The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (16 page)

“You may call me
pawamous
, which means guide in our language, or
chero
, which means head guide,” the Chax said.

“
All right,” Ian said, pausing, “but would you mind if I just called you Will?”

The
Chax tilted and dropped his head in a strange way that Ian had noticed before. “No, I would not mind. That would be very nice, if it doesn’t cause you inconvenience.”

Yes,
Ian thought,
I suppose that would seem strange in front of the others
. “No, it’s no inconvenience to call someone by the name they prefer. It’s a deal then, and you can call me Ian if you’d like.”

“Yes,” the
Chax said, “that would be most agreeable. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ian said, looking back over his shoulder at the
other Chax, who were still tightly grouped around their fire, “and I guess I should let you get going. I just wanted to thank you for telling us so much, I’m glad you’ll be our guide for this expedition.”

“I am very glad as well,” the
Chax said.

“And if some
time else,” Ian went on quickly, “I’d like to hear anything more you’d like to say about your planet or your people, if it wouldn’t be a bother.”

“No, no bother at all.”

“Excellent,” Ian grinned as he started back a bit, “and I’d be happy to tell you anything that you might want to know as well.”

Will stopped for a moment and
smiled back. “Thank you, I would like that.”

*              *              *              *

Getting up at three o’clock in the morning wasn’t as easy as he would’ve liked to admit. It had grown cool enough that he’d reversed his regulator to heat. The camp was still—the circle of rangers, the two tents and the guides and even the brisa stood silent, their heads resting against each other near the ground.

Rory had an even less pleasant time with it. He was in such an irritable mood that Ian didn’t know whether he should
be nice and volunteer to take the first turn of walking around the perimeter or to be afraid that Rory would fall asleep if left to watch up on the outcropping rock.

“You do the walking,” Rory mumbled when the
decision came up, and Ian obliged.

And it actually turned out to be the better of the two choices, as it was a pleasant
way to wake up. By army regulations, he was supposed to walk a perimeter one hundred feet from any of the camp’s edges, but he pushed it out a little further to give himself some room. It was a fairly easy chore to begin with, given such open terrain. He kept the light on his yeoman ready but never used it, and clicked an all clear on his yeoman to Rory every five minutes.

Ian felt like he did a decent job of re
maining alert, but he also found it especially easy to drift off on mental tangents, mostly involving what had happened throughout the previous day and what might happen today. This was somewhat detrimental, as he did want to do the best job he could, and he started stopping every couple minutes to peer into the shadows and listen.

While many of
the sounds they’d heard throughout the day were quiet now, a different, more peaceful bed of sounds had risen in their place. There were the chirps and rising hums of insects in the grass, distant squalls of small animals intermittently calling to each other, and all manner of other unique animal noises that were heard only once or twice through his watch. And while Orinoco’s daytime sky was periodically pretty under the clouds that moved beneath the sun, the night sky produced an even greater tapestry of wonders. It was startling, after being so accustomed to the bland hues of Baldave’s night atmosphere above all the city lights, to look up and see a strip of iridescent greens fighting their way across the planet’s canopy, being slowly broken down into other colors as they changed a little with every star they crossed. Pushing, giving, changing until they reached the other horizon as a dusty scarlet, and the sky continued on with another half dozen small struggles as if it had never happened and would never again. And it wouldn’t, each second that Ian could ever hope to see was forever unique from all the rest as Orinoco played the tumultuous game of survival against its own sun.

Ian waited until a bit after the
midpoint in their watch before walking back to the outcropping at the center of the camp and climbing up the handholds that had long ago been hewn out of it. Ian was relieved to find Rory still awake—groggy and looking disgruntled with existence in general—but awake, even though Ian knew he must have been conscious at least every five minutes of their watch to confirm Ian’s jump-clicks.

Watching
from up on the rock wasn’t nearly as interesting as walking the perimeter, but it gave a great deal more freedom to think and look up at the sky. The prime hours for observing it were mostly past, however, and the eastern horizon began to grow a lighter gray that slowly stretched itself up and across the atmosphere. As Ian lay on the cold rock, his hands behind his head and one leg on his other knee, he once again expressed his gratitude for being here. He renewed his promise to work harder to overcome the bad impressions he’d engendered, and keep improving on the ones that were in better shape.

Closing his eyes and quizzing himself, he started to go through all the possible
jump-click commands that their company might send over their yeomans. Every ranger had to memorize the core commands, but the other 294 weren’t mandatory, and indeed, Ian didn’t know anyone who knew even a significant fraction of them by memory. It wasn’t so cumbersome to look down at the text on his yeoman when a command he didn’t know came through, but it would be far better if he could identify the jump-clicks that the yeoman sent into his arm without having to look down. Ian imagined that would be particularly useful in any sort of combat situation. He figured if he learned ten of them every day, he’d have them all memorized a safe while before the end of the expedition. So for the next hour he drilled himself until he had ten of the core variants that he deemed would be most useful.

There were some subtle changes in the camp that ga
ined momentum the more the grays on the eastern horizon turned to golden arcs. The first and most obvious was the captain rising and setting his things in order, starting a small cube fire and pot of coffee. Perhaps twenty minutes after this, Lord Wester also began moving about inside his tent and soon after made his way out to the remotest corner of the camp and stared off across the plains that were quickly divulging into their morning phase.

