25 – Two Bears

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Draft 2 – Updated 4 April 2026 (C025/D002)

They paused now and then, during their ascent, to allow their horses to breathe. Each time they stopped, the clang of an anvil and the roar of a crowd grew louder. Strains of mountain music grew crisper. The chants echoing through the trees became clearer. 

“Two blows. Two blows. Two blows.” 

“What does that mean?” Butcher asked when he could finally make out the words.

“It’s a name,” LT replied. “One of the pit fighters.”

“Someone you plan to recruit?” he asked, calling past LT to Hunter who was leading them up the mountain. 

The elf shook his head. “Not why we’re here,” he replied without looking back.

“It could be,” LT suggested, glancing back toward Butcher with a wink. “Maybe your ancestors brought us all here on the same day for a reason.”

Now Hunter turned. Butcher had seen that look before. Amanda had a knack for drawing it from the elf. Inquisitive eyes set in a still-water face. But it was never followed by words, so he’d never discerned that look’s meaning. 

“He’s gonna think about it,” LT said with a sarcastic smirk when Hunter remained silent and turned back to the trail ahead.

Butcher snorted. “He’s been our partner since Amanda’s father passed. I never know what he’s thinking about anything.”

Butcher ran through the list of elves he’d known in his life. There weren’t many. He’d met them all in the course of his business. And he couldn’t recall a personal detail about any of them—other than the bullshit backstory they gave everyone. 

“The brotherhood was started by an elf and some humans,” LT said. “They worked together for two generations. Then the elves just walked away.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“No idea. Never said. Still won’t say today.”

Butcher frowned. Hunter was not involved in the day-to-day business of the butchery. He showed up regularly to bring fresh meat. Always courteous, he was never curious about the business. To the extent that they talked, it was always about Butcher’s family and Butcher’s neighbors in Three Mills.”

“Why didja walk away, Hunter?” LT asked.

“Politics,” Hunter replied, slowing his horse to a stop.

“What kind of politics?”

“The kind I’m not a party to,” he said, turning his horse to face them. “This is where we separate, yo. Give me a head start. About a finger. Then come on ahead.  Any questions about the plan?”

It was a simple plan. They would arrive separately, do their business separately, then reconnect at the Long Lake junction when they were done. 

“Do you think,” LT repeated his earlier question in an exaggerated voice, “your ancestors . . . brought Two Blows here . . . for a reason?”

Hunter paused a beat before answering. “Coincidence,” he said, “seems most likely.” Then he turned his horse and nudged it to a trot. 

LT laughed as the elf rode away.

“You’re relentless,” Butcher said when he was sure Hunter could no longer hear them. 

“Gotta be,” LT replied with a shrug. “Elves are tighter than a bull’s ass during fly season. They don’t volunteer nothing.”

“Why do you think they walked away?”

“No idea. ‘Ask the Beloved Council.’ That’s all they ever say.”

“So what does the Council say?”

“Withdrawal is temporary . . . while they consider the long term consequences of the treaty . . . and the like.”

“Oh.” That seemed reasonable to Butcher. “So it’s temporary.”

“Temporary,” LT replied, emphasizing the word, “means something different to them than it does to us. If temporary means a thousand years, we need to know. Cuz if that’s the case, we’re on our own as far as slavery goes.”

“A thousand years?” Butcher shook his head. “I’ve never believed that. Nothing lives that long.”

“I know. Seems hard to imagine.”

“You believe it?”

“They’re connected to the everwoods.” LT hesitated. “Somehow. And some of these trees have more than a thousand rings.”

Butcher frowned, looking up at the everwoods towering above him.

“Don’t ask me how it works,” LT confessed. “I don’t know and elves don’t talk about it.”

“But you know something.”

“I know what I’ve been told,” LT replied. “They believe their souls live in the everwoods. That’s where they come from when they’re born. That’s where they go back to when they die.”

Butcher could understand why elves might believe that. Elves were primitive, savages really. They didn’t have The Word. Missionaries were trying to educate them . . . and the heathens. But . . . trees? “What happens when a tree gets cut down?” he asked.

“Or when there’s a forest fire?” LT turned both palms skyward.

