Draft 2 – Updated 1 March 2026 (C015/D002)
Captain Croft knew as much about the Beard as any officer in the Company’s army. During the long days of summer, passing through it on the company road was relatively easy for expert riders like him and his rangers.
Rocks and debris did tumble onto the road now and then. Crumbling edges sometimes fell away. But these things were more of a threat to wagons, than to riders. So as long as the wagoneers travelling the road were careful, true harm rarely befell them in the summer.
In the long days of summer, in fact, travellers of all kinds could begin their journeys at sunrise and complete it two, sometimes three, fingers before dark. And if something did happen to delay them—an injury, a thrown shoe, illness, or fatigue—travellers could spend the night on the mountainside without fear of mortal danger.
But in winter, when days are short, when night falls quickly, when ice creeps underfoot, something changes and the passive Beard of summer turns into a grasping winter thing.
Captain Croft and his rangers ascended the company road to the Shadows the morning after the autumn equinox. This is the day on the calendar when nights become longer than days. It is the moment when wise travellers consider the Beard to be closed. While fast riders encountering no obstacles can still complete a journey through the Beard for several days after the equinox, wagons, pack trains, and inexpert riders simply choose not to risk it.
Croft himself crested the rise and arrived on the open plateau safely ahead of sunset. This was a relatively flat area between two impassable glacial horns that shot upward for thousands of feet. The plateau continued flat for nearly three leagues before sloping down the other side to the port city of Siouk.
At one time, the entire plateau had been covered in an ancient everwood forest. But once the Company moved in to claim the pass for their own, the trees had been cut down and turned into lumber. Most of the former forest now served as walls, fixtures, and fence posts. The rest had floated away as woodsmoke or still dotted the landscape as the wooded part of the wooded pastureland that now stood on the plateau in the ancient forest’s place.
The summer pasture, the area outside of the wooden palisade, was safe enough during the warm months to graze horses and livestock. There were gardens there as well, tended by slaves, that provided fresh vegetables and berries for the hundreds of humans who lived and worked in the Shadows. But at this time of year, everything was wrapped up and put away. The summer pasture was a ghost town. Croft saw nothing as he passed through the area, except the wooden wall ahead that marked the Shadows’ outer boundary.
Once inside that palisade, signs of life returned. These were the winter pastures. Horses, cattle, and sheep were tucked away in the broad, open area between the log palisade and an inner stone wall built to stand against an army. Here there were granaries and stables, slaughter-, storage-, and smoke-houses. Here, too, were the coffle yards for slaves tithed from the colony’s rich valleys.
Ahead, the gate to the stone wall stood open. Above them, an overpass, a defensive bridge, connecting the slope on the left to the slope on the right, was patrolled by a single guard. There was nothing to fear inside the palisades. Even in winter, the land claimed by the Shadows was safe. The only things to fear here lived in the marble sanctum at the center of the Company’s lair.
Beyond the stone wall lived the deputies. Here were the barracks where they slept, the grounds on which they trained, and the mess halls where they broke bread. The area between the stone walls and the marble walls of the inner sanctum belonged to the paramilitary force that ruled the colony of Weatheran. It was also where most of the Company’s work was really done.
Croft’s rangers stopped here. They dismounted, handed their mounts off to groomers, and carried their saddle bags back to their bunkhouses. Croft would have done the same, but he had orders. He was to report to the governor’s council immediately upon arrival. Exactly what he would report—and what he would withhold—had occupied his thoughts for the entire journey up from the river camp.
“I told you he’d come back empty handed,” a familiar voice snarked.
Croft looked up from this saddle bag to see Marshall Malcolm Hilmer and Sergeant Rooster Caldwell emerging from the guard house attached to the rangers stable.
The young marshal’s smooth white face was smug with privilege.
Rooster, the curly ginger beside him, was disappointed. His pale eyes scanned the area. “Maybe he left them in the coffle yard,” he said, looking at Croft with hope.
Croft shook his head.
Malcom chuckled and extended a hand in front of Rooster, who took out a bill fold and laid a rectangular paper bill in the marshal’s hand.
“The butcher?” Malcolm asked, with a smirk that said he already knew the answer.
Croft snorted a half-laugh. “Nope,” he replied, looking apologetically at Rooster.
The ginger deputy scowled back at him and laid another bill in Malcom’s palm.
“No hostages either,” Croft anticipated the next question, drawing the last bill from Rooster’s worn leather wallet and a hearty guffaw from the marshal.
“I told the old man,” young Malcom gloated, “never send a ranger to do a marshal’s job.”
It was Rooster’s turn to smirk. “What’s the point of going all the way down there and coming back with nothing?” he demanded, as he tucked his empty billfold into a shirt pocket.
