Chapter 54: Fate of Maren
The first supply crossing after the thaw came over the Darwen Span on the ninth day of the month.
It brought grain, oil, bandages, four hundred feet of rope, and two masons who had come to inspect the Span. They were supposed to stay for a week, though neither seemed to understand the bridge well enough to explain what they were looking for.
It also brought news.
Encrid heard it at the tally window.
He was standing in the cold with a slate in his hands, doing something he had started doing himself rather than believing in reports - to personally count the first supply crossing of the year.
He wasn’t actually trying to listen.
He simply had the good fortune of being a clerk holding a slate.
On the Wall, that made him part of the furniture.
"...and there’s no ridge road now. Not for us. You have to go around by Maren estate. That’s another day and a half."
"Go around from where? The ridge road has been there since my father was driving carts."
"The road is still there."
The first speaker was an older merchant with a scarf wrapped twice around his neck.
"It’s the ridge that’s the problem. There’s a commission sitting there. The White Griffin Knights are standing guard at both ends, and a clerk in the middle surrounded by a chest full of papers. They stop every wagon and ask where you were last autumn."
Encrid kept his eyes on his slate.
He wrote down a number that wasn’t even on any of the wagons.
"That’ll be the Maren business," the younger merchant said.
"That’ll be the Maren business."
"I heard it was finished. By midwinter, I heard."
"The hanging is finished. The investigation isn’t."
The older merchant spat onto the frozen ground.
"They’re going through ten years of records. Every account, every levy, every coin that house ever spent. There’s some guild fellow down there getting fat matching cargo lists against what they found in that fort."
He gave a bitter laugh.
"Every time he finds a match, somebody else’s cousin gets arrested."
He shook his head.
"Fifteen years I ran the ridge. Four of my drivers disappeared along that road. House Maren sent me a lovely letter every time. Promised they’d increase the patrols."
He laughed again.
"More patrols. I paid them a toll to rob me, then thanked them for the escort."
"What happened to the son?"
The conversation stopped.
The silence lasted long enough that Encrid looked up despite himself.
"He was hanged in his own yard," the older factor said.
His voice had become quieter.
"In front of his household."
He shifted his feet.
"They even carried his father out to watch. The old man had been dying in bed for two years, but the commission decided he was part of it."
He paused.
"It seems the Duke wanted the North to know what it cost."
The younger merchant swallowed.
"They say the old man didn’t even understand what was happening."
"Gods."
"The house is finished. Its name, its lands, all of it. There is no House Maren anymore."
The older factor paused.
"There’s a stone up on the ridge now, where the old fort used to stand. The names of everyone who disappeared on that road are carved into it, with a white griffin at the top."
He rubbed his hands together against the cold.
"The Duke paid for it with money from the Maren estate before he broke the estate apart."
He looked toward the road.
"That’s the only part of the whole affair that means anything to me, if I’m honest."
The younger man said something too quietly for Encrid to hear. The factor looked at him.
"Because my drivers are on that stone."
His voice was quieter now.
"All four of them. I’ve been up there to see it myself."
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Encrid was a bit overwhelmed by the information he had learned. Although he was the one who started it - to think the duke would eradicate an entire household because of that - it was quite surprising and also a realization of the power of the Gannons.
But that was a matter that didn’t concern him since he was at the Wall - a man at the Wall doesn’t think about being afraid beyond the span.
As he came back, he brought along a book from the crossing.
The second wagon carried a bookseller’s crate, and Encrid realized he hadn’t held a proper book in four months.
It was a bestiary.
The only book in the entire crate that wasn’t written for children.
It was a cheap southern copy, badly bound, with a title that promised far more than the book actually delivered.
A True Accounting of the Beasts of the Northern Green, With Their Habits.
Encrid read it that night beside the stove, and he arrived at a conclusion as he read it.
’It’s rubbish.’
He enjoyed it enormously.
Whoever had written that book had clearly never traveled farther north than the Riven.
The Reevers Encrid had seen were lean, long-limbed creatures with dark fur, narrow heads, and hooked claws made for tearing through flesh. They moved in packs and were about as noble as a starving wolf.
The book described them as noble creatures, guardians of the forest that hunted only when necessary.
Encrid stared at the page for a moment.
’Right.’
Stoopers were worse.
He had seen them before. Short, hunched creatures with thick arms, crooked backs, and long fingers that dragged near the ground when they walked. They were ugly, aggressive things that liked to lurk near the stakes and test the watchmen’s patience.
The book claimed they performed an elaborate courtship dance during mating season.
Encrid was fairly certain the author had invented that on the spot.
Then he reached the Gorehorn.
He knew exactly what one looked like.
A massive beast with a thick, muscular body, four powerful legs, and a pair of horns that curved forward from its skull like hooked blades. Even from a distance, it looked like something that could tear a man in half.
The woodcut in the book looked like an angry cow.
Encrid stared at it for several seconds.
Then he turned the page.
’Definitely rubbish.’
The section on cores was better.
Mostly because it was the sort of thing every person in the Empire already knew.
A roamer developed a core the way a tree developed a ring.
Very slowly.
Developing a single core was rare to find, and a second core only appeared if the creature lived long enough.
Cores were the reason anyone bothered hunting roamers at all.
A Level One core found in the woods near a village could pay a farmer’s taxes.
A Level Three core could pay for the farm itself.
Then at the back of the book, he found another section.
Creatures of Legend.
There wasn’t much written there.
Most of it was simply a list of names-beasts that had existed in old records, legends that had survived for centuries, and creatures that no living person had ever seen.
Then one word caught his attention.
Dragons.
Encrid paused.
The moment he saw the word, a large part of the novel’s plot came rushing back to him.
Dragons were important.
Very important.
There were several events in the novel that revolved around them, and Encrid couldn’t simply ignore them.
As he stared at the page, a ridiculous thought suddenly crossed his mind.
’What if I make a connection with a dragon?’
He remained silent for a moment.
If he actually managed to make contact with a dragon, the narrative value of his existence would shoot through the roof.
He was at least aware of that much.
But meeting a Dragon was no easy task. Even if he knew where they were - at his level - he probably couldn’t even stand in the presence of one. He would probably die from its aura alone.
What’s more, Dragons were known to be very egoistic and feisty - he would be better off interacting with main characters than putting himself in such danger.
He stopped his train of thought and laughed.
Even to himself, the idea sounded absurd.
’Me? Make a connection with a dragon?’
He shook his head and brushed the thought aside.
It was nothing more than wishful thinking.
Encrid closed the book and placed it on the shelf above his cot, close enough that he could reach it without getting up.
Then he lay down and fell asleep.
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