Moc’Dar’s lieutenant, Bog’Luc, would hold to his operational orders and hold this position, continuing to observe. “Go to Bog’Luc, Yeoman,” Moc’Dar ordered. “With stealth. Inform the lieutenant of the details you have reported with the second-sight. Serve Bog’Luc well. Go!”
“Yes, my Captain.”
The Yeoman Spellbreaker was up and moving with surprising rapidity. Moc’Dar would have laughed at him had there been the time. Instead, he too was up and moving through the wood, battleaxe in hand. A firesword’s red gleaming steel would alert the Company of Mir.
Moc’Dar reached the small bower overhung by the enormous branches of the Ka’B’Oo, the track lying only a few warblades beyond it. Soundlessly, first one, then another, then soon all six of the Sword of Koth he had summoned were with him there.
His voice low, Moc’Dar rapidly issued his orders. “You three will cross the track. Five men from the Company of Mir, all ahorse, well-armed. They move along the track beyond the glow of light. They are perhaps five lancethrows back. Move with speed and stealth. Standard ambush pattern at contact after confirmation. Be wary, lest the Virgin Enchantress, who is about some distance from here along the boundary with the wood, should hear and alert them with her magic. I want prisoners who can be made to talk. Questions?”
There were none.
“Remember, axes only and silence at all cost. Be about it then, Sword of Koth!”
The three he had designated to cross the track moved first, disappearing soundlessly among the trees. Moc’Dar gauged the time that it would take them, then summoned the three who remained with him to follow him, paralleling the track, deeper into the wood, toward the light from the five riders...
Erg’Ran cautioned his four companions, “Weapons close and ready, lads. We near the boundary.”
There was no way to exactly judge the distance, one stretch of the track looking so very much like another, but he had a good feel for the time which had so far passed along the track. Based on that Erg’Ran gauged them to be under four lancethrows from the boundary of the wood and plain.
Gar’Ath was somewhere out there in the snowy darkness, perhaps overseeing their progress, perhaps observing a Sword of Koth scouting party. If there were such a force lying in wait for them, Gar’Ath would warn his companions, or surely die in the trying.
When Erg’Ran chopped off his foot, his balance in the wielding of a weapon had somehow been altered for the worse. In his youth, he was a fair hand with a sword, although his skills approached not at all those of Gar’Ath. No one’s did. Since the loss of his foot, Erg’Ran (although he still wore a sword) had taken to using the very implement by means of which he’d lost his foot. He carried an axe. Its shaft, carved from the trunk of a stout Ka’B’Oo, was just less than five spans in length. Its head, of the finest hand-wrought steel, measured two spans from the tip of the dorsal spike to the outermost arc of the curved blade.
Many men would name their weapons, but Erg’Ran did not. It was his axe, and that was all. He longed for the day when its only purpose would be that of a decoration over the hearth of some pleasantly remote cottage.
They continued along the track, Erg’Ran riding at the little columns head, periodically craning his neck to reassure himself that the rearmost man—young Bin’Ah—had not been taken by surprise.
So far, there was no cause for concern, and this concerned Erg’Ran quite a bit. It would be impossible to imagine the Queen Sorceress not sending out a scouting party. So, where were her minions?
As Erg’Ran looked back once more, the answer came to him: Bin’Ah was swept from his stout red mare and into the shadows, the gleam of an axe blade caught for an instant in the light from the globe.
“They attack!” Erg’Ran shouted to the remaining three of the company, wheeling his horse about so suddenly that the ordinarily sure-footed creature nearly went down under him.
Sword of Koth swept at them from the shadows, four of them, axes only. Why did they not use their fireswords? There would have to be a reason, but there was no time to worry it. A giant of a man, black cowled hood over black battle mask, charged toward Erg’Ran, axe swinging for the legs of Erg’Ran’s mare.
This was a captive hunt, not a murder raid!
Erg’Ran’s axe was just as quick, and stronger, its long downstroke hesitating only an instant as it severed the other axes shaft, the axe head flying. Its flat struck hard against Erg’Ran’s right thigh and he winced with pain. The giant Sword of Koth who’d wielded the axe threw his body weight against the mare. The horse fell, Erg’Ran spilling from his saddle, nearly pinned.
