Recorded in the third moon after Thaw, current year, at the Charter Hall of Harrowgate, in the cold north highland, before the chartered posting-clerk and witnessed by the senior hunter-officer on duty.

Filed by: Melissa, called Threadscar, contractor of record.

Contract reference: Harrowgate posting-wall, bounty-row, first week of Thaw-moon; re-posted at the lockmaster’s crossing-house the following week after a second caravan-ambush was reported.

Issuing body: Charter Hall of Harrowgate under the standing bounty-wall authority, with funds contributed by the merchant-coalition of the upper Drynn route and by two tenant-estate treasuries whose hauliers had been taken on the stretch between Stone-Fork and the Upper Drynn pass.

Contract posting figure: forty silver for confirmed suppression of the band, kin-of-taken bounty-premium held separately on condition of living-retrieval which did not apply in this case.

—

I came to Harrowgate by caravan from the heartland, escorting a six-wagon train of copper-ware and winter-milled rye under standard hazard terms, arriving on the eighth day of the thaw-moon. The caravan-master paid out at the lockhouse the same night. I had meant to turn south inside three days. The posting-wall at the Charter Hall carried the bandit contract in the bounty-row; I read it against the regional intelligence I had heard on the road coming up—two caravans taken at ambush, one hauling-crew returned, one not—and decided the exposure was inside my working register. I took the contract the next morning before the dawn muster.

Six other contractors had signed by that time or signed with me. The crew was assembled and vouched by the tavern-keeper of the Long Board, who has stood vouch in Harrowgate for fourteen winters and whose vouch-record I know by reputation:

– Gresh, hyena-folk, short-sword and shield, caravan-escort and posted bandit-hunting in two previous corridor-seasons, rotating here by winter-emptied board

– Tulen, wolf-folk, scout and tracker, four years in the corridor-work, scent-sound on cold ground

– Rennek, boar-folk, polearm, older — the stiff-shouldered veteran of the group; I counted eight skirmish-seasons in his account when he read them out at the vouch

– Morn, human, crossbow and short-sword, second-rotation hire to Harrowgate, capable

– Auveth, badger-folk, hand-axe and throwing-blade, first-rotation of the thaw in this charter but steady vouch from a neighboring highland town

– Karn, corvid-folk, crossbow and long-range observation, a scout by preference, in his seventh winter on the boards

Seven of us, counting me. We assembled at the Long Board the following morning, confirmed share-terms at eight silver per share, and posted kin-of-record at the lockmaster’s ledger against the standard share-to-kin-on-dead clause before setting out.

The tracking took five days. Tulen read the ground the first two; the corridor above Stone-Fork has been bandit-run intermittently for three corridor-seasons and the cold-weather trace was not difficult. We lost the sign twice on stone shoulders and picked it up again against the stream-gravel where the camp-runners had watered. Karn took the ridge-lines and spotted smoke on the fourth afternoon, low and careful-banked—the bandits knew how to keep a fire small in the highland air where the smoke-column shows for miles.

We marked the smoke to a ruin-hollow in the eastern flank of the Drynn approach, where the old substructure runs three vault-chambers deep under a slumped hillside. The ruin had been opened before, long enough ago that the stone was lichen-weathered at the entrance and the workings had been stripped of anything saleable—no ward markings at the lintel, no active guardian-sign anywhere on the approach, which is the subset bandits work from by preference and which I recognized as such. It was shelter to them, not a working site. I note this because I want the record to show I read the ruin at its public-knowledge register; I did not and do not claim to read it deeper than that.

We came up on it at the hour before dawn on the fifth day.

Four sentries at the outer ring. Two at the mouth of the entry-fall, two above on the ridge-shoulder where the draft off the chambers vents warmer in cold air. All four were carnivore-folk; two I recognized as wolf-folk by stance and one as a larger carnivore-folk I could not place in the dark—Tulen put name to the species later. Karn and Morn took the ridge pair from range with crossbow at fifty paces. Gresh, Tulen, Rennek, Auveth and I took the entry pair with short work.

All four dropped inside seven counted breaths. No alarm went up that I could hear. We checked the sentries once each for stirring, and went in.

What we found in the first chamber I will set down exactly as I found it, because I was ordered to write this report and because a record should exist.

The first chamber had been converted to a preparation-floor. Three human bodies were hanging from an iron bar driven between two fallen pillars, at the height a butcher would use for a hog. They had been gutted and cleaned. The work was not ceremonial; it was the work of someone who had done it before and knew the right angles. A fourth body lay on a stone slab at the side, cooked through and partially eaten.

On a lower ledge along the north wall, three heads in a row, preserved in the cold air, set in the display-line a hunter might use for boar or wolf-trophies on a wall. Two were identifiable by the feature and one was too worked-on to name. I did not look at them longer than I needed to confirm what I was looking at.

