Chapter Five
“Speak to me of this weapon which kills with the kiss of fire, Moc’Dar.”
On one knee before the Sorceress Queen, Mistress General of the Horde, his eyes lowered in her presence, Moc’Dar began, “It is terrible and wondrous, Mistress General. It is small, not much over a span in length. There is a magical summoning, perhaps to invoke the fire, Mistress General.”
“What words does my daughter’s new friend use, Moc’Dar?”
“Clearly, the word which was alone was the magical summoning, the other words a warning that the Sword of Koth who was about to attack should lay down his firesword, Mistress General.”
“The word, Moc’Dar,” Eran insisted, keeping her voice low and level and even, almost soothingly compassionate, patient.
“It sounded like he said ‘Halt,’ but that cannot be, Mistress General.”
“Perhaps, Moc’Dar, it was not magic at all, but an implement of technology. Kneel there while I explore the concept,” Eran commanded. “The stone is cold and hard and rough, good for discipline.”
“Yes, Mistress General.”
Eran turned abruptly on her heel, skirts swirling round her ankles, leaving Moc’Dar to wait in discomfort. The place-shifting spell which Eran had used to travel from Barad’Il’Koth to Moc’Dar’s command post had wearied her, her magical energy not yet fully restored from summoning, then controlling the Mist of Oblivion. “Little over a span in length, a tongue of flame. Hmm,” she cooed. From her spell bag, placed on Moc’Dar’s map table when she arrived, Eran withdrew something little longer than a span’s length. It was hard to the touch as her fingers stroked across it. She raised it to view and turned to face Moc’Dar again.
“Was the wondrous and terrible weapon anything like this, Moc’Dar?”
He raised his gaze to hers, his eyes widening beneath his black leather mask. And he almost fell back as she pointed it at him. “Very—very much like that, Mistress General.”
“This is called a 1911A1, Moc’Dar. Do you want to see it spit fire, or do you wish to go on living in some lesser capacity than a human man? You have served me well, so I give you that choice. Choose carefully and wisely, Moc’Dar. But quickly.”
He paused, his body visibly trembling. At last, his voice subdued, he spoke. “Whatever is your will, Mistress General. That is my choice, only to serve your will.”
Eran pursed her lips. She could not decide this so easily. “As you know, Moc’Dar, I have plenty of horses, although I’m certain that you’d be an excellent mount. I must think. Stay on your knee. In fact, prostrate yourself there on the flagstones in obeisance to me while I ponder your fate.”
“Yes, Mistress General,” Moc’Dar responded, laying his body face down on the stone, arms outstretched to either side, not daring to look up. He looked quite ridiculous, and she liked that.
Still holding the item which she had taken from her spell bag, Eran slowly began to pace about the room, stopping after a time, beside Moc’Dar, raising one booted foot and letting it rest on his neck. “The object which spits fire, as you described it Moc’Dar, is called a pistol. The flame that you witnessed is not magic, but merely the flash from the burning of a mixture of natural elements. The loud noise which you doubtless heard, but failed to mention, is also a natural result of these elements interacting. What killed your Sword of Koth was not magic, either. It was something that is called a bullet. This is, to help you understand it, a very much advanced version of a crossbow, but rather than the tension of the released prod propelling the missile forward to its target with killing force, it is the pressure from the burning of these natural elements which I mentioned. If you understand what I have said, kiss my boot.”
Moc’Dar turned his head—the motion was visibly awkward for him, because her other foot still rested on his neck—and he kissed her right boot.
“So, you see, Moc’Dar, you ran away from something quite natural, not magical. What to do with you! My boots are soiled, Moc’Dar. You may rise to your knees and lick them clean for me while I continue to ponder your fate. But do not speak.” Eran removed her foot from his neck.
Silently, Moc’Dar rose to his knees, his tongue flicking against the sparkling leather of her boots.
“Keep cleaning until I tell you that you may stop, Moc’Dar.” Resting her elbow in the palm of her hand, Eran cocked her head back and contemplated Moc’Dar’s punishment. He had always been the most ruthless of the Sword of Koth. That was something in his favor. But, of course, his punishment had to be spectacular, a lesson to others of the Sword of Koth, and of the Horde of which the Sword of Koth was the elite. So it had to be an enduring punishment.
An idea came to her in the very moment that she looked down on him and took notice of the diligence with which he licked her boots.
“You may stop licking my boots, Moc’Dar. Raise your eyes to look at me, but do not speak.”
Moc’Dar obeyed.
Eran had never had a male body servant before. Of course, when he took up those duties, he wouldn’t be quite as male as he was now. Yet, the idea had a sort of appeal to it.
“I have determined your fate, Moc’Dar,” Eran began...
Alan Garrison sat in the snow under what he had learned was a Ka’B’Oo tree. The things were enormous.
Force of habit had made him act like he was taught to act when he went through Special Agent training. What did these people in another world, or maybe another universe, care if someone flashed a badge and shouted, “Freeze!” Alan Garrison had never killed a man before, in any universe. And, he could not help but think that his ineptitude in handling a unique situation had brought about that man’s death.
