The Golden Shield of IBF (42 page)

Erg’Ran said two things. “One of you help me up. We’ll have Sword of Koth swarming over us next.”

“Aye, old friend!” Gar’Ath held out a blood covered hand and so did the Champion.

Erg’Ran took both offered hands, then said, “One of you, my father’s sword, please. There, on the floor.”

There was no more use for the burning cloak with the Tree Demons all accounted for. Mitan ran from the archway, then drew Gar’Ath into her arms, his blood smearing her skin...

Swan, her magic all but depleted, told Bre’Gaa, “Break the arrow, Captain, so that you may pull it from my hand.”

“I will never forgive myself, Enchantress.”

“It was not your fault. Break the arrow. We must hurry, I fear.”

Bre’Gaa snapped the arrow’s shaft, and Swan winced but did not cry out. She nodded her head and Bre’Gaa placed one enormous hand over her wrist, so that she could not move her hand. He told her, “You are brave, Enchantress. There is a little of the Gle’Ur’Gya in you.” He smiled, then wrenched the shaft from her flesh.

Swan sucked in her breath, so quickly, so strongly that it sounded like a scream, but she assured Bre’Gaa, “That was not a scream, Captain. It only sounded like one.”

“I never assumed otherwise, Enchantress. You are bleeding, of course.”

“That will stop—now.” Swan willed the bleeding to cease and for the wound to begin to heal. Her hand still pained her, but that would pass shortly. “We must aid the others.” Already, there was a warm, itching sensation in her hand and the broken skin was starting to scab over and close. Swan began to get to her feet, Bre’Gaa assisting her.

Swan was going to tell him that he should run back and that she would follow, but as she looked along the passageway, she saw Mitan, an arrow nocked to her bow, and, behind Mitan, Al’An, Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath. The three males moved as though gravely injured. Mitan was covered in blood. Quickly second-sighting her, Swan detected no evidence of wounds, but second-sighting the others revealed just the opposite.

“Help me, Captain. I am weak, still, but I must see to their healing.”

“Your will is my command, Enchantress,” Bre’Gaa whispered...

There had been the sounds of pistol shots within the keep. Swan and her other realm man were within the keep. And Eran knew why.

That first night when she took Pe’Ter Goo’D’Man into her, Eran realized that the tablet which she was directed to by the monolith had spoken truly to her. All of the power in the universe would, one day, be hers alone.

Eran stared from the windswept parapet, beyond the stone walls and across Barad’Il’Koth. Second- sighting, she could see Woroc’Il’Lod, white caps rising at the command of the currents of frigid air. She threw back her cloak. With a toss of her head, its hood fell away and the cold embraced her naked body and the wind from the icy sea toyed with her hair.

She felt beyond wonderful.

It was clear to Eran, as she considered the current state of affairs, that the naval maneuvers along her coast were something with which she could easily deal when she felt that the time was right. They required no urgent action. After she had dealt with her daughter, the other realm man, and her brother, she could afford to waste magical power and summon, once more, the Mist of Oblivion. Watching it devour the ships and the arrogant fools aboard them would be a delight.

It was also clear to Eran that a trip to the other realm would soon be required. Pe’Ter was becoming more and more difficult and she tired of the memories she had to recreate for him. When Swan was gone and Pe’Ter was gone, it would be the end of a chapter in her life and she could move on.

And little time remained until Swan’s end.

Moc’Dar whined, and Eran gazed down at him. He cowered beneath his too-small cloak, his twisted body within its repulsively splotchy skin curled into a ball near her feet. He wanted to lick her boots, which made him feel secure. Because of that, she rarely relented to his simpering urgings. The time was, Eran mused, when Moc’Dar’s mind would have been engaged in more interesting pursuits. He’d been very handsome and clearly wanted her. Naked save for her open cloak and riding boots, gazing at her would have set his blood racing; hers, too. Instead, Moc’Dar, the once magnificent and courageous Captain of the Sword of Koth, was something totally different than anything else alive, a freak of her own design.

Eran had changed many males—sexual partners with whom she had become dissatisfied—into beasts, broken them with the whip to the saddle and the bit. She had ridden them over the hills and plains of Creath until they no longer pleased her, personally gelded them and left them with their still human minds to sink deeper and deeper into total madness. Eventually, they would die.

But, somehow, as she looked at Moc’Dar, Eran regretted what she had done. She could use Moc’Dar as he had once been.