The slope of the floor ran to a small pit where the scrap was being dumped. That is what I saw. That is what I am setting down.

Some of the bodies had restraint-marks on the wrists and ankles, not fresh—they had been taken alive, held for a span, and killed later. Two of the pairs of cord ligatures were still looped on the pillar-bolts at the chamber’s entrance, at the height a kneeling captive would reach. I did not count the cord-lengths because there was no time to count the cord-lengths. I counted bodies and I moved.

Gresh vomited. Tulen—later, not at that moment—asked who would keep the record of the dead so their kin could be found. I told him the officials of Harrowgate would keep that record and the magistrate would work the names. Tulen asked me this before he died in the second chamber. I am setting that down because Tulen’s kin should know that he asked it before he went further in.

The second chamber held the rest of the band. I count six: the leader and five others, all carnivore-folk. They had heard the sentries go, or had not heard but had felt the cold-air shift from the opened entry-fall, and they were on their feet and armed when we came through the second passage.

The fight was close work. Polearm length did not help Rennek in the narrow chamber, but he used the haft as a brace and held the left flank; Gresh took the near right; Morn and Karn set at the entry mouth for crossbow-line and then drew short as the range closed; Auveth went center with me and Tulen crossed to her.

Two of theirs fell in the first exchange. Their middle collapsed on itself and the leader pushed forward through his own wounded to reach us. He was the largest of them—wolf-folk, heavy-framed, red-leather and cold-steel, and he shouted as he came. I set down here what he shouted because the officials have ordered me to keep silent in public register on the band’s composition, and this report is not public register, and a record should exist. He shouted that we were nothing to him but meat on a slow day. He shouted it twice on the approach, and then a third time when Auveth closed with him and took his hatchet in the face and went down—so he had time to repeat himself, which is a thing I observed and am noting.

Tulen went down second, to the leader’s second-stroke on Auveth. He bled out in the time it took the leader to turn back to me, which is to say a count of four. I set down that Tulen died fast, because his kin will want to know that, and because it is true.

I killed the leader with the longsword. He had closed inside polearm-range by then, which meant he was inside mine. The work took one exchange. The cut went in under the collarbone and found what it needed. He went down on top of Auveth, which meant Auveth was under him when I checked her, and it is possible a more careful report would note that Auveth may not have been entirely gone when the leader fell across her; I looked, and I did not see what I would have needed to see to report otherwise, so I am reporting that she was gone when the leader fell and I am noting here that my certainty on that is the certainty of a person who did what she could in the time she had and has had ten days since to ask herself the same question.

The remaining three bandits broke after the leader went down. Gresh and I took two; Karn took the third at the back-wall with the crossbow as he tried to reach the third chamber.

The third chamber held the band’s storeroom and nothing that moved. Iron goods, tack, stolen caravan-gear, a set of oilcloth bundles we did not open until we were outside in daylight. No further captives. No further bodies. We carried Tulen and Auveth out. We did not carry the band out. We left the band where they fell, which is the standard record-to-magistrate practice where the ruin is already known to the charter.

—

**Casualties of the contract** — entered for kin-of-record payout per the clauses posted at the Long Board and countersigned at the lockmaster’s ledger at muster:

– Tulen, wolf-folk, kin-of-record: a sister in the lower Drynn waterstation, name filed at the lockmaster’s ledger. Death: interior engagement, second chamber, to the bandit leader’s second-stroke. Share: eight silver, to kin at the lockmaster’s disbursement window within the moon.

– Auveth, badger-folk, kin-of-record: a partner at the neighboring highland charter-town, name filed at muster. Death: interior engagement, second chamber, to the bandit leader. Share: eight silver, disbursement as above.

Surviving contractors to be paid eight silver each at the Charter Hall disbursement window, which has been posted for settlement at the close of this report.

—

On return to Harrowgate I reported the contract closed at the Charter Hall as the posting-wall required. The senior hunter-officer took the report in the ordinary register and entered the five names. He entered Tulen and Auveth’s names in the kin-of-record line. He asked three standard questions—corridor condition, ruin-state, remaining camp sign—and I answered in the standard form. He then paused the intake and sent a runner for the posting-clerk’s senior and for the magistrate’s second, which is not the standard intake register. I waited.

The officials who arrived with the clerk’s senior—the magistrate’s second, the senior clergy-witness of the Charter Hall, and two I did not know by face—took the full report in a closed room. It became clear within a count of minutes that they had suspected the band’s working-habit before my return. The merchant-coalition had posted a bounty-row premium at first delivery that the standard corridor-work did not justify, and the magistrate’s second had on her desk a re-classification notice the clerk’s senior already recognized. They had known, or suspected to the level that reading the ruin confirmed.

