The Golden Shield of IBF

by Jerry Ahern; Sharon Ahern

  The winged monster was magical, summoned out of the fossil record in stone. The one, single thing that Alan Garrison had which had been created from magic was the hooded greatcape which still clung to his shoulders.

  The beast tore down for him from the sky. Garrison flung the axe aside at the last possible moment, in the same motion grasping his cloak, swirling it before him. He waited the eternal microsecond, poised, cape in hand, like a matador refusing to give ground before the charge of a raging arena bull.

  The disgusting, hot breath of doom enveloped Garrison once again.

  He snapped the greatcape up, interposing its magical fabric between his life and the monster’s gaping jaws. If magic could not work to combat magic, Alan Garrison was about to find out. Garrison flung his body onto Arba’Il’Tac’s frigid grey stone and rolled.

  There was a hideous shriek and the rock pulsed beneath him. Garrison remembered to open his eyes. The monster skittered along over the plateau, like an out-of-control aircraft crash landing, the greatcape which clung to its head blinding it. As the monster struck at last with full impact, the intermittent pulsing of the rock floor transformed into a single, violent shudder. The monster skidded, stopped suddenly, shrieked again, then gave a mighty shake of its terrible head. The cape fell from the beasts eyes.

  The monster stood, swayed on ridiculously skinny legs. Its talons scraped at the stone, sparks flying in their wake. It flexed its wings, then soared skyward.

  Garrison didn’t lie to himself. He was fresh out of magical greatcapes. On its next pass, the beast would kill him...

  Swan’s heart skipped a beat when Al’An, braver than brave, blinded the winged monster and sent it crashing into the plateau. But her heart sank when the creature shrugged the greatcape from its eyes and once again took flight.

  Swan still didn’t know if there would be time enough.

  The other beasts magically resurrected by her mother, none of them so far displaying any evidence that they could fly, were advancing across Arba’Il’Tac. In the space of time that it would take to draw but a few breaths, they would close with Erg’Ran, Gar’Ath and the others.

  The magical energy filled Swan, but she did not yet know how she could use it in order to defeat this terrible enemy.

  Dismounting less than gracefully from her terrified horse, she glanced at the animal, magically commanding it, “You will stay beside me. Do not be afraid.” Her mount immediately quieted, lowered its head.

  Commanding what was natural was always easier than commanding the unnatural.

  Swan knew in that instant what she must do.

  These gargantuan beasts, mere moments away from their unspeakable triumph, were vicious, creatures formidable beyond her imagining. But Al’An’s fires pitters and axe, the swords and axes and spears and crossbows of the others, would kill living beasts. The monsters could be slaughtered only if they lived, were of flesh which could be rent, blood which could be spilled, bone which could be crushed.

  Swan had joked with herself when she was briefly angry with Erg’Ran, that she had to quit their interview lest she lose her temper and turn him into a frog. She knew the transmuting spells, but had never commanded them—until she raised her voice in a scream which echoed like thunder over the plateau that was Arba’Il’Tac.

  Swan felt the power. Everything stopped, men and horses and nightmare beasts focusing their eyes upon her.

  Swan’s arms extended toward the night, her hands grasping at the starlight. Magical energy flowed in lightning bolts from her fingertips as the ancient words spilled forth from her lips into the fabric of the sky.

  The Old Tongue words wove one with the other, the spell casting chain begun. The power of the lightning magnified beyond that of any magical energy she had ever known. Swan turned her open hands to the stars, great luminescent balls of magical energy—gold and crimson and brilliant white—born from her outstretched palms, floating, pulsating, alive.

  Her voice throaty, guttural sounding to her, primal, frightening, Swan cried out the final incantation, commanding the balls of light to her bidding. “The undead beast which flies and those which stalk the plateau, all to devour both man and horse their sole reason to exist!—transmute them so that they will be living beings of flesh as once they were! Obey me, force of magic! Transmute them into living creatures so that they can be returned to the dead!”

