"Your brother," said Rolf, recovering himself somewhat. "Your
brother. He's dead."
        "Eljuk?" said Guest. "But I just pulled him out of the
river!"
        "Not Eljuk!" said Rolf. "Morsh!"
        Then Guest helped Rolf Thelemite to his feet, and the two
went in search of Morsh Bataar. Rolf had seen Morsh go down and
his horse fall on top of him, so presumed the young man to be
dead. But when they found the body it opened its eyes then spoke
to them.
        "Will you shift this horse?" said Morsh Bataar. "For it's
died on top of me, and I think my leg is broken."
Guest and Rolf called for help, and the Witchlord Onosh came
over to them, called others to their aid, and had the horse
shifted.
        "It hurts like a red-hot poker," said Morsh Bataar, tears of pain in
his eyes. "It's the leg. The left leg."
Lord Onosh drew his scalping knife and cut away the clothing
which guarded the left leg. The thigh was prodigiously bruised and
swollen with blood, and Morsh Bataar was crying from the pain.
        "It's death," said Morsh, acknowledging the truth of his own
injury.
        Lord Onosh rose without a word. He knew the injury was as
good as death. Unless -
        "Zozimus!" roared the Witchlord.
        The wizard Pelagius Zozimus advanced and saluted his emperor.
There was blood and mud on the wizard's fishscale armor, but
Zozimus looked nonetheless lordly.
        "My lord," said Zozimus.
        "Zozimus," said Lord Onosh, pointing at Morsh Bataar. "I
charge you with the healing of my son."
        Pelagius Zozimus bent to the injury. When he was ready to
speak, he rose to his full height address his emperor on equal
footing.
        "Your son is a dead man," said Zozimus bluntly. "There is not
the skill in Gendormargensis to heal him."
        "You are a wizard, are you not?" said Lord Onosh. "A worker
of magic. A worker of miracles. Is the emperor to be denied a
miracle on his request?"
        "I am no god to undo what the gods have fated," said Zozimus.
"I have but some poor and wretched art of necromancy at my
command. I have it at my power to have the corpses of this
battlefield stumbling in their blood, their shambles but a parody
of life. And that - and that is all."
        "It cannot be all," said Lord Onosh.
        "My lord," said Zozimus, "were wizardry an art of miracle,
would I abandon wizardry for cookery? Not so. Yet such was my
choice."
        "Choice, choice," said Lord Onosh. "Look at me! What choice
have I got? My son's life or my wizard's. He lives or dies, but if
he dies then you die too."
        "We must get him to Gendormargensis," said Guest, who was
bent on seeing Morsh healed, and who associated healing with warm
rooms and sickbeds.
        "No!" said Zozimus sharply.
        "You heard my father," said Guest, angered so much that he
was almost ready to slaughter down the wizard on the spot. "His
life or yours."
        "Or both," said Zozimus. "I heard him. But we must not move
the boy. To move him is to kill him."
        "He can't stay here!" said Guest, looking around at the
sprawling river, the blood-punctuated mud, the bleary sky, the
horizon encumbered with mountainous hills, and the silent
swordsmen now starting to shiver as their sweat cooled toward
slime.
        "Give him a chance," said Zozimus, speaking harshly from a
throat still dry from battle. "Give Morsh a chance. If Morsh stays
here then he does have a chance - albeit a slim one. But if you
haul him back to Gendormargensis then he dies of a certainty, and
I die with him."
        "Then he stays," said Lord Onosh. "And I stay with him. To
work, Zozimus! Get on with it!"
        "A tent," said Zozimus. "I need a tent. Guest! Backtrack!
Along our track you'll find horses with tents. Morsh himself had
one such last night, though it was not in his keeping this
morning. Ride back and find such, for such is your brother's
survival."
        "I go," said Guest, bowing to Zozimus's imperative.
        Thus Guest went, and Zozimus was much relieved to see him go,
for there was no telling how much damage the boy might have done
in his fear for his brother's life. Then Zozimus called for
horseblankets; and firewood; and for dead horses to be heaped up
as a temporary windbreak while shelter more permanent was sought.
When Guest had gone, Morsh Bataar said through the tears of
his pain:
        "The man's not as tough as he thought."
        Here Morsh was speaking of himself. The Yarglat do not
readily admit to pain, and only by thus referring to it in the
third person could Morsh Bataar admit to the grief of his agony.
        "We none of us are," said his father.
        For the Witchlord Onosh had known pain and knew the truth of
it: there is no thing worse.
