GAZETTEER · THE VALE

The Wake-Lodge

The Greenwake's edge-of-city grove-hall at the east gate, on the working rim of the Kilns — a timber lodge of wardens, hides and posted bounties where the wild's business enters the capital. The one seat in Highbridge the Greenwake keeps, because the wild is not a thing the wild-folk bring indoors.

The wild does not stop at the wall, so the Greenwake keeps a door in it — but only a door. Where the smoke of the Kilns thins out at the east gate and the cart-road becomes the wild road, a timber lodge stands roofed in cedar-shake and hung with drying hides: the Wake-Lodge, the wardens' one concession to the city. They post here what has gone dangerous on the roads — the beast that took a drover, the pack working the north trail, the thing seen near the passes that had too many joints — and they pay coin for proof of it killed, trade hides and forage-remedies, and otherwise keep the capital at arm's length, because the Greenwake distrusts walls and the people who need them. It is deliberately small: the order's heart is out in the green at the Hollowing Oak, and Warden Esk keeps it that way, sending only enough wardens down to run the bounty-board and the trade and no more. The Wake-Lodge smells of cedar, tallow and wet fur, and it is the one place in Highbridge where nobody is selling anything they did not carry in on their own back. A newcomer comes here for honest work with a clear price — a bounty on something that needs killing — and for the truest road-news in the city, told by the only people who go where the roads stop.

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