  There was a rumble, louder than any thunder, her command louder still. “Heed me, force of magic! Heed well the Enchantress’s desire! Obey me now!” Swan tossed her head, energy swirling round her in a wind that was not a wind, her hair, her skirts caught up in it. Her back arched, hands and arms stretched to their greatest reach. The magic flowed...

  As if they were alive, the balls of energy flew from Swan’s hands, sailed through the night with effortless ease, engulfing first one, then another and another and another of the translucent beasts. At the very instant in which the light touched them, the nightmare creatures began to transform.

  Awestruck, Alan Garrison could do nothing but watch.

  Solid bone emerged from magic shadow, cells growing, dividing, growing, dividing again, multiplying into matter in the blink of an eye. Where there had been only magical illusion, there was life. Garrison watched nerve endings fire, tissue grow, blood vessels and capillaries fill, the blood flowing through them visible in the brief instant during which they remained partially transparent. Garrison witnessed oxygenation in the space of a heartbeat. Flesh and muscle took shape. Masking the circulation beneath, skin—wet and raw and slick and new—formed, encasing all within.

  The mesmerizing effect Swan’s incantation held over all life on Arba’Il’Tac faded as did the light.

  Garrison scanned the ground for his lost axe, took it up. Real, magical no longer, the creatures were as dangerous as before. But now they could be killed.

  Swan’s voice rang out to him across the plateau. “Raise your axe, Al’An! Raise it high!”

  Garrison did as bidden.

  A bolt of lightning flew from Swan’s fingertips, struck the blade of his axe, blue-white electricity arcing along its edge. “Now, brave Al’An! Now wield your axe in triumph!”

  Evidently, the winged creature did not like him. The beast flapped its enormous wings and took flight, circling above Garrison. He was tempted to shout to Swan, “Slip some magic to my .45s!” There was no time for that. The axe or nothing stood between him and the monster as it banked its wings and started to dive.

  At the back of his mind, he decided that he would just as soon forego the opportunity to encounter a fire-breathing ice dragon once—if—they reached Woroc’Il’Lod.

  This was a logic problem, Garrison convinced himself. All he had to do was figure out exactly where to strike the beast. The obvious target would be the reeking hole of its mouth, but was that the best choice?

  In the last second, Garrison thought not and tried something else. The beast nearly upon him—Garrison remembered that it couldn’t change direction all that rapidly—he ran forward with all his speed, dropping into a crouch and swinging the axe against the creature’s underbelly as it overflew him. Blood and gore and intestines rained down on Garrison, as his axe twisted in the creature’s guts.

  Before Garrison could think or act, the beast’s wings thrummed harder, and it was climbing. There was no time to let go, Garrison still grasping the imbedded shaft, tightening his grip as the monster strained for all the altitude it could attain.

  Definitely the proper moment for a reference to g’urg, Garrison thought desperately as he looked at the ground racing below. To what he mentally ascribed as the “North,” the plateau dropped abruptly toward a vast sea; Woroc’Il’Lod, great icesheets and towering icebergs stood well out from the shore.

  The blood and gore washed from the winged beast’s insides, covering Garrison in slime, and oozed down along the axe shaft. Despite his gloves, Garrison’s hands were slipping. Even had the axe handle’s surface remained clean, Garrison’s grip woul
d not hold out much longer.

  The creature shuddered, let out a cry, and Garrison realized that it died in the same instant.

  Garrison trembled. Fear, of course, but much more than fear, he shook with rage. He was going to die for sure this time, die and abandon the most wonderful, craziest, most perfect woman he’d ever known or ever dreamed of knowing. Had he been at all uncertain before this moment, now Garrison realized how much he loved her, that he loved Swan more than the life that he was about to lose.

  It seemed there was to be a pause between the winged beast’s death and Garrison’s own. The creature’s body floated along peacefully through the night sky, drifting on and supported by the wind currents. These precious few seconds passed. The wings, still outstretched but no longer flapping at the monsters volition, were beaten instead, an assault begun by the very air which had kept the beast aloft.

