The Golden Shield of IBF (48 page)

“The gates are this way!” Erg’Ran shouted, wheeling his horse, the animal rearing magnificently. Despite Erg’Ran’s peg leg and advancing age, her uncle and mentor sat a horse wonderfully and still cut a marvelous figure in the saddle.

The gates and the drawbridge—it was raised—lay to the far end of the courtyard. More than two score Horde of Koth, phalanx-like, interposed themselves between the stable and the sealed gap in the castle wall. As Al’An’s mount cleared the stable doors, Swan noticed for the first time that something was being dragged behind it, at the end of a rope.

Al’An’s horse reined back, only half-reared, hind legs deeply bent, its off-front leg fully extended, the other raised, pawing at the air. Al’An shouted to Swan, “Can you light this?” He gestured behind him with his sword.

Swan’s eyes scanned along the length of rope to its end. There was a bale of hay knotted there. Swan lit the hay, sagging a little in her saddle as she did so from the use of magical energy. Al’An saluted her with his sword, dug in his heels and the black mare under him sprang forward. The bale of hay spewed burning sparks everywhere in its wake, the already startled horses whinnying with fear and galloping madly in all directions across the courtyard. Most of the animals stormed toward the Horde of Koth’s line.

Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath were the first to come against the foemen. With Erg’Ran’s and Gar’Ath’s swords hacking and slashing from saddle height, the Horde of Koth gave way before the onslaught of tempered steel in determined hands. Their disorganized retreat quickly transformed into a startled rout. They ran in obvious panic from the steel-shod hooves of the terrified horses storming toward them.

Low over his horse’s mane, his sword held straight-armed before him like a lance, Al’An tore through the melee, toward the raised drawbridge. An officer in the Horde, brave but foolish, ran toward Al’An, intercepting him. As the officer slashed with his sword, Al’An s blade described a long, graceful arc. Steel met flesh. The Horde officer’s hand and the sword it held flew from his arm in a great spray of blood. Al’An charged onward.

Al’An reached the gate, reining back, his horse skidding and nearly falling to the cobblestone. Alan sprang from the saddle, with a single motion of his sword severing the rope with which he’d dragged the burning hay.

Arrows began to rain down from windows and niches interspersed along the height of the keep. Captain Bre’Gaa, riding beside Swan, shouted to her, “We must be gone from here! Soon, there will be no hope but to stand our ground and fight to the death!”

Far to their right, Mitan, still ahorse, returned fire with her longbow.

Swan looked from Captain Bre’Gaa to Al’An. Gar’Ath and Erg’Ran were nearing him at the raised drawbridge. Al’An’s mount began to veer off, but Gar’Ath intercepted it, catching its reins. Al’An, sword sheathed, was climbing the wall along the bar studded ladder toward the gatekeepers niche, the ladder set into the wall as the watchman’s only access to his nook. Peering down from the stall, Swan saw the man, and as he looked he brought a crossbow to bear. “He will kill Al’An!” Swan virtually screamed to Captain Bre’Gaa.

“Not this day, Enchantress!” Bre’Gaa drew his mount to an abrupt stop, nearly wrestling it into motionlessness. In an eyeblink, his bow was in his hands and he bent it to set the string. In the next eyeblink, he had an arrow nocked and fired.

Swan’s eyes tracked the arrow, unconsciously second-sighting in flight, seeing the arrow in infinite detail, the black and grey pattern of its fletching, the grain of its shaft, the keen honing of its broad steel head. Swan blinked and drew in her breath as a scream when the arrow struck the gatekeeper. The arrow penetrated through the bridge of the man’s nose and continued into the right cheek below the eye and into the mouth.

When she opened her eyes, she witnessed the gatekeeper tumbling forward from his niche, nearly striking Al’An with his body.

“That is the way the Gle’Ur’Gya are taught to shoot as children, Enchantress! Ha!”

And they were riding again, toward the drawbridge.

Gar’Ath had drawn his bow, in preparation of assisting Al’An, Swan knew, but put it away. He fell to working his body against the great iron studded bar set across the gates, its weight clearly immense.

Swan and her Gle’Ur’Gya shepherd reached the gates, Captain Bre’Gaa handing her the reins of his mount and saying, “If you would, lady.”

Captain Bre’Gaa sprang from the saddle and was beside Gar’Ath in the next eyeblink. Effortlessly, it seemed, he set his enormous hands to the bar and shouldered it upward and out of its braces. As if the bar weighed nothing at all, Captain Bre’Gaa flung the bar into the courtyard. When Swan looked back, she saw that he had not wasted his strength. The bar had struck and bowled over three Horde of Koth swordsmen who had returned to the fight.

