Ganne

Part 32 - Marlek's Dilemma.


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Marlek stood at the broken doorway peering into the rainy evening.  In the
bosky light he could barely make out the well housing thirty feet away.
Behind him, the cottage was lit by the flames of a roaring fire.  On the
Army blanket spread on the floor, a meagre meal had been set out.  It
still awaited the diners.

Genella's riding off into the night had not surprised him.  Though she was
now hiding it well, Marlek knew she had been scared witless by that Ganne
manifestation earlier in the day.  She had gone, he suspected, seeking her
usual refuge from situations she felt inadequate to face.

"Genella," Marlek lamented softly.  The utterance was the essence of
wistfulness.  Indeed, Genella?  He loved her; he had always loved her,
loved her with one of those hopeless, helpless passions, the kind of love
that made fools of the most level-headed people.  Marlek had given thanks
more than once for his military training.  It alone had saved him from any
self-demeaning demonstrations of his hopeless passion for a High Ganne.
For that, if for nothing else, Marlek was devoutly grateful to the army.

Genella knew, of course.  As a High Ganne, how could she not know the
hearts of men?  but she had never once given any indication that she knew.
It was all so bloody impossible anyway.  He was a common soldier, not even
drawn from the officer class, and she a Ganne of the very highest rank.
Her mother was a Queen - if she still lived?  There were children; rumour
told of a son and daughter somewhere - but of a husband for Genella, or
even an official Consort, Marlek had never heard any word.

Marlek sighed.  All this was old history.  It no longer hurt like it once
did; but the thing which still hurt was that he had no idea whether she
held any regard for him in her turn.  Just to know that she did would have
made his situation...  Well, not better exactly - but somehow more
bearable.  Then, at least, he might have hope.  To live without hope was a
wretched thing.

With an effort, Marlek shook himself free of his dark mood, and resolved
there and then to confront the Ganne on the matter.  It was not as if he
had anything to lose.  Yes, when she returned from the house, he would ask
her.

He knew why Genella had gone up to the house; but he did wonder why Sarah
had gone after her.  Sarah had expressed no particular affection for
Genella; and surely curiosity alone was not enough?  Yet Sarah had passed
up the comfort of a fire and food to go traipsing through the rain.

Sarah, like Garron, had made no sign that she had felt the eruption of
Ganne by the lake that morning.  Perhaps she had sensed their peril in the
unease of Genella, the Doctor and himself, and was by some deep-seated
instinct seeking her own place of safety.  Perhaps it was for the best
that he had not been able to bully her out of following Genella?  Standing
close to a High Ganne was probably going to be the only place of safety in
hundreds of miles.

Marlek was Ganne sensitive enough to know what that outburst of Ganne
portended.  If only a fraction of the horrors that were recounted in the
Ancient Histories were true...  He shuddered, for the first time in his
life he was truly deep down afraid.  Since this morning, the world had
become an hideously more dangerous place.

The Doctor, too, was aware of this fact.  Coming from feeding the horses,
he had looked in briefly.  On discovering that Sarah had set out after
Genella, he became restless.  He had taken up a honey cake and stood in
the doorway staring into the rain, while he munched thoughtfully on the
tasty morsel.  By the time he had reached the end of the cake, he had,
apparently, reached a decision as well.

"Shan't be long," he said to Marlek.  "Better make sure Sarah doesn't get
herself into any trouble." With that, grinning toothily and cramming his
hat down on his curls, he had essayed forth into the rain.

Unseen in the gloom, the raven had taken wing and drifted after the
Doctor's departing form.

Garron had not come in at all.

This last absence puzzled Marlek the most.  Where had the man got to?  He
had been just next door helping the Doctor bed down the horses.  He seemed
to have vanished.  It was not like the man.  He was a reliable soldier,
stolid and dependable.  He also liked his food.  It was not like him to
let anything short of an emergency delay a meal.  Marlek's concern for his
sergeant was growing by the minute.

An orange glow suddenly flared somewhere out of sight to the right.  For
an instant, the hamlet stood out in the rain, before darkness descended
once more on Baron's Acre.  An electric thrill ran over Marlek's body,
making his hackles rise.  In the cottage next door, the horses screamed.
The sound was laden with panic.  Marlek drew back from the doorway, and
squatted beside the broken door.  The crash and clatter of the spooked
animals bucking and kicking out stopped abruptly.  Marlek waited.  The
screams of the horses had died in a fretful whinnying leaving only the
pattering of the rain.  An unbearable taughtness grew in the air like the
electric tension before a lightning strike.  Marlek hunkered back from the
door, expecting at any moment some dreadful vision out of a demon haunted
past to manifest.

After half a minute, when nothing happened, Marlek edged forward and stuck
his head around the door jamb.  The cold rain on his neck sent a shiver
down his spine.  He could see nothing in the darkness.  Shuffling back, he
grabbed his sabre from the scabbard propped against the wall and rose.
Cautiously he stepped out into the rain.


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