Then Guest Gulkan related a third-hand tale which he had had from the Rovac warrior Altol Stokpol, concerning a number of baby monsters which had made a landing on the beaches of Carawell.
'As you see,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'regardless of our pacific intentions, we are sure to find ourselves at war with the Swarms, later if not sooner. If Estar falls to the Swarms, then so too will Penvash. Penvash, gentlemen, is but an eyeshot from the shores of Drum. Attack will come from the sea, from the sky.
Doubtless we have the strength to resist such attack, but make no mistake about it – it will be war.'
This sobered his audience, because most of them chose not to think about the Swarms unless they absolutely had to. As the ordinary citizen of Obooloo shuns and suppresses all knowledge of the temperament of the Mutilator, so too the wizards resident upon Drum chose to be wilfully ignorant of the menace upon their doorstep.
This initiated a long debate. And the debates of wizards are of a length and complexity which cannot easily be imagined by those who have not had personal experience of such deliberations.
Indeed, the debate went on for so long that, before it was over,
Drum had news of the latest developments to the south.
Morgan Hearst, the greatest warlord of Carawell, had made an alliance with a southron barbarian named Watashi, and with a number of pirates, and with those forces of the Collosnon Empire which currently occupied Estar. The long and the short of it was that a southern alliance was bent on installing upon the throne of Gendormargensis a child named Monogail, a female child who was alleged to be the offspring of the Red Emperor Khmar (he who was said to have died so long ago in the forests of Penvash).
The greater number of the wizards on Drum were inclined to treat this news as a happy coincidence. They needed an army. Very well! Here was an army! An army organizing for invasion!
'They have ships,' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'They have ships, swords and men. They have leaders who are mighty in war.
They have this child to be a figurehead for an invasion of Tameran. Very well. We can make an alliance. We can use this army to liberate the Circle of the Doors.'
But, to Guest, the fact that an army was preparing for invasion on their very doorstep was but idle coincidence.
Since Sken-Pitilkin had an airship, and since Guest Gulkan was in possession of a yellow bottle sufficient for the carriage of an army, and since their goal was not (oh vulgar ambition!) to conquer a continent but, rather (the future beckons!) to reopen the Circle of the Partnership Banks, any Door on that Circle could (potentially) serve as a base for action.
To most of the wizards, the Circle was but a theory. But, to the Weaponmaster, that Circle was a living reality. In particular, he had the most lively memories of Dalar ken Halvar, the city where he had once spent four long years in convalescence.
'It is said that the Rovac are mighty in war,' said Guest.
'But our war for the Circle will not be as other wars. We have no use for the slowness of ships or the slow ooze of infantry. We have the rule of the air and the capacity of the yellow bottle.
The wind's reach is ours. We need no strategy of mud, and of stone, and of wood, and of water. Rather, we must think as the wind, as the sun.'
'Very pretty poetry,' said Brother Fern Feathers, interrupting Guest Gulkan as he was winding himself up for revelation. 'But you have no soldiers.'
'I have allies,' said Guest, displeased to be interrupted in his rhetoric.
'What allies?' said Fern Feathers. 'You are but a homeless barbarian.'
'What makes you say so?' said Guest.
'Why!' said Fern Feathers, 'I say so because I know so! I know your curriculum vitae in depth and in detail.'
'Do you?' said Guest.
As the Weaponmaster had never lately found time for any detailed biographical revelations, he thought it exceedingly bizarre for any wizard to be claiming a knowledge of his past.
'Don't you remember?' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'I was head of the Ethnological Commission which interrogated you all those years ago when you were fresh-arrived at Drangsturm.'
'Ah!' said Guest, in the tones of a man who has stepped barefooted on a wasp. 'Now I remember!'
Now Guest remembered with a vengeance!
Though Brother Fern Feathers was mild (as wizards went) and not arrogant (or not at least by wizardly standards) and politely spoken (or as polite as could be reasonably expected) Guest Gulkan had never been able to bring himself to like the fellow. For some inexplicable reason, Guest had always found himself possessed of a mysterious but ineradicable dislike for Fern Feathers.
Now the inexplicable was explained, the mysterious was made bare and plain. Fern Feathers was an ethnologist! Worse, he was the very ethnologist who had led Guest Gulkan's interrogation in the Castle of Controlling Power!
'Sex customs!' said Guest, slamming his hand on the table.
'That's what it was! You had sex on the brain, like all ethnologists!'
'Have I somehow offended you?' said Brother Fern Feathers.
'Somehow!' said Guest. 'Where does somehow come into it? My scrotum, my foreskin, the hairs of my arse – are these not meant to be private? Yet – you and your committee!'
'We did but ask a few questions,' said Fern Feathers, starting to get defensive.
'Yes,' said Guest, 'but what questions?'
'Scientific questions!' said Fern Feathers.
'Oh, so it is science, is it?' said Guest. 'When I hear someone talk of science, then I reach for my sword!'
So saying, Guest suited action to words.
'We were but inquiring after knowledge,' said Fern Feathers, starting to grow fearful of his life.
'Then if you truly wish to receive knowledge,' said Guest, in his coldest and grandest tones, 'then hearken to me mightily, and perhaps you will live. Or perhaps not. For I am the Emperor in Exile.'
Then Guest began to rant – a strong word, true, but the word is apt – about his greatness, his mightiness and his superlativeness. He inflicted upon that gathering a veritable catalog of the exploits of his steel. He itemized the battles he had won, not neglecting to mention even his boyhood battle against Thodric Jarl in Enskandalon Square. He named the monsters he had faced or fought – the Great Mink of Gendormargensis, the murkbeast of Logthok Norgos, two therapists and a certain Crab of Untunchilamon, a dorgi of the depths Downstairs beneath the city of Injiltaprajura, a giant centipede, a number of crocodiles, and the bright-burning Shabble. Guest grew positively hoarse from boasting. Down through the long years, the memories of all the provocations he had endured at the hands of the Ethnological Commission had festered in the darkness of his mind, unacknowledged and unaddressed, and now their poison was spurting forth with a vengeance.
'All this I have done!' said Guest, in the fullness of his hoarseness, 'yet it is not enough for an ethnologist, no, not battles, not monsters, not travels, not the mastery of languages, not the braving of prisons and the survival of torture chambers.
All this I have done, yet he calls me barbarian and doubts my fitness to rule. So my question is this. What must I do to win his esteem? When so many feats have been accomplished already, what yet remains to my sword? I have asked myself this question, and have decided that only one task yet awaits me: the slaughter of an ethnologist!'
Seldom in the course of history has a barbarian been able to turn the tables on an ethnologist! Believe me, it is most uncomfortable for the ethnologist, particularly when the barbarian in question has a sword in his hand, and looks more than half- minded to use it!
Brother Fern Feathers positively groveled before the Weaponmaster, and assured the gathering that he believed Guest Gulkan to be the most accomplished and civilized of gentlemen, yes, a winner of battles, a slayer of monsters, and (in all probability) a master of the irregular verbs.
'I have no need of the verbs,' said Guest, glowering at the mention of these the most ancient and intractable of his enemies.
'I have no need of the verbs, no, nor of grammars neither, nor of dictionaries. You can burn your verbs and have done with them!'
