The Golden Shield of IBF

by Jerry Ahern; Sharon Ahern

  “In either case, it is of little consequence now. If we survive, however, it may be of great importance,” Swan continued. “My mother wishes to win this struggle, whatever way she can. The Queen Sorceress would know full well that the only chance we might have to combat this storm is by the use of magic. If I use my magic directly against it, in an attempt to destroy it, even assuming that my magic would be powerful enough, my magical energy will be almost fully depleted. Even with my magic at full strength to use against hers at Barad’Il’Koth, we will have little chance of success. Without it, we cannot win against the Horde and we will die on the Plains of Koth. That is a certainty.”

  Swan gestured toward the rapidly approaching wave, the swells through which their ships made way already increasing in height and strength. “We have one chance. We must turn the ships, retreating into the magical aura surrounding the summer palace. The evil magic of the storm my mother sends against us will have no effect there and what magic I will need to get us there can be rapidly replenished.” Swan looked toward the Gle’Ur’Gya pirate vessel. “The Gle’Ur’Gya are a powerful enemy, yet could prove a valuable ally. At any event, I cannot stand by and abandon them to my mother’s evil magic. Erg’Ran? Do you know their tongue well enough that you could offer them safe harbor inside the aura?”

  Erg’Ran hesitated, then nodded thoughtfully. “I believe so, Enchantress.”

  “Then do so now. Mitan, aid him with your magic that his voice may be heard over the crashing of the waves by the captain of the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel.”

  “Yes, Enchantress.”

  Swan looked at Gar’Ath. “See to it, Gar’Ath, that Bin’Ah orders our ship turned toward the summer palace. Signal the other four ships that they might do the same.”

  “Yes, Enchantress!”

  Swan turned her eyes to Alan Garrison. “Al’An, please accompany me to the prow of our ship where I will call forth the wind. I will need your strength to support and sustain me.”

  Garrison nodded, honored. “Yes, Enchantress.”

  Swan touched his cheek as he fell in beside her. They made their way rapidly forward along the rolling and pitching deck, steadying themselves as need be against the shoulders of the oarsmen. Raising her skirts, Swan took the three low steps to the small foredeck at the prow.

  The cyclonic wave was getting nearer, a huge pillar of gray so dark it was almost black, flecked with white froth.

  Gar’Ath’s voice rang out. “Captain! Order the oarsmen to ship oars. Trim the sail as needed. We turn for harbor in the aura of the summer palace. Then, raise full sail and order that the oarsmen row as if their lives depended upon it. They do.” Gar’Ath pointed toward the cyclonic wave.

  The Company of Mir’s warriors were a brave lot, fighting against impossible odds. From what Garrison had seen of them, they did not complain. If they were rational, they feared, but they’d made no show of it until this moment. Stark terror etched itself in their eyes, across the sets of their brows and chins and downturned mouths.

  Bin’Ah, who was the son of a riverwater fisherman and one of the Company of Mir’s principal talents when it came to shipwrights, gave the command. “Ship oars!” Immediately, the rolling of the deck beneath them increased, the growing swells hammering them broadside. “Hard left rudder and bring us about easy in the swells. Lower your sails until we find the wind. Oarsmen, be ready!”

  Garrison looked at Swan.

  Her greatcape open wide and fallen back, her arms were raised to maximum extension, palms outstretched. Over the din of the sea around them and the creak of ship’s planking, Garrison heard Erg’Ran’s voice, but the words he said were in a tongue totally unfamiliar. He was making the offer of a truce to the Gle’Ur’Gya.

  Their own ship was coming about to port. The Creathan equivalent of a semaphore signalman worked his flags to the other ships. On either side of them, Garrison observed the other four ships of their tiny armada attempting to come about.

  Garrison turned his eyes to Swan. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, he thought that he remembered the term for this part of a ship, the tip of the prow overlooking the water. It was called the pulpit. Swan stood there, as she had been, but now she was speaking in the Old Tongue. That much he recognized.

