Chapter One (old)

Wren

The lulling sounds of midmorning in the forest outside the village were disrupted by shouts. My head ached as the man before me proclaimed his anger to the world. Headache days filled with pain regardless of all my efforts to stave it, but today was one of my worst in a long time. Dull throbbing at my temples demanded that I silence the man before me, but I couldn’t. At least, I couldn’t yet.

He hung upside down from his tightly bound ankles, dreadlocked hair hanging at odd angles as it struggled to align with the pull of gravity. The scent of unwashed human wafted from him and turned my stomach as he bobbed before me. Yellow and brown teeth appeared from behind his lips as he spewed curses up at me. With the increased pain and nausea, I was sorely temped to kick him in the face. It would not be wise move since he was still armed with a sorry looking sword and slashed at me as he spun.

I watched him fruitlessly flap and flail. Obviously not the brightest of men, I had yet to see why Lord Forgtrey was willing to part for twenty gold for this man’s life. It must be a pride thing. When the bounty was declared, the proclamation only made vague references to crimes against the noble’s property and a very cryptic mention of it being a matter of honor.

“Just wait until I get my hands on you,” he managed before lapsing into profanity again. A whole sentence, I noted with amusement; the first sentence that didn’t contain a foul word in nearly a minute.

I shall wait, I mused as he whipped violently, until the blood pooling to your head makes you more compliant. Then, we shall see who is going to do what.

Upon leaving home over a year ago, bounty hunting had seemed the logical choice for a career. I alone of all my siblings could track animals and people through just about any conditions. In the few situations that I had difficulty finding my prey, I could always use the aerial assistance of my falcons. They could find what I wanted once I managed to communicate my desires.

Well trained in physical defense and offensive weaponry, I did not fear men. I had four brothers after all and growing up, I held my own against them in a fight. If I couldn’t defend myself, I knew how to run and hide. I could hide in obvious places, blending into the scenery and becoming one with the trees or brush. Yes, bounty hunting seemed perfectly suited for my skills.

Now, after spending a year hounding desperate men, rightfully wanted by the law for their misdeeds and lack of respect for others, I was reconsidering my choice. A small part of me longed for home life. Waking for a few mornings in a row to the same roof, kneading bread at a great wooden table, listening to my sisters’ quiet movements and soft conversation, the images called to me. Homesickness crept through my stomach, adding ache to the nausea.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my work. I did. I enjoyed the challenge of finding and capturing the criminals. Many of the dozen conquests of the past year had been challenging, requiring tracking through all weather and over miles of terrain. This last one, however, had not been enough to keep my mind occupied as well as my body. The insolent, jabber-mouthed man hanging before me had been hiding with his family within twenty miles of Lord Forgtrey’s castle. He still used his own name, bragged about his exploits, and generally made an obvious fool of himself. Finding him had taken only a few inquiries.

Brone, my dark brown stallion, nickered, calling for attention. After all he was the one to holding the man in the air with the heavy rope still tied to his saddle. He stayed in place, but eyed me with his soft brown eyes, asking for me to come closer. He didn’t like this new prize because it made too much noise. I found I agreed. To soothe my discomfort, I reminded myself of the twenty gold that would soon join my little stash of savings.

I crossed to touch Brone’s silken brown nose. He greeted me with a huff of air and nuzzled my face. I spent a few moments leaning against his neck with my cheek to his gleaming coat as the man behind me continued his diatribe.

Then suddenly the ruffian ceased speaking. I lifted my head from Brone’s warmth as a disturbance in the air above announced the arrival of one of my falcons. Shea, a grey-brown gyr female, descended toward us. Landing gracefully on the limb supporting my dangling conquest, she cocked head so she could see me with one bright eye.

My gaze went to her bare leg and fear rose in my chest. There should have been a message from Arnan attached to her leg.

“That bird yours?” the thief asked. He looked up his length at the underside of Shea’s belly. “Is she going to relieve herself on me?” Apparently this new arrival was more interesting than insulting me.

I didn’t reply. Reaching into my saddle bags, I withdrew a heavy leather glove. I slipped it on and then signaled for Shea to approach. She obeyed with a lazy flap and a short glide, gripping my fist with her sharp talons as she landed. I almost laughed as she ruffled her feathers and then lay them down again with a smooth flap of her wings. She knew she had a new audience. A beautiful bird, though not as remarkable as Gavin or Iolani with their white plumage, she liked to show off for new audiences.

“A trained bird,” my captive surmised. I ignored him. Instead I turned my attention to finding out why my bird had returned without my message or a message from my brother. Of all of my siblings, I was the most worried about him and his last messages had given me nothing to comfort my fears for his life.

