The Marcher Lord (Over Guard)

by Glenn Wilson

  Ian froze, thinking for a moment he might have heard gunfire in the distance, but decided that he hadn’t. “I like it if it’s worth it. Time is life’s currency, and there’s nothing to regret as long as it’s well spent.”

  Maddy picked her way down to lie on the inside of her tent, pulling some blankets from inside after her. “You’re crazy. There’s nothing worth this time of day.”

  Still listening in the distance, Ian found it hard to disagree with her.

  “Where did you hear that saying?” she asked him.

  “Which? That time is life’s currency?” Ian looked at her. “What makes you think that it isn’t mine, milady?”

  She stared at him for a moment before a grin broke through. “Because you wouldn’t be smiling like that. Tell me who you heard it from, I command you.”

  “Well, it’s fortunate then that I’m not officially on duty for another hour.”

  She laughed. Hard and bright.

  Ian smiled too, a little, though he didn’t realize it until he looked over and saw Ellis watching them with an empty expression. Reigning himself in guiltily, Ian decided that there was nothing he could do.

  “You may return to bed, milady,” he said.

  “I can’t sleep now,” she said. “Please, tell me. Where did you hear that from?”

  Ian settled back on his elbows. “An old friend of my family’s. Old Peter Narelli. He spent a lot of time at our home after—well, all through when I was growing up. He’s very wise.”

  Maddy rested her chin on top of her fists, looking sleepy. “What else did he say?”

  “Oh, all sorts of everything, really,” Ian said. “He talks most about history, mostly because we both liked that best. But … well, I suppose he taught me not to worry about things.”

  “That’s … silly.”

  “No, it’s not. Push your best and leave all the rest to the Lord. That’s what he always says. Who can add a single minute to their life by worrying?”

  “Did you worry a lot?”

  “I used to,” Ian said. “I used to worry about a lot of things. About not getting enough done, or not getting things done fast enough. But it never helps.”

  “I don’t think you were ever a worrier,” Maddy said, yawning. “You’re too optimistic.”

  “I’m better than I used to be,” Ian insisted. “I just realized that when it comes down to it, most of the things people worry about never actually happen. I say it doesn’t make sense to start worrying until all the cards are down on the table.”

  “And that’s something you said?” She was smiling up at him again.

  He almost wished she wouldn’t do that so often, it was getting harder to take. It wasn’t so much that it was unpleasant, no it was actually—

  Ian stopped at the thought, holding it, turning it over in perplexity.

  “It is,” he said, looking away awkwardly.

  He liked it when she smiled.

  * * * *

  The loose remnants of their camp waited and talked some for the next several hours. A little after sunrise, Corporal Hanley had Rory and Ian make breakfast, to no splendid result. But it was an amiable, if distantly tense time.

  Not long after eight o’clock, the hunting party returned. Ian could tell from their haggard pace from some ways off that it had been unsuccessful. There wasn’t much talk from them as they made due with their own breakfast.

  “Did you see it?” Ian quietly asked Will when he could.

  Will shook his head, looking detached. “We heard it a lot. Found tracks. Found a torn gazelle.”

  Ian couldn’t get much more from Will or anyone else. Making himself settle for that meager summary, Ian was left to surmise on his own that it must have been the constant nerves of chasing after something that was always potentially chasing after you that had worn them out so much. Only Lord Wester looked relatively unshaken.

  After a small break for the hunting party, they blearily broke camp and set out. Things were different now, however. Ian didn’t hear the actual orders, but their trajectory had shifted from being nearly due north to the general direction the lion had been detected. It also lost much of its focus, and wavered at the slightest hints that their tracking discovered.

  “Blasted thing,” Brodie said, stumbling in the uneven grasses, “hang it all anyway.”

