The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (39 page)

“It seems too bad,” Ian said,
looking at the downed four horn, “since I suppose we don’t eat this sort of meat.”

“The margrave only needs one,” Ellis said.

“That’s true,” Ian said. “But now that he’s gotten two of the big five, I suppose it’s going to be harder to find the others for him. It doesn’t seem like he’ll be pleased until he’s hunted a lion.”

“I heard the guides say we’re getting near the trees where the leopards are,” Rory said.

“But they don’t travel in herds like four horns or long buffalo,” Ian said, “and leopards will be the first ones to start hunting us.”

“A
re you scared?” Rory asked.

“No,” Ian said,
waving his hand, “I’m just taking realistic stock of the situation.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rory said, wipin
g at his forehead, “we’ll get ‘em. I just wish it wasn’t always so blasted hot.”

“May
as well get used to it,” Ian said as they began to near where the four horn was laying. The other four horns were a good ways back, lingering in some short brush trees, while the female was still clinging to the same area as the bull. Ian raised his Allen rifle in the air and shot the cartridge with the bay wide open and the suppressor off, producing the loudest sound it could.

Rory looked sideways at him irritably, but the female four
horn finally bounded off after the others. Coming up close to the carcass, they took a minute to survey it. Ian took his boot and pressed at its array of horns that gave it its name.

“Glad we don’t have to carry much of it back,” Ian said, looking back at the others.

“Right then,” Corporal Hanley said, “better get at it.”

Ian knelt and started at one side of the base of the primary horn with his
hunting knife, looking up at Rory until he also knelt and started on the other.

“Would be nice if
we could just use our swords on this,” Rory grunted.

“Yes,” Ian said, “it would be nice to tear them all to pieces.”

“I didn’t say I was going to,” Rory said, “I just said it would be nice—”

“And it would be nice if this hot planet wasn’t hot,”
Ian said. “Unfortunately—”

“That’s enough,” Ellis said.

Ian looked down at his knife and tried to figure out the most efficient way to work it through the gray bone.

“Which would you prefer then?” Ian asked, not looking up.
“To be really hot or really cold?”

“Cold,” Rory said, without much thought.

“Really?” Ian asked. “I’d much rather be hot. When it’s cold you have to spend so much time putting on clothes and—”

“It’s just cleaner,” Rory said. “You’re not sweating all the
time, and you can’t ever really get away from the heat. Home is much nicer than this.”

“I had plenty of
home,” Ian said. “If I had liked it better there, I would have never joined with the Guard.”

Ellis was frowning. “You don’t like home?”

“It’s fine,” Ian protested, “but I don’t want to live there my whole life. There are far too many other places in the galaxy to see. All Wilome is—is fog and snow and a little bit of hot in the summer.”

“There’s nothing wrong with just a little bit of hot,” Rory said, standing back up as Ian’s knife got close to Rory’s hands.

“Well,” Ian said, leaning down onto the ground for a slightly better angle, “—get that one too, please—at least you got posted to the hottest livable planet there is. It’ll be all pudding from here.”

“Yeah,” Rory agreed, “and no noble girls to bother with either.”

“That’s for sure,” Ellis said, kicking down at the ground with his arms crossed.

Ian went to say something but discovered
he had nothing in mind to say.

“Always complaining and talking and carrying on,” Rory said as he worked at the littler horn with his knife. “At least we get some rest from it when we go out here.”

“There is that,” Ellis agreed. He laughed a little. “Though I feel as though she would come if she could.”

“She thinks she’s so good at everything,” Rory said.

Well,
Ian thought,
she arguably has a case in one or two categories.

And they went on about the margrave’s
daughter, Ian found he had nothing he wished to add. He didn’t really feel like there was much of an issue to bring up, but the way they sounded, Ian thought they could be on the subject for hours. There was so much indignation, irritation. And Ian could understand it, at least the basis for their scorn, but he noticed that he had a strong reluctance to voice even that. It didn’t feel right.

“
Come on, then,” Ellis said, looking at Ian, “have you got it yet, Kanters?”

“Almost,” he said.

*
              *              *              *

It was growing toward midmorning, the sun being established enough to angle along Ian’s back as he crawled between the grasses. He took very sharp care with each movement, as agonizingly slow and tedious as it all was. For although he had a decent breeze and sound wasn’t a huge issue, he was wary of how easy it was to jar aside a tuft of the soft, springy grass, and how easy it would be to note, if one happened to be noting such things.

And as far as tracking a leopard went, Ian wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be. Will had said that they had sharp eyes and ears—noses—pretty much every sense. Probably
sharp taste as well, as it had the distinction of being the first predator they’d hunted.

It had been half
of an accident. Today was Wednesday, and they had set off early in the morning, beginning to run into larger areas of tassi trees. A half hour ago and the wyverns had begun acting up. This was fortunate because the brisa gave no similar warning. One moment their party was coming to a stop at the entrance of a wooded area, Madeline Wester and the Bevish servants trying to calm the wyverns, which looked as though they were set to twist off their packs and take off. And the next there was a piercing cry.

Ian had been watching the wyverns, so he turned just in time to see a long body spring off from the second
brisa, the Chax guide who was on top of it nearly coming down with it. Only the friction from the side of the saddle packs and his flailing arms stopped him.