With no mark or clue on Shea, I wasn’t even sure that my letter had reached Arnan. If she had lost it, it was quite possible that she simply returned to me for another. The other option was that she had lost Arnan’s letter. Either way, there was no way of me knowing. Finally satisfied that she was unharmed and I could gain no more information from her, I released her with an upward throw. In a flurry of wings, she took to the sky and disappeared. She would hunt down a meal for herself and then return to me later this evening. By then, I would have a replacement letter for her to carry to my brother.

“Don’t you speak?” my prisoner demanded.

I spoke, just not to the likes of him. He wasn’t worth making small talk with; I would say something when I needed to, but not before. Instead, I took a length of stout cord from my saddle bags.

When I turned to face him, he looked slightly frightened. “What are you going to do?”

He waved his rusted weapon toward me, but the movement was slow and sloppy. Face scrunched in concentration, he tried to keep the weapon between me and him. But his grip was lax from lack of circulation, making it easy to kick his blade away and knocking it from his numbing fingers. Once it was out of his reach, I picked it up. A cheap weapon, off balance and badly made, it wasn’t worth saving. I tossed it into the bushes.

“Hey,” he protested. “That was mine.”

“Not anymore. Present your hands,” I ordered.

A sneer crossed his face. “You know, you aren’t a bad looking woman. Maybe we can come to an arrangement. You must get pretty lonely wandering about on your own.”

I didn’t honor his comment with a reply. “Present your hands.” Drawing one of my throwing daggers, I met his gaze with a cold glare. Understanding the threat, he meekly presented his hands. I swiftly tied them. Then retrieving the bounty collar from the ground where I had thrown it when removing the rope, I latched the heavy leather around his helpless neck. Its presence declared my claim on the bounty.

“I will refuse to walk.”

“You won’t need to,” I replied.

After wrapping a rope around his arms so that his upper arms were strapped to the sides of his chest and then binding his ankles, I returned to Brone. Together, we lowered him to the ground. I noted with mild pleasure that he ended up laying face first in the dirt. He protested loudly as I wound up the rope that had snared him, flopping in the dirt like a dying fish. Then after stowing it in the saddlebags, I led Brone over to stand beside the thief. Lifting him onto my stallion’s back took some work, but after a few minutes of complaining and groaning on his part, I got him settled.

Brone didn’t like his new burden. He kept looking back at me with pleading eyes.

“It is only until we reach town,” I assured him, rubbing his neck. “Then we will be rid of him for good and I will treat you to a night in a real stable, with a carrot and everything.”

Brone liked the idea. He tossed his head, which caused our captive to unleash a whole new flavor of foul words, taking God’s name in vain. I suddenly had my fill.

“Enough,” I said. Reaching over, I grabbed his head by the disgustingly matted hair that covered it. Yanking his chin up so his throat was exposed and his neck hurt, I drew my knife again. “Be thankful that the price on your head is for your living body. Now, cease the venom or I shall gag you.” I wouldn’t have killed him, but he didn’t need to know that.

An abrupt silence followed. I heaved a sigh of relief. Hopefully that was enough to guarantee a quiet walk into town. If not, I would gag him with the smelliest rag I could find.

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Arthus

”Arthus Heaton, ya old trickster.”

I looked up from my bowl of ale and trencher of stew to behold the bloodshot gaze of a brawny blacksmith. It took me a moment to recognize Argan Romer, a fellow retired soldier.

“Staying here at the Leaping Hart?” he asked as he hefted his wooden leg over the bench and sat down. I watched him run his hand over the bald crown of his head and through the fringe of greasy gray hair that skirted the back of his scalp from ear to ear. When I had last seen him, his head had been so full of hair that we christened him Thatch.

“Aye,” I replied.

“What brings ya here?”

“The same thing that brings the rest of these ruffians.” With a slight motion of my fingers, I included the other occupants of the room. A rough and ugly group, they clung to the shadows, hiding their scarred and dirty faces from the wenches that served them. Very few were like me, brave enough to sit out in the open and enjoy the warmth of the fire. “I am answering the summons for bounty hunters that Lord Forgtrey sent out.”

“I do recall you mentioning bounty hunting before we were discharged. Has the trade treated you well?” he asked.

“Well enough. I have means to live on and food to eat. And you?” I asked before filling my mouth with stew. The thick gravy made its savory course down my throat, warming me from the inside out. I wasn’t about to tell Thatch that I hadn’t caught a bounty in a month. The cost of this meal and my room depleted my carefully horded savings into oblivion.

“Ah, I am content.” He leaned back and smiled at me. He had lost some of his teeth since I had last seen him. “I have a good woman to warm my bed, two little ones to carry on my name, work to occupy my hands and put bread on the table, and good friends to fill the long winter months with talk. Aye, I am content.”

“Time has been good to you,” I observed.

“You should come and meet the missus,” Thatch offered. “She can make us dinner. I am telling you, Art.” He rested his work roughened hand on his slight protruding belly and smiled. “She can cook like an angel. You must experience it. Come for supper tonight.”