  Garrison blinked. Balls of light were born from her palms, rolled over her hands; then, like lightning, the energy streaked from Swan’s fingertips, racing toward the sky. The clouds above them, rapidly scudding heavy masses of grey, became luminous as the energy from Swan’s hands penetrated them. And they began to change direction, to move toward the Land.

  A wind rose up, strong and cold, Swan’s skirts billowing on it, the shawl which had been wrapped about her head blown back from her hair.

  “All right, lads! Lower oars! Full sail and steady on the tiller, helmsman! Now, lads! Put your backs to those oars!” The rolling and pitching became almost instantly less pronounced, all lateral motion nearly ceased. The little ship was underway, back toward the magical aura which surrounded the summer palace. Garrison looked to port and starboard at the other four ships getting underway.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was slowly coming about into their little armada’s wake, under the circumstances its size a hindrance rather than an advantage. The Gle’Ur’Gya had accepted the offer.

  The column of furiously spinning water a quarter mile wide or better, so tall that it seemed to connect the water to the sky above, roared relentlessly toward them.

  “Help me, Al’An!” Swan rapidly descended the bow pulpit, Garrison beside her.

  Swan wedged herself against the stern rail. “Hold me fast, Al’An! Hold me fast!”

  Garrison braced himself behind her, the wind’s force already buffeting them.

  Swan raised her arms again, and the energy flowed from her fingertips, her hands beckoning the wind, like a symphony conductor summoning more from his orchestra, making the wind swell, rise to her demands.

  Garrison understood why she’d needed him with her. The wind forced her body back against him, his own hands white-knuckle-locked on the stern rail; his body was all that kept Swan from being blown down by the wind’s force.

  The cyclonic wave advanced inexorably, its speed seeming to increase.

  Garrison looked behind him. The helmsman at the tiller—he’d lashed himself to its arm—shook with the force transmitted to him from the water through which their craft plunged. “Gar’Ath! Help the man at the tiller! The helmsman! Help him! Hurry!”

  The helmsman’s legs buckled and he stumbled, fell, the tiller arm swaying frighteningly. “Swan! Hold on as tightly as you can for a second!”

  Garrison didn’t know if she’d heard him, nor could he completely let go of her for fear that she’d be bowled over by the wind. But Garrison twisted round, bracing Swan with his back, one hand only clutched to the bow rail. He stretched his other arm as far as he could, at last fisting the tiller arm in his left hand. His body immediately began to shake from the force of the rudder. Garrison looked over his shoulder. Swan was not holding on, could not, he suddenly realized. She required both hands free in order to summon the howling wind to drive them on.

  Garrison’s hearing was nearly gone, the wind’s shrieking wail filling his head, numbing his senses. He looked up. Gar’Ath clawed his way aft, hand over hand along the shoulders of the oarsmen. Gar’Ath’s long hair whipped across his face, his cloak blown off his shoulders. “Coming, Champion!” Garrison thought he heard those words, but could not be sure.

  Garrison’s shoulder muscles ached with the strain from the tiller and his gloved hand was beginning to slip. The weight of the man lashed to the tiller arm pulled Garrison off balance. Garrison was hurtled to one knee as their ship crashed against a swell. He felt Swan’s body shifting behind him. His muscles were tensed and stretching to the point of agony, but he held on because there was no choice.

  “Hurry, man!” Garrison cried out to Gar’Ath.

  “On my way, Champion!” Gar’Ath threw himself against
the force of the wind, his body crashing against the tiller arm. Garrison released, nodded his thanks. Garrison pulled himself to his feet and around, wedging his body more firmly against Swan’s.

  Wind-hurtled spray blinded Garrison for an instant.

  Struggling to reopen his eyes, what Garrison saw when he did was as frightening as the face of death. The cyclonic wave, obliterating all light above and behind it, was a wall of rushing blackness, bearing mercilessly down on their ships.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel had come about, was under full sail, and nearly passing them.