Swan approached, her boots packed with snow. Garrison looked up, saw her face smiling down at him from within the folds of her hood. She dropped to her knees in the snow beside him. “How are you feeling, Al’An?”
“I’m angry with myself.”
“No Sword of Koth has ever been taken alive, captured. You have done the impossible.”
“All I did was deck somebody and bust him. That wasn’t much. I’m an idiot.”
Swan’s pretty eyes widened in amazement. “How could you speak so cruelly about yourself, Al’An? You are—”
“All the time I’ve been with the Bureau,” he began, interrupting her, “I’ve always figured that guys like my boss, Matt Wisnewski, were airheads, idiots because they went by the book when circumstances dictated that they be a little creative.”
“The book?”
“You know, having a fixed set of responses for every situation and sticking to them—like rules that can’t be broken—regardless of the reality of the thing. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Swan nodded, “I think that I do. And you blame yourself for doing what you tell others not to do.”
“Exactly!” My God, Alan Garrison thought, a woman who understood him! Really understood him. It was just his luck, he thought, to meet the perfect woman, but she just happened to be from another world or universe, she was more or less immortal and she was in the middle of a war. With every moment that passed with Swan, Alan Garrison was becoming more and more certain that he loved her like he had never, ever loved anyone before or would again.
“We need to be on our way, Al’An. We have the extra horses from the Sword of Koth who were killed. We must ride to join with the Company of Mir near the old summer palace by the shores of Woroc’Il’Lod.”
“Is that an ocean?”
“Yes,” she told him, “an icy sea. At its center,” and she brushed a smooth spot in the snow, then sketched an outline with her gloved fingertip, “is the Edge Land, shaped like this. At its very tip, in the high coastal mountains, is Barad’Il’Koth, my mother’s stronghold, where we must go.”
Garrison studied Swan’s drawing in the snow. “So where we are now is known as the Land, and where we must travel over the sea is the Edge Land, which we could get to overland, but would mean traveling a greater distance. The Land is the principal continent here.”
Swan seemed to contemplate his meaning. Half the time, Garrison didn’t even know if he was using English, nor was he conscious of slipping back and forth between his language and hers. Everyone—the kind of neat old guy, Erg’Ran, and Gar’Ath—seemed to understand him, and he understood them.
“I see the meaning,” Swan went on. “There is but one continent here, connected by many wide expanses of land. The ocean flows around us, and it is made of many seas.”
“How many people are there in Creath, in your world?”
“People? There are—” Swan paused. “I am trying to calculate, and determine a reference that you will understand.” She shut her eyes, not making magic, he guessed, just thinking. She nodded her head, opened her eyes, said, “At one time, before the reign of my mother, Eran, there were many great cities, like Atlanta, but different, but with many, many people living and working in them.
“In those days, before I was born, the magical energy was used by all. Some used it better, more wisely, while others eschewed its use except for extraordinary purposes. Still others lived by its power.”
“So, your mother destroyed everything?” Garrison asked her.
Swan’s look visibly saddened. “Yes. She did that.”
“Why?” Garrison asked her.
“She was K’Ur’Mir—of the royal line, the royal blood. My ancestors and hers have ruled Creath since the time of Mir.”
Garrison wanted to ask who “Mir” was, but saved that for later. He was more concerned, at the moment, with learning why her world was as it was.
“My mother,” Swan went on, “was gifted beyond even the most extraordinary of our ancestors, gifted with the ability to use the magical energy. I don’t know why she did what she did, because she never told me. Erg’Ran, who, of course, knew her then, before and after, has told me that my mother devoted her every moment to study of the magical energy. She became obsessed with mastering all of the magic of the universe. That is impossible, even for her now, and she is the most powerful sorceress that there has ever been. No mortal, or immortals such as we, can master all magic.
“But in the pursuit of her obsession,” Swan continued, “she discovered spells and summonings which had been unused since the dark days before the coming of Mir. She used these, and with one such spell was able to draw into herself more magic energy than any K’Ur’Mir before her. And used this spell and this magical energy to transport herself to another realm.”
“Like you did,” Garrison said soberly.
Swan nodded, closing her eyes, continuing. “I used the spell to save my life, to keep from being consumed by the Mist of Oblivion. My mother used it in the quest for more magical power. Evidently,” Swan told him, looking at Garrison again, “she found it. When she returned, Erg’Ran recounted to me, her power had increased manyfold. She learned to transmute living things from one to another. I know how, but have never done it. I learned it from her without her knowing it.”
“What do you mean when you say she could transmute living things?”
Swan drew a deep breath, exhaled, saying, “Do you remember the difference in types of magic, Al’An? For example, when I used a very little bit of magical energy to heal the wounds Gar’Ath sustained in the wood, all that I did was to accelerate a natural process. To transmute is wholly unnatural. The horse which my mother, the Queen Sorceress, rides? Mul’Din? Mul’Din is a man’s name. There is good reason for that. The horse was once a man, her lover. Every horse that she has ever ridden since I was a child was once a man. They retain a man’s mind and emotions, but no power of speech. After she has run them into the ground, or tired of them, they are gelded and left for age and madness to destroy.”