  Ian heard a lot more of that all up through the ranks, though the margrave’s proximity was quick to dispel it wherever he passed. While Ian admitted it was irking that most of their company should get so worn down by only a handful of hours of the lion, he couldn’t help the dangling idea that there was great opportunity in it as well. The others could grumble and complain all they wanted about the lion, but he was more ready than ever for it.

  “Halt,” the captain raised his hand as a pair of their guides raised up a chorus at their northwest flank.

  Will was already jogging to them. He only had to take a quick glance down before he confirmed in better Bevish that it was more lion tracks.

  Their party seemed to drop whatever it had been pretending. Ian was hurrying after the captain and margrave even as their charge waved off the rest of the party toward the nearest set of trees to settle and wait.

  “That’s the way, then,” Captain Marsden said, nodding in the direction that Will was pointing. The captain turned, took stock of which of their company was closest—being mostly Ian and a grudgingly trailing Rory. “Jolly good. We won’t need so many in the daylight hours—”

  “Those two will do,” Lord Wester said, already striding down the fleeting trail the lion had made through the grass. “It should be some little thing like this. Chero!”

  “Well,” the captain said, hesitating even as he slowly followed, “jolly good then. Um, well, yes. Come on, then—Lieutenant! Keep the camp in our absence.”

  Shouldn’t we have one more—for the captain’s second?

  Ian thought this, but found it remarkably easy to discard.

  He didn’t know whether it was harder to contain his smile or the pounding of his heart. The daytime heat was beginning to stir up the air, shimmer the low horizon as he rechecked his rifle.

  “Are you always so daft?” Rory hissed behind him. “What are you always volunteering us for?”

  Ignoring him, Ian pressed up ahead to cover the margrave’s forward left flank as they took a more westerly route. The margrave led up the middle after the tracks, his eyes more up than down. This didn’t last all that long, however, as the terrain grew less level and more shrubs and small trees began to obscure their way. The trail also became less straight and distinct, Will having to take front and slowing them somewhat.

  It was impressive though, watching the Chax tracker who was focused on the ground, sometimes bent over the very tops of the grass. He would pull the blades aside to peer down between them, sometimes crouched down, walking on his knees and prodding Orinoco for her testimony. But it was always with an impressive amount of speed.

  Nearly an hour of this passed, their way growing steadily clogged with undergrowth and vegetation—spidery, tough trees that scorned any attempts to pass through. Coming to something of a shallow valley, they quickly spied a worn ring in the grass where the tracks led.

  They all cautiously straightened a little, the rangers fanning out as Lord Wester and his guides examined it. The area was still, however, not leaving them much to do, and they inevitably crept inward to overhear the others. The trackers stood over another remnant of a gazelle carcass that lay at one end of the circle.

  “You should try to occasionally relish your occupation, pawamous,” Lord Wester was saying dryly.

  “My Lord,” Will said, “it is very dire. This is not a normal red lion. Young lions are part of a pride, older lions either part of the pride with the matriarchs or in small groups of other males. Loners are very rare, outcasts from the rest of their kind. Very dangerous.”

  “Yes, well, that’s why we’re here,” the captain tried, mostly succeeding.

&n
bsp; “What is so different then about this one, if he is alone?” Lord Wester asked.

  Will’s eyes moved over, around the worn ring in the grass, back around to the body of the gazelle. “Lions who are alone are much less predictable. They have no natural ties remaining, and some learn to hunt Chax. And men. This ring—I have seen it before. The lion ran around several times to wear it down and then leaped out of it—at some point.”

  “It’s trying to lose us?” Captain Marsden asked.

  Will shrugged. “Who can know? Perhaps it only wishes to slow us through the day while it sleeps.”

  “It matters little,” Lord Wester said, walking away from the carcass. “Even if it was very careful, it had to leave some sort of tracks. Spread out and continue.”