“I’ll discuss that with the governor,” Croft replied, lifting the bundle he wanted from his saddlebag and nodding permission to the groomer to lead his mount away.
“Governor’s not coming,” Malcolm informed Croft. “He’s playing with his toys today. You can give the bad news to my father.”
Croft felt a buzz of frustration. He clenched his back teeth.
“I appreciate the money though,” the marshal jibed. “Rooster never learns and you never let me down.”
Croft ignored the young man’s taunts. Inside the walls, this was Malcom’s territory. Outside the walls, he would have his turn. “Just doing my job,” the old ranger replied.
“Your job?” Malcom feigned surprise. “You keep doing your job this well, it’ll be my job in no time.”
“Ain’t your job yet, kid.”
“Day ain’t over, old timer.”
“You don’t want this job, Malcom.” Croft leaned in to confine his words to the three of them. “Outside these walls, people fight back.”
Croft was hungry. He was tired and he wanted a bath. His meeting, scheduled with the governor, would now be with Malcolm’s father. For all he knew, this would be the day the kid would replace him. He didn’t care. He turned and headed for the marble gates.
Since they were going to the same meeting, Malcolm followed while Rooster turned back to the stables. As they reached the iron gate set in the marble walls, they met a coffle train arriving from the south valley. It, too, was late. It should have been here a week ago.
The children in the wagons were skinny. Dirty. Wasting from the coughs that racked their small bodies, coughs that started on the ranch two years ago, on the island where the Company bred many of their slaves. It had spread to the mainland last year. There were a few reports of it in the green valley, but it had clearly taken root in this coffle.
“There goes the south valley,” Malcolm mumbled, arriving at the spot where Croft waited well back, waiting for the sickly coffle to pass. “Shareholders won’t be happy.”
Neither will the governor, Croft thought, wondering why he was not more interested in the report of his First Ranger.
The two men walked together through the marble gate and entered the inner sanctum. On their right, stood the stone chateau, old and complete. It was carved into the side of the mountain, layered in steps that climbed the slope until the slope became too steep to climb. It had been the seat of government in the colony since it had replaced the wooden structure that stood in the mountain pass for two generations before it.
Across the road, carved into the opposite mountain was the marble chateau. Still under construction, it was the governor’s personal residence. It should have been finished by now, but construction had slowed after the war. The treaty had cut into the Company’s profits, so the shareholders were holding back funds. As the governor found ways to increase revenues, marble would flow faster.
Croft’s business was in the stone chateau. His only question was whether it was upstairs in the governor’s office, where the Company would be represented by Malcom’s posturing father or downstairs, in the dungeons where the man he reported to was playing with his toys.
Croft stopped on the spot where a decision had to be made. The marshal chuckled and moved past him up the stairs.
“If you think it’s a good idea to deliver bad news to the governor in the dungeons, you go right on ahead.” Hilmer chucked as he climbed the stairs.
He’s right. I won’t get to see him anyway. The only person who can get to him in there is the jailer. So Croft followed Marshal Hilmer up the stairs where the Lieutenant Governor would receive his report.
Malcolm stopped on the top step and waited for Croft. “I wonder what the captain of La Concord was thinking as he came up these steps,” he smirked.
La Concord sunk mid summer. Three hundred slaves bound for the islands died in that disaster—oarsmen and cargo. That cost the captain and his first mate their necks. Croft understood that he was coming back empty handed, but this was hardly that.
*****
“Is His Honor attending?” Harry Hilmer asked the recording secretary when he arrived in the appointed room on the middle floor of the three story structure.
“His Honor is aware of the meeting,” the secretary replied, scratching a date in ink on the page of an open minutes book. “He will attend or not as he sees fit, Your Honor.”
Croft did not turn to see Malcom’s smug face, but he knew the expression it would hold.
“How was your trip through the Beard?” the lieutenant asked, taking his seat in the smaller, less ornate chair to the right of the governor’s chair.
His chestnut hair was combed back, showing his high forehead creased by rows of lines that seemed out of place over his swollen cheeks. A short beard emerged from his wildly fuzzy sideburns. The two sides of his chestnut beard met on his rounded chin immediately over his turkey neck, which was mostly concealed behind a tall collar tied together with a bowtie that floated on a bed of ruffles.
“No haunts,” Croft assured him, getting to the meat of the man’s obsession with the Beard.
Croft’s bluntness appeared to rattle him. “Hardly surprising.” He was defensive already. “They don’t tend to show themselves in the daylight.”
“No signs of anything to be concerned about,” Croft assured him. “Nothing on the way down either.”