Swan looked up, Al’An clambering from the dowel rungs and into the compartment lately left by the gatekeeper. Could Al’An discern the workings of the mechanism by means of which the drawbridge was raised and lowered?

As Captain Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath swung open the gates, there was an earsplitting crack, and the drawbridge began to fall. Mitan rode up, as the drawbridge crashed into the open position, the moat beyond the gates spanned at last.

Gar’Ath snatched back his reins from Erg’Ran who held both his and Al’An’s mount in check, then vaulted into the saddle.

When Swan looked back into the courtyard once more, Sword of Koth and Horde of Koth were pouring from within the keep itself and the barracks structures within the walls. Many of the errant horses were being taken in charge. Small knots of men were being rallied.

Arrows struck into the gates, ricocheted harmlessly against the stone of the walls. One buried its head in Captain Bre’Gaa’s saddle. He tore it free as he remounted, then retook his reins. “We must flee, Enchantress! Ride now!”

From above them, Al’An’s hands clinging to a rope, she heard Al’An cry out, “Stay near the drawbridge! I’ll need magic once more, Swan!”

Feebly, Swan nodded to him. She knew what he had in mind.

Captain Bre’Gaa virtually led her horse, coaxing it onto the drawbridge. Mitan, Gar’Ath and Erg’Ran positioned themselves in the gate opening, steel ready.

Swan looked up. Where was Al’An? She saw him again. “Oh!” Swan exclaimed. “No!” Al’An stood on the uppermost of the rungs just outside the niche, hands firmly grasping a rope. In an eyeblink, his body flew downward through the air, and Swan almost screamed. Al’An’s feet struck the wall, but he pushed himself away. He came against the wall again, then shinnied down the rope, jumping from it while still some distance from the ground. Al’An landed in a crouch, one hand touching the flagstones. Then he was up and running in an eyeblink.

The next thing that Swan saw was something unlike anything she had ever seen before. Al’An angled his run toward the rear end of his horse and, as he neared it, he jumped, his hands to the horses rump. He sailed over his hands and into the saddle.

Al’An looked at her with a big grin. “Buckaroo Fishman, the cowboy legend, escaped Geronimo and a renegade Apache war party down Bisbee, Arizona way using that mount. I’ll tell you the story, sometime. Let’s ride!”

Onto the drawbridge, their horses’ hooves reverberated against the wooden boards. Al’An shouted to her, “When we’ve all gotten across, can you set the bridge afire?”

“I think I can.”

Al’An called out over his shoulder, “Gar’Ath! Mitan! Erg’Ran! Hurry!”

Captain Bre’Gaa reined in beside her a short distance beyond the end of the drawbridge and Swan looked back. A score of the Horde were ahorse and charging across the courtyard, Gar’Ath, Mitan and Erg’Ran turning their horses onto the drawbridge and riding, death snapping at their heels.

Hoofbeats thundered across the drawbridge, making Swan’s mount uneasy. Captain Bre’Gaa took its reins, held them fast.

Erg’Ran was first across, Mitan and Gar’Ath, side by side, just behind him.

“Not yet!” Al’An cautioned Swan.

Three Horde of Koth horsemen, swords drawn, were on the drawbridge, three more behind them, another two behind the three. “Be ready, darling. Lots of flames, huh? Ready—now!”

Feeling herself completely drain as she made the magic, Swan set the bridge afire with the very last of her energy, then collapsed, darkness engulfing her, the crackle of flames and the screams of men and animals echoing and re-echoing ceaselessly within her...

Alan Garrison didn’t know about the habits of real frontier heroes like Buckaroo Fishman, but the movie and television cowboys always found a grove of cottonwoods where they could make camp. It was invariably just outside of town, but secluded nonetheless.

If cottonwoods grew on Creath, Garrison hadn’t seen any, nor was he certain he’d know a Cottonwood tree if he tripped over one. Virtually nothing at all seemed to grow in Edge Land. But there was a high, rocky area in the foothills to the north of the plain of Barad’Il’Koth, and beyond it lay a barren valley. There were several passes immediately identifiable, ways in and out of the valley, so there was little chance they’d be boxed in by enemy troops except in significant force of numbers.

And Swan very urgently required rest and recuperation.