“Holy shit,” Garrison murmured.
“Is this a special kind of g’urg?”
Alan Garrison rose to his knees, swept Swan into his arms and kissed her harder than he had ever kissed anyone, the sweetness of tasting her beyond anything he could have imagined. In the stillness of the falling snow, he could hear Swan’s heart beating.
Virtually every officer of the Horde was assembled in the Great Hall of Barad’Il’Koth, crowded shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the narrow aisle within which Eran walked. General, captain, lieutenant alike, each man bowed deeply as she approached, not daring to raise head or eyes until she had passed. The smell of fresh leather, of the copper metal which trimmed a jerkin here, a sword scabbard there, the very scent of their male bodies, all blended in an intoxicatingly heady mixture. Eran, Sorceress Queen, Mistress General, inhaled it, tasted it, consumed the adulation as deeply as her body would hold.
Eran ascended to the dais on which her throne was set. Great torches burst into flame on either side of her as she moved past them, lighting in series, their fires rising at the slightest beckoning of her mind. Arrayed prostrate along the low steps, the sleeves of their robes arranged to carpet the stone beneath her feet, were the Handmaidens of Koth. Their voices chanted of her power. A tossed glance over her shoulder toward the long train of her heavily brocaded gown and the hands which bore it made everything perfect.
Moc’Dar, once strongest of the strong, carried her train as a woman would.
The onetime great captain of the Sword of Koth was heavily shackled about the neck and wrists and ankles, attired in a shift of sacking cloth and a short, hooded cloak. And he was no longer the man he once was. Although her magical energy was still depleted from managing the Mist of Oblivion, what remained had been more than adequate to alter Moc’Dar.
The rather ruggedly handsome face which she’d seen so rarely because it was covered by his black mask when he was uniformed was attractive no longer. In its place was a mask that he would wear forever. She had left his features recognizable, merely turned his skin into layers of scales, red and orange and green and black, with no pattern to them, the sight of them sickening. The effect was so disgusting, she transformed all the skin which covered his body to match. Where once a flowing mane of black hair had crowned his head, jellied lumps of flesh floated, their shapes altering as he moved. His once broad shoulders were diminished to sloping blobs of quivering skin. His legs were twisted and bent, his feet as well. His walk was torturous to watch, and she hoped even more so to endure.
And the obvious symbol of his manhood was gone from between his legs. Eran had altered his demeanor, as well. No longer was he the courageous warrior, fearing no man. He now feared everyone, everything, shivering in terror at the slightest glance, cowering even from his own image.
Moc’Dar’s punishment was delicious, and obvious to all who might be tempted to transgress or shirk.
Eran reached the height of the dais, standing before her throne, glancing down, watching as Moc’Dar, crawling about on hands and knees, fumbled her train. “Cover yourself and be still, Moc’Dar!” He obeyed instantly, or tried to. The moment that she had finished his transformation, then created for him what he wore, she had taught him—with the lash—how to comport himself. Moc’Dar had learned well. He was curled up into a ball near her feet, struggling to mask every part of his body beneath a too-short cloak and enormous hood. To do so, he had to draw his knees up to his chest, fold his arms tightly about him, bend his neck and back to an all but impossible degree. And, of course, he was in a constant state of terror, terror that he would displease her. On the contrary, he pleased her greatly this way.
Eran looked up, surveying the sea of frightened manly faces as she addressed her assembled officer corps. “Behold the great Captain Moc’Dar, his very name striking fear in the hearts of all who opposed him! Behold the officer who failed to obey me, who ran in cowardice. Behold what will happen to each or all of you should I be disobeyed or betrayed or merely feel the whim to see you forever undone! In pleasing my slightest wish is your only hope!”
Shifting her train, Eran lowered herself into her throne chair, her fingernails tapping against the armrests. The only other sound in the vast hall was the labored breathing she had given Moc’Dar in order to make his slightest effort even more painful, so that even in rest he could never rest.
Her voice low, even, Eran began again. “The Virgin Enchantress, Daughter Royal, Princess of Creath has defied me for the last time. Rather than lift the spell under which she masked the accursed Company of Mir from the Horde, she chose to transport herself to another realm and return again with a supposed champion from that world.
“This creature she has taken in thrall is not of you, but will appear like you. He relies on a magical weapon which kills with tiny tongues of fire. Without it, he is the equal of no man here. Soon, my magical power will render his weapon useless against you.
“My daughter and the unnatural creature which accompanies her as a familiar even now march on Barad’Il’Koth. With the bastard followers of Mir fighting beside her, the Virgin Enchantress naively hopes to unseat the ruling blood of the K’Ur’Mir, for she is not fully of the blood and she knows it and envies me.”
Eran stood. Moc’Dar must be peeking at her feet, she thought, amused, because his pitiful excuse for a body shuddered.
