The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (45 page)

“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 enough 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 knif
e. 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.

There was motion all around them, more shots being fired, more sound
s and cries—Ian was going to charge the animal, put it out of its misery. But as he thought this, he remembered that he should be more cautious of what else was occurring, recognizing that his focus was tunneled on just this Boeja.

At nearly the same moment,
Ian sensed more than saw another Boeja to his right, coming at him. A moment later and he indistinctively saw it in his peripheral vision, but he was already moving.

“Rory!” he yelled as he ran
at his first Boeja, not so much because he was scared for his second man—

Two long steps into his charge
, Ian felt the second Boeja cut and snap across the backs of his calves—

—or needed his second’s help—

Ian partially fell into his first Boeja, shoving its mouth down and out of the way with his cloak.

A
blast and then a thud into the ground came just a few feet behind and to the left of Ian, about where the second Boeja should have been.

He turned for the formality of confirming that the second Boeja had been very much shot into the ground.

—it was more to know where Ian’s second was.

Ian met
Rory’s expression and gave a quick nod. Ian was spinning back around, keeping his cloak protectively raised around him.

Fortunately
, things were in a state of cleanup. The very first group of Boeja had slowed some of their retreat at the encouragement of the last minute, but this second group of Boeja were mostly accounted for. Only one of them had kept running beyond their party and was some ways off, separated from all the others. Even as Ian watched, the margrave firmly finished loading his rifle, raised it, took the barest of moments to track it in, and then shot it dead to the ground.

“Are you all right, men?” Captain Marsden asked.

“Yes, sir,” they responded with subdued zeal.

Ian took his own stock of how they had fared. Will and
two others of their guides appeared unharmed. Another Chax likewise appeared only mildly brushed over, but the last of them had been clawed fairly bad and was presently sitting on the ground, looking weak. He was the only Chax who seemed to regularly wear a jacket, loose fitting as it was. It was a fortunate thing, as Will was busy cleaning up a lot of blood.

As for their
company, Ian was scratched up but fine. It took only a minute or so of dousing his cuts in tellicilin to clean them up from potential infection.

Rory didn’t look as though he had been clawed or bitten, though he limped a bit. The captain looked even more shaken, but Ian couldn’t see any signs he’d been
touched. Ian knew for sure the margrave hadn’t, which was all that really mattered.

With not a little swelling
of pride, of his hands shaking with a rush of post exhilaration, Ian decided that they had done quite well. Keeping all harm away from the margrave was one thing, but also keeping everyone else in one general piece was something else that was entirely admirable.

Ian didn’t have much
to do after finishing with the tellicilin. He drifted near Will. Upon arriving, he couldn’t find anything to do but stand and awkwardly watch Will rag off the wounded Chax with tellicilin and some other things that Ian couldn’t identify. The Chax sucked in his breath in pained stutters as Will went, his free hand making odd gestures and occasionally tapping at Will and the other Chax that stood nearby, but he said nothing.

The captain was still making a verbal log of their situation, making his final stop next to Will and
the other Chax.

“Rotten break that was,” the captain said, looking down at the wounded Chax, “it was all well done, though. Rest assured, couldn’t have hoped for anything better.”

“Yes, sir,” Will said, not taking his eyes off of his work. “He should not move for a time.”

“Of course not,” the captain said, trying to sound as though that
hadn’t just occurred to him. “Well, we have to keep pressing on—” he started a bit as the margrave’s rifle rang out again after the fleeing Boeja, “—of course. If—yes, he’ll have to stay here then, though we can’t much spare anyone else to stay.”

No,
Ian thought, kicking at the ground. They should have brought at least one more of their company. He started looking around, trying to dole out possible options.

“It won’t be very safe for him alone,” Will
said.

There was uneasiness in the wounded Chax’s eyes as he stared down, occasionally wincing.

“It’s no place for just a sling,” the captain agreed, reaching into his coat and bringing out a well-polished Lances pistol. He handed it down to the startled Chax. “Do you know how to handle one of these, pawamous?”

“Yes, but,” Will said, sounding taken aback and hesitant to voice any further doubts, “if another pack of Boeja
—”

“Up there!” Ian said, pointing to the tall rock that the one Chax guide had fought from. “None of the Boeja would be able to climb that.” He looked back to see Will considering it,
quietly blowing air out of his lips. “Is there anything else that would be able to?”

“No,” Will said.
“No, only the lion. But—we are all in the same danger of that.”

“We can only hope that we are the ones who run into him first,” the captain said with a manner of cheer. “It’s settled then. We’ll set the chap up there to be as right comfortable as we can, and we’ll pick him up on the way back. Make it so, men.”

With that decision made, they helped the wounded Chax to his feet, even as he continued to hold the Lances pistol tightly in both hands, staring at it. He wasn’t the only one of their crew, and Ian admitted to looking at it a fair bit, all smooth perfection, dark and shiny. He would have given a lot to have been able to hold it for a moment, as he imagined it was a solid sort of heavy.
But someday,
Ian thought. Now that was something he would be willing to spend money for.

