The Golden Shield of IBF (51 page)

“It is that army of which I speak,” Swan answered softly. Mitan sucked in her breath in what could have been a gasp...

The storm through which they’d interminably ridden was dissipating almost as quickly as it had fallen upon them. Moc’Dar’s horse, nearly spent, heaved with each breath. He raised his right hand and signaled that his column should halt.

With great weariness, Moc’Dar dismounted, the fallen snow rising half the height of his knee boots.

“Dismount!” Moc’Dar ordered, his command echoed and re-echoed along the column’s length.

The Ra’U’Ba near him asked, “Why do you order this? We can go on. The sky is clearing, Captain. See!”

“I know that the storm passes, as any fool knows.” Shaking his head, he humored the Ra’U’Ba and glanced skyward. “Look!” Moc’Dar shouted. “Look there!” Gathering the folds of his cloak close about him, Moc’Dar began to clamber up the ridgeline. The clouds were breaking, what sky was visible a dully gleaming grey. But, in the distance, there was incredibly bright blue. “Send the Yeoman Spellbreaker!”

Halfway up to the ridgeline, Moc’Dar looked back. Trundling gracelessly through the snow and into the drifts at the ridge’s base came his Yeoman Spellbreaker. Moc’Dar called back. “Ra’U’Ba! You will join us at once!” The blue had to be magic, had to be the work of the Virgin Enchantress.

Moc’Dar dropped to his knees, then to a prone position at the very height of the ridgeline, the snow wet and cold and working its way through his cloak and the leathers beneath. After what seemed an eternity had passed, but only a few eyeblinks really, the Yeoman Spellbreaker knelt beside him. “They may have guards second-sighting. Down flat, boy!”

“Yes, Captain Moc’Dar!”

The Ra’U’Ba reached the ridgeline and Moc’Dar ordered him down also. Ra’U’Ba looked oddly comical under normal circumstances when getting up or getting down, their characteristically heavy tails awkward seeming at best. But, attired as this one was—legs heavily wrapped under his skirt, the tail wrapped as well, upper body swathed in cloak upon cloak—the spectacle was beyond bizarre.

At last, the Ra’U’Ba as flat as he could get in the snow, Moc’Dar ordered the Yeoman Spellbreaker, “Second-sight me what is on the ground beneath that clear patch of sky, boy. Be quick and accurate.”

“Yes, Captain!”

Moc’Dar didn’t even look at him, until he heard him. “Specters!” The Yeoman Spellbreaker screamed the word like a tortured woman...

Swan, exquisite, her arms upraised, palms open, fingers outstretched, a fierce wind from nowhere tousling the wild mass of her auburn hair, ceaselessly assailing her skirts, commanded the magic.

Since he had come to Creath and learned to believe in the reality of magic, Alan Garrison had never been witness to a vortex like the one he now beheld. He doubted that anyone had. Its texture was velvet black, its substance darker than the deepest shadow, all light—save for tiny pinpoints, like stars in the night—absorbed within it. And, as he watched, Alan Garrison realized that he was peering into death itself.

From within the vortex, moving independently of touching anything, their horses’ hooves trodding thin air as though it were hardest ground, rode an army of the dead, girded for battle.

In a column of twos they rode. Pennants, mounted atop gleaming lances, stiffened before a wind which had not blown for a thousand years. Leather and steel, long since decayed in rot and rust, were solid matter once more. Polished and burnished, it creaked and clanged. Sinews and muscles—human and equine alike—surged with movement long foreign to them and voices spoke, echoing forgotten words from out of the grave.

Their armor was a mixture of articulated full-plate—so often wrongly associated with Arthurian Britain, but actually coming to flower in the late-fourteenth century—and mail with leather. Some were surcoated, heraldic symbols emblazoned to the chest as both a badge of identity and a challenge to foemen. Spurs tinkled, hooves clopped and horses of power and majesty whinnied, the exanimate army splitting into two files as it exited the vortex onto solid ground, fanning out to either side of the valley, riding onward.

Soon, riding alone in the wake of a dozen knights, was a single man. His countenance, beneath a full head of closely cropped auburn hair, was heroic, an aquiline nose below a high forehead and deep-set penetrating blue eyes, a wide mouth rigid with determination within a jawline appearing to have been chiseled from granite or cast from steel. The tendons of his neck were tensed, disappearing beneath a coat of burnished mail. Over his armor, he wore a surcoat emblazoned simply with the hilt of a great sword penetrating a round shield, but the shield was a vortex.

