Thorn the Bounty Hunter in The Amber Bones

by Brom Kearne

3

  The Bradenfield Province was the largest of the provinces that comprised the Free Lands. It extended from the Haebeen Valley to the east, across the Old Foss and all the way out to the Western Frontier. The western borders of the province weren’t defined as the territory wasn’t fully explored yet, but the general idea was that the Bradenfield Province extended all the way indefinitely. As the far western side of the province was sparsely populated there were few to contest the claim, and those that did were easily dismissed by a powerful legislature intent on nailing down a claim for as much raw property and undiscovered resources as possible.

  Herrickstead was a small town, but it was very important as it was the settlement located the furthest west of the entire province. Bradenfield wanted Herrickstead as a launching point for further explorations west, and Herrickstead already thought of themselves as their own province, sharing little in common with their government far to the east. So far there had been increasing friction between the two sides, but no violence as most of the citizens of the Western Frontier practiced civil disobedience and Bradenfield simply didn’t have the manpower to police them into compliance.

  The Fiann bordered on the north and represented all the land to the northeast, including the rich resources of the Gorges Linger Mountains and the headwaters of the Old Foss. Spen’s Span bordered on the south and southeast. It was here that the Old Foss emptied into the sea via the Dearwere Delta at Level Shore.

  The Haebeen Valley, where the town of Bradenfield was located, was encircled by the Saelie River to the north and the Rush Willow Tributary to the south, both of which emptied into the Old Foss. The Haebeen Valley boasted some of the richest farmland in the Free Lands, although very little of it was in use anymore. Years ago John Braden had settled his abnormally large family into the valley and began farming. It wasn’t long before a robust trading community sprang up around them, making his family the wealthiest in the Free Lands. Unfortunately, he was not without his vices, and his greatest was a love for cards and dice. Over the course of his life he lost vast fortunes of money, although his losing streaks were punctuated by some phenomenal successes. He won all of the land west of the Old Foss in a poker game one night with a full house. The deed, if you want to call it that, securing his claim over the property was carved into the very table at which the poker game was played. Hattie Dan, the original owner of the property, had nothing left to his name, not even parchment to write on, and so as collateral, during one last desperate hand of cards, he had carved ownership of the entire Western Frontier into that table. Upon having his flush trumped by John Braden’s full house he had killed himself with that same knife, or so the story goes. Regardless, that table was enshrined in the capital of Bradenfield along with the rest of the important documents relating to the size and shape of the territory. There was some grumbling among the non-legal classes that the land of the Western Frontier was never Hattie Dan’s to begin with, although those grumblings were quickly silenced as nearly every legal scholar and politician with an interest in the Western Frontier were in complete agreement on this one point, and the carvings of a desperate and drunk man were as good as any bona fide legal document when it came to ownership of the property.

  Despite John Braden’s few gambling successes he followed a trajectory of loss until the day he died. His family was unable to pay off the massive debts he had accrued, and so they got very little from his will. Almost the entirety of his estate wound up in the hands of lawyers, bankers, and politicians who each carved out a share over which they continue to squabble to this day.

  The Braden family’s power faded into obscurity, although it remains one of the most common names in and around the province. Each member of the family holds a bit of pride that it’s their name on the town and the provincial charters, and within each of their breasts lingers the faintest of futile hope that someday their rightful property will be returned to them and they’ll enjoy the power that they once wielded.

  Thorn lived in the far western reaches of the Western Frontier, about a half hour drive from Herrickstead. He had not been born in the Free Lands. He was born in the walled Collective City, known to the people of the Free Lands as Crimson City, located in the wastelands east of Bradenfield. It was a city with vastly advanced technology compared to the Free Lands and was entirely enclosed within great walls of hedrous crystal. In the early morning as the sun just peaked over the horizon to the east, the rays glinted through the crystal walls and made what appeared to be an earthbound crimson star that could be seen as far as the far reaches of the Western Frontier. It was for this reason that the city had come to be called Crimson City. Thorn was, to his knowledge, the only person who had ever escaped its oppressive confines, and as such he had had enough of organized civilization to last a lifetime. He lived by himself in the woods in the unpopulated and undefined border of the Western Frontier and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The sun was setting over the horizon and had bathed the yellow landscape in deepening red. Thorn was sitting on the rocky earth with his back propped against the wheel of his buggy. He had found a place to camp under a rocky outcropping that would provide shelter from the night winds as well as shield his camp fire from the eyes of pirates. He was boiling coffee while he munched on cornbread and finished a plate of beans.

