The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (40 page)

       
Elkor Alish proclaimed
stern laws against gambling for food and water, and enforced them by making
everyone eat and drink under the eyes of hand-picked manhandlers. The first two
people caught infringing the regulations were thrown overboard and left to
drown, after which there was no further disobedience.

       
By a combination of fair
dealing, ruthless discipline and punctilious organisation, Elkor Alish
eventually brought his ships safely to Runcorn with its multitudinous refugees
in reasonably good shape.

       
Togura, who had waited
eagerly for his first sight of this new city, found, to his disappointment,
that he had been here before. Runcorn was the place where he and the
Lezconcarnau villagers had first taken ship for Androlmarphos. A deserted,
depopulated place with no women to speak of - and certainly no whores, as far
as he could see.

Chapter 37

       
Amongst the Koruatu
philosophers of Chi'ash-lan, there were perennial debates about the role of the
individual in history. Are all people shaped and controlled by historical
forces? Or can an exceptional person shape history? Some supported the view
that human beings are like chips of wood floating in the flood of a great
river, unable to control their destiny; others held that certain world
historical individuals are like master engineers, able to dam, divert or indeed
reverse the river of history.

       
By the time of the
battle of Androlmarphos, the debate had been going on for half a millenium,
and, far from being exhausted, was growing steadily more complicated; the
matter of the role of the individual in history now involved questions of free
will versus predestination, and, most recently, fractious deliberations about
the very meaning of the word "history."

       
Some argued that history
is "a sequence of events." Others insisted that it is "events
determining culture." But then, in that case - what is culture? (To that
supplementary question, at least twenty-seven different answers were proposed -
and that was only in a single day's debate.)

       
One philosopher - Klen
Klo, a noted drunkard and kleptomaniac - argued that "History is
everything which happens apart from the weather." This satisfied many
people for almost as long as half a day, until one of his rivals - Shomo Shamo
Shah, a one-time gladiator - refuted Klen Klo's assertion by noting that
"Whoever could change the weather would be a world historical figure,
therefore the unchanging of the weather is a historical event."

       
Shomo Shamo Shah,
intoxicated by what he liked to think of as his own cleverness, went on to
claim that unevents - such as the nonchanging of the weather - are also part of
history. In the terms of this definition, any uneventful life which failed to
change anything at all could be seen as world historical. The world, said Shomo
Shamo Shah, might be full of world historical figures - such as Klen Klo.

       
Whereupon Klen Klo, also
intoxicated - though alcohol was the villain in his case - promptly punched
Shomo Shamo Shah in the nose, thereby sparking off a battle between
philosophers which was, at least in one of them more mundane and generally
accepted meanings of the word, a historical event.

       
None of this directly
affected Togura Poulaan, who was a long, long way from Chi'ash-lan, and who
never got to hear of the punch-up between Klen Klo and Shomo Shamo Shah, let
alone the debate about the role of the individual in history. Accordingly,
questions of what Togura mgith or would or could have thought about the debate
must remain strictly theoretical; he did not do much spontaenous philosophical
thinking, apart from wondering, not infrequently, "Why am I here?",
"What's going on?" and "Why do these things always happen to
me?"

       
Nevertheless, it is
possible that Togura might - if given the opportuntiy to participate in the
debate in Chi'ash-lan - have made a certain contribution. One cannot imagine it
being made with much style, as he was no orator; being young, he would
undoubtedly have had to speak through an interpreter. In the manner of the
inexperienced, he might have been long-winded as well; however, assuming this
fault to have been cured, he might have come up with something like this:

  
     
"History is
what we understand. The rest is a waking nightmare. History is the explanation
of who holds the knife. Withut the explanation, all we understand is the
pain."

       
His remarks, of course,
would have left the major questions unanswered, but, unlike some of the
frivolities ventured by the philosophers, they would have been heartfelt truths
discovered by experience. If challenged to justify his own position, Togura
could have easily supported it with material drawn from his own life.

   
    
It was at Runcorn that
he finally managed to get a reliable account of events which had been, until
then, unexplained nightmares. A mild-mannered pirate with designs on his
virginity (which, in the end, came to nothing) spent a whole day talking with him
in a bar. They were sober the whole time, as, thanks to strict rationing, they
had to while away the whole day with a single mug of ale apiece.

       
Togura learnt that rocks
could be wakened to life by a magic artefact known as a death-stone. That explained
the walking rock which had chased him through Looming Forest so long ago. As
Draven had told him, the troops Togura had met at Lorford, in Estar, had been
Collosnon soldiers in the service of the Lord Emperor Khmar of Tameran.

       
It seemed that the
warrior Elkor Alish had defeated Khmar's army of invasion, with, perhaps, a
little help from certain wizards. Later, Alish had gone hunting for a
death-stone. Finding one, he had made an alliance with a pirate chief, Menator,
and had set out to conquer the world. Recruiters had scavenged even to the
Lezconcarnau Plains, enlisting mercenaries, which was how Togura and the
villagers had, belatedly, come to join Alish's conquering army in the city of
Androlmarphos.

       
Alish had lost a great
battle on the plains to the east of Androlmarphos; Togura, fortunately, had
been ill with dysentery at the time. Subsequently, the enemy - who had come
into possession of the death-stone, stealing it from Alish - had stormed
Androlmarphos with the help of animated rocks.

       
All was much clearer.