Unhorsed, his axe flown from his fist, Erg’Ran drew back, reaching in desperation for his sword.
The giant Sword of Koth had the greatsword carried by Fo’Len only an instant earlier. How he had gotten it was no mystery. Another Sword of Koth stood over the fallen Fo’Len, axe dripping blood, readying for a second, killing strike.
The greatsword swung and stopped, a span only from Erg’Ran’s throat. “Yield, old man!”
There was the whooshing sound of steel against air, then the crack of bone. The head of the Sword of Koth who had been about to finish Fo’Len separated from its body, flew into the darkness. “I don’t think he’s wanting to do what you suggest, you evil black-masked bastard!” In the same breath as his words, Gar’Ath’s sword swung into the light, interposed itself between the greatsword and Erg’Ran’s throat, arced upward along the greatsword’s blade flat and forced the greatsword up and away. “Why don’t you try me, hmm? Maybe you’ll have better luck than your headless friend did.”
“I am Moc’Dar, Captain Leader of the Third Company Sword of Koth, Elite Guard to the Mistress General of the Horde. You should know the name of the man who kills you!”
“That’s an awful lot you’re asking a simple country lad like myself to remember, Captain. But, if it’s proper manners to know the name of the man who kills you, then I’d better tell you my name, and rather quickly, too!” As Gar’Ath spoke, he lunged, Moc’Dar’s stolen greatsword making to parry the thrust, but Gar’Ath’s sword was not where Moc’Dar had thought it would be.
Gar’Ath, gleaming bastard sword flying in his fingers, was the embodiment of grace and strength, the perfect coordination of every aspect of body and nature, death incarnate, magnificent to behold. And, Gar’Ath knew it and laughed about it. He was that way.
Gar’Ath had sidestepped, forcing Moc’Dar to move off balance in the attempt to recover. Gar’Ath s sword was still in motion, never stopping, with elegant fluidity executing a drawcut across Moc’Dar’s right forearm and wrist. The greatsword spilled from Moc’Dar’s hands as blood spilled from Moc’Dar’s arm. Gar’Ath wheeled, his blade arcing hungrily for Moc’Dar’s throat.
But there were suddenly two more Sword of Koth springing from the darkness.
“Beware!” Erg’Ran shouted, the time for being an enrapt spectator ended.
Moc’Dar fell back into shadow as Gar’Ath changed the vector of his blade, for an instant only parrying one enemy’s axe. Gar’Ath dropped to one knee, disengaged from the first of the two Sword of Koth; on the back swing, Gar’Ath’s sword opened the second man from crotch to chest. Gar’Ath threw himself to the side, the already dead man’s axe cleaving downward into the ground. Gar’Ath thrust the heavy pommel of his sword forward, into the abdomen of his remaining foeman. As Gar’Ath rose to his full height, his fist then hammered upward into the Sword of Koth’s face. Gar’Ath backstepped, both hands gripping the sword’s hilt as Gar’Ath arced the blade downward from and through his foeman’s shoulder, slicing deeply through chest and belly.
There was not a pause in the blade’s motion, steel arcing through night air, searching for engagement. There was none.
Erg’Ran, axe in hand again, shouted, “Bin’Ah—we must find him if he lives!”
“Oh, he lives all right, but there’s a bump on Bin’Ah’s hard skull big enough to remind us all of this night’s misadventure for
a quite a goodly time to come.”
“Usually,” Erg’Ran began, collecting his wits and calming his breathing, “the smallest Sword of Koth scouting party is comprised of ten line warriors, a master warrior, a lieutenant and a captain, not to mention a spellbreaker. I know you don’t like my asking, but—”
“These two, the one who was about to finish Fo’Len, the one who unhorsed Bin’Ah. Add in that big bastard of a captain who ran off, and there’s another dead one over there. That’s six accounted for.”
“There are eight left, nine if the captain survives his wound well enough to fight.”
