The Golden Shield of IBF

by Jerry Ahern; Sharon Ahern

Beside him, Gar’Ath whispered, “The way to kill one of the Ra’U’Ba is simple, Champion. Creep up behind the Ra’U’Ba with your blade at the ready for the death strike. When you have a close look at a Ra’U’Ba’s face, you’ll see that what appears to be a third eye at the center of the forehead is not. It is an unprotected portion of the brain. When a Ra’U’Ba is helmeted, he is virtually invincible because of his strength and skill with weapons. The helmets they wear are reinforced over the forehead. Only the most powerful sword or axe blow, accurately delivered, can reach this spot beneath a Ra’U’Ba helmet. Failing that, to kill a Ra’U’Ba is difficult, even for me.”

  “So, I sneak up behind this guy, jump on his back and stab him smack in that third eye that really isn’t, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Have you done this before, Gar’Ath?”

  Gar’Ath grinned, shrugging his eyebrows as he said, “I was never so fortunate as we are now. When I’ve fought Ra’U’Ba before, they were always helmeted.”

  “So this is a real break. Great,” Garrison said. “I guess we just must live right to be this lucky.”

  “Your words are true, Champion. Wait until I get close to the two on the far side of the canyon. I think that I can kill two of them quickly enough, unless you want the honor. I see that you have two weapons ready. Do the blades unfold from within?”

  “Yeah. That’s what they do. But, uh, you go ahead and take the two on the far side there, and I’ll get in there with you as soon as my guy’s down for the long count.”

  Gar’Ath nodded soberly, then was off, moving with the grace and speed that was second nature to someone who lived for combat, had lived for it all of his life.

  Alan Garrison’s eyes flickered from Gar’Ath to the Ra’U’Ba nearest him, and when Garrison looked back, he could no longer spot Gar’Ath. “This guy’s good,” Garrison murmured under his breath. He’d noticed that he’d begun talking to himself since coming to Creath; and some contended that talking to oneself was symptomatic of early-stage mental illness. “All I need. Go nuts here where I’ve got no health insurance. That’d be just great.”

  If there’d been an encampment here, the Company of Mir had to be great at cleaning up evidence after themselves. “Lucky this isn’t a crime scene.” There were no signs of old campfires, litter, anything beneath the snow cover. And the Ra’U’Ba really were looking.

  Garrison forced himself to look at his own particular Ra’U’Ba. He judged the height difference between himself and the Ra’U’Ba as roughly equivalent to that between Herve Villechaize and Andre the Giant.

  Garrison knew that he would have only one chance at this.

  Gar’Ath had to be in position near the two Ra’U’Ba who seemed to be conferring about something near where their horses were tethered.

  This was the moment.

  Alan Garrison broke into a dead run down the snow covered slope; his leather-soled cowboy boots were not ideal for reliable traction and his balance almost went once. But he kept running, one unopened automatic knife in each hand.

  “Oh, my God!” Garrison lamented under his breath. What if the scaly skin of the Ra’U’Ba was puncture proof? He was about to find out.

  The Ra’U’Ba’s body shifted just slightly, the massive shoulders sloping to one side, as if the creature was about to turn or look over its shoulder. Garrison put on all the steam that he had, sprinting the last few yards faster than he had ever covered ground before.

  Garrison’s left index finger hit the automatic knife’s opening button, as the blade snapped out, Garrison’s fingers twirling the handle into a dagger position. He leaped along the Ra’U’Ba’s tail and onto the Ra’U’Ba’s back, his left hand stabbing the knife blade to the handle into the flesh and muscle above the shoulder blade. Garrison held on, hauling himself upward along the Ra’U’Ba’s back. It was moving, a vicious sounding low roar starting from deep inside it.

  Garrison’s right arm snaked over the Ra’U’Ba’s right shoulder, his right thumb tapping the second knife’s opening button. Garrison’s left hand let go of the first knife, clawed for a handhold around the Ra’U’Ba’s powerful neck. The blade in Garrison’s right hand stabbed toward where he hoped the exposed portion of brain would be.

  The knife stopped dead.

