by Glenn Wilson
But a moment later, the natives began to throw stones hard and fast around Rory’s left side as well, some of which bounced around them more than a little unpleasantly, but it made enough of the difference that Rory needed. Surging up and backward onto the gully wall, Rory lost no time in scrambling up it.
Freed for a moment from not having his second right next to him, Ian straightened a little and swept his sword all around the ground at his feet, inflicting several more casualties among their surging host. He carried through with his sweep and threw it the other way after the ones he’d missed the first time, for a moment having optimistic impulses that he could finish them all here. But then the next wave came, as fearlessly as the first, only the slower ones stopping to pick at the carcasses of their comrades—Ian winced at one that swatted at him from the gully wall that it was crawling along—
“Pull back,” the captain’s choked voice came, “there are too many—get out of there, private!”
Ian turned and sort of kicked, sort of jumped to the top of the wall. He had to turn and finish off a few mollusks that were hanging onto him, Will stepping in to neatly club one off of the back of his leg.
And then they ran, of no great accord or strategy.
Ian’s skin jumped at the backwards sight of the first mass of the mollusks already scaling over the top of the wall, using their largest leg like a suction cup to climb it.
Their party went perhaps a full minute, up and down over slightly more gentle hills and through varying degrees of brush, almost stopping multiple times only to still hear the distant cacophony from the gully. But eventually, the margrave called them to a halt, impatient to begin tracking the lion again. They did so the best they could, their morale considerably shaken. Ian could feel it, in the taste in the back of his mouth, clinging at his skin—for as little experience as he had with low morale so far in the Guard, he was quickly growing to loathe it.
But he kept up a brave face and tried to cheer Rory up without belying that he understood their misgivings as the shadows in the trees continued to deepen. The Boeja, the mollusks, and even now a third irritation came in the form of giant mosquito-like insects that carried multiple dangling stingers from their heads. Their regulators were only partially able to hold them off, leaving their company and especially the Chax to be incessantly swatting at them.
“Stow it now, private,” Captain Marsden hissed at Rory, but Ian thought it was said in much the same vein of frustrated brotherhood that Rory cursed the insects with just above his breath. The captain’s mustache worked in impressive motions as he furiously swatted them away. “We need silence, the lion could be—blasted thing—it could be anywhere in this infernal place.”
Ian did his best to keep true to the spirit of the captain’s wishes, even while his superior struggled to follow his own orders. Keeping low with his rifle ready, Ian stuck close to Will and another one of the Chax on their right side, trying every moment to keep in mind what it would actually be like if they were to run into the lion then.
Nearly half an hour of this passed, with matters only growing gloomier—in the available light as well. By some half miracle, the kind that abound but are seldom recorded, one of the Chax stumbled upon a lion’s print.
“Is it the same lion?” Lord Wester demanded, straining his eyes into the dimness.
“I believe so—” Will said, with his face so near to the ground—
“Believing has nothing in common with knowing, pawamous,” the margrave said. “Is it the same lion or not?”
“Yes,” Will said, somewhere short of absolute conviction. “It is.”
And while this considerable fortune gave them a direction, the trail was scant and difficult to follow in the dimness. Or at least it seemed scant and difficult to follow to Ian, as he could hardly make it out at all. Clearly the superior night vision that the Chax possessed won out in these settings. And while the Chax almost entirely blended into the shadows, to the point that Ian could hardly keep track of them, they were able to navigate to a far less-impaired degree. No one dared to use any lights.
Several minutes they followed the trail down and down further into a sort of hollow, losing it once, barely regaining it, but then losing it entirely.
“My Lord,” the captain began, none too courageously, “it may be best at this point to wait until—well, until daybreak, My Lord. We have tracked it this far—”
“I know the situation, captain,” the margrave said.
“Surely it will wait just a few hours,” the captain said, “come morning—”
“Yes, I know. Just shut up and set up camp.”
The captain went some ways further after the margrave, who sat on a log and lit his pipe to smoke slow embers in the darkness, his dim outline stony. Ian was already herding Rory toward camp preparations, minimal as they were for the circumstances.
“Should we make a fire?” Ian asked Will in passing.
But before the other could respond according to the wisdom of their vicinity and experience, the captain gave a hard denial of starting a fire. He supported it by saying that they didn’t want to attract any attention from anything else that might harry them.
So their preparations were reduced even further, to where there wasn’t much left to do but eat some cold meat and take up positions around their charge. The margrave hadn’t brought anything for himself to sleep on, so the captain graciously offered his own watcher’s cloak. They settled in the best they could, even though any sort of deep sleep seemed steeply out of the question.
There were few nights when Ian would ever really prefer sleeping indoors over being out in the open, but without a fire or any other substituting light, it was poor business trying to conduct one’s self. Even the most basic functions were rendered cumbersome.
One Chax and one ranger were elected to keep watch at a time, and the captain and one of the guides kept it first. The rest of them hadn’t been down to bed for five minutes before Rory stirred, quietly cursing. No one else moved, the margrave remaining an exceptionally still, if slightly lighter shadow on the ground.