  After a quick stop at Ned Best’s general store in Herrickstead for supplies, including food for himself and fuel for his buggy, he’d been driving since he left Marshal Wolcott’s office that morning. From Herrickstead it was about a day’s drive to Crooked Crag. Arnold Keech was chaotic and Thorn didn’t want to give him a chance to move on. Sometimes he roved around, causing chaos and destruction as he meandered from one place to another, and sometimes he stayed put and tormented one town in particular for days at a time. But even if he had moved on at least he would have left an easy trail to follow. Thorn stopped for the night when he figured he was about an hour outside of Crooked Crag.

  Thorn had been a rambunctious brat when he had first come out of Collective City ten years ago as a young man of sixteen. He had been every bit as chaotic and destructive as Arnold Keech, although Thorn had turned most of his destructive tendencies inwards instead of outwards. He had been an adrenaline junky always looking for that next high. He got into endless fights and more often than not he got his butt kicked. He hadn’t been fighting to win though. He had been fighting to experience the thrill of combat and the thrill of being moments from death. Many times had he been beaten to within an inch of his life only to laugh and spit blood in the face of his opponent.

  It was not until he had gained a few years, and a little bit of hard-won wisdom, that he began the long and painful journey of growing up. But those early years had toughened him. He had a high pain tolerance and could take a beating like no other. And he had picked up a few fighting techniques along the way that became of monumental help when he had taken up bounty hunting. Though he usually claimed he was in the bounty hunting profession for the money, that wasn’t entirely true. Thorn’s needs were small and what money he had usually slipped through his fingers like water. He had survived for years with having little to nothing to his name. No, it was the thrill of the hunt that had attracted him. When he was bearing down on his prey he felt an adrenaline high in anticipation of the coming fight that he simply loved. He had mostly outgrown his days of getting his butt intentionally kicked in bar fights in order to feel the rush of being alive. Now he found that feeling in hunting down others, in testing his skills and determination against theirs, and in winning.

  His coffee boiled and he poured some into a tin cup which he held against his lips. He didn’t drink it yet, but savored the aroma and the warmth against the cooling night air.

  As much as he lived for the adrenaline of the hunt, he also enjoyed these peaceful moments on the trail, especially on the eve of a confrontation with someone as dangerous as Arnold Keech. Tomorrow night, assuming everything else went well, he’d be busted up, bruised, bloody,
and hurting. But tonight everything was peaceful and calm. Thorn took a deep breath of the sweet night air. It was arid and cool and easy to breathe, especially after the heat of the day. Thorn had worked up a sweat driving his buggy over the ragged terrain in the broiling sun. It felt good to enjoy the evening.

  Leaning against his tire made Thorn think of Marshal Wolcott’s confrontation with that fellow from Bradenfield earlier today and that brought a smile to Thorn’s face. His tires were definitely bigger than the allowed twelve inches. But Marshal Wolcott was right. There was no way he could have traversed this terrain with anything smaller. The trade caravans made and maintained the roads but those only existed for the established trade routes. Most of the time there was no road.

  His buggy was liquid fueled as opposed to most engines which were solid. They ran on what was colloquially known as slop fuel, which was a mixture of anything organic like grease, oil, and animal fat. Specialists bought it up and refined it into brownish cubes of quivering jelly. Slop engines were fine for work and town travel but Thorn hated them. Solid fuel was messy and gunked up the engines over time, robbing them of horsepower. Liquid fuel was more expensive and ran a higher risk of being watered down, so to speak, by dishonest fuel cookers, but on the other hand it allowed for larger engines and more horsepower. Thorn usually bought his fuel locally from people he knew and trusted so he didn’t have to worry about overpaying for a bad batch.