His shoulders were broad, his upper body erect, exuding strength and purpose. He rode a great white steed, the carriage of its head and the powerfulness of its neck reminiscent of purebred Arabian, its height and musculature more like that of a Percheron. The animal’s trappings were magnificent; a great high-cantled battle saddle, silver mounts matching the adornments of its bridle and chest plate, an equine counterpart to its rider’s white emblazoned blood red surcoat draping its body.

First handing off the great helm carried under his arm to the knight at his right hand, the rider dismounted. He was tall, long-legged and arrow straight. He approached Swan and dropped to one knee before her, deliberately drawing his sword, raising it to her in salute—his lips kissed its hilt—then lowering it, point to the ground. The bowed forehead touched its bronze cruciform hilt. “You are the Enchantress of whom I prophesied, but no longer virginal, or else you would not have had the power to summon me and my knights to your service. I pay homage to you for the great honor with which you charge me, that I might fight for you and for Creath.”

As he spoke, the knights under his command continued to ride from within the black vortex, a double rank forming, completely circumferencing the valley. The man stood, smiled, took Swan’s offered hand in his, bowed over it and kissed it.

“Had I fought throughout all eternity for this one shared touch, Enchantress, such efforts would have stood as an insignificant price to pay.”

“I knew of your wisdom and courage, sir, but had only guessed at your gallantry,” Swan informed him, her smile beaming.

He smiled again, saying, “Your gentle speech unduly flatters an old soldier, Enchantress. I entreat you cease.” And he turned from Swan and looked Garrison straight in the eye, assessing him. Extending his hand, he said, “Hail Champion! I am Mir and would that I might bear sword beside you in the great fight.”

Garrison clasped Mir’s hand, expecting that his own hand might pass through it, that this man before him was ectoplasm rather than substance. But the hand was even warm.

“I do not understand any of this, sir,” Alan Garrison declared, the words coming very slowly, deliberately.

Mir’s eyes twinkled as he smiled and responded, “The magic! Yes! I once was like you, Champion. More than you might suspect. Know this, that before I ride back through that vortex into the repose of death, I will with you share a secret known by none living in these days.”

Mir turned away, addressed Swan, “With your permission, Enchantress. I take it that we ride against Barad’Il’Koth, for nowhere else on Creath would there be the seat of evil power.”

“Indeed, great sir.”

“May I then speak to all present?”

“You do us wondrous honor that we should be privileged to hear your words, sir.”

Mir nodded, called to the knight to whom he’d passed his helm, “Have it that my knights dismount, Tre’El.”

“It shall be so, Mir.” The knight ordered, “Prepare to dismount!” Along the entire length of the valley, the command was echoed and re-echoed. At last, Tre’El gave the word, “Dismount!” As one, the knights stepped down from their saddles, the creak of leather and the clang of steel rising in a crescendo, then gone. There was, indeed, not a sound but the crunch of ground beneath Mir’s feet as he paced a few steps forward.

Once again Mir drew his sword. Placing its point to the ground, Mir rested his hands upon its quillons. “The day foretold has come,” Mir began, his voice not a shout, but clear, reverberating along the length of the valley and to all sides. “And she who was foretold is among us!”

A hurrah rose up spontaneously.

As the cheer subsided, Mir continued. “We have been honored beyond measure that, in Creath’s time of greatest need and greatest opportunity, we once more can fight against tyranny, fight for freedom!”

Again, voices raised in approbation.

“As we serve our Enchantress, we serve Creath. I cannot tell you what fate might await any who fall in battle. Would we return to our deaths, or would our spirits forever be denied that ease? But as we once gambled life for death, shall we now, in the cause of good and right, gamble death for the unknown?”

It began as a single voice, then a dozen, then a hundred, until all of the knights who thronged the valley chorused, “For the Enchantress! For Creath!”

“Then we shall take horse anon and, under the banner of freedom, in company of the Enchantress and her fierce Champion, we shall smite the enemies of goodness and justice and honor. To all of this shall we swear our destinies and our swords?”

As if one voice, the single word, “Yes!” thundered from the army of the dead.

Then all was still. Mir raised his sword, its steel gleaming white gold beneath the sunlight. At the top of his lungs, he shouted, “Enchantress! Prithee close the vortex from death! All in this valley now to horse! To Barad’Il’Koth! To victory!”