  There had been a perfect stillness, during which Garrison heard nothing but the soft keening of the wind. But, that whispering began to increase, subtly at first, then became a roar, louder and louder, the monster’s body starting to plummet.

  Death was inevitable for him, but that was no reason just to take it, accept it. That he would die, he was sure, but that he would fight death to the last, of that he was also certain. He let go of the axe shaft with one hand and grasped for the stem of the nearest wing...

  Erg’Ran’s axe blade bit deep into the throat of the beast. One mighty claw lashed downward, but Erg’Ran, despite his peg leg, was able to dodge aside.

  Erg’Ran’s horse reared, whinnied, and the beast was distracted and wheeled round to silence it. Erg’Ran shifted the axe to his left hand, drew his sword, charged the monster, hacking and slashing along its flank.

  The creature shrank back for an instant, as if pausing before its next attack, then flicked its massive tail and swatted Erg’Ran’s horse to the rock floor. Recoiling again for a moment, it sprang toward Erg’Ran, gargantuan head reared, fangs bared.

  Erg’Ran half-swung, half-flung his axe, into the juncture of head and throat. The monster screamed torment and bloodlust: the axe head was buried to half its depth, blood spewing from the gaping wound.

  Erg’Ran nearly lost his balance, moving too fast for his peg leg. Lunging, he pierced the creature’s abdomen with the point of his sword. He drew out the blade with both hands. Erg’Ran swung the sword as he would an axe, opening a ragged gash a warblade’s length at least along the monster’s midsection.

  The beast, blood pouring from its wounds, staggered, fell.

  Erg’Ran wrestled his axe from its body, his eyes scanning the plateau. Well out from the column, still mounted, sword in hand, Gar’Ath did battle with another of the beasts. Riding his horse between the creature’s hind legs, Gar’Ath reined back, sprang from his mount and neutered the monster with one mighty swing. Gar’Ath, smeared with blood and gore from head to foot, raised his sword in triumph, the body of his kill collapsing before him.

  As Erg’Ran made to see how the others fared, he heard the Enchantress scream. Sword in one hand, axe in the other, Erg’Ran craned his neck, searching for her, ready to charge toward the sound. No monster molested her. She stared, instead, into the night sky. Was there another of the winged beasts like the one which the Champion—“The Champion, Enchantress! The Champion?”

  Her voice was a lament, ringing out over Arba’Il’Tac and across the sky to the stars overhead. “Al’An plunges to his death!” the Enchantress cried. The fabric of the air around her contorted, vibrated. There was a burst of light. The Enchantress vanished within it...

  Garrison clambered up from the wing and onto the dead creature’s back. With each time that his blood-slicked gloved hands shifted, Garrison risked losing his balance, that he would lose his grip, fall away.

  The slipstream viciously tore at him. He felt his face contorting with its force.

  The ground was getting closer and closer, faster and faster.

  So far, the dead monster’s wings had not yet collapsed. Rather than dropping like a stone, its body followed an erratic glide path, accelerating by the microsecond. Blood pounded in Garrisons temples and the rush of air was so great that his lungs ached. He was losing consciousness, he knew.

  “Gotta hold on!” Garrison formed the words, said them he knew, heard nothing but the roaring of the air around him. His eyes were squinted so tightly against the wind’s pressure that he could not make out whether their bodies were about to crash against the unremitting rock of Arba’Il’Tac or into the icy waters of Woroc’Il’Lod beyond.

  Garrison’s arms were not long enough to go around the creature’s neck; no human’s arms would have been. But he gripped it as best he could.

  “Special Agent Alan Garrison killed in the line of duty,” Garrison thought or may have said aloud. He could no longer be sure. His ears ached and the sound of the wind was becoming progressively duller, like something far away, becoming fainter and fainter. “Cause of death: splattered while clinging to the dead body of a winged monster in some alternate universe place called Creath.”

