As if the front rank were one organism, it moved forward, at first snakelike, but after a few strides the horses and their riders formed into a remarkably straight line, lances still raised. The second rank, as Garrison glanced over his shoulder, began its advance, about a dozen yards behind the first.
Garrison strained to look along the line. He saw Tre’El, he thought. He caught possible glimpses of the other knights who had accompanied them for the reconnoitering. One man was distinguishable from another solely by the color combinations of surcoat, helmet plume, and lance as all helmet visors were lowered, all faces obscured.
The army of the dead advanced.
Coming down the defile toward them, still at least a mile or better away, rode the armies of Barad’Il’Koth.
Mir sat rapier-straight in the saddle, his sword low at his side, his body moving in perfect rhythm with the white charger which he rode.
Garrison looked at Erg’Ran. His drawn sword, once his father’s, hung easily in his right hand, the cowl of his robe thrown back, his lips drawn apart against the wind giving him the appearance of a smile, and perhaps it was.
Bre’Gaa rode with both hands on reins and cantle, the horse—of normal height and girth—looking almost too small for him, rather like the image of a Mongol warrior on a tiny Asian horse.
Gar’Ath’s long hair seemed to float on the wind, almost arrow-shaft straight behind him. His right hand held his sword, his fist flexing round its hilt, as if constantly testing the weapon’s balance.
All three of Garrison’s compatriots looked well at ease as they rode into battle. Garrison, on the other hand, felt a mixture of fear and exhilaration, certain that the fear would grow until there was no time for it, the heat of the moment consuming it.
The horizon-to-horizon skirmish line in which they rode was quickening, almost imperceptibly. Mir raised his sword over his head, held it there for a long moment, then lowered it so that its hilt rested along his right side. As Garrison looked from right to left, the lances of Mir’s knights arced downward, couching preparatory to impact, almost mirroring the precision of a Busbee Berkley choreography from a 1930s movie. The army of the dead and the armies of Barad’Il’Koth were now only a little more than a thousand yards apart.
Garrison looked up, noticing at once two things which seemed very odd, but which he almost instantaneously dismissed. A great, black bird, the size of an eagle, but its wingspan wider, soared over what was to become the battlefield. And, in the distance, from the direction of Barad’Il’Koth, there was a peculiar black dot in the sky. He thought that it might be another bird...
Swan grasped Mitan’s arm.
“What is it?” Mitan asked, shrugging off her hooded cloak and starting to draw her sword. A stiff wind, cold and bitter, had arisen in an eyeblink, clouds of silver and black racing across the sky. That wind tore at Mitan’s hair, lashed her bare flesh with its icy force.
At the sound of steel against leather, the archers notched their bows and the leader of the two score of knights ordered, “Draw swords!”
The second-sight, as Swan had feared it might, revealed to her more than she wished to see. “My mother is second-sighting us, I think, through means of the great bird which circles above. But there is terrible danger afoot.”
“What is it, Enchantress?”
“My mother—Mitan, the Queen Sorceress has summoned the Mist of Oblivion.”
Mitan touched her fist, still clenched round her sword hilt, to her forehead. Her voice little more than a whisper, she invoked the courage of “Mir!”
Swan raised her voice, calling out to the knights and archers, “I shall need that all of you step away from me, leaving a clear space. You will take your instructions in certain tasks from the woman warrior Mitan. Do not be afraid of what you may see or hear or think!”
Swan glanced at Mitan, Mitan asking her, “What is it that you wish me to do, Enchantress?”
“There is only one thing which I can do,” Swan told Mitan, realizing in that eyeblink that Mitan was the only female friend whom she had ever had. “If I were to place shift and somehow destroy my mother while she is weakened with controlling the Mist of Oblivion, that would only mean that the Mist would run its course, out of control, and might devour all of Creath. And the Queen Sorceress knows that I know this. She can have only one plan, and if I fail to counter it, all is lost forever. My mother is willing to risk the total obliteration of all of Creath, all life, in pursuit of her ends.
“I tell you this, Mitan, so that you will know that all that which I require of you must be accomplished with great diligence.”