  They hunted and searched and strained for some time after that, much longer than Ian would have guessed. What made it difficult was that there were multiple contenders for marks in the ground. Will, however, eventually discovered one that he deemed to be genuine. A mere pressed edge in the soil that was a little deeper than the rest, belying that a user of feet of significant size had made it. It lay nearly fifteen feet away from the ring, and the outline of the paw print was the breadth of both of Ian’s hands together.

  That was somewhat disconcerting, the notion that something with paws like that could displace itself so readily and so far. Ian made that idea exciting rather than troubling, however, doing what he could to appease Rory’s visible disquiet.

  Striking out again, the lion’s trail became more regular after some distance of it soft-pawing its way.

  Could something like that really conceive to hunt them?

  “More gazelle off that way,” Ian said to Rory as they walked, scanning the breaks of open plains when they could, and doing their best to watch the thicker patches of trees and underbrush. “There won’t be any lions over there.”

  “I know,” Rory said, watching the gazelle trot about serenely. “I was hoping that we would go back to camp for lunch after awhile. Haven’t had a real meal since last night.”

  Indeed, there didn’t look to be any turning back now. And while a part of Ian was growing exhausted with the constant need for alertness, he knew it would have been doubly frustrating to stop in the middle of all this. They needed to press their advantage in the daylight while they could.

  The captain kept up an incessant chatter when possible, and some of it was interesting, if not entirely misplaced. Not long after noon, they came across some droppings in their trail that had been mostly covered by a layer of kicked up dirt and grass.

  “We are only a couple hours behind,” the margrave remarked.

  * * * *

  The day wore on. There was no stopping for lunch, no resting.

  It wasn’t as if they necessarily needed it. Their pace was only as fast as they could track. But it was more the mental fatigue that he could feel heavy among them.

  Will—and once or twice one of the other Chax—offered new revelations about their lion as they went. It was particularly worrisome for Will that they were moving so far. He didn’t expect the lion to have any sort of permanent dwelling place, but he thought there should be more of a confined area.

  They twisted farther west, toward the Quacu Mountains that loomed ever in the distance. The ground began to rise in the anticipations, growing rockier, which further reduced their pace as the afternoon grew late.

  “Did it run all day?” Ian asked no one in particular when he was particularly near Will.

  “It would be half-dead if it did,” Will said. “They don’t have that kind of energy—No, it was just moving much faster than us. But … still, it must have run for some time.”

  Ian watched as one of their Chax guides hurried ahead into a rockier stretch. There were several flat boulders, and the Chax carefully leapt to the top of one to scan the distance.

  Ian was in the process of looking elsewhere, only to jerk his head back when the guide gave out a cry in his native language.

  They readied their rifles as the guide said something in Chax, then something that sounded like an attempt at Bevish. It was a high, not quite panicked sound, and their other guide joined in the chorus, but Ian didn’t understand—

  “Boeja,” Will breathed, then shouted out in clearer Bevish. “Pack animals, fierce predators!”

  Ian rushed with Rory and their captain, his pack swinging awkwardly as he pushed to get far enough to the left of the margrave. He cursed a little inwardly, angry again that they only had three of their company here. The captain should have brought a second.

  Ian took up position, peering in the direction their lookout was pointing. There was a lip on the rocky ground, and whatever the Boeja were, they were beneath it and out of his sight.

  The Chax were readying slings they’d procured as the men raised their rifles at the edge. Their lookout didn’t appear like he planned to come down from his rock, but instead crouched down as he fitted a rock in his sling.

  Shutting that, everything else out of his mind, Ian sighted down his Allen rifle, not sure precisely where he should be aiming.

  But then, a second before he had expected, darker motions moved along the line of the ground. Then came more rising geometry, and then the tops, and then the rest of several four-legged animals.

  They were close enough that Ian could see them fairly well, and the impression he got, aside from being surprised at their almost aimless, curious approach, was that they were like dogs. Built differently, leaner than and nothing as large as the larger breeds of dogs Ian knew of, but they were like dogs.

  Ian jerked his sight over to the nearest one, just as the captain—

  “Let it at them!”

