his feet and confronted Rolf Thelemite, who had previously been with those who had been fighting a rearguard action downstairs.

"What is it?" said Lord Onosh.

"I have news," said Rolf.

"News?" said Lord Onosh. "Then spit it out!"

"Thodric Jarl says we have secured the stairs," said Rolf.

"At least for the moment."

"Then I could have slept for that moment!" said Lord Onosh, rightfully aggrieved at having been awakened to hear such absolutely superfluous information.

Then the Witchlord declared that he would sleep, and must not be disturbed. Having delivered himself of this pronouncement, he slumped again, and was asleep in moments.

But he was again awakened.

"What is it this time?" said Lord Onosh.

He felt as if he had only been asleep for moments – and quite rightly, for his sleep had been too short even for the quick- boiling of an egg in a pressure cooker.

"It is Glambrax," said Bao Gahai.

"Then spit him and cook him!" said Lord Onosh, who was ready to murder for the privilege of sleep. "Get Zozimus to cook him, and in a pressure cooker if possible."

"My lord," said Bao Gahai, "he says Sod has Guest as a prisoner."

Then Lord Onosh remembered what he had seen on first entering the Hall of Time. Glambrax sprinting for the green lightblock. Two people scuffling near that lightblock. The people scuffling must have been Guest and Sod.

"Glambrax!" said Lord Onosh.

"Here!" said the dwarf, who had been sheltering behind Bao Gahai.

"What are we up against?" said Lord Onosh.

"Sod," said Glambrax promptly. "Sod. And a demon."

"A demon?" said Lord Onosh, sceptically.

While the Witchlord Onosh had heard much of ghosts, gods and demons, he had never yet met one in the flesh, nor did he expect to.

"It is true," said Glambrax. "That green thing at the end of the hall, it's a demon."

"Then I will contend against it with my wizards," said Lord Onosh. "Zozimus! Zozimus, blast you! Where are you?"

Zozimus was discovered in the shadows, soundly asleep. Once he had been stirred awake by the application of Sken-Pitilkin's country crook, Lord Onosh commanded him to go downstairs and fetch a dozen or so corpses. The necromancer departed, returning shortly with eleven shambling corpses.

Then the Witchlord Onosh marched on the demon, taking with him his wizards, half a dozen living warriors and the eleven corpses animated by Zozimus. The dwarf Glambrax tagged along behind them.

"Far enough," said Sken-Pitilkin, when they were still a dozen paces short of the demon. "This thing bites."

"It bites?" said Lord Onosh, in bafflement. "Bites? Pitilkin, it is a rock!"

"It is a rock in its nature as a crocodile is a log," said Sken-Pitilkin.

The fame of the crocodile and its treachery had reached even as far as the lands of the Collosnon Empire. Therefore Lord Onosh knew full well that the crocodile was a vile animal which could configure itself as a log, changing instantly to a marauding man- eater when some unsuspecting unfortunate stepped on it.

"Have you seen this particular crocodile in action?" said Lord Onosh, indicating the green-burning monolith.