They asked me three things: first, whether my crew would keep public silence on the band’s composition and working-habit; second, whether I would countersign a silent-settlement clause on an added bounty-row premium of sixteen silver, to be distributed to the seven of us on the eight-per-share basis; third, whether I had retained personal items from the ruin that would need to be entered at the disposition-window. I said yes to the first with the reservation I am recording here—that a record should exist and would exist in this report, which is an institutional record and is not public register. I said yes to the second on the standard survivor-kin basis. I said yes to the third and entered the band-leader’s belt-buckle, which was distinctive, as the only item retained for bounty-verification; all other storeroom material was signed over at intake.

The senior clergy-witness spoke then and said the words I expected him to say, which were that the magistrate-docket classification of the interior find would be entered as grave-violation-of-person, that the access would be sealed to magistrate-warrant only, that the burial of the victims would be held under civic-oath with family rites permitted privately and public ceremony absent, and that the band’s remaining sign would be burned at the ruin before the thaw-moon closed.

The warning that followed was simple. Public register—tavern, broadsheet, posting-wall, bardic performance, family correspondence, anything the circuit would carry—would not name the band’s composition. It would not name the carnivore-folk exclusivity. It would not name the working-habit. It would not name the display. It would name what a bandit-suppression contract conventionally names: camp found, resisted, taken, payout cleared. The officials’ stated reason was that the corridor-towns along the upper Drynn had not had an interspecies clash in eleven winters and the chartered welfare of the mixed households was worth more than the correction of the record. I did not argue. I do not agree in all particulars. I am setting down that I do not agree, and I am also setting down that I will keep the public register as ordered, which I will, because the coin is fair and the cost of the alternative is what they said it is and my silence in public is the cheaper price.

—

**Assessment, entered against the officers’ standing request for a frank field-register at contract-close.**

The band was composed exclusively of carnivore-folk. I am setting this down because I observed it and because the record should hold it. I am not setting it down as a claim about carnivore-folk at the species level. Carnivore-folk made up four of the seven contractors who killed this band, counting Tulen and Auveth among them, and it was Gresh who took the ridge-sentry with me and Tulen who tracked the camp and Auveth who held center beside me in the second chamber. The composition of the band is a fact of the band. It is not a fact about carnivore-folk.

The leader’s shouted claim—that we were meat to him—was not a theory I recognize as anything but a private pathology the band carried into a corridor where they could act on it. I have heard the sectarian register at taverns and at the edge of posting-walls across my rotations, and I have refused to work for the one recruiter who tried it on me in my hearing twelve winters ago at a heartland caravanserai. I am not equipped to say whether this band had picked the register up from a sectarian preacher, whether their leader invented it for them, whether they came to it along with the corridor-habit that taught them they could keep doing it. I heard him shout what he shouted. I watched him work toward us across his own wounded to say it again. That is as far as I will go.

What I will also set down, because it bears on the corridor:

– The band had held the ruin long enough to build the preparation-floor. That is a span of weeks, minimum, not days. The corridor-watch missed it. The reasons the corridor-watch missed it are outside my register but the watch-rotation worth inspecting is the Stone-Fork-to-Drynn stretch.

– The restraint-marks were not fresh on all the bodies. Some captives had been held for a span before being killed. The settlement ransom-clerk and the magistrate’s missing-person lists should be cross-checked against the three identifiable heads and against the body-count I have given here; there may be reconciliations.

– The stolen caravan-gear in the third chamber had identifying marks from at least two merchant-coalitions I recognized and one I did not. The coalition representatives should be brought to the storeroom for identification before the bounty-clerk disposition closes.

– The corridor will need an elevated hunter-contractor rotation for the remainder of this thaw-season and the next. Bands of this working-habit do not survive in one corridor without having been recruited from a feeder, and the feeder does not close with one suppression. The merchant-coalition should be told to carry the hazard-premium for another two corridor-seasons at minimum.

– Hunter-contractors bought into future postings on this stretch should be vouched for corridor-familiarity as well as for the standard subtype-competence, because the work-register inside the ruin is not the register a first-rotation contractor should be asked to read. If any of our crew is asked to continue on the stretch, I ask that Gresh and Karn be preferred. Morn and Rennek have performed to standard on this contract but are rotating south at the close of this posting per their own vouches, and Gresh and Karn are nearby.

—

That is the whole of the report. I have written it as I was ordered to write it. I have kept the public register as I was ordered to keep it. I have set down here what I would not set down in any other register, because I was told this record would be kept in the sealed-access line under magistrate-warrant only, and I have no reason to doubt that.

If the account here does not match the corridor-watch’s account or the magistrate’s case record on any point, the correction should go in the magistrate’s line and not in mine. I am not a correction to a civic record. I am a contractor closing a contract.

Paid in full at eight silver the share on the attested disbursement window.

Filed.

— Melissa Threadscar, contractor of record.

Witnessed at filing by Gresh, Rennek, and Karn for the surviving contractors; by the posting-clerk senior for the Charter Hall; and by the magistrate’s second for the sealed-docket line.