The margrave was still focused on the first group of Boeja that was retr
eating, but very little of the animals’ collective hearts appeared to be in it. Even as the group as a whole continued to move away, a few would break off to turn and cackle inquiringly back at them.

As Ian watched, Lord Wester raised his rifle after appearing to have been waiting for an opportunity. One Boeja in particular had stopped and was shaking its ears at them.

The margrave aimed for a tight second before moving his finger into the trigger guard, and then breathed, looking dissatisfied, before firing at the Boeja.

The animal jerked instantly as the shot flashed along the top of its back, and a moment later its squeal reached them. It flopped along the ground for a moment, but was able to kick back up to its feet, not looking overly hurt.

“Blasted thing,” the margrave said. “Private!”

For a moment Ian’s heart beat harder. He tried to think what the margrave might want from him, even as he just barely restrained himself from answering.

The margrave quickly glanced behind him at Rory. “Can you make that shot from here?”

Ian bit his lip and felt stupid.

“I can try, My Lord,” Rory said, frowning and not trying to show his limp as he walked to the margrave’s side.

With
just a slightly bitter train of thought, Ian sized up the distance and contributing factors for himself. It was well beyond their expected range, but he thought he could do it.

Rory absently adjusted his rifle’s bay settings as he stared
off at the Boeja in question. It spent a second dawdling not far from where it had been brushed by the margrave’s shot, and then it came to its better pair of senses and wheeled around after the others. Another opportunity was already in the making, however, coming in the form of another of the Boeja pausing to sniff at the area where the struck Boeja had rolled over.

“A broadside shot,” the captain urged, though Rory was already raising his rifle.

Ian’s second smoothly fell to one knee, cradling his rifle in the crook of his elbow as he put his eye down the sight.

“Take it now
—” the captain was saying, similar sentiments silently passing along Ian’s lips.

But a sudden reaction
hit the retreating line of Boeja, and their lingering Boeja was in the motions of turning straight back toward them when the roar of the red lion reached their company as well.

Rory fired, but even his last moment
’s adjustment wasn’t enough to save the shot. It flashed just off to the left of his Boeja, which was now running back toward their party along with all the others. The shot only caused the Boeja to flinch its head a bit as it buckled down and ran hard, for a moment directly opposite of the tree line where the roar had issued from. But then the pack swept aside more to the east, filtering off between their two sources of danger.

They all handled their rifles, almost raising them multiple times, but ultimately they left the Boeja to run, far faster than they had when running from their party. Their attentions progressively shifted from the Boeja and back to the darkening stretch of low forest.

Ian stared hard at it, his conflicting feelings given encouragement at all the possibilities that could lie within it.

“We’re losing daylight,”
Ian murmured, but loud enough that the captain heard him.

“Quite right,” Captain Marsden said, “shall we press on then,
My Lord?”

“What
else is there?” the margrave answered.

“Words are stronger than beauty;

this
love you have given me,

made
me see

things
I had never seen.”

—Eliza Fairwith, Bevish poet

They moved quickly over and down the rocky decline that led to the forest where the roar had issued from. It became increasingly pocked with skinny trenches and other deformities of the ground. These weren’t so numerous as to force them to cross any very often, but they served as warnings signs to the steady increase they were venturing into. As they neared the forest, it became clear that it was littered with small but sharp elevations and drop offs.

Perfect for the lion,
Ian thought.

They slowed considerably when they began to reach the outskirts of the woods. Both because they had to be far more cautious with the increase in cover, but also because they were a bit winded.
At least around the edges—sort of. Well, Ian at least could have gone much further without difficulty, and he keenly felt the bits of their time before nightfall slipping. Some of the others, Rory especially, didn’t look quite so perky after nearly a full day’s worth of moving.

As they passed through the lower brushes and into the thicker, darker trees, the captain fell to hand signals and occasionally
jump-clicks to Ian and Rory. The margrave largely ignored them all as they moved forward as quickly as quiet would allow. All of the Chax were busy searching for signs of the lion, but Lord Wester was given a wide and foremost berth to search on his own.

Perhaps ten minutes in
, the terrain became petulant enough that they were stopped at their first significant obstacle. Their way passed straight over a sheer drop off, some fifteen feet or more deep that stretched as far as they could see either way into the trees.

The margrave, captain
, and Will briefly consulted about this. Ian took the moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. As cool as it was in this darker shade of tassi trees, the air was thick with moisture, wisps of mist clinging at the edges of the forest all around them. In other circumstances, Ian might have even felt too cool, but his heart was constantly throbbing hard if not always fast, his senses straining and jumping at any abrupt breaks in the animal sounds above them and in the distance.

The conference seemed to have ended with the margrave not thinking much of the descent
this cliff required. Ian quickly volunteered his length of rope from his pack, not being the only one to have it on hand. And once their company had anchored the top end, the margrave carelessly half-walked, half-dropped his way to the bottom with their aid. The nobleman was immediately at it again with his rifle, causing them to hurry to catch up. The captain went next, then Rory upon Ian’s insistence, even though he was a great deal heavier than Ian, and it was a troubled way down for both of them.

By this time
, all of the Chax had nimbly made their own way down, jumping once or twice and sliding a bit in between to land unharmed in the gully at the bottom.

