The Golden Shield of IBF (9 page)

Gar’Ath, gleaming bastard sword flying in his fingers, was the embodiment of grace and strength, the perfect coordination of every aspect of body and nature, death incarnate, magnificent to behold. And, Gar’Ath knew it and laughed about it. He was that way.

Gar’Ath had sidestepped, forcing Moc’Dar to move off balance in the attempt to recover. Gar’Ath s sword was still in motion, never stopping, with elegant fluidity executing a drawcut across Moc’Dar’s right forearm and wrist. The greatsword spilled from Moc’Dar’s hands as blood spilled from Moc’Dar’s arm. Gar’Ath wheeled, his blade arcing hungrily for Moc’Dar’s throat.

But there were suddenly two more Sword of Koth springing from the darkness.

“Beware!” Erg’Ran shouted, the time for being an enrapt spectator ended.

Moc’Dar fell back into shadow as Gar’Ath changed the vector of his blade, for an instant only parrying one enemy’s axe. Gar’Ath dropped to one knee, disengaged from the first of the two Sword of Koth; on the back swing, Gar’Ath’s sword opened the second man from crotch to chest. Gar’Ath threw himself to the side, the already dead man’s axe cleaving downward into the ground. Gar’Ath thrust the heavy pommel of his sword forward, into the abdomen of his remaining foeman. As Gar’Ath rose to his full height, his fist then hammered upward into the Sword of Koth’s face. Gar’Ath backstepped, both hands gripping the sword’s hilt as Gar’Ath arced the blade downward from and through his foeman’s shoulder, slicing deeply through chest and belly.

There was not a pause in the blade’s motion, steel arcing through night air, searching for engagement. There was none.

Erg’Ran, axe in hand again, shouted, “Bin’Ah—we must find him if he lives!”

“Oh, he lives all right, but there’s a bump on Bin’Ah’s hard skull big enough to remind us all of this night’s misadventure for a quite a goodly time to come.”

“Usually,” Erg’Ran began, collecting his wits and calming his breathing, “the smallest Sword of Koth scouting party is comprised of ten line warriors, a master warrior, a lieutenant and a captain, not to mention a spellbreaker. I know you don’t like my asking, but—”

“These two, the one who was about to finish Fo’Len, the one who unhorsed Bin’Ah. Add in that big bastard of a captain who ran off, and there’s another dead one over there. That’s six accounted for.”

“There are eight left, nine if the captain survives his wound well enough to fight.”

Erg’Ran turned away from Gar’Ath, getting down awkwardly to his knees beside Fo’Len. Another of the company already attended the man, but he would not live through the night. “The castle is gone, vanished, every stone of it,” Gar’Ath supplied, unbidden. “But at the same time that I spied these Sword of Koth moving against you, I saw a man and a woman trudging through the drifts along the boundary of the wood. Perhaps the Virgin Enchantress lives. Who the man could be, I cannot say. Under the circumstances, old friend, I think we should take horse and ride to intercept this couple before the Sword of Koth chooses to do so.”

Erg’Ran nodded his agreement, then shouted his orders. “Bin’Ah—you help watching over our good lad here. We’ll not abandon Fo’Len until his spirit has gone from him. And then we’ll not leave his body here for the creatures to sport with.” Erg’Ran looked at his men in the light from the globe. Exhausted, frightened half out of their wits they looked. “Gar’Ath and I will ride on alone. If we are not back by sunrise, go to the rendezvous point.” Erg’Ran was not about to mention where that was, since one of the Sword of Koth could be hidden, listening somewhere out in the darkness of the wood.

Erg’Ran intended to leave the light sphere with those who waited behind, but before doing so he swept its beam over Gar’Ath. There was a darkening bruise near his left temple, and a redness leading down to his cheek. The left sleeve of Gar’Ath’s black shirt clung to Gar’Ath’s arm by blood alone, a long but not terribly deep gash leading from his shoulder halfway to his elbow. Gar’Ath swung his cloak round his body. “None of those wounds are from the fighting here, are they lad?”

Gar’Ath smiled wickedly. “The creatures of the wood had a mind to eat me, it appeared. I didn’t let them.” He laughed.

Erg’Ran told him in a fatherly way, “We’ll get a healer to look at that gash, lest it become fouled with sickness. Now,” and he looked around to the others of the company, “would somebody please help a peg-legged old man to get mounted?”