  Garrison felt sick inside himself. He’d missed. He was going to die; but, worse yet, Swan and Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath and the others and all the Company of Mir would be wiped out because this living abomination would telepathically communicate what had happened and the evil Queen Sorceress would know just where to send her armies.

  The Ra’U’Ba was flexing his shoulders. Garrison tried moving the knife, but it wouldn’t budge. The Ra’U’Ba raised up, balancing on its tail. Garrison lost his grip and fell to the snow, rolled, looked up. The Ra’U’Ba was lunging toward him. Even if he could risk a shot, Garrison knew that there wasn’t time. He rolled to his right.

  The Ra’U’Ba crashed against the ground, not onto Garrison, its body bouncing, then rolling onto its side, still. Garrison saw the handle of the knife that had been in his hand, rising out of a pool of yellow ooze. Garrison got to his knees. “Gar’Ath!” Garrison reached for the nearest of his knives, twisted it from the Ra’U’Ba’s brain, then clambered to his feet. Garrison looked around for Gar’Ath.

  Gar’Ath was on the ground, one of the Ra’U’Ba dead beside him, Gar’Ath’s dagger buried to the hilt in the creature’s brain hole. Garrison broke into a dead run, to aid Gar’Ath in fighting the second Ra’U’Ba, which was turning around, toward Gar’Ath.

  Garrison didn’t know what he’d do when he got there, but he had to do something. Garrison stopped in his tracks, almost in mid-stride. He didn’t have to do a thing to help Gar’Ath. The sword that appeared in Gar’Ath’s hand in one instant flew from his hand in the next, vibrating as its point penetrated the brain hole. The Ra’U’Ba swayed on feet and tail for about a full second, then toppled backwards into the snow, dead before it hit.

  Garrison stood about twenty-five yards away, remembering to breathe.

  Gar’Ath turned toward Garrison, doubling over as he howled with laughter.

  “What’s so funny, Gar’Ath?”

  “You pretending to know nothing of how to kill the Ra’U’Ba! And then using the classic method spoken of in the writings of Mir himself! Confess! There are Ra’U’Ba where you come from, Champion! Are there not? And you’ve slain more than your share of them, I’d wager! Am I right?”

  “No Ra’U’Ba where I come from, or writings of Mir, either, Gar’Ath. Only dumb luck.”

  Garrison’s shoulder slumped a little. Hungry, cold, tired, he started back across the snow to go get his other knife. Gar’Ath was still laughing. Garrison couldn’t have laughed at anything. He had this image in his mind of how disgusting it was going to be cleaning the Ra’U’Ba glop out of two automatic knives.

  Chapter Six

  A half-dozen fighters from the Company of Mir trickled down from positions of concealment along the canyon rim, calling to Gar’Ath, waving to him in greeting. Within a matter of minutes after they reached the canyon floor behind the Falls of Mir (and after Garrison’s quick introduction as “Champion”), Gar’Ath dispatched them on various duties. One of them—using a mount that the fallen Ra’U’Ba would no longer need—was commissioned to ride back for Swan, Erg’Ran and the others. Gar’Ath sent out a man to get Gar’Ath’s horse and Garrison’s. The others Gar’Ath assigned to various sentry posts, lest more of the Ra’U’Ba or any other enemy should be near.

  Everything attended to, Gar’Ath laid down the enormous sword he’d snatched up from one of the Ra’U’Ba, then proceeded to retrieve his own sword. Extracting it from the brain hole in the skull of the Ra’U’Ba looked for all the world—to Garrison, at least—like a long-haired young Arthur drawing the sword Excalibur from the stone. The scene was so reminiscent of this that Garrison called across the canyon floor to Gar’Ath, “You are rightwise King of England!”
<
br />   Gar’Ath turned his head and called back to Garrison. “What was that which you called me?”

  “King of England.” And Garrison started to explain what England was, the word coming out in his own tongue, despite Swan’s spell, because there was no equivalent to it in the language of Creath. But, the word “King” was in English, too. “England is a place, where years ago, in our legends, perhaps in fact, a young man rose to lead his people toward a dream. And a king, of course, is the male counterpart of a queen.”

  “Your home must be very strange, Champion, strange indeed, to have such a thing.”

