“You’ll learn to sleep in the saddle when you must, Champion,” Erg’Ran volunteered, glancing over at the newcomer as he swayed a little bit atop his mount.
“I could fall asleep in a heartbeat. Trust me. Trouble is, I’d fall off the horse.”
Erg’Ran laughed, saying, “That is how you learn, Champion!”
Erg’Ran urged his mount forward, coming up beside Gar’Ath. “We can rest when we reach the old summer palace, lad. You look as tired as the Champion.”
“I am that, old friend,” Gar’Ath confided.
“He acquitted himself well, I understand, our Enchantress’s Champion did.”
Gar’Ath turned a little bit in his saddle. “He fought bravely, Erg’Ran. He has a good intuitive ability for battle, just not very much practice. All the practice in the world won’t make up for a lack of that ability. The Champion’s a good man, but he has very strange ideas and comes from a very strange place.”
“In the old days,” Erg’Ran told Gar’Ath, “you would have met a great many people with a great many ideas, Gar’Ath, in the old days before life was a day-to-day battle against the Queen Sorceress. Perhaps, someday, there will be time for strange ideas once again. Perhaps you’ll live to see it. We’ll see.”
The trail, such as it was, wound steeply upward, toward the plateau of Arba’Il’Tac, where some said that all life on Creath once began, long before the coming of Mir or the dark magic before that, before anything. It was, some philosophers believed, the place where time began.
Erg’Ran was less worried over philosophy than tactics. Arba’Il’Tac was all but barren. The plateau sloped gradually downward, stretching on for lancethrow after lancethrow, before at last touching the cliffs which overlooked the icy waters of Woroc’Il’Lod. If the forces of the Queen Sorceress should catch them in the open on the plateau, there would be nowhere to hide, no position from which to fight. It would, almost certainly, be a massacre.
There was no alternative, however, to openly crossing Arba’Il’Tac. The snows in the mountain passes through which he had dispatched the Company of Mir toward the sea had piled too deep in the intervening day. If the Enchantress were to use her magic to clear a path through the snow, the results—avalanche, ice floe—might prove catastrophic. To use the broad track around the mountains, which led directly to the sea, would be tantamount to suicide. That track was the main turnpike to Woroc’Il’Lod, traveled regularly by the Horde, continuing on to eventually come to Edge Land and Barad’Il’Koth itself.
They would rest the latter portion of the day, and early night. Everyone needed sleep, himself included. Then, with their mounts rested, they would ride the last short distance to the summit and Arba’Il’Tac, crossing the plateau as rapidly as possible.
There was much to which they might look forward at the old summer palace. By the time that they reached it, the Enchantress’s magical energy should be fully restored. Little things like being able to bathe, eat their fill without looking over their shoulders (too much, at least), even having the time to interrogate the captive Sword of Koth awaited them there. If he could get everyone to focus on the goal of reaching the summer palace, perhaps their minds, too, could find rest from the immediate peril before them and the perils which lay beyond the summer palace.
Woroc’Il’Lod had to be crossed, with its treacherous floating mountains of ice which could gut a ship or crush it, cyclonic winds and wind-driven waves of incredible height and force, torrential sleet storms with such ferocity that they could all but skin a man. And then there were the ice dragons to be reckoned with.
If the Company of Mir survived all of this, it would be only to march hopelessly outnumbered against the Horde of Koth at Barad’Il’Koth, succeeding in that only to confront the darkest of black magic, wielded by the evil Queen Sorceress herself. All of them needed the summer palace, a short rest there, renewal, a moment of happiness.
Erg’Ran tried to focus his thoughts on the summer palace, yet in his mind’s eye he could see nothing but the barren plateau of Arba’Il’Tac...
Swan brought a plate of food and a cup of tea to Al’An, dropping to her knees beside him beneath the windbreak Gar’Ath had shown him how to construct. The snow still fell heavily, but the wind had decreased. Using very little of her magic—she dared not use too much, lest she regret it when they crossed Arba’Il’Tac— she heated food for the men and herself; they couldn’t risk a fire.
