The Cullers

The Greenwake's beast-hunters — they track and kill the maddened, dangerous animals before they reach the farms and steadings.

Out past the last fence, things go wrong with the wild stock: a stag that won't stop charging, a hill-cat that hunts people, a boar gone rabid and quick. The Cullers hunt those down before they reach a steading and gore a child or empty a sheepfold. They are the Greenwake's hardest edge — trackers and killers who keep the frontier folk alive, clearing the dangerous beasts that breed up in the deep wood and drift toward the farms. They strip and sell what's worth coin — hides, horn, the odd dug-up trinket or chunk of temple-bronze a kill turns up, which the salvage-buyers in town pay well for — and put the rest in the ground. They have no patience for the Rootbound's let-it-be and less for the Ledger's loggers who chase off the game and leave the predators hungry.