excuse for murder.
So the aeronauts crossed the high pass and headed downward into the next valley. The descent was short, for the valley of Yox was higher still than Ul-donlok. Yox was a desolation of icelocked frigidity where snow still lay on the ground. Its heart was a long and narrow iceblock lake which looked as if it would not unfreeze until the sun grew old and swallowed the very planet in the swollen bloating of its heatstroke age.
At the valley's north-eastern end was the high pass known as Volvo Marp. Fortunately, Volvo Marp was marginally lower than Zomara Pass, and the travelers crossed it with comparative ease.
As the air adventurers were about to commence their descent – which would take them beneath the ominous threat of a prodigious overhang of unstable ice and rock – Ontario Nol bade them farewell. The venerable wizard of Itch took one mule to carry his own supplies on the return trip, but left the air adventurers with the other two animals; and left, also, the pain-medicine with Thodric Jarl.
Thus left to their own devices, the aeronauts descended. Guest Gulkan endured more than a few twinges of suspicion as he dared himself beneath the unavoidable overhang, for conceivably Nol could use some power of his to precipitate that overhang into an enormous avalanche, and Guest half-feared him capable of such betrayal.
However, adventurers descended safely, won their way clear of the last of the snow and the ice, then began the sweaty, unromantic labor of making their way through the steep-cut hills to the Yolantarath riverplain.
On that journey, the pain-killing medicine carried for the feeding of Thodric Jarl at last ran out; and the Rovac warrior recovered both wit and competence, which was by no means an improvement, for he regained his narrow paranoia along with his intellectual agility. Glambrax swore that Jarl, fearful of the pickpocketing abilities of wizards, was at pains to count his own testicles every time he went for a piss.
Paranoia notwithstanding, Jarl kept his temper in check; for the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken- Pitilkin enjoyed the protection of the Witchlord Onosh, and Thodric Jarl was solemnly sworn to the Witchlord's service. Hence Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, unlike the almost-murdered Ontario Nol, enjoyed the protection of a privileged position, and were theoretically safe from the murder which dwelt impatiently within the Rovac warrior's blade.
In the peace of that protection, the journey from the heights to the river was almost without incident.
True, Guest Gulkan almost got the whole party murdered when he tried to seduce the virginal priestess who presided over the decidedly tantric rites of a village of benighted charcoal burners. In that same village, Glambrax was bitten by a rabid dog which was foaming at the mouth. Zelafona hustled her son to the nearest stream, where she supervised the washing of his wound with water and the scrubbing of the same disfigurement with soap – a good initial treatment for rabies, and the sooner done the better.
'If that is the initial treatment,' said Glambrax, 'what is the follow-up treatment should I prove to be infected?'
'The cutting off of your head,' said Guest Gulkan heartlessly. 'A loving decapitation, done to prevent unspeakable hells of suffering.'
'Never fear, for I have drugs,' said Sken-Pitilkin, lying like a horse trader. 'Precious drugs of miraculous rarity which will consummate your cure should you fall sick.'
'I pick you as a liar,' said Glambrax.
'Then you pick him wrongly,' said Zelafona warmly, 'for Sken-Pitilkin and I have often shared the inner secrets of the healing arts. The good Sken-Pitilkin has the drugs of which he speaks, and will cure you if you sicken.'
This from Zelafona's mouth was as much a lie as when it came from Sken-Pitilkin in the first place. But Glambrax was cozened into believing the lie, and belief put his heart at rest; and thus did wizard and witch between them cure the dwarf of his anxiety, if not of any contagion he might have contracted.
Would Glambrax fall ill of the rabies? There was no telling.
The incubation time of the disease varies from two weeks to two years – so the question of contamination is not swiftly to be resolved.