Erg’Ran turned away from Gar’Ath, getting down awkwardly to his knees beside Fo’Len. Another of the company already attended the man, but he would not live through the night. “The castle is gone, vanished, every stone of it,” Gar’Ath supplied, unbidden. “But at the same time that I spied these Sword of Koth moving against you, I saw a man and a woman trudging through the drifts along the boundary of the wood. Perhaps the Virgin Enchantress lives. Who the man could be, I cannot say. Under the circumstances, old friend, I think we should take horse and ride to intercept this couple before the Sword of Koth chooses to do so.”
Erg’Ran nodded his agreement, then shouted his orders. “Bin’Ah—you help watching over our good lad here. We’ll not abandon Fo’Len until his spirit has gone from him. And then we’ll not leave his body here for the creatures to sport with.” Erg’Ran looked at his men in the light from the globe. Exhausted, frightened half out of their wits they looked. “Gar’Ath and I will ride on alone. If we are not back by sunrise, go to the rendezvous point.” Erg’Ran was not about to mention where that was, since one of the Sword of Koth could be hidden, listening somewhere out in the darkness of the wood.
Erg’Ran intended to leave the light sphere with those who waited behind, but before doing so he swept its beam over Gar’Ath. There was a darkening bruise near his left temple, and a redness leading down to his cheek. The left sleeve of Gar’Ath’s black shirt clung to Gar’Ath’s arm by blood alone, a long but not terribly deep gash leading from his shoulder halfway to his elbow. Gar’Ath swung his cloak round his body. “None of those wounds are from the fighting here, are they lad?”
Gar’Ath smiled wickedly. “The creatures of the wood had a mind to eat me, it appeared. I didn’t let them.” He laughed.
Erg’Ran told him in a fatherly way, “We’ll get a healer to look at that gash, lest it become fouled with sickness. Now,” and he looked around to the others of the company, “would somebody please help a peg-legged old man to get mounted?”
Bin’Ah, of the great bump on the head, accomplished that, and as Erg’Ran eased up into the saddle, he told the fellow, “You and the others keep a watchful guard. There are at least eight of the many abroad in the darkness. Be vigilant!”
Gar’Ath swung effortlessly into the saddle, and Erg’Ran and his brash young swordsman friend were off along the rutted track. They held their animals to a tight rein, lest one of the horses should move too quickly and break a leg...
“I felt it when one of them used the second-sight. Looking at us.” Swan whispered, her lips close to Alan Garrison’s ear. “It was probably a new Yeoman Spellbreaker, because normally the second-sight isn’t felt. The only time it is felt is when whoever’s using it isn’t very good at it. Yet.”
Without warning, Swan had jerked at his elbow. “Remain perfectly still while I cast a shadow spell. Then come with me quickly.”
Since he’d had no idea what she was talking about, there had been no sense arguing.
The shadow spell turned out to be a remarkable thing. And Swan’s magic seemed so essentially effortless. Alan Garrison had grown up watching reruns of Barbara Eden folding her arms and doing shoulder shimmies, Elizabeth Montgomery crinkling her nose, but Swan’s magic was nothing like that. And, so far, the results hadn’t proven humorous. They were, however, effective. Her shadow spell, however Swan did it, created two vaporous-looking replicas of his shape and hers, black and featureless but perfectly formed.
Swan evidently held the shadow beings in perfect synchronization with their bodies as they began again to labor their way through the snowdrifts. Then, as they passed a singularly heavily trunked tree, Swan whispered to him, “Hide here with me quickly, Al’An.”
Garrison did as he was told, looking back, was amazed to see the shadow shapes continuing onward, as if they had somehow taken over in the search for the road leading through the wood.
When Garrison asked, “How are you controlling those things?” Swan responded only with a smile. He could barely see that, because the light which had lit their way had ceased to emanate from Swan’s left palm. Instead, a literally disembodied light was visible from the hand of her shadow counterpart. “We’ve been spotted,” Garrison said, stating the obvious. “Where and how many?”
She told him she had no idea how many persons watched them, but she was certain that they would be warriors in the Sword of Koth, her mother’s elite guard. The “where” would be a knoll, itself barely visible through the swirling snow, perhaps two hundred yards distant as Garrison judged the range. Too great a distance for a pistol, at least in his hands.