At her insistence, the prisoner Sword of Koth was bidden to take food, but he refused. Unless he hoped to die of starvation—which would take a very long time—he was quite foolish. If he planned to escape, as she assumed he must, the prisoner would need his energy, his strength. Upon further consideration, Swan wondered if, indeed, the prisoner entertained any hope at all to escape and return to his command?
Her mother dealt severely with anyone whom she considered to have shirked a duty to her, and clearly the duty of every Sword of Koth was victory. Failing that, the only acceptable excuse was death.
Despite what he was, Swan felt genuine sadness over the man’s plight. Perhaps he really did intend to starve to death.
Al’An took the offered plate of food from her hand. It was a stew made from dried meat and dried vegetables. He took the metal cup of tea, sipped from it. “Thank you,” he told her.
“I’m afraid it’s not much. My magical energy is nearly restored, but I must save what I have in the event that we are attacked as we cross Arba’Il’Tac. But when we reach the summer palace, it will be different.” Swan laughed, saying, “Then, Al’An, at long last, you may eat your fill, as I have promised.”
“That’ll be nice,” Al’An responded. She could just make out his features by the bluish white light from the globe which she had made for Erg’Ran to use. The globe was set beneath a rock overhang and would not be visible for any great distance, nor from the air, should her mother use the birds as an instrument for finding them. Al’An was smiling at her.
“I’ll be right back,” Swan told Al’An, getting up, brushing the snow from her dress and cloak. She fetched her own plate of stew and mug of tea and brought them back so that she could eat with Al’An. He slid over, spreading his cloak open so that she could fit within its folds as she sat beside him. “Thank you, Al’An.”
“So, tell me about Arba’Il’Tac. Erg’Ran said it’s thought to be the place where all life here began. Sounds interesting, a kind of Garden of Eden.”
Swan laughed softly. “It is no garden, Al’An. It is barren rock, as if there were once a great mountain where it stands now. Then some mighty sword or axe was wielded against it, sheared away its peak, left it dying.”
Al’An laughed, then, “You make Arba’Il’Tac sound so inviting. If it’s that barren there, why do people think it’s where life began?”
Swan thought that Al’An had to be very hungry, indeed. Even with magic, the stew did not taste that good when she’d sampled it. Yet Al’An ate ravenously. Swan finished sipping at her tea, still trying to construct an answer for his question, something that he would understand without knowing the entire history of Creath. At last, she said, “There are many kinds of living things in our world, as I imagine there must be in yours. There were some types of creatures which no longer exist.”
“You guys amaze me!” Al’An enthused. “A fossil record has been discovered here?”
She considered his words, their meaning, then answered, “Yes, a fossil record, as you put it. Within the rock floor of Arba’Il’Tac are the etchings of bones from many creatures which no longer live, and these markings have been found nowhere else, nor have the bones ever been found which match these markings.”
“Sort of prehistoric elephant graveyard.”
Swan gave up at understanding that, but agreed with him anyway by just nodding her head as she ate from her plate of stew.
“You know,” Al’An said, swallowing food as he spoke, “it’s really interesting—fascinating’s a better word—the way that societies paralle
l one another.”
“I don’t know what you imply, Al’An.”
Al’An gestured with his spoon. “We have spoons, plates, cups. Women in my world once dressed as you do, and men once carried swords. Horses? We’ve got horses. Have you got dogs? If I live a million years, I’ll never understand this. And, those are only superficial examples. There’s so much more profound stuff to consider.”
“Profound stuff indeed, Al’An. What profound stuff?”
“Well, like good and evil, right and wrong, like that. It’s universal, maybe, a commonality to life. But, on the other hand, we have nothing like Ra’U’Ba, and if there ever were ice dragons in my world, there aren’t any now. I know you’ll probably think that I’m crazy, but in one way, I’m almost looking forward to seeing one.”
“Al’An!”
“Yeah, I know. Well, almost, I said. I just wish I had a camera with me, so if I do go back I can—”
Al’An fell silent.
“If?” Swan repeated.
