The Golden Shield of IBF (37 page)

Bre’Gaa bowed slightly and flung back the hood made from the upper portion of his great kilt. “The weather is cold, even for a Gle’Ur’Gya. I came for my cloak. You are both welcome to my cabin as long as you wish, or to join me on deck.”

“I think I’d like that,” Garrison told him honestly. Enclosed as they were, Garrison felt the motion of the sea more pronouncedly. And, still feeling a little weak, he had no desire to experience nausea.

“Excellent,” Bre’Gaa declared. He ducked his head again, this time to avoid an overhead mounted oil lamp, as he crossed the cabin floor to an armoire. He opened one of the doors and pulled out a hooded cloak. “Your swordsman friend and his lovely lady are on deck and I am certain that you’d be interested to know that the Enchantress is supposed to arrive shortly. At least as far as I am able to ascertain from her flagships signals. By the way, I was very impressed watching your firespitters against the ice dragons. You must let me try them at our first opportunity.”

Garrison sat up too fast, his head reminding him of that fact. “Yes, I will—both join you on deck and let you try my firespitters. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Anon, then.” Swirling his cloak about his shoulders, Bre’Gaa was at the cabin door in two strides, ducking through the doorway and gone in another.

Garrison swung his legs over the side of the berth. His feet didn’t touch the cabin floor. “These guys are tall,” Garrison observed to Erg’Ran.

“Let me help you, Champion.”

Garrison let him help. He clambered down from the bed to his feet, unsteady the moment they touched the cabin floor. “This is getting to be a habit with us, Erg’Ran, you helping me to keep from falling down.”

The older man merely smiled, then, after a moment, suggested, “I think that you ought to lean against the bed here for an eyeblink or two whilst I get your things. Save your strength until you have a good feel for your legs under you, Champion.”

“Good advice,” Garrison agreed.

Erg’Ran went to a second, matching armoire on the opposite side of the cabin, opened its double doors and began rummaging about inside. “The Enchantress has restored your weapons as they should be. Your bombing jacket—”

“Bomber jacket, Erg’Ran. Not bombing.”

“Ahh! Bomber jacket. Yes. It has been seen to as well, Champion. But, I fear you’ll need a cloak, considering the cold weather. The Enchantress anticipated your requirements and has provided one for you.”

“Question?”

“Yes, Champion?” And Erg’Ran turned away from the armoire and looked Garrison in the eye.

“Are you really as afraid as it seems that Swan could turn evil, like her mom did?”

“Just a casual question, I see. One of little import. Yes, well... You see, Champion, my niece is as fine as fine could ever be. Yet, you saw yourself how she resolved the issue of the ice dragons. Indeed, I encouraged her to bring on the tempest, to use the lightning. Lightning was all that either of us could think of as a weapon which would destroy the ice dragons. But my niece surpassed anything I had imagined as possible. You heard the Old Tongue words come from her lips? You saw the energy form around her, flash through her? I would doubt that my sister could do that in quite that way, with so much power.

“In short,” Erg’Ran concluded, “if the Enchantress should succumb to the enormity of the power which she can already wield and were to become obsessed with possessing still more—and she will have that opportunity—she would have greater magic ability than anyone Creath has ever known or had, more magic than all of the K’Ur’Mir who have ever lived combined. Such power cannot help but seduce even the Enchantress, make even the best of us teeter on the brink of falling victim to temptation. Should the Enchantress succumb, she would lust for more and more power until becoming so lost within her personal desires that she would have become oblivious to her own evil. I fear for her because I love her. And, because you love her, Champion, do not forget what I have told you.”

“You never give simple answers.”

Erg’Ran returned to getting things from the cabinet, but said over his shoulder, “Where you come from, are there simple answers to complex questions, Champion?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then, I shouldn’t expect that you would hope to find simple answers here, either.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying, Erg’Ran.”

The older man was through with his search. His arms weren’t laden with its results—Garrisons pistols, his sword and the golden Shield of IBF, the bomber jacket, a cloak. They floated in the air beside him.

“Magic? You?”

“You’ll note that it serves you, not me.”

“But, your magic, although it levitates
my
belongings serves
your
ends, means that you don’t have to carry my stuff.”

“That is a good point.” Erg’Ran let the items slowly sink to the cabin floor. “When you’re ready, then. I’ll see you on deck, Champion. No rush.”

