Gareth Ashford's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

By midafternoon Thornwood could barely walk. The wound in his side bled through the cloth Gareth had bound. He stumbled on a root and went down to one knee. His breath came ragged. Gareth saw the gray in his face and knew the man would die on his feet before he complained. They were still a half day from the guild. Gareth made the call. His own camp was close, a lean-to of weathered timber near a cold fire ring. He hauled Thornwood toward it. Snikka walked ahead and scouted the trees. "You stop, you lose time," she said. "He stops now or he dies on the road," Gareth said. "Dead men pay less." They settled Thornwood on the worn bedroll under the shelter. Gareth built the fire back up and set water to boil. He peeled the old binding away and packed the wound clean. Thornwood watched him work with flat, steady eyes. "Why bother," Thornwood said. "You sell me either way." "Guild wants you breathing." Gareth tied the fresh cloth. "So you breathe." Thornwood was quiet a while. The fire popped. Then he spoke, low and plain. "You should know who you're walking toward. The lord who hired your guild. Harlow Grimwold." Gareth stilled. "Tell me." "He owns the forest. Every tree, every road." Thornwood coughed. "Poachers caught on his ground pay a fine. He works them till they've paid three times the timber's worth. None finish. When they die, the debt goes to their family." He met Gareth's eyes. "My men poached his deer to eat. That's why we hid in these woods. That's why we had nowhere else." Snikka crouched by the fire. "Forty guards," she said. "I've seen them on the eastern road. They don't take prisoners for ransom. They take them for work." Thornwood nodded. "The guild didn't tell you his name. They never do. You clear the road, you walk to his manor to collect. He pays you, or he finds a reason you owe him instead." He leaned back. "He hanged his own guard once for grumbling. Sent the man's family the bill." Gareth sat back on his heels. The coin for his village had felt close enough to touch. Now he saw the hand that held it. A lord who turned every debt into a chain. Gareth knew that kind of debt. It had buried his father under rent he could never outrun. "The bandits who ran," Gareth said slowly. "They saw my face." "Then Grimwold knows your name by now," Thornwood said. "He knows who cleared his road. He'll want to meet you." Gareth looked at the bound man he had meant to simply hand over. The bounty was no longer a clean trade. Walking to the manor meant walking into Grimwold's reach, where a payment could become a debt and a man could vanish into the woods to cut trees until he died. "Damn…That complicates things now." Gareth said. "I really need to save my village, but I can’t do it at the cost of another. Shoot!" Snikka watches Gareth’s emotional conflict and finds herself developing romantic feelings for him.