The Golden Shield of IBF

by Jerry Ahern; Sharon Ahern

  Feeling herself completely drain as she made the magic, Swan set the bridge afire with the very last of her energy, then collapsed, darkness engulfing her, the crackle of flames and the screams of men and animals echoing and re-echoing ceaselessly within her...

  Alan Garrison didn’t know about the habits of real frontier heroes like Buckaroo Fishman, but the movie and television cowboys always found a grove of cottonwoods where they could make camp. It was invariably just outside of town, but secluded nonetheless.

  If cottonwoods grew on Creath, Garrison hadn’t seen any, nor was he certain he’d know a Cottonwood tree if he tripped over one. Virtually nothing at all seemed to grow in Edge Land. But there was a high, rocky area in the foothills to the north of the plain of Barad’Il’Koth, and beyond it lay a barren valley. There were several passes immediately identifiable, ways in and out of the valley, so there was little chance they’d be boxed in by enemy troops except in significant force of numbers.

  And Swan very urgently required rest and recuperation.

  Their expropriated horses grazed poorly in the almost nonexistent vegetation. Mitan tried making grain appear magically, but her vortex kept collapsing before anything more than a few specks of dust materialized.

  Mitan did make fire appear, and in the fire Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath hardened the tips of wooden shafts they’d cut with Erg’Ran’s axe and whittled to shape with their daggers, these for use as throwing spears. The supply of arrows was dangerously low should there be an assault against them in any force.

  Erg’Ran kept vigil beside Swan, who seemed half asleep, half in coma. Alan Garrison kept watch from a rock pinnacle at the edge of the little valley, and was pleased as he saw Mitan striding toward him. “Greetings, Champion!”

  “Any change in Swan?”

  “Our Enchantress still rests, and Erg’Ran is with her, tending her. Could you use some company, Champion?”

  Garrison smiled and nodded. Mitan scampered up along the rocks as nimbly as would a mountain goat. Despite the triteness of the comparison, it was the first thought which crossed his mind as he observed her. On the other hand, he reflected, she was much nicer looking.

  When she reached the pinnacle where Garrison was perched—it had taken him three times longer to climb it and he’d been out of breath when he reached the summit—Mitan dropped down to her knees beside him, resting her sword across her thighs. As she drew her cloak over her bare legs, she remarked, “You love her, I know.”

  “Yes, and very much. More than I could ever weigh, measure or calculate, actually.”

  “That’s good,” Mitan volunteered, smiling. She raised her arms, her hands beginning to tinker with her very pretty, well-past-shoulder-length dark brown hair. Garrison found it curious that, despite the considerable length of her hair, her lover’s hair was even longer. “Sorry I’m so bad at magic,” Mitan said, laughing. “I guess I should have been born male.”

  “Gar’Ath would have been pretty upset about that.”

  Mitan laughed again. “Yes, he would have, wouldn’t he?” Mitan cleared her throat. She was beginning to braid her hair, after a second or so, the braid started, bringing it over her left shoulder, working the interweaving of her tresses with casual deliberateness, seeming to derive a certain languorous enjoyment from the task. Her eyes focused on something—likely nothing—far away, Mitan said, “I spoke with Erg’Ran.”

  “And?”

  “It is within your power to restore the Enchantress, and also to enable her to defeat the Queen Sorceress.”

  Garrison hunched his shoulders inside his jacket, happy for the sweater which Swan had magically knitted for him. There was a stiff, chill breeze. “I think I can speak for Swan as well as myself when I say that affairs of the heart can be choreographed to death. At least where I come from, people don’t really—” Garrison cut himself off.

  “Why did you stop saying what you were saying, Champion?”

  “It sounded stupid.”

  “May I ask you a question, Champion?”

  “Sure, Mitan.”

  “Where you come from, is there virtue in letting what is good be destroyed needlessly, Champion?” Garrison just looked at her. “Well, it seems to me that since you love the Enchantress and the Enchantress loves you and it was clear to all who observed the two of you together—aboard ship and elsewhere—that you could not wait to be together, well—”

  “Well?”

