human thigh bone with a wicked little knife. Guest Gulkan himself, the Weaponmaster in his glory.
The Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and his murderous compatriot Thodric Jarl. The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin. And, of course, the slug-chef Zozimus himself.
'We have not troops sufficient to pursue our original plan,' said the Witchlord.
'To get to Favanosin, you mean?' said Guest.
'No!' said his father. 'Favanosin was but a ploy! Remember?
Our original plan was to make a great arc to Gendormargensis, and seize that city while Khmar pursued us in the south.'
'That was not our plan,' said Guest. 'That was Jarl's plan.
Or your plan too, maybe, but never mine.'
This was provocative, and Lord Onosh had to struggle mightily to control his temper. By then, the reversion of authority from son to father was more or less complete. By imperceptible degrees, Guest Gulkan had lost all authority, since he had proved lacking in the necessary skill, drive, diplomacy and decisiveness required to rule a crisis. While the Witchlord Onosh had busied himself with the organization of an army, his son the Weaponmaster had been embroiled in the ever-increasing complexities of institutionalized gambling, thus permanently discrediting himself in the eyes of hard-bitten veterans such as Thodric Jarl.
Ever since the hanging at Ink, Guest Gulkan had shown a tendency to shy away from absolute adult responsibility. And, after Witchlord and Weaponmaster had made an alliance at Babaroth,
Lord Onosh had accelerated this tendency by deliberately minimizing Guest's involvement in all decisions – even those which might well have been within the young man's competence. As adult authority had passed from his hands, Guest had increasingly reverted to a childish irresponsibility which vexed his father sorely; and Lord Onosh showed unexpected strength of character in being able to control his temper in the face of his son's many provocations.
Avoiding the easy opportunity for uproarious argument, Lord Onosh now said:
'The plan, the original plan, was a feint toward Favanosin, followed by an eastward arc to Gendormargensis. We are now too weak to do any such thing. Yet even if we abandon hope of capturing Gendormargensis, I believe we must still turn east to have hope of safety. Let us make for the shores of the Swelaway Sea. Let us take passage to Safrak's islands. Let us there settle – or, if denied refuge by Safrak, let us take the trading route to the free city of Port Domax. So say I. Now what say you?'
There was silence, as if one and all were so battered by the successive shock of events as to have lost all powers of initiative and self-determination.
'Well,' said Lord Onosh, with some impatience, and with a harshness which betrayed the stress he was under. 'You have heard me speak. Must I parrot out the whole business three times over?
Or have you opinions to submit? What is your counsel?'
As a child may sometimes feel over-burdened by adult responsibilites, so too may an adult; and, though Lord Onosh had long sought absolute power, in the difficulties of defeat he was finding the solitary burden of such power to be a weight most uncommonly difficult to bear.
'I say,' said Thodric Jarl, speaking first since he thought all duties of battle were primarily his, 'that we are in no state to fight our way to the south. Furthermore, what we know of Favanosin is written in smoke. None amongst our number has been there. Some say that ships from that harbor venture to Argan, to Ork, to Ashmolea, but nobody can vouch for this of a certainty. I believe more is known of Port Domax, though the knowledge belongs to others, not to me.' Sken-Pitilkin cleared his throat.
'Mighty is the wisdom of the Rovac,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'and Jarl has truthed of Favanosin of a verity. All we know of Favanosin is that it clutches the sea's shore like a very whore's egg. But Port Domax – why, I've been there myself.'
'Port Domax exists, certainly,' said Pelagius Zozimus, denying Sken-Pitilkin the fullness of his intended oratory. 'Sken-Pitilkin has seen it, and as for me – why, I once ran a small eatery in that very city. That was half a thousand years ago, true, but I've been there often enough since then. Its language is Toxteth; its business is trade; and the city is well-connected in enterprise with Safrak and Ashmolea, with Wen Endex and with the more southron parts of Yestron. I vote for Port Domax.'
