Free The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) by Glenn Wilson Page B

antagonism.
    This he was mostly able to put off for the moment in the hopes that things might work out in the hopefully near future. Matters had a knack of doing that sometimes. In any case, Ian was grateful that he wasn’t on Kieran’s flank.
    He had a lot to be thankful for, Ian reflected as he walked with the others in the steadily cooling air, listening with part of an ear and inserting little jokes when he happened to catch openings in the conversation. He’d been deeply blessed, almost to the exact degree he’d desired. God had, in fact, blessed him so richly that he shouldn’t be—
    Drinking—
    No, Ian thought. This is fine.
    He pulled his eyes up and ran his hand absently over his belt. They were coming to the top of a wide and gradual incline. A noticeable inflow of Bevish soldiers was afoot, both on and off-duty—the difference being fairly apparent in their levels of excitement and non-excitement. This made Ian feel a lot more comfortable, as he didn’t want to be worrying about constantly watching his loose articles.
    Dwight was going on about how someone he knew had been soaked, completely soaked last night. Ian listened to the progression of the rather unappealing plot with an apprehension he couldn’t quite quell. Bits of uncertainty crept into his gut.
    No, this was necessary. He needed to get to know his fellows as soon as possible. After all, he had no idea how many more opportunities he would get the rest of the expedition. In any case, it would be quite a while before he would get to go somewhere like this. It wasn’t as if he could pass it up.
    And it would be fun. Just a couple quick hours of socializing, that was all. He was really fortunate that he’d been invited along so many times in one day.
     
    *              *              *              *
     
    But waking up, as he did every fifteen minutes, as it seemed, his throat dry and burning, the very top of his head angrily pounding downwards, Ian quickly came to regret accepting the third invitation. Or at least he hoped he had regretted it, but through the evening, as disoriented and miserable as reality was, there was a decent chance he couldn’t actually remember what was the source of all his pending woes. But he hoped he had.
    He remembered very well arriving at Flaxens, the l aughing, the way the top of the ale—so different from what he’d known in Wilome—would sizzle just after hitting the wooden mugs. He remembered that it had burned in his mouth and sung in his stomach, danced in his blood—he remembered the laughing.
    He couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, remember how or when he’d gotten back to their company’s quarters. He couldn’t remember any particular words he had spoken, or any particular words that had been spoken to him. He couldn’t remember exactly when he had stopped being able to remember, and he certainly couldn’t remember just when he’d started to stop drinking. He also had great uncertainty about whether or not there was any particular time he had felt or realized that something was wrong. Although, thinking back, there was enough general unease that he surmised that it must’ve begun to occur at some point.
    The confirming moment that he did clearly remember came some time after getting back to their quarters and trying to fall asleep—as easy but sporadically impossible as that was. Several times he had to make trips of varying urgency to the lavatory, which he wasn’t sure how he’d ever been able to find. But, during one of the first instances, he’d come in on Kieran in the last stages of emptying his stomach. Stumbling some, Kieran had said something that no longer held up as coherent words to Ian’s memory, but it had been a special kind of irritated. Disgusted too, Ian supposed, because in some forgotten order Kieran had informed him that Ian had been stupid enough to be goaded into drinking far too much. It was a common ordeal for new