“What is it now?” Ian whispered, fortunately being the closest to him.
“Lost my yeoman,” Rory muttered.
“What?”
“Lost my yeoman,” Rory repeated.
“I know what you said.” Ian raised himself up and tried not to clench his jaw too much. “How could you do that?”
“Just took it off when I was sitting over there, had it too tight. But then I forgot to pick it back up—”
“All right, all right,” Ian said, rubbing his forehead and trying not to dwell on how grossly unappealing it was to get up to kick around in the dark after something none of them should ever lose. But Rory did have to have it in case anything would happen, and Ian tried to know that helping him was the Christian thing to do—
“Come on, then,” Ian said shortly, getting to his feet.
—without grumbling.
They set about it as quietly as possible, some twenty or thirty feet from the ring of most of their party—twenty or thirty because Rory couldn’t exactly remember the exact place, as it was devilishly easy to lose places in dark forests.
“Should we try a light?” Rory asked after a moment of failing to distinguish exactly where they had been, his voice low and sorry.
But that didn’t help them any.
“No,” Ian whispered, estimating that they were about as close to where they had previously been as they were going to get. “Captain’s orders. But it should vibrate and move if it picks up any jump-clicks—see, I’ll send your unit one. Now keep still—”
Ian sent the most complicated retreat with holding circumstances that he had memorized, having gotten at least a solid third of them down by this point. Both he and Rory held their breaths, trying to listen for anything beneath the breeze that rippled through the treetops.
After a few seconds of nothing, Ian wiped at the frustration in the corners of his eyes and tried to forg
et that this was the last thing he wanted to be doing. “Split up. Go that way about ten feet, then stop. I’ll send it again.”
Rory agreed and moved far more carefully than usual off that way. By that point, Rory was starting to get near the Chax sentry they had posted. Ian only knew where he was by the way the Chax turned at their doings, his tan pants dimly visible.
Also moving a few feet away, Ian lowered himself to one knee and palm, with his head near the ground and his eyes closed as he keyed the command again with his free hand.
There was more breeze, on and off, and he wished it would just take a holiday for a minute. But in addition, there were some near and distant nocturnal birds calling, some other creatures of less bird-like makes, but mostly the sound of insects. They were slightly different than the ones they had experienced over the plains and seemed to punctuate more, whereas their relatives were more prone to drone.
For the long moment he waited he was afraid, fairly certain that they were going to have move again, at least a couple more times. But suddenly he heard Rory stir, move a bit more loudly than before, then whisper almost too softly that he had it.
That was a soundly unexpected relief, and Ian let the tops of that out in a quick exhale. But he was struck—yes, it was strange. Ian didn’t feel entirely at ease, not even close really.
Putting both hands on the ground and holding his head up into the gently moving air, he tried to hold his thoughts still, put his finger on where his anxiety was still stemming from.
That had been his intent anyway, but he found himself continuing to listen, trying to follow the patterns in the noises in the darkness. There were the distant animal cries, the insects—and the insects. Something was off about them.
Rory started toward him, his boots brushing through the underbrush.
Jerking his hand over to his yeoman, Ian snapped off an order for Rory to halt.
Rory did falter a little at the jump-click, but it took a second signal and a sharp third before he stopped completely.
Then there was stillness. Ian tried his best to keep his part of it, even while he reached back around into one of his coat pockets and pulled out his hand lantern.
A couple things happened at once—their Chax sentry stirred near them again, as though half-turning, and then hissed something through his teeth. Soft footsteps fell on the opposite end of the camp—the captain’s? But it was the slight change in the long mass of shadows near and behind the nearby Chax that caught Ian’s eyes.
He slowly brought in his breath.
Then he flipped the lantern’s switch, immediately illuminating everything in front of him. His eyes squinted at the abrupt change, but he couldn’t tear them away from the enormous row of legs, of sandy fur and tail and mane and head—its body, the lion’s body was sprawled down along the ground, inching toward their sentry.
Its eyes reflected the light from the lantern, and for a forgotten heartbeat it blinked at it.
“Look out!” Ian yelled, even though in hindsight it was a needless thing to say.
Everyone around him was suddenly taking cover, but what cover could there possibly be against something that sprang up so quickly? And with one quick leap, the lion barreled through their Chax lookout, who had tried to dive to the ground and only partially succeeded.
Ian fell back to a sitting position as he yanked his rifle around with his free arm. He did his best to swerve the lantern after the lion as it hurtled past the sentry, between Ian and the rest of the camp. Ian ended up only succeeding for a couple seconds before it vanished somewhere in the darkness behind him, a haphazard shot fired by someone chased after it with its own momentary light.
“Form up! To the margrave!” he could hear Captain Marsden shouting, and Ian found himself wholeheartedly agreeing as he jumped back to his feet, rifle in hand.
It was certainly one thing to be tramping around a forest with the imminent possibility of running into a red lion at any moment. It was an entirely different thing to be running through a darkened forest with the imminent expectation that a red lion would be running through you at the very next moment.