There had been a tumult of motion and voices, the wyverns screeching and the
brisa loudly stamping. It took a few moments to sort out the confusion, their captain not really helping matters. Two shots had managed to be fired at the attacker, but nothing had come close to hitting, and it had bounded away—in more than one direction, if all the varying reports could be believed.

The
leopard, the smallest of the planet’s large cats, was also purportedly the most cunning. They weren’t nearly as strong or fast as some of its closer relatives, but it was fast and had no match in the trees where it hunted from.

“Very dangerous,” Will had roundly cautioned, as he always seemed to have to do. “They should only ever hunt at night, and rarely people. This one must be starving, or wounded.”

“Good fortune, captain,” the margrave said as he calmly readied his rifle, “of all of our hopes for this excursion, I had not expected to find a leopard. And here it has dropped right into our laps.”

They
had summarily been assigned to hunt after it, five rangers haphazardly setting off in the general direction it had gone. The general notion was that they would protect the margrave while he shot it, as dubiously idealistic as Ian found that.

Although he had no real way to be sure, his gut told him that the leopard wouldn’t have run straight off from where they’d last seen it. Running off the assumption that it was very good at what it was created to do, having been designed for strategy and stealth over power or special
armaments, Ian had voluntarily run out to the farthest spot on their line, away from the trees and into the grasses. Rory had fallen in after him, huffing a little and looking irritated. But with this position, Ian was free to range farther than all of the others. In the end, this amounted to more of him waiting once he was in position as the inside of their line picked through the trees. He was afforded an excellent view, however, as he could see all along the tree line by crouching down just beneath the tips of the grass, and he didn’t have to move very often.

This had also given him plenty of time to try to calculate what the leopard could have done, which grew more and more extravagant the longer they went without seeing it. Their direction wasn’t very conductive to limiting it either, as Captain Marsden twice changed up their composition. After twenty minutes
, Ian began to sense that their company’s nerves were beginning to wear, as they became less focused and inevitably began to huddle closer together.

If it was hurt, it would want something easy—if it attacked and was hurt it would need something
quick, so either the first attack was a mistake, and would then be changing its tactics or have been scared off—or it was purposely fast and unsuccessful, which meant that it would want us to follow it, which meant that it would want us doing what we’re doing now because that would leave the rest of the party less defended, which means—

Ian had
already come to this conclusion multiple times before their party grew distracted and disorganized enough for him to act on it. Making sure that Rory was adequately protected by the others—and indeed, Rory had fallen close enough to the others that he presently had more than a few other second men to protect him—Ian slipped forward, slowly at first until he was further away from the others, and then he fell into a fast, sprinting sort of crawl through the grass, his eyes roving over the passing tree line.

The
tree area wasn’t large, and Ian soon made it to the fielded area that lay next to its far end. Their caravan waited roughly in the middle of the woods, opposite the side he was leaving. And if he had a sure bet, Ian would put it on the leopard having darted off the way their company had pursued it, but then doubling back around through the trees where they wouldn’t have been able to see it. Its objective would then be to come at their caravan opposite where they were waiting just outside of the trees.

Ian stopped for a moment, catching his breath and trying to listen over the pounding in his ears as he remained still
, attempting to spot any motion inside the woods. The trees weren’t all that tall, but tall enough that there was a large area of potential areas for him to scan. The foliage also didn’t allow him to see very far into it. Judging that he was far enough from the others and that the piece of forest closest to him was about as narrow and safe as he would get, he crept toward it, thinking of getting within the tree line and skirting around the rest of the woods until he reached their party.

But he hadn’t gone all that far when he heard a short, sharp roar, well within the woods
, but not all that far off from his trajectory.

Ian stood,
ran with his rifle in hand to the nearest tree. Hitting it a little harder than he had wanted, he took restock of the situation and listened for anything further. But no other sounds came, and judging from what he could interpret from the roar, Ian estimated that the leopard must be near the opposite side of the woods, but not exceptionally close to their party. No instant cause for alarm then, he thought as he left his tree.

And there were still three of their
men with the margrave and his family. He thought of Corporal Wesshire in particular, as the corporal had volunteered to stay behind. No, Ian wasn’t concerned about them, he decided as he kept low and weaved through the trees. He was concerned that he wasn’t going to get any sort of chance at this—

He saw a
tall figure—to his right, in the corner of his eye—

Ian
ducked and pulled himself to a stop at the base of a tree large enough to crouch behind. Taking deep, careful breaths to the count of five, Ian peered around its corner. For a moment, he didn’t see anything as he tried to recall the exact spot he thought he’d seen a man—There.

Ian saw
some slight movement, followed by a darkly dressed man standing between the trees at the edge of the woods, looking as though he was watching further down the way Ian was headed. Pulling his yeoman up, Ian magnified the image, quickly peering around to make sure there weren’t any others as he waited for it to recalibrate.

The man was dressed in a darker uniform that wasn’t familiar to Ian, but was of a Bevish, or at least Dervish cut. Ian didn’t know what sort of rifle the man held, but it looked like a heavy caliber.

Wiping his lips and trying to imagine who this could be, Ian decided that it was probably trouble. And if the man wasn’t anyone to be wary of, then Ian lost nothing in being wary.

He waited for another minute, watching the man but also his surroundings. The rest of the woods
were still, however, the sun only making it through the tree canopy in bits and pieces. The sweat under Ian’s uniform seemed out of place in the mild bird songs and coolness of the tassi trees.

“Who could miss home?”
Ian whispered.