Bin’Ah, of the great bump on the head, accomplished that, and as Erg’Ran eased up into the saddle, he told the fellow, “You and the others keep a watchful guard. There are at least eight of the many abroad in the darkness. Be vigilant!”

Gar’Ath swung effortlessly into the saddle, and Erg’Ran and his brash young swordsman friend were off along the rutted track. They held their animals to a tight rein, lest one of the horses should move too quickly and break a leg...

“I felt it when one of them used the second-sight. Looking at us.” Swan whispered, her lips close to Alan Garrison’s ear. “It was probably a new Yeoman Spellbreaker, because normally the second-sight isn’t felt. The only time it is felt is when whoever’s using it isn’t very good at it. Yet.”

Without warning, Swan had jerked at his elbow. “Remain perfectly still while I cast a shadow spell. Then come with me quickly.”

Since he’d had no idea what she was talking about, there had been no sense arguing.

The shadow spell turned out to be a remarkable thing. And Swan’s magic seemed so essentially effortless. Alan Garrison had grown up watching reruns of Barbara Eden folding her arms and doing shoulder shimmies, Elizabeth Montgomery crinkling her nose, but Swan’s magic was nothing like that. And, so far, the results hadn’t proven humorous. They were, however, effective. Her shadow spell, however Swan did it, created two vaporous-looking replicas of his shape and hers, black and featureless but perfectly formed.

Swan evidently held the shadow beings in perfect synchronization with their bodies as they began again to labor their way through the snowdrifts. Then, as they passed a singularly heavily trunked tree, Swan whispered to him, “Hide here with me quickly, Al’An.”

Garrison did as he was told, looking back, was amazed to see the shadow shapes continuing onward, as if they had somehow taken over in the search for the road leading through the wood.

When Garrison asked, “How are you controlling those things?” Swan responded only with a smile. He could barely see that, because the light which had lit their way had ceased to emanate from Swan’s left palm. Instead, a literally disembodied light was visible from the hand of her shadow counterpart. “We’ve been spotted,” Garrison said, stating the obvious. “Where and how many?”

She told him she had no idea how many persons watched them, but she was certain that they would be warriors in the Sword of Koth, her mother’s elite guard. The “where” would be a knoll, itself barely visible through the swirling snow, perhaps two hundred yards distant as Garrison judged the range. Too great a distance for a pistol, at least in his hands.

“We can’t stay behind this tree forever,” Garrison told her. “Can’t you make us invisible or something, so that we can move without them seeing us?”

“Invisibility is not part of nature, and such magic as that requires spell-casting of the most difficult type—it would consume virtually all of the magical energy remaining to me. The same would be true if I were to spell-cast those who watch us, so that they alone could not see us. Anyway, I don’t quite know where they are or how many of them there might be. But whoever second-sights us will likely continue to observe the shadows which I summoned. Before it is realized that these are shadows only, we can hatch a plan.”

This wasn’t an opportune time for Theory of Magic 101, but Garrison had to ask her, “What do you mean when you say that you summoned the shadows?”

“They are our shadows. Now, the light is so dim that we cast no shadows. But our shadows are a reality, only unseen because of circumstance. I merely summoned the shadows from the darkness by means of light. The summoning wasn’t hard, but separating them from ourselves takes some continuing effort. I cannot maintain the magic for more than a short while longer, Al’An.”

Guessing from Swan’s remarks that they had been spotted some twenty minutes earlier, that allowed plenty of time for her enemies—his enemies, for the moment at least—to have done any number of things. Garrison had no military background, but was well familiar with the concept of an envelopment, in this case the bad guys circling around behind the good guys in order to get the good guys caught in a crossfire. Anybody who had ever watched a western movie knew that much of small unit tactics. Garrison loved Westerns.

The key element to surviving an envelopment was to be someplace else besides where the bad guys thought their prey would be when they struck. Evidently, there was some equivalent to the western movie on Creath, because what Swan whispered in Garrison’s ear perfectly echoed his own thoughts. “We need to betake ourselves from here, into the wood, so that if there is an attempt to trap us, we will be out of the trap before it closes.”

The snowdrifts were no deeper where they were than anywhere else. Garrison suggested, “How about entering the forest right here? Shall we?”

Helping her to manage the highest of the drifts while still attempting to stay crouched and low, Garrison started forward, Swan beside him.

