A Circle of Iron (Eldernost: Book 1)

by Greg Benage

  Chapter 2

  The broken tower hunched at the edge of a stone road that stretched from the ruined city to the western verge of the Greenwell, where it abruptly ended. Thorn imagined its builders reaching the edge of the great wood and deciding there was no point in going any farther. From what he’d seen of the rest of the world, they might have been right.

  Blind Tom said the tower and road both had been ancient when the Old Empire was born. In ages past, the tower would have guarded the western approach to the city. Its former glory faded and forgotten, it now served as the only inn to be found in the boomtown that had sprung up at the edge of the ruined city of Eldernost. The establishment was called the Duck, for the simple reason that someone had spiked a wooden mallard into the masonry above the entrance. Thorn had never met anyone would could recall when this had been accomplished, who was responsible, what it might signify or how the guilty party had come into possession of a wooden mallard.

  The bounty-hunters sat at a long table crudely built from wooden planks and bearing the scars of iron knives and heavy tankards. If they could not be found sitting at this table, day or night, it was only because they had run out of sufficient funds to do so, and had been forced into the Greenwell to collect another bounty. Thorn judged it the best spot in the taproom. It was near the wall, along a stretch that remained in sufficient repair to keep the elements off of them. It was close enough to the great hearth to stay warm when the winter chill set in, but not so close as to be baked alive. And it offered a clear angle to the stairs a drunken patron was required to navigate to reach the common sleeping area on the second floor.

  None of them spoke. Thorn never had much to say after returning from the forest. He wasn’t sure whether his friends shared his preference for silence or simply followed his lead. There would be time for chatter in the coming days, but for now, he merely wanted to relax and enjoy the pleasant sensation of being alive. He rested an elbow on the table and smoked his pipe and tried very hard to think about nothing.

  “Caleb Thorn!” It was a man’s voice raised above the din of the evening crowd. By his tone, it was a man who thought himself quite important. Thorn ignored it and blew a ragged smoke ring at Mara, who scowled and waved the vapors away from her face.

  Thorn heard several feet, heavy-shod, march across the room towards them. Still he did not turn. “Thorn,” the man said again, this time right behind him. “The Lord of Eldernost demands an audience.”

  “I’d encourage him to take up the lute,” Thorn said. “They say the pipes are easier to master, but I never met a piper I didn’t want to hit. Everybody likes a lute.”

  Mara chuckled, and there was a moment of confused silence from the newcomers. The soldier cleared his throat. “He demands an audience with you.”

  Finally, Thorn shifted on the bench and looked at the speaker. He was a man-at-arms, younger than Thorn but old enough not to be green, and dressed in the livery of Lord Viorno. He’d heard the soldier’s name a hundred times and couldn’t have called it to mind if someone was torturing him for it. “If I were looking for myself,” he said, “I’d probably check the Duck.”

  “What if you were looking for yourself and you got lost?” said Big Odd.

  The soldier looked at Odd and back at Thorn. Then his right hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “My lord wants to talk to you. I’ll either escort you to him, or drag you there in chains.”

  Thorn sighed. He drained the last of the ale from his wooden cup and set it back on the table. “I’ll have the escort if those are the choices,” he said, swinging his legs over the bench.

  He led the soldiers out and walked down the road to the large red pavilion where Lord Viorno resided on those rare occasions when he visited the town. It was still more of a camp than a proper town, by Thorn’s reckoning, and the Duck was its only permanent structure. With the exception of the tower, a man could choose between some manner of tent or shanty if he needed something over his head. By those modest standards, the lord’s pavilion was a palace. Thorn was just glad Viorno hadn’t confiscated the Duck.

  His escort relieved him of his weapons, or at least the ones they could find, and prodded him inside. The pavilion was richly decorated for a house and downright opulent for a tent. There were heavy carpets laid down on plank flooring, a large, ornately carved desk and chair, a couple of campaign chests and a longchair that—in Thorn’s opinion—commanded an uncertain and somehow feminine territory between a chair and a cot. There were side tables, hanging lamps, seating for distinguished guests and a tree for the lord to hang his armor on, if he had any.

  Thorn moved into the center of the tent and stopped without needing to be told at the dirtiest and most well-worn spot on the carpet. He bowed, and thought it probably wasn’t shallow enough to get him hanged. “My lord,” he mumbled.

  Lord Viorno was a Gray—that much was obvious at a glance. His hair was an unnatural silver and the eyes that peered out from dark hollows were an eerie golden hue that appeared to be lit from within. The lord’s olive skin was creased enough that he clearly wasn’t a young man, but beyond that it was anyone’s guess. He might have been forty or a hundred. With the alchemical treatments his wealth and status afforded him, age had become irrelevant. The only trick was that the medicine called for a lot of magic, and the world didn’t have much left to give.

  But that, of course, was why a boomtown had risen from nothing but a broken tower on the edge of a ruined city so ancient only alchemists and wizards claimed to know its name. It was about the magic. It was about extracting enough of the stuff from the stone, and the earth, and the trees that Grays like Viorno could dance with immortality.

  Thorn, who had no particular fear of death but also no particular fondness for the finitude of life, was intensely envious.

  The Gray watched him for a moment without speaking. “You are a bounty-hunter,” he said finally.

  Thorn wasn’t sure if it was a question or not, so he just nodded.

  “You hunt wights,” Viorno said, and then continued before Thorn could nod again. “I’m told, despite any appearances to the contrary, that you are the best wight-hunter in Eldernost.”