“I charge all officers to go forth to seek out and destroy the Company of Mir, destroy them utterly. I charge you further that you should go forth and seek out my daughter, the Virgin Enchantress, and assault her by all means of force and guile to bring about her death and doom. And the foul creature with her—kill him if you must, but better reward to the officer who brings me this creature alive that I may make another toy with which to amuse myself, as I have done with Captain Moc’Dar. All this I charge you do, under pain of incurring my terrible wrath!”
Sweeping her train behind her, Eran started down from the dais, with a snap of her fingers bringing the cowering once-man Moc’Dar to heel.
“Almost there, lad,” Erg’Ran remarked to Gar’Ath, who rode beside him. They were riding a track and just passing the miller’s hut, and soon their small band would be at the Falls of Mir.
“If the fighters left behind have not themselves been forced to flee, behind the Falls there could be welcome rest, old friend.”
They rode side-by-side at the rear of the column, the Virgin Enchantress and her champion at the column’s head. The other survivors from the previous night’s fight on the track in the wood, the shackled and bound prisoner, and the body of their fallen comrade were all at the columns center.
It was just after dawning, the sky more grey than black. The large flakes of snow were falling steadily and softly.
“It’s a long way yet to Barad’Il’Koth, Erg’Ran. If I don’t make it—” Gar’Ath started to say.
Erg’Ran stopped him in midphrase. “You’ll make it if any of us do, lad. It’s the Virgin Enchantress I’m worried over. She is the one they most wish to kill, Gar’Ath. Her champion strikes me as a good lad, and he’d give his life for her, as would you or I or any of the Company of Mir. But there are dangers of which Swan is unaware and must remain so for a time, at least.”
“What sort of dangers, old friend?”
“I can say nothing of it now, lad, except to tell you this. Her mother—curse the Queen Sorceress—was once, like Swan, an innocent girl.”
“Are you saying the Virgin Enchantress is in danger of becoming like her cursed mother! That’s madness, Erg’Ran,” Gar’Ath charged.
“Madness there is, lad, but not in my words, but in power.” And Erg’Ran struck his heel and the stump of his peg to his mount, urging the animal forward...
“When I was little, sometimes my mother was very good, loving. I remember that, and I try to believe they are two separate people,” Swan told him, her horse close beside his. She was a better rider, Garrison knew. By the same token, if he did stick with her, doing this Champion thing, all the way to Barad’Il’Whatchyamacallit, his horsemanship would have plenty of opportunity to improve. “I want to believe that I can still love my mother who was while I fight against the evil of my mother who is. Do you understand what I mean, Al’An?”
He considered her words, thought about them very hard, then said, “I think that I can understand what you mean, but only to a point. We’ve all had people we liked or loved who had traits that we disliked, or maybe despised. For that to be the case with a parent would be very tough, Swan. How about your dad?”
“Dad? Oh, my father,” Swan said. “I never really knew him. I have a few memories of his voice, his touch, the way his beard felt rough. But then he was gone.”
“I’m sorry that I asked, Swan.”
“No,” she told Garrison, “it’s all right, Al’An, because I wish for you to know these things.”
“Did your dad, uh—”
“I was told that he died, but now I know that he did not. It is very possible that he lives still, at Barad’Il’Koth.”
“Then, your mom and dad are still together?”
“I don’t think so,” Swan responded. “Tell me about your mom and dad, Al’An.”
Garrison shrugged his shoulders. “Not much to tell, really, except they’re nice folks. Always pushed me to be practical, which I resented a lot more then than I do now, but I still resent. They loved me a lot, and still do. They were pretty young when I was born. They were in college. Usual thing for those days. Met, fell in love, got married, she dropped out to help pay his way through school, then got pregnant with me. They always told me that they intended to have a baby then. Kinda hard to imagine a pair of twenty-two-year-olds, wife working a full-time job, husband working a full-time job and going to school full time, going into his senior year, deciding suddenly to have a baby. She had to quit work and he got a part-time job to try and make up for the money they lost with her income gone. You know how it is.”
“No,” Swan said, the expression on her face totally honest. “My mother was born Princess Royal, as was I. I don’t know about my father, but my mother never wanted for anything that she desired, except more power of magic. I never wanted for anything, except to have my father with me and for my mother to cease to be evil. College is a learning place?” Swan asked.
“For some people, anyway.”
“We learn from our elders, and then from books and scrolls and by trying things.”
“Kind of the same thing for us, but it’s a little more formalized, more structured.”
“Within a day, my magic will be fully restored, Al’An. Will you stay to fight beside me?”
“Dropping the other shoe, huh?” Garrison replied.
Swan smiled, then glanced down at her feet. “I wear boots, not slippers, and I have dropped neither boot.”
Garrison glanced at his wristwatch, a black-faced Rolex that he was given when he’d graduated law school. “I’ve noticed something, Swan. Time here, it moves differently than it does where I’m from. I caught it that when that Mist of Oblivion thing ate up your castle and nearly got you with it, it was nighttime, and more or less a full day had passed between then and the time you and I arrived here.