        Then:
        "It hurts," said Morsh Bataar, in frank confession of his
pain.
        Then, unable to help himself, Morsh Bataar cried out, gasping
with pain - gasping in the inarticulate agony of the flesh. Lord
Onosh wiped the cold sweat from his son's forehead, and Pelagius
Zozimus, unable to bear this sight for any longer, withdrew to the
riverbank to think.
        The gray-bearded Thodric Jarl went with him, hoping he would
try to escape, for Jarl had a deep-felt hatred of wizards, and
would welcome any excuse to murder him.
        "The break is bad," said Zozimus, who usually shunned Jarl as
if the man was death incarnate - as well he might prove if things
took a turn for the worse.
        "Very bad," said Jarl, with grim satisfaction.
        "Still," said Zozimus, "men have lived through as much."
        "No men that I know of," said Jarl.
        "Then Morsh Bataar will be the first," said Zozimus, trying
to pretend to a confidence which he did not actually feel.
Pelagius Zozimus was no healer, for he had never studied to
be either bonesetter or pox doctor. Zozimus was a wizard of the
order of Xluzu, a necromancer whose skills allowed him to animate
the dead. This filthy and dispiriting work he had long ago
abandoned in favor of cookery, for he disliked death. Equally, he
disliked disease, injury, deformation, and every other debasement
and degradation of the flesh.
Yet -
        Zozimus had ever been a great scholar, and in the course of
learning about death he had learnt much about life, for the study
of death is necessarily the study of corpses and skeletons, which
is an excellent way to learn about the living.
        In the Castle of Ultimate Peace, a mighty fortress by the
flame trench of Drangsturm, the order of Xluzu had long maintained
great collection of skeletons, which included the bones of a
sailor who had died of rabies after being bitten by his mother-in-
law's dog. In youth, this sailor had broken his thighbone after
falling from a mast, and had spent four months lying in his bunk
while he recovered from the injury.
        In the course of the sailor's cure, a huge bolus of bone had
knitted together the fractured ends of his thighbone, which had
been out of alignment by as much as the width of two fingers. The
result had produced a very strange skeleton, but when healed the
leg had been normal enough to facilitate the bestriding of decks
and the kicking of dogs.
        So Jarl's pessimism was not necessarily predictive.
        If Morsh Bataar was lugged to Gendormargensis, he would
doubtless die from the rigors of the journey, but if he could be
kept just where he was, if he could be clothed and cleaned and
warmed and fed, sheltered from the elements and -
        "You know," said Jarl, "while you sit here, Morsh is dying."
        "So you tell me," said Zozimus.
        "He's dying of pain, you fool," said Jarl, unable to restrain
himself any longer. "Pain is the breaking of men, and kills when
wounds alone would not."
        Jarl wanted to see Zozimus fail and die. But Jarl had ever
liked Morsh Bataar for his steadiness and his leisured good
humor, and did not want to see him die in a delirium of agony.
The relief of his pain would probably not save his life, but might
at least ease his parting.
        Zozimus took the hint.
        "Opium!" said Zozimus, slapping his thigh as he named the
best kind of pain relief he knew. Then: "Send to the city for
Sken-Pitilkin!" said he, knowing his fellow wizard was never far
away from a supply of the peace of the poppy. "Send for Sken-
Pitilkin," said Zozimus, "and tell him to bring us his opium."
        "Your word," said Jarl, "is my command."
        And he turned to obey.
        So Sken-Pitilkin was sent for, and brought as directed,
arriving late in the afternoon of the following day after a ride
so rigorous it had almost killed him. There was no problem in
finding the campsite, for by now there were hundreds encamped by
the river, with a steady steam of incoming stragglers filtering
out of the hills. To feed this multitude, Lord Onosh had
commandeered a string of barges which had been coming down the
Yolantarath, deeply laden with some of the spoils of the autumn
harvest in the east.
        Guest Gulkan himself greeted Sken-Pitilkin on his arrival,
and led him to Pelagius Zozimus. No longer was Zozimus glorious,
for his bright-shining armor had been mired by the splattering
muck of the encampment, and the dervish wildness of his bloodshot
eyes, combined with his unkempt condition, made him look three
parts lunatic.
        "What took you so long?" said Zozimus, when Sken-Pitilkin
arrived.
        For in all that time Zozimus had seldom strayed out of
earshot from Morsh Bataar, and much which the sleepless wizard had
heard while within earshot had been far from pleasant.
        "What took me so long?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Why, first I had
to be born, and then - "
        "That's nonsense enough," said Zozimus. "Have you brought the
opium?"
