The Golden Shield of IBF

by Jerry Ahern; Sharon Ahern

  “Seasoned and true is more flattering a description,” Erg’Ran suggested, getting into the spirit of the thing.

  Unrattled, Moc’Dar said, “You three my Mistress General has interest in seeing alive.” Moc’Dar looked at Mitan, Gar’Ath and Bre’Gaa. “You three, she wishes to see only dead.”

  “You forgot the part about how I should know the name of the man who kills me,” Gar’Ath reminded Moc’Dar. “Just like last time. Remember?”

  Six Handmaidens of Koth extended their fingertips from within their long, flowing sleeves. They were veiled from the crowns of their heads to the hems of their ankle-length black robes in translucent black cloth which cast the planes and angles of their faces in eerie shadow. They formed a circle, hands clasping as they began to chant.

  Garrison cracked, “I think the one second from the left is the ugliest, Bre’Gaa. What do you think?”

  “It is hard to choose, Al’An, but you may be right. However, that one on the far right, I do believe, is even more unattractive.”

  Garrison looked at Swan, loosed her hand and raised her chin with the tips of his fingers. He kissed her hard on the mouth, then whispered, “I hope it helps; we’re gonna need your special talents, darling.”

  Swan smiled up at him. “Tell me when, my love.” Inexplicably, Alan Garrison felt considerably better. He looked at the six witches, at Moc’Dar, at the other Sword of Koth warriors, their eyes glowing slits of hatred beneath their black leather battle masks. “That can’t be good for your complexions, guys,” Garrison began, walking slowly toward three Sword of Koth who blocked him. “I bet you guys get blackheads like crazy wearing those masks. Back where I come from, we have television. Well, I’ve seen these commercials for these strip things you put on your nose? Snags the blackheads out like that!” Alan Garrison flicked up the point of his sword and ran the first six inches of its steel into the nearest of the three Sword of Koth.

  As Garrison stabbed the man he shouted, “Now’s the time, Swan! When!” As the words left his lips, in the same eyeblink Alan Garrison shoved the dying Sword of Koth warrior off his blade and toward the circle of six witches, using the soldier’s body like a battering ram. The circle of hands was broken.

  Garrison sidestepped, a firesword, burning red hot, just missing his right shoulder. There was a second flash of steel, past Garrison’s face. Mitan’s blade thrust forward and into the throat of Garrison’s attacker. Garrison arced his own sword right and up, catching another Sword of Koth behind the thighs, draw cutting, then stabbed his blade forward, into the Sword of Koth’s face mask.

  There was a shout from Gar’Ath. Garrison wheeled toward the sound. Four Sword of Koth formed a semicircle around him, Gar’Ath beating them back, but not that easily. Garrison leaped toward the melee, spinning his sword like Errol Flynn had done when he’d starred as Robin Hood. Garrison caught one Sword of Koth’s blade, deflected it, then hacked downward, gouging steel into flesh where the man’s neck and right shoulder met. Garrison averted his eyes from the arterial blood spray, ducking as another sword whistled through the air where his face had been a split second earlier Garrison thrust, his blade hesitating for an eye-blink, then punching on, puncturing the Sword of Koth’s coat of mail, skating past ribs and up into the right lung.

  Garrison was suddenly aware of a whistling sound. As he deflected another foeman’s blade, he glanced to his right. There was a vortex formed near the chamber door, hailstones flying from within it at stupendous speeds, Swans hands gestured toward this target and that, and the marble-sized balls of ice struck at witches and Sword of Koth, driving them back along the passage, into the doorways from which they’d emerged.

  Erg’Ran’s father’s sword sang through the air, severing the head of the last of the combatants against whom Gar’Ath fought.

  “This way!” Swan called out, gesturing with a nod of her head. Garrison, Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath ran behind the vortex, Garrison and Gar’Ath half-carrying Erg’Ran as they propelled him forward.

  Swan ordered Mitan, “Take over the vortex. All you need now is to maintain it.”

  “I’ll try, Enchantress!” Hesitantly, Mitan began to move her hands, her eyes focused on the vortex. “I should look in the direction in which I wish the hail to flow, shouldn’t I, Enchantress?”