“Your will is mistress of my fate, Enchantress.”
Swan embraced Mitan, kissing her cheek. “Dear friend, you must go out onto the battlefield, find Al’An and bring him to me. Have these knights of Mir, from whatever materials they can, construct an enclosure, around me, but not over me. Al’An alone must enter the enclosure. I will be like I have never been and hope never to be again. There will be grave danger. Al’An must know this and choose, of his own free will, to aid me. And you must tell Al’An that, if he does, whatever he sees, he must again become my lover, as soon as he has entered the enclosure. My life, his, yours and Gar’Ath's, Erg’Ran’s, and all life on Creath will depend upon this.”
“I fear for you, Enchantress and friend.”
Swan embraced Mitan once again. “Hurry that what needs be might be accomplished before the Mist o’ertakes us all.”
Mitan dropped to one knee, touched her forehead to Swan’s hand, stood, then began issuing orders to Mir’s knights and archers. Swan’s fingertips pinched the fabric of her skirts and lifted them slightly as she walked to the center of the ring of knights and archers. Already, the knights were stripping away their surcoats, taking their swords to their lances.
Swan had known since her girlhood that her mother, who had once shown genuine tenderness toward her, displayed unspeakable evil in her interactions with others. As Swan’s body grew into womanhood, so did the depth and breadth of her understanding, her grasp of her mother’s other self. When her mother realized that the Daughter Royal would not become chief among the Handmaidens of Koth, aiding her mother’s evil magic, all loving kindness left their relationship. It was replaced by that same evil with which Eran systematically strangled the life from Creath, destroyed the K’Ur’Mir and all who opposed her. Swan fled with Erg’Ran to the summer palace, where evil magic could not hold sway. Only a long time afterward, her education well under way, was a truce effected between her and her mother. It allowed that she should dwell alone in her own castle, unmolested on condition that she take no active part in combating her mother’s designs.
She should have realized then, as she finally did now, that there was magical power within her which her mother gravely feared, yet simultaneously wanted to employ.
That power was about to be put to its ultimate test.
Despite the magical energy which Swan had expended in the opening of the vortex into death and the summoning of Mir and his knights, she told herself that she still possessed adequate power to do what needed to be done.
Found within the scrolls destroyed when her castle was consumed by the Mist of Oblivion were many writings from before the coming of Mir, among these many of those same forbidden writings by means of which her mother’s evil had grown to know no bounds.
The reading of them could sometimes evoke evil. As Erg’Ran had labored to translate them, he had wisely begun at their ending and worked toward their beginning, thus obviating the chance that the spell or summoning would become unintended magical reality.
As with everything which she read, these, too, were committed to memory.
Swan raised her voice, her arms outstretching to the sky, her fingers splayed, palms open to the magical energy surrounding her, drawing it into her. Its current surged throughout her body. She spoke, reciting one of these proscribed writings, saying the text in its natural order, the reverse of how she had learned
the incantation.
Swan pressed her palms together between her breasts, becoming one with the energy around her. Light, dazzlingly bright filled her, exploded from her. Fear consumed her as the utterances left her lips....
A sudden rising of wind, bitter cold, swept over the defile, and dark, luminescent clouds rushed to fill the dome of sky above the opposing armies. Mir thrust his sword toward the enemy forces, his blade at the full extension of his right arm, ordering in a voice which no howling wind, no thrumming hoof-beats could obscure, “At a gallop, charge!”
The ground beneath them shook and Garrison’s ears pounded from the drumming of steel shod hooves, nearly two thousand fully armored knights, countless tons of heavily geared battle horses, men and animals in harmony, riding in almost perfect synchronization, a symphony of thunder.
The armies of Barad’Il’Koth quickened to a gallop, Garrison realizing full-well that this was all battle strategy. Two hundred yards separated them, would be gone in an instant, but not before the last hundred yards the enemy army crossed finished their horses to exhaustion. Those mounts which Mir’s men rode would be fresher, stronger.
From the direction of Barad’Il’Koth, Alan Garrison saw a gathering darkness, blacker than any cloud could be, fog the color of the bottom of an inkwell devouring the sky.
