A Circle of Iron (Eldernost: Book 1)

by Greg Benage

  Chapter 3

  Thorn’s companions were not amused.

  “You can’t even find a wight in the ruins,” Mara said. “And even if you could, you can’t get it to stand still long enough to bleed it.”

  “We got a wizard for that,” said Thorn. He told them about Quinix. Mara snorted and Blind Tom just shook his head, as if he were saddened by the whole sorry affair. He tossed a bone from the table and it vanished into the mastiff’s drooping, slavering jowls.

  “If he was a wizard, he could conjure the wights and we wouldn’t have to go looking for them,” said Big Odd. It was a more logical thought than he usually had to offer.

  “Ain’t no wizards like that anymore,” said Blind Tom, “not in hundreds of years.”

  “Well, I guess he doesn’t have to conjure them, he just has to find them,” Thorn said.

  Mara sucked on a tooth and then worked the point of a knife around it. Her table manners weren’t the most ladylike, but Thorn found himself staring anyway. Out in the Greenwell, she collected as much dirt and stink as any of them, but she cleaned up a lot better. With hair the color of copper, fierce blue eyes and a figure to tighten your trousers, she was a good-looking woman, and no mistake. If you could ever get her into a dress and teach her not to pick her teeth, she might be beautiful.

  Of course, if she did all that she wouldn’t make time with the likes of him.

  Mara caught him looking at her and scowled. She slammed the knife point-down into the table. “We wouldn’t be the first ones the Gray sent into the ruins. You remember a few months back, Viorno sent a full company into the city after the wight they call Redmourn. The company never came back, but they say Redmourn’s still in there.”

  “Three days after Viorno sent in his soldiers,” said Blind Tom, “Redmourn hit a caravan bringing supplies from Trevi. Fed on the teamsters and burned the wagons.”

  “The oxen, too,” said Big Odd.

  Thorn looked at him. “The oxen, what?”

  “They say he drained them, too.” He looked thoughtful. “How much blood is in an ox? More than a man, I’ll bet, more than two or three.”

  “Depends on the man,” said Blind Tom. “You might have an ox’s worth of blood in you.” Big Odd winced.

  “I’m sure he had help,” Thorn muttered. “If he drank it all himself he would have popped.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Mara. “The ruins? I’d rather kill three wights at once in the deep wood than go hunting for one in the city. Less work for the same pay.”

  A better chance of returning from the Greenwell, too. “Not the same pay. Viorno is putting up a mark a month and we’re expected to be on patrol six days a week. No bounties on the wights we kill. But I ain’t sure how much choice we got, seeing how he also banned us from hunting in the wood. And he hinted he might like to hang us for poaching. Hang me, anyway.”

  “Bloody buggers and bastards,” Mara spat. “Even at the edge of the bleeding world, the bloody Grays are always there to give you a crooked turn.”

  “The Gray can’t stretch a neck that’s a hundred miles away,” said Big Odd.

  Blind Tom nodded. “Might be we’ve worn out our welcome, Caleb. We could follow the edge of the forest north, see if the Andermen need someone to kill their wights. We could find a ship sailing for Amura and do the same. I always wanted to see the South.”

  “Bugger the Gray, Caleb,” Mara said. “If he wants a milk nurse for his scavs he can bloody well suckle them himself.”

  “The bounties are good, here,” Thorn said. “At least they were. Back in the world, folks are starving in the fields, all except for the Grays. There’s talk of another war between Krace and Anderland, with both sides just waiting to see which way Castien goes. We’ve had it good here. Life could get pretty hard if we leave.” When it did, they’d be looking to him for their next meal. Their eagerness to make a change would be long forgotten.

  “Harder than hunting the ruins?” said Mara. “I don’t see it. If there’s to be war in the north, we’ll go south, like Blind Tom said.”

  “We’d never be able to come back. We’d be fugitives.”

  “Fugitives, where? Between here and Trevi, maybe. Beyond that, you won’t find many who’ve ever heard of Lord Viorno and even fewer that care.” Mara looked at him, her eyes imploring. “The world is wide, Caleb. I’d like to see a piece of it.”

  Blind Tom sighed. “Hunting wights in the Greenwell ain’t a great way to live, but at least a man is free. Take that away and there’s easier ways to live.”

  Big Odd nodded. “Easier ways to die.”

  Thorn looked up from his cup to see a scav approaching their table. Unlike Lord Viorno, a man who might have been a hundred but looked forty, the scav was probably forty and looked a hundred. Most of his hair had fallen out, but what remained was a dull gray produced by hard life and a never-ending supply of stone dust. Deep crags lined his face and savage wrinkles crisscrossed his neck and throat like scars from the lash. He held a greasy woolen hat and twisted it nervously in his hands. “Beggin’ your pardons, masters…and, uh, m’lady.”

  Thorn saw Mara’s body tense up and her face flush red. He knew she didn’t much care to be called a lady, most likely because she didn’t think she was one. He didn’t want to see the old scav take a public beating from an angry woman. “What do you want?” he said. “This is a private meeting.”

  The scav bobbed his head. “It’s just, my friends and I couldn’t help overhearing what you were deliberatin’ on.” He gestured behind him to the table he’d come from, but Thorn noticed the other scavs’ attention was on everything but the bounty-hunters. “The name’s Jem, and I’m a scavenger—we all are—as I guess you probably know. The thing is, we’d be eager to offer a bounty on any wights you take in the ruins. We can’t offer a whole mark like the lord does…er, did, I reckon…but we could give you a quint for a set o’ teeth. We were thinking that, plus whatever the Gray is giving, might make it worth your while.”

  Thorn nodded and looked around the table. “That’s a fair offer, friend,” he said. His crew didn’t seem as enthusiastic about it, but they didn’t have the sense for business he did.

  “There was some old boys in Sacerta when I was a younger man, made a living selling protection,” said Blind Tom. “You looking to move into a field less reputable than bounty-hunting, I reckon you could pick worse.”

  “We wouldn’t be forcing them to take our protection, nor threatening to do violence to them if they didn’t,” Thorn said. “It ain’t hardly the same thing. They’re asking for our help.”

  Mara sneered. “I can shit a quint if Old Nook puts too much spice in my food.”

  “In Sacerta, they paid them old boys more than that not to beat their wives or burn their shops down,” said Blind Tom.

  “Better to live in poverty than to die with an extra quint in your pocket,” said Big Odd.

  Thorn nodded once and then shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Jem. I understand you want to keep the wights off you, but we just ain’t the ones to do it.”

  The scav looked to his table and back at Thorn. He swallowed hard. “We could go as high as three quints for a wight,” he said.

  Thorn stood and stretched out his hand. “At three quints for the bounty,” he said, smiling, “we’re just the ones you’ve been waiting for.”