Their expropriated horses grazed poorly in the almost nonexistent vegetation. Mitan tried making grain appear magically, but her vortex kept collapsing before anything more than a few specks of dust materialized.

Mitan did make fire appear, and in the fire Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath hardened the tips of wooden shafts they’d cut with Erg’Ran’s axe and whittled to shape with their daggers, these for use as throwing spears. The supply of arrows was dangerously low should there be an assault against them in any force.

Erg’Ran kept vigil beside Swan, who seemed half asleep, half in coma. Alan Garrison kept watch from a rock pinnacle at the edge of the little valley, and was pleased as he saw Mitan striding toward him. “Greetings, Champion!”

“Any change in Swan?”

“Our Enchantress still rests, and Erg’Ran is with her, tending her. Could you use some company, Champion?”

Garrison smiled and nodded. Mitan scampered up along the rocks as nimbly as would a mountain goat. Despite the triteness of the comparison, it was the first thought which crossed his mind as he observed her. On the other hand, he reflected, she was much nicer looking.

When she reached the pinnacle where Garrison was perched—it had taken him three times longer to climb it and he’d been out of breath when he reached the summit—Mitan dropped down to her knees beside him, resting her sword across her thighs. As she drew her cloak over her bare legs, she remarked, “You love her, I know.”

“Yes, and very much. More than I could ever weigh, measure or calculate, actually.”

“That’s good,” Mitan volunteered, smiling. She raised her arms, her hands beginning to tinker with her very pretty, well-past-shoulder-length dark brown hair. Garrison found it curious that, despite the considerable length of her hair, her lover’s hair was even longer. “Sorry I’m so bad at magic,” Mitan said, laughing. “I guess I should have been born male.”

“Gar’Ath would have been pretty upset about that.”

Mitan laughed again. “Yes, he would have, wouldn’t he?” Mitan cleared her throat. She was beginning to braid her hair, after a second or so, the braid started, bringing it over her left shoulder, working the interweaving of her tresses with casual deliberateness, seeming to derive a certain languorous enjoyment from the task. Her eyes focused on something—likely nothing—far away, Mitan said, “I spoke with Erg’Ran.”

“And?”

“It is within your power to restore the Enchantress, and also to enable her to defeat the Queen Sorceress.”

Garrison hunched his shoulders inside his jacket, happy for the sweater which Swan had magically knitted for him. There was a stiff, chill breeze. “I think I can speak for Swan as well as myself when I say that affairs of the heart can be choreographed to death. At least where I come from, people don’t really—” Garrison cut himself off.

“Why did you stop saying what you were saying, Champion?”

“It sounded stupid.”

“May I ask you a question, Champion?”

“Sure, Mitan.”

“Where you come from, is there virtue in letting what is good be destroyed needlessly, Champion?” Garrison just looked at her. “Well, it seems to me that since you love the Enchantress and the Enchantress loves you and it was clear to all who observed the two of you together—aboard ship and elsewhere—that you could not wait to be together, well—”

“Well?”

“The Enchantress was to find the origin of her seed, remaining a virgin until she had done so. That is the prophecy. Now, it seems to me, that it is time for the rest of the prophecy to be fulfilled.”

Garrison took a cigarette from his pack, looked away, then looked back. The pack was refilled. He tried his Zippo lighter, but it had been soaked one too many times for there to be any viable fuel remaining. Garrison looked at the cigarette and then at Mitan. “How’s about a light?”

Garrison’s cigarette lit.

“My one big magical ability! The simplest thing!”

“Just because you’re no magical whiz,” Garrison reminded her, “doesn’t mean you’re any less of a woman, Mitan; you’re manipulating me quite well, indeed.”

“Manipulating?” Mitan asked with a coy smile.

“Yes,” Garrison replied. “Manipulating. When we went to Bre’Gaa’s ship, the
Storm Raider,
for the first time, you didn’t have to dress as though you were going to Cinderella’s ball. You were already driving Gar’Ath crazy looking at you when you were dressed as you are now in your fantasy woman warrior outfit. So, the beautiful princess look was just enough to push him over the edge. You did him a favor, compelled him to overcome his inherent shyness so that the result which you both desired would be attained. Manipulating. Perfectly normal. Men want to be manipulated by women, at least smart men. Men are frequently more direct, whereas women will more often approach a problem from the side. Whereas brute force or intimidation might achieve a certain result, that same result or an even better one might be achieved with guile. Trust to your femininity, Mitan, regardless of your magic; your womanliness hasn’t failed you.”