  “You’re getting it,” Swan reassured her.

  There was something like a stutter, the vortex’s shape contracting, then expanding again to its original size, the flow of hailstones, interrupted for an eye-blink, renewing itself.

  “Gar’Ath and Captain Bre’Gaa—please stay with Mitan,” Swan ordered as if she were making a request.

  “Yes, Enchantress,” Bre’Gaa responded, snatching up a partially ice-encrusted firesword from the passage floor. As his hand closed around it, the blade began to glow, the ice turning to steam. Swan faced the doorway, extending her hands toward the door itself.

  The door seemed to vibrate, its shape shifting almost imperceptibly. Swan sagged back, almost fainting and Garrison caught her in his arms. “My mother’s magic is very strong.”

  Garrison stared into Swan’s eyes. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Fold your arms about me and stand very close.”

  “Yes,” Garrison nodded, doing as she’d requested.

  Again Swan tried to break the spell which sealed the doorway, only this time Garrison felt a tingling sensation throughout his entire body, felt his own strength draining from him. His knees beginning to buckle, he held on to her, more tightly.

  The vibration of the door increased. Over the constant whistling sounds of the ice pellets spraying from the vortex, Garrison detected a very faint, almost mechanical sounding hum.

  There was a flash of energy, visible as yellow light, like the popping of an old camera bulb but the wrong color. Swan sagged against Garrison and Garrison himself nearly fell.

  The draining of his own energy had stopped. Erg’Ran reached for the door’s round handle, lifted it and twisted it. The door swung inward.

  Garrison glanced behind him. Ice pellets had formed a ridge almost a foot high in some places and coated most of the passage floor. Gar’Ath and Bre’Gaa flanked Mitan as she continued to orchestrate the hailstorm which Swan had begun.

  Barely able to hold himself up, Garrison assisted Swan forward, through the doorway and into the chamber beyond.

  The chamber was surprisingly well lit, tapers burning in sconces spaced evenly along three of the walls, a large window dominating the fourth. Lying face down on the bed was the figure of a man. He wore a monkish robe of heavy grey cloth, cowl turned down. He didn’t move and for an eyeblink, Garrison thought that the man might be dead.

  Swan, sounding very much like a little girl, began to sing softly, “L’Ull B’Yan G’lte...”

  The words sounded strange to Garrison, and with Swan’s language spell they shouldn’t have. But, somehow, Alan Garrison knew that he should know their meaning, recognize them as something heard long ago.

  As Garrison was about to ask Swan why she sang them, the figure on the bed moved, sat up.

  In the next eyeblink, in a voice choking in emotion, the man on the bed sang back, “Lullaby and good night, with roses—” This time, the opening words to Brahms’ “Lullaby” were unmistakable. The man was singing in English, American English.

  “Father!” Swan gasped.

  “Swan?” The man stood up from the bed. “Swan? Swan!” Whatever energy Swan had remaining to her went into the few steps that she took before falling into her father’s waiting arms.

  He kissed her forehead. She kissed his cheek, her arms encircling him. His arms closed around her like a shield and rocked her gently back and forth, as if, somehow, the notes of the lullaby still echoed within them both.

  Alan Garrison cleared his throat and sniffed. “Sir?”

  The man who held Swan in his arms looked up. “Did you just speak to me in English?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m Alan Garrison. I’m from back home, sir.”<
br />
  Swan’s father closed his eyes and turned his head. When he looked back across the chamber, tears streamed from his eyes. “I recognize that jacket you’re wearing. A-2 bomber jacket. You a flyboy, fella?”

  “I took some flying lessons; but, no, sir. I’m a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Swan’s father shook his head wearily, sighing, “This has gotta be one of Eran’s tricks.” He cleared his throat. “I knew you G-Men had a long arm! But, it can’t be this long, from one world into the next! You—all of you—even you,” and he looked into his daughter’s eyes. “You’re only in my imagination, and Eran put you there!”

  “No, father. I’m real,” Swan sobbed, clinging to him as he started to push her away.

  “What are you afraid of the Feds for?” Garrison prodded. “You running from something?”