All this Ian noted with only passing interest, personal habits that were nice to have seen, but
didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t have guessed at. His efforts to keep the last two jump-clicks he was memorizing separate were far more distracting, at least until he heard movement from within the other tent.

By this point
, the lieutenant had roused all of their company, and the Chax were also up, though in a much less structured fashion. This was mostly background noise, and Ian’s watch was all but done. However, he did have an advantage over most of the company in that he was able to roll over to his stomach and peer over the edge when the opening to the more elaborate of the two tents was undone.

He quickly contained himself, scooting back far enough that he wasn’t visible from the tent or most of the rest of the camp. Waiting a few moments, he raised his head just a bit.

Elizabeth walked around to the sunny side of her tent, her hair down and tangled and her nightgown and morning robe pulled around her. As she sat, out of sight of the rest of the camp, she quickly and methodically pulled a washing comb and then dryer palm through her hair. She worked with her eyes either hard on the ground or up into the sky. Her hair alternately glowed and was muted as it became wet and dry again, and one of her slender feet slipped out from her gown’s layers to be white and forgotten against the wet morning grass.

Ian ducked back down, figuring he should probably leave. While innocent enough, he wouldn’t want to be caught catching sight of the margrave’s
daughter’s left foot. But he glanced back up, and then froze as Elizabeth looked his way.

She gave
no real hesitation in motions or expression. And for a desperate second, he wondered if she had been able to see him all along from where she sat.

But he
cringed back anyway, pursing his lips and about to start away when her voice called over the edge.

“Oh, private?
Could I see you for a moment?”

Rising up and without looking her way, quickly dropping down to the next
level of the stone outcropping, then grabbing a handhold and dropping a little further to the ground, he realized that he had half-hoped she would call him over. There was some considerable risk of impending censure, but he found himself willing to take that chance as he tried to help his sheepish expression.

“Mi
lady,” Ian bowed a bit and kept his eyes down. Her foot was by this time firmly secured out of sight.

“Good morning, private,” she said somewhat easily. “Would you be so kind as to
grant a favor for me?”

“Of course, mi
lady,” Ian said.

“Could you tell me the reason why a young man,” she shifted her comb to her other hand, “would wish to
watch someone tending to her hair?”

“I could give many, I think,” Ian said, looking up to
find her eyes. He was quite aware of how corporeal his hands were, and that their placement was quite unsatisfactory. He settled on clasping them behind his back, after more than one misplacement, as that seemed to be the most polite and passive option.

“What could interest a man about such a mundane chore?” Elizabeth
Wester asked. “What pleasure would he find in seeing a lady comb her hair?”

“A great deal, I thi
nk,” Ian said, “depending on the head of hair.”

She put her brush down for a moment, doing something with it that Ian didn’t know about
, as unacquainted as he was with such devices.

“Are you rangers always
quite so unhelpful?” she asked.

He couldn’t help but grin, desperately hoping that he wasn’t completely misreading the
lady’s seemingly playful demeanor. “I hope not.”

“I suppose we’ll have to see,”
the margrave’s daughter said. “This is going to be quite a lengthy expedition. Is hunting something you enjoy?”

“I
regret that I cannot be very helpful about that either,” Ian laughed a bit. “I’ve never really hunted anything wild. But I do think I will.”

“It excites you then?”
she asked.

“Yes,” Ian said, hitching a bit as he wasn’t quite sure how careful he should be with his words, “so far. Do
es the pursuit interest you, milady?”

She
smiled softly, her eyes still elsewhere as she worked at her hair. “It can have its charms.”

He
let his hands fall to his sides. “Well, I have it on good word that ladies of good stock are naturally susceptible to men who hunt … hunt well, I mean.”

“Is that so?” she asked.

“Those are not my words,” he cautioned, “but have you ever noticed such things happen?”

“To ladies of good stock?
To some,” Elizabeth Wester said, “I imagine. On Gower, the march planet my father governs, there is always a great deal of hunting, and very many ladies do seem to enjoy it existing … do you know why that is?”

Ian shrugged. “I haven’t really ever thought about it.”

“Never?” she asked.

“Well, I will now,” h
e said. “Do you know why?”

She stared at the ground
, distant for a moment. “No.”

“Oh,”
Ian said, looking off in the direction of all the camp’s noise, which was growing increasingly louder.

She
turned her eyes and stared at him, almost in a conspiratorial manner. “I think it may be for the same reason a young man enjoys watching a young lady comb her hair.”

“That sounds reasonable,”
he said quietly.

“How frightful of me,”
she said, glancing back at the camp, “I am afraid I have held you overly long.”

“No, it’s fine,”
he assured her, giving a quick bow, “but I hope you’ll excuse me, milady.”

“Certainly,”
she nodded with a smile. “I am glad you took the time to speak with me.”

“It was
a pleasure, milady,” Ian said and started off, thinking that he probably should’ve taken more time to say that, it was probably the polite thing to—

“And private?”
Elizabeth called after him, “I suppose I have occasionally been excited by hunting. Good luck.”

Ian
half-turned back toward her but didn’t stop, smiling all the way and hoping that was adequate enough to reciprocate interest without messing up any recent culminations that may or may not have culminated.