'If a witch can agree with a wizard,' said Zelafona, who had the shortest voice of any in that council, 'then I vote likewise.'
'And I – ' said Glambrax.
'Hush yourself!' said Jarl. 'Nobody here asked opinion of a dwarf.'Guest Gulkan and Rolf Thelemite took that as a cue for violence, and so grabbed the dwarf and sat on him, though not without difficulty, for Glambrax was prodigiously strong for his size, and could have mastered either one of them in single combat.
'My sister speaks with reason,' said Bao Gahai; and, though she had nothing new to add to the discourse, she reinforced the dignity of her own authority by rehashing at length all the arguments which had been so far presented.
'Well,' said Guest, seated panting atop a struggling dwarf,
'now we're talking sense, though I hope we find footing on Safrak.
I've no wish to run to the Sea of Salt, assuming the thing to exist, so I'd far more happily settle on Alozay, or some such similar island. Khmar can't bring his horse against us, not there, whereas we, why, with time to spare we can – Glambrax! – we can – grief of gods, the thing's biting! – we can plan – Rolf! Get his head, man! – we can plan Khmar's destruction and – ya! – and think to brute back the empire. Gods! The thing's biting!'
'Obviously,' said Lord Onosh, observing the course of Guest Gulkan's oratory, 'the energy of the young and of the dwarves who play with them is truly prodigious in its optimism. Yet I think
Khmar secure, and doubt that the empire's reclamation lies within our power.'
'But the journey to Safrak does,' said Thodric Jarl, rising to his feet, and so bringing their council to an end.
Thus on the following day the Witchlord's army turned east, making for the Swelaway Sea. And a hard going they had of it, what with the difficulties of the terrain, the lack of provisions, the squalor of mud, and the frosts and snows.
For they had all seriously underestimated the derelictions of the wilderness which lay between the road to Favanosin and the shores of the Swelaway Sea. In that wilderness, there was nothing to buy and there was nothing to pillage. There was frost, mire, muck, swamp and weather-hardened thorn. Now the army saw desertions in truth, and it had been reduced to a bare 400 men by the time it arrived at the Swelaway Sea in the snow-shod bleakness of a season of withered sun.
Ah, that winter! That snow! Even now, the mere memory of it tempts the chronicler toward an exercise in self-pity. Even now, the worst of dreams recall the bite of that season. The army had become a rat-rag troupe of beggars, of cripples and convalescents, of blank-staring refugees and muttering derelicts. The bellies of the greatest lords amongst them were sick with the desolations of hunger. Numb fingers and bone-poke ribs. Fumbling dreams. Hope- wreck and delusion. They were all in, finished, exhausted, their last resources gone.
Yet they reached the freshwater sea.
Here a memory, very clear and sharp. The Witchlord Onosh, seated on a lakeside boulder, with his knees to its flanks as if he were seated upon a horse. The dirt of unwashed fatigue crusted in the big, fat, deep and inexplicable gouges which track their way down his slanting forehead. The black of his eyes catching the gray depressions of the everstretch waters of that horizon- exceeding inland lake. He sits; and watches; and breathes; and the smoke of his breath dissipates in a silence unbroken by any sound saving that of the rasping fatigue of his lungs.
It is the silence which stands out in memory: the silence which oppressed that army as it first absorbed the stare-stretch impact of the presence of so much water. For his own part, the Witchlord thought that everstretch of gray a very monstrosity in its insolence. Surely there should not be so much water in the world.
Though the vastness of the Swelaway Sea was but a commonplace matter to Guest, since he had grown well acquainted with it during the time of his exile on Alozay, never in all his life had Lord Onosh seen either this freshwater sea or the far greater Sea of Salt which was said to exist on the borders of the continent which contained his empire. For, though Lord Onosh had supervised the enforcement of law and taxes in the seaport city of Stranagor, he had always done so from Gendormargensis. And, though the Weaponmaster was said to have been born in Stranagor, the Witchlord had never been to that seaport, and knew no more of the Hauma Sea than