“Right,” Ian said to himself as he hurriedly stowed away his rope, glancing again at the nearly vertical drop and grinning, grimacing. “Man alive
—”

He stepped just slightly over the edge, falling back the best he could against the cliff wall, against the dirt and twisted roots and whatever else as his weight
grabbed him, the incline pushing past him as he threw his boots around as strategically as he could. He was keeping control, juggling, and then losing it at the last few feet as he fell forward.

Fortunately
, the gully at the bottom was narrow enough and faintly covered its rocks with vegetation so as to comfort his fall. His ankle popped a little, his knees rang, and there was a burning line beneath the sleeve of his coat where he’d hit a sharp rock, but otherwise he was all accounted for. Standing quickly, he was happy that no one paid much attention to him. What mattered most was the trick of not catching his fall too much and appearing soft for it.

But even before he had completely stood
, another issue surfaced. It was signaled when Rory gave a startled cry, joined in various fashions by most of the others.

Ian raised his rifle in the general direction that Ro
ry was facing but saw nothing. He followed his second man’s line of sight downward just as a polite tap came at the corner of Ian’s boot.

Glanci
ng down, a follow-up movement registered all around his boot and sudden clenching of it in uneven increments that were more insistent.

His glimpse of the source turned out to be a squat creature, with wriggling appendages—

Ian jerked his foot back, which nearly toppled him as he felt something brush past his other foot, and he instinctively tried to get away from that as well. His mind was probably reasoning it was best to limit himself to having one issue attached to him at a time.

In the next moment or so
, as he scrambled off to the side and jumped up to the edge of the gully, he got a better look at the creature shaking hands with his boot.

It was perhaps a little small
er than a rugby ball, but similarly shaped and a little heavier. It had some sort of husk or shell—he couldn’t really tell—mostly black but crisscrossed with dark, green lines and splotches. The thing propelled itself by means of two short, stubby legs that were presently convulsing; the third, larger leg that it mostly used to stabilize itself while not moving was tucked tightly against itself. The rest of its appendages didn’t seem nearly so decided. There were certainly two at the front of its body, wrapped around Ian’s boot. But he also glimpsed another handful of smaller ones that ran around the edges of its carapace, convulsing in like manner and looking like the two main ones, but not entirely grown up.

All this might have been well and good, Ian having paused to resume his composure and
plan a little bit more, but it was its eyes, half a dozen at least, squinting and red and rolling all around up at him that made that impossible.

He jumped, half-
rolled most of himself onto the ledge of the gully, carrying his new friend with him—the gully was coming alive with scores more of them.

Leaning back and raising his foot,
Ian saw that its multi-jointed, asymmetrical arms were pressing and feeling around the leather of his boot. They moved upwards slightly as teeth-like points pressed in and out of his boot from dozens of holes all up along its appendages.

One of the natives screamed in pain, and Ian was thankful that he was
in the kind of army that issued hardy footwear. Bracing his foot with the animal on it, he pulled his other leg back and kicked it as hard as he could.

A shot was fired—from a pistol? Ian thought that was a bad idea in close of quarters
like this—

But i
t was awful because there was really no place to kick it in this position without also striking at its eyes, which occurred in horrible fashion. The thing let out a shrieking whistle, and Ian tried not to look at the damage he inflicted. The blow hadn’t been quite enough to dislodge it, however, as its arms were stuck all around his boot.

He half-
kicked at it again but realized that this wasn’t going to work very well against this creature and the other ten that were frantically coming after him.

Resorting again to his knife,
Ian drew it and thrust at the creature hard, wincing at the sounds it made, but he was finally able to detach it. All around him were similar sounds and another shot was fired, unmistakably from a rifle—

“Don’t shoot,” he found himself yelling as he pulled himself onto the ridge, even though he instinctively knew that his captain had fired at least one of them.

Quickly taking in the scene, Ian saw that his party was generally fighting to get out of the gully. Their margrave had reached it and was looking down on all of this with a repulsed expression, one hand on his pistol holster, but it remained undrawn. Ironically, the Chax had seemed to fare best of all, using their slings as clubs.

But Rory was struggling, being roughly in th
e middle and half-sitting back as he struggled to fend the mollusks off, clumsy with his knife and rifle.

Ian dove
by the Chax nearest him who were throwing down stones into the gully as well as dragging Captain Marsden out. Shouldering his rifle, Ian drew out his sabre, activating it as he hopped down to his second’s right side, almost literally on top of a couple of the mollusks.

Dropping to one knee,
Ian vaguely waved his knife along the ground in front of him and focused on chopping his sword up and down all around him. It wasn’t exactly an expansive plan, but the sword made short work of any of the mollusks that it touched, splitting them into hissing piles that let up a nauseating stench.

“Go, g
o now!” he was yelling to Rory.

D
espite these efforts more or less clearing Rory’s right side, he still had at least a couple of the mollusks’ wavering arms digging into him, with another batch close behind with the same idea. Ian spared what he could for a moment to carefully stab one mollusk off from Rory’s side with his knife.

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 capta
in’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.

The
ir 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 availa
ble 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 th
is 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.