Before I could accept or decline the invitation, a shout caught my attention. My hand instinctively went to my sword before I remembered that I had left it in my prepaid room. I still had my knife in my boot, but it didn’t look like I needed it. The disturbance wasn’t within the inn.

“What do you mean this is your bounty?” an angry male voice hollered from outside the inn. The sound floated in through the open door. I joined the other patrons at the great windows and then blinked to be sure that I was not hallucinating.

“Do you see what I see?” Thatch asked as he elbowed my side.

Malron Roark, the notoriously unscrupulous bounty hunter, stood in the street outside holding the upper arm of a bound man. A standard bounty collar of heavy leather with a leading ring and strap encircled the captured man’s neck. Another person standing just out of my sight held the lead. It appeared that one of them was attempting to steal the bounty on the prisoner’s head from the other.

Malron Roark was a nasty brute. Rumor had it that he had sold his siblings into slavery when their parents died. Anyone who challenged him was considered a dead man, which frequently since Malron didn’t take kindly to not getting his own way. The two of us had met up last winter and he took a disliking to me. I had not tolerated his rudeness and he didn’t appreciate my intervention. In the end, he left, driven out by our noble hosts, while threatening to kill me.

I elbowed my way to the open door and promptly found myself echoing Thatch’s question to the man at my side.

“Aye, I do,” the man confirmed.

I looked again. A slender woman stood tall and defiantly glared at Malron. The lead to the prisoner wrapped tightly around her left fist and her right hand on the hilt of the dagger at her waist, she was clearly ready to defend her prize. I assumed that it was her prize because if it wasn’t, she was insane to challenge Malron.

“Your horse bit me. By law, I can demand compensation and I name this as my payment. He is my bounty now.” Malron tugged on the arm of the prisoner as the woman pulled on the lead. The prisoner went nowhere with a cry.

“He wouldn’t have bitten you if you hadn’t been trying to steal my gear. He had just cause to defend.” Her voice carried clearly. “I suggest you release my prisoner before you kill him and he is of no use to either of us.”

“If I cannot have him, why should I let him live?”

“For killing a bounty hunter’s bounty before he can make a delivery, the penalty is replacement. If you kill him, you will owe me his worth in gold.”

“Ah, but you are obviously not a he,” Malron pointed out with a leering glance down her body.

“The law speaks for woman as well as man. Release my prisoner or I shall have to take stronger measures.”

Malron laughed. “What are you going to do, set your horse on me?” He pulled on the prisoner’s arm.

A high pitched whistled rent the air, piercing through my head. All the men around me lifted their hands to their ears, but I didn’t. Instead I watched with fascination as a great white falcon appeared. After circling for a moment and narrowly missing Malron’s head, it landed on the woman’s leather covered shoulder. It turned its head and fixed Malron with one eye. Then it let out a call.

Malron frowned. “Do you think I am going to be afraid of a bird? I could fight him off with one hand.”

“It is a female and she will not be all you will have to contend with if you don’t comply.” The woman stuck her chin out in the direction of the roof above the inn. Consumed with curiosity, I pushed through the crowd, stepped out into the open, and looked up. Four more falcons of varying colors perched on the roof ridge among the thatch.

“Witch!” Malron spat at her as he stepped back, releasing his grip on the prisoner’s arm. “I will have you burned for witchcraft.”

“Only after you are hung for horse stealing,” the woman answered calmly.

“One thing I can say for her, she has nerve,” the innkeeper muttered from beside me.

“Who is she?” I asked.

The middle-aged man frowned up at me in surprise. “Where have you been that you haven’t heard of Wren Romany?”

“I have been in the mountains for a year chasing the Morantany gang.”

“Ah, that explains it. Wren only appeared around here about three months back. Rumor has it that she materialize for the first time a year ago somewhere near Caerdenn. Something about a family curse or something, but that part of the tale I think is just fantasy.”

“You mean she is a bounty hunter?” I turned to watch her gather her prisoner and herd him in the direction of Lord Forgtrey’s castle. The falcons had disappeared as quickly as they had appeared and her horse followed at her heels without lead or command.

“She cleaned up most of Lord Forgtrey’s list pretty quickly. This is the third bounty she has brought in this month.”

The number seemed a little unrealistic. Wanted men rarely stayed close to where there was a price on their head. To capture so many so fast seemed impossible; yet, if the innkeeper was to be believed, that is exactly what happened.

“I would be interested in talking to her.”

The innkeeper laughed. “You can try, but I bet three coppers that she will not say a word to ya. I can barely get a sentence and she sees me every time she comes into town. The last man who tried to engage her in conversation got pinned to the wall.”

“Well, that prisoner is going to bring her a sizable bounty and Malron isn’t going to let her walk away from that exchange. He will not be satisfied until he has brought her to public shame and if it increases his funds, it will be all the better. She is going to need protection.”

The innkeeper chuckled. “I would like to see ya try to tell her that.”

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Wren Romany
Rachel Rossano
© 2006