westward for a day from Locontareth, then halted, and held a council of war.
The venerable Sken-Pitilkin, drawing himself up to his full height and striving for further height by making emphatic rhetorical gestures with his country crook, still counseled that they should march to Nork and flee by sea. But Guest refused.
To Guest, Nork was nothing but a name, and he rightly took the place to be small, and inconsequential, and distant, and difficult of access, and a proper base for nothing other than despair. But Guest was still possessed hot hopes of victory, and so the great city of Stranagor was much in his thoughts.
'I was born there, was I not?' said Guest.
'So rumor claims,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'though I do not know the circumstances of your birth.'
'Neither do I,' said Guest. 'But I have heard men claim me born at Stranagor, so think that city auspiciously omened for my victory.'
Stranagor, the ruling city of the mouth of the Yolantarath, was much a mirror-image of Gendormargensis in terms of power and influence. If Stranagor would accept the rule of the Weaponmaster, then he might yet hope to match the Witchlord on the field of battle, and to win for himself a great victory.
'I will make for Stranagor,' said Guest, 'and hope to hold that city in independent revolution against my father. Unless you have any better idea.'
'Well,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'when your father comes to Locontareth, where will he seek us?' Sken-Pitilkin, of course, was still thinking of flight rather than of hopes for future victory, for the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon lacked the sanguinary optimism of the unruly boy who had been for so long his student.
'Why,' said Guest, 'when the Witchlord seeks us, he will seek where we have gone, of course. He will have no trouble in finding us fled to Stranagor. There is no army which does not leave stragglers in its wake. But what of it? Let him pursue us to Stranagor. For I will rally that city to my banner, and bring the Witchlord to battle, and trample him into the murk and mire, then feed his head to my dogs, and let my women keep his organs as trivial souvenirs.'
As Guest Gulkan then owned no banner, no dogs and no women, Sken-Pitilkin thought him over-optimistic. Still, clearly the boy was in a mood for battle. Sken-Pitilkin said as much.
'I think you in a mood for battle,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Why, of course,' said Guest. 'For I am a mighty general, a leader of men, a master of weapons with the defeat of Thodric Jarl already to my credit. A mood for battle! What other kind of mood should I be in?'
Several suggestions slipped neatly onto Sken-Pitilkin's tongue. A mood for panic, for example. A mood of contrition, perhaps. But Sken-Pitilkin swallowed these suggestions unsaid, then spoke out of the wisdom of his geographical expertise, and said:
'So, you wish to meet the Witchlord in battle, do you? Then what say we were to circle back behind him?'
'Circle back!?' said Guest, as if scandalized.
'Yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'You know the circle, do you not?
It is that geometrical form which has the shape of the moon at its full. By inscribing just one half of such a shape upon the surface of this continent, we can by judicious timing bring ourselves to the Witchlord's rear.'
'And bugger him,' said Guest.
'If you must put it like that,' said Sken-Pitilkin, resisting a near-uncontrollable urge to indulge himself in a sigh, 'then, yes, once behind the Witchlord we can bugger him. To be precise, we will fall upon his baggage train. He will have a baggage train, you know. There is no big army which moves without one. Each has its baggage trailing behind like the intestines dragging in the street behind a madman who has disembowelled himself. Let us thus then circle back and fall upon this baggage train.'
'Circle back!' sneered Guest. 'Circle back! Fall upon him!
Fall, yes, and bugger him! What on earth are you thinking of?'
'Why,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'exactly what I have said. Why sneer you?'
'Because,' said Guest, 'this skulking business of sniffing round in circles, of falling upon the unwary and indulging in buggery, why, it strikes me as being unsavory in the extreme, and I want no business of buggery in my biography.'
'Boy,' said Zozimus, who had till now sat silent in the somewhat travel-stained splendor of his elven armor, 'boy, this is serious!'
'Serious!' said Guest. 'Then know that I am serious! The manoeuver you have proposed is one apt for the purposes of a brigand band or a scouting squad. You cannot thus manoeuver an army. We still have a thousand spears, and a thousand spears cannot slip, skulk and circle.'
'Why not?' said Sken-Pitilkin.
He asked the question with a frank directness which set Guest Gulkan back on his heels. Why not, indeed?
'Because,' said Guest at length, 'it would be very difficult.'
'True,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'But a wizard could do it even if a boy could not. A thousand spears can be as adept in tactical agility as a brigand band, if only assuming that they have a genius to command them. Besides, the alternative is the complete dissolution of your army, particularly if you are bent on marching to Stranagor.'
'Dissolution?' said Guest.
'Why, of course,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'For you have no baggage train of your own, therefore your men must either starve or desert on the march to Stranagor, which I figure to be a march of not less than half a thousand leagues.'
'It is more,' said Zozimus.
'I did but speak in round figures,' said Sken-Pitilkin irritably. 'I know it is more! Say, 600 leagues by horseback.
More, much more, if we follow the bends of the river. Twice the distance of our retreat from Babaroth to Locontareth. Guest, your army has suffered a double-blow already. The loss of a battle and the desertion of a city. You must give them victory, Guest, and soon. Else you will lose your army entirely.'
Thus the wizards Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus began the great task of convincing Guest Gulkan to their plan, a process which took the better part of an entire night. Then, the boy Guest being finally convinced, the three of them set to with a will, and organized furiously.
They began with a ploy designed for deception.
At the Weaponmaster's behest, a small group of men who owned Stranagor as their birthplace were sent forth on a march to that city. As these set out for far-distant Stranagor, half a dozen soldiers defected to the nearby city of Locontareth, taking with them the news that Guest Gulkan was escaping to Stranagor with those who were bound for that city, heavily disguised to avoid detection.
Another small party set out for Nork – and their destination was likewise betrayed by paid defectors carefully rehearsed by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin.
Then Guest, his wizards and the rump of his army headed south along a rough and ready trading track – only a bankrupting extravagance would have called it a road – which led in the general direction of Favanosin. Initially, the soldiers were told that Favanosin was their destination. Naturally, some stragglers fell out and were left behind, with the news of Guest Gulkan's flight to the south fixed firmly in their minds.
Thus, counseled by his wizards, the Weaponmaster managed to split himself in three – surely one of the most extravagant feats of wizardly magic to be found in the history of the Confederation of Wizards. Thanks to this wizard-war legerdemain, Guest was simultaneously running north-west to Stranagor, south of west to Nork, and due south to Favanosin, and there was hope that random rumor might have him running in a dozen different supplementary directions as well. One thing was for certain: by the time the Witchlord Onosh and Thodric Jarl reached Locontareth, the true truth of the boy's direction would be beyond retrieval.
'But when,' said Guest Gulkan, as they marched south, 'when will we break for the east to circle round behind my father?'
'Leave that decision to me,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'for if you don't know it then nobody else will.'
'But I need to know it!' said Guest.
'Then your good friend Rolf Thelemite will find he needs to know as much himself,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'and by such dispersal of intelligence, the entire army will know by the end of the day, which means our stragglers will know, and our deserters likewise, which means Lord Onosh will know the same, and soon. Peace, Guest!
Trust me! Just for once, please, trust me!'
