The Golden Shield of IBF (53 page)

Eyeblinks remained, Swan knew, before the battle would be joined, the first arrows shot. Mir had requested that she remain behind with a rear guard, and she would honor that request, Mitan with her.

Beside Swan, Mir had already donned arming cap and mail coif and was about to lower his helmet into place. But he stopped, turning his face toward the sound of Erg’Ran’s voice. “And what is it that you must know, uncle and mentor to the Enchantress? I am honored that you do think so well of me.”

Erg’Ran, despite the fact that he was on horseback, was out of breath. Sniffing once, he looked Mir in the eye and asked, “Whence cometh your gift of prophecy, sir? Who are you?”

Mir crossed his right leg over the neck of his great steed, his right elbow coming to rest on his knee, and his chin settling into his leather-gauntleted hand. “You have studied my teachings, I am flattered to know, for it is you who led the Enchantress so wisely to this time and place.” He smiled, almost laughing, but not derisively. “Were I to reveal to you the answer to either of these two questions which you set before me, Erg’Ran, would you believe it? Or, as well used to the enigmas in which I have wrapped many of what you have spoken of as prophecies, would you see my answer merely as a riddle?

“You, Erg’Ran, of all who breathe the magic of life, are most well-suited to understand what answer I might give. You risk your life for the benefit of all. Within your brain is a repository of great wisdom, yet you constantly seek more knowledge. You have magic well beyond the ken of any male ever of Creath, yet you foreswear its use for your own ends. When lately I inquired of you from the Enchantress, she regaled me with such facts as these, and most happily enlivened our discourse.”

“I—I do not understand, sir.”

“Ah, but you do! I am a man, and never was I more, nor do I hope ever to be less. I asked questions and sought answers. I was not content in darkness, and struggled for the light of wisdom. A fate was lain before me, and I could not deviate from its design. Like you, I realized that I trod an unforgiving path.”

A voice called out from the foremost rank of knights. “The enemy is near to range for the longbows, Mir!”

“Anon! Anon!” Mir retorted. He looked again at Erg’Ran. “My destiny awaits me once again, as will
yours. Only in that hour shall you truly know the answers which you seek. But here are my answers. The gift of prophecy which you credit to me is not prophecy at all, but logic. If one sets out a plan for future history, a time when evil shall be crushed by good, there will always be persons of good heart who see such prophecies as hope and shall endeavor, beyond their ordinary abilities, to bring such happier times to pass. They will find wellsprings of strength which they never knew that they possessed, and courage in greater measure than a thousand armies such as mine.” Mir’s right hand gestured around him, to his knights and archers. “Specificity is the ruination of prophecy.

“And your second interrogative I have already answered, but will vouchsafe to say again: I am a man.” Mir donned his helmet and charged Erg’Ran, “Care for your Enchantress as you do always. Remember, Erg’Ran, that the sweet scented flower and the rankest shrub sprout from the same ground; while quiet diligence nurtures the blossom, unreasoning zeal can foster the weed.”

Mir swung his leg back over his saddle and drew his sword. Quietly, he rode forward, immersing himself in the sea of armored warriors beneath wind stiffened pennants.

Had she been a man, Swan realized, she could have ridden between Mir and her Champion, fought beside them; but, were she a man, there would not be stirring deep within her those feelings for Al’An which so quickened the woman’s heart which beat within her breast.

“Uncle?”

“Yes, Enchantress?” Erg’Ran responded, his gaze at last turning from Mir.

“Al’An will survive the ordeal which is before us?”

Erg’Ran smiled, reached across the gulf between their mounts and closed his hand over hers. “A man fights for many reasons. Al’An genuinely feels for the cause which brought us to this place, to this time. And, of all men, because he loves you, he has great reason to return from the field of battle, to once again be at your side. If passion, then, can armor a man against his enemies, your Champion is well-shielded from hurt.”

Swan nodded.

One thing had been missing from Mir’s words of explanation to Erg’Ran. Had there been nothing more to Mir’s great prophecies than logically based conjecture concerning the course of future history—as Mir purported—then how had he known that the Virgin Enchantress was to seek the origin of her seed? How had he known that she would find a Champion in the other realm? By Mir’s own words, “Specificity is the ruination of prophecy,” Mir had contradicted his very contention.