  “The Enchantress was to find the origin of her seed, remaining a virgin until she had done so. That is the prophecy. Now, it seems to me, that it is time for the rest of the prophecy to be fulfilled.”

  Garrison took a cigarette from his pack, looked away, then looked back. The pack was refilled. He tried his Zippo lighter, but it had been soaked one too many times for there to be any viable fuel remaining. Garrison looked at the cigarette and then at Mitan. “How’s about a light?”

  Garrison’s cigarette lit.

  “My one big magical ability! The simplest thing!”

  “Just because you’re no magical whiz,” Garrison reminded her, “doesn’t mean you’re any less of a woman, Mitan; you’re manipulating me quite well, indeed.”

  “Manipulating?” Mitan asked with a coy smile.

  “Yes,” Garrison replied. “Manipulating. When we went to Bre’Gaa’s ship, the Storm Raider, for the first time, you didn’t have to dress as though you were going to Cinderella’s ball. You were already driving Gar’Ath crazy looking at you when you were dressed as you are now in your fantasy woman warrior outfit. So, the beautiful princess look was just enough to push him over the edge. You did him a favor, compelled him to overcome his inherent shyness so that the result which you both desired would be attained. Manipulating. Perfectly normal. Men want to be manipulated by women, at least smart men. Men are frequently more direct, whereas women will more often approach a problem from the side. Whereas brute force or intimidation might achieve a certain result, that same result or an even better one might be achieved with guile. Trust to your femininity, Mitan, regardless of your magic; your womanliness hasn’t failed you.”

  Garrison stood up.

  “Where are you going, Champion?”

  Alan Garrison smiled down at Mitan. “Where am I going! Really! Ha!”

  “Yes! Where are you going?”

  Alan Garrison merely shook his head. He started the long—for him—climb down from the pinnacle; paradoxically, Garrison realized that he was ascending to a new stage in his life rather than descending at all, committing himself to the love which had forever and would forever change his life...

  The courtyard was filled with men and horses. On a balcony far above in the highest tower of the keep, the Queen Sorceress stood, watching. Moc’Dar feared that, at any moment, his Mistress General might choose to transmute him once again into the cursed creature he had been before. On lower balconies, the Handmaidens, in groups of six, waited, ready to perform their Queen Sorceress’s bidding.

  The odor of the incinerated remains of the drawbridge and the even worse smells from the gutted stable somehow still permeated the courtyard, despite a bitterly cold wind which swept over the walls. Had Eran summoned it? Moc’Dar shivered.

  To his knowledge, the Queen Sorceress, Mistress General had used no magic yet. Even the drawbridge was being rebuilt by hand. Within a very little time, it would be completed enough that it was half its original width and his forces could storm across it in pursuit.

  Moc’Dar stood in his stirrups and called out to the Sword of Koth and Horde troopers, most of them already ahorse. “There is a limited distance which the traitorous Swan and her vile accomplices could have traveled. It was clear that she had little magical energy remaining to her. We must find her before her magical energy is restored or can be enhanced. Any man who fails to give me his all will answer to me with his life. My personal future depends on the outcome of our endeavors. Should I fail, death would be welcome. Remember this as you ride the pursuit, as you hunt the quarry. An
d, remember, too, that we are to return the Virgin Enchantress and her Champion from the other realm to our Mistress General unless such proves impossible. The old Erg’Ran, as well. Should we be unable to bring them back alive, we shall lay their rotting corpses at the feet of the Queen Sorceress and beg her forgiveness!”

  Moc’Dar looked toward the high balcony. Eran would have heard. Did she approve? Moc’Dar looked once more to his black-clad warriors, then to the drawbridge. It was completed enough, he decided. To a lieutenant at his side, he ordered, “Take six Horde of Koth, and order them to ride at full gallop by twos across the drawbridge. If it does not fail beneath their weight, we take the field in the next eyeblink.”

  “Yes, Captain Moc’Dar!” The lieutenant raised his clenched fist over his chest. “You! And you and you and you! And you two, also! By twos, at full gallop, cross the drawbridge now!”

