The Golden Shield of IBF (13 page)

Gar’Ath didn’t seem to have anything to do with magic, a “what you see is what you get” kind of guy. He leaned over from his saddle, his voice a loud whisper and still barely audible over the noise of the Falls. “If you’d hold the reins of my horse, I’m of a mind that it might be best to reconnoiter on foot, Champion.”

Garrison liked him, despite the fact that he persisted in calling him “Champion” and despite his haircut. Gar’Ath’s dark brown hair, wavy and full like a woman’s, was grown almost halfway to his waist, the sides bound back by a leather thong knotted at the nape of his neck. Garrison could just see some guy with the Bureau showing up for duty sporting a haircut like Gar’Ath’s. The look on Matt Wisnewski’s face would be worth a few weeks’ suspension without pay and a reprimand in the personnel file.

As Garrison took the reins of Gar’Ath’s mount, the swordsman flicked his cloak out of the way of sword and shield, shooting Alan a grin, and started forward along the icy pathway.

Garrison’s hand tightened on the butt of the pistol he held.

After a moment, Gar’Ath came running back, leaned up toward Garrison in the saddle, his voice barely audible. “There’s a small band of Ra’U’Ba roaming about in there, looking for information they can sell to the Horde. Our lads that we left behind may still be up in the rocks. We must act, and quickly too, Champion.”

Garrison bent low in the saddle in order to hear better. “I’m missing something, here. Who are the, the, the whatever you called them?”

“The Ra’U’Ba are not like us. You’ll see, but we must be very silent, lest they hear us. They communicate with one another over great distances by using their minds alone. And, they can use their minds to block themselves from the second-sight. That is why the Queen Sorceress suffers them to live, because they are the best spies, almost undetectable.

“When one of them discovers a bit of valuable information,” Gar’Ath went on, “he tells it to another by mind alone, even if that other is an incredible number of lancethrows away. Distance matters not at all to their minds, Champion. If one of them should see one of our Company, the Horde would be informed almost instantly, and troops dispatched at once. That is why they must be dealt with one at a time and quickly. This is not work for your firespitter, Champion. Trust me there. Ready the edged weapons of which you spoke. The Ra’U’Ba are tremendous fighters, heavily armed and hard to kill unless you know their one weakness.”

“Let me guess. You don’t know what that one weakness is, right? Shit.”

“What?”

“G’Urg.”

“Aha! G’Urg. I
do
know the weakness, but it’ll be easier to show you than tell you, Champion. We’d best leave the horses here.”

Alan Garrison dismounted. His hands began fishing in his pockets for his knives. “Telepathic mercenary spies who are terrific fighters. Wonderful,” Garrison groused...

At the end of the pathway behind the Falls of Mir was a steeply sloping downgrade. There was less snow here, as the canyon beyond the Falls was sheltered from much of the wind. Angling along the downgrade was a road of sorts, snow covered but still discernible.

Prowling about on the canyon floor were creatures looking for all the world like heavily armed mutant humanoid monsters from some cheap horror movie, but with better makeup and weirder costuming. Either that, or they were a cross between a gargoyle and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Ra’U’Ba stood at least two heads taller than the average professional basketball player.

Unless the one closest to them, which Garrison could see in the best detail, just happened to be particularly ugly, calling the Ra’U’Ba “grotesque” would have been a compliment. Spiked horns grew from the sides of their otherwise humanlike heads, the horns curled forward like those of a bull, but not quite that distended. Their ears were more pointed than the ones Leonard Nimoy used to wear. From his vantage point, Garrison would have sworn that they had three eyes, two dark and one yellow, the yellow eye between and slightly above the other two near the center of the forehead.

Their hands—six long fingers each—were easily large enough to palm a basketball while still holding a hotdog and a drink cup. The Ra’U’Ba were obviously jointed oppositely from humans at both the elbows and knees; merely watching them motion with an arm or walk a pace or two was nightmarish.

Their bodies rippled with muscles superimposed upon muscles; not even Arnold Schwarzenegger had calves like they did. With long tails balancing enormously powerful-looking torsos, the Ra’U’Ba gave the appearance of walking on three tree-trunk-sized legs.

If the Ra’U’Ba appeared physically formidable, they also looked sartorially ludicrous. Naked from the waist up, barefoot, the only garment any of them wore was a skirt. These were nearly knee-length and of a color most reminiscent of vomit. The skirts obscured their thighs and the roots of their tails.