Erg’Ran walked to the doorway and left.

Alan Garrison lit a cigarette the old-fashioned way, albeit with considerable difficulty. Because of the strength of the wind which whipped over the
Storm Raider’s
deck, he was forced to shield his windlighter in his cupped hands and still screen it within the cowl of his hood. After all of that, it took three tries.

The temperature felt bitingly cold, despite the heavy outer shell and lining of the cloak he wore and the bomber jacket underneath.

To what Garrison mentally labeled the east, he saw the faintest hairline of sunrise on the horizon.

He was rested enough, he supposed. He was hungry, but there’d probably be food forthcoming. He had looked at himself reflected in a sheet of brightly burnished copper which was hung like a mirror over a wash basin in Bre’Gaa’s cabin. He was clean shaven—Swan had seen to that—and there was no trace of a mark or scar where his ear had been partially ripped away by the dragon scale.

Despite the dangers and resultant injuries, Garrison was having the time of his life. Every day was a new challenge, a new adventure, just what he’d hoped to find in life “in the other realm” and never had. He was living the novel he had always wanted to write, and the willowy, drop-dead gorgeous heroine of the story was his girl.

Garrison inhaled on the cigarette, staring out to sea.

He’d slain a dragon, fought monsters, been instructed in the use of a blade by a master swordsman, done all lands of neat stuff and met the greatest girl ever. The business of almost dying twice he could have done without, but one had to take the bad with the good.

By the same token, the venture in which he was engaged was deadly serious business, the fate of all of Creath in the balance, not to mention his own life and, most importantly, the life of the woman he loved.

“The woman I love,” Garrison murmured to the dark waters, saying the words very slowly so that he could savor them.

From beside him, he heard Swan’s voice. “Who is she, the woman that you love, Al’An?”

Garrison snapped the cigarette into the water, turned around and took Swan into his arms. “Who is she! Are you going to just magically appear without warning all the time? And, this virgin thing. Let me tell you! It’s driving me nuts, Swan. Who do you think’s the woman I love?”

“Me?”

“You know it, darling,” Garrison whispered to her. He drew Swan’s body tightly against his own, looked into her eyes, then put his mouth to a better use than talking.

“The six of us are all that will be required, and any more people will just get in the way. That’s assuming, Bre’Gaa, that you really do want to come.”

“If you wish me to, Gar’Ath.”

“You’d be an asset,” Mitan declared. “A definite asset.”

“Then we are six,” Erg’Ran announced.

Garrison took a cigarette from his pack, but replaced it before Swan could light it or the pack magically refilled itself. There was no ashtray in Bre’Gaa’s cabin. “If there were seven of us, we could saddle up and go out and save a Mexican village from banditos. But I’m not gonna be the guy who shaves his head.”

Erg’Ran just looked at him. “What in Creath are you talking about, Champion?”

“Cross-cultural reference to my world. You couldn’t be into Yul Brynner movies, so don’t worry about it.”

“As you say, Champion. I shall not worry, nor do I believe that any head shaving will be required.”

“Then, I won’t worry either.” Quickly trying to redeem himself after the absurdly obscure reference to the classic western had made him sound like an idiot, Garrison asked, “Is everything planned for the diversions? I missed a lot while I was recuperating.”

“See this chart, Al’An,” Bre’Gaa said, rolling it out across the nearly waist high table at the center of his cabin. “We ply these coasts regularly looking for whatever we may find to plunder.” Bre’Gaa’s middle finger, nearly as long and thick as a small banana, traced along an impossibly rugged looking outline of Edge Land. “My crew knows every inlet where there’s depth enough that the
Storm Raider
won’t run aground. All of the tides—high, low, neap—are as familiar to us as our names. My first officer is working with your Bin’Ah and the commanders of the Enchantress’s other vessels. Short of the use of powerful magic against a widely dispersed array of targets all at once, which the Enchantress tells me is impossible, Eran will never be able to catch us. She can second-sight us all she wants, and I hope that she does. That will just keep her infernal Horde of Koth in constant motion. The Queen Sorceress will have no way of knowing where we’ll strike, where we’ll land, if we’ll strike or if we’ll land.”