  The six men, already ahorse, wheeled their mounts toward the drawbridge, the horses around them whinnying loudly, pawing the courtyard surface. Twenty-four hooves thundered across the cobblestones.

  The first two were across, the second two, then the final pair of riders.

  The partially completed drawbridge held.

  Moc’Dar stood in his stirrups again, shouting, “Woe beyond pain, suffering greater than death to the foes of the Queen Sorceress! We ride to victory!”

  Moc’Dar glanced up to the highest balcony again. Had Eran nodded her approval? Or was it merely the wind toying with her hair?

  Moc’Dar wrestled his animal toward the drawbridge and dug in his spurs, crossing the courtyard onto the drawbridge, across it, onto the trail, the full might of the Sword of Koth and two companies of the Horde in his wake...

  Eran stepped from the balcony, listening as the click of her boot heels replaced the hammering of hooves, letting her cloak fall from her otherwise naked body beneath.

  Pe’Ter was dead of his own hand. In the eyeblink as she learned this, her heart was filled with two emotions: loss, and disgust. That she felt a genuine sense of loss at the death of the only male whom she could truly have considered a husband, the father of the only child she had ever borne, consumed her with self-loathing.

  That Moc’Dar had failed to prevent Pe’Ter’s death and Swan’s escape filled her with disgust for his blithering incompetence. Moc’Dar came within an eyeblink of feeling the full force of her wrath, but she stayed her impulse.

  Perhaps such newfound restraint accompanied the realization that her magical energy needed to be used very wisely now that Pe’Ter would be forever unavailable; and, that Moc’Dar’s very incompetence might serve her best purpose, affording her a new source of that special energy which she so craved.

  In preparation for such contingency and in order to minimize the frivolous use of her magical energy, Eran strode across her apartment to the bell pull beside one of the tapestries and tugged it. The bell would summon those six Handmaidens of Koth who sometimes attended her personal needs.

  Now, Eran would cause herself to be dressed in perfect finery, to look her most alluring, most sensual and beautiful.

  There might, after all, soon be a new other realm man to plunder her willing body...

  “Some little of the Enchantress’s magical energy returns to her, Champion, but so slowly. When one has drained oneself as my niece has done, it is to be expected. There are tales told from the days before the coming of Mir of sorceresses who died in battle with one another, not at the other’s hand, but by so depleting their magical energy that there was no longer the sufficient strength to live. There is magical energy within us all, you see, even those who do not know that they possess it. When this final reserve is exhausted, there can be nothing left but death, because the magical energy and the energy of life are one and the same. We are all the better for the Enchantress’s being young and strong.”

  Alan Garrison sat on a rock beside Erg’Ran, a cold wind blowing from the north. “How much longer before we can travel?”

  “Within a day we could risk it, Champion. What are you thinking?”

  Garrison stared down at his hands. He’d bloodied them here, and would bloody them again if he lived. The battle with Swan’s mother was just beginning. “I’m thinking that since Swan’s father is dead, and her mother is someone none of us could just sit down and chat with, you’re the logical one.”

  “For what, Champion?” Erg’Ran was packing the bowl of his pipe.

  Garrison rubbed his hand over the stubble of his beard. “Well, I kind of feel I should, uh—I want your blessing to ask your niece to marry me. However you do things like that here.”

  Erg’Ran struck flint to steel, smiling over the bowl of his pipe as he did so. “Blessing?”

  “You know, that it’s okay by you.”

  “And what if I said no? Would you not entreat for her hand? Would you love Swan any the less, or she love you the less?”

  “That’s not it. Of course, we’d still love each other, and I’d still ask her to marry me.”

  “Then,” Erg’Ran persisted, “this request which you make of me is merely formality?”

  “Yes. But, still, I’d like you to give us your blessing.”

  “Whatever that means to you, Champion, you have it.”

  Garrison nodded. Staring down at his hands, he said, “One other thing.”

  Erg’Ran looked back at him quizzically through the smoke curling up from his pipe.

