Chapter Fourteen
Locontareth: a community on the southern banks of the Yolantarath, some 460 leagues from Gendormargensis as the crow flies, and rather more as the river winds. Locontareth is near the borders of the empire ruled by the Witchlord Onosh. To go any distance south from Locontareth is to find oneself in hostile territory, though a trade route does run south for 640 leagues from Locontareth to the port of Favanosin.
So it was that the retreat to Locontareth began in the heat of high summer. With the shocked and shaken revolutionary army demoralized to little more than a retreating rabble in its defeat, Guest Gulkan found himself its leader, since nobody else wanted the job – for who wants such a job in a time of failure when political prominence looks to be a likely cause of execution rather than a golden path to glory?
In his swift and unopposed seizure of power, Guest Gulkan was aided by the nature of his birth. Since he had been born into the imperial family, it was only natural that a great many people should automatically think him fit to exercise imperial power; and, since Guest had at his side the wisdom of the wizards Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus, he did not do too badly at it.
Usually, Guest was rumbunctiously uncontrollable in his undisciplined delinquency. But in defeat, and in the first shock of his new position, and sore from his wound, and nagged by pain, and full of fears of gangrene and blood poisoning, he found himself floundering, and so became unnaturally amenable to advice.
As the army looked to Guest Gulkan, so Guest looked to his wizards; and, in this day of greatest need, they did not fail him.
On Sken-Pitilkin's suggestion, the Weaponmaster's men burnt everything they could not carry. They burnt wagons and weapons, fodder and food, clothing and bandages. One or two of the more dimwitted soldiers, obedient to the literal sense of the orders they had received from on high, were caught trying (with varying degrees of success) to set fire to their own dung. Thus lightened, the defeated army retreated on horseback, carrying nothing but that which their saddlebags could hold.
The shortest horseback route required the retreating army to cover over 300 leagues from the Pig to the city of Locontareth.
The land was flat; the way was known; the weather was not unfavorable; and under these conditions a ruthless horseman can cover fifty leagues a day, assuming he has a string of horses which can be interchanged as each from its burden tires, and assuming also that the horseman does not waste time in mourning for those of his mounts who die of their exertions.
But the most ruthless horseman in the world cannot maintain such a pace for long, horseflesh being unable to match the rider's ambition; and in the confusion of its retreat, Guest Gulkan's army was hard pushed to manage twenty leagues a day, to the great and intolerant frustration of its youthful general.
Nevertheless, despite his impatience, Guest Gulkan tempered the pace of his retreat by having his army take the time to set fire to all of worth which fell to their possession. They burnt barges and villages, temples and shrines, thickets and woods, and daily fired the grass to scorch the very earth in their wake.
Thus Guest Gulkan and his people retreated downriver, leaving behind them a swathe of devastation suggestive of a very dragon in its angers.
'Your father must feed upon ashes if he would chase us,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'else delay while he puts together a baggage train for the support of his army.'
It seemed that Lord Onosh chose the latter path, for no word of pursuit reached Guest Gulkan, even though his scouting patrols maintained the vigilance of war in his wake.
Those patrols went forth at Guest Gulkan's sole suggestion, for as the days went by, and as he began to realize that he was unlikely to die from his boot-spike wound, he began to get a grip on himself and his new position, to remember what he had learnt in his years of growth in Gendormargensis, and to gather about him a small corps of responsible veterans who served him as his principal officers, and helped him manage the difficult business of retreat. In these days of difficulty, Guest Gulkan 'lived in the skin of a horse', as the Yarglat saying has it; and, after the first few days of confused retreat, his army was no longer a mindless blob of compacted protoplasm, but was rather a dynamic organism armed and barbed. Never did his army sleep in its entirety. Instead, it maintained its vigilance with sentries, passwords and patrols.
In his retreat, the Weaponmaster commanded thrice a thousand horse. He did not bunch his spears around him, but spread his army across the countryside that it might feed with ease upon the land and maximize its destruction of the same. Only as the army approached Locontareth did it close in, as Guest concentrated his strength to smash anyone who might think to stand between him and his city of refuge. Guest in his eagerness rode with the advance guard, and so was amongst the first to sight Locontareth.
'There it is,' said he, pointing at the distant city. 'Our journeys are nearly at an end.'
'Only if we choose to halt here,' said Sken-Pitilkin, who had matched the rigors of Guest Gulkan's horse- coursing, and sat saddled a swordlength distant from him now.
'Of course we halt here,' said Guest. 'It would be utter folly for us to head back to Gendormargensis.'
'Gendormargensis is of all places the furthest from my mind,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'I was thinking not of Gendormargensis but of the sea. From Locontareth, it is barely 300 leagues to Nork.'
'Where is Nork?' said Guest.
'It is on the coast,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'There are ships.
The Hauma Sea – '
'It was never my ambition to play fish or be fish,' said Guest shortly. 'I've no thought of Nork and none of the sea. This is not a retreat but a – a withdrawal, a tactical withdrawal, that's the term. At Locontareth we stand and turn. The city is our strength, and us the masters of the world if we can make good use of our strength.'
Neither Sken-Pitilkin nor Zozimus fancied the idea of being besieged in Locontareth by an angry Witchlord aided by the devices of Thodric Jarl. The Rovac were noted for their mastery of the art of the siege, so with Thodric Jarl in charge the city was sure to fall. Neither of the wizards thought Guest Gulkan a potential world ruler in embryo: rather, they thought him a wild boy who would be lucky to escape with his skin.
But Guest Gulkan was grimly determined to hold Locontareth as his own, to smash his father in battle, and then to turn the tide of war and make himself master of the empire (first) and then the world (very shortly afterwards).
With the great retreat nearing its end, and with the perceived safety of the city gates at hand, Guest found himself less and less in need of advice from his wizards. Furthermore, since the boy was sorely fatigued, and since he was under great stress, and since he was still in grievous daily pain from the wound in his foot, his temper had shortened to the point where it was difficult for either of the wizards to argue with him effectively, so they in their wisdom soon abandoned that futile enterprise.
So it was that Guest Gulkan's retreating army marched to Locontareth: only to find that the city had barred its gates against them, and had declared itself for the Witchlord Onosh!
'I will burn this town to its bones!' said Guest, seeking to fight off shocked dismay with a display of anger.
But, on investigation, the young Weaponmaster found that he lacked the forces required to make good his threat. Though he had three thousand horse, many of these were from Locontareth, and had no belly for burning their own hearths. Indeed, some thought to stay, and throw in their lot with the Witchlord Onosh. Guest threatened them.
'My father has sworn a great buggery of bayonets,' said Guest. 'If you stay and stand, and throw yourself on his mercy, his greatest mercy will be castration at a minimum.'
But such rhetoric had little effect. For most believed that the Witchlord's wrath would be softened by Locontareth's surrender; and believed, too, that further retreat offered them nothing but pain, struggle, exile, hunger, fear, danger and death.
In the end, Guest saw that those from Locontareth would be useless to him in a fight, therefore let them enter the city.
Then he marched on with a thousand men. A great many of these were slaves; or escaped criminals; or deserters from the Witchlord's army; or men in flight from girlfriends, wives, mothers or lovers.
Rough stuff they were, but great armies can be built from such, if great generals be on hand to lead them. Guest Gulkan, who thought himself by then a very considerable general – for he was inclined to discount the value of the great amount of advice which had been given to him by his wizards, and was increasingly inclined to attribute the coherence of the retreat from Locontareth to his own wisdom – marched his diminished army
