THE MARCHMAN by Karlene M. Kubat
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THE MARCHMAN By Karlene M. Kubat He knelt over a recent mud flow on the slope of a pine-quilled ridge, examining a boot's print stamped in the shiny rivulet of mud.The nearly perfect imprint was clear and fresh in the maroon oozecreeping down from the volcanic throat of towering Mount Rubora. Standing up too quickly in the high elevation he rocked in dizziness and slammed one boot awkwardly into the soft mud. He cursed mildly, drawing back his foot and staring down. His mark was laid close beside the other he had found; the difference in the size of the prints surprised him. Alongside his print the other was much smaller and oddly lance-shaped, an unusual boot. He had no reason to doubt that he was tracking a Marchlander, yet doubt persisted. He was unwilling to accept the idea that anyone within these venerated boundaries would commit such an offense. The Marchman In the early morning's first glimmer, someone bearing an old bloodletting weapon had shot the aging wild boar as he rooted for tubers left to winter in the vegetable fields. On the silvered grass, in sight of the high tinted windows recessed beneath the soaring triforms of Solvault Hall, he found the blood mingled with fresh droppings and recalled the sound he had heard in his sleep, melded into a dream. Giving himself over to the powerful instinct of defense he said nothing and went alone with a small stunning weapon, pursuing the beast as it plunged, maddened and bleeding, through the thick underbrush. Gradually the low growth thinned as he followed the animal's spoor into deep forest where tall close- growing firs shut out the light. It was not until much later, breaking out on a rough volcanic ridge, that he had found the unfamiliar human print, a mark that taunted him with its audacity. For a time, the trail had again brought him down among the big firs. Soon he heard the echoing complaint of a raven curiously following him through the dense evergreen network high overhead. The mischievous bird waited in silence as he searched quadrants of sky-chinked branches until he found it. He stood looking up with a broad grin, imagining the scowling raven's cocked-head view of him: foreshortened man. Croaking a final warning from its high perch, the irritated old rapscallion shook its black feathers, spread its wings and floated silently away. "Come tell me what you find out there, prankster," he called softly after his hard-beaked critic. His voice was tempered with humor directed at himself. He was in his element, aroused beyond fatigue and unafraid. Tramping along, now and then his mind pored over the obsolete data catalog of Marchland flora and fauna. The old record 2 The Marchman of what so precariously existed here needed updating, a new microlibrary of the variegated greens, of innocently heroic wild creatures free to hunt, to bicker and breed in rich sovereign forests like no others on the planet. But why must he consider records amidst all this green? Such records could not produce a single wren's feather much less preserve a forest. Preservation was his responsibility. He had sworn an oath not to shirk even the least of his duties, but present times were... For a brief moment the carefully controlled anger directed at his rapacious enemies overtook him. Willfully held at bay, the rising specter of their evil was lately proving more and more inescapable, they who in their rapacious schemes forever dogged his days. A faint afternoon breeze shook down a few dry needles, sprinkling them silently over the brown forest floor, where sparsely captured sunlight swayed in delicate gold patterns. He drew deep breaths from this same current of humus-sweet air, watching it ruffle the fern clumps with a slow hypnotic rhythm. The quiet and relief of solitude spread over him with the visceral undiluted joy of an awed child in its hiding place, that essential need to be cut off from others; intoxicating concealment. With the momentary pleasure of this seductive weaning from heavier purpose, his inured old boots lightened and set him down swiftly in a deeper forest chamber. He had for once a realizable task: the challenge of certain exposure and confrontation. He stubbornly ignored a nagging question: why had his men not responded to the sound of the rifle? Was there sufficient defense of the March to welcome such carelessness as educational sport, or was he merely after a tantalizing wild goose? With the raven's mocking warning ringing in his ears, he 3 The Marchman tracked on over the stark rising and dipping foothills of the great active volcano. His long legs bent and stretched against time that belonged to other missions, intricate and global, but which easily paled beside this spirited chase through a boyhood haunt of idle pleasures. As the reality of the boar's wound pressed in upon him, waves of renewed anger and curiosity rolled forth. Before him danced a boarish vision: thin waltzing legs supporting a narrow body bristled with silver and black, well- proportioned and agile for a tough-shielded mass of over two hundred kilograms; the lower canines curling back toward trifling obsidian eyes, lethal tusks that could rip open a foe with one upward thrust of the big shaggy head; the large sensitively pricked ears and moist cartilaginous snout always nervously twitching, seeking. He knew and once envied this formidable old male who had long spurned the company of the roving herd. Moving over a fingered pumice slope then down into a shallow ravine of dwarfed pines, he heard the second sharp report and hid himself. Adrenaline pumping, his sinewy hide and bone frame crouched in a drying green net of short-lived bracken. Thoroughly captivated by what he saw, he was held motionless by a peculiar mixture of fascination and ire. With an antique rifle balanced across her khaki knees, she was hunched over the heaving beast, running her fingers through the coarse mud- and blood-caked mane, which had already begun its winter thickening. Floating faintly on the cooling late afternoon breeze came a thrilling dove-cooing croon. Slowly, as the sound prickled his skin, he realized that the communion came from her throat. Fine threads of pale hair adhered to the back of her neck in sweaty coils. Then her torso straightened uncannily, for he had 4 The Marchman made no sound, and stiffened as she turned completely around. The narrowed green eyes stared directly at him, emitting their own gleam of phosphor from within the hat brim's dark shade. As he approached, she stood up with recognition and deep surprise, the rifle slipping into her lean-fingered left hand. These actions, done reflexively, were followed by a deliberate nod of respect. Half extending the stained right hand, she came toward him. She saw the unmercifully hard look he gave and let the hand fall, glancing back at the fallen boar now breathing heavily. "He'll be all right," she offered almost inaudibly, yet he caught the difference in inflection. The Marchland sound was there but altered by a foreign influence. He walked around the boar with his hand on his hip and his eyes traveling from the woman to the beast and back to the woman -- who had set off a curious admonitory signal in his head. Finally he knelt and put a hand against the animal's warm flank. "You knocked him out with that antique?" From where he knelt he could see that the brim-shadowed face was pale and tired, yet subdued by amazing chrysolite eyes of glass green, eyes with a gaze so direct they were almost insolent, but perhaps unknowingly so. "He has parasites eating away at him." "Parasites!" he exclaimed, standing up. "There is a more technical name," she added, with the strange refined voice that continued to puzzle him. "You know who I am, Jarl Wyld? It has been a long time." She fell silent and an amused smile played across her face, as though she were remembering something they both knew very well. 5 The Marchman She had called him by the title that only Marchlanders used. Now it came to him and he faulted himself for the incredible slowness of his memory. She was of course Nev Churlwraith's daughter, Chloë. What was it Nev said she had become in her absence? A naturalist? Certainly not. He saw the irony of this, imagining the methodical, scholarly process of a vocation time had passed over. He was certain Nev had said naturalist. It mattered little. The narrow sole's imprint, which he had stalked so heatedly, was merely an assertion of prerogative, for hadn't a Churlwraith the same right here as a Wyld? He could not think what made him hold onto such anger. A certain instinctive precaution? Yet what threat might she imply? He was short with her, reluctant to have her back in the fold. "Are the animals contaminated, then?" "No," she answered, offering no explanation. She had been unmistakably rebuffed by the revered benefactor of her homeland. Her face closed away all but the unguarded strain of fatigue as she waited gravely. "Do you know what would've happened if one of my men saw you with that...that piece of junk...and if they hadn't recognized it as the clumsy anesthetic that it is? You might be in worse shape than this poor beast." Now she was indignant, as one whose good intent has been shunted aside by insensibility.