        "Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But I must see our patient before
I dispense it."
        "It is peace," said Zozimus impatiently, for after listening
to Morsh Bataar's agony he wanted peace for the man more than
anything else.
        "It is peace," agreed Sken-Pitilkin. "But sometimes death is
the measure of that peace."
        Then the two wizards went to see Morsh Bataar.
        From the gruesome account of Morsh Bataar's injury which had
been delivered to him in Gendormargensis, Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin
had got the impression that the boy's broken thighbone had
ruptured through the skin, an injury which would have virtually
guaranteed his death.
        But on being admitted to the tent which sheltered the boy,
Sken-Pitilkin found the skin unbroken. Battalions of leeches were
feasting on the thigh, doing their best to suck every drop of
blood from the injured limb.
        "It was Jarl who insisted on the leeches," said Zozimus.
"We've had half a thousand people looking for them, and still they
look for more, though leeches in such quantity must surely kill."
        "The blood must be drawn from the wound," said Sken-Pitilkin
equitably, "and the leech is a precision instrument superbly
designed for that express purpose. How do you feel, Morsh?"
        Morsh Bataar spoke his pain in pain, spoke it in a mewling
cry which evidenced long torture and the imminence of death. His
pain was the measure of his strength, for a weaker man would have
long since lost the power of protest.
        "The opium," said Zozimus impatiently.
        "There is more to healing than ramming strong drugs down the
throats of your patients," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "But Jarl said - "
        "Since when do wizards command themselves by the sayings of
the Rovac?" said Sken-Pitilkin sharply.
        "I am in danger of my life," said Zozimus, "hence will
command myself by whoever knows best."
        "Then be commanded by me," said Sken-Pitilkin, endeavoring
the calm the Witchlord's over-agitated slug-chef. "Be commanded,
for I fancy that I have more of the healing arts than have you."
        "So you say," said Zozimus. "But Jarl says that pain will be
the death of the boy even if nothing else kills him."
        "The pain," said Sken-Pitilkin, "is consequent upon the
fracture. The boy's bone is broken."
        "That much I have divined," said Zozimus stiffly.
        "The bone of the thigh lies broken in the flesh," said Sken-
Pitilkin, continuing in his best classroom manner. "With the bone
broken, the muscles of the leg strive to shorten the leg. Thus
broken bone is pulled against broken bone, and the result is an
agony your most expert torturer would be hard put to better."
        "Why," said Zozimus, in sarcastic imitation of admiration,
"you speak with the fluency of a very pox doctor!"
        "Thus have I made my living in the past," said Sken-Pitilkin,
admitting this secret without shame. "It is the truth, Pelagius. A
broken bone is no big thing in itself, but the gritting together
of the ends of the bone is living hell."
        "So," said Zozimus, seeing the nature of the cure now that he
understood the problem, "we must separate the ends of the broken
bones to ease the pain of our patient. Do you think your wizardry
the equal of the task?"
        "I would not trust my wizardry with a tenth of it," said
Sken-Pitilkin, who, as a wizard of Skatzabratzumon - an order
dedicated to the mastery of the mysteries of levitation - had no
special powers relevant to the cure of the flesh. "Still, mere
mechanical skill may succeed where wizardry fails. I believe I can
build something efficient for our purposes. Guest! Guest Gulkan!
Where are you, boy?"
        Guest Gulkan manifested himself in response to this shout,
and, at Sken-Pitilkin's orders, mustered up a raiding party. Sken-
Pitilkin led this party aboard one of the barges tied up by the
riverbank - the barges earlier commandeered by the Witchlord for
the feeding of his multitude - and this barge they then looted
thoroughly.
        "What now?" said Zozimus, once the looting was done, and
Sken-Pitilkin had a great heap of rope, sticks, spars, planks and
sailcloth at his disposal.
        "Now?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "We build!"
        As the power to levitate objects can be enhanced by the
adroit use of pulleys, levers and inclined planes, wizards of the
order of Skatzabratzumon had long been diligent in their studies
of such devices, and Sken-Pitilkin was well equipped to oversee
the building of a stretching machine. Under his supervision, men
worked through the night, and by dawn had finished the thing. The
contraption looked very like a torturer's rack, and worked on
exactly the same principle.
        "Tenderly, now," said Sken-Pitilkin, as his team of well-
briefed assistants gathered around the recumbent Morsh Bataar.
"Guest. Thodric. Secure the harness."