  “Look, you! See, I know how it seems, wartime and everything. But I didn’t desert, G-Man! I was brought here, against my will by Eran, and Eran darn well knows it! I’d swear to that before any court martial board the Army could convene.”

  Alan Garrison just stared.

  “Okay. I’ll play your nasty little game. Have we beaten ’em yet?”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Eran knows my name. I’m First Lieutenant Peter Goodman, United States Fifth Army, Second Battalion, C Company.”

  Garrison still stared.

  “So, answer me, huh? Did we win the war, fella, or what? If you’re who you say you are, maybe you’ll convince me this isn’t another little fantasy Eran’s created so she can—Aw, man!” Goodman turned his face away from his daughter. “Eran’s got me believing it! I stopped what I was saying because I wouldn’t say that word in front of my daughter!” He grabbed Swan by the shoulders and shook her. “You have no right to rip a man’s soul out!”

  Garrison was about to intervene, but Goodman let go, his own shoulders slumped. “Eran’s good, real good.”

  “What war, sir?”

  “What war! The war!”

  “Somehow I don’t think you mean Desert Storm?”

  “Desert what? General Rommel just bought the farm, they told us. Word was Rommel and some of the other Nazi High Command bigshots were maybe plotting to bump off Schickelgruber himself. You hear scuttlebutt like that, ya know?”

  “Holy shit,” Garrison rasped.

  “Watch your mouth in front of my—”

  “You’re talking about Erwin Rommel, right? The Desert Fox? And the war you’re talking about was against the Axis? Germany and Japan and everybody, right?”

  “What the heck war you think I’m talking about, fella? The Spanish Civil War is old news.”

  “What’s the last date that you remember, Lieutenant, before you were brought here?”

  “It was the first week in November, 1944. That’s gotta be twenty, maybe twenty-three years ago. You know that. Eran knows that. So, did we get our hands on Hitler and the rest of his goosesteppers? Make up a good one, fella. That’s what Eran’d want you to do.”

  “Hitler whacked himself in his bunker in Berlin as the Allies were closing in. Eva Braun was with him. He married her just before they died. Poison and a pistol shot to the head, if I remember it right. A lot of the Nazis got away, but a lot of them were caught after the war.”

  “I can’t see Hitler having the guts to kill himself.”

  “Nevertheless, Lieutenant Goodman, that’s supposedly exactly what Hitler did. According to the history books, anyway. How old were you, sir, in 1944?”

  Swan’s father seemed to think for a minute. “I was born Thanksgiving Day, 1919. I got outta college about six months before Pearl Harbor. I enlisted nine December 1941. I’d just turned twenty-two. I was going to turn twenty-five in a couple of weeks.”

  “You look like you’ve had a tough time of it since you came here, Lieutenant. And, by your reckoning, then, it’s 1964, maybe 1967. Hmm?”

  Goodman seemed a little defensive, and a little wary, but in a different way, as he said, “You telling me something different?”

  “When I left home, sir,” Garrison informed him, “my calendar read September 1998. That’s a hair under fifty-four years, not twenty-three years ago. That’d put you looking at your seventy-ninth birthday this November.”

  “I’m not seventy-nine! You one of them hopheads you read about or something?”

  Alan Garrison answered by taking out his wallet. He handed Swan’s father his driver’s license. “Georgia driver’s license. My picture. Not very flattering. License expires in the year 2002. In the middle there on the left? That’s my birthday, October 19, 1968. Do I look like I haven’t been born yet?”

  Goodman’s face, which hadn’t been rosy cheeked to begin with, turned ashen.

  “We’ve got Eran’s people outside, trying to get in. We don’t have much time, sir. We’ve gotta get you out of here, and Swan’s magic is about spent out,” Garrison informed him.

  “I am Eran’s brother, Erg’Ran. May I call you Pe’Ter? Or, do you prefer Goo’D’Man?”

  “Can’t anybody in this darn place say my name right?” And Peter Goodman fell to his knees and wept. Swan knelt beside him and cradled his head against her breast.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was no way of telling how much time was passing. Garrison’s wristwatch performed exactly as it had ever since he’d reached Creath. Time was either going by so slowly that the Rolex’s sweep second hand seemed barely to move, or the second hand spun wildly rapidly, so fast that Garrison was certain the movement would break. Or the hands of his watch didn’t move at all and there was an eternity between the soft ticks as he held the watch to his ear and waited and waited.

