Chapter Seventeen
Babaroth: a town some two leagues (4,000 paces) north of the confluence of the Pig and the Yolantarath. The 'Battle of Babaroth,' as it is commonly known, took place at the Pig itself.
In that battle, the Witchlord Onosh defeated his enemies with the help of his Rovac-born general Thodric Jarl. The revolutionary leader Sham Cham, chiefest of the Witchlord's enemies, died when an arrow took him in the eye, whereupon the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan led the revolutionary forces in a vigorous retreat.
By the next day, Guest Gulkan had fully recovered from his waking nightmare. Indeed, he disclaimed all knowledge of any such nightmare, claiming that a good night's sleep had obliterated his memories of the trauma of the previous evening. Guest celebrated his full recovery from nightmare's claims by holding a little ceremony in honor of the Battle of Babaroth. In that battle, Witchlord had defeated Weaponmaster; but, Guest Gulkan having made himself his father's master, the Witchlord Onosh was forced to kneel upon the earth -
And to eat a small portion of that earth as a token of his son's supremacy.
Shortly thereafter, as Guest Gulkan's army marched through the stretch of trees which lay between the Pig and the settlement of Babaroth, Sken-Pitilkin was audacious enough to question Guest Gulkan's wisdom.
'Your father's fate lies in your hand,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'You have a choice of how you dispose of him. Is your choice to murder him?'
'I have no thought of murder in mind,' said Guest.
'Then,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'for the life of me, I cannot imagine what possessed you to make your father eat mud.'
'Why shouldn't I?' said Guest. 'I have defeated him, and he should acknowledge as much.'
'Yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'But the manner in which you compel his acknowledgement is likely to make it impossible for the two of you to live in peace. If you push him too far, then he will rise against you, even if his resistance serves merely to ensure his own execution.'
'How should I treat him, then?' said Guest.
'With affection,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'With love. He is your father, after all.'
'Love!' said Guest bitterly. 'What love has he ever shown me?
I saved his life, yet even then he showed me no love.'
'You spared him,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Yet sparing a prisoner is but a casual convention of war. It is hardly love.'
'No!' said Guest, with violence. 'I save him! In the river, the Yolantarath! Years ago!'Sken-Pitilkin was taken aback by the Weaponmaster's vehemence. Was the young man losing his mind?
'Guest,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'you forget yourself. It was not your father you saved. It was Eljuk. Your brother Eljuk.'
'Eljuk!' said Guest. 'No, it was my father. I saw the future, you see. There was my father, in the river, in the Yolantarath. He was drowning, Pitilkin. That's why I went into the water. I thought it was my father.'
'But it wasn't,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'But I thought it was!' said Guest. Sken-Pitilkin absorbed this, thought about it, then said:
'Well, Guest, whoever you thought you were saving, it was Eljuk you saved. And, anyway, your father offered you a reward for the saving. He was obligated. You could have asked for anything.
But you chose to ask for a ridiculous trifle, a bauble of a title.
You chose to be the Weaponmaster, which makes you a living joke, for all the world knows you to be the master of no weapon.'
Thus did Sken-Pitilkin vent his scorn upon the Weaponmaster, hoping to break the young man out of his mood of bitter self-pity.
For surely honest anger was preferable to such self-pity. But such was Guest's distress that he absorbed Sken-Pitilkin's dire and unpardonable insult without so much as the flicker of an eyelash.
'I chose the title,' said Guest, 'because it was an ornament, a bauble, a trifle, a toy. But as for the larger things, like my life, say, like the woman Yerzerdayla – my father should have given these for love.'
Now Sken-Pitilkin began to understand the depths of Guest's suffering. After saving his brother Eljuk, the boy Guest had not asked for any great thing by way of payment for services rendered, for he thought his father should give him the great things out of love. But his father had given him nothing.
Now that he knew as much, Sken-Pitilkin exchanged Guest Gulkan's company for that of his father.
'My lord,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'I'm no lord of yours,' said the Witchlord Onosh. 'You've thrown in your lot with my son. Will you be my executioner,
Pitilkin? He'll have me killed in Gendormargensis.'
'I've seen no sign of that,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'No sign!' said Lord Onosh. 'I'm marching under guard, disarmed and dishonored. Is that no sign of impending execution?'
'After war, my lord,' said Sken-Pitilkin, cautiously, 'a peace is best enforced by the disarming of one party to the conflict.'
'Peace!' said Lord Onosh. 'You call this peace? I call it defeat, yes, and bloody slavery.'
'Was it slavery to be a judge at Ink?' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Ink!' said the Witchlord. 'The affair at Ink was a mere charade, a charade of justice.'
'Was it?' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'I think not. Rather, I think your son did you honor by making you an honest judge of an honest affair of law.'
'You think me ambitious to be chief justice?' said the Witchlord irritably. 'Don't toy with me, Pitilkin!'
'I think the fate of your family no toy to play with,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'As you helped me in my time of need, so I – '
'You'll help me, will you?' said Lord Onosh.
'That is my wish,' said Sken-Pitilkin, making a partial retreat into formality in the face of the Witchlord's undisguised anger.
'Then,' said Lord Onosh, 'if you truly wish to help me, then take that country crook of yours, and use your powers of levitation to send the boy Guest hurtling through the air till his head smacks crash against a treetrunk. Smash him, Pitilkin! Well.
Will you? No. You've not blood, meat or marrow enough for murder.
You are but a paltry pox doctor, and you bring me what every pox doctor brings – advice! Well, get on with it! Advise, and be gone!'
'My lord is kind to permit me the honor of advising him,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Let me then advise my lord to think back to a time when he went hunting bandits in the hills near Gendormargensis.'
'They are not hills, Pitilkin. They are mountains.'
'Hills. Mountains. Whatever. My lord went hunting. His son, his much-beloved Morsh Bataar, fell and broke his leg.'
'And?' said Lord Onosh. 'What do you want? You want reward for fixing the leg? If so, you've left it a little late in the asking!'
'It is Guest who won reward,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Though he could not swim, the boy risked his life in the Yolantarath. He risked his life to save his brother Eljuk.'
'And was rewarded for it,' said Lord Onosh.
'Yes, my lord,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'But when you rewarded him, when you gave him the title of Weaponmaster, there was one thing you did not know.'
'And what was that?' said Lord Onosh.
'When the boy went to the river,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'he thought he was saving you. The boy had endured a vision. A vision in which you drowned. So when he saw a man in the river, he went to the water to save you.'
'Save me!' said Lord Onosh, in rage.
'Why, yes, my lord,' said Sken-Pitilkin, taken aback by the Witchlord's anger. 'He wished to save you. What else would he wish?'