Al’An set down his plate of stew, nearly finished with it. She was about to inquire if he wanted to eat her food, but he asked, “When I kissed you earlier, how did it feel to you?”
Swan felt her cheeks become hot as he looked at her. “I liked it very much,” Swan answered honestly. Perhaps that was a custom where he came from, to make inquiries concerning things like that. To be polite, she asked him, “And how did it feel to you, Al’An?”
“I liked it very much. So much so, in fact, that I’d like to do it again, and again, and maybe—”
“Maybe what, Al’An?”
“Maybe, uh,” and Al’An fell silent. But he folded his arm around her shoulders and they sat like that, sheltered by the windbreak, for some time. Swan slept beside Al’An in the little time allotted for rest, his cloak wrapped about them both. But before Swan closed her eyes in sleep, Swan closed her eyes as Al’An kissed her.
Chapter Seven
Alan Garrison stretched in his saddle, scanning the plain of Arba’Il’Tac stretched out before them. He said to Swan, mounted on a black mare beside him, “This is like a lunar landscape, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”
Swan took a moment before responding, and he realized that it was probably the word “lunar” which she was working back and forth between the two languages, perhaps because of its Latin root. But, as he looked skyward, he understood another problem. The snow had stopped and the sky above them was clear. Visible along a horizon so vast that the very curvature of the planet was apparent were two yellow moons, one half-full, the other three-quarters.
Despite the glow of moonlight, there was a vast array of stars, as abundant and diverse in size and luminescence as a depiction in a planetarium, more brilliant than he had ever seen on any other night of his life. Alan Garrison had no astronomical training, but he was convinced that none of the constellations were in the slightest way familiar. Yet, wherever he was, wherever Creath was, the stellar display was beyond magnificent.
“My world is somewhere out there,” Garrison told Swan, taking her gloved hand in his, holding it tightly. “At least, I think so. But don’t ask me where.” He turned around in his saddle to look at Swan’s face. The words he wanted to say were the kind of thing that any red-blooded American ten-year-old boy hearing it in a movie would have retched at the thought of. Garrison said them anyway. “The stars, the sky, they don’t compare with the beauty of your face, the brilliance in your eyes.” Garrison swallowed hard. “Mushy” stuff was always hard for him to say.
Swan squeezed his hand and “Al’An,” was all she said in reply.
Erg’Ran rode up beside them. “We’d best be moving, Enchantress, Champion. Second-sight for us when you can, Enchantress, if you will.”
“I will,” she promised.
Erg’Ran thumped his fingers against the head of the Ra’U’Ba battleaxe which was lashed to Garrison’s saddle. “Don’t overextend on the swing, Champion, if use it you must. Balance is the name of the game.”
“I’ll remember,” Garrison vowed.
Erg’Ran raised up in his saddle, calling back along their column. “Remember to keep a good pace, but don’t wind your horses. If we’re attacked, we’ll be needing everything they’ve got. Gar’Ath, pick another man, then the two of you ride a few lancethrows out along our flanks.”
“Right!” Gar’Ath called back. Then, “Bin’Ah? Your bump on the head better now, you can ride the watch.”
“That I’ll do, Gar’Ath!” Bin’Ah responded, thwacking his heels against the flanks of his chestnut mare.
“We ride, then!” Erg’Ran announced, taking the point.
Garrison gave Swan’s hand a final squeeze, then released it.
Although the snow had ceased to fall, there was a wind, bitingly cold beneath the clearness of the star-filled sky. Garrison huddled deeper into his cloak, tugged the cowl of his hood more closely about his face.
The combination of moons and stars illuminated the plateau so brightly that Garrison could almost make out the small print below the words “Sea-Dweller” on the black face of his Rolex wristwatch. Why he’d bothered to look at it was a mystery to him. Time in the conventional sense he had come to know since his first awareness of such things as a child was meaningless here.
Judging from the positions of the moons on the horizon—and he had no backlog of experience on which to base an opinion of any sort—he thought that the time here was more or less the equivalent of two in the morning. That disagreed totally with his wrist-watch.