“You pitiful thing. Get to your knees. Now!” Moc’Dar, his disgusting body trembling, groveled before her. “I gave you a command!”

Shaking as would a leaf in the wind which caressed her skin, Moc’Dar rose clumsily to his knees.

“Raise your eyes so that I may look into them.”

Hesitantly, obviously terrified, Moc’Dar obeyed.

“My power is without limit, Moc’Dar. Soon, my power will be all of the power in the universe. The punishment I made for you has sufficiently terrified my other officers. Perhaps, I can further instill fear and wonderment by demonstrating that I do not only punish with the greatest severity, but likewise show the greatest munificence.” With those words passed from her lips, Eran took a step closer to him, drew her cloak forward in her fingertips and swathed its folds around Moc’Dar.

As she did so, her flesh touched his.

“I return to you your former shape and strength and visage, the power of speech and rational thought, the courage with which you were once imbued. I return to you all that you once were, Moc’Dar.”

Eran opened her cloak, flinging it back. Naked before her knelt Moc’Dar the man. “Speak, Moc’Dar, but choose your words wisely.”

“Queen Sorceress, Mistress General, I am yours to command.”

Eran smiled. Moc’Dar had always had a way with words. “You will uniform yourself at once; I will facilitate that.” With a thought and a wave of her right hand, Moc’Dar was dressed as a Captain, his black leather mask totally obscuring his face except for his eyes and mouth and the holes for his nostrils. With her left hand, she made fine weapons—firesword, dagger, crossbow and quiver of bolts—appear.

“You will lead the Sword of Koth to the chamber where I keep Pe’Ter. You will find my daughter and perhaps several others there, or they will have just departed. If they have departed, you will pursue them. You will find them. You will kill all who may be accompanying my daughter except for the old fool Erg’Ran and another whom you will recognize because he is not of Creath. You will bring Erg’Ran, the other realm male and my daughter to me, if at all possible. I wish to deal with them personally. However, should you find my daughter in the embrace of the other realm male, you are to kill them both by whatever means necessary and as quickly as possible. Do not indulge yourself and risk my wrath.

“If my daughter attempts to use magic against you and no other viable alternative presents itself in order that you may serve my will, even if she is not with the other realm male, you must somehow kill her. I cannot overemphasize the importance of your understanding this quite clearly, Moc’Dar. As much as I wish the pleasure of my daughter’s destruction for myself, at any cost Swan must be prevented from accomplishing her purposes.

“Six of my most gifted Handmaidens will accompany you and your men. The entire Sword of Koth and, indeed, the Horde in all its numbers will be at your disposal for the sake of this mission’s successful resolution. If you fail, your only recourse will be to take your own life. What I did to you the last time would be merciful by comparison to the punishment I should mete out if you fail me again.”

Moc’Dar said nothing, merely lowered his eyes.

Eran made her spell bag appear from the air around her, and from within it drew the pistol which Pe’Ter had carried before she had brought him to Creath. Moc’Dar visibly recoiled just seeing it.

Eran spoke in the Old Tongue, a summoning to alter the universal bonds within the natural elements which burned and caused the projectile to spew forth toward its target. She looked at Moc’Dar and told him, “That which was consumed in flame behind the projectiles within this firespitter and all others in Creath will burn no longer. No firespitter in Creath will function. If a firespitter is pointed at you, Moc’Dar?”

“Yes, Mistress General?”

“Laugh.”

Eran saw a gleam in Moc’Dar’s eyes...

Garrison’s face and hands itched, as did his neck, The dozens of bites he’d received and the gouges where chunks of flesh were torn from his body were healing so rapidly that the process was almost beyond his powers of belief.

Swan walked beside him through the upsloping passageway, seeming not only depleted in magical energy but so exhausted that she could barely move. Likely, Swan still possessed adequate magic to heal wounds, or for something as silly as lighting his cigarette were there time to smoke one, but the more spectacular magic which might be required to get them out of a tight spot would not be available for some time. Somehow, the only word that Alan Garrison knew in the language spoken by Swan’s people was perfectly appropriate: g’urg.

Nagging at the back of his mind was the unpleasant thought that, if they survived, getting out of Barad’Il’Koth would be a lot tougher than getting in. And he was worried that his pistol shots with the Seecamp had not attracted any response. The keep was a very large structure indeed, but hardly so enormous that the reports from the .32 hadn’t been heard by somebody. The two drunken Ra’U’Ba whom Mitan and Gar’Ath had killed quite possibly had the time to communicate telepathically with other Ra’U’Ba.

