Blood For Wages

2: Not a Living, But a Life

Torsten Gunn sat atop his courser and looked out over the rolling hill country. Slashed with craggy gullies and broken rock formations, the lush green grass rose to meet slopes of yellow gorse. Heather swayed like crowds of drunks in places; dusky purple and pigeon wing grey. Mist hung in dreamy swathes in the hollows. Never ceased to stir awe in him, the tribeland of Aldinfang, the place he used to call home. Wondered if that awe would ever leave him. Maybe when he died, but not before.

He looked over all these things, recalling the secret names he had concocted for them when he'd been a small boy. In the days when he ran wild over this heathland like a scrawny, pale ghost. Long before he'd met his beautiful wife, been blessed with his daughter, cursed by having had Cameron Gray cross his path, or taught himself the fine old Fallaros traditions of fighting, blackmailing and cattle-thieving.

From his vantage point, hidden in the dark green lee of a boulder as big as a crofter's hovel, Gunn could make out the road below; a discarded brown ribbon in all the greenish grey. His horse moved nervously under him. Jogged the hand that held a stub of charcoal. Sent a meandering black line across the tight verse of script already jotted down on the scrap of parchment in his other hand.

Gunn clicked his tongue in annoyance.

It was a fine-looking horse; dark as sin, with rear haunches that looked capable of stoving in a barn door. He'd taken it from a Aldinfang guard captain, who'd been leading a company of green-coated soldiery along a river gully that Gunn and his men had been hiding out by. Took it from the man after he'd had Boniface Woe gouge out all his fingernails and some of his teeth with a paring knife so that he'd tell them where and when the next tax caravan was coming through. The slobbering, crying captain had obliged––with some difficulty after the teeth. Gunn had rewarded him by sticking his sword slowly up under the man's sternum and twisting it, seeking for his rotten heart. Boni Woe had laughed and had thrown the teeth into the stream to lie with the other stones.

Gunn sighed gently through his nose, rubbing at his scrubby brown beard. He watched the white water of a different river running like molten light down the tor to his right. Jotted down another thoughtful line on the parchment.

The courser shifted again. As fine as the beast looked, Gunn had begun to think it had not the temperament for the outlaw life. It did not belong here, and things that did not belong could not be expected to survive.

Since Mai had gone on, Torsten had not felt like he really belonged anywhere. He wondered whether that meant he was long to persist in this world. He found he didn't much care.

He was a different man now. Lived a faster existence. Didn't dwell on whether any hour he spent now was better than any hour he could recall, because all the hours before he had last seen Mai were dead. All those memories that he had shared with her were gone too, because he no longer had her to share them with.

He heard hooves thudding on the springy turf, approaching.

"What you doin', boss?"

It was the new boy. The young lad that Gunn and his band had picked up after waylaying and raiding a bunch of unfortunate cattle drovers. They'd happened to spy the men and kine traversing a long brae a few miles east of an old Fangfolk garrison stronghold. Money and meat.

He was a nice-looking lad. Pale skin, with eyes the colour of dying milkwort flowers. His brows were drawn down in a scowl that didn't come close to disguising how wet behind the ears he was. He'd sued Gunn's band for mercy when they'd surrounded the kine and the drovers. Had begged and cried to be allowed to join up when he saw the older men choose to fight and die.

This was still an adventure to him. He hadn't figured that it was his life now. He still believed that Gunn had given him a gift when he had let him live and ride with the company. Hadn't deduced that what he might currently perceive to be a temporary mistake forced upon him would most likely turn into a lifelong regret.