Butcher put a hand to his beard and squeezed down its length from his chin. He didn’t know much about what elves believed. He was never one to discuss religion outside of church. He wouldn’t consider bringing the topic up in his place of business, especially with important suppliers like Hunter and his friends. 

“Only way to get answers,” LT climbed down from his horse and moved to his saddlebags, “is to keep asking questions.”

The anvil rang and the chants resumed above.

“You were breaking his balls about Two Blows,” Butcher said, joining LT on the ground. “What was that about?”

LT withdrew some items from his saddlebag and squeezed them between his knees. “You ever done any farming, Butcher?”

“No.” Most of the people Butcher knew were farmers. But neither his family nor Amanda’s had ever worked directly on the land.

“Farmer gets a piece of land,” LT began while resecuring the bag’s leather strap through the buckle. “He owns it. Clear title. But it’s still not his alone. He has to share it with nature. If he wants to raise sheep, he has to share some of his sheep with the wolves. If he wants to grow crops, he has to share some of his rice with the birds.”

“Nature’s rent,” Butcher acknowledged. “It’s a cost of doing business.”

“Elves,” LT removed the items from between his legs and took a seat on a horizontal log, “see us as a one of those costs. We are something they have to manage.” 

“Interesting.” Butcher had never heard this about elves before. “Do they see us as wild or domestic?”

“We don’t know yet,” LT replied, offering up a small bundle of food wrapped in clean cloth.

Butcher accepted the bundle and sat next to him. “What does that have to do with Hunter’s ancestors?”

“Elves believe the everwoods are their ancestors.”

“Oh,” Butcher stopped, a piece of jerky hovered a finger length from his mouth for a moment before he lowered his hand to his lap. “I can see how that could be a problem.”

Butcher had always been curious about elves, but asking questions seemed to provoke only more silence and fewer visits. Amanda’s father had warned him to respect Hunter’s privacy. He’ll tell you what he wants to tell you when he feels you need to know it.

“Elves believe that their ancestors manage them the same way that elves manage their neighbours,” LT claimed. “Until we understand them better, we won’t know if they see us as enemies or friends.”

Then the farm is managing the farmer. But isn’t that true of everything? My business manages me sometimes.

“To be fair,” Butcher countered, “Hunter’s never done anything that I would consider harmful to anyone I know. All he does is bring us food. And when somebody we know falls on hard times, he brings us extra just for them. And he never takes credit for it.”

“Then answer me this, butcher. What does a hog say about the farmer who raised him the day before he gets slaughtered?”

*****

Tin shingles over blue granite walls appeared on the slope above them. As Butcher and LT rose to level grade, the music grew louder and people sprouted on the landscape. The smoke of melting fat from a hundred fire-grilled sausages drifted through the air. Music flowed from a cluster of happy men playing fiddles, banjos, and mandolins atop an idle gallows that had been repurposed as a bandstand. Open ground between the buildings milled with people, peddlers, and hawkers. It was a festival—fight day at Two Bears. 

The riders threaded their way through the crowd until they reached the trading post where they tethered their mounts to a hitching post. The raised boardwalk surrounding the building was crowded with saloon girls. Others displayed themselves in more provocative ways on the second floor balcony overhead. Bouncers watched over them all as they flirted with miners, prospectors, trappers, and men in Company uniforms. 

Butcher and LT arrived at the trading post’s main entrance to find their way blocked by a locked door and a large, unfriendly man. NO HEATHENS read a sign in the window. CLOSED FOR THE FIGHTS read another. LT expected as much. The trading post was always closed while fights were underway. They’d have to come back this evening to conduct their business.

“Surprised you’ve never been up here before,” LT said.

“My daddy advised me to stay away,” Butcher replied.

“Mine, too,” LT laughed. “Group I fell in with ain’t exactly friendly with the Company, though. So we work around that through Sewager.”

“He’s the owner?”

“He owns every building in this camp. The trading post, the bathhouse, the stables, everything. He runs the liquor, the fighting pit, and the comfort rooms. He even has his own militia. He’s as close as you can get to being a governor without being a governor.”

