The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (11 page)

By this point
, the double time was getting hard. They were all well-conditioned, half of them being more or less fresh out of training, but the day of new demands had drained them in a way that Ian could hear with each measured breath they took. The captain most of all seemed to be having trouble keeping ahead of them, the motions of his arms looking minimal in the shadowy blur that he ran in just ahead of their left.

But as they began the slow rightward arc around the city, the darkness in front of them rapidly began to lighten. Gradually
, Ian was able to sort out that there was a light shining somewhere outside of the wall. Soon thereafter they passed Ellosians, the first people in quite some distance. Their group consisted of off-duty Bevish regulars, laughing and making their way around the wall into the dark where Ian’s company was leaving. They stepped off the road and made token salutes at Captain Marsden and the rest of them.

It was a welcome sight, the clearest indication Ian had yet seen that this planet was firmly theirs.

Kieran began to lag back into Ian. Gingerly putting out his hand to push the other private ahead, Ian whispered the word steady. Kieran’s back visibly bristled and surged forward, perhaps overcompensating a bit.

S
omething of a cooperative pull was among them, a beat to their gasps that ran in between their shoulders that jostled in time together. Concentrating on the smoldering in his legs, the heaviness in his lungs, Ian pushed just a little bit more, a little bit more, ignoring the burning desire for its end by knowing they were almost there.

He was surprised when he looked up again maybe only a couple minutes later. The
area, he’d known, was growing exponentially brighter. But as he watched, they came around far enough for the large light shining in their direction to be visible, though it was still some distance away. More and more structures, crates, people, and machines became visible. The well-recognized movement and sounds of a harbor grew, but to a lesser degree than Ian was used to. It was almost quaint if he compared it against the Wilome varieties he knew so well. And this was of a different order, for there were no shuttles, or really space craft at all that he could see. For he could now see the river, wide and reluctant in the light, that ran off somewhere to their left, the northwest as he figured, with the rest of the stream running into the city beneath the heavily fortified wall built to accommodate it. From what he could tell, this harbor was probably only part of a network, but it lay outside the walls and choked almost the entirety of the water with docks and moorings and other such assortments. Several large cargo boats sat along the riversides with people and cranes clambering all along their lengths. One low and almost old-fashioned looking warship stood out nearer the point of the population, quietly watching.

As the path merged into the harbor’s old cobblestone, the captain raised an arm
, and they slowed with him to a gradual stop. He turned to face them, and Ian could tell the look of someone trying not to appear winded—and not just because Ian was doing the same.

“
Good, lieutenant,” the captain said, looking them over and breathing hard through his nose. “That was a right fine march, I’d say. A fine start. We obviously have many things to work out,” his gaze turned its predictable circuit to Ian, “but there’s nothing here that time and diligence won’t fix.”

Ian noticed
a Bevish man briskly walking toward them. His clothing wasn’t altogether familiar, but Ian thought it bore some sort of relation to a Bevish navy uniform.

“Welcome, captain,” the man said as he
neared. He held up his yeoman and allowed it to identify them all, though the port and city authorities had probably done that some time ago. The man gave a quick army salute. “Follow me please, if you will. Your accommodations are waiting and will leave shortly.

“Thank you, good sir,” the captain said, only sparing a glance back at them before jolting to catch up with the man, who hadn’t waited for an answer.

Their lieutenant was left standing with the rest of them; whereas, the captain should’ve at least verbally passed the reins to him.

“Right,” the lieutenant said, fumbling for a moment, “warm beds are this way, chaps. Keep form.”

There was a murmuring chorus of the expected ayes from them, groggy as they were. They continued at a regular march that was perhaps a bit loose across the harbor grounds at a sharp upstream angle, away from most of the activity. Their pace was a bit troublesome, as it didn’t seem as though there was any official marching rate that would match their guide’s concerned walk. Ian saw the lieutenant purse his lips in consternation at what to do. Ian was trying to think of what he would order in this situation—and being fairly frustrated at his difficulty to think between the noise and motion around them and the mild pounding at his temples. They couldn’t very well adopt a decent pace without either overtaking the man or losing him and having to catch up at intervals. And there was a proud sensibility that they couldn’t just slouch out any sort of march in front of all these people. A good deal of seamen and workers and even some Bevish regulars were about, and while most of them were preoccupied and a long ways off, their company was attracting a good deal of idle curiosity.

“T
hought we were going on a real boat,” Rory mumbled beside him.

Ian peered ahead, trying to guess
where exactly they were headed. To Rory’s credit, however, he now noticed that there weren’t really any normal ships in this direction. There was just a dock that led out to something he couldn’t see very well, where men and a crane were loading things onto something—which meant that it must be a boat, and if it was a boat they were heading toward—

Really?
Ian thought as they came close enough to the river’s edge, steepened by human engineering into a deep canal with a square drop off. Instead of some sizeable, free-floating boat or some other similar vehicle, the dock they were led to jutted out a good distance, nearly to the middle of the river where a black, rectangular platform was sticking just a few feet above the river’s surface. It was only lit in the middle, roughly where the dock led to, but Ian saw that it was wider than that, and the entirety continued downwards, beneath the water that was quietly flowing around it.

“Right this way,” their guide said, sounding as if he was already onto his next chore. “Step lively
now, they don’t like having to fish anyone out. Puts ‘em in a rotten mood.”