Lieutenant Governor Hilmer pulled several loose pages out of a folio he’d brought with him. Croft dared not roll his eyes, but he wanted to. Hilmer subjected everyone who passed through the Beard after the equinox to his long list of silly questions. It was, he said, for science. One day his notes would provide answers to the mysteries of the Beard. One day, he claimed, he would demonstrate the existence of a demonic portal that opened in the fall and closed again in the spring.
“There is no mystery here,” Croft had explained to him many times over the past two years. “Our people cut down all of the trees above and below the Beard. The predators have nowhere else to go.” Croft was a ranger, not a priest. There was no magic in his world. No demons neither. “They need to fatten up for winter,” he said of the predators he believed were behind the disappearances.
Hilmer’s questions droned on. Croft answered them all. Sights. Sounds. Smells. Temperature changes. Did he hear any voices? Any whistling? Did anyone call his name? Did he see anything strange? Unexplained stairways? Then it was over. His Honor jotted his last note, slid his papers back into his folio, and proclaimed the Beard closed for the season.
“Tell the men to seal the eastern gate,” he told his son, the man who was in charge of these things at the Shadows.
“Hang on a moment,” Malcolm cautioned, drawing his father’s eyes. “You haven’t asked him about the slaves.”
The older Hilmer seemed bewildered. Croft knew Harry had no interest in slaves. He was only here for the haunts. Slaves were the governor’s business.
“What slaves?” Harry asked.
“The ones he went to find,” his son replied, tipping his head in Croft’s direction.
“What about them?”
“Ask him?”
Lieutenant General Hilmer turned his eyes to Croft and a look of understanding broke upon his face. “How many needed to be quarantined?” he asked, causing his son to groan in disgust.
Croft waited a moment, savouring the kid’s annoyance. “None,” Croft replied, eliciting a second satisfying groan from the marshal.
Harry seemed pleased with the news.
“That’s because he didn’t bring any,” Malcolm explained, frustration singing in his words.
“Oh,” said Harry, looking down at the papers he was gathering. Then he stopped. “Oh!” he said again, this time with a completely different tone.
The older Hilmer was distressed. Croft’s mood darkened.
“This,” Harry said, his speech tentative, “is . . . not . . . ”—he searched for the right word, before settling on—”good.” He looked as if he might vomit. “The coffle from the south valley was short. And most of the slaves were sick.”
They all seemed sick to me, Croft might have said, but chose not to.
“The shareholders will not be happy,” Harry admitted, realizing the truth of his words as he said them. With the loss of the ship in the summer . . . ” he calculated, “we are . . . more than a hundred behind right now.”
“And yet,” his son pounced on the opportunity Croft knew he’d been waiting for, “Captain Croft brings us nothing.”
His Honor looked puzzled for a moment, then realized that Croft was someone to blame and the anger began to crawl across his lips.
“He has failed us in every way,” Marshal Hilmer continued. “He’s brought no slaves and no leverage. And . . . he’s made us look weak. The butcher, who Uncle told him to bring back for questioning, is sitting in Three Mills plotting against us.”
That’s a lie, Croft thought. The butcher wasn’t there. But the truth of the thing did not matter. This was political. The little shit wanted the First Ranger’s job. The way his father was nodding, Croft could see he might be about to get it.
“Captain Croft reports to me,” said Governor Ducot, entering the room and stopping before a hand basin set up at a station just inside the door. His back was to them while his body servant poured water from a tin jug over his hands into a basin.
All three men jumped to their feet when he entered. Not a word was uttered until he finished. He turned, handed a blood stained towel back to the servant, and took his seat in the large chair.
“I retained Captain Croft at the request of the shareholders,” he reminded them as the secretary scratched words into the minutes. “They felt I would . . . benefit . . . from having an advisor who has their ear to the ground, as it were.”
Then he looked directly at Marshal Hilmer. “Captain Croft’s family settled in the green valley nearly a hundred years ago. Your family”—he glanced at the man sitting to his right and then back to the younger Hilmer—”came to this colony five years after me.” He paused to allow that fact to sink in. “You are young and ambitious, Malcolm. Your turn will come. In the meantime, you must have patience.”
Malcolm sat back and crossed his arms.
“Captain Croft is more than thirty years your senior,” he advised his nephew. “Instead of constantly trying to replace him, try to learn something from him.”
Yeah, Croft thought. Good luck.
Malcolm shifted resentfully in his chair.
“The next first ranger will be a Hilmer,” Governor Ducot promised his nephew. “It could very well be you. In the meantime, do try to learn something from the experts I employ.”
The young man’s mouth twitched with words held back. His fingers scratched the fabric of his britches near the long knife on his hip. Malcolm was rash. Croft wondered how rash.
“What do you say, boy?” Harry prodded him. “What do you say to His Honor, your uncle?”