“Rory!” Ian called behind him, nearly throwing his hand lantern back to make sure his second was following. And Rory was, with his rifle out, a comforting enough degree of unshaken written in his face.
They reached where the margrave and captain were squatting with their rifles, the latter calling out orders to have all the potential lights that their party possessed to be lit around them and off into the underbrush.
Ian fell to the far side of the margrave and Rory took the closest side, the Chax crowding in near them. They held their slings out, but didn’t look nearly as confident with them as before.
They had just set themselves like this when a splitting roar hit them, roughly from the same direction the lion had ran. But it was awful, the volume so much stronger. Ian knew it was some trick of how the lion produced the sound, how it echoed around the trees, but it felt like it came from all different directions, pressing down on him from above, striking up behind his shoulders.
Their group visibly shook from the sound, but it was the strangled cry of their sentry who had been run over that drew Ian’s attention. Shining his lantern that way for a moment, he couldn’t see much of the Chax through the underbrush, but he saw there was a good deal of blood and feeble movements from the Chax. Grimacing, Ian stood as he took his lantern and threw it that way. With some satisfaction, Ian saw that all of those hours spent throwing rocks and the like hadn’t been entirely wasted, as it landed just beyond the Chax without hitting him. Then at least, they would be able to see if the lion came near the Chax and presumably be able to do something about it.
Their group sat that way for several more seconds, breathing hard and straining to hear in the darkness all around them.
“There is not much to be had sitting here,” the margrave said, slowly rising to his feet. “Beaters. Do your job.”
Ian tightened his hands around his rifle, glad he had both of them free now. The rest of their party followed suit after their margrave, Will methodically sending their remaining two Chax guides fanning out in front of them. They carried spot torches that they shone out in columns and each carried a club in favor of their slings.
That left the rangers to take the sides and back of the margrave, Ian watching their left flank and trying not to glance ahead too much. Another roar came more on their left side this time, and they adjusted accordingly. Ian glanced back at their wounded Chax and the light beside him, growing farther and farther away.
“Do you think he is trying to turn us into a trap?” the margrave asked Will.
“Perhaps,” Will said, motioning his Chax around toward where the roar had issued from, he seeming to have a better sense of its location. “There are certainly no other lions with him. We have nothing else to fear once we find him. But he is strong, and his blood is hot—it will take many shots.”
Ian ran his fingers underneath and along the barrel of his rifle, thinking of what they could do differently, better than they already were. He strained his eyes through the shifting shadows that hid away from their torches—the Chax saw better in the dark than they did, maybe if they kept their lights just with the humans and let beaters look, but no, surely the Chax could still see better with the torches than with nothing at all—
The beaters were singing a low chant as they went. It was strangely distracting and so strangely grim. Ian couldn’t catch anything in it besides the word nar, which occurred frequently.
He tried to keep his rifle loose and easy to pivot at his side, making it follow his train of sight as he went—
There was sudden screeching—then howling just above and in front of them. One of the Chax reflexively jerked his torch up that way to discover a company of monkey-like creatures swinging away from them, the one that was crying out was hanging upside down and defiantly baring its teeth with its orange and red-furred head—
—their Chax shouted somethin
g different and scared—the lion was some distance away in one of the torches’ light, its legs furiously grabbing at the ground, but its body not seeming to waver at all from its trajectory.
Ian’s rifle slid up, just below his eyes. For a moment, he was distracted at the notion that the lion felt like it was moving just a little faster than what was possible. But that was foolish, and he brought the action up to his cheek, still only using the sights as a rough guide as the lion broke past the nearest Chax, rushing for some destination just to the right of Ian.
He fired, by this time another shot had struck in high, somewhere around the lion’s shoulder that looked like it should have hit. His own shot went a little low, and he didn’t follow through to know if it had fared any better.
The lion reached near the captain, who was standing and firing in front of Ian. As though the captain was a tempting but secondary offering, the lion swept by without altering its footing. But it looked like as though he was struck to some extent.
Ian began to follow suit, only in the opposite direction, out of the lion’s path. Swinging his head around the opposite way as he went, Ian tried and failed to see where the margrave was.
The lion rushed by, and another shot went off. Ian fell into the underbrush, momentarily losing his rifle as their party’s illumination became far less trustworthy. He swept his hand around the dirt until he found it. Picking it up in his off-hand, Ian stood and drew his sword, having no time to load another cartridge.
The red lion had surged well past their party and was wheeling back around. In its wake was the rest of the party, minus the perimeter Chax. All of them were struggling back up to some level of altitude, as though the lion had just brushed through all of them. The lion itself appeared shaken, no doubt by all the heavy fire directed at it. It was growling, staggered a little sideways over a bush, then half-roared and dove after the nearest person. Rory.
Ian rushed as straight as he could after his second, nearly having to jump over the margrave as he passed, who was hastily jamming another cartridge into his rifle. Ian activated his sword but saw there was no way he could make it—he dropped his rifle, drawing out his knife from its sheath. He activated and then hurled it in front of him as hard as he could.