Once beyond the boundary where the vast, empty plain behind them met the forested area ahead of them, the drifts were considerably lower and the going was easier. “There are evil creatures which dwell here, the further from the track, the greater their strength. Be cautious, Al’An.”

“Are you any good with that sword?” Garrison asked Swan, mainly to get her mind off boogie-creatures and monsters and stuff.

“For a woman, yes.”

“That’s a sexist attitude toward your own gender, isn’t it? What I’ve read about sword fighting—unless you’re talking the really big two-handers—always made me think it was more a matter of skill than strength alone.”

“Yes, but a woman ordinarily has other skills that she must learn to ply beyond combat, and there is less opportunity to practice for combat. I acquit myself well enough, Al’An.”

It dawned on Garrison that she must be getting a much better handle on English, because she hadn’t been asking as many of her weird questions, such as, “What is shit?” That was a really good one. He’d have to get Swan to do a language spell on him so that he could become fluent in something like Japanese or Chinese. Either language would be a real plus for his career with the Bureau—if he stayed with the Justice Department.

They were several yards within the treeline, visibility poor. Garrison thought he heard something. He ceased all movement but placing a finger to his lips in what he hoped was a universal symbol for silence. Very slowly, he edged down from a crouch to his knees, Swan did the same.

He had heard something. Hearing it again, he recognized the sound as a voice. Waiting, listening, barely breathing, Garrison realized that there were two voices, speaking to one another in hushed tones. They grew almost imperceptibly louder, nearer. Garrison’s right fist balled tightly around the butt of his pistol.

There was something odd, odder still than anything he had so far endured. He could understand these voices, about every third or fourth word. That should have been impossible, however he did, as clearly as if—

Garrison turned abruptly on his knees in the snow beside Swan, almost shouting aloud. His hands went to her shoulders. Her eyes glanced toward the pistol, then back into his. Swan’s eyes were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.

Evidently, Swan heard the voices as well. There was an impish look in her eyes, then she shrugged her eyebrows and her lower lip looked pouty. He’d never noticed her lower lip looking that way before. She shrugged her shoulders under his hands, then smiled broadly.

Garrison heard one of the voices almost perfectly clearly now, however subdued. “... says that the only way to take the life of the Enchantress is for all of us to rush her. I will do as my Captain orders me; but,
by the Queen Sorceress, I hope Moc’Dar is right.”

“Some of us may perish, Gol’Hoc, but she cannot magic us all at once. And whoever is the man accompanying her, he is likely not a sorcerer, merely mortal.”

“She is powerful, this Enchantress, or otherwise how did she survive the Mist of...” The last word faded off.

The sounds of boots softly crunching snow faded as well.

There were two questions Alan Garrison had to ask Swan, and immediately. His left hand pushed back her hood far enough that his lips almost touched her ear. “Did you use a language spell on me without asking me?” Garrison whispered emphatically.

“Yes. It seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances. I can lift it in an eyeblink, should you prefer, Al’An.”

Garrison was tempted to tell Swan just that, but being able to use the language here would be an asset while he was here, wherever here was. Garrison asked his second question. “Why do they talk about me as just mortal? Are you not mortal?”

“I would only die after the course of many human lifetimes. I am as human as you, but it is the magic which prolongs my life. I have never been truly sick, though I’ve had aches in my head or my belly. I feel other pain, hope someday to know the pain of child-bearing. I broke a toe once, but it healed within a day. Had I used my magic, the bone would have grown together instantly. The magic lets me cure myself—and others, too—for the reason that I told you. Most magic is only the acceleration of what would happen naturally. And I heal myself even if I am unaware of being ill. In that way, I am not mortal at all. Were someone or something to take my life—then I am as mortal as you, Al’An,” Swan whispered back, her lips beside his cheek.

Garrison was tempted to try the old movie routine, and ask her to pinch him so that he would wake up. Logical fallacies inherent to the idea aside, it never worked in the movies. And, if he were to awake and she were gone—The thought made him momentarily as cold as he had been before she magically wove the warm hooded cloak which he wore. Garrison started to speak, but Swan held a finger to her lips now, her eyes staring off in the direction the men belonging to the voices had taken. She turned to Garrison quickly. “I used the second-sight. They are Sword of Koth, those two. There should be thirteen or more of them. We must leave this place.”