  Garrison craned his neck to look forward and up. The square sail on their ship’s single mast was strained full. His eyes tracked along its edges to the lines securing it to the spars. If one of those lines should snap, they were done for.

  Swan heightened the tempo of the gale force winds she commanded, winds orchestrating five tiny ships and the full-masted Gle’Ur’Gya pirate vessel to water surface speeds Garrison wouldn’t have thought possible. Her hands moved ever more furiously, the rush of air around Swan and Garrison tearing at clothing and the flesh beneath.

  The deck planking under Garrison’s feet was beginning to tremble and the handrail shook. Garrison looked forward. Their solitary mast vibrated like a tuning fork.

  Garrison cast a glance over the side. Their tiny ship’s wake was near tidal wave proportions, walls of white frothed water rising to port and starboard. He could imagine how it must have looked from the bow.

  Faster and faster, the deck planking shuddering, starting to buckle. The roar of the wind was so intense that Garrison screamed against it, desperately trying to equalize pressure before his tortured eardrums burst.

  Faster and faster, Swan’s hands flew, drawing the wind to them, to the sails.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel had passed them all. In the same instant that Garrison looked for it, the Gle’Ur’Gya’s aftmost mast snapped, flipping forward across the main deck, chopping down spars from the main mast, sails flapping wildly in the wind, tearing, blowing free.

  Garrison wanted to cry out to Swan, call her attention to the plight of the crew of the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel. He shouted her name. If she heard him over the roaring air currents careening around them, she did not acknowledge it. Garrison looked to their own mast once more. It vibrated more pronouncedly.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was slowing so dramatically that, within moments, it would be all but dead in the water, and precious few moments after that, the cyclonic wave would be upon it, consuming it.

  Alan Garrison saw the thing more clearly than he wanted to. Around the base there was a trough, a plunging, white-capped chasm, the boundary between the cyclonic wave’s suction and Woroc’Il’Lod’s otherwise roiling surface.

  The trough was perilously close.

  But the trough was closer still to the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel, nearly even with it. Alan Garrison experienced an ironic, guilty happiness, engendered by the knowledge that he didn’t possess the magic of the second-sight, hence would remain mercifully blind to the agonized faces of the Gle’Ur’Gya as they met death beyond horrific imagining, their bodies thrashed and torn, broken limb from limb.

  There was a moment when the Gle’Ur’Gya ship was all but motionless on the water’s surface, what momentum it still possessed from before the collapse of its masts was equalized by the reverse current forming and reforming at the trough’s outer boundary. Then the Gle’Ur’Gya were drawn inexorably back, into the advancing edge of the trough.

  There were man-shapes, yet somehow different from men, hurtling themselves from the deck into the Woroc’Il’Lod, vainly, foolishly, heroically fighting for a last instant of life.

  A lone figure, perhaps the vessel’s captain, perhaps its cook, stood on the high afterdeck, a sword raised in his right hand. It was possible that the Gle’Ur’Gya had lost his mind, yet even more likely that he was doing the only thing that he could do to keep his sanity. The figure began to execute a kata with his sword, ballet-like in its grace, the sword whirling in his hands as if it had a life of its own and it and the figure wielding it were in perfect harmony, communion.

  In the end, as the crippled Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was about to slip off the edge and into the trough, to be devoured within the monstrous cyclonic wave, the Gle’Ur’Gya mariner manipulated his sword one last time. His right hand, which grasped the hilt, was almost beside his right ear, the sword’s pommel angled rearward and slightly upward, the point of the blade stabbing aggressively forward. His left palm was open, fingers extended, his hand—at once a target and a shield—was thrust toward this enemy which he could not kill.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya ship careened over the trough’s edge and vanished. An instant afterward, fragmented portions of the vessel’s hull were visible along the leading edge of the cyclonic wave, then gone.

  Alan Garrison didn’t know why his eyes sought out Gar’Ath’s face but when they found it, he saw the swordsman’s eyes swam with tears.

  The Gle’Ur’Gya’s fate would be theirs in moments, Garrison realized.

