He was relieved that they were to abandon verbs for geography. For geography was not quite so very bad, at least when there were no maps to be studied. Sken-Pitilkin had trunkloads of maps, charts and plans showing the margins of earth and sea, the sewer systems of foreign cities, the whims of the wind, the fruiting of the harvests, key infestations of dragons and the geographical range of the platypus. But while Guest knew the theory of maps, he had yet to master the art of conjuring truth from a scrabblework of isograms. Usually, when given a mapwork problem, he would stare at the parchment all day and get precisely nowhere. Guest Gulkan had such difficulties partly because so many things on Sken-Pitilkin's maps were entirely alien to his experience. The sea, for instance. He was exasperated by geographical figurations which suggested that in places the sea ran on for thousands of leagues without interruption, because surely the existence of such an immensity of water was contrary to both reason and sheer probability.
And a shortage of illustrations made it difficult to match these alien places with their flora and fauna. The elephant and the platypus were both delineated explicitly in Sken-Pitilkin's Book of Beasts, the one being a very large mouse with deformed teeth and a nose of surpassing length, and the other being a rat in the form of a duck.
But what of the quokka? And the jellyfish?
Of these Guest Gulkan was unable to form any clear conception.
Yet he hoped never to meet such a monster as a jellyfish in the flesh, for it had been described to him as a translucent beast in the form of a blob from which depended a million fine-stranded tentacles which stung and killed. The monster was alleged to be otherwise without features, possessed of no eyes, nose, ears, arms, head, neck, trunk or external organs of generation. Guest Gulkan had met with the jellyfish twice already in nightmare, and on neither occasion had he been able to argue the brute out of killing him. On no account did he want to meet the thing a third time in the world of the real.
He said as much.
'Fear not the jellyfish,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'A far more dangerous creature is the woman. Far many more men have been killed on account of women than ever met their deaths in the tentacles of a jellyfish. You in your own flesh look to become one of them.'
'It's not come to killing,' said Guest. 'Not yet.'
Though the young Yarglat barbarian knew there would almost certainly be a killing when he met with Jarl on the morrow, he had no appetite for argument with his tutor.
'Then don't let it!' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Pay out your gold!
Bribe the Rovac! Buy yourself a victory! For it won't be Jarl who dies. Oh no. If it's blades in earnest, it's you who dies. And you're running out of time to do something about it.'
'You underestimate me,' said Guest. 'I have my sword, and I've spent my life training in its use.'
'Your life!' said his tutor. 'Boy, you're still wet from the egg! If you don't trust me, then trust the city. All over Gendormargensis, men are placing bets, and the odds predict your speedy death in battle.'
'When we fight,' said Guest, tempted into the heat of argument despite himself, 'it won't be me who does the dying. I've killed men and, and I've trained for killing more, and what's Jarl so special about?'
'A man is a man,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'And a boy a boy.'
'I'm no boy!' said Guest in fury, though of course at the age of 14 he was very much a boy.
'A boy, verily, to be so easily provoked,' said Sken-Pitilkin calmly. 'Why, you're as irregular in your humors as one of the Akromian verbs.'
'Jarl will be boy enough to bury when I'm through with him,' said Guest. 'You want to be rich? Then bet on my fortunes!'
'I'm not a gambling man,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'But as soon as our lesson is over, I'm going to wager a month's salary on your early death. I'd be a fool to pass up a chance of profit so certain.'
'Certain!' said Guest, rising to his feet. 'I'll show you what's certain!'
With that battle-smash threat, the young Weaponmaster boiled out of his room, driven by the steam generated by the heat of his anger. However, once having boiled in such an impressive fashion, he found his wrath evaporating almost as swiftly as it had been generated.
So where to now?
In the harshness of its winter, Gendormargensis was no place for idling out of doors. Its bleakness was ruled by the wind-slam rain which slushed the streets to a turgid muck, the frigidity of which beaked eagerly through the cracks and chasms in the Weaponmaster's filthy boots. Though Guest was an emperor's son, the congenital disorder of his gear ever made him look like an impoverished refugee from six years of mountain-path campaigning.
Ever so slowly, the young Weaponmaster began to feel ever so slightly stupid. Should he go back inside? And lose face by apologizing? Never! Even so… he half-wished Sken-Pitilkin would exert his authority and order him back inside. But his elderly tutor appeared to have given up on him, at least for the moment. Guest Gulkan summed his options, and quickly, the weather being a disincentive to extended meditation. He could quest to Rolf Thelemite's sickbed and seek to rouse the man from his convalescence. Or he could at last yield to the advice of his betters, seek out Thodric Jarl, and bribe that Rovac mercenary to throw their fight in Enskandalon Square. Or, if still bent on dueling Jarl to the death, he could practice those sword-skills which he had been honing for so long.
Or -
But here Guest Gulkan left off thinking, for an oncoming messenger was hailing him.
'Ho! Gulkan my man!'
It was the dwarf Glambrax, his pet dwarf and his father's favorite fool.
'Ho!' said Guest.
'Ho-ha!' said Glambrax.
'Ho-ha-ho-ho!' said Guest.
This went on for some time, the pair bawling at each other in the strumpeting wind like a couple of madmen, for this was a nonsense-game they had brought to perfection in the last year or so. But at last Glambrax swapped nonsense for sense.
'Zelafona, my man,' said Glambrax, thus venting to the winter air the name of the witch who had mothered him.
'If I'm to be Zelafona,' said Guest, 'then I'm naturally woman, not man, though I doubt I'd be woman of yours.'
'Zelafona,' said Glambrax, ignoring this sally in favor of his business. 'She wishes to see you.'
But Guest had no wish whatsoever to see Glambrax's mother, who, after all, was Bao Gahai's sister. Doubtless she had good advice for him, but he was brim-full to the ears with good advice already, was drowning in the stuff, considered it noxious, said as much, and proposed that he detoxify himself with some hard spirits in the nearest tavern of convenience.
'With Rolf,' said Glambrax.
'Oh, if we can liberate him, then yes,' said Guest. 'By all means with Rolf.'
So they took themselves off to the infirmary where the convalescent Rovac warrior was laid up in bed, recovering from the aftermath of an attack of scarlet fever. They found Eljuk Zala seated by Rolf Thelemite, reading to him from one of Sken-Pitilkin's books of geography. Guest Gulkan and Glambrax wrested the book from Eljuk Zala and pitched it into a half-full chamber pot, then swept the invalid and his nursemaid away to the nearest tavern. There Guest got very drunk, his companions got almost as intoxicated, and Guest in his bravado told all the world how he would hack Jarl to pieces on the morrow, then take the fair Yerzerdayla as his own, and bed her with all the ferocity of strength at his disposal.
When the next day blurred to life, Guest Gulkan woke but slowly. He was sullen and hungover as he made his way through the dull morning light to Enskandalon Square, where he was scheduled to meet Jarl in combat.
Lord Onosh was there already, waiting for his son. With Lord Onosh was the dralkosh Bao Gahai, in company with her sister Zelafona and Zelafona's dwarf-son Glambrax. Others were there also: a full two hundred assorted warriors, servants, tribesmen and beggars, together with vendors selling hot chestnuts and cups of warmed-up horseblood diluted with hard liquor.
Present amongst that gathering was Eljuk Zala, and there too were the wizards Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus.