If he hadn’t already signed on to this war, Alan Garrison realized that he would have enlisted on the spot. Swan clapped her hands closed and the vortex disappeared into itself. She turned and looked at him, smiled, then kissed his cheek. “I love you, Al’An.”

Alan Garrison told her honestly, “Always,” then started to look for Swan’s horse. As he turned his head, he saw Erg’Ran. The old man wept...

Eran sat in her throne chair. The six Handmaidens who most closely attended her made themselves prostrate on the treads at her feet, she and they the only living things in the great hall. Torches flared smokelessly in sconces everywhere along the side walls and great braziers filled with magical fire which consumed no fuel and gave no heat burned on either side of her.

“Which one of you will dare speak?” Eran inquired, knowing full well that it would be Belan, the most gifted and most beautiful of them, as it always was. “She may rise to her knees before me.”

Belan rose. Head bowed beneath her veil, she began, “O mighty Queen Sorceress at whose feet we fawn, I would beg to speak.”

“So be it.”

“There is communication from the field, Great One, passed by the minds of the Ra’U’Ba.”

“Speak to me of it, Belan.” Eran lifted her heavy velvet skirts, rearranging them as she leaned forward, perching on the edge of her throne, her chin resting in her hands.

“It would appear, Mighty Queen, predicated upon the magical power which was reportedly witnessed, that the union between the Daughter Royal and the other realm man has—”

“No!” Eran rose so violently to her feet that the wine cup beside her tumbled, spilling its blood-red contents across the stone. Belan shrank back in fear, reassuming the fully supplicant posture of the other witches.

“What sort of manifestation?” Eran reseated herself.

Belan’s voice trembled, was muffled by the stone step against which her face was pressed. “Mighty Queen, it is reported that there was a vortex, unlike any ever witnessed, enormous and black. From within the vortex, Great One, rode an army of armor-clad warriors.”

“And?” Eran realized that her own voice trembled and she clasped her hands tightly in her lap because, like the rest of her body, they shook.

“The leader of this army, Great Queen Sorceress, a knight of heroic bearing, wore emblazoned on his red surcoat the sword penetrating the vortex shield, the symbol of—”

“I know whose accursed symbol it is!” Eran shrieked as she sprang to her feet. The Handmaidens shrank from her in terror. Eran began to descend the steps leading from her throne, the Handmaidens grasping at her dress, eagerly pressing their lips to its hem. Eran had no strength to pull clear of them, was barely able to walk.

Her life was falling into ruin and she silently cursed the day she brought Swan’s life from her womb.

In the history of Creath, there was no other army of knights like that which Belan had described. Nor, in all of history, was there anyone who wore the symbol spied on the knight’s surcoat, save for one: Mir.

Swan had summoned the dead to be her army, and they would be invincible foemen.

Three choices remained to her, capitulation unthinkable.

Eran could utilize virtually all of her magical energy to summon once again the Mist of Oblivion, to devour her enemies. But, if Swan had indeed mated with the other realm male—which she obviously had—Swan might be able to seize control of the Mist and turn it against her. If Swan drastically depleted her own magical energy in doing so, she could easily replenish it by using the other realm male to her purpose.

Eran knew that she could flee, flee to the other realm and find an other realm male with whom to mate, replacing Pe’Ter. By the time that she could return, Swan would have seized Barad’Il’Koth, banished the Horde to the four winds, and—if she had the stomach for it—seen to the execution of the Sword of Koth and the Handmaidens of Koth.

Because Swan’s blood was half of Creath and half of the other realm, her magic might even now be greater than had ever been known in Creath, materially stronger than Eran’s own. Giving Swan time to learn to use it could prove to be a strategic error from which Eran might never recover.

There was one final option, and Eran would require the assistance of her Handmaidens in order to attempt it. If she succeeded, she could destroy her daughter and the army of the dead. “Handmaidens! Attend me quickly!” Eran screamed. She drew up her skirts and ran from the great hall, laughing uncontrollably...

Through the Ra’U’Ba, Moc’Dar received the order from the Queen Sorceress, Mistress General, “Fight my Daughter Royal and her army of the dead until your own death, Moc’Dar, or suffer in unimaginable horror and degradation throughout eternity as the despised object of my unremitting wrath.”