  Goodman sat on the edge of the bed, and he began to talk. “Eran has spells on me. You could never take me with you. Man, I feel uncomfortable talking like this in front of my daughter.” He reached out and took Swan’s hands in his hands, kissed them lightly. “When a man and a woman are together like, well, like when your mother and I made you, honey,” Goodman said, looking only at his daughter, “well, it should feel good for the man and the woman—gosh, I can’t explain this to you! You’re a grown woman.”

  “I think Swan understands the idea behind the birds and the bees, Lieutenant,” Garrison volunteered. “You can speak frankly. Honest, it won’t offend her, sir.”

  Goodman looked at Garrison, as if for reassurance, then at Erg’Ran. The older man, who was really younger, said, “Your new friend from Earth is right,” and Erg’Ran sounded forced as he squeezed together the two syllables of Goodman’s first name and said, “PeTer.”

  Goodman smiled. He had a decent smile, Garrison thought absently, seemed like a decent guy, too, the land of guy who’d gone off to make the world safe for children he hadn’t had yet, knowing that maybe he never would. And here he was, on the edge of nuts, seeing a daughter he’d been taken away from when she was an infant.

  And, in a place where time was some sort of weird, unpredictable thing, there wasn’t any time at all to be a father. But Goodman was trying.

  There might still be time enough to be a hero, if Garrison read Goodman right and understood the source of Eran’s power as he thought that he did.

  “You see, your mother and me,” Goodman finally went on, “we really loved each other in a kind of strange way. I think that’s why she hasn’t killed me, that and the other thing. And your mother’s afraid, very afraid, afraid of loving anybody. To your mom, love is weakness, and she can’t afford to be weak.”

  “Sir? The key to her power? Is it—?” Erg’Ran fumbled with his pipe as he spoke, didn’t look into Goodman’s face.

  “Yes. I don’t know why. I never did. Once, Eran told me that in the real old times here, long before your Mir came along, when things were really bad, one of the most evil of the evil sorceresses discovered a way into the other realm.” Goodman glanced over at Garrison. “Our Earth, buddy. She came to our Earth, pal, and she took a human man back with her he
re and she kept him for—well, I’m not gonna say it.”

  Garrison nodded his understanding. Under less grim circumstances, Garrison would have asked Goodman if Goodman thought that Judge Crater might have been held prisoner in the next room over. He let it pass.

  “It’s like she runs down in her magic, ya know? Well, and she uses me—But, when I found out that she was killing people and destroying whole cities and everything, like some land of Hitler or Tojo or somebody, I told her I wouldn’t, well, that I wouldn’t. Not again. So, Eran started using—” Goodman looked at his daughter. “I don’t like talking about your mom like this, honey.”

  “I know that she’s evil, father. When her magical energy declines, she comes to you and being with you increases her magical energy beyond anything otherwise possible here.” Swan’s smile, as she looked into her father’s eyes, was the sweetest thing Alan Garrison had ever seen in his life.

  Goodman spoke again. “She—your mother—she used pain and all sorts of stuff to try to make me do what she wants. When she’s really desperate—I don’t think she likes reliving how we met—but she casts one of her spells and makes me think I’m back in that little town outside Paris with Dave Spaulding. Dave was my platoon sergeant. Great guy. Aww!”

  “What is it, father?” Swan asked at Goodman’s sudden exclamation.

  “Dave was a couple years older than me. He’d be over eighty now, if he’s alive and made it through the war!”

  Swan dropped to her knees at her father’s feet, gently touching at the shackles on his wrists. There were no chains in them, but he had worn them, Garrison could tell from the marks, for a very long time.

  Goodman started talking again. “Anyway, Eran makes me think I’m back there again and I’m this young guy and she’s this beautiful, exotic girl hot to climb in the sack—sorry, honey.”

  “It’s all right, father.”

  “And, that’s how she—well, you fellas know what I mean.” Goodman paused for a moment, then continued. “And, afterward, she has all the power she needs to do whatever she wants.”