  They gave a short volley, the sharp cracks of their Allen rifles and the brighter streaks of light briefly illuminated the area between them. Ian was happy to see his hit at the back of his target, not that it had been a particularly difficult shot. He saw that the captain’s and Rory’s shots hit as well as Ian hurried to reload.

  The struck Boeja gave startled shrieks, the others echoing it as they jerked from the shots. They broke away into a half-circle around those that had been hit, sounding more confused than anything as they let up a chorus of chortling shrieks.

  Ian winced at the sound, it was so unnatural.

  But their shrieks began to change again as rocks began to fly into their midst. More startled yelps came as the group became increasingly aware of the danger. They began to slow in their approach, hesitating a bit—

  Ian locked his cartridge in and flung the stock up to his shoulder, just a moment before Rory and then the captain did as well from out of the corner of his eyes. Ian took an extra half second, following along the midline of a Boeja that was wheeling away.

  Hurrying out a breath, Ian squeezed the trigger just a moment before regretting it as the Boeja spun around again and inadvertently just out of the line of his shot. It struck the rocky ground beyond it, making the Boeja fall back, shrieking from the hot pieces of rock that exploded from the ground, but it was left unharmed otherwise.

  Breaking a rule and not entirely following through with his shot, rotten as it had turned out to be anyway, Ian was already reaching around with his left hand for the next cartridge, noting that Rory had also missed, but the captain had managed to hit his mark.

  Ian looked over. The margrave wasn’t firing. He had his rifle loose and ready in both hands, but he was observing the proceedings without any definite signs of inclination.

  But most of the show looked to be over as this second volley, supplemented by the steady doses of rocks from the Chax slings, had the Boeja shrieking off in something just short of a full retreat. By his rough estimates, Ian thought that they had managed to keep the beasts from crossing over the halfway mark between the margrave and the ridge—

  “Behind us!”—a hoarse shout from Will—

  Whirling, there were half of another dozen Boeja—terror hit through Ian’s chest as they loped in close, close en
ough that Ian could see the texture of the nearest one’s tongue as it lolled its head around at him.

  Whether they had really meant to run in so quietly or not, this new flank of Boeja let out the first of their own shrieks. They were running fast, their mouths open and panting like they were smiling, playing, but the one nearest to Ian suddenly lunged at him.

  Stumbling back, Ian instinctively swung at its head with his rifle, clipping it hard just a bit behind an ear with the butt. It barked at that, but was only slightly deterred. Skidding across the ground, it turned after him, even as Ian came to half of his senses.

  Ian pulled his rifle away, what little worry he could spare wondered whether he had broken it. With his left hand, he reached up and grabbed his knife that was suspended down in his shoulder holster. A harsh flick of his thumb at the magnetic restraint deactivated it so that he could pull it free.

  Dimly, he registered the more powerful report of the margrave’s rifle somewhere close.

  The blade of Ian’s hunting knife was nearly a foot long and had energized cutting power, though it wasn’t as intimidating as the energy from their swords. Still, the Boeja hesitated in its last bound, though it was too late to stop as it leaped up at Ian.

  He let himself slip a bit to the left, missing most of the Boeja’s momentum as he swung at the rest of it with his knife. His knife and lower arm struck away its jaws. There were sharp pains along his wrist, but most of the Boeja’s teeth fell along the heavy material of his overcoat sleeves.

  Coming to the rest of his senses, Ian dropped his rifle, switched his knife over into his left hand, and then grabbed around behind into his watcher’s cloak with his right hand. He spun to keep his Boeja in front of him. Taking a handful of his cloak in front of him, he shifted it into its brick mode. It instantly expanded and became rigid in the shape of a wide fan, radiating out from his grip to its edges.

  The Boeja looked like it was too angry and pained to be impressed. Stumbling about as it shrieked and shook its damaged head, it turned back at Ian.