Their skin was reptilian, covered with grey-green scales, but since they were nearly naked they had to be warm-blooded creatures, considering the ambient temperature. Admittedly basing his observations on limited experience, Ra’U’Ba armament seemed to Garrison as bizarre as their physiology. Great shields, the size and general rectangular shape of those used by the armies of Ancient Rome, all but covered their backs like the shell of a tortoise. Helmets hung from each shield, the helmets peaked in the style of feudal Japan, but hinged in order, he assumed, to accommodate the horns on their heads. Built into the helmets were metallic face masks, these almost as terrifying looking as their real faces.

Baldrics, overly wide, were crisscrossed from each shoulder to the opposing hip and blades the size of broadswords were carried high in the frogs. A belt of similar width girded each Ra’U’Ba’s midsection, suspended from or attached to it various other weapons—short-shafted axes with wickedly broad heads, daggers and shuriken-like throwing stars, only much larger than any Garrison had ever seen.

Gar’Ath leaned toward Garrison, his whispering more easily audible beyond the roar of the Falls. “We must lie in wait and take them quickly lest their minds tell the other Ra’U’Ba what we are about.” Gar’Ath returned his sword to its sheath and drew his dagger.

An automatic folder in each hand, Garrison was as ready as he would ever be. That wasn’t very ready at all. He’d never sneaked up on somebody with the intent to kill, nor certainly had he ever used a knife to do harm to anyone. Like any cop who took his survival seriously, he carried knives not only for ordinary and extraordinary chores, but for last ditch self-defense. He had practiced with the knives, developing a kata or technique for use of one on its own or both together. Rehearsed as a series of martial arts moves in front of a full-length mirror, the routine looked confident, intimidating. Holding the knives, preparing to confront a heavily armed living adversary, Garrison felt no confidence at all, and intimidated rather than intimidating.

Some Champion, he almost verbalized.

Gar’Ath was on the move, creeping forward through the snow, weaving his way along the boulder-strewn downslope. Alan Garrison caught up and stayed beside him. Garrison had counted three of the Ra’U’Ba, and three horses, too. He wondered how something with a tail that long and large could ride a horse? Maybe the tail was jointed at its root and could sling to one side or the other, or rooted high enough to hang out behind, over the saddle’s cantle. If he kept concentrating on something else, he might be able to slow down his breathing, control his heart rate.

Garrison and Gar’Ath stopped behind a pile of broad, flat rock slabs, snow accumulated several inches high. He and the swordsman were only a few yards from the nearest of the Ra’U’Ba.

This would be a waiting game, like marking time in the predawn over too many cups of coffee, the word yet to be given that it was a go to serve arrest warrants on a heavily armed group of suspects. But the word always came, no matter how long it took. The biggest problem was always nerves, because there was so much time to think about what could go wrong, like getting killed or crippled, or doing something stupid and causing someone else to be hurt or killed.

Swan hadn’t magically made him any heavy winter gloves. Garrison only had the thin shooting gloves that he always carried in the pocket of his bomber jacket, kept there for emergencies. Despite the cold and the thinness of his gloves, Garrison’s hands perspired. He stripped away the gloves, to better handle the knives.

Beside him, Gar’Ath whispered, “The way to kill one of the Ra’U’Ba is simple, Champion. Creep up behind the Ra’U’Ba with your blade at the ready for the death strike. When you have a close look at a Ra’U’Ba’s face, you’ll see that what appears to be a third eye at the center of the forehead is not. It is an unprotected portion of the brain. When a Ra’U’Ba is helmeted, he is virtually invincible because of his strength and skill with weapons. The helmets they wear are reinforced over the forehead. Only the most powerful sword or axe blow, accurately delivered, can reach this spot beneath a Ra’U’Ba helmet. Failing that, to kill a Ra’U’Ba is difficult, even for me.”

“So, I sneak up behind this guy, jump on his back and stab him smack in that third eye that really isn’t, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Have you done this before, Gar’Ath?”

Gar’Ath grinned, shrugging his eyebrows as he said, “I was never so fortunate as we are now. When I’ve fought Ra’U’Ba before, they were always helmeted.”

“So this is a real break. Great,” Garrison said. “I guess we just must live right to be this lucky.”

“Your words are true, Champion. Wait until I get close to the two on the far side of the canyon. I think that I can kill two of them quickly enough, unless you want the honor. I see that you have two weapons ready. Do the blades unfold from within?”