  “My crew is. Are. The best wight-hunters, I mean.” Thorn didn’t like where the conversation was heading. If he knew anything about Grays, it was that nothing good ever came of one noticing you. For the Grays, a man who was good at making money was a good man to tax.

  “I would like you to collect bounties for me,” Viorno said.

  “I already do that, m’lord. It’s your decree that put bounties on wights, and I expect the gold I earn comes out of your coffers one way or the other.” Thorn winced. He sounded like he was begging for a tax.

  “You hunt the Greenwell?”

  “I go where the wights are, and they tend to be in the wood.”

  “You hunt around the timber camps, then?”

  Thorn shook his head. “Used to. Don’t any more.”

  The Gray arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Too many wights. Bounty-hunting works on the idea that you can find one wight, trick him and then bleed him out before he realizes he’s been tricked. The wights don’t seem to care for your timber camps, and they come after them in packs. Sometimes more, in, uh…”

  “Waves?”

  “Yeah, there you go. And waves of wights aren’t really the sort of thing a bounty-hunter goes looking for. Like I said, better to find one alone in the wood.”

  Viorno nodded. “Why do you suppose I’ve placed bounties on wights, Master Thorn?”

  Thorn shrugged. “I guess you don’t like wights. I’ve no fondness for them either, so I’m selling as long as you’re buying.”

  “In fact, I don’t like them because they raid my timber camps and my ruins, they feed on my loggers and scavengers, and every one they kill is like a gold mark plucked from my coffers.”

  “I’d say you got a legitimate grievance with the wights, m’lord.”

  “And yet, you
take my gold and hunt for wights in the middle of nowhere—not the ones that are preying on my timber camps or marauding through the ruins, feeding on every scav they see.”

  Thorn shifted uncomfortably. “I guess a wight I take in the wood is one won’t be troubling your loggers or scavs.”

  “I disagree, Master Thorn. I consider such a bounty a waste of money…my money, which, between us, is the only money I really care about. Henceforth, bounty-hunting in the Greenwell is banned. Should you violate this prohibition, you will be hanged.”

  “What about the timber camps?” Thorn said. He’d promised his crew they’d never hunt the camps again, but maybe they could devise a new strategy to more effectively isolate the wights there.

  “I’ve made other arrangements to secure my logging operations. My chief concern is the ruins.”

  “So you’re saying I can only collect a bounty if I hunt the ruins.”

  “I am indeed, Master Thorn. I also expect you to spend six days of every week there. Your current practice of going out once every month, or less, does not suit my needs. For this service, I will pay you one gold mark per month.”

  “Plus the bounties on the wights we take?”

  The Gray smiled and shook his head. “This retainer will replace the bounties.”

  Thorn’s eyes narrowed. “We make that much taking a single wight.”

  “You did,” Viorno said. “I’m restructuring your compensation.”

  Thorn bowed his head and sighed. “I’m not the right man for the job. I don’t know the ruins—I know the wood. In the Greenwell, Blind Tom’s dog can sniff out a wight, and it’s just a matter of getting close enough for it to chase you. In the ruins, could be a wight lurking in every shadow and it’d be wiping your blood off its chin before you even knew it was there. And there’s hundreds of scavs working the stone on any particular day. My little crew can’t keep the wights off them all.”

  “That’s why I’m sending my wizard with you. He has studied with the Schoolmen and knows well the lore of Eldernost.” Viorno gestured to a figure standing to the right of his chair in the shadows at the back of the tent.

  “Your wizard, m’lord?” said Thorn, squinting.

  The figure stepped out of the shadows and revealed itself. Lord Viorno’s wizard was fat. Thorn guessed he had to go three hundred pounds, at least. He was also young, just into his twenties if Thorn was any judge. The man was pale and pasty, and what hair he had hung lankly on his lumpy skull.

  “I am Quinix,” the man said, bowing.

  “Okay,” said Thorn.

  “Quinix will be your guide in Eldernost,” Viorno said, “and with his assistance, you will protect my scavs from the blood-drinkers.”

  Thorn shook his head. He tried to do it in a way that looked regretful. “I expect your wizard is a font of knowledge, m’lord. And I’m sure you can find someone with a knack for fighting wights in the city, but it ain’t me or my crew. I can do more good for you hunting the Greenwell, same as always.”

  “It wasn’t an offer, Thorn.” Viorno cocked his head to the side and frowned thoughtfully. Thorn didn’t like the looks of it. “I’m told you spend days, even weeks in the Greenwell on your little hunts. Is that true?”

  “I guess so,” Thorn said. “We don’t spend any more time in the wood than we have to, but sometimes it takes awhile to track and hex a wight so we can put it down.”

  Viorno nodded. “And what do you eat when you are in the field?” The Gray continued before Thorn could answer. “I have witnesses who will attest to your taking game from the wood. Are you aware the Greenwell is my demesne and that poaching is punishable by hanging?”

  Thorn swallowed. Part of him was amused by Viorno’s claim to the vast forest. His ancestral lands were miles away, near Orsina, but some duke or king had given him Eldernost and the surrounding land, as if it was theirs to give. It struck Thorn as a claim several thrones and every living wight would dispute. On the other hand, the Gray didn’t need much reason to hang him, if he needed any at all. “I’d love to become acquainted with your witnesses, m’lord, since the only ones other than my crew I ever saw in the wood were blood-drinkers.” He paused, thinking it through. “All the same, if I’m reading the situation correctly, you’ll hang me if I hunt anywhere but the ruins, and you’ll hang me for poaching if I don’t hunt in the ruins. That about the shape of it?”

  Lord Viorno smiled. “I will expect your regular patrols of Eldernost to commence at first light.”