“But,” Garrison continued, laying his argument, “when I met you at DragonCon, I got the impression that you’d arrived only a little while before I got there myself. That seems to make me feel that what was a day for your world was only less than half a day for mine. And my watch.” Garrison shot the cuff of his bomber jacket and raised his arm from beneath his cloak so that she could see what he meant by a watch. “Sometimes, I can look at it and the sweep second hand doesn’t move, and sometimes the minute hand seems to be spinning. My body’s telling me that it’s been a day and a half at least since I’ve eaten anything—remember you promised me a meal?—but here it’s been less than a day. That doesn’t make any sense at all, unless I’m nuts and my watch is broken. It’s like time moves whenever it damn well pleases here, or stops for the same reason.”
“It is different, I’m sure. I’ll try to formulate an explanation, if I can.”
“Don’t worry about it, Swan. The point I was so belaboring is an answer to your question. If I stay and help you fight, I might be gone from my world for an eternity, or I might have been gone for a couple of minutes. Heck, I mean, a hundred years could’ve gone by where I’m from and I wouldn’t know it. So, I’ll make you a deal.”
“A deal, Al’An?”
Garrison nodded. “Yeah. I’ll help. You know I can’t refuse you. If that kiss in the snow under the Ka’B’Oo this morning meant half as much to you as it did to me, then you know why, too.” My God, Garrison thought. She was actually blushing! Garrison cleared his throat. “But, if I go back, when I go back, when, if, I don’t know. But you’ve got to try to get me back to DragonCon just when I left it, because I could never explain what happened here and I’d wind up getting put away in the laughing academy.”
Swan seemed to consider his words, but before she could speak, Garrison blurted out, “And, no, that’s not a school where they teach you to laugh. It’s a place for people who’ve lost a grip on reality, maybe gone nutso.”
“Like ‘nuts’ that you said a moment ago. People would think that you were sick in your mind.”
“Yes, exactly,” Garrison said.
“I can try, and that is all that I can honestly promise, Al’An, but I hope that you choose not to go.” She leaned out of her saddle, reached across and held his hand.
“I hope I don’t, either. And, under the circumstances, an honest promise is all I can ask for.”
Swan smiled at him, withdrawing her hand. Garrison reached across to her, taking it back...
In one of the stories Alan Garrison had read or seen in his youth about Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, the outlaws were sometimes known as the “Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.” This was because their hideout was behind a waterfall, in the hidden box canyon beyond. As a kid, he’d always wanted to go there, ride in behind that waterfall. When, as an adult, he learned that there really was such a place, between being a good FBI agent and being a good son and being a good boyfriend to various and sundry girls he’d never had a steady relationship with, there wasn’t the time to go there.
As their horses mounted the steep, narrow rock ledge and started to pass behind the cascade, Garrison found himself humming Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven. It was the wrong movie, but it was the only appropriate-sounding Western movie music that he could think of.
Gar’Ath rode beside him now. Erg’Ran had told them as they approached the Falls of Mir—who was this Mir guy?—that, “It is best that the Champion and one other go ahead in the event that danger or carnage lies beyond. Gar’Ath has volunteered to accompany you, Champion.”
“It’s Alan, all right? Yeah, I’ll go.”
So they went ahead, a quarter mile or so, Swan, Erg’Ran and the others well back with the prisoner. There would have to be time to interrogate this Sword of Koth badass, and pretty soon, Garrison reminded himself.
“The style of fighting that you used with your feet, Champion. I liked it. I’ll make an offer I’ve never made before to any man.”
“What’s that, Gar’Ath?”
Gar’Ath shot him a broad smile. “I will teach you every secret that I know as concerns the use of the blade, if you will teach me your fighting style.”
Garrison considered the offer for what it was, at once a great compliment and a great opportunity. He’d read about swords all of his life, examined them, but never learned how to fight with one. On the other side of the coin, Garrison had just seven rounds left in one of his SIG .45s, eight in the other and only two spare magazines, for a total of thirty-one rounds. The little Seecamp .32 in his right front pocket was another seven rounds with no spare magazine. “You’re on, compadre.”
“Compadre?”
“A great man of action in my world used to use that word a lot, and he said other things like, ‘Listen up, pilgrim.’ Like that.”
“So, we’re agreed then. Here’s my handclasp on it!” Gar’Ath extended his hand, and Garrison his, but Gar’Ath’s fingers closed on Garrison’s forearm with a powerful grip. Garrison did the same.
They started their horses behind the Falls of Mir, the murmur that had been the sound from the rushing water building rapidly to a roar.
Gar’Ath freed a shield—round, much like a Scottish targe, with a center spike emerging from a center boss—from lashing thongs which bound it to his saddle. The shield slipped onto his left forearm, his left hand holding the reins of his mount. Gar’Ath then drew his sword. It was plain looking, in the sense that it was devoid of ornamentation, but beautiful nonetheless. Its tip came to a spear point, the almost three feet of blade with multiple fullers starting only a few inches back from the point and running the blade’s length to the fist-long ricasso just forward of the guard. The guard itself was wide and spanned a little under a foot from end to end, the quillons drooping slightly, terminating in circular lobes large enough to have been a man’s finger ring. What Garrison could see of the hilt beneath Gar’Ath’s fist was brown leather covered. The ribbed pommel was about the size and shape of a plum, designed as a skull crusher.