“It is the Mist of Oblivion!” Erg’Ran was screaming.
Garrison could not have shouted back over the cacophony which surrounded them, only nodded that he had heard, understood. But, he did not, really. How could nothing consume something? And, he realized, the Mist would not only devour Mir’s knights, but all who rode this defile. Eran was fully willing to kill virtually her entire army.
“Mir! It’s the Mist of Oblivion!” Garrison tried to shout the warning. If Mir heard him, the legend did not acknowledge doing so. As if Garrison were not sufficiently terrorized, when he looked at Mir’s white charger, Alan Garrison felt his heart slap a beat. The animal’s gait seemed unaffected, but below the knee its off hind leg was becoming transparent.
Twenty-five yards.
The rising wind and the slipstream surrounding horse and rider blew froth and sweat from Garrison’s mount back across Garrison’s face, into his eyes. Garrison wiped it away with the sleeve of his bomber jacket.
A dozen yards. The leader of the armies of Barad’Il’Koth, although otherwise uniformed as Sword of Koth, was bareheaded and wore no black leather battle mask. Moc’Dar. Garrison looked along the length of Moc’Dar’s red hot glowing firesword. There was fire, too, in his eyes, an expression akin to laughter etched across his face, his lips drawn back, teeth bared.
Alan Garrison thrust his sword out at full length and leaned into his horse, its lather-soddened mane lashing at his face.
The sound, as the two armies met, was not the heroic oaths and villainous epithets of human voices, nor the shrieking of frightened animals, but instead like the impact of one heavy object slamming suddenly against another. And then, there was the clash of steel. Four thousand warriors fought to the death.
From the north, from Barad’Il’Koth, the Mist of Oblivion drew ever nearer.
Garrison had one last look at it, his horse bowled from under him by the thrust of a sword through its chest. He fell from the saddle, impacting the ground over his Golden Shield of IBF, scrambling away from the killing weight of the dead horse and the murderous hooves of the animals around him. A Sword of Koth, his firesword sizzling blood, bore down toward Garrison, Garrison throwing up his shield, deflecting the blow. Mir’s white steed—its entire off-hind leg was now ghostly transparent—muscled between Garrison and the Sword of Koth. Mir’s mighty sword arm swung, his blade cleaving through his enemy’s skull from crown to jaw bone. “The magic, Champion! The Enchantress’s magic is fading. Fight rapidly!” And Mir rode off.
For what seemed an eternity, Garrison stood in the middle of the battle, unhorsed, easy prey to his enemies, but his heart and mind obsessed with worry over Swan.
Two riders from the Horde closed toward Garrison. Garrison slammed the Golden Shield of IBF against the forelegs of the horse to his left, sidestepping the rider to his right. The horse which Garrison had impacted with his shield stumbled, fell to its knees. During the instant in which its Horde rider fought for balance, Alan Garrison stepped closer, slamming his shield against the rider now, his sword skating along the right edge of his shield, thrusting into the rider’s chest.
As the horse staggered upright, Garrison flung himself onto its saddle, shouldering the dead Horde trooper to the ground. Garrison couldn’t find the reins, instead grabbed a hank of mane and jerked it left, turning the frightened animal toward the second of his two attackers, the man bearing down on him with a sword. The horse began to stumble, for a fleeting instant Garrison wondering if it had broken a leg. Without thinking, Garrison looked down. The dead Horde of Koth’s right foot was tangled in the right stirrup, half under the horse. Garrison swore at his own barbarism, hacking downward with his sword and severing the dead man’s foot from the ankle. The horse half reared, gave a whinny more like a scream of fear, then vaulted forward.
Garrison’s second attacker swung his sword, Garrison oriented in the opposite direction to be able to respond in kind, instead taking the full force of his opponent’s blade on the Golden Shield of IBF. Garrison’s body vibrated with it, his left arm numbing.
Guiding the horse with nothing but his knees, even his grasp on its mane lost, Garrison hacked downward with his sword as the horse wheeled round. Garrison’s cut opened a wound in his attacker’s right thigh and across the right side of the chest of his attacker’s mount. The horse veered away. Garrison lunged, overextending himself to the point of nearly falling from the saddle. But the very tip of his blade punctured the right shoulder of his opponent, doing no serious damage.