  Faster and faster, Swan’s hands flew with blinding rapidity, the speed of the wind which propelled their five craft increasing and increasing. Swan’s greatcape was ripped from her shoulders, blinding Garrison for a second, then jerked away from his face. Her braid began to loosen, came apart, her spray-drenched hair whipping across Garrison’s eyes. The sleeves of Swan’s dress sheared, her bodice, her skirt shredding nearly to rags.

  There were loud cracking sounds, one after the other. Garrison twisted his neck around to look forward. Oars were snapping like matchsticks, wooden fragments caught up in the wind, firing along the deck. If enough holes were shot into their solitary sail, it would shred in microseconds.

  Garrison turned his head, looking aft, his body wedged hard behind Swan’s. Garrison squinted against the wind, and his lips were set wide apart, rictus-like. Wave after wave of spray launched over them, Garrison choking with it.

  The cyclonic wave was frighteningly nearer, the trough’s boundary readying its first kiss to their stern. Their wake was nearly eradicated by the reverse current into the trough.

  Swan’s body went rigid against Garrison, her hands and arms thrusting upward in one last summoning. The wind pushing them rose to her command. Garrison lost his grip, stumbling back. Swan’s body hurtled past him. Garrison grabbed for her, caught her ankle. Her body slammed to the deck and both of them skidded along the spray-slicked planking. Garrison reached out with his other hand, clawing for a hold. He caught his fingers around a rail stanchion, his wrist breaking. He knew that he shouted with the pain, but he heard nothing but the roaring wind.

  Garrison held on, wedging one foot against the ledge of an oarsman’s well.

  At last, he heard something over the shriek of rushing air, the sound he’d anticipated and most feared hearing. It was the thunderous crack of their mast snapping in two. Their square-rigged sail held its integrity for an instant longer, the mast’s upper section rigidly suspended on the wind. The sail billowed outward, the broken segment of mast arcing backward, almost upright for a split second. Then, it snapped forward, like a thrown knife. Their little ship shuddered, the sail torn in two. Garrison looked aft. All light was obliterated, the cyclonic wave towering over them.

  The wind which had driven them in their desperate gambit, simultaneously ally and enemy, began to subside.

  A new roar, louder than the wind, replaced its sound.

  Garrison stared into the cyclonic wave. It seemed to be on all sides of them at once.

  In his peripheral vision, Garrison caught sight of some of the oarsmen, trying to clamber back to their positions. Gar’Ath was slumped over the tiller, dead or unconscious.

  The cyclonic wave edged nearer, and Garrison knew that their ship was slipping back, the reverse current dragging them into the trough. Garrison turned his head forward, for one last glimpse of Swan. He truly loved her; and, if somehow some part of them went on, he would love her even after deat
h, he realized.

  Garrison looked up. The sky, still cloud impacted, seemed oddly bright. He looked over the starboard rail. The other four ships were motionless on the water, the nearest only a hundred yards or so out. The Company of Mir crewmen were waving their arms, their oars, their swords.

  “Holy shit!” Garrison gasped.

  He let go of Swan’s ankle, let go of the stanchion. Broken wrist or not, as he crawled forward on his knees, his eyes scanned the deck for something he could use as an oar. He found an actual oar, part of the shaft furthest from the blade broken away. Garrison plunged the oar into the water. He shouted, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Row! We’re nearly inside the aura! Row!” It was futile, one man gouging an oar’s blade into the sea, but Alan Garrison did it anyway.

  He thought he heard Swan’s voice, but it could have been his mind playing tricks on him. Garrison looked up from the water.

  Her dress in tatters, left arm bleeding, hair plastered half across her face, Swan stood amidships, a broken piece of oar in her right hand, raised high over her head. She flung it into the air and it remained motionless. There was a flash of light, a vortex forming around the fragment.

  And, oars, perfect and new, fell from the vortex, onto the deck. The Company of Mir oarsmen ran to them, picked them up, ran back to their positions, thrust them into their locks.