Swan asked Erg’Ran, “Did you notice something odd in Mir’s words, uncle?”

“Riddles within riddles, Enchantress. Mir draws one into logical befuddlement, concealing his true nature within the very enigma which he leads one to believe that he is about to unravel. There is mystery to Mir, and well he knows it and well he keeps it.”

Perhaps Erg’Ran had so diligently studied the teachings of Mir that he had begun to think like Mir. At times, he certainly talked like him. Swan shook her head and looked away, the fighting about to start. She would second-sight the battlefield, perhaps seeing more than she would wish to see. But before she did that, there was one thing more important than anything. She urged her mount forward, into the knot of men gathering around Mir. Her eyes moving to right and left, at last she saw that for which she searched, the face of Al’An. He conversed with Gar’Ath and one of Mir’s knights.

Swan turned her horse toward him, patted its neck with her hand, the animal moving forward. “Al’An! Al’An!”

Al’An turned his head, saw her, said something to Gar’Ath, then spurred his mount toward her. In an eyeblink that seemed like an eternity, their horses had stopped and they sat facing one another.

“I wanted to tell you that I love you, Al’An,” Swan said.

“And I love you.”

“Then, kiss me only once and I shall keep your touch on my lips until once again we kiss when the battle is done.”

Al’An leaned forward, his horse closer to hers now, his right arm encircling her waist, drawing her close to him. And his mouth came against hers and her limbs were weak and she pressed her body against his. “I won’t die, Swan,” Al’An whispered. “I promise, darling.”

“I shall hold you to your promise, my love.”

Al’An touched his hand to her cheek, turned his horse with a tug to its reins, rode off. A tear fell upon Swan’s cheek and she made no attempt to brush it away...

A gap formed within the first rank of knights, Mir leading them into it. Alan Garrison, shield up, sword drawn, rode beside the once again living legend, and with Garrison were Captain Bre’Gaa, Gar’Ath and, hastening to join them, Erg’Ran. Tre’El, Mir’s Knight Commander, sat on horseback between the rearmost rank of archers and the leading rank of knights, awaiting Mir’s signal that the battle should begin.

Riding along the broad defile, their numbers stretching from horizon to horizon, their horses at a steady gallop, were the forces of the Queen Sorceress.

“The Enchantress second-sighted on them, just an eyeblink ago. Moc’Dar, only a Captain, leads them, Generals among them. Most peculiar,” Erg’Ran announced. “The Enchantress tallies their number at one hundred score foemen.”

Mir said, “Numerically, we are then evenly matched. They cannot win over us, they know that. Lightly armored foot soldiers, ahorse on animals which will be more than half-spent before engagement, pitted against heavily armored knights and ranks of archers! For whatever reason they take the fool’s gambit, blood-sworn foemen though they may be and however evil their cause, we do not cross steel with cowards this day.”

Mir leaned across his saddle and told the knight beside him, “Let the word be passed that each of the enemy who fights with honor is rightwise due an honorable death.”

“Yes, Mir!”

Mir looked forward. “Tre’El! The archers shall stand down and retire to take up a defensive position in support of the Enchantress. We shall take no unfair advantage in the field.”

“Yes, Mir!” And, Tre’El ordered, “Archers! Stand down!”

Garrison looked at Mir. Alan Garrison had met brave men and foolish ones, but never before a great man.

As the archers threaded their way past the mounted knights, Mir stood in his stirrups, his visor lowered.

“At a gallop! For the Enchantress!” Mir charged his knights. “For Creath! For freedom!” Brandishing his sword high above his head, Mir shouted, “We ride to victory!” The magnificent white horse on which Mir was mounted moved forward at its rider’s urgings, Garrison knocking his heels against his own animal’s flanks.

As if the front rank were one organism, it moved forward, at first snakelike, but after a few strides the horses and their riders formed into a remarkably straight line, lances still raised. The second rank, as Garrison glanced over his shoulder, began its advance, about a dozen yards behind the first.

Garrison strained to look along the line. He saw Tre’El, he thought. He caught possible glimpses of the other knights who had accompanied them for the reconnoitering. One man was distinguishable from another solely by the color combinations of surcoat, helmet plume, and lance as all helmet visors were lowered, all faces obscured.

