Of course, Guest defeated his father with ease.
For, as has been made plain by this history, the greatest and most difficult part of the art of war is the manoeuver of armies.
But Guest Gulkan had a yellow bottle which was equal to the accommodation of an army; and Sken-Pitilkin had an airship which was equal to the transport of the bottle.
I remember.
It was in spring that Guest Gulkan shattered the Witchlord's forces in the Battle of Sipping Cross, and marched on Gendormargensis.
Since the slow and weary business of loading an army into and out of the yellow bottle was one which could take days to accomplish, Guest Gulkan did not dare try such a stratagem when he was so closely engaged with his father's forces. He expected his father to leave men in ambush; or to turn and meet him in force; or, at the very least, to stand at Gendormargensis and fight.
So, shunning air transport, Guest Gulkan took his army overland for the last few leagues which stood between himself and the city.
On reaching Gendormargensis, Guest found that Lord Onosh had fled, taking his army with him. The city was in no stage to stand in siege against the invaders, for it was in the grip of a cholera epidemic, cholera being one of the recurrent scourges of the Collosnon Empire. And here it must be admitted that, regardless of Celadric's great expenditure on architecture, Gendormargensis remained a city in which sewage disposal was of a very rudimentary nature.
On account of the epidemic, the victorious Weaponmaster did not enter the city, but pitched his tents on the mudlands beyond the walls. On Sken-Pitilkin's advice, those tents were pitched a good half-league upriver from the city.
'Cholera,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'is spread by filth within water. it would be far less common if you could train your people to boil their drinking water and wash their hands after going to the toilet.'
'Are my people babies that I should be teaching them how to piss and dung?' growled Guest.
'Why,' said Sken-Pitilkin, staring at Guest as if the Yarglat warrior was a new and remarkable species of frog, 'it is a barbarian! It growls in the face of science and bares its fangs at wisdom.'
'I,' said Guest, with dignity, 'lack a pox doctor's perverted interest in the functions of the anus.'
'Ah,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'then you renounce all claims to civilization. For civilization is essentially a device for the tidy disposal of bodily excretions.'
'Really!' said Guest. 'I thought the name for such a device was a brothel!'
Thus Guest and Sken-Pitilkin debated outside the walls of Gendormargensis. They continued the debate long into the night, for Guest was too tense to sleep, and too much the professional to drown his tensions with drink.
The next morning, Guest Gulkan pursued his father's retreating army, and at noon he came upon his father's baggage train. It was an incredible scene of spilt rubbish, mud, mired wagons, slaughtered oxen, bonfires, drunks and deserters. Guest Gulkan knew at once that his father's army had given up, for many of the bonfires were made from bunched spears, from arrows, and from other gear of war. It is difficult to accept the surrender of men who can simply snatch weapons from the battlefield, and in consequence of this difficulty it is common to murder those who surrender. By making sure that not one whole weapon remain to them, the Witchlord's men were endeavoring to have their surrender accepted.
'They have disarmed themselves,' said Guest, surveying the scene.
'Yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'As your father disarmed himself before venturing to Alozay.'
'I remember,' said Guest.
Of course he remembered. His father had caused weapons to be hidden in treasure chests, then had used those weapons against his hosts. But where were the treasure chests now?
'It would be most economical of time,' said Guest, 'if we were to slaughter these prisoners.'
'Doubtless,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'But you have cholera in your capital, and an invasion yet threatens from the south. Have you soldiers so many that you can be murdering them?'
'True,' said Guest.
Then took the trouble to accept the surrender of those who sought his mercy. Having accepted their surrender, he then went to the much greater trouble of searching them for weapons, and digging in the mud, and launching great interrogations.
At last, Guest declared himself satisfied.
'There are no weapons here,' said Guest. 'I've looked. I've looked everywhere.'
'There are the bonfires,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Fires?' said Guest. 'Fires, yes, doubtless, but – what can one hide in a fire?'
'Think,' said Sken-Pitilkin. Guest Gulkan obeyed, and, after due consideration, ordered that the ruins of the bonfires be raked apart. His subsequent excavations discovered swords; and spears; and helmets, shields, chain mail, knives, clubs, throwing stars, caltrops, battle axes.
Enough for an army.
Once Guest's inevitable reprisals had added another field of blood and butchery to history's scenery, the Weaponmaster pursued his father, and the pursuit soon took him into the hills.
I remember.
It was cold in the hills.
By now, Lord Onosh was running in earnest. But however he ran, he could not escape from his son. In desperation, the Witchlord Onosh split his forces, sending parties in five different directions in the hope of evading pursuit. But the Witchlord's doom was so patent that some of his people deserted with the express intention of betraying him.
Guest Gulkan accepted the intelligence which was brought to him by the deserters, then had them put to death.
'For,' said Guest, 'treason is a capital crime, and, besides, it is these deserters who are putting me to the necessity of killing my father.'
In the face of these judicial murders, Sken-Pitilkin said nothing, for Guest's mood had become changeable, and the wizard thought it unwise to challenge him when he had entered into one of his sanguinary phases.
And you think you would have done otherwise?
Well, perhaps you would have. But perhaps you would have died on account of your attempted diplomacy. In any case, this is not the tale of what might have been. This is the story of that which was. I remember.
I remember it was cold.
It was cold in the hills, cold in those days of spring, and colder yet by night. In the weariness of the long pursuit, men slept in the saddle. The pursuit went on by day and night, until bad weather set in, bringing abolishing rain, and clouds which reduced the night to an utter darkness.
I remember.
The trees, by night, wrathed by the rending winds. The campfires, driven and shriven by the bone-bleak wind. The muttered discontents of the fingerjoints, old bones protesting against the cold, against the unrelenting rigors of campaigning. Bao Gahai had died in the course of the Witchlord's war with the Weaponmaster, and was there any guarantee that a wizard would prevail in health where a witch had failed and perished?
Dawn, at last.
Dawn, and the rain dying away, and a weak light filtering through the breaking clouds. The ground mired with mud, and wet with petals, the petals of spring blossom brought down to earth by the drenching rains of the night.
Then Guest Gulkan took the saddle and led his people in pursuit. And many men marveled to see the confidence with which he led the way, wasting no time on spying for tracks.
But of course Guest Gulkan had often hunted in these hills.
He had hunted with his father, back in the days when Lord Onosh had sported after bandits. Guest knew the habits of the hunted, and knew too the lie of the land. Lord Onosh had fled through the hills in a great arc, and that arc had taken him into a valley which led down toward the Yolantarath River. The steep scarps of the valley's rocky sides meant that Lord Onosh would now be inevitably channeled down toward the flatlands, like many parties of bandits before him.