Feeling was coming back into Garrison’s left arm, and pain with it. He grabbed a handful of mane again, wheeling his horse a full ninety degrees. A Sword of Koth, blade gleaming bright red, charged toward him.
As Garrison tried to vector his own mount out of his enemy’s way, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Gar’Ath and Moc’Dar, both men still on horseback, locked in combat. A freeze-frame which would forever be emblazoned in his memory, had Garrison blinked he would not have seen it. Moc’Dar’s fire-sword arced downward. Gar’Ath, his horse rearing under him, held to his saddle by his clenched left fist, his left arm at full extension, his left leg, bent at the knee, braced against the cantle.
Gar’Ath s body swung outward, right arm pistoning forward, the sword in his right hand impaling Moc’Dar through the heart. The hint of laughter which Alan Garrison had seen etched in Moc’Dar’s expression was still there as his head flung back and his body went rigid in death.
Garrison looked around. His Sword of Koth attacker was nearly upon him. There was nothing for it but to fight. Garrison dug in his heels, and the horse beneath him leaped forward. Garrison’s mount and that of his enemy slammed against one another. The Sword of Koth’s blade hacked downward, past his animal’s head. Garrison deflected the blow with his shield, the sound of metal striking metal like the clanging of a bell. This time, Garrison had deflected the blow, not taken its full impact. He punched forward with his shield, hammering it against the head of his enemy’s horse.
The horse lunged away, the Sword of Koth who rode it slashing with his blade. Garrison’s horse took a deep cut along the left side of its neck. Rather than using his sword crossbody, Garrison slammed his shield against his opponent’s left arm and shoulder.
Garrison’s horse wheeled ninety degrees. Before his Sword of Koth attacker could respond, Garrison hacked downward with the K’Ur’Mir sword, missing his opponent’s left shoulder, but opening a long cut along the Sword of Koth’s upper arm.
Garrison dug in his heels, his attacker riding off, Garrison after him, sword raised, cleaving downward, this time finding its target, drawcutting from the right shoulder toward the spine, the tip of his blade snagging for
a split second against the ribcage.
Garrison pulled back on his horse’s mane, looked to right and left. At the far left edge of his peripheral vision, he saw Mitan. She fought her way toward him, her bare arms bloodied, more blood splotching her left cheek.
Garrison glanced skyward. Again, he felt his heart skip a beat.
The empty blackness which was the Mist of Oblivion was nearly over the battlefield, but from behind him, where he had left Swan in supposed safety, rose a gleaming golden vortex of incalculable size. Swan, ghostly transparent, floated in the air within the vortex, white hot energy emanating from her body. Swan and the vortex were one, energy flowing from it, into it, as if from the core of Swan’s being there had formed a star and she was its fiery heart.
“What’s happening!?” Garrison screamed, but knew that Mitan could not possibly hear him.
Two Horde of Koth troopers rode at him. “Not now!” Garrison threatened, begged. But they could not hear him, because he could barely hear himself, nor would it have mattered to them if they could hear him. Garrison saw Mitan’s lips moving, but he could hear nothing over the din of battle.
Garrison grabbed a greater hank of mane and dug in his heels, spurring the animal toward the two Horde troopers. As he did so, he spied Mitan again, breaking clear of the knot of enemy personnel around her, riding toward him.
The two Horde of Koth vectored their mounts so that Garrison would ride between them, and Garrison did just as he realized they wanted him to do, but hoping to deny them the result that they desired. He tried what he’d tried before, using his shield as a weapon against the mount of the enemy to his left, if nothing else fending off one attacker while he dealt with the second.
The man to Garrison’s right hacked his sword through a wide arc, Garrison barely halting the blade’s travel in time, catching the enemy sword’s edge against the flat of his own, his left arm—aching— hammering the Golden Shield of IBF first against the head and neck of the other Horde trooper’s horse, then against the man himself.
The Golden Shield of IBF Page 43