  Garrison was wrenching his other knife from the shoulder and neck of the Ra’U’Ba. Gar’Ath, dagger in one hand, sword in the other, both dripping blood and yellow brain matter, approached. “Let me get this straight, Gar’Ath. There’s no concept of a male ruler here?”

  “Warrior leaders are mostly men, Champion, although there have been a few women who’ve distinguished themselves greatly in battle. You really know nothing of Creath beyond what you have learned since your arrival, or what the Enchantress might have recounted before you returned with her, do you?”

  “Not a thing,” Garrison admitted.

  “Let’s see to our steel, and while we do, perhaps I can provide—”

  “Bring me up to speed?”

  “If you say, Champion. I can do that.”

  It would be nearly an hour before Swan and the others reached the canyon behind the Falls, the way Garrison figured it. Picking up on some of the local lore while he cleaned his knives might keep his mind off the fact that he’d just taken another life, and that killing wasn’t really bothering him as he thought that it should be.

  “Where to start, now,” Gar’Ath mused aloud.

  “I know the perfect place,” Garrison supplied. “Who was this Mir that I’m always hearing about?”

  “Ahh, you can’t go starting with Mir, Champion. It’s before that, the land of place that Creath was before the coming of Mir. That’s the only way to be understanding then or now.”

  Garrison took out one of his cigarettes, offered one to Gar’Ath. The swordsman declined. Garrison lit up the old-fashioned way, which involved a cigarette lighter instead of magic.

  “Magic is a way of life here, even if you don’t practice magic. I don’t. But the magic is all around me. The Enchantress healed my wounds with magic. When I was being born, so they tell me, I was turned around the wrong way in my mother’s womb. My mother was no user of magic, never had the way of it. My father was a swordmaker, so he knew a little magic, but not what would be needed. There was still something of a civilization left in those days, before the Horde had destroyed everything. In the village, there was a woman who was a midwife, and she was attending my mother. She knew enough magic to make most pain go away, to cure warts, things like that, but not to turn a child in the womb.

  “There was a K’Ur’Mir family—” Gar’Ath continued, Garrison interrupting him.

  “I’ve heard that term, Gar’Ath. What does it mean? The royal blood? Nobility?”

  “The nobility, as you say. They fled one of the larger towns when the Horde came killing and destroying. Every K’Ur’Mir has the ability with magical energy. My father had made a sword for their son, who was named Gar’Ath. I was named after him, because of what his mother did. When my father told them that I had to be turned and the midwife didn’t have the magic, Gar’Ath’s mother came and turned me with her magic, then eased the birth for my mother. If I’d been born a girl, they would have named me after the woman who saved my mother and me. As it was, they named me after her son. He died less than a full cycle of the seasons later, his father and mother, too, when the Horde swept through our village. She used her magic to hold them off as long as she could, but her magic was nothing compared to the magic of the Queen Sorceress.

  “But,” Gar’Ath continued, “her courage, and the courage of her husband and son and village men like my father made it so that almost a hundred lives were saved. In the end, the two best swordsmen from the village—my father one of them, of course—were chosen to lead those who could be saved to safety. The village was already in flames. The Queen Sorceress sent an ice dragon to take care of that.”

  “An ice dragon,” Garrison repeated aloud.

  Gar’Ath looked at Garrison oddly. “They slept within the ice since before anyone can know, and she freed them to serve her.”

  “Oh. Those ice dragons.” Now that he thought of it, he remembered Swan mentioning something about an ice dragon’s poison bladder or whatever.

  “Ra’U’Ba roamed the roads, killing, finding persons to be tortured and made to reveal where there were hiding places, where other survivors could be found. The beasts within the deep wood were summoned by the Queen Sorceress, commanded by her magic to go into the villages and devour the dead and the dying.

  “Those of us from our village who survived were able to hide in the mountains, occasionally establish long-term camps. Some went on to other villages, and died when the Horde swept through. I grew up, learning to read and make runes, cipher numbers, survive in the wild, fight. My father taught me everything he knew of the blade. This sword, which I made, is a copy of the one that he left in the belly of the ice dragon that swooped down from the skies to burn our village.”