“We can’t stay behind this tree forever,” Garrison told her. “Can’t you make us invisible or something, so that we can move without them seeing us?”
“Invisibility is not part of nature, and such magic as that requires spell-casting of the most difficult type—it would consume virtually all of the magical energy remaining to me. The same would be true if I were to spell-cast those who watch us, so that they alone could not see us. Anyway, I don’t quite know where they are or how many of them there might be. But whoever second-sights us will likely continue to observe the shadows which I summoned. Before it is realized that these are shadows only, we can hatch a plan.”
This wasn’t an opportune time for Theory of Magic 101, but Garrison had to ask her, “What do you mean when you say that you summoned the shadows?”
“They are our shadows. Now, the light is so dim that we cast no shadows. But our shadows are a reality, only unseen because of circumstance. I merely summoned the shadows from the darkness by means of light. The summoning wasn’t hard, but separating them from ourselves takes some continuing effort. I cannot maintain the magic for more than a short while longer, Al’An.”
Guessing from Swan’s remarks that they had been spotted some twenty minutes earlier, that allowed plenty of time for her enemies—his enemies, for the moment at least—to have done any number of things. Garrison had no military background, but was well familiar with the concept of an envelopment, in this case the bad guys circling around behind the good guys in order to get the good guys caught in a crossfire. Anybody who had ever watched a western movie knew that much of small unit tactics. Garrison loved Westerns.
The key element to surviving an envelopment was to be someplace else besides where the bad guys thought their prey would be when they struck. Evidently, there was some equivalent to the western movie on Creath, because what Swan whispered in Garrison’s ear perfectly echoed his own thoughts. “We need to betake ourselves from here, into the wood, so that if there is an attempt to trap us, we will be out of the trap before it closes.”
The snowdrifts were no deeper where they were than anywhere else. Garrison suggested, “How about entering the forest right here? Shall we?”
Helping her to manage the highest of the drifts while still attempting to stay crouched and low, Garrison started forward, Swan beside him.
Once beyond the boundary where the vast, empty plain behind them met the forested area ahead of them, the drifts were considerably lower and the going was easier. “There are evil creatures which dwell here, the further from the track, the greater their strength. Be cautious, Al’An.”
“Are you any good with that sword?” Garrison asked Swan, mainly to get her mind off boogie-creatures and monsters and stuff.
“For a woman, yes.”
�
��That’s a sexist attitude toward your own gender, isn’t it? What I’ve read about sword fighting—unless you’re talking the really big two-handers—always made me think it was more a matter of skill than strength alone.”
“Yes, but a woman ordinarily has other skills that she must learn to ply beyond combat, and there is less opportunity to practice for combat. I acquit myself well enough, Al’An.”
It dawned on Garrison that she must be getting a much better handle on English, because she hadn’t been asking as many of her weird questions, such as, “What is shit?” That was a really good one. He’d have to get Swan to do a language spell on him so that he could become fluent in something like Japanese or Chinese. Either language would be a real plus for his career with the Bureau—if he stayed with the Justice Department.
They were several yards within the treeline, visibility poor. Garrison thought he heard something. He ceased all movement but placing a finger to his lips in what he hoped was a universal symbol for silence. Very slowly, he edged down from a crouch to his knees, Swan did the same.
He had heard something. Hearing it again, he recognized the sound as a voice. Waiting, listening, barely breathing, Garrison realized that there were two voices, speaking to one another in hushed tones. They grew almost imperceptibly louder, nearer. Garrison’s right fist balled tightly around the butt of his pistol.
There was something odd, odder still than anything he had so far endured. He could understand these voices, about every third or fourth word. That should have been impossible, however he did, as clearly as if—
Garrison turned abruptly on his knees in the snow beside Swan, almost shouting aloud. His hands went to her shoulders. Her eyes glanced toward the pistol, then back into his. Swan’s eyes were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
Evidently, Swan heard the voices as well. There was an impish look in her eyes, then she shrugged her eyebrows and her lower lip looked pouty. He’d never noticed her lower lip looking that way before. She shrugged her shoulders under his hands, then smiled broadly.
The Golden Shield of IBF Page 7