“You may care to borrow my dagger. Your firespitter might be noisy for what work may lay beyond the falls, Champion.”
“I’ve got edged weapons if I need them, thanks.”
Gar’Ath nodded.
The environment behind the falls was extremely cold. The air was filled with a heavy, frigid mist. Ice, thick and slick, covered the pathway and the rock wall beside them. Garrison hoped that his horse felt more confident of the footing than he did.
Garrison slipped his left hand under his cloak and bomber jacket, his fingers touching against the butt of one of the SIG .45s. He had no intention of giving the pistol a soaking in the icy spray unless he had to.
Gar’Ath slowed his mount, Garrison doing the same. Swan had second-sighted beyond the Falls, seeing nothing of alarm, but warned them, too, that her mother might be back to full magical power. If that were true, and her mother’s soldiers had taken the hidden camp, her mother could have cast a spell to block Swan’s second-sight.
Garrison was amazed at his own thinking. He was beginning to accept things like second-sight, spells, summonings. He’d started to light a cigarette about a mile or two before they came in sight of the Falls of Mir and hadn’t even given it a second thought when Swan lit it for him with her magic. She seemed to get a kick out of doing it, anyway.
Gar’Ath didn’t seem to have anything to do with magic, a “what you see is what you get” kind of guy. He leaned over from his saddle, his voice a loud whisper and still barely audible over the noise of the Falls. “If you’d hold the reins of my horse, I’m of a mind that it might be best to reconnoiter on foot, Champion.”
Garrison liked him, despite the fact that he persisted in calling him “Champion” and despite his haircut. Gar’Ath’s dark brown hair, wavy and full like a woman’s, was grown almost halfway to his waist, the sides bound back by a leather thong knotted at the nape of his neck. Garrison could just see some guy with the Bureau showing up for duty sporting a haircut like Gar’Ath’s. The look on Matt Wisnewski’s face would be worth a few weeks’ suspension without pay and a reprimand in the personnel file.
As Garrison took the reins of Gar’Ath’s mount, the swordsman flicked his cloak out of the way of sword and shield, shooting Alan a grin, and started forward along the icy pathway.
Garrison’s hand tightened on the butt of the pistol he held.
After a moment, Gar’Ath came running back, leaned up toward Garrison in the saddle, his voice barely audible. “There’s a small band of Ra’U’Ba roaming about in there, looking for information they can sell to the Horde. Our lads that we left behind may still be up in the rocks. We must act, and quickly too, Champion.”
Garrison bent low in the saddle in order to hear better. “I’m missing something, here. Who are the, the, the whatever you called them?”
“The Ra’U’Ba are not like us. You’ll see, but we must be very silent, lest they hear us. They communicate with one another over great distances by using their minds alone. And, they can use their minds to block themselves from the second-sight. That is why the Queen Sorceress suffers them to live, because they are the best spies, almost undetectable.
“When one of them discovers a bit of valuable information,” Gar’Ath went on, “he tells it to another by mind alone, even if that other is an incredible number of lancethrows away. Distance matters not at all to their minds, Champion. If one of them should see one of our Company, the Horde would be informed almost instantly, and troops dispatched at once. That is why they must be dealt with one at a time and quickly. This is not work for your firespitter, Champion. Trust me there. Ready the edged weapons of which you spoke. The Ra’U’Ba are tremendous fighters, heavily armed and hard to kill unless you know their one weakness.”
“Let me guess. You don’t know what that one weakness is, right? Shit.”
“What?”
“G’Urg.”
“Aha! G’Urg. I do know the weakness, but it’ll be easier to show you than tell you, Champion. We’d best leave the horses here.”
Alan Garrison dismounted. His hands began fishing in his pockets for his knives. “Telepathic mercenary spies who are terrific fighters. Wonderful,” Garrison groused...
At the end of the pathway behind the Falls of Mir was a steeply sloping downgrade. There was less snow here, as the canyon beyond the Falls was sheltered from much of the wind. Angling along the downgrade was a road of sorts, snow covered but still discernible.
Prowling about on the canyon floor were creatures looking for all the world like heavily armed mutant humanoid monsters from some cheap horror movie, but with better makeup and weirder costuming. Either that, or they were a cross between a gargoyle and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The Ra’U’Ba stood at least two heads taller than the average professional basketball player.
Unless the one closest to them, which Garrison could see in the best detail, just happened to be particularly ugly, calling the Ra’U’Ba “grotesque” would have been a compliment. Spiked horns grew from the sides of their otherwise humanlike heads, the horns curled forward like those of a bull, but not quite that distended. Their ears were more pointed than the ones Leonard Nimoy used to wear. From his vantage point, Garrison would have sworn that they had three eyes, two dark and one yellow, the yellow eye between and slightly above the other two near the center of the forehead.
Their hands—six long fingers each—were easily large enough to palm a basketball while still holding a hotdog and a drink cup. The Ra’U’Ba were obviously jointed oppositely from humans at both the elbows and knees; merely watching them motion with an arm or walk a pace or two was nightmarish.