Garrison was concerned about what seemed to him an obvious flaw in the plan. He asked about it. “Bre’Gaa mentioned the second-sight. I’ve been thinking about that. What if Swan’s mother second-sights every ship in the armada and doesn’t find her daughter, or Erg’Ran—doesn’t find any of the six of us? Isn’t she going to get suspicious?”

“My sister probably will be suspicious,” Erg’Ran agreed. “However, not to worry, Champion. First of all, as you may have noticed or may not have realized, the second-sight allows one to view at great distances in exquisite detail. It does not allow one to see through walls, however. Even if Eran were to use a bird through which to project her second-sight, to see inside this cabin aboard this ship the bird would have to be inside the cabin. The only exception to that would be if the structure—in this case, the
Storm Raider
—were protected by a guarding spell. Only the person who had initiated the guarding spell would then be able to second-sight through walls.”

Garrison nodded. “I get it, then, I think. We make it obvious that the six of us are inside this cabin, in the hope that she does second-sight us, or is second-sighting us now. Then, somehow, we slip out the back.”

“Actually, with magic, which I will be able to use because my mother’s attentions will be so much divided and her magic cannot be used to accomplish two tasks at once,” Swan supplied.

“Aye, and we hope that our naval diversions keep the Queen Sorceress so busy that indeed we can get inside Barad’Il’Koth and get ourselves out again,” Gar’Ath declared. “At least, it sounds simple. I like that.”

Garrison laughed. “Everything sounds simple, unless Erg’Ran is telling us about it.”

“Champion!”

Garrison clapped the older man on the back. “Only joking, my friend. Only joking.” He looked at the others, then threw out the question, “How’s this little raid of ours supposed to work, guys?”

“My magical energy,” Swan began, “was severely depleted, as you know, but is almost completely restored; this occurred much more rapidly than I had supposed that it might, Al’An. I have no idea why. But it should be easy enough for me to place shift us from Bre’Gaa’s cabin to Barad’Il’Koth, although whether or not I will be able to place shift the six of us all at once remains to be seen.

“Despite the diversions,” Swan went on, “my mother might still sense us arriving; but I doubt that she will be alert to what we are about. She should be too busy to notice.”

“How about getting out of Barad’Il’Koth when we’ve done what we need to do? Especially if—by some quirk of circumstance, let’s say—your mother somehow does catch on to us being there,” Garrison persisted.

“We will have some options, Al’An,” Swan assured him. “Magic would certainly be one of the options. Others may prove more viable. We’ll simply have to determine our means of escape after we’ve accomplished what must be done.”

Garrison told Swan and the others, “There’s a wonderful old expression where I come from, about doing something by the seat of the pants.” Garrison looked around the cabin before saying anything else. Bre’Gaa wore a great kilt, Erg’Ran a monkish robe. Gar’Ath was dressed in a brown leather jerkin, dark green tights and knee boots. Mitan was attired in next to nothing, as usual (a bra-like top and matching short skirt of brown leather, boots to her thighs and lots of edged weapons). Swan wore a full-skirted, floor-length charcoal grey dress.

“By the seat of the pants?” Erg’Ran repeated quizzically.

“Oh, never mind.”

Swan could not bring herself to be as scantily attired as Mitan. Mitan looked wonderfully pretty that way, but Swan would have felt so self-conscious that she wouldn’t be able to think straight. And think straight she must if they were to accomplish their mission at Barad’Il’Koth and have any hope of getting out alive.

Swan compromised, magically attiring herself in traditional male clothing. She wore a full-sleeved white blouse, a black leather jerkin, black stockings and black knee boots. Swan belted her sword at her waist, swinging aside her hair, which was done in a single heavy braid extending well below her waist.

Using a little magic which she hoped that she could spare, Swan made a full-length looking glass appear. Dressing like a man made her feel silly, but it was practical under the circumstances. And there was a certain land of almost wicked fun just in doing it.

The dagger, which she usually carried under her skirts, she sheathed at her right side in such a manner that it could be drawn conveniently with either hand.

Swan wheeled around so that she could see herself more fully, trying to convince herself that at least, had she really been trying, she could have made a convincing looking boy—except for the braid, of course. Resignedly, Swan just shrugged her shoulders. Even her shoulders looked obviously too little. She looked like a girl, a girl trying unsuccessfully to look like a boy. “Oh, well,” Swan sighed acceptingly.