With Glambrax maybe dying, and with Guest Gulkan lucky to have escaped death, the party proceeded, and nearly died out to the last person when Pelagius Zozimus cooked them some greenish- blue fungal growths which he swore to be edible. Then there was the pit-trap which almost claimed Sken-Pitilkin, even though it was actually intended for bears; and there was the wasps' nest which almost secured a gruesome demise for Rolf Thelemite; and an unfortunate accident befell Thodric Jarl, for, in the grip of some nightmare which he refused to explicate thereafter, he almost strangled himself in his sleep.
But, these minor incidents excepted, all were in good health and better spirits by the time they reached the Yolantarath, where they were promptly captured by a cavalry patrol loyal to Sham Cham, the leader of Locontareth's tax revolt.
The troops who had captured Thodric Jarl and his confederates were Rovac warriors loyal to the Muktih of Stranagor, a military governor who had been appointed by the Witchlord Onosh, but who had betrayed his rightful liege lord by throwing in his lot by the tax revolutionist Sham Cham. Since Jarl was of the Rovac, the prisoners were not slaughtered on the spot. Rather, they were taken to the city of Locontareth, the center of the tax revolt, and there -
On account of the prestige of their persons, Guest Gulkan and his associates were soon dragged in front of Sham Cham himself.
Sham Cham? A hairy individual with the manners of a monkey, unclean in his person and foul in his breath. Let us waste no time on Sham Cham. He thought himself a great political philosopher because he was too selfish to contribute to the common good by paying his taxes, but it takes more than tax delinquency to make a leader. Sometimes the man calls forth the moment, and sometimes the moment calls forth the man; and on this occasion, the moment was in the ascendancy.
At least if Sken-Pitilkin was any judge of character.
'You have heard,' said Sham Cham, once he had gone through the ritual of cutting away some of Guest Gulkan's hair plus a button's worth of Guest Gulkan's scalp, 'that I am at war with your father. What do you think of that?' Guest Gulkan, bleeding generously from his missing button's worth, tried to remember Ontario Nol's elegant arguments about farmers fertilizing their crops to improve yields.
'As farmers shit on fields,' said Guest, wiping the blood from his eyes and flicking that blood from his fingers at random,
'so should my father shit on you.'
Sham Cham did not take kindly to being besplattered by the blood from Guest Gulkan's fingers. Nor did he at first take kindly to the political dictum which Guest had enunciated, so Guest promptly blamed it upon Ontario Nol.
'Who is this Nol?' said Sham Cham. 'I should dearly like to meet him, so I can kill him.'
'Ontario Nol,' said Sken-Pitilkin, coming to the rescue, 'is an economist, an economist who thinks that Gendormargensis should share its tax revenues with Locontareth for the greater ultimate good of the empire. This is what the boy Guest meant when he passed his earlier comment about excrement.'
Then Sken-Pitilkin said more, much more, most of which was pleasing to Sham Cham, who was glad to hear that the number of his supporters had been enlarged by the addition of an economist.
'Very well,' said Sham Cham, when he understood the truth of the dictums enunciated by Ontario Nol, the abbot of Qonsajara. 'So much for Nol. But what about the rest of you. Are you for me or against me?'
'What happens if we're against you?' said Guest.
'You die,' said Sham Cham.
'Then I'm for you,' said Guest promptly, thus throwing in his lot with the revolutionaries.
Zelafona had managed to pass for a useless old beggar woman, and hence was asked for no oath. But an oath was demanded of all the males, and all swore themselves to the service of Sham Cham – except for Thodric Jarl, who said he was sick, useless for battle on account of his half-healed ribs, and therefore should not be compelled to declare his allegiance one way or another. The Rovac warriors loyal to the Muktih of Stranagor supported Jarl in this, so Sham Cham, not wanting to pick any arguments with any of his supporters unless he absolutely had to, decided not to push the issue.
A few days later, Jarl escaped, which roused Sham Cham to a fury. He brought together the Rovac warriors in whose custody Jarl had been kept, listened to their excuses, then massacred the lot of them. It was pointed out to him by some of his advisers that this might have been a mistake, since the Rovac were acknowledged to be mighty in war.