A young woman shrieked, drawing their attention. A bouncer in a grey uniform Butcher did not recognize, shoved a drunken man in a fur coat backwards down the steps of the boardwalk. He landed hard on the ground, the back of his fur-capped head slamming into the dirt. The clay jug in his hand remained safely upheld, only a small splash of clear liquid escaping.

“You know this fella Sewager?” Butcher asked, keeping a wary eye on the surly bouncer as they moved along the boardwalk. They descended the steps together, stepped around the prostrate drunk attempting to struggle to his feet, and sauntered in the direction of the fighting pit.

LT shook his head. “Only by reputation. Been to the pit here a few times. Never been inside his saloon.”

Butcher felt his brows twitch. “He doesn’t go to the fights?”

LT shook his head. “Avoids being seen as taking sides, they say.”

The line to enter the amphitheatre was long, but it snaked steadily forward. All of the men running it wore the same grey uniforms as the bouncer outside the trading post. The national patch and the Company patch were identical to familiar Company uniforms. But in place of a provincial patch they wore a patch showing two bears up on their hind legs. Whether the bears were fighting or embracing was unclear to Butcher.

“The fights are run by the local militia,” LT continued.

“I thought this was Eastbranch territory.” Butcher’s brows twitched again as he gauged the moods of the militiamen at the gate. “We passed an Eastbranch territory marker on the way up, didn’t we?”

“We did. Sweetwater Falls is actually right in the corner of the Eastern Province. But there’s only two roads leading in here. The one coming up from the valley goes through the western province. The one coming down from the glacier goes through Snowfall.”

The crowd in the amphitheatre pit roared their approval of something and a hammer pounded furiously, ringing on an anvil.

“Eastbranch has technical control of the territory but has no direct route here. So Two Bears is isolated in its 

own little pocket.”

“So they just let Sewager have his own militia?”

“Eastbranch kept a garrison here for years trying to keep an eye on Two Bears. One after another got burned out or slaughtered by heathens.” LT gave him a wry side-eye that Butcher immediately understood.

“Smart money being on Sewager as the one behind their troubles,” he said.

“Either way,” LT replied, “it got to be too expensive. So they settled on letting Sewager do his own thing. Been peaceful ever since.”

“Good for your friends, too, I suppose.”

LT grinned and raised his eyebrows as they reached the front of the line. “Picking sides cuts down on Sewager’s profits.”

A half dozen militiamen were stationed at the entrance to the pit collecting payments and looking people over. Uniformed Company men passed unchallenged through a separate gate just a fathom away. Everyone else had to run the gauntlet. Butcher felt a prickling sensation at the back of his scalp as they squeezed into the funnel before the gate. The presence of uniformed men at a choke point was rarely a good thing, in his experience.

When his turn came, Butcher stepped up to pay his two brass bulls. Four of the six guards at the gates laid eyes on him. He shifted his gaze to LT to avoid making eye contact. A moment later he was waved forward. When he next glanced at the gauntlet, all but one had moved their attention elsewhere. The remaining guard searched his face and then stepped into his path. 

“You’re the butcher from Three Mills,” the thick man said, blocking their way forward.

“John Butcher,” he replied, pasting on his friendliest customer-service smile and extending his hand.

The guard accepted his hand and returned the smile. “You probably don’t remember me,” he said, provoking John to examine his face more closely.

“I . . . do . . . know you,” Butcher realized. “I just can’t . . . wait . . . you came into the shop a few months ago . . . with—”

“Molly,” the man smiled, releasing his hand, allowing Butcher to keep moving along with the line.

“Yes.” A wave of relief washed over Butcher. “Molly Cooper. You bought ten stone of smoked sausage as I recall.”

The man’s smile broadened. “Twelve,” he corrected Butcher. “For Two Bears.”

“And how was it?”

“We loved it,” he gestured to the gauntlet of uniforms before the gate.

The crowd was pressing forward, moving them away from the gate into the seating area.

“Great to see you again,” John said as he and LT moved out range. “Take care now.”

“You’re famous,” LT said, clapping John on the back as they turned away. 

Nearly shit myself, he thought. He was pleased to know that the militiamen liked his sausage, though. Food was a fine foundation for friendship. 

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