Garrison s watch did, however, remind him that he needed to ask Swan about the clock which she had built. Or did she whisk it together with magic? Even so, that the concept of a gear-driven mechanical clock was not alien to her was heartening.
Gar’Ath and Bin’Ah were clearly visible as they took up their outrider positions. Garrison twisted round in the saddle, the leather creaking comfortingly. The others of their company rode in a column of twos, the prisoner Sword of Koth at the approximate center, his still-masked face held high, a blanket tied around his upper body for added warmth. The shackles of Garrisons Model 100s had been taken from the Sword of Koth’s wrists exactly three times so that, under close guard, the fellow could urinate. Not a word had left the prisoners lips, however, no request for water, not even an insult to his captors.
Despite the fact that their prisoner had provided them with no willing intelligence, Garrison and the others had learned some things from the few personal items carried on the man’s person and from items found in his saddlebags and the saddlebags of the other mounts they’d seized. What data Garrison and the others accumulated largely consisted of various Sword of Koth tactical maps, many of these maps’ duplicates, and items akin to notebooks, with various points concerning past battle plans written in them. Interestingly, these included the most recent entries, which called for the death of Swan by whatever means necessary. Found among the belongings of the Ra’U’Ba were maps, more crudely drawn and less informative. There was also a diary kept by one of the Ra’U’Ba. Erg’Ran could read their language, as he perused it (Swan out of earshot) informing Garrison, Gar’Ath and some of the others that it seemed like the diary’s author was obsessed with rather bizarre fantasies concerning human, rather than Ra’U’Ba, females.
Putting the horses once belonging to the Sword of Koth together with the animals ridden by the three dead Ra’U’Ba, plus the extra horses the men who’d remained as a rear guard behind the Falls of Mir had kept, their column included quite a decent-sized small herd. Garrison had solved the problem of how to keep the animals in check, based on something he’d seen in a western movie. Using lengths of rope, loops were tied about the necks of each animal, the horses then teamed in fours, tethered to a single, stout lead.
Besides the maps, tactical notebooks and horses, their so-far minor military victories netted their company an abundance of saddles, spare swords, battleaxes and the like.
When Garrison had inquired about what field rati
ons the Sword of Koth or Ra’U’Ba might have stashed in their saddlebags, on the first occasion Erg’Ran told him, “What the Sword of Koth carry is edible, but only if you are desperate.” As concerned the Ra’U’Ba’s food supply, Gar’Ath simply said, “No man or woman would eat their vile slop, usually dried and salted human flesh.”
So far, Garrison reflected, the stew he’d consumed so quickly that it was more like inhaling than eating was his only taste of Creath cuisine. If that stew were at all typical, to say that the population of Creath’s tastes were—gastronomically speaking—a bit Spartan was putting it mildly. He’d wait to be impressed at the summer palace, as promised.
Ahead of the column, the plateau called Arba’Il’Tac seemed to stretch on to infinity. If anything grew here at all, it was too microscopic to be seen by the human eye. There was some snow, but it was rapidly being blown clear, just sticking in the deeper cracks and crevices of the rock floor. Few actual large rocks, even fewer which might qualify for boulder classification, dotted the landscape. Garrison’s immediate impression that Arba’Il’Tac appeared almost lunar was premature; the plateau was most unmoonlike due to its total lack of craters or any major surface impressions. It was, as Swan had told him, as if something had lopped off the top of a mountain and the plateau remaining was merely the stump.
Garrison’s meager mastery of equestrian-related parlance was easily strained, but if memory served he thought that the gait at which their horses moved over the plateau would best be described as a canter. It was somewhere between a slow lope and a fast gallop.
So far, nothing had arisen out of the ordinary and they were making good time. His horse, fresh from several hours of rest, seemed eager still and straining to run. “Easy, girl,” Garrison murmured to her.
Moc’Dar cowered beneath the chart table, near the Queen’s feet, feebly attempting once again to hide his disgusting body beneath his meager cloak, just as she had decreed him to do. He was amusing, but Eran felt that she would soon tire of him this way, perhaps spellchange him to something even more repulsive, more torturous for him to endure.
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