Their bodies rippled with muscles superimposed upon muscles; not even Arnold Schwarzenegger had calves like they did. With long tails balancing enormously powerful-looking torsos, the Ra’U’Ba gave the appearance of walking on three tree-trunk-sized legs.
If the Ra’U’Ba appeared physically formidable, they also looked sartorially ludicrous. Naked from the waist up, barefoot, the only garment any of them wore was a skirt. These were nearly knee-length and of a color most reminiscent of vomit. The skirts obscured their thighs and the roots of their tails.
Their skin was reptilian, covered with grey-green scales, but since they were nearly naked they had to be warm-blooded creatures, considering the ambient temperature. Admittedly basing his observations on limited experience, Ra’U’Ba armament seemed to Garrison as bizarre as their physiology. Great shields, the size and general rectangular shape of those used by the armies of Ancient Rome, all but covered their backs like the shell of a tortoise. Helmets hung from each shield, the helmets peaked in the style of feudal Japan, but hinged in order, he assumed, to accommodate the horns on their heads. Built into the helmets were metallic face masks, these almost as terrifying looking as their real faces.
Baldrics, overly wide, were crisscrossed from each shoulder to the opposing hip and blades the size of broadswords were carried high in the frogs. A belt of similar width girded each Ra’U’Ba’s midsection, suspended from or attached to it various other weapons—short-shafted axes with wickedly broad heads, daggers and shuriken-like throwing stars, only much larger than any Garrison had ever seen.
Gar’Ath leaned toward Garrison, his whispering more easily audible beyond the roar of the Falls. “We must lie in wait and take them quickly lest their minds tell the other Ra’U’Ba what we are about.” Gar’Ath returned his sword to its sheath and drew his dagger.
An automatic folder in each hand, Garrison was as ready as he would ever be. That wasn’t very ready at all. He’d never sneaked up on somebody with the intent to kill, nor certainly had he ever used a knife to do harm to anyone. Like any cop who took his survival seriously, he carried knives not only for ordinary and extraordinary chores, but for last ditch self-defense. He had practiced with the knives, developing a kata or technique for use of one on its own or both together. Rehearsed as a series of martial arts moves in front of a full-length mirror, the routine looked confident, intimidating. Holding the knives, preparing to confront a heavily armed living adversary, Garrison felt no confidence at all, and intimidated rather than intimidating.
Some Champion, he almost verbalized.
Gar’Ath was on the move, creeping forward through the snow, weaving his way along the boulder-strewn downslope. Alan Garrison caught up and stayed beside him. Garrison had counted three of the Ra’U’Ba, and three horses, too. He wondered how something with a tail that long and large could ride a horse? Maybe the tail was jointed at its root and could sling to one side or the other, or rooted high enough to hang out behind, over the saddle’s cantle. If he kept concentrating on something else, he might be able to slow down his breathing, control his heart rate.
Garrison and Gar’Ath stopped behind a pile of broad, flat rock slabs, snow accumulated several inches high. He and the swordsman were only a few yards from the nearest of the Ra’U’Ba.
This would be a waiting game, like marking time in the predawn over too many cups of coffee, the word yet to be given that it was a go to serve arrest warrants on a heavily armed group of suspects. But the word always came, no matter how long it took. The biggest problem was always nerves, because there was so much time to think about what could go wrong, like getting killed or crippled, or doing something stupid and causing someone else to be hurt or killed.
Swan hadn’t magically made him any heavy winter gloves. Garrison only had the thin shooting gloves that he always carried in the pocket of his bomber jacket, kept there for emergencies. Despite the cold and the thinness of his gloves, Garrison’s hands perspired. He stripped away the gloves, to better handle the knives.
Beside him, Gar’Ath whispered, “The way to kill one of the Ra’U’Ba is simple, Champion. Creep up behind the Ra’U’Ba with your blade at the ready for the death strike. When you have a close look at a Ra’U’Ba’s face, you’ll see that what appears to be a third eye at the center of the forehead is not. It is an unprotected portion of the brain. When a Ra’U’Ba is helmeted, he is virtually invincible because of his strength and skill with weapons. The helmets they wear are reinforced over the forehead. Only the most powerful sword or axe blow, accurately delivered, can reach this spot beneath a Ra’U’Ba helmet. Failing that, to kill a Ra’U’Ba is difficult, even for me.”
“So, I sneak up behind this guy, jump on his back and stab him smack in that third eye that really isn’t, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Have you done this before, Gar’Ath?”
Gar’Ath grinned, shrugging his eyebrows as he said, “I was never so fortunate as we are now. When I’ve fought Ra’U’Ba before, they were always helmeted.”
“So this is a real break. Great,” Garrison said. “I guess we just must live right to be this lucky.”
“Your words are true, Champion. Wait until I get close to the two on the far side of the canyon. I think that I can kill two of them quickly enough, unless you want the honor. I see that you have two weapons ready. Do the blades unfold from within?”
“Yeah. That’s what they do. But, uh, you go ahead and take the two on the far side there, and I’ll get in there with you as soon as my guy’s down for the long count.”