Malcolm’s eyes blazed for more than a moment. Then he broke and looked down. “Thank you,” he mumbled, “Your Honor.”
Uncle Governor glared at his nephew, giving him a long slow nod, waiting for more. But nothing came.
“What happened to my coffle, Captain?” the governor returned to the business at hand.
“I think gnolls got to it,” Croft replied.
The lieutenant gasped. The marshal scoffed. And the governor instantly denied what his expert had just told him.
“Impossible,” he said. “There are no gnolls on Company land. I had them exterminated. On the borders, maybe. In the mountains possibly. But not in the green valley.”
“Then somebody brought them back,” Croft answered. “because it was definitely gnolls.”
“And they’re all dead?”
“The slaves are dead.”
“What about the guards?”
“All gone.”
“Are you sure?” Harry was bewildered. He opened his folio and looked at his papers for answers. “Maybe it was demons—”
“No!” The governor’s open hand slammed down hard on the table, causing everything on the surface to jump.
“The elves are behind this,” he snapped, thrusting a finger at Croft. “In league with the butcher. It’s one of their bloody tricks.”
Croft didn’t think so. How he would say it, though, was another thing. “Reverend Garrett has been keeping an eye on the butcher,” Croft reminded his boss. “I brought his report,” he sorted through the objects on the table in front of him and produced a journal, which he passed to the governor.
“His son is vendible this year,” His Honor said, opening the handwritten journal and flipping through it. “I knew he’d try to pull something. Just like his brother.”
Croft ignored the accusation. The governor’s hatred of elves made him lose his bacon grease every time their existence came up. “The preacher doesn’t think so,” the ranger explained. “The only elves anybody’s seen him with are his suppliers.”
The governor gave up on the journal, closed it, and flipped it back onto the middle of the table.
“So where is he?” he glared at Croft, “I told you to bring him back with you.”
Malcolm uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. “You were told to bring the butcher back. If not him, then his wife or his kids.” Then he said the thing most likely to trigger his uncle. “You make us look weak, Croft.”
Croft was tired. Hungry. Weak. Strong. Ducots. Hilmers. They use these words without knowing what they mean. “If I thought the butcher was behind it,” he admitted, trying to dampen the flareup. “I would have done exactly that.”
The governor, red-faced, inhaled a long breath. It hissed through his nose.
“In any case, he wasn’t there,” Croft continued. “Taking his family would raise tensions. Provoke resistance. We don’t want that.”
Governor Ducot’s eyes blazed.
“Push too hard, we get Milton,” Croft said frankly. “The coffle’s gone. We don’t know why. But we can answer that question in the spring.”
Croft knew what Ducot knew and what the other two did not. Croft was the guard rail. He reported to the governor but he worked for the shareholders. They didn’t want another Milton. They didn’t want another Southport. They didn’t want an expensive war—with anyone in the colony.
“It’s your call,” Croft allowed the governor. “I’m just here to advise you.”
There was silence then. Croft was done. He wanted to leave now. He wanted supper. Then he wanted a bath.
“The Beard is closed now anyway,” Harry put in. “There is nothing we can do until spring.”
Croft agreed. He hoped that would be the last word.
“I can snatch the butcher and have him here in two days, Uncle,” Malcolm blurted.
Croft clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut hard. He drew in a long breath, careful not to let it hiss.
Harry shook his head. “The Beard is cl—”
“The Beard is closed when I say it’s closed, Harry,” the governor snapped.
“Look,” Croft made one more attempt to be the grownup at the table. “The guys at the river mills have dogs. I’ve asked them to search the area. If they find anything—”
The governor’s patience ran short. “What am I supposed to tell the shareholders?” he demanded, leaping to his feet. The chair squealed back across the wood floor. “We are a hundred thousand gold behind our quota. Twenty thousand of it was in the green valley coffle”—he pointed toward a window—”It could be running for the free lands right now. And you didn’t even bring me any leverage,” he shouted at Croft.
“Uncle—”
“Quiet,” Ducot snapped at his nephew with enough force to startle Harry in his seat.
“Tomorrow morning,” the governor thrust his index finger at his First Ranger, “you will ride down that hill and bring me the butcher.”
Croft nodded. “I can do that,” he admitted. “If he’s there.”
“Let me lead the mission, Your Honor,” Malcolm pleaded. “It’s just an errand. Croft can come with me. He can be my second.”
Harry shook his head vigorously. “The Beard is closed, son,” he insisted. “It’s too dangerous.” Then he looked forlornly at his brother-in-law. “Your sister would not forgive you if a demon took her son,” he said, eyes begging for backup.
The governor leaned forward placing his hands on the table. He glowered at everyone while they all sat in silence.
“I’ll consider it,” he replied after a long pause.
Croft doubted he would. The boy was not ready.