The army of the dead advanced.

Coming down the defile toward them, still at least a mile or better away, rode the armies of Barad’Il’Koth.

Mir sat rapier-straight in the saddle, his sword low at his side, his body moving in perfect rhythm with the white charger which he rode.

Garrison looked at Erg’Ran. His drawn sword, once his father’s, hung easily in his right hand, the cowl of his robe thrown back, his lips drawn apart against the wind giving him the appearance of a smile, and perhaps it was.

Bre’Gaa rode with both hands on reins and cantle, the horse—of normal height and girth—looking almost too small for him, rather like the image of a Mongol warrior on a tiny Asian horse.

Gar’Ath’s long hair seemed to float on the wind, almost arrow-shaft straight behind him. His right hand held his sword, his fist flexing round its hilt, as if constantly testing the weapon’s balance.

All three of Garrison’s compatriots looked well at ease as they rode into battle. Garrison, on the other hand, felt a mixture of fear and exhilaration, certain that the fear would grow until there was no time for it, the heat of the moment consuming it.

The horizon-to-horizon skirmish line in which they rode was quickening, almost imperceptibly. Mir raised his sword over his head, held it there for a long moment, then lowered it so that its hilt rested along his right side. As Garrison looked from right to left, the lances of Mir’s knights arced downward, couching preparatory to impact, almost mirroring the precision of a Busbee Berkley choreography from a 1930s movie. The army of the dead and the armies of Barad’Il’Koth were now only a little more than a thousand yards apart.

Garrison looked up, noticing at once two things which seemed very odd, but which he almost instantaneously dismissed. A great, black bird, the size of an eagle, but its wingspan wider, soared over what was to become the battlefield. And, in the distance, from the direction of Barad’Il’Koth, there was a peculiar black dot in the sky. He thought that it might be another bird...

Swan grasped Mitan’s arm.

“What is it?” Mitan asked, shrugging off her hooded cloak and starting to draw her sword. A stiff wind, cold and bitter, had arisen in an eyeblink, clouds of silver and black racing across the sky. That wind tore at Mitan’s hair, lashed her bare flesh with its icy force.

At the sound of steel against leather, the archers notched their bows and the leader of the two score of knights ordered, “Draw swords!”

The second-sight, as Swan had feared it might, revealed to her more than she wished to see. “My mother is second-sighting us, I think, through means of the great bird which circles above. But there is terrible danger afoot.”

“What is it, Enchantress?”

“My mother—Mitan, the Queen Sorceress has summoned the Mist of Oblivion.”

Mitan touched her fist, still clenched round her sword hilt, to her forehead. Her voice little more than a whisper, she invoked the courage of “Mir!”

Swan raised her voice, calling out to the knights and archers, “I shall need that all of you step away from me, leaving a clear space. You will take your instructions in certain tasks from the woman warrior Mitan. Do not be afraid of what you may see or hear or think!”

Swan glanced at Mitan, Mitan asking her, “What is it that you wish me to do, Enchantress?”

“There is only one thing which I can do,” Swan told Mitan, realizing in that eyeblink that Mitan was the only female friend whom she had ever had. “If I were to place shift and somehow destroy my mother while she is weakened with controlling the Mist of Oblivion, that would only mean that the Mist would run its course, out of control, and might devour all of Creath. And the Queen Sorceress knows that I know this. She can have only one plan, and if I fail to counter it, all is lost forever. My mother is willing to risk the total obliteration of all of Creath, all life, in pursuit of her ends.

“I tell you this, Mitan, so that you will know that all that which I require of you must be accomplished with great diligence.”

“Your will is mistress of my fate, Enchantress.”

Swan embraced Mitan, kissing her cheek. “Dear friend, you must go out onto the battlefield, find Al’An and bring him to me. Have these knights of Mir, from whatever materials they can, construct an enclosure, around me, but not over me. Al’An alone must enter the enclosure. I will be like I have never been and hope never to be again. There will be grave danger. Al’An must know this and choose, of his own free will, to aid me. And you must tell Al’An that, if he does, whatever he sees, he must again become my lover, as soon as he has entered the enclosure. My life, his, yours and Gar’Ath's, Erg’Ran’s, and all life on Creath will depend upon this.”