  “Could you stop calling me Champion and start calling me Alan? Or, even Al’An?”

  Erg’Ran smiled. “I will consider that, Champion.” Garrison nodded his head, stood up, and started up into the rocks where Swan had been resting. He cleared his throat, threw his shoulders back. Alan Garrison was a little nervous. He had, after all, never proposed marriage to anyone before, nor had he ever dreamt that, assuming that the girl in question accepted, his next question would be about making love together immediately so that they could save a world. It sounded like a desperation play pickup line, really, the kind of thing a guy said after “Wanna boogie, mama?” failed miserably...

  Al’An was walking up the slope toward her, and it required no magical ability to know why.

  Swan had never imagined that what she knew was about to transpire would come about in such a way. She had always pictured it that she would give herself to the man of her dreams only after a wedding in some flower-dotted grove where Ka’B’Oo trees grew and beautiful white horses awaited to bear them to some happy place. And she would never be dressed as she was now, in a man’s cloak, jerkin and stockings. For her wedding, she would wear a dress of magnificent white lace; for the moment when she surrendered her most special physical intimacy, she would wear some soft, wondrous linen gown that he, in turn, would take gently from her body, replacing its texture against her with a feeling she had never felt before.

  Tears filled Swan’s eyes, happiness that the moment she so longed for with Al’An was about to arrive and that she still lived to share it with him, and sadness that this terrible conflict with her mother, the Queen Sorceress, had dashed the last of her hopes.

  “Swan.”

  She was able to sit up a little, propping herself on one elbow. “Al’An.”

  “Will you be my wife and take me as your lover?” As he spoke the words which quickened her heart, Al’An dropped to one knee before her. She put her hand in his. “I love you more than I ever thought it would be possible to love anyone. From the moment I saw you, it was—I don’t know how to say it, Swan.”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, you’re so incredible. The magic and all, that’s just fine, but it’s you I love. I wouldn’t care if—”

  “Yes,” Swan said again. “Yes, I will marry you, Al’An, but only if you still feel that I should after you bring the magic into me and I possess greater magic than my mother. And, yes, I will take you as my lover in this very moment, and you will be the only lover that I shall ever take. This I swear by the courage of Mir.”

  Al’An took her into hi
s arms and crushed her lips beneath his own, his mouth devouring hers, their tongues touching. Swan felt her body go rigid in that very eyeblink, then soften beyond any softness she had known.

  Al’An’s hands swept over her, and his strength filled her with delicious weakness. Her head fell back and his hands loosened her hair, his lips caressing her throat, her cheek, his hands moving over her again.

  Swan raised her hands to Al’An’s face, her arms embracing his head, drawing it close against her. His hands were at her waist, moving upward along her body. A chill went through her and her body was closer to his than before, molded to every contour of his body, the strength of his arms wonderfully crushing her, his mouth smothering her.

  The black jerkin unlaced beneath his hands, as did the neck of her white blouse. His hands touched her where no hands but her own had touched her since infancy, his fingers exploring gently within the linen of her camisole.

  In the eyeblink that his hand brushed against her left breast and her nipple hardened to his touch, Swan cried softly and touched her lips to Al’An’s cheek.

  Above her waist, her clothes were all pushed away and her skin felt cold and hot simultaneously, the sleeves of her blouse binding her arms ever so slightly. Al’An leaned back, shrugging out of his jacket, his baldric and his firespitter sheaths, standing to pull the sweater she’d made for him off over his head. He tugged off the shirt beneath it—he called it a T-shirt—and his upper body was naked before her.

  Swan knelt before him, touched her mouth to his abdomen and to his chest as he dropped to his knees before her. The soft hair which grew from a man’s flesh was odd feeling to her lips, wonderful feeling. Without knowing why, but wanting to, Swan kissed first one, then the other of his nipples.

  Al’An took her into his arms, their flesh nearly one, her breasts on fire with desire for him. Al’An guided her onto her back and his hands were at her waist, fumbling with the stockings. Swan laughed softly, bringing her own hands to help his.