“Yeah. That’s what they do. But, uh, you go ahead and take the two on the far side there, and I’ll get in there with you as soon as my guy’s down for the long count.”

Gar’Ath nodded soberly, then was off, moving with the grace and speed that was second nature to someone who lived for combat, had lived for it all of his life.

Alan Garrison’s eyes flickered from Gar’Ath to the Ra’U’Ba nearest him, and when Garrison looked back, he could no longer spot Gar’Ath. “This guy’s good,” Garrison murmured under his breath. He’d noticed that he’d begun talking to himself since coming to Creath; and some contended that talking to oneself was symptomatic of early-stage mental illness. “All I need. Go nuts here where I’ve got no health insurance. That’d be just great.”

If there’d been an encampment here, the Company of Mir had to be great at cleaning up evidence after themselves. “Lucky this isn’t a crime scene.” There were no signs of old campfires, litter, anything beneath the snow cover. And the Ra’U’Ba really were looking.

Garrison forced himself to look at his own particular Ra’U’Ba. He judged the height difference between himself and the Ra’U’Ba as roughly equivalent to that between Herve Villechaize and Andre the Giant.

Garrison knew that he would have only one chance at this.

Gar’Ath had to be in position near the two Ra’U’Ba who seemed to be conferring about something near where their horses were tethered.

This was the moment.

Alan Garrison broke into a dead run down the snow covered slope; his leather-soled cowboy boots were not ideal for reliable traction and his balance almost went once. But he kept running, one unopened automatic knife in each hand.

“Oh, my God!” Garrison lamented under his breath. What if the scaly skin of the Ra’U’Ba was puncture proof? He was about to find out.

The Ra’U’Ba’s body shifted just slightly, the massive shoulders sloping to one side, as if the creature was about to turn or look over its shoulder. Garrison put on all the steam that he had, sprinting the last few yards faster than he had ever covered ground before.

Garrison’s left index finger hit the automatic knife’s opening button, as the blade snapped out, Garrison’s fingers twirling the handle into a dagger position. He leaped along the Ra’U’Ba’s tail and onto the Ra’U’Ba’s back, his left hand stabbing the knife blade to the handle into the flesh and muscle above the shoulder blade. Garrison held on, hauling himself upward along the Ra’U’Ba’s back. It was moving, a vicious sounding low roar starting from deep inside it.

Garrison’s right arm snaked over the Ra’U’Ba’s right shoulder, his right thumb tapping the second knife’s opening button. Garrison’s left hand let go of the first knife, clawed for a handhold around the Ra’U’Ba’s powerful neck. The blade in Garrison’s right hand stabbed toward where he hoped the exposed portion of brain would be.

The knife stopped dead.

Garrison felt sick inside himself. He’d missed. He was going to die; but, worse yet, Swan and Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath and the others and all the Company of Mir would be wiped out because this living abomination would telepathically communicate what had happened and the evil Queen Sorceress would know just where to send her armies.

The Ra’U’Ba was flexing his shoulders. Garrison tried moving the knife, but it wouldn’t budge. The Ra’U’Ba raised up, balancing on its tail. Garrison lost his grip and fell to the snow, rolled, looked up. The Ra’U’Ba was lunging toward him. Even if he could risk a shot, Garrison knew that there wasn’t time. He rolled to his right.

The Ra’U’Ba crashed against the ground, not onto Garrison, its body bouncing, then rolling onto its side, still. Garrison saw the handle of the knife that had been in his hand, rising out of a pool of yellow ooze. Garrison got to his knees. “Gar’Ath!” Garrison reached for the nearest of his knives, twisted it from the Ra’U’Ba’s brain, then clambered to his feet. Garrison looked around for Gar’Ath.

Gar’Ath was on the ground, one of the Ra’U’Ba dead beside him, Gar’Ath’s dagger buried to the hilt in the creature’s brain hole. Garrison broke into a dead run, to aid Gar’Ath in fighting the second Ra’U’Ba, which was turning around, toward Gar’Ath.

Garrison didn’t know what he’d do when he got there, but he had to do something. Garrison stopped in his tracks, almost in mid-stride. He didn’t have to do a thing to help Gar’Ath. The sword that appeared in Gar’Ath’s hand in one instant flew from his hand in the next, vibrating as its point penetrated the brain hole. The Ra’U’Ba swayed on feet and tail for about a full second, then toppled backwards into the snow, dead before it hit.