       
With the help of a rough
and ready map (drawn on a tabletop with someone else's spilt beer) Togura was
even able to make an estimate of the route he had travelled after leaving
Estar. He had crossed the Ironband Mountains - he remembered, distinctly, a mad
moment when he had claimed those mountains as his empire - and, descending
those mountains, had reached the northern part of the Lezconcarnau Plains,
there to be captured by a roving band of villagers.

 
      
Thanks to
that tutorial session in Runcorn (he was offered another kind of tutorial, too,
but declined) his nightmare became history.

       
This, of course, does
not answer the original question: does history dictate to the individual or
vice versa? Some philosophers - Lunter Hojo, for instance, the notorious
lunatic who was almost killed in a kite-crash - hold that "both
possibilities are true"; in the case of Togura Poulaan, however, it could
be asserted, on the basis of what he had endured until reaching Runcorn, that
"both possibilities are untrue."

       
Togura had been severely
buffeted by the turbulence on the fringes of great events, but those events had
not created a destiny for him - they had simply kicked him until he was dizzy.
And he had never yet been in a position where he could personally influence the
world's affairs. Using Togura as an example, it is possible to argue that
"some of our lives are random" - though anyone unwilling to become
embroiled in the tiresome disputes of Korugatu philosophers would do best to
ignore the subject altogether.

       
Certainly Togura's first
chance to put the theory to the test, and to attempt to become a world
historical figure - or to be forced, by the thrust of events, to accept that
destiny - came at Runcorn. Though there were few people in the city, there were
many plans, plots, cabals, schemes and conspiracies. Little hives of intrigue
were abuzz with low-voiced diplomacies, threats, promises, oaths of allegiance
and wild speculations.

 
      
Men were
planning to murder their defeated leader, Elkor Alish. Others were hoping to
steal the death-stone back from the opposition, and ensure that Elkor Alish did
become world conqueror after all. Some were for over-running one of the smaller
mountain kingdoms on the coast to the north of Runcorn - the choice was either
Chorst or Dybra. A few were for setting up a kingdom in Estar. Many held that,
with their depleted numbers, the only sensible thing to do was to retire to the
Greater Teeth.

    
   
On one hot summer's day, the
fair-haired young pirate by the name of Drake made Togura an offer. They had
just collected the day's ration of rice and vivda (which was issued together
with a single metal token good for a mug of beer in any tavern in town) and
were sitting eating when Drake made his proposition.

       
"I'm going with an
embassy to Selzirk," said Drake.

       
"Selzirk?"

       
"Don't tell me you
don't know where Selzirk is," said Drake. "I'd have thought even
you'd know that."

   
    
"I do," said
Togura, with dignity. "Selzirk's the capital of the Harvest Plains. The
capital of the people who defeated us at Androlmarphos. I wouldn't have thought
it'd be a healthy place for a pirate to venture just now."

       
"We go as an embassy,"
said Drake, patiently. "We'll be safe enough. They're civilised, you
see."

       
"I think maybe
you're bloating the fish a bit," said Togura, using a bit of idiomatic
pirate-talk. "Ambassadors don't usually come so short in the tooth."

       
"Oh, I'm just going
along as a pair of ears," said Drake. "I was born in Selzirk, see, so
I speak the local ingo. I've got authority to take a companion. Do you want to
come?"

       
"No thanks."

       
"Have you got
enemies in Selzirk, then?"

       
"No," said
Togura. "But I've got a home in Sung."

       
"Man, home is a
place for old men to die in. We're young! Come! We're leaving tomorrow!"

       
"I'll think about
it," said Togura.

       
"It was his chance,
perhaps, to venture to the heart of the action, to dare all and hope to become
a world historical figure, a hero, a giant bestriding the world of events. In
the event, however, he turned it down, and Drake left without him."

       
Finding that Bluewater
Draven was sailing to the Greater Teeth on a courier cutter, Togura begged a
ride; from the beer-table map, he knew the Greater Teeth were a step closer to
home, so he quit Runcorn, leaving, without regret, the melancholy, mostly
deserted city, and his best chance of proving or disproving certain theories of
history.

Chapter 38

       
As the courier cutter
coursed for the Greater Teeth, Draven did his best to dispel the prevailing
gloom aboard, a gloom which was consequent on defeat behind and an uncertain
future ahead. He organised sing-songs, joke-telling sessions and a fishing
competition.

       
Togura, who won the
fishing by catching a small thresher shark, was dismayed to find that the first
prize was being thrown overboard. Second prize was the chance to command the
courier cutter for a man overboard exercise; fortunately, the man with the
second-best fish was a competent seaman, and Togura, very angry and very wet,
was rescued from the waters of the deep.

       
Third prize was a choice
between getting keelhauled or eating the thresher shark, raw, bones and all.
Shark-eating proved to be an amusing spectator sport; the man playing gourmet
vomited twenty-seven times before he finally mouthed down the very last of the
fish.

       
"Fourth
prize," said Draven jovially, "is getting skinned alive."

       
However, as only three
people had caught fish, fourth prize was not awarded.

       
Drake also organised a
tug-of-war, a rat-fighting competition and a knuckleskull league, knuckleskull
being a pirate game which is played with cudgels, and tends to lead to bad
headaches or worse. Then there was the game of "Quivliv Quoo," which
means, literally, "Slippery Octopus." One person ties another up; the
captive, if he can escape, gets the chance to throw a bucket of water over the
person who did up the knots. There was, once, a drinking race; they did not
have enough liquor on board for a second session.