  “And all of this, I gather, was brought about because of the will of Swan’s mother,” Garrison said. He’d nursed the cigarette as long as he could, put it out and looked about to find something with which to clean the blood and gore from his knives. He followed Gar’Ath’s lead and cut a large swatch from the nearest dead Ra’U’Ba’s skirt. He promised himself that he’d wash his hands afterward.

  Gar’Ath continued his story. “I told you about the destruction of my village so that you would understand, Champion, how it was before the coming of Mir. What the Queen Sorceress did was destroy all that had been built in the generations since Mir’s coming, returning Creath to the blood-soaked land that it once was.”

  His sword and dagger clean, Gar’Ath took a vial of oil and various sharpening stones from a pouch hung on his belt. “Before the coming of Mir, the dark magic ruled Creath. You asked why we have no men who would rule as a queen rules. I’d never questioned the way of things before you asked me, but the answer is obvious. Magic. Men can be taught to perform specific magical processes, can teach these skills to other men. But only a woman can create magic, can take a spell beyond this to that and back again. The magic comes from within them.”

  Alan Garrison had always liked the word “epiphany.” It rarely saw any use, however. But the point which Gar’Ath had just made brought Garrison to an epiphany—he understood Creath at last. “That’s why there’s so little technology in a society that must be thousands and thousands of years old, Gar’Ath, why everything sort of stopped! And why women run the whole thing!”

  “What do you mean, Champion?”

  “Where I come from, when we wanted to travel faster, we built sleeker ships that were better rigged, trains that ran with steam, then diesel power, and planes to fly in the air and take us from one point to another at greater speeds than were possible on the land. All you guys did was work up a new magical spell or summoning or whatever. Who needs an airplane if you can travel from one place to another with magic? And you don’t even need to worry about luggage. Just make new clothes with more magic once you arrive! Magic took all the initiative out of any quest for technology here. And since women are the ones with the real magic, they run the show!” Garrison glanced at Gar’Ath’s sword. “As far as craftsmanship goes, something like your sword is a real high point here, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t get me wrong now, Gar’Ath. Your sword is magnificent. But have you ever tried making wheels with little teeth on them? They’re called gears. With your metal working skills, you could build machines.”

  Gar’Ath smiled. “You’ve seen an instrument like the one by means of which the Enchantress counted the
passage of time?”

  “She made a clock?”

  “As you say, but the time-telling device was inside her castle, which is no more.”

  “How’d she get the idea to make it?” Garrison queried Gar’Ath.

  Gar’Ath reflected for a moment, then responded, “She spoke once of reading about the device in an old book or scroll.”

  Garrison took off his wristwatch and passed it over to Gar’Ath. “This is such a device, Gar’Ath. These are common in my world. This one is an old-style, which uses weights and gears. We have time-telling devices which are totally different, more technologically advanced.”

  “It’s very small compared to the one built by the Enchantress.” Gar’Ath put it beside his ear. “And the noise it makes is much less.”

  “A clock! She built a damn clock! And someone else built one before her! Do you realize what all of that means?” Garrison felt like shouting it from the canyon rim. He didn’t wait for Gar’Ath to reply. “Swan is reintroducing technology to Creath without even knowing it!”

  Gar’Ath returned Garrison’s watch. “Is this a good thing?”

  “It could be, really could be, yes. With the magic and the technology, you guys could be—”

  “What could we be, Champion?”

  Alan Garrison sat down again on the rock he’d been warming. “Anything you wanted, Gar’Ath. Creath could be anything that anyone here ever wanted it to be, a paradise.”

  “I don’t know that last word that you said, Champion.”

  Alan Garrison nodded his head soberly, saying, “I didn’t think that you would, Gar’Ath.”

  Alan Garrison still had to learn about this Mir and what Mir did and why. More importantly, he had to discover why Swan’s mother was obsessed with undoing all that Mir had done, was committed to perpetuating a dark age of evil magic and death for Creath. One way or the other, the secret to understanding what motivated Swan’s mother would only be found beyond the ice sea Woroc’Il’Lod, in Edge Land at evil’s stronghold, Barad’Il’Koth. ...