        Working as carefully as they could, Guest Gulkan and Thodric
Jarl secured Morsh Bataar's shoulders and the foot of his injured
leg in the padded imprisonment of leather harness-work.
        "Ready?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Very well. On my command, begin
to pull. Steady but sure."
        "Don't!" cried Morsh Bataar, piteous in his fear. "Don't hurt
me!"
        "This is not pain but its cure," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Guest.
Thodric. Are you ready? Well - remember you work against muscle,
so be ready for resistance. On the count of three. One. And two.
And three."
        Then Thodric Jarl and Guest Gulkan applied their strength,
the one hauling on the foot of the injured leg, the other pulling
back on the shoulders.
        Morsh Bataar screamed.
        "Steady, boys!" said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "You're hurting him," said Eljuk Zala, advancing on Guest
Gulkan as if to attack him. "Let him go! You're hurting him!"
At that, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin reached out with his
country crook, slipped it round Eljuk Zala's neck, then dragged
him backwards. Taken by surprise, Eljuk fell backwards, whereupon
the nimble-witted Pelagius Zozimus sat on him.
        "Keep it steady, boys," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Now. Slow but
sure. Use your strength. He's a strong man, and you work against
his greatest muscles. Strength, boys!"
        Then Thodric Jarl and Guest Gulkan stretched Morsh Bataar in
earnest, and as the two ends of grating bone were dragged apart
the most amazing relief came into Morsh Bataar's face.
        "A little more," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Just a little more.
Right. Hold him! If you let him go, you kill him!"
        This was the devilish part of stretching the patient. Once
stretched, he must stay stretched, for the broken ends of his own
thighbone were weapons which might kill him if he was released
from the tension under which he had been placed. Quite apart from
the question of pain, the sharp edges of broken bones can be
wicked devices for the severing of blood vessels.
        "Gather round," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        The dwarf Glambrax and the Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite knelt
alongside Morsh Bataar, slipped their hands under his body and
awaited the order to lift.
        "Pelagius," said Sken-Pitilkin, seeking to command his cousin
into action.
        "The boy," said Zozimus, who was still sitting on Eljuk Zala.
"This boy Eljuk. He's not safe to let loose."
        "Then I'll sit on him," said Sken-Pitilkin, and matched deed
to word so Pelagius Zozimus could join Glambrax and Rolf Thelemite
alongside Morsh Bataar. "On the count of three," said Sken-
Pitilkin, speaking from his new-found throne. "One. And two. And
three."
        Morsh Bataar groaned as he was lifted, then cried out sharply
as he was set down on the stretching machine with a slight bump. A
slight bump it was to those who were handling him, but Morsh
himself - why, poor Morsh felt as if he had just been dropped off
a mountain.
        "Easy, Morsh," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We're almost done."
        Then, while Guest Gulkan and Thodric Jarl maintained the
tension on Morsh Bataar's foot and shoulders, keeping the broken
ends of his thighbone apart, Sken-Pitilkin supervised the
attachment of boot-harness and shoulder-harness to hooks. Ratchets
and wheels were used to put both sets of harness under strain, so
Morsh was being stretched by foot and shoulders.
        "Enough," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Guest. Thodric. Release your
hold. Now."
        Guest Gulkan let go of Morsh Bataar's shoulder harness and
Thodric Jarl released the foot harness.
        "Sweet blood," said Jarl, studying Morsh Bataar's face for
signs of pain. "It works."
        "It works," confirmed Morsh Bataar. "Thank you."
        Then he essayed a smile, or tried to. It was more of a
grimace than a confirmation of pleasure, but it was a very miracle
considering the torments he had been through. Indeed, Morsh
Bataar's mere survival was little short of sheer miracle. But
then, the Yarglat are tougher than other peoples, or so they say -
though pain is the same for us all, as the very Witchlord himself
had acknowledged.
        "Well," said Sken-Pitilkin, rising from his seat. "Now we can
fetch our emperor to survey the scene of our triumph."
        The seat the wizard had risen from was of course the hapless
Eljuk Zala, the anointed heir to the Collosnon Empire. Eljuk rose
from the mud unsteadily, a swollen leech hanging pendulously from
his nose. As he tried to exit from the tent, the Witchlord Onosh
entered, and the two collided.
        "Ho, boy!" said Lord Onosh. "You need to blow your nose!
Well, Zozimus! How is my son! How are you, Morsh? You're looking
better. Much better. Grief, what a contraption! What have we here,
Zozimus? A siege engine, is it? Is young Morsh to be catapulted to
Gendormargensis, or must we drag him?"