  Rich Tanning was Thorn’s mechanic who had built his buggy. All buggies in the Free Lands were custom. Bradenfield had been pushing hard for regulations on the size, shape, and fuel consumption of buggies, but so far they had only met with slight success. With so many different people designing buggies, and not all of them located within the province of Bradenfield, it was difficult to regulate their manufacture. As such, they had contented themselves, for the time-being at least, to regulating the one aspect of them that they could, and that was the tires.

  Thorn’s buggy had independent suspension with thirty-four inch tires on A-beam arms that angled outwards for greater stability on the toughest terrain. Thorn had screwed a pair of headlamps into the top of the cage for night travel. They were powered, as was everything electrical in the Free Lands, by a piezo-pump utilizing either the quartz crystals from the surrounding landscape or the more expensive, and more powerful, hedrous crystals. The passenger seat had a locking wire cage for transporting bounties.

  Thorn set aside his coffee tin and laced his fingers behind his head. The sun had mostly sunk behind the hills now and the sky was turning purple from the east. It was a beautiful sight as the stars began to show through the haze of vanishing light.

  Arnold Keech was waiting for him tomorrow. Waiting to test him. No, that wasn’t right. Thorn was testing himself. He sought out these challenges. He craved the adrenaline rush of battle when the consequences were high. He sought out situations that put him against a do-or-die scenario to test if he could survive. But that was tomorrow. Right now all he cared about was enjoying the night and listening to the coyotes barking in the distance.

  Thorn had drifted into a light snooze when he was startled awake by an artificial grinding noise. He was quick to bounce into an alert crouched stance, listening. The fire had burnt down to glowing orange embers. The moon was rising in the sky bathing the dunes in silver. Thorn’s camp was in shadow. He crawled up one of the rocks providing him shelter, lying flat when he had a good view of the area around him. On the road some distance from himself he beheld an awesome sight.

  It was a trade caravan. An armored transport led the way, lumbering along on giant treads. It was over thirty feet high. Soft orange lights were visible through slits ringing the upper and lower decks, each with an electric or pulse cannon poking through. Armed and armored guards patrolled the uppermost deck, gazing over the silent dunes through binoculars. Another armored transport identical to the first brought up the rear.

  Between these two armored transports were three shorter but wider ones. They were connected to one another with couplings. These transports were crowned with the amenities for a luxurious and very comfortable lifestyle. On the first was a well-kept garden complete with a grape trellis, fountains, and a dining area. The second had a large bath made of stone. People were reclining in it enjoying the night air. Thorn imagined that bath had to be heated, as it was quite cold tonight. The third car had an outdoor bar with music that Thorn could faintly make out over the grinding of the treads. This third one was the most crowded. People were socializing and drinking, dancing and laughing.

  Although the light was too low for Thorn to make out the color of the flags he recognized them by their emblem. It was a tree and a dove. This was the Browning Trade Family. Those flags, if seen during the light of day, were deep brown. The tree and the dove were woven from gold thread. The caravans lumbered over the countryside as a mobile town, stopping at predetermined cities and towns to set up a shopper’s paradise for a few days before moving on to the next one. You could find just about anything for sale at a trade caravan. The heavy armor and excessive weaponry had arisen out of necessity due to attacks from pirates and bandits. With the amount of wealth contained within those transports, they certainly needed whatever protection they could get. And they could afford a lot of protection.

  It was heading west, opposite the direction Thorn was traveling. Thorn surmised that it was heading out to Herrickstead from Tabor’s Hollow. Thorn watched until the last vehicle was past then crawled down from the rock. He unpacked his sleeping bag from his buggy and unrolled it on the hard ground beside the embers of the fire. He was asleep within minutes.