  Garrison thought that he laughed, but he couldn’t be certain. If, somehow, word concerning the manner of and circumstances surrounding Special Agent Alan Garrison’s bizarre death could be gotten to Matt Wisnewski, Special Agent in Charge Wisnewski would be stuck writing paperwork on this until mandatory retirement sneaked up and bit him in the ass!

  It was definite now. Alan Garrison was laughing, even though he couldn’t hear it.

  Garrison was instantly certain of one thing, however. He could hear Swan telling him that he would be all right. Talk about denial! “Nuts!” Garrison said, describing his own mental condition.

  And then he saw this bird, land of pretty really, about the size of a crow, but brown with a red breast like a robin. Its wingspan was pretty substantial. Garrison felt something shudder within him, blinked his eyes the rest of the way shut, then opened them. He tried to say “Crazy!” but Garrison realized that he could no longer talk. Everything had slowed down around him. Even though he still felt the rush of wind, it was somehow more normal seeming, almost pleasant.

  That was it, he realized. He was dead already.

  There was a light, but it looked more like one of the two moons this place had than some glow of eternal peace. Definitely dead, though, Garrison realized. Because, when he looked below, he could see the great winged creature spiraling downward in the last few seconds before it would go splat all over Arba’Il’Tac. And he could see himself still clinging to the dead monster’s back.

  Good-bye, body! He definitely could not make words anymore. This death thing, however, wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be, at least not yet. He was actually enjoying this soaring around in the air routine.

  And he wasn’t alone. There was something with him, but he couldn’t communicate with whatever it was.

  Oh, well, Garrison tried to say. He would definitely miss Swan; he loved her so much. He just hoped that she’d be able to defeat her mother’s evil forces, and that good old Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath the hotshot would protect her, take care of her.

  All the happiness was suddenly gone from him. To make matters worse, Garrison looked below him again and saw the monster strike the stone floor of Arba’Il’Tac. He witnessed his own body being flung from its back, bouncing on the rock a few times—Whoa, that would’ve hurt!—and rolling over twice.

  Garrison was coming down, very gently. He could see in much greater detail. The monster’s wings were torn from its body during impact.

  Garrison was trying to see his own body, but afraid to see it. Evidently, he had no choice in the matter. He kept going down and down, but easily, controlled, gently.

  He crossed over a broad expanse of Arba’Il’Tac, then came to rest on his own chest. There was a lot of blood. His eyes were staring up at the stars, wide open in death.

  He thought he saw Swan, but he couldn’t change the direction in which he looked, as if something else controlled his eyes. Wh
at eyes?

  Yeah, it was Swan. She was looking at him, tears flowing from her big, gorgeous eyes. Everything about her seemed big, tall, very tall, but just as beautiful. Somehow, he felt as if he sat in the palm of her hand. This was interesting. Was this a fantasy, he wondered, that Swan was with him?

  Garrison tried forming words again, but could not.

  He was looking at her eyes, at her tears, simultaneously wanting to tell her not to cry but that he felt like crying, too.

  Swan’s right hand passed over his field of vision. After that, Alan Garrison felt nothing at all but a warm, pleasant darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  The rhythm of Erg’Ran’s horse’s gait, the creaking of leather, and the clinking of spurs and armaments composed a march more triumphal than circumstances dictated. Yet they had made it this far. Children, chickens, pigs, gar’de’thus, chased by or chasing a yelping dog, scurried from the path of the column, Erg’Ran at its head, Gar’Ath beside him.

  The land surrounding the old summer palace was as Erg’Ran remembered it, except for its current inhabitants.

  All those who remained alive of the Company of Mir were encamped within the magical boundaries surrounding the castle walls. There were the tents of men at arms, shared with their women and children. Each ridge pole flew the colors of clan or tribe. There were a small number of female warriors, fewer of them still clad fetchingly. One female warrior, auburn hair to her waist, barefoot, wearing a loose-fitting ankle length green dress, a hand-and-a-half sword suspended from her baldric, waved to Erg’Ran and sang out to him. “Ho! Erg’Ran!”