        "As I said to my lord earlier," said Zozimus, "to move Morsh
to the city would be to kill him."
        "Ah," said the Witchlord briskly, "but that was before he was
lashed to this brilliant machine. I can see the sense of it.
Surely now it's only sanity to shift him."
        "My lord," said Zozimus, "when the wounded are dragged from
the battlefield, then every bump is agony - and by my computation
there are half a billion bumps between here and the city."
        "So it will hurt a little," said Lord Onosh. "Still, Morsh is
a strong man, is he not?"
        "Hostaja," said Zozimus, appealing to his cousin. "We can't
move the boy, can we?"
        Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin considered the question.
        "I have not the full skill of an accomplished bonesetter, nor
the full depth of a bonesetter's proper experience," said Sken-
Pitilkin, "so I cannot answer definitively. But I know for a fact
that where the bone has broken there must surely be blood. Blood
clots to lumps, so to move the boy may be to break free such
lumps. Once free in the flesh they can travel, and jam in the
heart, with death as a consequence."
        "Then what do you suggest?" said Lord Onosh.
        "I suggest that Morsh is safest here," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I
vote for no certain decision on chances, but suggest that he
stands four chances in five of a quick death should he be shifted
to the city. I would not wish to move him much before midwinter,
not with the bone so savagely broken."
        "Then," said Guest Gulkan bravely, "if Morsh must stay, then
I will stay with him, and guard his solitude till then."
        It immediately occurred to Lord Onosh that Guest Gulkan might
well be volunteering to stay with his brother because he was
afraid to return to Gendormargensis. As soon as Guest got back to
Gendormargensis, he would have to meet Thodric Jarl in combat, and
that combat would in all probability be the end of him.
        "Guest," said Lord Onosh, "on the day of our battle against
the bandits you saved the life of Eljuk Zala."
        "So I did," said Guest, who was no great exponent of the art
of modesty. "I dragged him from the river at the risk of my very
life."
        "That was well done," said Lord Onosh. "As a compliment to
your bravery, I offer you any boon within reason."
        "Does this mean - "
        "It does not mean that you may lay claim to the woman
Yerzerdayla. But else you may ask."
        The Witchlord fully expected Guest Gulkan to be excused from
his coming battle against Thodric Jarl. Now that the tempers of
all concerned had had time to cool, Lord Onosh had no wish to see
Guest spitted on Jarl's sword, particularly not since Guest was
the best hope for the continuation of the family line and the
preservation of the empire.
        "My lord," said Guest. "I have long wished to be known as the
Weaponmaster."
        "Since you were a child," agreed Lord Onosh.
        "But you have ever denied me such a title," said Guest.
        "I have denied it for a very good reason," said Lord Onosh.
"The very good reason being that you are the master of no weapon."
        "Yet," said Guest, "it is the title I claim. That is the boon
I wish from you."
        Lord Onosh was quite taken aback by this. Nevertheless, he
granted Guest Gulkan what he wanted. And all the way to
Gendormargensis, Lord Onosh wondered exactly how his son hoped to
survive the encounter with Thodric Jarl to which he had doomed
himself.
        While the much-wondering Witchlord made his way back to
Gendormargensis, the young Weaponmaster trained with his sword on
the banks of the Yolantarath. Ever and again Guest Gulkan slashed
and sliced, imagining how the mighty razor of his courage would
cut down Thodric Jarl to size.
        When he was weary with training, Guest made his way back to
his tent. Already the campsite stank, and already some dog had
managed to die in the middle of it. Rain fell continually, pocking
the boot-craters in the slimy gray mud. Guest Gulkan's neighbor's
tent lay mortally wounded in the mud.
        He looked around.
        He saw a bit of river escaping in the general direction of the distant ocean. Mucky gray cloud - much of it. He didn't see the wind, but it saw him. Changed direction smartly. Bucketed his face with cold rain.
        "Great," said Guest, glowing with confidence and self-
satisfaction. "Just beautiful."
        What was beautiful above all else was the flatness of the
land, the flatness which gave mobility to the horse-troops of the
Yarglat, the flatness which had made them the conquerors of the
Collosnon Empire.
        "This," said Guest, striking a theatrical pose, "is the
empire. And I, the Weaponmaster, will make myself lord of it."
        No thunder boomed to complement his words, but such was the
intensity of Guest's imagination that he fooled himself into
believing that he heard such thunder; and he told himself it was a
very good omen, and proof of the favor of the gods.