The company reached the dock, following their guide who
fearlessly trotted along toward the platform. They exhibited slightly more hesitation on their part, especially Rory, who worriedly looked over the edge. They produced a little bounce in the dock construction as they went, which didn’t seem to be so much of the permanently fixed type. Ian couldn’t understand why the top was still wet underneath their boots either—

He looked to the left of them and saw to his surprise a series of lights deep beneath the water, stretching out straight upstream for some
distance.

Scaling the dock’s length in short order, their guide stopped at the end and motioned them down to the platform and beyond, giving a steady stream of encouragements as he checked his yeoman.

The captain nodded in acknowledgement of the other man—though the other didn’t see that—and stepped down onto the metal platform with a muted clang. His ranking men followed, and then Ian and the other privates.

A
slight pause came as the first of them had to walk around to the other side of the open hatch at the middle of the platform. They then started down the steps that were surprisingly well lit from inside the platform and as wide and gradual as anyone could ask for. They were able to go down two at a time, Ian to the right of Rory.

As he stepped down after the others,
Ian glanced to his left to see their guide already well away from them. Ian turned his head back upriver and watched the lights as long as he could as he descended beneath the cold metal.

Here
I’m in the water up to my knees,
Ian thought to himself.
And now my waist … shoulders. And here I’m beneath it all now.

The steps continued down
a bit less than a story, and at the bottom, a short entranceway led to an exceptionally durable-looking hatchway. Its top blinked green and slid open, creaking with a good deal of weight and authority when the captain drew near. Beyond was another long, cylindrical room hewn from the same metal. But this one had a good deal of activity, the far half of the room looking to be a casual eating space or tearoom that was sparsely dotted with Bevish seamen, regulars, and engineers. The nearer half of the room they had come into was more of a checkpoint, with several heavily armed regulars and low-ranking officers at hand. To either side of them ran heavy metal barriers with alternating gaps that Ian imagined would be very handy to shoot out of. Both barriers slanted toward the center of the room, where they met at a slender gap only wide enough for one person. Looking up at the ceiling, Ian surmised that this entire area could be securely shut off if need be.

A lieutenant at the checkpoint between the two barriers saluted the captain and quickly pointed his yeoman arm at him, immediately setting
off a ping in the captain’s yeoman, the rest of their company’s yeomans getting a different sounding acknowledgement a moment later.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” the lieutenant said, stepping aside as they filed past
him. “I think you’ll find all your accommodations in good order. Your drawing compartments are three sections down and marked out for you. Ring any of the consoles onboard if you have any problems at all.”

“Thank you,” the captain said distractedly as they continued past, perhaps noticing and perhaps purposely ignoring the mild attention they held from the various crew and passengers assembled. In fact
, the captain slowed a bit so that Lieutenant Taylor was at his elbow. “Truly remarkable, isn’t it?”

Perhaps indeed,
Ian thought.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant remarked, “
can’t say I’ve ever been on a train quite like this.”

Ian wondered at that. Could all of this really be a train? He supposed it made more sense than the dark and jumbled up theories he had been operating on.

“Quite right,” the captain said, more than loudly enough for them all to hear. “This is a Dervish contraption, mark it. Quite old, too. They’re overly fond of these, the Dervish are. I had the privilege of riding one at Malasiers.”

“Indeed?” the lieutenant said, staring up at the bulwarks with fair interest.

“Yes, though all of that territory is ours now as well,” the captain said, pausing at the door. But then he seemed to remember that they had at least two more compartments to go and brightened a little, waving his yeoman in the opening gesture at the hatch’s yellow light that was flashing questioningly at them.

With a snap and a good deal of creaking
, it disengaged from the other car and slid off to the right, revealing a somewhat generous hallway that ran the length of the next car, which looked to be the same dimensions as the one they were leaving. This car, however, had drawing compartments on both sides and down its entire length. The interior was also more gently built. The metal was still very present, but the deep chestnut wood and lazy red blinds of the interior made it seem much less intrusive.

Up above them,
perhaps the middlemost half of the ceiling was made of the same tough-looking metal, but was translucent. It was a dark, shimmering movement that swept by above them, contrary to the casual progress of their boots on the plush, blue carpet.

“The
Dervish heavily favored these vehicles,” the captain continued as they all started down the car, “especially here on Orinoco, where it’s so difficult to move anything by air. The natives also wouldn’t be able to tell how many troops or supplies the Dervish were moving whenever there were uprisings. The Hallmers were nastily good at watching for that, so this helped the Dervish immensely in keeping them in line.”

“I
would imagine,” Lieutenant Taylor answered as he—all of them really—cautiously peered into the compartments they passed. Most of them were empty, and the rest had tired-looking, or already sleeping, regulars in them.

“Quite a brilliant setup,” the captain carried on, “the potential for enormous quantities of transport right under the
natives’ noses. And nothing they could do for it.”

As they passed the
passenger compartments—which Ian noticed with some apprehension didn’t have beds but rather somewhat reclining seats built into the walls—Ian tried to stop listening. That was difficult, however, as he tried to think of ways that a native population would be able to reach something like this. Trees—rocks, some sort of dam—but no, not if the river was of any girth or depth like it no doubt was. And even the flimsiest of sensors on the river would be able to catch any sort of progress toward that kind of scheme.

“This one
primarily looks to be a troop carrier,” Captain Marsden gestured at the compartments, “but many of them are strictly for cargo. Weapons, food, supplies, and the like. However, these troop carriers are also capable of moving plenty of cargo as well. The upper fifth of all these cars are hollowed out for holding special crates that can be quickly moved down the entire length of the locomotive by a system—magnetic, as it. Brilliant, quite brilliant, really.”