Gar’Ath nodded soberly, then was off, moving with the grace and speed that was second nature to someone who lived for combat, had lived for it all of his life.
Alan Garrison’s eyes flickered from Gar’Ath to the Ra’U’Ba nearest him, and when Garrison looked back, he could no longer spot Gar’Ath. “This guy’s good,” Garrison murmured under his breath. He’d noticed that he’d begun talking to himself since coming to Creath; and some contended that talking to oneself was symptomatic of early-stage mental illness. “All I need. Go nuts here where I’ve got no health insurance. That’d be just great.”
If there’d been an encampment here, the Company of Mir had to be great at cleaning up evidence after themselves. “Lucky this isn’t a crime scene.” There were no signs of old campfires, litter, anything beneath the snow cover. And the Ra’U’Ba really were looking.
Garrison forced himself to look at his own particular Ra’U’Ba. He judged the height difference between himself and the Ra’U’Ba as roughly equivalent to that between Herve Villechaize and Andre the Giant.
Garrison knew that he would have only one chance at this.
Gar’Ath had to be in position near the two Ra’U’Ba who seemed to be conferring about something near where their horses were tethered.
This was the moment.
Alan Garrison broke into a dead run down the snow covered slope; his leather-soled cowboy boots were not ideal for reliable traction and his balance almost went once. But he kept running, one unopened automatic knife in each hand.
“Oh, my God!” Garrison lamented under his breath. What if the scaly skin of the Ra’U’Ba was puncture proof? He was about to find out.
The Ra’U’Ba’s body shifted just slightly, the massive shoulders sloping to one side, as if the creature was about to turn or look over its shoulder. Garrison put on all the steam that he had, sprinting the last few yards faster than he had ever covered ground before.
Garrison’s left index finger hit the automatic knife’s opening button, as the blade snapped out, Garrison’s fingers twirling the handle into a dagger position. He leaped along the Ra’U’Ba’s tail and onto the Ra’U’Ba’s back, his left hand stabbing the knife blade to the handle into the flesh and muscle above the shoulder blade. Garrison held on, hauling himself upward along the Ra’U’Ba’s back. It was moving, a vicious sounding low roar starting from deep inside it.
Garrison’s right arm snaked over the Ra’U’Ba’s right shoulder, his right thumb tapping the second knife’s opening button. Garrison’s left hand let go of the first knife, clawed for a handhold around the Ra’U’Ba’s powerful neck. The blade in Garrison’s right hand stabbed toward where he hoped the exposed portion of brain would be.
The knife stopped dead.
Garrison felt sick inside himself. He’d missed. He was going to die; but, worse yet, Swan and Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath and the others and all the Company of Mir would be wiped out because this living abomination would telepathically communicate what had happened and the evil Queen Sorceress would know just where to send her armies.
The Ra’U’Ba was flexing his shoulders. Garrison tried moving the knife, but it wouldn’t budge. The Ra’U’Ba raised up, balancing on its tail. Garrison lost his grip and fell to the snow, rolled, looked up. The Ra’U’Ba was lunging toward him. Even if he could risk a shot, Garrison knew that there wasn’t time. He rolled to his right.
The Ra’U’Ba crashed against the ground, not onto Garrison, its body bouncing, then rolling onto its side, still. Garrison saw the handle of the knife that had been in his hand, rising out of a pool of yellow ooze. Garrison got to his knees. “Gar’Ath!” Garrison reached for the nearest of his knives, twisted it from the Ra’U’Ba’s brain, then clambered to his feet. Garrison looked around for Gar’Ath.
Gar’Ath was on the ground, one of the Ra’U’Ba dead beside him, Gar’Ath’s dagger buried to the hilt in the creature’s brain hole. Garrison broke into a dead run, to aid Gar’Ath in fighting the second Ra’U’Ba, which was turning around, toward Gar’Ath.
Garrison didn’t know what he’d do when he got there, but he had to do something. Garrison stopped in his tracks, almost in mid-stride. He didn’t have to do a thing to help Gar’Ath. The sword that appeared in Gar’Ath’s hand in one instant flew from his hand in the next, vibrating as its point penetrated the brain hole. The Ra’U’Ba swayed on feet and tail for about a full second, then toppled backwards into the snow, dead before it hit.
Garrison stood about twenty-five yards away, remembering to breathe.
Gar’Ath turned toward Garrison, doubling over as he howled with laughter.
“What’s so funny, Gar’Ath?”
“You pretending to know nothing of how to kill the Ra’U’Ba! And then using the classic method spoken of in the writings of Mir himself! Confess! There are Ra’U’Ba where you come from, Champion! Are there not? And you’ve slain more than your share of them, I’d wager! Am I right?”
“No Ra’U’Ba where I come from, or writings of Mir, either, Gar’Ath. Only dumb luck.”
Garrison’s shoulder slumped a little. Hungry, cold, tired, he started back across the snow to go get his other knife. Gar’Ath was still laughing. Garrison couldn’t have laughed at anything. He had this image in his mind of how disgusting it was going to be cleaning the Ra’U’Ba glop out of two automatic knives.