One way or the other, Garrison was certain that their presence in the keep was known, and that a trap would be awaiting them.

As they neared the end of the passageway and were about to reconnoiter the area beyond, he heard the sound of running feet behind them. Mitan spun around, drawing back her bow. “I can’t see anyone yet!”

Bre’Gaa, brandishing his sword, declared, “I’ll look ahead,” then ran toward the end of the passageway.

Garrison drew both SIG .45s.

In the next instant, Garrison spied two black-uniformed soldiers, then two more, then more and more, coming into view round the nearest bend in the passageway, less than a hundred yards behind them.

“Ordinary Horde of Koth,” Erg’Ran labeled them. “They’ll kill us just as dead as their elite brethren in the Sword of Koth. Come on!”

Somehow, the immediate danger seemed to reinvigorate Swan. When she broke into a dead run toward the end of the passage, it was as if the exhaustion which she had evidenced only moments earlier had completely fled. Garrison hung back in order to support Mitan as she loosed an arrow, dropping one of the Horde of Koth troopers with a solid hit to the chest. Mitan was already nocking another arrow, a third arrow clenched in her teeth.

Garrison stabbed both pistols toward the still charging enemy and fired—or, tried to. The hammers rose and fell, but neither pistol discharged a round. “Aw, shit!” Accepted procedures for hangfires not withstanding, Garrison thrust one pistol into his belt, freeing his left hand to rack the slide of the pistol in his right. A fresh round chambered, Garrison touched the trigger. “Shit!”

Mitan loosed another arrow. A third soldier went down.

Garrison told himself that maybe the only ammunition which had been magically rendered useless was the ammunition Swan had produced for him magically in the first place. Garrison pulled the .32 from its Pocket Natural holster. Pointing the little pistol in the direction of the enemy, he pulled the trigger. There was no sound except for a loud click.

“Shit! Shit! All right! Run for it, Mitan!” Garrison grabbed Mitan’s shoulder the instant an arrow flew from her bow. “Come on!”

Mitan took his advice, sprinting toward the end of the passageway, Garrison at her heels, holstering his now useless ordnance as he ran.

Bre’Gaa was shouting, “A high-ceilinged chamber and a staircase beyond. A small force of Horde of Koth is coming down the staircase.”

Swan had stopped beside Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath at the end of the passageway. Erg’Ran told her, “I’ll stay behind and hold off the Horde behind us. I’m too slow afoot with this cursed peg leg.”

“Yeah, and you’d die, too,” Garrison told him. “We all go or we all stay, right?”

Everyone nodded or grunted agreement. Swan said, “I would never leave you to die. You were always my dearest friend, and you are my uncle. Without your wise counsel, if we were to succeed, we would still fail.”

Was long-windedness in times of emergency a family trait? Garrison wondered. Swan was beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, forthright, courageous and loving. “So, who’s perfect?” Alan Garrison almost said aloud. Instead, he urged, “Can we get going here?”

“To the staircase!” Swan commanded.

Mitan hung back with Erg’Ran, Garrison handing off his Golden Shield of IBF to the older man. “Carry this for me, please, for a while? I never learned how to fight using a shield and it might come in handy for you.”

Erg’Ran started to reply, but Garrison had no time to listen. Swan charged toward the staircase, sword in hand, a cry on her lips. “Death to the Horde!”

Garrison was right beside her, his sword drawn, Gar’Ath and Bre’Gaa outdistancing them, reaching the base of the staircase, then running up.

Garrison paused for an eyeblink. Swords flashed, steel clanged. This was just like something out of a movie. If he’d squeezed his eyes tightly, Garrison could have almost convinced himself that Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone were battling to the death, with cold steel in the brisket as the price of defeat.

Without realizing it, Garrison was in motion, running up the stairs, Swan beside him, sword arcing over his head as he shouted, “Death to the Horde!”

In the next eyeblink, Garrison was locked in mortal combat with two black-uniformed ugly guys with mean faces and big swords. The one to Garrison’s left—tall, broad in the chest—brought his blade around in a sweeping arc on level with Garrison’s throat. Garrison ducked, backstepped and nearly fell down the stairs. But the blade missed him.